Dol Dol is somewhere behind me, in the green grass, mud and inundated gullies of Mukogodo in a rainy season. Saturday was my last day there, and after another day in Nanyuki to tie up some loose ends, I’ll get to play tourist for two weeks in Nairobi and on the coast. My mom sent me an email predicting that my last days in Dol Dol would be bittersweet, and of course she was right. There’s something in human nature, I think, that leads us to romanticize a place that we’re leaving after a long time. No matter how angry or frustrated a place makes us, there will always be things which tug at our hearts, which make us wish we had a few more weeks to spend there. I imagine, even as Moses led them across the parted Red Sea, there were more than a few Israelites thinking about how much they’d miss seeing the light of late afternoon reflected off the Nile.
Of course, Dol Dol tested this theory by showing its most repulsive side as we were leaving. At our farewell party on Friday night, one of my bosses got stupendously drunk, stole 500 shillings meant to reimburse us for the party expenses, kicked, punched and beat a fellow attendee and then passed out in the street. At a soccer game Saturday afternoon, a woman got stupendously drunk, started a fight, punched a baby in the head and was then beaten very nearly to death by her own brother as dozens of people cheered him on. Even still, the theory holds.
Part of my premature nostalgia revolved around saying farewell to my friends, of which I can count quite a few. It’s not just a feeling of missing them, but of abandoning them to the intermittent boredom and insanity that marks the day-to-day life of the place. But there are other attachments: to the sunsets over the mountains, to scattering the Vervet monkeys that cluster among the cacti, to the way young women, upon seeing an elder along the road, stop and stand stock still with their heads bowed until they’re acknowledged by the elders. I don’t think I would agree to return to Dol Dol for another three months, but I’ll miss the place.
If I returned, however, I’d find it a very different place- Dol Dol has been awarded its district. It’s fitting, in a way, that the issue which exploded during my first week in Dol Dol should be resolved during my last. From what I’ve heard, I have the speaker of the Parliament to thank for the closure. A Laikipiak Maasai and a local boy, he decided it was time to give up his job- and with good reason, since the speaker doesn’t get to vote on bills or shape policy, but instead has the unenviable task of getting Kenyan parliamentarians to show up on time and follow proper procedure. He decided he wanted to be a bona fide MP, which couldn’t happen in Kikuyu-dominated Laikipia, so he lobbied quietly for months, and the result is Laikipia North, a district and constituency to be headquartered in Dol Dol. Its boundaries, in keeping with the Kenyan political tradition, were drawn to ensure the greatest possible degree of ethnic homogeneity: the Maasai, just 10% of the old Laikipia District, will represent 90% of the population of Laikipia North. Because the Laikipiak Maasai are a tiny ethnic group, with only around 20,000 people, the district will be one of Kenya’s smallest, but it will bring all the trappings and perks of district-hood to Mukogodo.
The survey for the electrical lines has been done already, and the work will start next week to bring electricity from Meru to Dol Dol. The speaker is selling his house in town to the government (at an exorbitant price) so that it can house the new District Commissioner, who is arriving sometime this month. The various ministries and district offices will probably be built along the road in from Nanyuki. That spine-shattering road is going to be leveled and paved all the way from Nanyuki to Dol Dol, and a new road will run east from Dol Dol to Meru. As a result, Dol Dol will lose what is, to my mind, its defining characteristic: its location at what is literally the end of the road. Very soon, it will find itself part of the wider world. Safaricom has already picked out where it’s going to build its new cell tower, and the internet is sure to follow the government into town.
Of course, people have been thrilled by the news. Money will flow in- Laikipia North will get its own Constituency Development Fund, a sum of money transferred from the central government to each parliamentary constituency to be used on local development projects. The new district will get its own Constituency AIDS Control Council (CACC) and District AIDS and STD Control Officer (DASCO) to throw funds around, which would have been great to have two months ago when we were scouring the division for money. The Laikipiak Maasai will now control a seat in Parliament, and it’s therefore a safe bet that national political leaders will visit the community more often and be more generous when they do.
But the community has been flooded by money before and is no richer for it. Three or four years ago, a lot of locals in Dol Dol were awarded a huge cash settlement by the British government for the pain and suffering caused by accidents involving old military ordinance left on their land. The money that each of them received reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in an area where the average annual income is much less than $1,000, could seemingly last even a wastrel of a Maasai for several lifetimes- but every last shilling of it is already gone. The victims/beneficiaries recently went on TV to claim that the British had cursed the money, but there’s a simpler explanation. The Maasai of Dol Dol have shunned cash and bank accounts as stores of value; in the local reckoning, that’s what cattle are for. Money is for spending. So when some of these men got huge sums of money, they spent it. Most of it was blown on beer and women, but some people put it to more extravagant use, chartering flights to posh lodges in Maasai Mara for lunch, Mombasa for dinner. Some of the money went to cattle, but most of those cows died during the drought. No one used it to buy businesses, build houses, or improve the local infrastructure; so far as I know, the largest investment made with the lawsuit earnings was a mid-sized truck. Nobody built a fortune with that money, and because they developed expensive tastes and addictions, most of the awardees are poorer than they were before they got the money.
So I’m not ready to celebrate for Dol Dol just yet. I don’t know if I’ll find things any better if I return- I just know it will be different. For me, and for the people of Dol Dol, it’s time to say goodbye to the Other, and hello to Kenya.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The truth about Kisumu, uncut
This has been a bad year for the improbable, comforting illusions we hang onto. We had convinced ourselves that David Sedaris was a genius, capable of teasing the ridiculous out of the mundane events of true life; this year, we found out that he fabricated those events. We had convinced ourselves that NBA refs, while bad at their job, were at least doing their best to call a fair game; this year, we found out that at least one was fixing matches. So it was with trepidation that I went to Kisumu, the heart of Luoland. The Maasai find the Luo fascinating, and I’d heard some fantastic things about the Luo: that they all drive Hummers, that even the street children speak English amongst themselves, that they subsist exclusively on tilapia. They sort of sounded like American suburbanites, and I was afraid a trip to Kisumu would ruin the image in my mind of a little bit of Monmouth County along the shores of Lake Victoria. Indeed, just like David Sedaris and Tim Donaghy, the Luo let me down.
As it turned out, the Luo do fry themselves up a mean tilapia, but it’s hardly a staple (especially now that Lake Victoria is running out of fish) and they eat the same pilau, ugali, chapatti and goat stew that the rest of Kenya eats. The English skills of the Luo were similarly overstated. Most conversation is in Dholuo, a Nilotic language closely related to Nuer and Dinka. Certainly, though, you hear more English and less Swahili than you do in other cities in Kenya. The Luo think that this is because, as Nilots rather than Bantus, they find Swahili particularly difficult to learn, though this hasn’t stopped the Nilotic Maasai, Samburu and Kalenjin from picking up Swahili. Maybe a better explanation is the close historic and economic ties Luoland has to neighboring Uganda, where English predominates over Swahili. All the same, I had more difficulty communicating than I would have in, say, Keyport. Finally, I failed to see even a single Hummer during my time in Kisumu. The city does have, however, a lot of motorcycle rickshaws, bicycles with extra seats on the back for passengers, and at least one matatu with a checker-board ceiling, neon decals of hip-hop stars from the early part of this decade, and a DVD player and surround-sound system to play pirated rap videos.
There are two more distinguishing characteristics to the Luo, attributed to them by actual, published reports rather than drunk Maasai: that they are the only major tribe in Kenya not to circumcise their males, and that they are fanatically devoted to perennial presidential aspirant and bona fide Hummer driver Raila Odinga. Kisumu bucks the trend of Kenyan towns by relegating Jomo Kenyatta’s name to a secondary street and naming the main drag after Oginga Odinga, Raila’s daddy and a prominent Luo politician of days past. People love their Raila in Kisumu, and since the Luo are the second or third-largest ethnic group in Kenya, Raila rode this support to national prominence. It appears likely that Raila will win the nomination of the major opposition party to run against Kibaki in December, but few people think he’ll beat the president. It’s funny to note (just not to a Luo) that Barack Obama’s father came from a village near Kisumu, and it’s therefore likely that America will elect a Luo president before Kenya does. It’s not a perfectly fair comparison, however, because one of the main criticisms lobbed at Raila is that an uncircumcised man is unfit to govern the country, while I don’t believe that particular litmus test has been used in American politics yet, except perhaps by Lyndon Johnson.
All of that said, I really liked Kisumu. It has a relaxed feeling of slow, tropical decay, perhaps the consequence of its process of slow, tropical decay. Once a prosperous, bustling lake port, Kisumu has been decimated by three imports: sugar, water hyacinth, and HIV. The dumping of European sugar on the East African market has nearly killed off the Kenyan sugar industry, which was centered on the Luo villages surrounding Kisumu. Water hyacinth, a hydrophilic weed, was introduced a few decades into Lake Victoria, and spread rapidly to the point where it choked off ports and made shipping between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda impossible. HIV arrived from across the lake in Uganda, and quickly found a home in polygamous and frequently promiscuous Luo society. Nyanza province, and its capital Kisumu, now have the highest infection rates in Kenya, nearly 30%. The only thing that belies this economic decay is the presence of a large and wealthy South Asian community, whose members live in large Mediterranean-style houses on the lakeshore south of the center and whip around town in silver Mercedes sedans. They do lend an exotic, Oriental feel to the city, with ornate mosques and temples dotting the city, and good Indian food on almost every menu in the city.
Also in Kisumu’s favor is its lack of tourists. Remote, far from the elephants and mountains of central Kenya, Kisumu is way off the tourist-circuit. You can tell by the quality of the nature guides. Guides tend to be very good in Kenya, frequently encyclopedic in their knowledge of plants and animals. Our guide at the Luo fishing village of Dunga, where we took a boat onto Lake Victoria to look at the big, goofy hippos, was a bit different. He quickly admitted that he didn’t have much experience with tourists, since few came to Dunga, but that would have quickly become evident anyway, as rather than provide us with information about the animals, he told us in great detail about his dreams of mating with hippos, and his lingering fears that he may be inadequate, anatomically speaking, for the task.
The next day we were in Kakamega, north of Kisumu, a land populated by the Luhya, proudly Bantu-speaking and circumcised. At the beautiful rainforest there, we were guided around and told the scientific names of all of the plants and trees, their life cycles, and how the bark of one could be used to treat malaria. The guide did not say a word about his bestial desires for the black-and-white colobus monkey. Ah, here we were. Safely back on the tourist trail.
As it turned out, the Luo do fry themselves up a mean tilapia, but it’s hardly a staple (especially now that Lake Victoria is running out of fish) and they eat the same pilau, ugali, chapatti and goat stew that the rest of Kenya eats. The English skills of the Luo were similarly overstated. Most conversation is in Dholuo, a Nilotic language closely related to Nuer and Dinka. Certainly, though, you hear more English and less Swahili than you do in other cities in Kenya. The Luo think that this is because, as Nilots rather than Bantus, they find Swahili particularly difficult to learn, though this hasn’t stopped the Nilotic Maasai, Samburu and Kalenjin from picking up Swahili. Maybe a better explanation is the close historic and economic ties Luoland has to neighboring Uganda, where English predominates over Swahili. All the same, I had more difficulty communicating than I would have in, say, Keyport. Finally, I failed to see even a single Hummer during my time in Kisumu. The city does have, however, a lot of motorcycle rickshaws, bicycles with extra seats on the back for passengers, and at least one matatu with a checker-board ceiling, neon decals of hip-hop stars from the early part of this decade, and a DVD player and surround-sound system to play pirated rap videos.
