winter in warsaw

i have never fathomed traveling to poland and yet here i am in poland. in one of those intensive workshops that give you no opportunity to see anything about the place other than the hotel room.

so i'm not so disappointed.

i did try to be a little bit of a tourist though and attempted to book an evening city tour. they had many options: the jewish tour, the communist tour... in lovely classic Nysa 522s but they were only available on weekends and i was traveling back then.

and so i compensated by over-eating everything that was particularly polish and by "engaging" with local poles by messaging with my tinder swipes... or not. of course i didn't understand i thing they were saying in polish!

i thought of my one pole friend - who hasn't lived in poland for awhile - so i didn't try to call her.

it felt like russia to be honest.

it's the first time i ever really thought about eastern europe, about what life might have been like during communism. about the fickleness of nationalities. one of the conference girls i ended up spending a lot of time with, hates the question "where are you from?" she tells me her grandmother's nationality changed three or four times in her lifetime and yet she never moved.

when her grandmother was a little girl, it was called the austro-hungarian empire, and then czechoslovakia after world war 1 and then slovakia in '93. it was called the slovak republic under nazi germany and czechoslovakia under soviet rule and each time they were forbidden from speaking certain languages.

and so she doesn't feel much for nationality in much the same way her grandmother doesn't.

and i found this amusing, being a nomad who never grew roots too deep to find that even when you do, your surroundings can change so much and so frequently they render you the nomad.

being in san francisco

so america keeps trying to convince me that its food is real. real beef! the ads say, real milk!... which makes me wonder, what this food otherwise is?!

"grass fed beef" says one menu. "farm-grown potatoes" boasts a crisps packet. do cows not otherwise eat grass? are potatoes not otherwise grown on farms?

but i like san francisco so far. i like the visual treat of both the new and old. it IS beautiful and people are friendly. and i like the paper toilet seat covers and use them every time.

i know that i could be doing a lot of touristy things. but instead i've been enjoying spending time with migrant locals. living through their years of immigrant experiences vicariously through summarised reflections of what moving to america has meant for them, watching san francisco evolve and gentrify.

the american dream both is and isn't. it IS amazing that you can be whatever it is that you want to be, especially in a place as culturally diverse as san francisco. but if you don't achieve your dream, then it really isn't worth it living in the states - i don't think. you end up in a vicious cycle of making ends meet, staying stuck. too stuck to leave. and too stuck to enjoy staying. but for those who make it, i can understand why they would never want to leave.

coming to san francisco

the last time (and first time) i was in san francisco, i was 15, it was the end of a millennium and there were grand speculations about how the world was going to end.

i went with family and stayed with family and don't remember much besides eating and shopping.

the woman next to me on the plane told me that it was beautiful but i don't think i had much of a concept of the beauty of cities then and so i just took her word for it.

16 years later, i'm here again, this time for work and i appreciate it much more both as someone who has traveled and as someone who has grown roots. i care about the history and character of a city and it's exciting to be in a place that has changed exponentially.

in the late 90s, my cousin had gotten into the gaming industry straight out of high school. little did anyone know that that was to define the city and that the city was to define the world of technology.

everyone here works in tech, my friend says, at dinner as she explains who around the table works where. and true enough, everyone either has a start up or is innovating, or is working for a tech firm in some way or form... except laura from new york who makes a living suing people for some magnetic device she "invented".

we go out to a club after dinner and everyone is super friendly and quite polite and i wonder if this is typically san franciscan. everyone here goes to burning man, my friend explains, which is a week long party in the desert.

during the day we had gone window shopping and site seeing and she had told me all about the kinds of things san franciscans like, which is just about everything. there are themed parties for themed parties' sake. there is innovation for innovation's sake. but there are more non san franciscans in san francisco than san franciscans because people leave. the streets are becoming gentrified. and there is so much money people don't know what to do with, they get high and don't commit.

i do notice that people in the club range from 30 - 50.

it's never-ever land. we don't grow up.

it is fun in the club and the light shows are mesmerising and the people around me seem to be in good spirits not necessary because they're high (although i did learn later that there was a lot of coke going round) but simply because they want to have fun and fun seems to be a necessary part of living in san francisco.

but amidst all this fun which i'm happy to have for the time that i'm here, i think that i wouldn't want to stay in never-ever land. and that there is something sad about not evolving.

Baringo

We're going to the former president's home, a place touched by his priority for education, evidenced by the schools on every bend but equally silenced by his intolerance for dissent. So much so that the only civil society that existed there for awhile was environmental. So much so that it was only when he left power that his people finally admitted that they were hungry.

I don't know how much of it is my own feeling or whether there really is a sense of loss in Kabarnet for the days when their man was in power. Every election cycle is fraught with the question of alliances and front-runners and in a country divided by ethno-political power and memory, the question I feel on their lips or anyone's lips who has not yet tasted power is whether and when it will be their time (again).

