Warm Milk

I was walking back to my room after a somewhat dismal breakfast (who runs out of warm milk? We all need it, for cereal, tea, coffee) and ran into the tourist from the day before. Before she could say, ‘Jambo!’ I was on it like white on rice. Just not ‘Jambo’ though. I slide in my ‘morning’ and felt so much happier for having said it. ‘Jambo’ to me has a place and a time. Naru Moru was not just that place and the timing was off. ‘Jambo’ reeks of tourists on the beach in Mombasa. Maybe after a few drinks I’d be (more) congenial to ‘Jambo’?

I remember once, many years ago, a gaggle platoon of tourists chose to roam the estate we lived at and they unfortunately decided that this poor unsuspecting African child was the best option to yell at the first word they’d learnt. ‘Jambo’ they chorused and I looked at them aghast. I muttered a stony ‘hi’ and left them shocked and appalled that I wasn’t warm enough to repeat their dreadful cry. I was annoyed they assumed I didn’t speak English and they probably thought I was extremely churlish. But that’s neither here nor there. Teenage angst is hardly the moral of this story.

What does ‘Jambo’ mean anyway? Where did it come from? Why does it exist? I’d be more impressed if a tourist yelled at me ‘asapaaa’ or ‘wallaps’ or who knows. Maybe I’m just stuck in a little rift of my own, sneering at tourists with their dopamine & oxytoxin-laced, generalized terms of greeting and ashamed to admit that I am technically the same because I bear the same generalized greeting forms but don’t insist on them. I digress.

I assume this all boils down to the stereotypes people have of places and my main issue stems from the preconceived notions people from developed nations have towards people from developing nations. ‘ohmigosh u have running water’ ‘there’s tissue here?’ ‘you use toothpaste’ ‘you don’t wear skins’ ‘you don’t live in trees’. WTF!? Sure some places don’t have running water, sure some people still use leaves for tissue, sure some people use a medicinal twig to brush their teeth (apparently it’s so much better than an actual toothbrush or paste) but I don’t remember the last time I saw someone running around in skins (cue Dedan Kimathi circa pre- independence pre-my birth even) or lived in a tree. I really don’t think any Kenyan has achieved that feat despite my sister telling her pal in Engineering that where we came from my dad owned a whole forest and he made people pay rent to stay in the trees because ferocious beasts like lions stalked the forest floor waiting for some hapless human or animal to stroll by ready for… breakfast? At least they don’t need warm milk (cue title of this blog post). I’m just saying.

My ramble for that particular day in December ’09 (right before we went off to see the splendor of Isiolo town).