There are two more distinguishing characteristics to the Luo, attributed to them by actual, published reports rather than drunk Maasai: that they are the only major tribe in Kenya not to circumcise their males, and that they are fanatically devoted to perennial presidential aspirant and bona fide Hummer driver Raila Odinga. Kisumu bucks the trend of Kenyan towns by relegating Jomo Kenyatta’s name to a secondary street and naming the main drag after Oginga Odinga, Raila’s daddy and a prominent Luo politician of days past. People love their Raila in Kisumu, and since the Luo are the second or third-largest ethnic group in Kenya, Raila rode this support to national prominence. It appears likely that Raila will win the nomination of the major opposition party to run against Kibaki in December, but few people think he’ll beat the president. It’s funny to note (just not to a Luo) that Barack Obama’s father came from a village near Kisumu, and it’s therefore likely that America will elect a Luo president before Kenya does. It’s not a perfectly fair comparison, however, because one of the main criticisms lobbed at Raila is that an uncircumcised man is unfit to govern the country, while I don’t believe that particular litmus test has been used in American politics yet, except perhaps by Lyndon Johnson.
All of that said, I really liked Kisumu. It has a relaxed feeling of slow, tropical decay, perhaps the consequence of its process of slow, tropical decay. Once a prosperous, bustling lake port, Kisumu has been decimated by three imports: sugar, water hyacinth, and HIV. The dumping of European sugar on the East African market has nearly killed off the Kenyan sugar industry, which was centered on the Luo villages surrounding Kisumu. Water hyacinth, a hydrophilic weed, was introduced a few decades into Lake Victoria, and spread rapidly to the point where it choked off ports and made shipping between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda impossible. HIV arrived from across the lake in Uganda, and quickly found a home in polygamous and frequently promiscuous Luo society. Nyanza province, and its capital Kisumu, now have the highest infection rates in Kenya, nearly 30%. The only thing that belies this economic decay is the presence of a large and wealthy South Asian community, whose members live in large Mediterranean-style houses on the lakeshore south of the center and whip around town in silver Mercedes sedans. They do lend an exotic, Oriental feel to the city, with ornate mosques and temples dotting the city, and good Indian food on almost every menu in the city.
Also in Kisumu’s favor is its lack of tourists. Remote, far from the elephants and mountains of central Kenya, Kisumu is way off the tourist-circuit. You can tell by the quality of the nature guides. Guides tend to be very good in Kenya, frequently encyclopedic in their knowledge of plants and animals. Our guide at the Luo fishing village of Dunga, where we took a boat onto Lake Victoria to look at the big, goofy hippos, was a bit different. He quickly admitted that he didn’t have much experience with tourists, since few came to Dunga, but that would have quickly become evident anyway, as rather than provide us with information about the animals, he told us in great detail about his dreams of mating with hippos, and his lingering fears that he may be inadequate, anatomically speaking, for the task.
The next day we were in Kakamega, north of Kisumu, a land populated by the Luhya, proudly Bantu-speaking and circumcised. At the beautiful rainforest there, we were guided around and told the scientific names of all of the plants and trees, their life cycles, and how the bark of one could be used to treat malaria. The guide did not say a word about his bestial desires for the black-and-white colobus monkey. Ah, here we were. Safely back on the tourist trail.
Monday, July 23, 2007
A good day for the peanut vendor of Kericho
One of the values that Kenyans like to identify in themselves is resourcefulness. And so when a bus drove off the Kericho-Kisumu road, tilted on 2 wheels, and wedged itself at a 45 degree angle into the mud of a tea-field, someone sensed a business opportunity. He dashed from town with a tray of peanuts, which he sold for 30 shillings per bag to the jumpy bus passengers milling along the side of the road. It took two hours of digging, pushing, and pulling to get the bus back on the road, so the vendor was able to sell of his whole stock. Of course, there was nothing noteworthy about this event, bus crashes and hawking being two prominent beats in the rhythm of Kenyan life, and I wouldn't have mentioned it except that I was one of the passengers.
I really have no one to blame but myself. Sure, the driver was talking to his friend, eyes off the road, when we slowed down and drove down the ditch, but that's what Kenyan bus drivers do. No, I should have known better- the warning signs were all there. I had convinced Vivien that we should take the bus from Nakuru instead of the matatu on the grounds that the bus was safer. Of course, Kenya likes to confound reasonable thinking and logical planning. If you cut a vacation a day short to get to a meeting, you'll find the meeting has been postponed a day. If you walk a mile across town just to get a plate of your favorite pilau, you'll find that the restaurant has just run out. So of course, if you take a bus for safety reasons, it will crash. I should have known.
The second cause for concern was the pastor. He came on-board as the bus was filling up, and delivered a long sermon about the importance of prayer. Once, he told us, he had asked people on a similar bus to join him in a prayer of appreciation for God, and after being rudely turned down, the bus left Nakuru and was promptly hijacked. He asked us to bow our heads and join him. After the story we had heard, what choice did we have? The passengers all prayed, and afterward, the pastor left the bus telling us that because of our prayers, God would guarantee a safe and easy passage. As we stood, four hours later, looking at our listing bus sinking into the deep mud, someone mumbled "That pastor was really the devil in disguise." I don't know. I just think God doesn't appreciate having words put in His mouth by a two-bit bus station minister. I empathize with Him.
I really have no one to blame but myself. Sure, the driver was talking to his friend, eyes off the road, when we slowed down and drove down the ditch, but that's what Kenyan bus drivers do. No, I should have known better- the warning signs were all there. I had convinced Vivien that we should take the bus from Nakuru instead of the matatu on the grounds that the bus was safer. Of course, Kenya likes to confound reasonable thinking and logical planning. If you cut a vacation a day short to get to a meeting, you'll find the meeting has been postponed a day. If you walk a mile across town just to get a plate of your favorite pilau, you'll find that the restaurant has just run out. So of course, if you take a bus for safety reasons, it will crash. I should have known.
The second cause for concern was the pastor. He came on-board as the bus was filling up, and delivered a long sermon about the importance of prayer. Once, he told us, he had asked people on a similar bus to join him in a prayer of appreciation for God, and after being rudely turned down, the bus left Nakuru and was promptly hijacked. He asked us to bow our heads and join him. After the story we had heard, what choice did we have? The passengers all prayed, and afterward, the pastor left the bus telling us that because of our prayers, God would guarantee a safe and easy passage. As we stood, four hours later, looking at our listing bus sinking into the deep mud, someone mumbled "That pastor was really the devil in disguise." I don't know. I just think God doesn't appreciate having words put in His mouth by a two-bit bus station minister. I empathize with Him.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A new book about wizards
I've been told that the newest (and last?) Harry Potter book is coming out very soon, and I figured this was as good a time as any to take up the magic literary mantle. I mean, if J.K. Rowling makes millions and millions of dollars writing about fictional wizards and witches, I ought to be able to make even more writing about the very real ones that live near me.
Of course, when I write the book, maybe I'll leave out the story about the cursed family of Kimanjo. Too sad, especially for a teenage audience. Kimanjo is a wild sort of place, in the forests west of Dol Dol, with no school but lots of leopards and lions. One family there has had a run of bad fortune over the past year that, I'm told, cannot be explained by natural circumstances. The patriarch of the family died of AIDS, and upon finding this out, his wife killed herself. One of the children died in an automobile wreck shortly thereafter. Last week, the patriarch's first wife, quite drunk, tried to cross a swollen river and was swept away to her death. All that's left of the family is two children, and the hunt is on in Kimanjo for the witch who administered the curse.
I think the story of Jackiline is cheerier. She was once married to a man, my neighbor, and quickly had a child with him. They divorced and married others, and she tried unsuccessfully to have another child with her new husband. After a few years of trying, the husband divorced the wife, on the grounds of her infertility. She married a third man, and again tried to have a child- once again, the efforts were futile and her husband divorced her. Despondent, she went to her first husband and asked him what was wrong with her. The problem, he responded, was the magical power that the men of his family have. As far back as anyone can remember, there's been something special about the men of this family. Once one of them has slept with a woman, even once, she will be unable to conceive a child with another man. Pragmatist that she is, Jackiline arrived at a solution: one weekend when the man's wife was away, she seduced him. That was eight months ago. The delivery date for her new child is sometime next month.
Then, of course, there's the case of the Akamba. At some point a few weeks back, I realized that most of the women I've found particularly beautiful, charming or interesting here have come from one tribe, the Akamba. I thought this was a little weird, because the Akamba aren't a particularly large tribe, come from the other side of the country, and are thin on the ground in this region, but I chalked this up to a quirk of personal preference, the same way one might favor Italian women to Irish women, French to Finns, Thais to Taiwanese. After talking to my friends in Dol Dol, however, I have a much better explanation: witchcraft. The Akamba- and the Akamba alone- possess powerful love potions, which they give to anyone they fancy and want to bewitch. The potion can be slipped into a drink- sometimes Akamba witches seem a lot like American fratboys- or applied topically during a handshake. I haven't caught any of these women red handed, but you know, the circumstantial evidence adds up to a strong case.
There's more I can add to the book. There's the man in town who walks backwards past a certain house because he thinks the occupant is a witch, and there's the herbal potion I took which was supposed to make me immune from cold weather but really just made me break out in hives. When it comes to the supernatural, there's always more. So somebody find me a literary agent; I think the movie rights will be big.
Of course, when I write the book, maybe I'll leave out the story about the cursed family of Kimanjo. Too sad, especially for a teenage audience. Kimanjo is a wild sort of place, in the forests west of Dol Dol, with no school but lots of leopards and lions. One family there has had a run of bad fortune over the past year that, I'm told, cannot be explained by natural circumstances. The patriarch of the family died of AIDS, and upon finding this out, his wife killed herself. One of the children died in an automobile wreck shortly thereafter. Last week, the patriarch's first wife, quite drunk, tried to cross a swollen river and was swept away to her death. All that's left of the family is two children, and the hunt is on in Kimanjo for the witch who administered the curse.
I think the story of Jackiline is cheerier. She was once married to a man, my neighbor, and quickly had a child with him. They divorced and married others, and she tried unsuccessfully to have another child with her new husband. After a few years of trying, the husband divorced the wife, on the grounds of her infertility. She married a third man, and again tried to have a child- once again, the efforts were futile and her husband divorced her. Despondent, she went to her first husband and asked him what was wrong with her. The problem, he responded, was the magical power that the men of his family have. As far back as anyone can remember, there's been something special about the men of this family. Once one of them has slept with a woman, even once, she will be unable to conceive a child with another man. Pragmatist that she is, Jackiline arrived at a solution: one weekend when the man's wife was away, she seduced him. That was eight months ago. The delivery date for her new child is sometime next month.
