Most of my blog posts as of late have concerned my ministry and my work, which I hope is understandable as that is what my life revolves around here in Kenya and my reason for being here. I’ve also tended to sprinkle in a number of theological reflections along the way as a means of processing and making sense of my experiences. However, in this post, I want to take a completely different tact and talk about a few absurdly stupid examples of what goes on in my everyday life. So, no tragic stories, no theology, and no asking for donations (which I’m sure everyone welcomes). Just everyday idiotic life stuff.
I don’t know much about cats and have never really had much of an interest in them. On the other hand, I’ve had dogs and been around dogs most of my life. If I get a pet when I return from Kenya, it will be another dog. In the neighborhood where I live in Mombasa there are a bunch of feral cats. When I go to put out the garbage on trash day, the cats see me and start making their way over to try to get into the tasty morsels of refuse I’m discarding. I used to try to shoo them away, but I don’t even bother anymore as they simply come back once I close the gate and go back inside. These cats also seem to like hanging out in my yard. My neighbors on one side have dogs and those on the other side have three kids. I’m guessing the relative solitude is what makes my yard the most desirable on my side of the street.
I usually don’t mind the cats being around except for when they get into my trash and that “one period of time a month” (which I now understand is not strictly the case for cats). This past week was the worst since I moved here. The cats nightly mating escapades and associated loud howls kept me up for three nights straight. I’m talking little to no sleep. I was a zombie, but who could sleep through that. I’m not exactly sure (I’m very naïve when it comes to these things), but I think there is only one female in the group along with three males.
Given the one female, I found it hard to believe that this type of activity could actually go on all night, so I did a little research on the subject. From what I learned, the female is ready to mate again in as little as five minutes and may allow up to 30 matings with multiple males in a given heat cycle. Well that explains it. I learned much more than this, but in the spirit of trying to maintain some sense of decorum in my blog posts, I’ll forgo giving any further details. I’ll leave it to you to look it up yourself if you are interested. However more than likely, most of you already know about the birds and bees of cats and I’m one of the few who was clueless.
By night three I had had enough. Armed with Google, I was intent on finding a solution, which I hoped didn’t come down to killing the little #@!$s. Just kidding, although I have to admit it did cross my mind. I found two viable solutions. The first was orange peels and the second was vinegar. I opted for vinegar as I was worried that orange peels would attract ants and I didn’t want to cause another problem by giving ants any reason to get anywhere near the house. I’ve already gone through the ant nightmare and don’t want to experience the pleasure again. Thank God for exterminators.
So, I got a spray bottle and mixed a 50% vinegar solution and sprayed it all over where the cats hang out. No longer did I finish spraying and go inside than I look out the window and the cats are laying down and have a grand old time right on the surfaces I had just sprayed. They didn’t even wait until the vinegar solution was dry. So much for that suggestion.
I was now left with no alternative (well there was still that other one, but I didn’t want to go there yet), but to resort to orange peels. The cats scattered when I came out the door as they usually do. I laid down the orange peels from two oranges. Luckily, I like oranges and even had them on hand. Lo and behold, the cats got one whiff of the orange peels and never came back. Who would have thought that these creatures that scour through my trash and love the smell of fish would be so turned off by a little citrus! I left the orange peels out overnight and as I feared, there were ants partaking of them the next morning. I got rid of the peels and washed away the ants. Fortunately, I have not seen any ants in the house since.
I have to admit that I probably don’t keep abreast of the latest coronavirus news as much as I should. I just don’t want to be consumed by the never-ending news cycle in which everyone has opinions which are diametrically opposed to each other and the commentator are more interested in pushing their ideological agenda than in seeking the truth, which is pretty much the case for any issue these days. Because of this, I had managed to shield myself from any of the conspiracy theories involving Covid-19. That is, until one day last week when I was in the office and greeted one of the priests who I saw walking by outside. We began to talk and not unexpectedly, the conversation turned to what was going on with the coronavirus. As we talked, he began to tell me how the coronavirus was linked to the new 5G mobile network. I wasn’t really buying into it as the idea that a virus could be transmitted by radio wave is obviously not possible.
I guess Father perceived my unbelief and proceeded to play a video on his phone for me. The person speaking in English in the video, who proclaimed to be a microbiologist, was espousing just this type of 5G conspiracy theory. It wasn’t the content that shocked me – people espouse a lot of stupid theories, but the language. Every other word that came out of the mouth of the person in the video was vulgar. The speaker was dropping f-bombs all over the place. I politely listened to the end of the video, but it took everything I had to not burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. When the video was complete all I could manage to do was to tell Father that I think I needed to go to confession after listening to that. I know Father was just trying to understand the issues, but I advised him that he needs to be more discriminating with his sources.
