I’m a little disappointed in myself for yesterday. I was out and about almost the entire day, but only managed to take two pictures.
My morning was spent finishing my current book. On Sundays I’ve found that everything seems to shut down, and if not for the whole day at least until midafternoon. I had the thought yesterday that I was awestruck when I learned Chick-fil-A closes on Sunday—now it’s feels totally normal to see stores giving up 1/7 of their possible business. And to be honest, I kind of enjoy the idea of taking a full day to relax. One thing I think Americans struggle with (which has been noted to me by many people I’ve met) is needing to always be active or productive or moving. Of course there are many different outlets for this, but it’s rare to see families and friends and communities taking out full days, every single week, to spend time cooking, eating, laughing, and enjoying life. So, I embraced it and slowed down with my morning and was able to finish my book.
A little before noon I left the hotel with one goal: find a place open and serving lunch. I walked a while and finally found a spot next to this rice mill. My goal wasn’t really driving me too much because it took about an hour for me to travel a mile. I was walking very slowly, stopping in at stores along my way, exploring to goods and whatnot.
After lunch I had another goal of finding a shuka (one of the Maasai robe/blanket things) for under 10,000 tsh. I’ve been wanting to get one, but my friends have told me that anything above that price is skin color tax, and I shouldn’t settle, but people have not been willing to go much below 10,000. Anyways, no luck on that still, but I did find some other trinkets and had a fun time walking around.
One problem I often have while I’m out and about is people coming up to me for many different reasons. I remember in Ethiopian it was really difficult because it would be children asking for money, and it made me feel terrible, so I would opt to kinda zone out and ignore them. Here it’s a lot more friendly, normally with the same end goal, but still a lot more friendly. And I enjoy talking with people, but I know at some point it comes that they are going to ask for money. It truly is a problem for me though because sometimes I just want to be able to walk around and take in the environment, watch motorcycles roar past, or sit and eat a meal without being disturbed, and when I don’t have that peace and I’m constantly being harassed it puts me in a bad mood for anyone who approaches me with good intentions. And that happened yesterday.
It’s a culmination of the whole day and I don’t want to be a bore, so the gist of it was that throughout the day a lot of people had been more bold than usual in harassing me, so when it came to a little boy with a crippled leg I was a total American asshole. As I passed, I didn’t understand him at first because I was locked into the ‘ignore and get home’ mindset, but after hurrying past, my very delayed translation led me to believe he was asking if I could tell him some English.
I got home not five minutes later right around 5:00pm and the rest of my day was spent in a kind of bad mood. I do not think it’s at all wrong to blame other people for leading me to how I reacted, and I don’t think it’s a particularly evil thing that I did either, more so I was stuck reflecting on being an outsider.
Anyways, in the end I came to good conclusion—I just need to toughen up—but it had me down for a bit. Today is back to work which I’m excited for. I have a lot to get done and I think it’ll help make the days go by quickly so I can get back to exploring the city and culture around me next weekend!