BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU ARE A SINGLE WHITE MZUNGU

I have always been a trusting person, with my life, money, feelings and just about everything else I can offer.  I consider myself to be a good person morally, ethically and in general in all aspects of my life.  After what I have been through and seen the in the last 12 months has tested my boundaries and my belief in myself and I would nearly call myself borderline gullible, which irritates me, as I never in a million years would have called myself ‘gullible’.  Ugh I hate that word.  I have always been taught to use your head and your gut instincts and if something seems too good to be true, then generally it is.  I have always been surrounded by lots of people (generally older than me) from a young age playing squash, working at the squash courts, working and managing a video shop for 3 years, in banking for 3 years and then the travel industry for a third of my working life.  I have always dealt with people and always felt that I was a good judge of character.  Even the last 23 months of travelling you need to be careful, always be watchful and wary of people around you and of strangers that you meet.  My confidence was broken when Zeme and I broke up as I never really saw it coming.  I was devastated at the time, but I have come to the realisation that we are all human, we all make mistakes and that I can’t doubt myself for the rest of my life after one misjudgement.

When I told friends that I was moving to Africa there were concerns raised about my safety and to make sure I take care of myself.  This was easy enough, I had been travelling for nearly 2 years and I had managed to escape unscathed based on my principles and instincts (besides Zeme of course).  I wasn’t worried too much myself, I consider myself ‘travel savvy’ and took their advice in the good intentions it was meant and filed it away.  Now that I am on the ground I am starting to realise that I DO need to be careful about what information I am telling people, people I don’t know, honesty has always been the best policy for me.  But I have to remember that I am now in a different culture, a different way of life and where a country that had 41 million people where the average wage which is set by the government by location, age and skill level; the lowest urban minimum wage is 7,578 schillings (89USD) per month, and the lowest agricultural minimum wage for unskilled employees is 2,536 shillings (29USD) per month making 46% of the Kenyans population live below the poverty line, that’s over 18 million people, With those statistics I can see why there is a BIG reason that people think that Mzungu’s have money, compared to that.  I hate to stereotype a nation (and I know that they hate it) but most of the local people I have been dealing with don’t have a lot of money just like they stereotype Mzungu’s, that we all have money….which I guess compared to the daily living wage of $1.00-$2.96, I can see why they come to their conclusions.  Now throw into that being a white woman, a Mzungu and then to top it off with your marital status as single, reality sets in and I guess I am somebody’s meal ticket from poverty and a better way of life.  This only became apparent last week when I was at the Masai Markets and just in conversation that I was single, when I left 2 hours later I had 3 marriage proposals, jokingly-but serious if I let it, and then my awkward conversation with Driver Don on Saturday also throwing his hat into the marriage ring I am starting to realise that this piece of information may just be better kept to myself in future conversations. 

I’m not easily spooked, but I need to remember where I am and I’m not saying that all the people I have dealt with are bad people, but there may be unsavoury people listening to conversations, there are desperate people living in this country and you just never know what that can drive people to do.  With all that in mind when I am writing my blog I am trying to keep my address, names of people and the amounts that I am spending out of my blog, just an extra precaution that I haven’t ever had a need to worry about before.  I guess when I was travelling it didn’t matter too much as I was always moving, but I need to protect my privacy and also my home now that I am stationed here and I need to protect that when I am writing about things.  I spoke to Driver Steven about it all, he is someone I can bounce things off and we are becoming great friends.  I get a great vibe from him and when we were talking he also reiterated, as a Kenyan, that I also need to be careful as 95% of Kenyans when they see a mzungu think money, and then when I am a female AND then they find out I am single can be a mix for disaster.  I am going to just have to be careful on who I tell that I am not married, as I do get asked that question quite a lot and I have to think about my own safety here, and I need to wizen up now that I am here and people are going to have to work a lot harder to gain my trust rather than me just giving it away freely to people who I don’t know.  I am not a paranoid person, but I think there is a difference between paranoid and being a little more cautious. 

So I’ve mentioned the Masai Market guys and their semi-serious proposals, which you do take with a grain of salt, Africans in general always talk marriage, well to me.  I was keeping track when I was on my overland trip in 2011 and I remember getting up to 14 proposals in the 8 weeks that I was here.  So it is a joke to them, but these guys had a sense of urgency about meeting them again, catching up for a coffee, asking for money for lunch and you just know there is a small level of seriousness to it.  Then the following day (Saturday) I had my stalker Driver Don jump on the marriage band wagon and this guy moved fast after only 10 minutes and was also honest to boot, telling me I had the money and he had the car.  When I went to pay for my ride he asked if he could be paid the return fare in advance, which I declined and I don’t think it was so much as to rip me off but to make sure it was him that secured my ride home.  This is where this part of the story gets a little more ‘stalker-ish’ when I got a phone call at 8pm on Tuesday, 3 days later, from said Driver Don, letting me know he was at my apartment block and wanted to know what my apartment number was.  Um-firstly the call was totally out of left field and secondly what did he need my apartment number for, and when I asked, he said so he can come and see my rooms. Um, I don’t think so and I said as much to him and mentioned that I was actually having dinner, to which he asked if he could have some and I just came straight out and told him I didn’t think it was a good idea and thanks for the phone call.  Okay I think he has just been elevated from pre-stalker to full blown stalker.  The good news is the way the apartments are set up and with the massive gate out front, he doesn’t know where I live, not that I expect him to come and break in or anything-but isn’t that just a little OTT?

