A taste of the night life

Yesterday, Harriette invited me to go to a slam poetry reading in Westlands with Ros. I honestly really didn't want to but I decided to do it because I don't really have any opportunities to do anything fun and its not like I had anything better to do. I tried to wrangle something decent to wear and we got to the restaurant, Doss, at like 7:45. Harriette and Ros met the woman who put the whole thing together just the night before at a dinner party. The woman Imani is from Hawaii but has lived in Kenya for 16 years. The whole event was to benefit a program to teach poetry to girls in Kibera. She was the first person to read her poetry in front of everyone and it was amazing! I couldn't believe it, it was way better than I could have expected. She was reading some poetry prompts that she was using with a pen pal she has in some California prison. They were so emotional, confident and visceral. Mostly everyone else with the exception of a couple of Americans were Kenyan and it wasn't just poetry. There were musicans and beat boxers too. One of the groups who performed were I later heard have the biggest selling CD in Nairobi and I got one of them to sign their CD that I bought. They were so adorable, Kenyan hipsters are my new favorite thing. I took a picture and had another of the singers sign the other CD that I got. Her name was Dela and she had a reggae, R&B vibe. Her voice was really beautiful. After the fundraising part was over they had an open mic and one of the people who went up was this Rastafarian Kenyan and he did his poetry monalogue in Kiswahili and he had everyone in the place jumping up, screaming, and laughing hysterically throughout his whole thing and I had no idea what he was saying. It makes me happy that I am starting Kiswahili classes on Monday. It was funny someone shouted, "What are you saying," in the middle of his set and everyone started laughing. It was honestly one of the best nights I have had since being here and Harriette asked Dela when she would be performing again and I think we might go and see her again. It makes me want to start writing poetry, I can start using some of my creative writing tools I learned last semester.