Then, of course, there's the case of the Akamba. At some point a few weeks back, I realized that most of the women I've found particularly beautiful, charming or interesting here have come from one tribe, the Akamba. I thought this was a little weird, because the Akamba aren't a particularly large tribe, come from the other side of the country, and are thin on the ground in this region, but I chalked this up to a quirk of personal preference, the same way one might favor Italian women to Irish women, French to Finns, Thais to Taiwanese. After talking to my friends in Dol Dol, however, I have a much better explanation: witchcraft. The Akamba- and the Akamba alone- possess powerful love potions, which they give to anyone they fancy and want to bewitch. The potion can be slipped into a drink- sometimes Akamba witches seem a lot like American fratboys- or applied topically during a handshake. I haven't caught any of these women red handed, but you know, the circumstantial evidence adds up to a strong case.
There's more I can add to the book. There's the man in town who walks backwards past a certain house because he thinks the occupant is a witch, and there's the herbal potion I took which was supposed to make me immune from cold weather but really just made me break out in hives. When it comes to the supernatural, there's always more. So somebody find me a literary agent; I think the movie rights will be big.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Buy a goat, fight HIV/AIDS
After a long, dusty matatu ride from Dol Dol, I like to head to the Mt. Kenya Cyber to catch up with the world. Yesterday, when I logged on and surfed my way to the Drudge Report, I found a Financial Times article titled “UN warns it cannot afford to feed the world”, which described the World Food Program’s trouble in maintaining the amount of food it distributes. The growth of the Chinese and Indian consumer markets, as well as the world’s new interest in turning corn into electricity rather than tortillas, has meant the price of staple foods has skyrocketed in much of the world. When I got back from the internet café, I opened up the Daily Nation, which ran a large article on its third page titled “Maize farmers count blessings and cash.” It’s a good time to sell food, and a bad time to buy it. As if I needed to be told.
For all the thought I’d put into the AIDS training and mobilization, all the strategies we’d discussed for the daunting tasks of getting stubborn elders to use condoms, teaching illiterate women about antiretroviral drugs, and testing proud and promiscuous morani for HIV, most of my work revolved around the equally daunting task of feeding dozens of Maasai. In Mukogodo, you can come up with the perfect plan, the perfect project, but if you don’t provide the perfect meal, it will fail.
Such is the spirit of volunteerism here. Very, very few are the people who will do something for nothing, even if it’s for their own benefit. People attending workshops, trainings or anything like that usually expect cash payments. This is especially galling when the same people complaining yesterday about having nothing to do are asking to be paid today. The blame lies with the NGOs, including the one for which I work. They throw money around to boost the attendance and thus impress donors, and now everyone has come to see the NGOs as cash cows. It’s gotten so ridiculous that people demanded payment before they’d watch a play about HIV or be tested. Crazy. If you’re in Mukogodo, work for an NGO and see someone on fire, be prepared to pay him an “allowance” before you tell him to stop, drop and roll, or else he won’t budge.
Of course, because of our principles (by which I mean our meager budget) we did not make any cash payments. I know for a fact that we lost attendees and mobilizers because of this decision. In order to keep the rest, we had to at least feed them. And the Maasai like to eat. I’ve seen four of them eat their way through a full-sized goat in half an hour- and I mean all the way through, including the organs, the blood and the bone marrow. One of my friends explained the speed with which the Maasai eat by saying, “We used to have to compete with the hyenas.” Trying to satisfy these appetites is not the sort of thing I wanted to get caught up in, but as many, many people here told me, “No eating, no meeting”. So we bought seven goats, a huge sack of rice, 10 kilos of sugar, the state of Idaho’s quarterly potato yield, enough cooking fat to supply a La Belle Province franchise for a month and an amount of flour suitable for covering the surface of Lake Huron in chapatti. We spent lavishly, because I was told that if we fed the people “cheap rice”, they’d all quit. Even still, it wasn’t enough. Part of the problem was that someone took a fair portion of the food, especially the cookies, out of the locked office where we kept it. The bigger problem was that random people turned up to eat with trainees and mobilizers, so instead of the forty people we budgeted for, we were feeding sixty. In this anti-Hanukah, the food was designed to last eight days but only lasted five. Worst of all, we had to sell two of the goats.
This is not to suggest that the problems were only culinary in nature. The medical officers, who spoke at the training, wanted to be paid for their work, even though they were already getting a government wage to promote the health of the community. The teacher who holds the keys for the community library hall where we were to have the training refused to hand them over unless we paid her a bribe. We found an alternate venue at one of the churches, but the pastor, who was one of the trainees, refused to let us use it unless we paid 500 shillings. The problem was resolved only when we got one of the town’s Big Men to threaten the teacher into giving us the keys. I don’t think we had to pay him a bribe.
Despite all that, the project has been judged a success. The VCT counselors are seeing a lot of clients, the community is buzzing with talk of HIV, and a few leaders have emerged to plan a sustained community HIV program. I just want to be far, far away from the kitchen when that program is launched.
For all the thought I’d put into the AIDS training and mobilization, all the strategies we’d discussed for the daunting tasks of getting stubborn elders to use condoms, teaching illiterate women about antiretroviral drugs, and testing proud and promiscuous morani for HIV, most of my work revolved around the equally daunting task of feeding dozens of Maasai. In Mukogodo, you can come up with the perfect plan, the perfect project, but if you don’t provide the perfect meal, it will fail.
Such is the spirit of volunteerism here. Very, very few are the people who will do something for nothing, even if it’s for their own benefit. People attending workshops, trainings or anything like that usually expect cash payments. This is especially galling when the same people complaining yesterday about having nothing to do are asking to be paid today. The blame lies with the NGOs, including the one for which I work. They throw money around to boost the attendance and thus impress donors, and now everyone has come to see the NGOs as cash cows. It’s gotten so ridiculous that people demanded payment before they’d watch a play about HIV or be tested. Crazy. If you’re in Mukogodo, work for an NGO and see someone on fire, be prepared to pay him an “allowance” before you tell him to stop, drop and roll, or else he won’t budge.
Of course, because of our principles (by which I mean our meager budget) we did not make any cash payments. I know for a fact that we lost attendees and mobilizers because of this decision. In order to keep the rest, we had to at least feed them. And the Maasai like to eat. I’ve seen four of them eat their way through a full-sized goat in half an hour- and I mean all the way through, including the organs, the blood and the bone marrow. One of my friends explained the speed with which the Maasai eat by saying, “We used to have to compete with the hyenas.” Trying to satisfy these appetites is not the sort of thing I wanted to get caught up in, but as many, many people here told me, “No eating, no meeting”. So we bought seven goats, a huge sack of rice, 10 kilos of sugar, the state of Idaho’s quarterly potato yield, enough cooking fat to supply a La Belle Province franchise for a month and an amount of flour suitable for covering the surface of Lake Huron in chapatti. We spent lavishly, because I was told that if we fed the people “cheap rice”, they’d all quit. Even still, it wasn’t enough. Part of the problem was that someone took a fair portion of the food, especially the cookies, out of the locked office where we kept it. The bigger problem was that random people turned up to eat with trainees and mobilizers, so instead of the forty people we budgeted for, we were feeding sixty. In this anti-Hanukah, the food was designed to last eight days but only lasted five. Worst of all, we had to sell two of the goats.
This is not to suggest that the problems were only culinary in nature. The medical officers, who spoke at the training, wanted to be paid for their work, even though they were already getting a government wage to promote the health of the community. The teacher who holds the keys for the community library hall where we were to have the training refused to hand them over unless we paid her a bribe. We found an alternate venue at one of the churches, but the pastor, who was one of the trainees, refused to let us use it unless we paid 500 shillings. The problem was resolved only when we got one of the town’s Big Men to threaten the teacher into giving us the keys. I don’t think we had to pay him a bribe.
Despite all that, the project has been judged a success. The VCT counselors are seeing a lot of clients, the community is buzzing with talk of HIV, and a few leaders have emerged to plan a sustained community HIV program. I just want to be far, far away from the kitchen when that program is launched.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Celebrating Some Uhuru in Nakuru
Exactly 231 years after John Hancock and company signed their John Hancocks and company, I made my own declaration of independence- "Uhuru in Nakuru!". Uhuru, in addition to being the very, very cool name of Jomo Kenyatta's son, is Swahili for "freedom", and freedom is exactly what Vivien and I needed. As much as I like Nanyuki and Dol Dol, they're the smallest, most stifling places I've ever been. We set foot in Dol Dol, and we're mobbed by our Dol Dol friends, as well as the Dol Dol drunks and the Dol Dol beggars. As soon as we get back to Nanyuki, our cell phones start ringing: someone's spotted us getting off the matatu, word has spread, and everyone we know in town is calling us. Even strangers track our movements: when I talk to someone in Nanyuki for the first time, he or she can rattle off eight or nine places I've been and what I was doing at each one. Apparently, there's no anonymity for the token white people in a small Kenyan town.
So we went someplace bigger. After seven weeks in Dol Dol and Nanyuki, Nakuru felt huge. When I walked into one of the big, modern supermarkets, my jaw actually dropped (so I guess my reintegration into North American society may be rougher than I predicted). It was nice to be someplace bustling, however, and to be in streets filled with all kinds of people: Kikuyus and Maasai, yes, but also Luhyas, Luos, Kalenjins, Somalis, South Asians and wazungu. More than that, it was nice that all of these people brought their cuisines with them to Nakuru. After seven weeks of variations on corn, beans and goat, I can't describe the pleasure with which I consumed Chinese food, real Indian food (my God, cooked in a tandoor!) and a tall, frosty milkshake.
Of course, Nakuru's fame doesn't come from its supermarkets or its cuisine. It owes its fame to the national park, Lake Nakuru, in the outskirts of town. At 15 square km, Lake Nakuru is usually home to several million flamingos. Seen from up on the Baboon Cliffs, it looks like there's a pink band running around the whole circumference of the lake, with several other agglomerations of pink in the middle marking the sites of highest crustacean density. The mud flats around the lake play host to lions, leopards, warthogs, rhinos, giraffes, gazelles, kudu, and so many zebras and buffaloes that after a few hours you wish they'd go away so you could get a better view of the other animals. Or at least I did- I have several pictures where zebras jumped in front of whatever I was trying to photograph. It was a good time despite the zebras, however. We went around with two Nakuruites who couldn't tell the difference between a buffalo and a rhino, but they made up for their lack of animal knowledge with a willingness to take their old Toyota Celica everywhere the safari Land Rovers were going: on mud tracks, across rivers, over the grass. Their ignorance of wildlife was only really a problem when Wes decided to throw banana peels at the baboons and we found ourselves surrounded by two dozen very hungry monkeys.
Nakuru also has a bit of infamy attached to it, at least by the Maasai, because of Menengai Crater. The crater, towering 1500 feet above town, is supposedly the site of a nineteenth century battle that the Laikipiak Maasai lost to another Maasai band, with hundreds of the losers tossed over the rim to the smoky bottom. The Maasai identify it as a site of evil and refuse to get near the rim. They're really missing out. The view is amazing. There's an almost sheer drop to the bottom, 1000 feet below, and as you look across the crater, 15 kilometers wide, you can see the path the lava took, the ripples it left on the crater floor. Just like the Gilani supermarket, it was a breathtaking thing to see.
Well, now I'm back in Nanyuki, and in a few hours we're off to Dol Dol. The HIV workshop starts tomorrow, and we still need to iron out the logistics. The biggest issue is that we bought seven goats for the lunches, and now we have to find someone to slaughter and butcher them. That's what it comes down when you run a workshop in Laikipia- finding someone to kill a goat. Ah, it's good to be home.
