correspondence 9/14/06

It feels like I've been here for weeks instead of days. September 10 is eons away, prehistoric in fact. Oh baby donkey just walked by! There are no cars on Lamu, only donkeys. It's the only form of transport if people don't want to walk. This means two things: donkey shit everywhere and braying at all hours of the day...and night. Oh and cute baby donkeys walking by internet cafes.

The houses are built very close together (I'm betting you've looked up pictures) and look like images I've seen of the Casabah in Algeria. Sewage water runs through open drains that lead to the ocean (oh so very sanitary) and trash is everywhere. Oddly enough I like it. It's an adventure navigating between donkey doo, sewage, and garbage...that's how I like to look at it. The place reminds me of what a cleaner 16th century london might've looked like (doesn't say a whole lot about 16th century London, but never mind). Most Lamu houses date back to the late 19th century (some even further) and are made from a mixture of dead coral and cement. They are very tall (3-4 stories) with a rough surface of shell and cement. I get so involved in avoiding the donkey doo that I miss out on looking at my surroundings. When I get to know the town better maybe this will change. It's fun to run my fingers across the surface of buildings and pick out individual shells in the mish-mash of wall.

My day starts at 4:30am when the roosters wake up. Rarely have I felt such a strong antipathy towards a species (outside of carpenter ants and octipi). If you get a chance, kindly send me a meat cleaver - I'd put it to good use (chicken for dinner EVERY night). 5am is the call to prayer and I'm out of bed by 6:30. With a cup of tea or coffee I turn from rooster-hating-zombie to human being just in time for 7am Kiswahili class. I learn swahili until 8 when we break for breakfast and then it's back to school until 12:30pm. I can conjugate in the present, past, future and past perfect AND negate all of those. My vocabulary is pathetic and my conjugating abilities are sub-par but kidogo, kidogo (bit by bit) I will learn. We have a 1-2 hour lecture or tour at 2:30pm about Lamu or Swahili culture. At 5pm-7pm I go to my Kiswahili tutor and then from 7-8pm we have dinner at the guest house. By 9pm I'm zonked! Around 10pm a local musician comes to teach me a traditional Swahili wind instrument (it kind of looks like a clarinet, but smaller). I suck. One of the adivisors of the program noticed me playing my penny whistle and suggested I try to learn this Swahili instrument (can't remember the name for it, I know I'm horrible). It sounds like a banshee farting and is, for me, incredibly difficult to play. I spit and sputter through the palm reed as my poor teacher watches. I have the vague sense of tears welling up in his eyes as I butcher this beautiful instrument.