Sometimes it’s not fun being a celebrity. I’ve never been a person who wanted to be famous, the attention makes me nervous. Here, it’s unavoidable. Everywhere I go, people will stop riding their bikes to watch me pass, children will come shrieking from the fields or houses pointing and shouting ‘mzungu’ (unless I’ve already yelled at them about this in which case they will yell ‘bettina’ or some variation of my name), people stop outside my gate and will just stare and watch me cook or do chores. I’m freaking hilarious by the way. Anything I say or do is followed with laughter or cheers (it would be ok if this continued back home).
One of the not-so-good things about being so noticeable is
always being a topic on the bush radio. This term was coined by a trainer
during PST. Any news or gossip travels through the village at lightning speed.
I don’t know how they do it. This morning I was breaking news! I woke up
determined to finish my laundry that has been piling up around me for days and
decided to take my big bucket down to the watering hole instead of the one I’ll
usually carry on my head. I think this one holds 50 liters, which is nothing to
an amayi, but for me, I’ve just gotten used to 20L and I’m not ready to push
it. So I looked around and found my one and only bungee cord, strapped the
bucket to the back of my bike and was off. When I got to the water hole I, as
usual, was not allowed to pump my own water (mzungu privilege) and watched as the
women took over. After the water was filled I gracefully (ha!) plopped the
bucket back on my bike, strapped the measly bungee cord over the bucket and
started to make my way home. I made it about 50 steps when I hit a rock lodged
in the dirt and my bike went down, bucket, water and all. There was this huge
dramatic wave as all the water splashed and soaked into the dry sandy dirt, it
was quite impressive actually. Luckily I was out of sight of the women at the
water hole, but not out of sight of a couple children and women sweeping the
dirt outside of their houses. Completely embarrassed, I picked up my broken
bucket, re-strapped it to the back of my bike and continued toward my house too
ashamed to go back to watch it get filled up again. The women watching me pass
sang a chorus of “pole, pole, sorry, sorry” as I walked by with 6 children
trailing behind me. I hoped since this all happened around 6am, that that would
be the end of it… but no. Throughout the rest of the day I’ve had people
stopping by my house apologizing and asking if I was ok. I feel like I can hear
people around my house talking about the mzungu who spilled her water this
morning… I’m sure I am going to do far more embarrassing things, but I wanted
to keep you up-to-date on the latest news via the bush radio!
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