Kiswahili and English are both official languages of Kenya and the schools here teach classes in English. I don’t know for sure how familiar Kenyans are with English swear words. I get the sense that they have some understanding of them, but I’ve never really heard anyone here curse in English. In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing anyone curse. However, it’s more likely that people curse in Kiswahili. I don’t know any of those words nor do I really care to learn them.
One of my biggest frustrations here in Kenya is the unreliability of electrical power. Yes, I have not yet managed to shed all my attractions to creature comforts. Not only does any electrical appliance or device have to sit behind a surge protector, but the electricity can and will go off at any moment. Sometimes the outage is only for an hour or two, but at other times, the power can be off for most of the day. Power is usually restored by sundown or at least before I go to bed, but I have had to go to sleep a few times with the power still off. I usually have to endure a few outages a week. What most aggravates me is when I have to throw away food that is in the refrigerator or freezer.
I started shaving my head when I first began losing my hair and have been doing it now for quite a number of years. I just grab my hair clippers and go at it myself. I don’t use a guide, but simply use the clipper razor by itself resulting in the shortest possible buzz cut short of employing shaving cream and a disposable razor. I don’t aspire to the shiny look, so have never really tried this latter method. For that matter, I don’t necessarily aspire to shaving my head in the first place, but you have to go with the cards you are dealt. Actually, even if I did still have a full head of hair, I probably would still shave it. I’ve become so lazy that I would do it just to avoid the fuss of having to care for my hair.
I’m assuming by now you have figured out where I’m going with this (and this is not the first time it has happened). I’m shaving my head and right in the middle of it the power goes out. OK, it’s not like I have much to work with in the first place, but I would definitely be embarrassed to go out the way I looked – sort of punk, but not really. Luckily, I didn’t have to leave the house that day – one of the few advantages of the lockdown. I wasn’t happy about my current look, but not really a big deal. I’d just complete shaving my head once the power came back on. The power only stayed off for a few hours and I was able to successfully make myself half way presentable again when power was restored. Life was good again.
Since the pandemic started, I’ve pretty much turned into a vegetarian. This was not a conscious choice, but more a result of that fact that it is difficult for me to buy meat. Before coming to Kenya, I was never a big beef eater. Although I didn’t shy away from the occasional steak or hamburger, I survived much of my life on chicken with some occasional fish thrown in. In Mombasa, I don’t live close to a supermarket. As traveling during the pandemic is problematic, I have been buying all my food from small shops and little roadside markets near my house. There are some butcheries nearby, but thus far I don’t feel confident enough with their food handling to risk buying meat there.
As I had some chicken frozen in the freezer from a previous trip to the supermarket when the pandemic was just beginning, I had decided the day before to defrost a package of chicken thighs and legs so that I could cook it the next day. After finishing my hair cut and waiting for a while to make sure the power would stay on, I preheated the oven, seasoned the chicken and prepared it for baking. Not even ten minutes after I put the chicken in the oven, the power goes off again. I decided to wait a bit in the hope that the power would come back on and the chicken could finish baking – in reality it hadn’t even really started baking yet. No such luck. Now I’m really not happy. What do I do now? I don’t want to wait much longer and risk the chicken going bad. Finally, I decide to take the chicken out of the oven and fry it. Although the oven of my stove is electric, the burners are propane. As an aside, the propane tanks in Kenya are right next to the stove. All this kind of stuff used to freak me out when I first got here, now I don’t even think about it.
Although I love fried chicken, I didn’t really want to make it. Not only didn’t I really need all that extra fat, but I had just cleaned the whole house, including the kitchen and stove, from top to bottom the day before. Frying makes a mess. It doesn’t appear that splatter screens have been invented in Kenya yet (at least I have not been able to find one), so there was really nothing I could do about the oil that would splatter while I fried up the chicken. Resigned to the fact that my cleaning from yesterday (at least in the kitchen in and around the stove) was in vain, I prepared the chicken for frying and proceeded to cook it. As expected, the frying made a little bit of a mess, but not too bad. Once the chicken was cooked, I removed it onto a paper towel lined plate to absorb some of the cooking oil and cool. Paper towels are not very common in Kenya. Instead, Kenyans primarily use napkins for everything, although you wouldn’t call them that here as that word is reserved for sanitary napkins. I’ve made that mistake a few times and have gotten strange looks as a result. Napkins are called serviettes (from the British) in Kenya. While the chicken was cooling, I cleaned up the splattered oil from around the stove. Good as new – or at least good as yesterday.
No longer had I finished cleaning and washing the pans, dishes and utensils that I used for cooking, when the power decided to come back on. At that point I could have gotten upset, but I decided instead to not go there and just enjoy the fruits of my labor. Fried chicken was not the worse possible outcome. In fact, I quite enjoyed it.