So we went someplace bigger. After seven weeks in Dol Dol and Nanyuki, Nakuru felt huge. When I walked into one of the big, modern supermarkets, my jaw actually dropped (so I guess my reintegration into North American society may be rougher than I predicted). It was nice to be someplace bustling, however, and to be in streets filled with all kinds of people: Kikuyus and Maasai, yes, but also Luhyas, Luos, Kalenjins, Somalis, South Asians and wazungu. More than that, it was nice that all of these people brought their cuisines with them to Nakuru. After seven weeks of variations on corn, beans and goat, I can't describe the pleasure with which I consumed Chinese food, real Indian food (my God, cooked in a tandoor!) and a tall, frosty milkshake.
Of course, Nakuru's fame doesn't come from its supermarkets or its cuisine. It owes its fame to the national park, Lake Nakuru, in the outskirts of town. At 15 square km, Lake Nakuru is usually home to several million flamingos. Seen from up on the Baboon Cliffs, it looks like there's a pink band running around the whole circumference of the lake, with several other agglomerations of pink in the middle marking the sites of highest crustacean density. The mud flats around the lake play host to lions, leopards, warthogs, rhinos, giraffes, gazelles, kudu, and so many zebras and buffaloes that after a few hours you wish they'd go away so you could get a better view of the other animals. Or at least I did- I have several pictures where zebras jumped in front of whatever I was trying to photograph. It was a good time despite the zebras, however. We went around with two Nakuruites who couldn't tell the difference between a buffalo and a rhino, but they made up for their lack of animal knowledge with a willingness to take their old Toyota Celica everywhere the safari Land Rovers were going: on mud tracks, across rivers, over the grass. Their ignorance of wildlife was only really a problem when Wes decided to throw banana peels at the baboons and we found ourselves surrounded by two dozen very hungry monkeys.
Nakuru also has a bit of infamy attached to it, at least by the Maasai, because of Menengai Crater. The crater, towering 1500 feet above town, is supposedly the site of a nineteenth century battle that the Laikipiak Maasai lost to another Maasai band, with hundreds of the losers tossed over the rim to the smoky bottom. The Maasai identify it as a site of evil and refuse to get near the rim. They're really missing out. The view is amazing. There's an almost sheer drop to the bottom, 1000 feet below, and as you look across the crater, 15 kilometers wide, you can see the path the lava took, the ripples it left on the crater floor. Just like the Gilani supermarket, it was a breathtaking thing to see.
Well, now I'm back in Nanyuki, and in a few hours we're off to Dol Dol. The HIV workshop starts tomorrow, and we still need to iron out the logistics. The biggest issue is that we bought seven goats for the lunches, and now we have to find someone to slaughter and butcher them. That's what it comes down when you run a workshop in Laikipia- finding someone to kill a goat. Ah, it's good to be home.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Chariots on Fire
I think to date I've only tangentially mentioned matatus, which is a serious oversight on my part considering the large share of my time given over to waiting for them, riding them and recovering from riding them. Swahili, I think, for "death by suffocation", matatus for the backbone of Kenyan public transport. The vast majority are white Nissan vans with 14 seats packed together very, very tightly. They sit at a town's matatu stage waiting to fill up with 17 or 18 people, then race off. Matatus also serve as the main mode of local shipping, and because most goods sold in Dol Dol have to be brought in from Nanyuki, I usually find myself crammed among Maasai warriors, bundles of qat, vats of cooking oil and tanks of paraffin. Because the vans are in a bad condition, the roads in a worse one, and the drivers in a worse one still, matatus have a horrendous safety record. In fact, if you ranked all the means of transport on their mortality rates, matatu travel would fall right between hydrogen-filled zeppelin and riding on the back of a hungry tiger.
A few years ago, the government actually tried to reform the matatu sector. It introduced laws requiring that every passenger have his or her own seat and seatbelt, enforceable at the police checkpoints along each road, and mandated the installation of speed governors in the matatus to cap their speed at 80 km/hour. Very quickly, however, the matatu drivers discovered that the practiced use of a cigarette lighter could disable the speed governors and the practiced use of a bribe could disable the police. And so the madness continues. This weekend, I had my worst matatu experiences, which is saying something because the best you hope for when you board a matatu is that you'll survive and that you'll regain feeling in your legs within 72 hours.
Even without the speed governors, most drivers on the Dol Dol-Nanyuki route are kept under 80 km/hour by the road conditions. Because blown tires come out of the dirvers' pay (and even at low speeds, a tire punctures a quarter of the time), drivers fight their qat-addled inclination and go slow out of self-interest. Not so our driver on Friday. The brother of the MP and local a Big Man, he not only has a spare tire, he has a whole spare matatu. So, throwing caution into the wind and rain that enveloped us, he whipped the matatu around the rutted and muddy roads of Laikipia, ignoring the chorus of "Pole pole! ("Slow down!") and snapping vertebrae. The Somali woman in front of me got sick and vomited. The two people sharing my seat kept themselves busy: the momentarily pious Vivien crossed herself and mumbled Our Fathers while Joseph read aloud the Ken Saro-Wiwa story "Africa Kills Her Sun", which I thoughtfully suggested be retitled "Africa Kills Her Public Transport Passengers."
As it turned out, we did not crash and die. This was a mixed blessing, because while I cherish my time on this earth, it meant I had to take the matatu home to Dol Dol on Sunday. I was one of the 25 passengers on the 14-seater van, with a 5 year old boy and and 50 year old man sharing my lap, but even this overloaded matatu did not meet demand. When we stopped to let someone off at Jua Kali, there was a rush of prospective passengers, and the conductor had to kick and punch people to keep them off the van. At the next stop, a full-fledged melee broke out. On one side, a group of drunks attacked the driver, and someone swung a rungu, the traditional Maasai club, at his head. Just as the driver safely shut the door, another groups of drunks attacked the conductor. They tried to slam the sliding door on his face- luckily, the door on this matatu did not close, and we sped off before anyone was lynched. People have told me that the end of the month, when everyone gets paid and (consequently) very drunk, is the worst time for matatu travel, and I think there's some truth to that.
Anyway, I'm off to Nakuru for a few days. It's a big town in the middle of the Rift Valley, and part of my plan to see Kenya's four largest cities (watch out Kisumu, you're up next). It has a lot of things Nanyuki doesn't, like flamingos, movie theaters and Indian restaurants, so I'm pretty excited. And how, you ask, am I getting there? By matatu, of course.
Here's wishing you all a happy 4th of July, and a grudging happy (belated) Canada Day.
A few years ago, the government actually tried to reform the matatu sector. It introduced laws requiring that every passenger have his or her own seat and seatbelt, enforceable at the police checkpoints along each road, and mandated the installation of speed governors in the matatus to cap their speed at 80 km/hour. Very quickly, however, the matatu drivers discovered that the practiced use of a cigarette lighter could disable the speed governors and the practiced use of a bribe could disable the police. And so the madness continues. This weekend, I had my worst matatu experiences, which is saying something because the best you hope for when you board a matatu is that you'll survive and that you'll regain feeling in your legs within 72 hours.
Even without the speed governors, most drivers on the Dol Dol-Nanyuki route are kept under 80 km/hour by the road conditions. Because blown tires come out of the dirvers' pay (and even at low speeds, a tire punctures a quarter of the time), drivers fight their qat-addled inclination and go slow out of self-interest. Not so our driver on Friday. The brother of the MP and local a Big Man, he not only has a spare tire, he has a whole spare matatu. So, throwing caution into the wind and rain that enveloped us, he whipped the matatu around the rutted and muddy roads of Laikipia, ignoring the chorus of "Pole pole! ("Slow down!") and snapping vertebrae. The Somali woman in front of me got sick and vomited. The two people sharing my seat kept themselves busy: the momentarily pious Vivien crossed herself and mumbled Our Fathers while Joseph read aloud the Ken Saro-Wiwa story "Africa Kills Her Sun", which I thoughtfully suggested be retitled "Africa Kills Her Public Transport Passengers."
As it turned out, we did not crash and die. This was a mixed blessing, because while I cherish my time on this earth, it meant I had to take the matatu home to Dol Dol on Sunday. I was one of the 25 passengers on the 14-seater van, with a 5 year old boy and and 50 year old man sharing my lap, but even this overloaded matatu did not meet demand. When we stopped to let someone off at Jua Kali, there was a rush of prospective passengers, and the conductor had to kick and punch people to keep them off the van. At the next stop, a full-fledged melee broke out. On one side, a group of drunks attacked the driver, and someone swung a rungu, the traditional Maasai club, at his head. Just as the driver safely shut the door, another groups of drunks attacked the conductor. They tried to slam the sliding door on his face- luckily, the door on this matatu did not close, and we sped off before anyone was lynched. People have told me that the end of the month, when everyone gets paid and (consequently) very drunk, is the worst time for matatu travel, and I think there's some truth to that.
Anyway, I'm off to Nakuru for a few days. It's a big town in the middle of the Rift Valley, and part of my plan to see Kenya's four largest cities (watch out Kisumu, you're up next). It has a lot of things Nanyuki doesn't, like flamingos, movie theaters and Indian restaurants, so I'm pretty excited. And how, you ask, am I getting there? By matatu, of course.
Here's wishing you all a happy 4th of July, and a grudging happy (belated) Canada Day.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Flashing a Gender and Other Adventures in the English Language
Gentlemen, let's say you're at the Agricultural Society of Kenya show, dancing in an overcrowded mess-hall built for the British airforce, the DJ interrupting every song 3 times to yell "Mo' fiyah!", and the girl you've been dancing with bats her eyelashes and asks you to flash her. What do you do?
The correct answer is that you take your cell phone out, call her number and quickly hang-up before she answers so that she gets your phone number without you getting charged. That's all she was asking you to do. This, after all, is Kenyan English, where the double entendre has yet to be discovered. The motto, repeated at every commercial break, for the leading TV station is "Turning on Kenya". I guess it's possible that re-runs of late 90's American sitcoms elicit a different response here than they do back home, but more likely, the executives at NTV have no idea what they're saying.
The evolution of words, and word use here, would delight a linguist. English is usually introduced by the church, the school, the office, or more recently, the NGO. Once the words are set free among the population, though, there's really no predicting how they'll be used.
Take the evolution of the word "gender". At some point, the youths in Dol Dol must have been educated on gender equality. This came to be abbreviated as "gender", as in "Make sure there's gender at the HIV training." However, because in this relatively misogynistic society gender equality really means inviting more women than you otherwise would, the word "gender" has come to mean "women", so "Make sure there's gender at the HIV training" can be read as "Make sure there's women at the HIV training." When Mwenda and Joseph go cruising for ladies, they say that they're "Off to find gender", and when they think they've found someone for me, they say that they want to introduce me to "a gender named Ruth".
Similarly, "mobilize" must have been introduced by NGOs, but now it's bled into everyday English. If you want to go out at night, you mobilize your friends. If you want to organize a party, you mobilize your resources. The nadir for this came when girls "mobilized" themselves to go to the bathroom together.
