Monday, January 09, 2006

Nairobi - 24th Dec

It is temperately delicious at the airport. Although my layers sweaters and jackets are certainly not helping with the load - it is a very pleasant ,expected surprise.

No longer does everything seem distant and foreign - Somehow this trip feels like a drive to New York or a flight to BC. It seems like I have been doing this frequently and I haven't missed that much in the 1.5 years I have been away.

Seeing the folks and the girlfriend is great. I can tell right away this is going to be an intricate dance in sharing my affection for the two as their interactions are so delicately intertwined.

Not a minute to waste, My zacks is already on his relentless quest to showcase Nairobi's glamour life - the venue is Panari center/plaza along Mombasa road. There is something acutely unsettling about the whole scenario, and I cant quite put my finger on it.

However somewhere amidst the Waiters at "pampa churascaria" donning some incongruous brazilian hats...and the shrab-mangled weng unlashed by the maitre'd, and the meal that cost 10000 bob for 4 people - it became astonishingly clear. Nairobi is on the fringes of the worst ever identity crisis. Nairobi/Kenya has managed to unknowingly nurture deep into its a culture, a double edged sword - one tearing away at its "Have" and "Have-Not" fabric.

Somehow I resented being part of the "Have" fabric. I felt a need to be reborn into a new Kenya where none of this culture-created fabric existed. I feel that as we continue to try exist on both sides of the spectrum, We shall consume ourselves, like that fabled chinese snake, by eating our own tails as we forget who we TRULY are as Kenyans.

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