Where Do Babies Come From? and The "Muzungu"

'Muzungu' is my most familiar word. I hear it ALL the time. It's the word for white people (and interchangeably Westerners as I understand it). Little kids yell it as we pass them driving to the village. They are also yelling, waving, and overall seem excited, so it's not so bad. When we walk down the street people yell 'Muzungu,' mostly kids, but some mature looking people as well. One time I gave a group of adults 'the face' when they were yelling about 'Muzungu' in a rude sort of way as we passed each other on the streets. They got it and stopped.

About a week after we first arrived in Shirati, I noticed a bird that sat outside my window; its chirp sounded like 'muzungu, muzungu.' I asked Sara about it and she told me I was crazy; it was just a mourning dove or something. So that's the explanation of the 'Muzungu.'

A couple of nights ago we went to a friend's house. There were a couple of young people there we know through work and Sara. I told them that in the US we tell children, "A stork brought you," when they ask where they came from. As far as I know, I saw my first stork ever when we got to Kenya. There was a group of huge birds in a tree, and someone told me they were storks. My first thought was, "Where are the babies?" So when I explained the stork story to the friends they said, "We don't tell them that," in an awkward way; like there was something more to it. It took a couple of seconds and a bit of giggling before one of them told us that sometimes when kids ask they tell them a 'Muzungu' brought them. How weird to think that here we are the stork in the story?

We asked them for some other 'Muzungu' stories. Apparently some children are told that the 'Muzungus' just want to eat them. This would explain the kids that start balling when they see me. I must admit, that is a depressing feeling.