Pole Pole

In Swahili, “pole” means both “sorry” and “slowly”. This is not a coincidence. Everything in Kenya happens pole pole and people constantly say it. They actually even translate it into English. An actual conversation we had with Mzee Mungai the first week:
M: Mzee, how was your day?
Mungai: Fine, fine.
M: What did you do today? (it was a Saturday)
Mungai: I did some work in my room slowly slowly.

Life in Kenya is much less structured and everything is always late. They are thoroughly amused at the American custom of arriving on time to anything much less EARLY. School is supposed to start at 8 and we never start before 8:30. Church is supposed to end at 12:30 and never ends before 12:55.

There are some reasons for this: transportation is much less reliable [matatus break down a lot], travel times are extremely varied [matatus will stop constantly to pick up more people if there is a single square inch free in the vehicle], and people lack a lot of the “instant” technologies that we take for granted in the US [a lack of microwaves, refrigerators, etc. all extend meal times for example since prep is virtually from scratch].

The hilarious thing is that even though everyone knows in advance that things will be pole pole, no one ever seems to take steps to mitigate this. For example, the other day I watched the “Baby Class” (ages 2-3) at school while one of the teachers ran into Mombasa. She left early and said she would be back at school by 11. The previous day I asked her what work she wanted the children to complete in her absence and she left me about one hour worth of work total. I thought this was strange because I had at least 2.5 hours from 8:30 to 11 to kill but figured it would be fine.

Now, I didn’t expect her to be back at 11. I expected her to be back pole pole at around 1 – even with this guess I was off by almost 2 hours when she showed up at 2:45 which is basically the end of school. I’m not at all surprised by this incident but I was surprised that she didn’t leave me with more work. If you know that you’ll likely be delayed by several hours, wouldn’t it be smart to leave me with extra work, not minimal work? The end result was me sitting with 15 3-year-olds for over 4 hours singing every nursery rhyme and playing every clapping game I could think of. I think the kids thought I was insane although that’s commonplace here. M and I call these moments “crazy wazungu moments” because you can tell that’s what people are thinking.

Pretty much any description of activities includes pole pole. When asking what the itinerary would be for a safari, we were told that the first day would include “a game drive slowly slowly”. I have to admit that it’s sort of nice that no one expects you to be anywhere at a specific time although I can imagine it’s rather frustrating if you’re trying to accomplish something which is time sensitive. Luckily we aren’t particularly pressed for time so we’re adapting to life slowly slowly.

I just wish that mail weren’t delivered pole pole. We’re on day 17 of waiting for a package to get through Kenyan customs. I contacted someone and finally they informed that I have to go to Mombasa to retrieve it even though it was sent to Msambweni. Not sure how I was supposed to know that or when we would have been informed if I didn't ask. So, we’re going to Mombasa today to see if we can “finesse” it out of customs so we’ll update you on what is sure to be an interesting adventure.