I have returned from a three-week Nairobi hiatus spent in Northeast Province and Mombasa. It hit me today, as I stepped onto the tarmac at Kenyatta Airport, that I live in a wondrous country. Sweet Mombasa where one of S.’s co-workers had us over for dinner almost every night to break fast over warm, sweet, coconut mandazi, potatoes in hot curry, coconut rice, samosas, and sweet milky tea. The house overlooking the pool and the blue water, the fishermen in their morning and evening trips, the glimpse of a shark, the pig being slaughtered in the house next door, the monkeys in the trees devouring a gift of small bananas. In Nairobi, I am greeted with a suddenly unfamiliar, cold, cold climate. Putting on a sweater, the car jam could be hours long. The drought is creeping into Central Province, even with all its lushness. The towering Safaricom and Zain billboards, the skyscrapers downtown, the hustle and bustle of a capital.
