Muzungu. Pamela Sisman Bitterman

expression of apology, I swear I catch each Kenyan blushing as I butt past. Once outside, pacing and ranting in the empty meadow, I become an information-overload, blathering idiot, prattling on theatrically and managing to slip into the conversation some modicum of cause for alarm. “This is so not what I expected!” I’m told I scream at my unsuspecting sister. I’m certain I’m laughing and using hyperbole for dramatic effect but even so, the next morning I get a call from my husband.

      “Your sister phoned me in the middle of the night. She said, ‘Pami told me that it is not what she expected!’ I said, “Yeah…?” And she yelled at me, ‘So, Joe! Joe! What are we going to do?’ ”

      Well of course there was nothing to be done and no need. There is a series of steps that are taken by individuals who throw themselves into foreign, alienating, and potentially dangerous experiences. The mechanisms for adaptation are typically the same: preparation, perseverance, and cognitive dissonance. That being said, on the infamous Dark Continent, the stakes could arguably be considered a smidge higher and the acclimation more imperative. Though I never seriously doubt that I will be fine, I still have my share of self-indulgent, bellyaching moments and my sister is the unwitting recipient of an early earful. But even these fragile flare-ups become part of my settling-in process. In my journal during my first week in Maseno, I write things like, “I miss normalcy, my normalcy, irreverent humor, honesty, honesty from the other muzungus, and from myself. Oh gawd, listen to me! I’m seriously going to have to have about a million disclaimers in this book just so I don’t come off looking like one enormous, insensitive clod.”

      TIMELINE: Time it takes me to let go of those heavy disclaimer misgivings: I am solidly there by the time I leave Kenya.