You realize that after two months of being in this country,
everybody expects me to behave as if I have fully adjusted to the Kenyan
Culture. They expect me to behave in a completely Kenyan way but the reality is
time away has changed me and though I may seem like someone who has adjusted
well, the reality is deep within I do get lost. I feel like I neither belong
here fully nor to the Norwegian culture I lived in for a while; Call it
identity crisis I guess.
For instance, the other day I visited a high profile
journalist in Kenya in what was to be our first meeting. We had been
communicating for a while over phone and Email but had never really met. I
dressed up in what I felt to be the most comfortable way in the July sun in a polo
neck T-shirt and a trouser and happily placed a back pack on my shoulders and
went to meet him. This was quite something different than my usual jeans and
T-shirt which I was used to in Norway. He was not impressed with my dressing
style though as he later told me. He must have expected me to be more in a suit
and without the back pack. He told me, after a while of course, that the moment
he saw me, his first impression would have been to send me away as I did not
look the part. My only saving point was the confident and re-assuring manner in
which I presented myself from the handshake to the talking, he said.
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