"My" Space

Personal space is something that varies very much from one country to another. This was perfectly illustrated to me last April when I was in the US. In a grocery store, with large aisles, I was accosted by a rather bolshie lady for blocking the aisle with my shopping cart. There was in fact plenty of room around it, but I wasn’t going to argue! Similarly, there were a couple of times when people would apologise profusely for being in the way, when I hadn’t noticed that they were, given the ample space around them, and the distance of several metres between me and them. Contrast that to my return to Kenya. Standing in line at the Customer Service desk in a supermarket here to return empty bottles, I was somewhat surprised when someone stood in the 6 inch gap that was between me and the desk!!!

On a public holiday in October, I joined some friends on a trip down to Magadi, which is a soda lake about 90 minutes to 2 hours from Nairobi. It’s a beautiful drive, with the ascent to the shoulder of the Ngong Hills, and then continuing downwards from then on into the Rift Valley. The landscape i

s pretty dramatic with hills and volcanic plugs, and very little in the way of noticeable buildings. Instead, Masai manyattas blend into the scrub land. Once at Magadi, we looked for somewhere with a little bit of shade to have our picnic (it being 37C there), and eventually found a large acacia. So, we set up our table and chairs. Not long after our arrival, a Masai young man pulled up on his bike, greeted us, and then remained, leaning against the tree trunk, watching this strange bunch of people produce sandwiches, sausages, fruit and drinks from the bags we'd brought with us. He was within feet of us, but that certainly didn’t seem to bother him, and we just found the whole thing rather amusing! After about half an hour, he received a phone call on his mobile that caused him to wander off to some bushes. Not sure if he was concerned that we might listen into his conversation in Masai (!), or whether he was taking the opportunity for a call of a different nature. Eventually, he continued on his way. Soon after, we were joined by 3 youngsters, who stood and observed for some time, while talking with each other. One refused a drink of water poured into a Tusker (beer) bottle, but another accepted - and was possibly disappointed to find that it was indeed water as we’d said.

So, space is relative. Maybe all of those people had decided ahead of time to stop at the tree, and our presence was in no way going to stop them. Or maybe, they just wanted to have a good look at our strange behavior. Certainly, there was no concern about impinging on someone else’s space and privacy!