I am overwhelmed by the way people have welcomed me in Kenya. Pages in my diary are filled with stories about invitations for tea and descriptions of new people I have met and want to remember. Below you find some of them.
On my first walk through the streets of my new home-town in Kenya, people approached to shake my hand and wish me a warm welcome. “We would like more Europeans to come, please stay the rest of your life and bring friends and family!”, an elderly man proposed. A young girl expressed her pleasure of having the opportunity to invite her new European friend home for tea, and a tall man wearing a red cap explained that “if there are no new people coming to our place something is wrong! We are nice people, you are nice people; we should all live here together!”. “Come”, an aged man requests. He starts talking before I’ve had time to cross the street. Luckily a girl next to him translates his statements. “He says you have to tell the people in Norway that you met a very old man without teeth”. I promise to do so and also to show the picture of him. I don’t know how many hands were shaked and how many welcomes were pronounced before sunset, but I do know that children and adults, engineers and business women, youngsters and elderly people, teachers and farmers, house-wifes and students, sober and drunk made me feel very appreciated and welcome in their village. A few days later I had learned that ‘Jamge’ means ‘how are you’ and ‘misin’ means ‘I’m fine’. Using these expressions in the street gave me a lot of credit. People would honour me for learning quickly and being involved in the culture of my new home. I felt proud and encouraged to learn to know these people.
I sometimes try to imagine what it is like for a foreigner to arrive in Norway and start a life there. Would he or she tell a similar story? Is it likely that he or she would feel as welcome as I do? Let’s do an experiment and tell the same story again with some tiny adjustments. We substitute European with African, Kenya with Norway and we replace tea with coffee:
On my first walk through the streets of my new home-town in Norway, people approached to shake my hand and wish me a warm welcome. “We would like more Africans to come, please stay the rest of your life and bring friends and family!”, an elderly man proposed. A young girl expressed her pleasure of having the opportunity to invite her new African friend home for coffee, and a tall man wearing a red cap explained that “if there are no new people coming to our place something is wrong! We are nice people, you are nice people; we should all live here together!”. “Come”, an aged man requests. He starts talking before I’ve had time to cross the street. Luckily a girl next to him translates his statements. “He says you have to tell the people in Norway that you met a very old man without teeth”. I promise to do so and also to show the picture of him. I don’t know how many hands were shaked and how many welcomes were pronounced before sunset, but I do know that children and adults, engineers and business women, youngsters and elderly people, teachers and farmers, house-wifes and students, sober and drunk made me feel very appreciated and welcome in their village. A few days later I had learned that ‘hvordan står det til?,’ means ‘how are you’ and ‘bare bra’ means ‘just fine’. Using these expressions in the street gave me a lot of credit. People would honour me for learning quickly and being involved in the culture of my new home. I felt proud and encouraged to learn to know these people.
On my first walk through the streets of my new home-town in Kenya, people approached to shake my hand and wish me a warm welcome. “We would like more Europeans to come, please stay the rest of your life and bring friends and family!”, an elderly man proposed. A young girl expressed her pleasure of having the opportunity to invite her new European friend home for tea, and a tall man wearing a red cap explained that “if there are no new people coming to our place something is wrong! We are nice people, you are nice people; we should all live here together!”. “Come”, an aged man requests. He starts talking before I’ve had time to cross the street. Luckily a girl next to him translates his statements. “He says you have to tell the people in Norway that you met a very old man without teeth”. I promise to do so and also to show the picture of him. I don’t know how many hands were shaked and how many welcomes were pronounced before sunset, but I do know that children and adults, engineers and business women, youngsters and elderly people, teachers and farmers, house-wifes and students, sober and drunk made me feel very appreciated and welcome in their village. A few days later I had learned that ‘Jamge’ means ‘how are you’ and ‘misin’ means ‘I’m fine’. Using these expressions in the street gave me a lot of credit. People would honour me for learning quickly and being involved in the culture of my new home. I felt proud and encouraged to learn to know these people.
I sometimes try to imagine what it is like for a foreigner to arrive in Norway and start a life there. Would he or she tell a similar story? Is it likely that he or she would feel as welcome as I do? Let’s do an experiment and tell the same story again with some tiny adjustments. We substitute European with African, Kenya with Norway and we replace tea with coffee:
On my first walk through the streets of my new home-town in Norway, people approached to shake my hand and wish me a warm welcome. “We would like more Africans to come, please stay the rest of your life and bring friends and family!”, an elderly man proposed. A young girl expressed her pleasure of having the opportunity to invite her new African friend home for coffee, and a tall man wearing a red cap explained that “if there are no new people coming to our place something is wrong! We are nice people, you are nice people; we should all live here together!”. “Come”, an aged man requests. He starts talking before I’ve had time to cross the street. Luckily a girl next to him translates his statements. “He says you have to tell the people in Norway that you met a very old man without teeth”. I promise to do so and also to show the picture of him. I don’t know how many hands were shaked and how many welcomes were pronounced before sunset, but I do know that children and adults, engineers and business women, youngsters and elderly people, teachers and farmers, house-wifes and students, sober and drunk made me feel very appreciated and welcome in their village. A few days later I had learned that ‘hvordan står det til?,’ means ‘how are you’ and ‘bare bra’ means ‘just fine’. Using these expressions in the street gave me a lot of credit. People would honour me for learning quickly and being involved in the culture of my new home. I felt proud and encouraged to learn to know these people.
1 comment:
I came across this blog while doing a bit of searching online for news of my favorite people. I spent a month in Kenya, in the Bomet area of the country, and fell in love with the Kipsigis people in ways I never thought I would. Thank you for sharing your experiences!
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