You’re not supposed to judge your new culture in terms of better or worse, only different. But, that is pretty dumb. Here are some things that are just better or worse. For good measure, I’ll also throw in something that is “just different” and something that’s the same.
WORSE: Television. It depends on what you mean by worse, I guess. If you judge TV shows by how accidentally funny they are, then Kenya TV shows are better. I’m not saying there isn’t some real trash on American television. But there are also some quality shows (like the ones you watch). Here, it’s almost exclusively low budget affairs that wouldn’t place in Cleveland’s 48-hour film festival (no offense to those who participated). One highlight is this show about an 8-year old pimp who takes liberties with his prostitutes. The lead actor is, in fact, a child. To be fair, I can’t keep up with television-Swahili, so maybe it’s like their version of Law & Order SVU.
NO PICTURE.
BETTER: Television. One good thing about low budget television is that they just stay away from extreme gore. I enjoy the show CSI (a lot), but it also signals a weird time in our special effects history when we became so bored with the traditional blood and guts on film that we decided we needed to know what’s going on inside. “I get that he was shot in the head; but what happened to the bullet; where is it now?” The only blood I’ve seen on Kenyan television was during a football [soccer] game when a player took a cleat to the face … allegedly; you could so tell it was fake.
NO PICTURE!
DIFFERENT: Television!
SAME: Television. A lot of American shows actually make it to Kenyan television.