Ethiopian men

Happy Birthday to one of my lovely mothers, Joy : ) I hope you are having a great day!

So Wednesday on my matatu ride home a man came and sat down next to me. People sit next to me all the time on matatus as they are not known for being spacious or not completely filled to capacity. People, however, do not usually start up conversations with me. Only two people in my daily matatu rides have ever started up a conversation with me like this man did. His name was Abush and the other was Araya. Both talked to me and introduced themselves and then invited me over for tea sometime. Interestingly, both were Ethiopian as well. Another interesting thing is that usually when men talk to me I get a bad feeling and can sense that they are just talking to me because I am a white woman and they want to have sex or marry me or various other things they suggest. But both of these men seemed genuinely nice (although it’s possible that they are just good actors). I think it is really interesting that both were Ethiopian. Are random Ethiopian men generally friendlier than random Kenyan men? Is it just a crazy coincidence and I am stereotyping based on two people? I mean I am positive that not ALL Ethiopian men are like this because that is a lot of people to generalize. I do not know, I just think it’s interesting. Anyway, Abush wanted me to come over to his house for tea sometime and I said maybe we could meet in the city for tea. He also paid my matatu fare, which was really nice.
Other than having yet another pleasant experience with a guy on a matatu, my day was uneventful. I was supposed to meet a friend in the morning, but once I got to campus she told me that her aunt was sick and she had to go to her place, so I spent the hours between 10am and 2:30 pm reading a book and studying a little for my test on Thursday. Chipa showed me this little book he has of test taking tips, which I read. I told him that after I read it I felt a lot more nervous for my test than I had before reading it. He said “yeah I usually read that before tests in high school instead of studying”. I asked him how that went for him, how he did on those tests, to which he replied “not very well”. It was pretty funny. So I am going to review the material as well as reading the little book.