The onion layer theorem; Dutch style

I’ve been in this country for all of four weeks now (give or take a few hours).I must say its been quite the ride thus far (no pun intended) but I’m settling into the ebb and flow of things around here. Be that as it may, there are still a few things that I have noteworthy and shall proceed to share them with you:
1. They have very subtle ways of making you learn Dutch(even when they say you don’t really have to); what with writing names of all the products in Dutch at the supermarket and all notices, road signs and such like items are all in Dutch;
2. A ‘high-speed’ head on collision with another bicycle is not only a possibility but a very painful reality and not as comical as it sounds; I know!
3. Onions are a very big part of the Dutch culture (though they don’t really know it yet or won’t admit to it).

The last of this we shall dwell on for a bit of a while.
I come from the sunny side of the world; where the only use for jackets is filling up the wardrobe except for one month in a year, after which they assume their prescribed purpose of filling out the space in the closet. With this in mind, its pretty evident to see why I’d learn to take good weather for granted. However, this is not the land of sunny days and warm nights; this is the land of schizophrenic weather patterns and misguided rainfall patterns- misguided mainly because the rain always catches me off-guard.

I have, through misguided bravado and really bad weather prediction skills, learnt that the weather cannot be taken for granted in this not so sunny side of the world.

The few Dutch friends I have made have taught me the layering principle i.e. to put on a ridiculous number of clothing layers to combat the cold and strange weather patterns and then proceed to shed off the unnecessary layers as the day warms up and layer up as it cools down. Needless to say that dressing up like this in the house is a bit retarded and thus one must strip down the extra layers and leave only the basic layer of clothes…just like an onion…

Doesn’t it make you wonder, aren’t onions grand?

Kinyozi hajinyoi...I wish I was a chamelon

Wahenga walisema 'Kinyozi hajinyoi' which when translated roughly comes to 'a barber never shaves himself'. The old folks, whoever they may have been, were pretty wise in their assessment and stipulation of the so called sayings and proverbs but there is always that idiot who will defy these sayings...

It is pretty obvious you realise when you think about it; its the same concept with the hairdressers, you'll never walk into a salon and find one of them trying to fix up their hair too much because really that is a bit of a complex application....

Well the idiot sits before you today...after literally defying the wahenga and literally tried to shave myself. There is a reason that the Lord created the human with only one set of eyes at the front of the face, so that for complex events as shaving, a barber is involved. its pretty easy to shave your beard but what happens when you try to shave the back of your head without a pair of eyes behind there?

The natural contours of the African head combined with the steel-wool likeness of its attendant hair make for a really tough shave even by a barber, so how tough would you assume that the action would be to one who cannot see the back of his head...
this story need not continue for you can probably assume how badly this turned out...

The chameleon can rotate its eyes 360degrees about their axes...maybe thus even see the backs of their heads...sometimes I wish I was a chameleon....

The gods have spoken

The gods of Mt. Kirinyaga have heard my pleas and sent forth a petition to the gods of the northern regions that I now reside in.
In the petition, they say that the reason an African is the hue that he is so that he may absorb the rays of the glorious African sun and in this way stem away such maladies as may be suffered by the fairer hued members of the human race.
In this very same petition the gods insisted that should an African be subjected to too few rays of the sun then his hue would be reduced considerably to the extent of the not so hued as himself and this would predispose him to the same maladies that the fairer hued members of the human race suffer from as a result of the sun.
It further stated that the weather gods in the north should hold forthwith release of such aspects as rain, snow and sleet till a date that shall be agreed upon by the council of the gods.
I, the African in question, think the negotiations worked....the gods of the north sent us sunshine today.
Tomorrow is up to the gods...

Murphy's law

Murphy's law is an adage in Western culture that broadly states, "if anything can go wrong, it will." It is also cited as: "If there's more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way"; "Anything that can go wrong, will," the similar "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong"; or, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law
I'm not Murphy...evidently, but I feel for this guy (go to the link above).
My story is not as bad but absolutely catastrophic in my eyes so you must share my pain...
Thursday morning:I wake up a bit confused; the alarm clock didn't ring so I'm ten minutes behind schedule but I will live. I run to the shower and turn on the hot water and wait....1 minute, two minutes...DAMN, the boiler has absconded duty so it means no hot shower that morning but who's to argue at that hour.
after a cold-inducing shower, I dash out and do the whole changing thing and then breakfast and with twenty minutes to my lecture, I run out and as I hop onto my bike, I realise I have a bloody flat tyre....
Long and short of it, I get to class late, sweaty and tired and still numb from an ice cold shower but I lived to tell the tale...Murphy are you listening...

I miss the African sun

I've been here all of two weeks (give or take a few hours) and I have come to one conclusion: The weather has multi-personality disorder in this country and I will prove it.
When I arrived I was told its summer only to be greeted by confused looking raindrops at the airport but I didn't say a thing; we drove to my new apartment and then it actually cleared up, I saw the sun and a few white puffy clouds...so far so good I guess. Then night came (at about 9.30 the sun set - this is apparently only weird to Africans) and I went for a drink in the town only to be assaulted by large hail stones and rain with an attitude problem...all within the span of 6hours of my arrival.
Since then its been a wait and see kind of attitude with the weather; carry a jacket in your bag and such like things...and its still summer. On only two days since I've been here have I seen the sun fully and it was a weekend, a glorious I daresay hot weekend...no sweaters or jackets all day and night....
So please, understand me when I say the Dutch weather is schizophrenic, and I do so miss the African sun...