Surprisingly Normal

Since many are interested, I will share the most shocking thing about being in Kenya. It is not the lack of running water or electricity, nor the unpaved roads, congas, or lack of stoves that is the most shocking. What I have found to be the most shocking thing about being here is how surprisingly normal things are and have become after adjusting.

I thought about it yesterday as I was gchatting with one of my friends from New York, telling her that I had to go because the sun was setting. Every night before bed, I scramble to get my things together where I know they will be so that I am not struggling to find things in the pitch black before I go to bed. I said that I also needed to go help bring the cows in. This statement made her type, “Haha,” and ask if we ate the cows. I explained that cows are a source of value here, and that it was very rare that will kill them, but use them mostly as a source of wealth and milk. It was as if this was completely normal in the U.S., that I shouldn’t have to explain the meaning of cows being kept as domestic animals.

Another way to explain it is like the feeling you get when things in your house or room become “part of the scenery.” When I moved into my last apartment in New York, I put off getting a bookshelf for so long that I forgot my books were just piled in the corner, waiting to be shelved. After some time, you no longer notice the books in the corner that once irked your mind causing dissonance, but rather, your mind accepts them and forgets that they are placed in your room improperly. I suppose living in a foreign country anywhere causes this to happen to your mind – it grows so accustomed to the things it sees and the day-to-day routines that they simply become “normal,” even if entirely different from the routines of a life you may have lived just one month prior.
Living here has proven to be surprisingly normal, so much so, that I could probably write ten things in this section already…