Other linguistic quirks come from the fact that English is the last language people learn. Because Kenyans are taught in school that the only greeting in English is "How are you?" (which follows the pattern of Swahili, Maa, and a lot of other tribal languages), if you say "Hello", you'll usually get "Fine, fine" as a response. The limited vocabulary probably accounts for the constant use of the phrase "So many" in response to quantitative questions, even ones that really require a specific numerical answer. How many times have you visited Dol Dol? So many. How many banks are there in Nanyuki? So many. How many fingers are there on your hand? So many. How many ways can a Kenyan answer such a question? Just one.
The correct answer is that you take your cell phone out, call her number and quickly hang-up before she answers so that she gets your phone number without you getting charged. That's all she was asking you to do. This, after all, is Kenyan English, where the double entendre has yet to be discovered. The motto, repeated at every commercial break, for the leading TV station is "Turning on Kenya". I guess it's possible that re-runs of late 90's American sitcoms elicit a different response here than they do back home, but more likely, the executives at NTV have no idea what they're saying.
The evolution of words, and word use here, would delight a linguist. English is usually introduced by the church, the school, the office, or more recently, the NGO. Once the words are set free among the population, though, there's really no predicting how they'll be used.
Take the evolution of the word "gender". At some point, the youths in Dol Dol must have been educated on gender equality. This came to be abbreviated as "gender", as in "Make sure there's gender at the HIV training." However, because in this relatively misogynistic society gender equality really means inviting more women than you otherwise would, the word "gender" has come to mean "women", so "Make sure there's gender at the HIV training" can be read as "Make sure there's women at the HIV training." When Mwenda and Joseph go cruising for ladies, they say that they're "Off to find gender", and when they think they've found someone for me, they say that they want to introduce me to "a gender named Ruth".
Similarly, "mobilize" must have been introduced by NGOs, but now it's bled into everyday English. If you want to go out at night, you mobilize your friends. If you want to organize a party, you mobilize your resources. The nadir for this came when girls "mobilized" themselves to go to the bathroom together.
Other linguistic quirks come from the fact that English is the last language people learn. Because Kenyans are taught in school that the only greeting in English is "How are you?" (which follows the pattern of Swahili, Maa, and a lot of other tribal languages), if you say "Hello", you'll usually get "Fine, fine" as a response. The limited vocabulary probably accounts for the constant use of the phrase "So many" in response to quantitative questions, even ones that really require a specific numerical answer. How many times have you visited Dol Dol? So many. How many banks are there in Nanyuki? So many. How many fingers are there on your hand? So many. How many ways can a Kenyan answer such a question? Just one.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The Arrival of the White Ghosts
One day I woke up in Nanyuki, went to my favorite cafe, and found 14 Swedes.
You hear a lot of fantastic stories about white people here. I've been told that there's a McGill M.A. student who's been going around Nanyuki for weeks looking for me, but no one can remember his name. One afternoon in Dol Dol, Mwenda told me "Nick, there's a beautiful Danish girl in my mother's pub. I'm going to introduce you to her," but when we walked in thirty seconds later, the pub was filled with old, drunk men. The great Dane had vanished. One of Vivien's friends is in Nanyuki, apparently, but hasn't made his presence known to anyone. In a large city, maybe these white people-as-Bigfoot stories would be understandable, but Nanyuki is a small place, and Dol Dol even smaller. If you go to the health clinic on any given morning, you're liable to run into half of Laikipia's white population. If you go to Marina Grill in the afternoon, you're liable to find the other half. You just won't find the McGill student, the beautiful Danish girl, or Vivien's friend, those white ghosts who have managed, somehow, to escape detection.
The strangest rumors we've heard, however, were about the Swedes. Apparently, my organization had made arrangements to host some Swedes. When I first arrived, I heard it would be two Swedes. Then, a few weeks later, I heard four. Then six. Then Sunday, I found the whole retinue sitting in Camcorner: 12 students, two teachers, male and female, all wearing capri pants and chain smoking Marlboros. And as strange and unfriendly as they are, it's nice to have them around for a few days.
There are few pleasures quite so sublime as feeling like an old hand in something at which you once had to work hard. And fitting in here was hard work. I just hadn't realized how far I'd come until I saw these fresh-off-the-boat Swedes, scared of street children, unable to understand even the most basic Swahili, and without a single African friend. My heart swelled with a sense of superiority, a fine enough reward for weeks of hard work and misunderstanding. Because as much as Dol Dol occasionally drives me crazy, I do now feel at home there. I have friends who are concerned if I'm not around for a few days, neighbors who come to borrow candles and invite us for tea and Scrabble, and there are several alcoholic school teachers who insist I owe them beers.
I think the Swedes are visiting Dol Dol today. I just hope they don't mess the place up too much.
You hear a lot of fantastic stories about white people here. I've been told that there's a McGill M.A. student who's been going around Nanyuki for weeks looking for me, but no one can remember his name. One afternoon in Dol Dol, Mwenda told me "Nick, there's a beautiful Danish girl in my mother's pub. I'm going to introduce you to her," but when we walked in thirty seconds later, the pub was filled with old, drunk men. The great Dane had vanished. One of Vivien's friends is in Nanyuki, apparently, but hasn't made his presence known to anyone. In a large city, maybe these white people-as-Bigfoot stories would be understandable, but Nanyuki is a small place, and Dol Dol even smaller. If you go to the health clinic on any given morning, you're liable to run into half of Laikipia's white population. If you go to Marina Grill in the afternoon, you're liable to find the other half. You just won't find the McGill student, the beautiful Danish girl, or Vivien's friend, those white ghosts who have managed, somehow, to escape detection.
The strangest rumors we've heard, however, were about the Swedes. Apparently, my organization had made arrangements to host some Swedes. When I first arrived, I heard it would be two Swedes. Then, a few weeks later, I heard four. Then six. Then Sunday, I found the whole retinue sitting in Camcorner: 12 students, two teachers, male and female, all wearing capri pants and chain smoking Marlboros. And as strange and unfriendly as they are, it's nice to have them around for a few days.
There are few pleasures quite so sublime as feeling like an old hand in something at which you once had to work hard. And fitting in here was hard work. I just hadn't realized how far I'd come until I saw these fresh-off-the-boat Swedes, scared of street children, unable to understand even the most basic Swahili, and without a single African friend. My heart swelled with a sense of superiority, a fine enough reward for weeks of hard work and misunderstanding. Because as much as Dol Dol occasionally drives me crazy, I do now feel at home there. I have friends who are concerned if I'm not around for a few days, neighbors who come to borrow candles and invite us for tea and Scrabble, and there are several alcoholic school teachers who insist I owe them beers.
I think the Swedes are visiting Dol Dol today. I just hope they don't mess the place up too much.
Friday, June 22, 2007
The Culturally Rich and Materially Poor
After a long period of idleness brought about by cancelled meetings, vanishing bosses and events like presidential visits and primary school track and field which brought the community to a standstill, we’ve spent the last two weeks doing genuine, sometimes exhausting and frequently frustrating work. It’s been great. The plan is to bring a VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) to Dol Dol to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and get people tested. It seems like everywhere else in Kenya has had one of these campaigns, but Dol Dol’s never had one and it’s a definite need.
Looking at surveys we conducted in the targeted areas, one of the most glaring things that pops out is the amount of unprotected sex that’s going on. In a place like North America, high levels of unprotected sex would imperil some individuals, but because the norm is serial monogamy, the spread of HIV would be relatively slow. Here, where the culture favors polygamy, and for the unmarried to have lots of sexual partners during the same period, the introduction of even one infected person into the web of sexual relationships would imperil the whole community in a matter of months. This underscores the importance of testing, of course, but it’s also gotten me thinking about the relationship between culture and development.
It can be seen as heresy to say that culture is restraining the Maasai’s development, because in a sense their culture is the Maasai’s greatest asset. Maasai culture is marketable and has been since the arrival of the British colonists and the anthropologists who followed them, but it continues today. The Maasai make up 1.4% of the country’s population, but inhabit a much more important place in the world’s consciousness than the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, Akamba and the dozen other more numerous tribes which you’ll never hear about unless Kenya falls into a civil war. Down on the coast and in Nairobi, Maasai morani pose for tourists’ pictures for $1. In Nanyuki, prostitutes dress up in Maasai garb to attract the attention of potential clients. A Maasai I met from the diplomatic police corps complained that the Toronto Metropolitan Zoo had shamelessly ripped off Maasai culture in designing its exhibits. Maasai culture is big business, but very rare is the prosperous Maasai village. I can’t help but think that other elements of the culture, some of the deeply-held values and traditions, rather than the dances and jewelry and warriors slaying lions, are playing a bigger role in shaping the course of development.
When I got here and found out that the Maasai measure status and wealth by the size of their herds, not their cash holdings, I thought that was kinda cool. Then I looked around. In a bid to show their status and wealth, many Maasai have assembled mega-herds, which the land cannot sustain. The contrast is stark between the privately owned ranches, where the animal-to-land ratio is kept low and there is a thick cover of knee-high grass, and the Maasai group ranches, where the grass has been grazed into oblivion and the soil is left unprotected to be washed away by every rain. Then, of course, when a drought inevitably comes and thins out the herds, people lose a quarter or a third of their wealth, money which could have sat safely in the Barclay’s Bank in Nanyuki earning interest. But hey, that’s the culture here.
Likewise, the Maasai disdain for farming and fishing costs them dearly. Two weekends ago, work took me to a village on the east side of the division. Here the land had originally been occupied by the Maasai, but migrants from elsewhere in the country, who brought their agricultural traditions and expertise with them and knew good land when they saw it, moved in. A farmer on a small plot can make $800 or so in an average year; by contrast, a herder would have to sell about 70 goats or 20 cows, more than many herders even own, to earn that much. But the Maasai consider themselves herders, and as I said, if they sold off their herd to get some (literal) seed money, they’d risk losing status. By the same token, Laikipia’s streams are stocked with big, tasty trout that the Kikuyu and others profitably sell, but the Maasai don’t like to eat fish and don’t see the point in fishing. At the workshop, when I sat down with some fried tilapia, I was asked why I was eating snake.
The cultural norms that marry off girls at a young age, deny them education and then shackle them at home all day with domestic duties deprive the Maasai of half of their potential productive workforce. Most of the shops in Dol Dol are run by women, but all but a few are non-Maasai migrants. Because their mothers are undereducated and overworked, most children are not read to, are not nurtured, the boys sent out to play with each other and the girls put to work in the house as soon as they’re physically able. And of course, the family patterns put the community at grave risk for HIV and other STDs.
Certainly, aspects of Maasai culture can be harnessed for development. In two areas of the division, the close-knit nature of the group ranches has allowed for community-based eco-tourism projects that have brought significant income to the residents. The traditional system of age-set oversight and elder adjudication of behavior has kept order and maintained low crime rates in the absence of much formal law enforcement. And the cultural trappings of Maasai life have bound together a small group of people, spread from Mukogodo to central Tanzania, into one coherent group.
At the same time, many people here, especially of my generation, are much more adamant than I am about the fact that old values are impeding development. These Young Turks of Mukogodo at least pay lip-service to the ideas of diversifying income, empowering women, and practicing monogamy, but it remains to be seen whether they will bring change in the community, and sometimes I’m skeptical. When one of the youth groups showed me their new, collective farm, I was excited; then I learned that they had put a Kikuyu in charge of running it. So it goes.
