December 9, 2009 - You Know You Live in Kenya When...

• there is an article in the newspaper about how an airplane hit a warthog on the runway.
• your neighbor calls at 7:30 pm to ask if you just heard gunshots; you are not too sure so the neighbor calls the compound security who tell her that it was probably just a car backfiring; your neighbor calls you back and tells you to stay clear of the windows just in case AND you are not alarmed.
• you are at a dinner party and the power goes out at 8 pm; it is pitch, pitch, pitch black (no security lights or anything) and the conversation just continues as if nothing had happened for several minutes before the power comes back on; nobody moves, nobody stops talking, nobody's tone of voice gets tense.
• your house has resident mosquitos, and you've started to name them.
• your housekeeper told you today that she doesn't wash her hands with soap (and therefore you are not surprised that your family had a stomach virus a few weeks ago).
• your carpenter tries to charge you $20 for a small piece of wood (5x the actual price) and refuses to negotiate because you're a Mzungu.
• a monkey crawls into the Deputy Country Director's office at work (she is #2 at WFP) and poops on her desk.
• you realize that the sunflower seeds on your desk have been stolen and nobody had access to your office...except the monkey sitting outside your window.
• you've been typing for one hour on your keyboard when a gecko lizard suddenly crawls out from under it.
• it takes you 3x as long to drive home from the store as it should because you are stuck behind a man pulling a cart full of furniture and there is too much traffic in the other direction to pass him.
• you travel 5 miles to work and every day see that a different traffic accident has occurred en route.
• you drive 45 minutes to visit an orphanage and when you leave 1 hour later it takes you 3 hours to get home.
• you drive through red lights as if red means "go".
• none of the above mentioned events shock, frighten, disturb or surprise you. Ever. You don't even flinch.

LMW & KW