i'm alive!!

Hi all!!
i just wanted to let you all know thati'm alive.
i'm still trying to get down my trip to Turkana in words, so here's an blog that i wrote before i left for you all to read.
miss you all!!!
African Picasso

There’s a phenomena in Nairobi called Maasai Markets. On Tuesdays it’s in the city, on Fridays it moves to Village Market (also known as UN market because of the people that shop there), on Saturdays it’s in a parking lot behind the Hilton Downtown, and on Sundays it’s at Ya-Ya center.

The markets are fun, with so many different things for sale: jewelry, bowls, picture frames, scarves and batiks. At every market there’s at least one person selling batiks who claims to be the African Picasso. They attack you as soon as you arrive in the market, asking you to please come and see their batiks, because not only do they make their own, but they’ve mastered the skill to achieve the same level as that of Picasso.
If you tell them that you’ve seen many other African Picasso’s they assure you that they are in fact the original ones. There’s a market nearby that’s open everyday, and a man there has a sign that says that he is the original African Picasso.

A few weekends ago a few of us went to the market behind the Hilton, which is huge, and the people there were so pushy that we got pretty frustrated pretty quickly. One man had been following us around since we got there (wamunzungu usually are easy targets they didn’t understand what things should cost, or how to bargain). When he first told us that he was the African Picasso, I was so fed up with everyone saying that they were the African Picasso that I kind of freaked.
“Why Picasso?!” I yelled. “Why not the African Monet, the African Matisse, the African Van Gogh, the African Renoir, why just Picasso?!?!”
They all kind of started at me like I was crazy, and a guy that walked by yelled “I’m the African Matisse!” at me.

We happened to walk past the man’s stall and he stopped us and he said, “look I’m the African Picasso, looking is free!” (they all say that, along with “touching is free, almost everything is free!!”)
I got a little frustrated, probably unreasonably. His artwork is was good enough, it just wasn’t Picasso at all. They were pictures of animals, and they looked like almost everything else around. I turned and looked at him and said, entirely seriously “Picasso was abstract, do you understand me, abstract.”
He looked at me and said, “Ok! I’ll show you my abstract drawings.”
“No, no,” I said, “he was a cubist.” This was met with a blank stare, to which I responded “you find out what cubism means, and then we’ll talk.”

I probably overreacted, but if you’re going to pick an artist to name yourself after, at least try to understand what their artwork looks like.

We’ve met some other really nice people at the market however. At Zebra market (which is nearby, and open everyday, instead of once a week) we met a woman named Eunice. I was with my friend Liz, and we told her that our names were Elizabeth and Mary (sometimes it’s just easier) and she looked at us and said “You’re sisters right, no cousins.” People are always mistaking any of us on the program for cousins, sisters, etc, so we weren’t surprised. After we told her that we were just friends she said, “No, in the bible!!” Kenyans have mandatory religious education, called CRE in the majority of the country (Christian Religious Education) although in the Muslim areas it’s called IRE (Islamic Religious Education). Kenyans know their religious texts. Eunice was so sweet. We didn’t even have to bargain with her or “her sister” (who knows if they’re sisters or not) who was in the stall across the way. They gave us amazing prices because we just chatted with them (we even tried to use our Kiswahili, which I think won them over more!). Since then my friend liz has gone back to visit her, and she asked where I was, which is so nice!! A good deal of you will probably get presents from Eunice or her sister.

Some observations about Kenyan and music:
American hip-hop is HUGE, especially that song Beautiful Girls (or as we call it, Suicidal). We hear that everywhere we go.

Classic Rock stations on the radio will probably only play hip-hop and R&B from the late 1990s/ early 2000s.

Reggae is huge, and is sometimes used to bring across a point. There was one we heard on a matatu the other day that had a chorus that went “Abortion is a crime, it’s not a human right, you would punish parents that kill there kids, so punish women that have an abortion.” A very interesting way to get your point across.

Our favorite radio station is called “Black Supremacy” and their tag line is “We’re taking over”

miss you all!!