-------------

We arrive in Kabarnet, five hours after leaving Nairobi and in the evening when we take dinner I notice the homogeneity of colour and laugh at the irony of what is black in Nairobi being brown in the Rift Valley.

Trips to UG

The last time I landed in Entebbe, they herded us like goats into lines to submit forms declaring that we did not have ebola. 

"This is very serious!" they cautioned us, as if to justify how much more inefficient their immigration services had become as a result of the crisis.

And then they sprayed us with hand sanitiser and let us go. 

-----------------

Uganda always reminds me of Rwanda: the hills upon which the cities are built, the militarised state...

"What do you think about when you think of Uganda?" my colleague asked me. 

"Idi Amin."

He laughed, "but that was so long ago!"

"And greenness and bananas." I compensated. 

"We are a democracy now."

"What is the ratio between the ruling party and the opposition?"

"About 70:30?"

"Wow, that's a big difference."

"Yeah but the Vice-President is running this time. I think he has a good chance of winning."

"Is he really independent?"

"Well, come to think of it, he hasn't officially denounced the party."

"Do you think maybe he could just be alternating like Putin and Medvedev?"

"Maybe. I wouldn't put it past them."

Second hand things

I collect furniture, no thanks to the addictive nature of OLX. And so my house is a collection of once owned pieces by people in some form of transition.

But I also collect the stories behind them and with each item, I am always surprised by the experience.

This is how my house came together:

1. The sofa and dining table

A woman seemed to be selling her whole house on OLX. Almost everything a house would consist of was for sale. But I liked her sofa most and the matching dining table. Both, dark brown wood and dark brown suede or something similar to suede (you never know these days). We agreed on a price for both and I came with a truck. Are you leaving the country? No, I'm getting married. Wow! That's great! Congratulations!

"He wasn't going to marry me, you know. After a year of living together, he said he didn't feel the need to get married. Why? I asked him, because you get all the wifey benefits? And so I moved out! I bought all this furniture and restarted my life. A little while later, he proposed. And now I'm moving back in and selling all of this."

And so she sold me both for half the price she bought them for. "I want to pass on some of my good luck," she said. 

2. The coffee table

I liked the table. 

As it looked small enough to fit in my car, I organised a time to go and pick it up.

She showed me the things she was selling, the things that were already sold and the things she was leaving behind. "I've pretty much sold everything I wanted to," she started. "We're going back with just two suitcases each... aren't we?" She looked at her daughter. A five year old with big hair and big eyes, swinging her legs from the stool that she sat on as she watched us transact. 

"We're excited to go, aren't we?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed with all the ignorance of what it would mean. 

"My marriage is not working. I couldn't find work here. It just got too much. So now we're going back. I'll go back to my old job. If I didn't have her, maybe I'd be travelling elsewhere. But she has to go to school you know!" she joked and I laughed. They looked like a cute pair.

"I'm afraid, you know. I didn't think I would be doing this."

And so I assured her, as much as a stranger can, standing halfway between the door and the living room until we had run out of as much of the casual conversation you can have at eight in the morning before someone goes to work. 

And then we picked up the coffee table - a piece of wrought iron and wood that was the entry point for her to seek confidence in a stranger and we carried it down the stairs and set it down in my backseat. And then we hugged like we knew each other and parted ways. 

3. The carpet

It was an explosion of blue - my favourite colour and even if I thought it might not go with my brown-coloured living and dining room, I just had to see it.

"I lost my job," she says. "If you know of anyone looking for someone in communications, please let me know?"

"Sure." I said and gave her my card. 

"I'm just volunteering here until I find something," she continued.

I wished her all the best in finding work again.

The carpet she just sold me would last her at least a week or two in unemployment, I think. 

4. The bed

It was a wedding present. They were moving to a smaller place closer to work and needed a smaller bed. 

"Are you married?" His wife asks me.

"No. Not yet. No I'm not."

"When you get married call me. I'll give you more books," she said as she handed me two books about beauty and marriage. 

They talked about the fleeting nature of beauty, counselled women about getting married before the expiry date of their beauty and about keeping beautiful for their husbands. 

Beauty also depends on money, the book reads, so prosper so that you can invest in making your wife beautiful!

She still calls me to ask me whether I am any closer to getting married and my answer is always the same, "No, not yet. But I will when I do."

5. The curtains

He had found a job elsewhere and so they were packing up and going. "I have gotten so many calls," his wife tells me, referring to the responses to her ads, "it's so hard to keep track."

"Yeah, I can imagine. You have good stuff."

"Thanks. I realised that people aren't so interested in high fashion. Just, well built things." She fingers the curtains. "They're so thick we didn't see the need to line them." 

"Yeah, I can see."

"Only the pair in the baby's room is lined so he can sleep some more."