Looking at surveys we conducted in the targeted areas, one of the most glaring things that pops out is the amount of unprotected sex that’s going on. In a place like North America, high levels of unprotected sex would imperil some individuals, but because the norm is serial monogamy, the spread of HIV would be relatively slow. Here, where the culture favors polygamy, and for the unmarried to have lots of sexual partners during the same period, the introduction of even one infected person into the web of sexual relationships would imperil the whole community in a matter of months. This underscores the importance of testing, of course, but it’s also gotten me thinking about the relationship between culture and development.
It can be seen as heresy to say that culture is restraining the Maasai’s development, because in a sense their culture is the Maasai’s greatest asset. Maasai culture is marketable and has been since the arrival of the British colonists and the anthropologists who followed them, but it continues today. The Maasai make up 1.4% of the country’s population, but inhabit a much more important place in the world’s consciousness than the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, Akamba and the dozen other more numerous tribes which you’ll never hear about unless Kenya falls into a civil war. Down on the coast and in Nairobi, Maasai morani pose for tourists’ pictures for $1. In Nanyuki, prostitutes dress up in Maasai garb to attract the attention of potential clients. A Maasai I met from the diplomatic police corps complained that the Toronto Metropolitan Zoo had shamelessly ripped off Maasai culture in designing its exhibits. Maasai culture is big business, but very rare is the prosperous Maasai village. I can’t help but think that other elements of the culture, some of the deeply-held values and traditions, rather than the dances and jewelry and warriors slaying lions, are playing a bigger role in shaping the course of development.
When I got here and found out that the Maasai measure status and wealth by the size of their herds, not their cash holdings, I thought that was kinda cool. Then I looked around. In a bid to show their status and wealth, many Maasai have assembled mega-herds, which the land cannot sustain. The contrast is stark between the privately owned ranches, where the animal-to-land ratio is kept low and there is a thick cover of knee-high grass, and the Maasai group ranches, where the grass has been grazed into oblivion and the soil is left unprotected to be washed away by every rain. Then, of course, when a drought inevitably comes and thins out the herds, people lose a quarter or a third of their wealth, money which could have sat safely in the Barclay’s Bank in Nanyuki earning interest. But hey, that’s the culture here.
Likewise, the Maasai disdain for farming and fishing costs them dearly. Two weekends ago, work took me to a village on the east side of the division. Here the land had originally been occupied by the Maasai, but migrants from elsewhere in the country, who brought their agricultural traditions and expertise with them and knew good land when they saw it, moved in. A farmer on a small plot can make $800 or so in an average year; by contrast, a herder would have to sell about 70 goats or 20 cows, more than many herders even own, to earn that much. But the Maasai consider themselves herders, and as I said, if they sold off their herd to get some (literal) seed money, they’d risk losing status. By the same token, Laikipia’s streams are stocked with big, tasty trout that the Kikuyu and others profitably sell, but the Maasai don’t like to eat fish and don’t see the point in fishing. At the workshop, when I sat down with some fried tilapia, I was asked why I was eating snake.
The cultural norms that marry off girls at a young age, deny them education and then shackle them at home all day with domestic duties deprive the Maasai of half of their potential productive workforce. Most of the shops in Dol Dol are run by women, but all but a few are non-Maasai migrants. Because their mothers are undereducated and overworked, most children are not read to, are not nurtured, the boys sent out to play with each other and the girls put to work in the house as soon as they’re physically able. And of course, the family patterns put the community at grave risk for HIV and other STDs.
Certainly, aspects of Maasai culture can be harnessed for development. In two areas of the division, the close-knit nature of the group ranches has allowed for community-based eco-tourism projects that have brought significant income to the residents. The traditional system of age-set oversight and elder adjudication of behavior has kept order and maintained low crime rates in the absence of much formal law enforcement. And the cultural trappings of Maasai life have bound together a small group of people, spread from Mukogodo to central Tanzania, into one coherent group.
At the same time, many people here, especially of my generation, are much more adamant than I am about the fact that old values are impeding development. These Young Turks of Mukogodo at least pay lip-service to the ideas of diversifying income, empowering women, and practicing monogamy, but it remains to be seen whether they will bring change in the community, and sometimes I’m skeptical. When one of the youth groups showed me their new, collective farm, I was excited; then I learned that they had put a Kikuyu in charge of running it. So it goes.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Choosing your God in Laikipia
Because it's Sunday and I'm in Nanyuki, I've been thinking about religion all day. I was woken up at 7:30 by the singing of the congregation in the skeleton of their half-finished church across the street. I turned on the TV and found every station showing Christian programing. I walked into town past a church where, all morning long, the pastor screams and screams over a microphone, and when I got into town, I found almost every business closed for the Sabbath. Kenya is, in some ways, an extraordinarily religious place. Except for the few Muslims, almost everyone will describe himself or herself as devoutly Christian. Dol Dol, with a population generously given at 2,000, has about a dozen congregations, ranging from the well established Catholic mission stocked with 3 priests and 10 nuns to home-grown Protestant groups that meet every Sunday under particularly shady trees. Every photocopy place in Nanyuki seems obligated, perhaps by some old colonial ordinance, to plaster its walls with print-outs of Christian themed jokes, poems and inspirational quotes. At the paralegal training I went to two weeks ago, every session was started with a prayer, a hymn and a sermon. After one sermon about how certain sinners (adulterers, drunkards, etc.) would be barred from heaven, the town drunk interrupted the session to ask the chaplain to define exactly what kind of drunkenness he had meant. Even the fiery female lawyer from the women's rights organization, educated in England and brought to Nanyuki to instruct the men on the importance of respecting human rights, took time out of this task to comment on the "abomination" of homosexuality and the "sham" of evolution. This left me wondering how the wealthy, probably liberal, women in Europe and North America that fund her organization would react to her words.
Under this veneer of Christian piousness, the people of Laikipia maintain a lot of old traditions and beliefs. While Christians back home point to the Bible as requiring chastity and monogomous marriage, here polygamy, adultery, and general sexual promiscuity are still very much the norm, and it's not at all unusual to find a Christian with 3 wives and twice that many girlfriends. In general, the Maasai don't seem to like the proscriptions of Christianity; the Catholic church is particularly popular among young people because it's more tolerant of drunkenness than the Protestant ones. Nor have the Maasai given up their old spirituality. The stories they tell of their origins owe a lot more to Maasai creation myths than to Genesis. Many people still go to soothsayers and spiritual healers. One of the most educated men in town, a former schoolteacher and community leader, told me that a mystic attributed his illness to a curse placed on him by a woman he had spurned, so now he's biding his time until he can go to Samburu to confront her. Mukogodoans who are really sick go to a village called Wamba. About half go to the huge, Catholic-run hospital there. The other half go to the house of the most famous witch doctor in northern Kenyan, located across town.
Given the Maasai's conscious effort to preserve their cultural traditions, it's not surprising that some of the Maasai spirituality lives on. What needs explanation is the thorough adoption of at least nominal Christianity, and I think the right explanation is a secular one. The Maasai have converted for very practical reasons: education, food, money, etc. Most education grants and food aid come through the churches, and most NGOs active in the region are at least theoretically faith-based. All of the churches say that they give aid based on need, not the recipients' beliefs, but it certainly helps if you know the priest, minister or reverend. Even the small congregations take up collections, some of which go to aid members in need, and sermons tend to stress financial gain. It seems, however, that the churches with the most resources get the largest flocks. Long before the government stepped in, it was these churches that provided the region its infrastructure. The missionaries are now reaping the rewards, in the form of large flocks, for decades of hard work making themselves the source of largesse in the community. I just wonder if they've really won the battle for all of those souls.
Under this veneer of Christian piousness, the people of Laikipia maintain a lot of old traditions and beliefs. While Christians back home point to the Bible as requiring chastity and monogomous marriage, here polygamy, adultery, and general sexual promiscuity are still very much the norm, and it's not at all unusual to find a Christian with 3 wives and twice that many girlfriends. In general, the Maasai don't seem to like the proscriptions of Christianity; the Catholic church is particularly popular among young people because it's more tolerant of drunkenness than the Protestant ones. Nor have the Maasai given up their old spirituality. The stories they tell of their origins owe a lot more to Maasai creation myths than to Genesis. Many people still go to soothsayers and spiritual healers. One of the most educated men in town, a former schoolteacher and community leader, told me that a mystic attributed his illness to a curse placed on him by a woman he had spurned, so now he's biding his time until he can go to Samburu to confront her. Mukogodoans who are really sick go to a village called Wamba. About half go to the huge, Catholic-run hospital there. The other half go to the house of the most famous witch doctor in northern Kenyan, located across town.
Given the Maasai's conscious effort to preserve their cultural traditions, it's not surprising that some of the Maasai spirituality lives on. What needs explanation is the thorough adoption of at least nominal Christianity, and I think the right explanation is a secular one. The Maasai have converted for very practical reasons: education, food, money, etc. Most education grants and food aid come through the churches, and most NGOs active in the region are at least theoretically faith-based. All of the churches say that they give aid based on need, not the recipients' beliefs, but it certainly helps if you know the priest, minister or reverend. Even the small congregations take up collections, some of which go to aid members in need, and sermons tend to stress financial gain. It seems, however, that the churches with the most resources get the largest flocks. Long before the government stepped in, it was these churches that provided the region its infrastructure. The missionaries are now reaping the rewards, in the form of large flocks, for decades of hard work making themselves the source of largesse in the community. I just wonder if they've really won the battle for all of those souls.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
The "Mungiki Menace", again
I didn't really intend to write today, but I got a few emails from people concerned over the news about all of the violence in Kenya (and they all cited the BBC, so I guess American TV has dropped the ball on this one), so I thought it would be good to let everyone know how things stand and reassure you of my safety. Things are undeniably bad down the road in parts of Nairobi and Central Province. The Mungiki beheaded a local official and three of his family members and neighbors last week in a district called Muranga'a and killed two police officers in Mathare, a Nairobi slum with 500,000 inhabitants. The police cracked down, killing a few people in Muranga'a and sealing off Mathare before going door to door and killing 33 people. Most of the dead were shot in the back of the head, and it's become clear that of the 40 or so people who have been killed in total, only a few were Mungiki. Life can be astoundingly cheap here/
I, however, am not in one of the problem areas, and for once Rift Valley Province is untouched by violence. Nanyuki is a diverse town, and while the majority of the population is Kikuyu and there are a few Mungiki in town, things are peaceful here. In mid-May, the Mungiki distributed leaflets in Nanyuki, and most other cities with a large Kikuyu population, inciting the youth to let Kibaki know that he was letting down his tribe. The youth here don't seem to have responded. Someone I know, a friend of a friend, was arrested this week and beat up by the police for having dreadlocks, since the Mungiki used to wear dreads before the group was outlawed and went underground, but it's pretty safe to say he's not a sect member. Everything else I've heard is second-hand, but I've heard plenty. The Mungiki have become an obsession here, with the newscasts invariably leading with the latest Mungiki news and the newspapers devoting the first three or four pages to Mungiki stories, with one of the papers running a multi-paged section titled "The Mungiki Menace" every day. The stories come in two varieties and are irresistable. The newest stories are first-person tales of police brutality in Mathare, but the most common story is still an expose about the initiation rituals of the Mungiki, with some unnamed source discussing how he was made to drink human blood and swear an oath to abstain from alcohol, drugs and sex with non-sect members. The exception to the anonymity of sources is one MP, Kihara Mwangi, who claimed that he witnessed 10 other Kikuyu MPs, including some members of the Cabinet, be administered Mungiki oaths. The assumption is that Kihara is now a dead-man-walking. We'll see.
