england: sign language assembly and brixton

we had the wonderful privilege to attend the british sign language assembly up in dudley. wow. what a beautiful assembly. we don't really understand british sign language, but some things are universal. like mark and his disgusting rotten fruit illustration - that he actually carried to the platform with him :). actually we were impressed with how much we understood especially from the deaf. weirdly, its easy to communicate with deaf regardless of which language they know. which makes me suspect that they just simplify what they are signing to our level..

we met the most wonderful kids - toby, george and jasmine. they are all in the sign language congregation and we absolutely loved them. we travelled together to the assembly and it was quite hilarious communicating with them via a pair of radios that mark bought ("ferrari coming up on the left"). here is jasmine teaching me to make faces. definitely not the other way round. its nice to be able to communicate with people on my level. 

after the assembly, we spent some time with crispy. she was determined to improve our fashion sense. here we are in london, one of the fashion capitals of the world and…well, i will leave you to judge for yourself. 

actually she took us to a part of london called brixton.  all round fascinating place with an awesome vibrant multi-cultural open air street market with more stuff from africa for sale than we have here in kenya!

it kind of segued into a covered market that was just as interesting - any kind of material or food from any country you want was available. this market kind of grew organically from the 1870s on the sidewalks into the market it is now - maybe there is hope for street markets in kenya yet.

brixton has had a pretty rough history - it was made famous by the brixton riots in the 80s and 90s because of racial inequality. on the other hand, john major started off his political career giving speeches from a soapbox in this very market.

we loved brixton for its totally not being generic. actually this is one of the lovely things about england ('lovely' is to england as 'awesome' is to the usa) - every place has its own flavor and style - i dont know how long it will last but little individually run tea shops are everywhere in buildings that are unique in their architecture.

next stop - southampton.