No, Really Dude! We're, uh, So Sad You're Dead!

To all my future visitors, I can only hope you'll be so lucky as to arrive in time for a real Kenyan funeral. They sound like such a riotously good time (from my bed, at 3am) that I would hate to have you miss the fun, the culture, the experience.

Someone here told me that the newly dead should not sleep alone their first few nights in the grave. So, families will rent HUGE sound systems and blast their music all through the night. Maybe the idea is to forcefully keep themselves awake by cranking the volume until sleep is impossible. Which might be acceptable, if they didn't aim the speakers outward, toward their sleeping neighbors! Or maybe the aim is to wake the dead, and the family is kind enough to try and reach out to everyone. Who really knows?

The hills and valleys in my area, though, they have an Amazing ability to transport sound so that music from 2 or 3 kilometers away sounds as clear (and loud) as music from right next door.

The problem with this comes at 2am, after you've been struggling for sleep for the last 4 hours. You stumble into your sandals, arm yourself with a panga and step outside, prepared to murder your neighbor. But then you realize, the noise isn't, in fact, from next door, but rather from some chump's place, waayyy over there, across the valley. Sure, you could probably make it over there and complete your mission. But if the music is this loud here, then.... damn! How freakin' loud is it over there?!?

I just don't understand how people known for their hospitality can be SO RUDE as to keep their hard-working neighbors awake all night! Or, how these people tolerate such behavior! That's what you get in a town with no cops and no phones with which to call them, I guess.

The part of me not desperate for sleep wants to get dressed and go over to shake my booty all night. I mean, really!, an all-night disco with no cover charge? In Kenya?? I'm there!

And just when you think it will be worth every effort to find this home and slaughter them all, one by one, it stops.

Peace!

And it's only 4:30am, so, that's like, 2 hours of sleep, and, I could almost survive the next da- Cock-A-Doooooodle-Dooooooooo!!!!!!! And you realize, with a tear, that the music has only stopped because it is dawn. Time to get up and start the chores, start the day. The whole night has passed with hardly a wink. Where was my sleep????

But sleep does come, finally, lulled by sweet dreams of snapping the neck of every rooster in the land. Joy!! One, by One, by One, by One....