Ballad of a thin man

It is said that all hatred is insecurity.

So, I propose a modest corollary:

• All culture shock is disorientation.

The last few weeks have been very positive - a lot of fun with the family, new experiences, reconnecting with old friends (hey Gareth C.), and generally growing a lot.

New places are, however, like a house of mirrors in the sense that they exaggerate precisely those features about which you are the most self-conscious. The last week has provide ample examples of the fact that I am no longer in Kansas.

Each of the examples below is, in and of itself, trivial, but in the aggregate amounts to the question which Dylan made famous: "Oh my god, am I here all alone? "

Something is happening here, but I don't know what it is:

• Am I too rigid in my worldview?: Simply put, things are different here. The restaurant that serves a warm avocado mousse (I shudder to contemplate warm avocado anything). The load of laundry that cost me $80 because it was calculated on a per item basis (we had put in 26 various undergarments - at a dollar a pop) (ed. - this bill is under appeal at the hotel - on the sheer principle of it). The nanny who was literally 12 hours late for an interview/evaluation session (arrived at 8am instead of 8pm). The bottle of pinot noir which I absolutely knew was corked but with respect to which I wasn't sure how to act given that it likely cost many times what the waiter was making.
  
  
• Am I concerned about self-actualization?: Not to get all law school on you, but in Kenya, your legal personality flows from the person who holds the job in-country. This phenomenon has its own vocabulary: e.g. Anno is a 'staffer', S. is a 'dependent', and I am a 'spouse'. My UN ID card (required to get onto the grounds, the duty free shop, and, crucially, the squash courts) reads 'Thomas, A. - spouse'. The UN spouse agency reps routinely call me 'Thomas'. I'm not too fussed about it, but was surprised to learn that I wasn't a person in my own right for many of the procedures I was undertaking (e.g. house search, buying a car, filling out the never ending paperwork). This week I will go to my first Nairobian mummy's group meeting, which should be a more positive form of 'spouse-hood' - I will report back!
  
  
• Am I, in fact, racist?: I find myself escalating what would be considered merely inconsiderate behaviour in my comfort zone to 'who do you think you are?" scenarios. For instance, S. and I were stuck walking behind a lady in a UN campus verandah (outdoor but covered - definitely non-smoking), which lady was smoking while she was walking. I could scarcely contain my scorn (I did so to spare my kid an ugly scene because she didn't seem to care about the smoke at all), which was perceptibly heightened because she was not a black Kenyan. In hindsight, why should it matter who the person was - all that was annoying was that my daughter and I were inhaling second hand smoke in a place where, by law, there shouldn't have been any.
  Similarly, whenever I meet a South African person, I tend to miss the first 3 minutes of the conversation because I'm too busy guesstimating their age and subtracting it from the year 1991 (the year apartheid was formally abolished).
  
  
• Are we making sure S. and the new baby are ok?: We has our first pediatrician wellness visit this week, and the doctor seemed really cool (although much less interactive with S. than we were used to in Brooklyn - all his questions were addressed to us). In terms of a decision tree, much rests on where you live before you can pick your child's school, hospital, gym (due to traffic patterns, safety etc.) In this sense, things are moving positively. Today, we met with the landlord of a beautiful house in a nabe called Spring Valley (opposite one of the forests which Wangari Mathaai fought for). It was very positive, and the house itself is near a very good school with a martial name that I like very much: the Lower Kabete Academy. The house is a cosy bungalow with a staggeringly beautiful garden with mature trees, a rabbit, a dog, 2 cats, and some wild monkeys. We get a much more positive vibe from this than the Italian house (which fell through, inexplicably but in hindsight happily). I won't say any more now so as to not jinx anything. Keeping ze old fingers crossed!