Can't you see that it's just raining, Jack Johnson croons, there ain't not need to go outside. Solitaire bores me and his word-drawn pictures of infatuation take my mind to women past, the gap between love and the idea of love, and the drought in my love life. Drought in my sex life. It hasn't rained in a while.

Clicking and tapping, the sounds of the keyboard and rain on the window sing the harmony meant to accompany the song and my interior monologue. I feel sorry for myself, lonely, and wanting. It is companionship I lack. I want someone to reassure me, not to ask but know what's bothering me, beauty like a Marquez sentence, a reason not to go outside. Like the weather, these thoughts are always present and always changing, sunny and hopeful some days, cloudy and melancholy others. Today my mood is grey, waxing pathetic in step with the guitar rhythm. It seems natural. I have come to expect these bouts of loneliness. I've not grown taller in a couple of years but these tempestuous horizons seem right, post-pubescent growing pains of a 21-year-old in a foreign land, unsure of who to trust, what to believe, wishing there was an easy answer, someone to console him in a primal way, quelling the anxiety that constantly spreads with the mechanical regularity of his beating heart.

All this from the rain.

More than anything, the sad rain pines on about the importance of detail. Perfect companionship that flourishes on the details of the counterpart. Partners who complement, make happy, communicate with their eyes, know through their touch, trigger inside jokes with random words, love through living. Indeed, it is the small things. Small things that I think I miss because of the mood I summon from the rain highlight the screaming disconnect between my reactions and realities, a gaping hole between my fairytale life and truth in front of me. My reactions to small things are the most obvious indicators of ignorance. Large signs, Welcome to Nairobi, seeing poverty, hearing Kiswahili, speaking with Kenyans, tell me I am in Kenya but the small things tell me that I am in a real place, a different place, a country, city and slum that is not an entry in the Lonely Planet or coordinate location on a map but a contrasting reality. Something as massive and amorphous as poverty, a slum of ~1 million, are thoughts that loom larger than logic. Palpable yes, different certainly, harrowing and unforgettable but easily ignored because poverty is so impersonal, too massive, untouchable, entirely unfounded within most Westerner's database of reactions. So it is the small things that make it real. Contrasting reactions to the exact same things allow me to understand that I really don't understand. Poverty is too big, but I know what reactions are triggered by rain and a grey day. Prompted by the small things, my reactions are telling of the extent to which my mind is simply conditioned differently. It rains and I pine while tomorrow the mud paths will be impassable. Sex-life; companionship; these romantic notions of what life ought to be are in and of themselves different realities in my mind than they are for most Kenyans. Moreover, the rain, a natural event, a small thing, a common occurrence worldwide, means something so different to me in my head than it does in life here.

Sheets now. A crowd gathers below the canopy at the entrance to our compound. Miles, not just a window, gate, electrical fence, guard dog, are wedged between me and the people I see reaching for umbrellas, jogging for shelter, covering new hair dos. Running for shelter, rushing to get home, stay dry, stay clean, stay warm, most of the people I look down on don't look so different from a crowd in midtown when the skies open. But, chances are their reactions are different. Frolicking in the rain is only fun when you know you can warm up afterwards. It is even more fun when warming up is an assumption. A warm shower, a dry home, a cup of tea made with clean water, inviting clothing. People in Kibera don’t chase rainbows.

What does the rain mean to you if you live in a structure made of mud, don’t have running water, an extra pair of shoes, or paved road to your house. What does the rain mean to you if you can't open your business, or your child will get sick? What does the rain mean if it is your drinking water?

I don’t know. It is probably not a prompt to feel pathetic in the confines of your warm home. I don’t know. That is the whole point. The small things point out: I have no idea.