Waiting

When I drive down the road here I always see people sitting near the road seemingly doing nothing. They are apparently waiting for something, but for what I am not sure. Some are maybe waiting for transportation to town; this can be an all morning activity sometimes as the overcrowded matatus rush by without stopping. Others are actually watching their cows or goats as they feed on the side of the road. In town people seem to be waiting fro things too, waiting in line at the bank or post office, waiting for a job or waiting for customers. Waiting is something that seems to be part of everyday life for most of the Kenyans I see and no seems to notice that maybe if things were better organized it wouldn’t be necessary to wait so much.

Waiting seems to be a common theme for me here in Kenya. While in the office I wait for data to be prepared for my analysis. While in the field I wait for the different blood and stool samples to arrive at our central clinic to be transported back with our jeep to the main lab for analysis. I wait for meetings, I wait for the car to take me home, and I wait for my food at the restaurant, and well I just seem to keep waiting for people or things. I am more aware maybe of waiting here then back home because if in the US you expect to wait 15 minutes for something on average here you except to wait an hour instead. I guess it gives me plenty of time to see the world go by and sometimes take some good pictures but other times I just wish things could move a bit faster so I didn’t have to think about all the things I could be doing instead of waiting. In generally I consider myself fairly patient and I do really try to “go with the flow” with things here in Kenya but there are days were I become frustrated with the inadequacies of a country that is truly on the verge of being “great” if only they were a bit more efficient and maybe if the roads weren't as bad. The roads, however, require a whole different blog entry for another day.

Yesterday, I spent a long time waiting for various things. I used my time to write this blog entry in my notebook so I guess it wasn’t a wasted time so much as a different use of my time. Hopefully today when I return to the field I will have a bit less waiting time otherwise I might be submitting another entry to my blog tomorrow too.