I, on the other hand, am safe. The Mungiki have targeted matatu drivers, police and local administrators whom they see as uncooperative, and I do not fall into those categories. For that matter, I've never been to the Nairobi and Central Province shantytowns where Mungiki operates and the police go trawling for suspects. Dol Dol, where I spend most of my time, has a majority Maasai population and is completely safe from everything but elephants. So while the news stories are cause for concern, they're not a cause for concern on my behalf.
I, however, am not in one of the problem areas, and for once Rift Valley Province is untouched by violence. Nanyuki is a diverse town, and while the majority of the population is Kikuyu and there are a few Mungiki in town, things are peaceful here. In mid-May, the Mungiki distributed leaflets in Nanyuki, and most other cities with a large Kikuyu population, inciting the youth to let Kibaki know that he was letting down his tribe. The youth here don't seem to have responded. Someone I know, a friend of a friend, was arrested this week and beat up by the police for having dreadlocks, since the Mungiki used to wear dreads before the group was outlawed and went underground, but it's pretty safe to say he's not a sect member. Everything else I've heard is second-hand, but I've heard plenty. The Mungiki have become an obsession here, with the newscasts invariably leading with the latest Mungiki news and the newspapers devoting the first three or four pages to Mungiki stories, with one of the papers running a multi-paged section titled "The Mungiki Menace" every day. The stories come in two varieties and are irresistable. The newest stories are first-person tales of police brutality in Mathare, but the most common story is still an expose about the initiation rituals of the Mungiki, with some unnamed source discussing how he was made to drink human blood and swear an oath to abstain from alcohol, drugs and sex with non-sect members. The exception to the anonymity of sources is one MP, Kihara Mwangi, who claimed that he witnessed 10 other Kikuyu MPs, including some members of the Cabinet, be administered Mungiki oaths. The assumption is that Kihara is now a dead-man-walking. We'll see.
I, on the other hand, am safe. The Mungiki have targeted matatu drivers, police and local administrators whom they see as uncooperative, and I do not fall into those categories. For that matter, I've never been to the Nairobi and Central Province shantytowns where Mungiki operates and the police go trawling for suspects. Dol Dol, where I spend most of my time, has a majority Maasai population and is completely safe from everything but elephants. So while the news stories are cause for concern, they're not a cause for concern on my behalf.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Elephants, Real and Metaphorical
Watching from the dirt track to Arjijo, I saw them start to move. First one, then a second, then a third, the big gray boulders started to roll down to the valley below. One turned in profile, exposing a long, white curved tusk. I had finally seen elephants, not in a game reserve or a ranch, but on my morning commute. I was heading to Arjijo to interview neophyte farmers and bee-keepers on their organizational needs- one of which, it turned out, was protection from elephants- but the entire time I was working there, I was thinking about the elephants I might run into on the way back.
Animals, for the most part, don’t much interest me anymore. Donkeys, sheep and cows graze on my front yard, camels stampede down my road, monkeys scamper around the trees between the house and town, gazelles and antelope are almost as common as deer are back home, and I was greeted on arrival to Dol Dol by two herds of zebras and another of giraffes. It’s easy to get used to them all. Elephants are different, though, even to the Maasai. As best I can tell, elephants are the one animal that they fear. The Maasai view is that elephants have it out for humans, since humans alone can kill elephants, and the smell of a human can therefore drive an elephant into a killing frenzy. Having talked to enough Maasai, all of whom seem to have a brush-with-elephant-caused-death story, I’ve begun to believe it. I scan the landscape for damage inflicted by elephants on trees, fences and sheds. I listen when David tells me that if I run into an elephant, I should disrobe so that it will be fooled into attacking my clothes. I take a keen interest when Joseph and Mwenda debate whether a minibus driver should reverse or accelerate in the face of a charging elephant. I sit up and notice when the news reports that a poll worker in the district was trampled by an elephant while walking back from a local primary election. Mostly, though, I forget what my science teacher taught me about elephants being docile herbivores. If these people who laugh at lions, hyenas and cobras fear elephants, then so will I.
Now I’m in Nanyuki, where the only thing that can trample me is a matatu, but I’m still dealing with a sort of elephant: Maasai elders. Big, ornery and powerful, these men are just as dangerous as the animals the youths compare them to. I’m at a workshop for training paralegals with representatives from all over Mukogodo, and about half of them are testy older men. They spend half the time yelling at each other about old political disputes and spend the other half of the time yelling at feminists. You see, the workshop is being run by a women’s rights NGO based in Nairobi, which sent up some fiery female lawyers to try to talk some sense into these men, men who could teach the Taliban a few things about misogyny. It’s been an interesting clash of ideas. Maasai men in their forties and older womanize prodigiously but usually have two or three wives by now. They typically marry a generation or two below themselves, and last year someone’s 8 year-old wife was taken away by the authorities and placed in a Nanyuki orphanage. The vast majority of men beat their wives and Maa even has a specific word- kitala- for the refuge a woman takes with her relatives after she’s been beaten by her husband and before the elders convince her to return home with him. By the time they’re beaten by their husbands, though, women are used to their treatment and put up little fight. As children, they were pulled out of primary school, circumcised, and sold off to their husbands for 7 cows (9 if they’re impregnated before marriage). There’s even a kind of purdah, a segregation of sexes. Maasai tradition states that Morani, the warrior age set, cannot eat meat that has been seen by women, so an entire generation of men isolates itself from women three times a day, going off to roast goats in the bush. If you walk down the street in Dol Dol, you almost exclusively see men lounging around, as the women are all at home doing work. They collect water and firewood, cook, clean, and milk the cows. Except for the boys and young teenagers who herd the cattle, males usually drink and chew qat. One of the many Maasai taboos prevents men from entering the kitchen after they’re circumcised, so there are rules against them sharing domestic duties. The good news is that Maasai men of my generation are a lot less, or less blatantly, misogynist than their fathers are. But those old elephants are still around, and are running the show for now.
I really don’t want to sign off with a NOW screed, so I’ll give you some good news. My quest for Kenyan celebrity was not, as I feared, derailed when I was evicted from the VIP section. Yesterday, I was flipping through the TV, and saw a segment on the Swahili news about Kibaki’s visit to Dol Dol (if only I spoke Swahili, I could tell you why there was a 10 minute segment on national TV about a week-old presidential visit). About three minutes in, there’s a shot of the crowd, and plainly visible is a mzungu looking quite dashing in a red shirt. It was a much better way of getting on TV than being trampled by an elephant.
Animals, for the most part, don’t much interest me anymore. Donkeys, sheep and cows graze on my front yard, camels stampede down my road, monkeys scamper around the trees between the house and town, gazelles and antelope are almost as common as deer are back home, and I was greeted on arrival to Dol Dol by two herds of zebras and another of giraffes. It’s easy to get used to them all. Elephants are different, though, even to the Maasai. As best I can tell, elephants are the one animal that they fear. The Maasai view is that elephants have it out for humans, since humans alone can kill elephants, and the smell of a human can therefore drive an elephant into a killing frenzy. Having talked to enough Maasai, all of whom seem to have a brush-with-elephant-caused-death story, I’ve begun to believe it. I scan the landscape for damage inflicted by elephants on trees, fences and sheds. I listen when David tells me that if I run into an elephant, I should disrobe so that it will be fooled into attacking my clothes. I take a keen interest when Joseph and Mwenda debate whether a minibus driver should reverse or accelerate in the face of a charging elephant. I sit up and notice when the news reports that a poll worker in the district was trampled by an elephant while walking back from a local primary election. Mostly, though, I forget what my science teacher taught me about elephants being docile herbivores. If these people who laugh at lions, hyenas and cobras fear elephants, then so will I.
Now I’m in Nanyuki, where the only thing that can trample me is a matatu, but I’m still dealing with a sort of elephant: Maasai elders. Big, ornery and powerful, these men are just as dangerous as the animals the youths compare them to. I’m at a workshop for training paralegals with representatives from all over Mukogodo, and about half of them are testy older men. They spend half the time yelling at each other about old political disputes and spend the other half of the time yelling at feminists. You see, the workshop is being run by a women’s rights NGO based in Nairobi, which sent up some fiery female lawyers to try to talk some sense into these men, men who could teach the Taliban a few things about misogyny. It’s been an interesting clash of ideas. Maasai men in their forties and older womanize prodigiously but usually have two or three wives by now. They typically marry a generation or two below themselves, and last year someone’s 8 year-old wife was taken away by the authorities and placed in a Nanyuki orphanage. The vast majority of men beat their wives and Maa even has a specific word- kitala- for the refuge a woman takes with her relatives after she’s been beaten by her husband and before the elders convince her to return home with him. By the time they’re beaten by their husbands, though, women are used to their treatment and put up little fight. As children, they were pulled out of primary school, circumcised, and sold off to their husbands for 7 cows (9 if they’re impregnated before marriage). There’s even a kind of purdah, a segregation of sexes. Maasai tradition states that Morani, the warrior age set, cannot eat meat that has been seen by women, so an entire generation of men isolates itself from women three times a day, going off to roast goats in the bush. If you walk down the street in Dol Dol, you almost exclusively see men lounging around, as the women are all at home doing work. They collect water and firewood, cook, clean, and milk the cows. Except for the boys and young teenagers who herd the cattle, males usually drink and chew qat. One of the many Maasai taboos prevents men from entering the kitchen after they’re circumcised, so there are rules against them sharing domestic duties. The good news is that Maasai men of my generation are a lot less, or less blatantly, misogynist than their fathers are. But those old elephants are still around, and are running the show for now.
I really don’t want to sign off with a NOW screed, so I’ll give you some good news. My quest for Kenyan celebrity was not, as I feared, derailed when I was evicted from the VIP section. Yesterday, I was flipping through the TV, and saw a segment on the Swahili news about Kibaki’s visit to Dol Dol (if only I spoke Swahili, I could tell you why there was a 10 minute segment on national TV about a week-old presidential visit). About three minutes in, there’s a shot of the crowd, and plainly visible is a mzungu looking quite dashing in a red shirt. It was a much better way of getting on TV than being trampled by an elephant.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Robert, the President, and a Plumber
Let me tell you about Robert. I met him on my very first day in Nanyuki when he tried to sell me a Swedish-English dictionary, but it was only in the pub in Dol Dol, when he proclaimed his love of reggae and its stars “Bob Marley, Chuck Norris, etc.” that I really warmed to him. In a village with more than its share of eccentrics, Robert, with qat on his lips, beer on his breath, and Winnie the Pooh on his sweatshirt, stands out. It is something of a Dol Dol tradition for him to be locked up for causing a disturbance at community events, and I find his ability to disrupt every event, year after year, a sign of admirable endurance. He has much more energy than you’d expect of a man of his 40 or so years. While most of his contemporaries lounge in the shade, he ambles down the street, hugging his friends and greeting them in Maa, English and five words of what may possibly be Italian. When the Ph.D student here launched an anti-littering program, Robert was the first to join, picking up trash from the ground and sticking it in bushes, berating schoolchildren who made the mistake of dropping garbage within his field of vision, and yelling the program’s name at passers-by. When I got back from Nanyuki last Monday, however, I was worried about him.
