Same has happened to me and they assume I'm dominican until I open my mouthWas in Kendall a few months ago, people will talk to you in Spanish assuming your a black Cuban person and when you respond back in English they kinda give you alook.
This is Extremely, extremely false. Like you would only think this if you stayed in the capital. In my travels I encountered hundreds of people with an elementary school level of Swahili and a first grade level of English thriving.
When i took trips there and left the hubs of Mombasa and Nairobi there were millions of people whose only language is their ethnic one. For example, on that border area with Uganda and the lake there are many people who look at you crazy for trying to speak Swahili or English because luo is the lingua Franca. Everybody in official capacity from banks to govt offices is speaking luo. when you turned on the radio most of the channels were in luo too
The most beautiful non coastal part of Kenya when I last visited was kissi which is composed of many hills and mountains filled with tea and the norm is the kisii language outside their main town.
One of my biggest regrets was not visiting the volcanic and desert areas to the north because it's very scenic. Do you know what language they speak there? Somali or turkana. Whole school systems exist and are taught in Somali because a big chunk of that area used to be part of Somalia for centuries, very similar to New Mexico or Cali being part of Mexico before colonial fckery combined them.
Because of the extreme diversity of their country and the British colonialists arbitrarily grouping different ethnicities in the same country, Kenya is a diverse nation where the official languages can often be useless outside the 3 major cities.
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