
Week One in Nairobi, Kenya
Things they don’t prepare you for
· The out of body experience you have of not moving to a different country for 6 months but for having to take two 8 hours trips and being in three different time zones in that span of time. Do this constitute me as a time traveler #afrofuturism (?).
· Being the only one in your group that haven’t been on 8-hour flights before. It’s really liked a bus drive but better because there’s no under smell of mustiness and you get a meal with good chicken. It was honestly the best chicken I’ve ever eaten out of the box and we got Swiss chocolate for free. The chocolate was so perfect I almost forgive them for my back pains.
· The nerves you feel when you give the only other black person in your group the look when the yts are being the yts for the first time
· The relief you feel when the only other black person in your group return the look when the yts are being the yts for the first time
· Your host little sisters putting on lucid dreams and trying to control yourself to not sing at the top of your lungs because that’s just your natural impulse when you hear that song now. You’re really unprepared for this since your aunt told you not to buy toms because they wouldn’t know what they are but they rockin pumas and Ugg’s. Ima start calling them ranch because they be dressing
· Your host dad not being able to get out of the parking lot 1. Because the ticket isn’t working 2. Because he’s lost…….did my dad find a way to transport himself into my host dad. Did he finally find a way to go on this trip with me? #afrofuturism (?)
· Wanting to call your grandad so he can crack a joke and make your emotions kick in since you have yet to figure out how or what to feel
· Wanting to send a picture to your granny right after you get off the phone with your grandad because you know she would love to draw the scenery.
· Your host family to bring up flint and saying the black eating prayer, “god is good. God is great. Thank you for my food amen”, at dinner
Things they do prepare you for
· Being the ONLY person with shorts on
· Making notes at 4 a.m.
This whole summer I wrestled with the idea of if I should blog or not while I’m here. However, the night before I left I had an episode where I thought I lost my passport and found it in my journal. (Hey God, 👋🏾heard you loud and clear). So here I am doing something like a blog. The Virgo in me wants to have a concept and a theme and a structure and a schedule. The sag moon and rising in me wants to just have some adventure and go with the flow of it. We’ll see how this go then. This is going to be a bit difficult for me because I’m not the type to share my writing especially one composed entirely of my feelings not hidden by double meanings and academic words. What’s even more hard about it though is in the beginning I haven’t felt anything yet. I had no emotions about this trip. Not as if it’s not a big deal because it is but it’s a concerning nothingness. No nerves, no anxiety, no excitement, no homesickness. It’s a nothing that’s hard to describe. I wanted to feel grateful and curious, but I didn’t. Maybe that would change? Maybe that’s a symptom of jet lag? I wasn’t sure. I remember telling one of my close friends that summer was the buildup of my fall depression which would be hitting right about now. And with working two jobs and the death of my granny, this summer did a splendid job of building up. But this feeling of nothing was not that which is good.
And then Mac Miller died. I’m not Mac Miller biggest fan. I can’t name every single track and all of his discography, but Blue Slide Park was the first rap album I ever bought. Now this is a big deal because it was the key component of me taking a conscious step of creating my own unique relationship with rap which is something I love. Very much so like the unique relationship and love I had with my granny who passed this summer. So, the first real emotion I have been able to identify while I’ve been here is grief. Life goes on. And it goes on with or without you. Even after you orient yourself and weave people into your being and you get so comfortable with them in your existence that you don’t even think about the possibility of them not existing with you anymore, life goes on with or without them. I’ll never receive another phone call from my grandad, drawing from my granny, or album from Mac Miller. But life still expects me to go on. I knew this trip was going to change me, but this feeling of grief has exposed to me that life will always reinvent me willingly or not. No matter how bad you want to just hit the pause button sometimes life will go on.
That fact can be really scary sometimes. Especially when I just started to recognize that feeling of nothingness mentioned before was comfortability. That seems taboo now that I know who I am can suddenly be shoved to shift at any moment and there’s no way to prepare for that. But maybe this is the lesson that I have been searching for. It’s a little upsetting to me that the feeling of comfortability is so rare for me that it was hard to recognize from the jump. In America I carry so much anxiety from so many factors in my life that I have to remind myself to relax my shoulders and jaw while lying in my own bed. I am always self-conscious of myself and my presence in America because I know in any second regardless of what I am doing or not doing things can go sour. I know that just because of the way I look there are going to be dangerous assumptions about me that can sometimes be life threatening. Here I blend in. People come up to me speaking Swahili because they think I’m Kenyan and then take the extra step to ask why my parents never taught me my language. And after revealing that I have an aunt that share the same name as their current president there is no convincing them that I don’t have ancestry roots here. I walk into a space and don’t feel the need to avoid eye contact and when people smile or acknowledge my presence it feels genuine and well-intended. It’s also shocking to me that my comfortability hasn’t replaced my alertness. Kenya do have a high crime rate that I am aware of, but so do Detroit and I have survived this long. I am smart enough to not be scared. Here is it is a little easier for life to go on because there are less uncontrollable factors to threaten that which makes me wonder, is this how it feels to live in a society absent of gratuitous violence. I can breathe and matter easier.
p.s. Stay tuned for a concept, and a theme, and a schedule. This is more so a rough draft and literally thoughts I pieced together in my phone notes late at night.