Tuesday, 08 September 2009

ONE YEAR OF 'BACK HOME'

Haiya,it's been a year already.

What has got better

• Closeness to family and hooking up with old friends. Going home more frequently
• I have a job that I love
• Cheap organic food
• Nice people, (in Uganda at least), generally
• New friends,new language (that's very similar to Gikuyu and Kiswahili)
• No winter, leaving and returning home when it’s dark outside
• Low bills. $10/month for electricity and $5/month for water. Now am not paying for water
• The profit potential
• And then some

What has got worse
• Death. Lost 2 relatives this year, the Mungiki massacre. Have also been to two funerals with work colleagues, and other colleagues have lost people and I haven’t been able to go. At least two meetings have been cancelled because someone has died and there is okuziika. The frequency has made me a bit of a worrier.I hope to live long, seems planning is not enough. An idea comes to mind. Creative people are making making a living out of the death industry. It's sure, and it's recession-proof.
• Blackouts, H2O rationing in Nairobi
• Traffic. In Kampala, Boda Bodas don’t help with that
• Bad customer service, if existent. Not being able to return stuff once I’ve paid for it
• The poverty that I see, or the manifestation of it

What I miss
• My friends and ‘family’, those who saw me in my good and bad times
• Good customer service. Being entitled as opposed to being treated like someone’s doing you a favour when you give them business
• Reliable power, water, things generally working efficiently. You know when the train comes
• People who take responsibility when they screw things up
• Open-mindedness, even at church. Now you know I didn’t commit to the fundamentalist world view
• Springtime and Summertime, my mind and moods popping up with the flowers, the sun setting late

What has changed
• I’ve blogged more. This is my 21st post this year. I did 17 in 2008, 1 in 2007.
• I am no longer dating ‘Chorge’. He is a great guy, I enjoyed his sense of humour (“you know in Kisii we can never go jogging in the mornings or evenings, especially if it’s (still) dark. Someone may think we are night runners and we end up getting lynched”), and a perfect body. Won’t delve into the details of my current state of affairs. Stay tuned
• I am more assertive, and that can be a bad thing sometimes. I am working on being nice about it
• I’m no longer deeply religious and don’t want to be. I’m a Christian, yes and I’m working on getting my relationship with God back on track. Guess who had moved?

2 comments:

Cee said...

I definitely feel you on the winter part...I hate winter aki....heri summer. I guess God knew that's why there are no extra long days in Africa coz people would never go home in Summer neither would they go out in Winter

Maua said...

Yaani a year is gone?

with the things you miss, some you can try and improve, eg customer service. Be a good example, hoping you will have perfected it by the time we come back.

I'll send you some maua every spring.