Wazungu, give me sweets

I figure that it's about time to talk about some of the people that I've encountered here, since they have been as integral to my experience in Africa as the wildlife and landscapes.

Firstly, I've had a lot of great opportunities to work on my princess wave. Whenever we drive anywhere in our Cruisers, people always stop and stare. But the reaction of children is by far the best; put simply, they love us. They would just stop and wave at us all day. And some get so excited that they run after our cars as fast as their little legs will carry them. And we just wave and wave and wave.

I feel that I have to make a confession here: I'd say that at least half of the time, these kids run after us yelling two main things: "give me sweets" or "give me money" with a bit of "hello, how are you?" and just some plain old whooping at the top of their lungs. We basically either ignore those pleas, or just respond to them "hakuna sweets," which means "there are no sweets." After three weeks here, it still hasn't gotten old.

When we're on the ground in towns or villages, we tend to create a similar sort of stir. In our local village, the mamas (Maasai women) start swarming our cars before we've even stopped moving, preparing to bombard us with sales pitches for their jewelry. On market days, they literally will not leave us alone, following us around wherever we go.

The kids will follow us around too. Without the distance of the car between us any longer, they are slightly more shy, although they warm up pretty quickly. Since I really like playing with them, I'll have foot races against them or make up hand games to play or show them how to pound and explode it. It's really fun to play with kids that are so interested in you.

One day, we drove to a school outside of Loitokitok town to help a local hospital group serve the community. We weighed babies, gave out vitamins and deworming mediation, and administered vaccinations. We were arrived, before we had even gotten out of our cars, we heard a group of mamas walking out way and singing together. As they sang, we went through their long receiving line, shaking each of their hands, and the hands of the children around them. They led us singing into the schoolyard.

When they had finished singing, they lined up all of the kids (there must have been at least 70 of them, but maybe more than 100) to sing to us too, though I think that yelling is a more appropriate description of their serenade. When they had finished, it was expected that we sing something for them (which was not surprising since when we visited a Maasai boma or homestead, pretty much the same thing had happened by way of greeting). So we treated them to a bit of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Ain't No Mountain High," the Hokey Pokey (which was a HUGE hit, probably because we did the dance moves to it too), and finally the Macarena.

That last one was my idea, because I thought we could get the kids to do it with us. They didn't really get that they were supposed to copy us, so I ventured up to their mass and took one of their hands in mine and did it for her. Then all of the sudden I had a crowd swarming around me, reaching their hands towards me, asking me to show them next. I finally got them all doing it, and some of my fellow American students followed my lead and got the other kids to do it too.

I think that most of the kinds just really liked touching me because I'm American and look different from them. So I let them. I went through the crowd and tried to offer my hands to as many as possible. If I stopped and sat, some were so bold as to touch my hair. (They are really fascinated by hair here, as pretty much everyone, men, women, and children, shave their heads.) I admit that I always thought it was weird watching politicians wade through crowds offering their hands out to everyone, but when I was there, I could just tell that it would mean so much to these kids, that I wanted to give some of myself to them.

On the other side of things, yesterday we went out into the field to conduct interviews of the local community about farming and agriculture, and one little kid who had never seen white people (wazungu) before started bawling at the sight of us.

There is so much more to write about the people whom I've encountered (particularly about the Maasai and their beliefs and traditions), but I feel I have already written a lot for now. I will leave you with the knowledge that I received my Maasai spear today, which if thrown properly will kill an elephant, giraffe, lion, etc. with one blow. Lessons are pending.