I also was giving a guy on Facebook the benefit of the doubt with all his initial offer of friendship. I have had a few Facebook friend requests from Africans I don’t know the last few weeks.  I generally as a rule won’t accept anyone that I don’t know but I have accepted one person based on face value.  I do need to get myself out more and he went to the trouble of sending me his email address and phone number, he lives in Nairobi and he quite clearly mentioned being a friend.  I do need to get myself out there sometime and whether it was male or female I think I would have done the same thing.  If I am to meet anybody, may I could just meet them at my hotel in town.  They have a bar there, a nice restaurant and at least I have people who know me there, my security mates Dominic and Maureen and they can keep an eye out for me there.  Now I can hear you all cringing as you read this but sometimes you just need to run with your gut instinct and everything just rings right and so as not to get our messages crossed I have been up front with him and his replies have been more than honest, so I have accepted him as a friend-it all has to start somewhere and whether it was a male or a female I would have done the same thing.  Well I got a message during the week asking that when I next go back to Australia, can I take him with me.  Well there goes the ‘just want to be friend’ card straight out the window.  You give people an inch and they want to take a mile.  What a shame that he was no different.     

Caretaker Charles has thrown in his hat this week.  Every time he has seen me he has told me how nice I have looked and when he came down this week to fix my toilet he asked if he could have a beer while he was here.  He has done a lot for me since moving in and I think he has well and truly deserved a beer from me.  So while he fixed what needed to be done we did so over a beer.  My rent is due at the end of the month and I need to deposit the money directly into the rent account, so Charles has offered to walk me to the bank which is in ‘local’ town and I appreciate the offer and again the beer and I also intend to tip Charles a small amount as well as I think I have asked a lot and he has always come through for me.  Well again, you give an inch and it turns into a mile, and on Friday he asked if he could come down to the apartment for a beer-just a beer, nothing needed to be fixed and I just had to nip it in the bud and I said not today.  Why oh why do people put me in these situations.  I don’t want to sound like all of Kenya is hitting on me, but when I go out this is my daily interaction I have with people.  I know I am in a ‘local’ area and it is just something that I am going to have to get used to, wizen up to and accept.

The Masai Market this week was interesting.  I have made a few ‘friends’ that I go and see and say hello to each week now.  Everyone’s smiles are so infectious, whether they are genuinely for me or for the Mazungu in me?  I will never know but I am always happy to be there.  I always make a point of seeing Jemima and Vincent, they seem to be genuine and I will chat to them for about 15-20 minutes, it is mostly Jemima that I speak to, she seems like a good egg and I told her about Driver Don and she has said that it is nit right what he has done and to be careful.  We swapped numbers this week and I am trusting this with my gut.  Vincent on the other hand, some family member of Jemima’s is trying to win my affections.  He has asked that next week I bring some bottles of Tusker so that we could have a beer together.  I don’t think so, but nice try and a new move I hadn’t seen this week.  I bought a pair of earrings from a young guy at the markets who I later saw in the supermarket and he stopped to have a chat.  We introduced ourselves and then after a few minutes he said he had to go, but he had something special for me at his stall (another new line) that he wanted to show me, asked me where my car was and then asked for my address when all that failed.  I told him if the item was still at his stall next week I’d take a look and I declined to give my address and he doesn’t even know my marital status, he just went straight in for the kill-ahhhh the cockiness of the young (excuse the pun).

Finally to round off the week I have been dealing with something that not many people know about.  To put it simply I have been having a ‘text-omance’ with some-one I met on my African trip in 2011.  The romance blossomed on my Africa trip in August 2011, and then I returned for 5 days in November 2011 to see him again and see where things may lead.  At this point I hadn’t met Zeme (it stopped during my relationship with Zeme) but we have kept in touch for the last 18 months via text messaging and sporadic phone calls, more so after Zeme and I split.  I’m talking about sending/receiving texts every day during that time and now that I am back in Africa we have seen each other twice and it seems that things are never the same as you thought they were, especially after such a long hiatus.  So it is now time to cut ties with my ‘friend’ that has been on-going since my extended trip here in mid-2011.  I haven’t written much about our relationship/friendship at all, and I am not going to go into details now-but if things are not right, then something needs to be done about it.  I am not sure if the hardest thing will be actually missing him as a person or the thought that I am not going to be getting my daily text message that I seemed to have thought that I depended on but now for some reason I have seen the light, all on my own, when my close friends who knew about the ‘text-omance’ saw what has taken me 18 months to see.  My favourite saying to try and keep myself on track is ‘Never allow loneliness to drive you back into the arms of someone you know you don’t belong with’.  It is so true, as I get so lonely some days and I have to stop myself from phoning/texting-I need to move on and it’s not fair on both of us to keep this ‘thing’ going.  We both have different feelings, and right or wrong what we are doing I can tell you they are not for the right reasons.

So what a week. 

Being a single, white, Mzungu in this town is going to be tougher than I thought.

I need to still be myself and at the same time just look at each situation as it comes up, analyse it, process it and then make a decision on what happens after that.  I need to always be in control of my own decisions and I know that they will not always be positive ones-I may have to be tough, but at the end of the day when it comes to my personal safety, I have no choice.