Kenyan Conversation

Friday, May 28, 2010

I have been going over and over in my head to find a good way to explain the Kenyan manner of speaking, and I am struggling to pinpoint it exactly. The best I can say is that it is incredibly vague, and everything exists in superlative. For example, I came downstairs today and Mama Vicky handed me an avocado from her tree that she has been saving for me for days and told me that tomorrow I must eat is (again, MUST eat it). I said I was very excited, and she whips around and says, “You are excited? Avocados are your favorite?” I have learned by now that favorite is not an exclusive term, and can be applied to anything you like at all. If it is not your favorite, you will probably never see it again, so I just say that everything is my favorite. About 3 minutes later, Mama Vicky is setting the food on the table, which includes chapati, a fried bread/pancake that I hadn’t had yet. I hear her call from the dining room with an unusually nervous tone, “Alex, suppose that chapati isn’t your favorite???”, I laugh, and respond, “Mama Vicky, suppose it isn’t? Will you kick me out of the house?” She storms back into the kitchen and takes me strongly by the shoulder, “Alex, No! I will make you ugali instead. I know you love ugali!” End of conversation. She transitions swiftly into Kiswahili with Paul’s mother, who is staying with us because she has a swollen foot. For the record, I don’t LOVE ugali, I think it’s just fine, so I am compelled to say that I LOVE it. In Kenya, you either love something or you hate it. There is no middle ground.

Everything is also completely vague. When you ask how far away someplace is, it is either very very near, or very very far. And these things are compared to a sliding reference point for distance. Asking for more detail never helps., for example:

Me: “Is it very far like Kisumu, or very near like Naka?” (translation: is it an 8 hour drive, or a 15 minute drive away?).

Kenyan: “OK, OK, it is kind of far like Isiolo.”

Me: “Where is Isiolo?”

Kenyan: “OK, sawa, I will take you some fine weekend.”

Me: “I would like that.” (I have no idea where I just agreed to go.)

My student Antony and I usually bicker most of the day about little things in life. We get into a discussion about femininity and masculinity because I am a girl, and I randomly use a piece of pink scrap paper to sketch something and Antony turns it into a full-scale debate about gender roles based on pink being a girl’s color, and blue being a boy’s color. I say that I like pink, so Antony exclaims, “so you LOVE pink!” I say I don’t know if I would say I LOVE pink, but I like it Antony responds, “so you HATE pink!” I say I think pink is good, but I also like blue. Antony gets angry, “so you LOVE blue?!?!” I am now just annoyed by the total lack of use of descriptive words other than LOVE and HATE. I retort that I don’t think I have the capacity to truly LOVE or HATE a color anyway. Vienna and Amos burst out laughing and Antony changes the subject. I am not sure who won this debate, but I feel good about it.