"Yeah! That's very good."

"So which ones do you want?"

"I think all the beige ones."

"Ok I'll take them down for you. You'll need to wash them though."

"Sure, no problem."

"So, are you new here?"

"No I'm just moving out."

"Ahh, I see."

And then it came out of me, "I didn't think I would be doing this alone. I thought maybe I'd have a roommate or move in with someone, I...."

And there it was, in the slip of the tongue, I had made her awkward. I had imposed my fears on a stranger. She stood looking at me compassionately, unsure of what to say. 

After a moment, I gathered myself together and organised for a time to come again to pay and pick up the curtains and said goodbye. She watched me go, unaware that I had panicked when I had first hired a truck and felt my heart drop as it pulled into the compound. 

Because it was only then that I realised that my transition of moving out was a reflection of the status of my career and my economic situation: of what I was able to afford to move into and of what I was able to buy - a summary of my worth, in a way. 

So perhaps this is was why these sellers felt the need to impart the history behind their furniture pieces - because they were testimonies of the circumstances under which they were letting go of bigger things and because in those moments, we were each others' only witnesses.

the 3am man - her side of the story

i read a post about the 3am man ealier this year and thought to write her side of the story (which i also posted as a comment on the same blog post). It goes as follows:


It's going midnight and you have that dread in the pit of your stomach again that he's going to come home at 3am or later. And you know that when he does come home, he'll be the only thing that he can be at that hour which is an idiot. 

And for your male friends who settled because they needed someone to temper their idiocies, they like to joke about you not succeeding in tempering his. 

It's not even a matter of limiting freedoms for control's sake, though, it's just that nothing good ever comes out of staying out that late. And you hate that to ask him to come home makes you that proverbial nagging wife. And so you keep quiet and he calls it you being judgmentally silent.

To be honest, you don't mind the 1am man. The 1am man is high in the mellow kind of way, he's relaxed, talks more than he normally does, maybe says sweeter things than he normally would... But the 3am or later man? Is simply a fool. He loses his phone(s), wallet, keys, cigs, lighter, car, argues for argument's sake and finds himself arrested for loitering or being drunk and disorderly or whatever other charge a cop can think of to maximise extortion. And instead of calling you, because you also happen to be a lawyer, yes, another goddamn lawyer, he calls his boy Joni, who hangs up on him laughing while he says, "that was a good one manze."

There's nothing he's losing, you think, from leaving the same boys he sees three times a week a few hours earlier than 3am. But you let him be, because he says you met him that way so you should love him that way. And you do. You let him get into trouble, because inevitably it's him who has to deal with it... well:

- Except when he wakes the tois up as he finds his way through the house bumping into every noisy thing on the way from the door to your room and if Ciku doesn’t go back to sleep well, she will be cranky (which equals crying and tantrums) all day the next day which you have to deal with and have been dealing with since she was born;

- Except when he wakes you to try to feed you Kenchic chicken and chips because in his 3am mind, if he is hungry, you are hungry too, “I’m not just giving you the last piece o’ chicken babe, I’m giving you all of it!” He tries to charm you as he greases your face with food offerings and leaves chicken pieces all over the bed;

- Except when you have to call Joni to ask him whether he’s seen or heard from him ‘cos he hasn’t been home in the last two days and you’re worried and Joni reacts with, “kumbe he wasn’t joking that Friday when he said he’d been put in cell!” And so you spend your Sunday or Monday looking for him in the cell you think he might be in;

- Except when he barges into the bedroom, with 3am booze-induced self-aggrandisement of becoming a lion – nay, a mandingo and declares that it’s time to have sex with all the enthusiasm of a caveman whose killed and dragged meat home and announces this achievement, only in this sad reality he will probably pass out in the throes of trying to do so;

- Except when he’s constantly suffering from stomach pain and diarrhoea and never gets to eat the food that you cook for him and then wonders why you have no motivation to cook;

- Except when he cancels or indefinitely postpones plans you have made because he’s broke again and needlessly tries to question how it is that he lost/loses so much money;

- Except when, every other time someone he knows or was with gets into an accident and you pray that every next time it isn’t going to be him.

He says he loves you for accepting who he is and you don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. So you take every 3am night as it comes and listen to his justifications of witchcraft or owing his boys. And you want to both laugh and cry because as much as it's annoying and cyclically senseless and deprives you of sleep and many other things, there is no malice and you can only be so upset with actions that are not intended to hurt. It’s like the times you buy him PS games and he runs out the house almost immediately to floss to his neighbor friends and colleague friends and drinking friends and then plays them all day and forgets you have just come back from being away and were looking forward to catching up. And then he comes sheepishly back home and you want to both laugh at his childlike fervor and the stories that come out of these idiocies but cry also out of both relief that he’s home and the recurring sadness that you lose/lost him momentarily to booze.