kenyan dental floss

now, to understand the jist of this story, i need to help you understand a bit about my friend daniel's personality... and although an intimidating task, i think i'm up to it.

umm... how do i explain him? okay, so sometimes he... nope. crap.

wait. okay... he likes "joking" with people. really, all the guys in his family do... they like to see how gullible the average person is. if you ask a question, they'll give you a bogus but totally believable answer, and wait to see how long it'll take you to question it's validity. they think this kind of psychological manipulation is oooooh so funny.

whatever... they're lipparellis. enough said.

since i got here, i've been asking questions about kenyan culture ALL THE TIME, and i think sometimes dan gets tired of explaining. when that happens, i can usually recognize the gleam in his eyes as he gives me an answer that totally makes sense, but really is completely untrue... just the shock factor that he likes going for. usually within a few seconds i come to find out he's just messing with me, but he thinks it is hysterical. luckily, i'm not the only one he does it to.

we all have suffered through his "jokes"... but payback is a bummer. nah... really though, there are four girls here, and you gotta feel for the one american guy amongst so much estrogen.

not even kidding... with the four of us girls combined, we could probably float a hot air balloon just by blowing into it sometimes.

someone give the man a medal for putting up with us.

anyways... back to the lunch we were having. we walked into the "restaurant" and grabbed a table. i noted on the way to our table that the fly-covered fruit salad was not looking so hot today. someone had forgotten to put the lid back on the bowl.

appetizing.

the popular foods here are so weird, but some of it is palatable for the american taste buds, so i dont mind. instead of ugali or sukamawiki (no idea how to spell that) or some kind of weak soup that the kenyans call "curry", i usually get chicken and chips.

basically, chicken and chips can be whittled down to the following: you know american KFC chicken? yeah... its not anything like that. you get a piece of what must've been a very malnourished chicken's LEG (and that makes you wonder if it was hit and flattened by a matatu before it was sold to the restaurant), and three fourths of your plate filled with the most disgustingly oily french fries you can imagine.

i know, i know... but it's that or the "curry"... and lord only knows what animal died to became broth for that stuff. i'll take my chances with the chicken and chips.

so this day, we ordered and were sitting around laughing before the waitress (non english speaking kenyan) brought us a little side plate with our napkins (i mean serbiettes... napkin is the word they use for pms products here), utensils and... floss.

i thought it was this restaurant's equivalent of a toothpick... maybe they gave us floss because they ran out of toothpicks for us. not so much. it was probaly just a random string that fell off our waitress's shirt.

i looked at the plate and said "oh... is this floss?"

and daniel said "yeah... see?" as he imitated how you would use three inches of too thick string to floss your teeth.

quickly, i realized they had only provided us with one piece of floss, and i thought that was weird... so i said "really?"

walked right into that one, didnt i?

lauren and daniel were laughing so hard it took a good 10 seconds for daniel to gasp out a "no... not really!" as i realized i'd been duped again.

the non english speaking waitress brought me my roadkill and oil fries, and i mumbled "i hate everyone" as daniel put the random piece of string (or kenyan dental floss) aside so he could focus on gnawing the gristle off his piece of roadkill.

he didnt choke on it. that was sad.


daniel and the kenyan dental floss