It’s just that he was so excited for the president’s visit: “Everyone here is scared of the Big Men, but not me! I’m going to talk to them! The Ministry of Humanity and Justice gives me that right.” For three days, he spoke of nothing but the evils of littering and the rights granted to him by the Ministry of Humanity and Justice. The problem for Robert is that Kenya doesn’t have a Ministry of Humanity and Justice, it has a Ministry of Justice, and that Ministry of Justice takes an interest in people like Robert, especially when it concerns the president. I was really relieved, then, to see Robert alive, though being dragged into a police Land Cruiser, after he tried to deliver a pamphlet on the evils of littering to President Kibaki’s podium.
Robert’s ability to avoid being shot was a lone bright moment in an otherwise dark day for Dol Dol. To start with, Kibaki was late. He was supposed to arrive in March; this was rescheduled to Tuesday, then 11:30 on Wednesday, then 1:30. He didn’t actually arrive until 5, and by then many people who had arrived early in the morning had to leave to bring the herds in before dark. They didn’t miss much. Oh, the local dance groups were good and the song lyrics inspired (“President, please give us a district/ And we will support you”), but the groups had been practicing all over town for two weeks and I now hum that song in my sleep. The real disappointment, however, was Kibaki himself. The local MP introduced him by reminding the Maasai that, as good children, they should be obedient and grateful. Kibaki took to the podium, and finding his prepared remarks rather than Robert’s anti-littering literature, proceeded to instruct the audience to stop selling their young daughters off as brides and to start paying taxes. That’s fine advice, but if you’re going to play the fatherly role in Kenya, you’re expected to bring gifts. This was Kibaki’s failing: no district, no land rights, no electricity. All he brought was $40,000 for the girls’ high school and $10,000 for the boys’. Insult was added to injury as the rumor that Kibaki’s people had slaughtered 30 cows and 75 goats proved to be false, and the crowd went home disappointed, tired and hungry. The feelings soon coalesced into anger, even rage, but in the days that followed this too passed and people began to speculate about what Raila Odinga, the opposition frontrunner, will offer when he visits later this year.
For me, it was also a day of dashed hopes, especially my desire for Kenyan celebrity. An hour before Kibaki arrived, as I was winding my way through the crowd, I was pulled away by one of the boy scouts who doubled as crowd control at the event. Apparently I was being taken to the V.I.P. seating tent, which faces the crowd. That I got this special treatment only because I was one of five white people in a crowd of a thousand bothered me little and I tucked my shirt in as I approached the tent, preparing for my star turn. However, the V.I.P. section was already filled with various dignitaries, ranchers and women in large hats, so the boy scout went to consult with his boss. A moment later, to my dismay, I was being led to a seat 6 feet away from the podium behind which Kibaki would be standing (and which Robert had been trying to use as a library of anti-littering tips). This was too close. In the regular, old VIP section, I reasoned, I could pass for a rancher’s son or maybe one of the more obscure Leakeys, but in my new seat I would probably have to pretend to be Kibaki’s wife. The long arm of the law saved me from that, as a policewoman quickly came to me to say that the entire section was reserved for members of the cabinet, and that I’d have to move. As it turned out, I was forced back into an even worse position in the crowd than I’d had before the scout’s intervention, and the ability to untuck my shirt on such a hot day was little consolation. (By the way, I hope I’m not endangering Kibaki’s life by saying that at no point in this process was I asked for identification or to empty my pockets of their visibly bulky contents-my camera and phone. I feel like things may have played out differently if this were America or Canada).
At least I can raise my spirits with the gift of music, having acquired a battery-powered radio while in Nanyuki last weekend. We get good reception on two Nairobi stations in Dol Dol. One usually plays Christian reggae (Chuck Norris’ favorite kind, I’m told) and the other plays the top 10 songs from last December. It’s pretty sweet living there, especially since the toilet was also fixed this week. It was, as expected, an ordeal. The plumber/locksmith/mechanic showed up drunk, having consumed his advance in the form of bathtub booze, and without any of his tools. He gamely tried for an hour to perform the repairs with a branch he pulled off of our front yard, but gave up and went back to town to get his tools. On the way, he got into a yelling match with one of our neighbors. Three hours later, after a liquid lunch, he came back with his tools and a small posse, and they staggered their way through the repairs. Fantastic. I don’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, however, because I’m back in muddy old Nanyuki for the week. Oh, and Robert! I don’t want to leave you thinking he’s sleeping on the floor of the Mukogodo jail. He was released the next day because, he says, the president called the jail on his behalf, telling the warden that he supported Robert’s important work on the environment. The president even sent him a letter, and Robert says he’s going to show it to me when I get back to Dol Dol. I can’t wait.
It’s just that he was so excited for the president’s visit: “Everyone here is scared of the Big Men, but not me! I’m going to talk to them! The Ministry of Humanity and Justice gives me that right.” For three days, he spoke of nothing but the evils of littering and the rights granted to him by the Ministry of Humanity and Justice. The problem for Robert is that Kenya doesn’t have a Ministry of Humanity and Justice, it has a Ministry of Justice, and that Ministry of Justice takes an interest in people like Robert, especially when it concerns the president. I was really relieved, then, to see Robert alive, though being dragged into a police Land Cruiser, after he tried to deliver a pamphlet on the evils of littering to President Kibaki’s podium.
Robert’s ability to avoid being shot was a lone bright moment in an otherwise dark day for Dol Dol. To start with, Kibaki was late. He was supposed to arrive in March; this was rescheduled to Tuesday, then 11:30 on Wednesday, then 1:30. He didn’t actually arrive until 5, and by then many people who had arrived early in the morning had to leave to bring the herds in before dark. They didn’t miss much. Oh, the local dance groups were good and the song lyrics inspired (“President, please give us a district/ And we will support you”), but the groups had been practicing all over town for two weeks and I now hum that song in my sleep. The real disappointment, however, was Kibaki himself. The local MP introduced him by reminding the Maasai that, as good children, they should be obedient and grateful. Kibaki took to the podium, and finding his prepared remarks rather than Robert’s anti-littering literature, proceeded to instruct the audience to stop selling their young daughters off as brides and to start paying taxes. That’s fine advice, but if you’re going to play the fatherly role in Kenya, you’re expected to bring gifts. This was Kibaki’s failing: no district, no land rights, no electricity. All he brought was $40,000 for the girls’ high school and $10,000 for the boys’. Insult was added to injury as the rumor that Kibaki’s people had slaughtered 30 cows and 75 goats proved to be false, and the crowd went home disappointed, tired and hungry. The feelings soon coalesced into anger, even rage, but in the days that followed this too passed and people began to speculate about what Raila Odinga, the opposition frontrunner, will offer when he visits later this year.
For me, it was also a day of dashed hopes, especially my desire for Kenyan celebrity. An hour before Kibaki arrived, as I was winding my way through the crowd, I was pulled away by one of the boy scouts who doubled as crowd control at the event. Apparently I was being taken to the V.I.P. seating tent, which faces the crowd. That I got this special treatment only because I was one of five white people in a crowd of a thousand bothered me little and I tucked my shirt in as I approached the tent, preparing for my star turn. However, the V.I.P. section was already filled with various dignitaries, ranchers and women in large hats, so the boy scout went to consult with his boss. A moment later, to my dismay, I was being led to a seat 6 feet away from the podium behind which Kibaki would be standing (and which Robert had been trying to use as a library of anti-littering tips). This was too close. In the regular, old VIP section, I reasoned, I could pass for a rancher’s son or maybe one of the more obscure Leakeys, but in my new seat I would probably have to pretend to be Kibaki’s wife. The long arm of the law saved me from that, as a policewoman quickly came to me to say that the entire section was reserved for members of the cabinet, and that I’d have to move. As it turned out, I was forced back into an even worse position in the crowd than I’d had before the scout’s intervention, and the ability to untuck my shirt on such a hot day was little consolation. (By the way, I hope I’m not endangering Kibaki’s life by saying that at no point in this process was I asked for identification or to empty my pockets of their visibly bulky contents-my camera and phone. I feel like things may have played out differently if this were America or Canada).
At least I can raise my spirits with the gift of music, having acquired a battery-powered radio while in Nanyuki last weekend. We get good reception on two Nairobi stations in Dol Dol. One usually plays Christian reggae (Chuck Norris’ favorite kind, I’m told) and the other plays the top 10 songs from last December. It’s pretty sweet living there, especially since the toilet was also fixed this week. It was, as expected, an ordeal. The plumber/locksmith/mechanic showed up drunk, having consumed his advance in the form of bathtub booze, and without any of his tools. He gamely tried for an hour to perform the repairs with a branch he pulled off of our front yard, but gave up and went back to town to get his tools. On the way, he got into a yelling match with one of our neighbors. Three hours later, after a liquid lunch, he came back with his tools and a small posse, and they staggered their way through the repairs. Fantastic. I don’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, however, because I’m back in muddy old Nanyuki for the week. Oh, and Robert! I don’t want to leave you thinking he’s sleeping on the floor of the Mukogodo jail. He was released the next day because, he says, the president called the jail on his behalf, telling the warden that he supported Robert’s important work on the environment. The president even sent him a letter, and Robert says he’s going to show it to me when I get back to Dol Dol. I can’t wait.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
How to prepare for a Kenyan election
As very few of you likely know, Kenya is having elections at the end of the year. Everything, from the presidency to the divisional councils, is up for grabs. Kenya is a very poltically conscious country, and this week it's been impossible not to hear about the campaigns.
The big national story, which has gotten some airtime internationally on the BBC and CNN, is the Mungiki killings near Nairobi. The Mungiki are a secret organization with the raison d'etre of promoting radical Kikuyu nationalism and female circumcision. Although banned by the government, they claim (dubiously, most people say) to have a membership in the hundreds of thousands. Usually they spend their time strong-arming minibus drivers into paying protection money and conducting mass circumcisions, but around election time their portfolio expands. In a country where voting goes along ethnic lines, the ability to suppress the voting by minority groups is beneficial; consequently, the Mungiki are sometimes stirred into action to kill some non-Kikuyus and intimidate others into staying home from the polls. It's also alleged that the Mungiki have been hired by some leaders to assassinate rival politicians. When six bodies turned up beheaded around Nairobi last week, the blame immediately fell on the Mungiki. The resulting investigation has resulted in two former MPs being arrested for their connections to the group, and two current MPs are being questioned. The Mungiki have vowed to assert themselves more in the coming months, and have announced some sort of rally for next weekend, though one might question why a secret organization would stage a mass rally.
Speaking of mass rallies, the big news in Dol Dol this week is President Mwai Kibaki's vist to town this coming Tuesday. This will be the first presidential visit to Dol Dol. Everyone I know in town is dashing between meetings to prepare for the event; Kibaki will be greeted by a whole day's worth of Maasai dancing, singing and theater prepared by the community groups. The local government has been making its own preparations. The last few days, tractors and huge trucks carrying fresh dirt have rolled into town, ready to repair and grade the cracked, rutted roads for the VIPs' arrival. This has actually embittered many local residents, who are pretty hostile to this government to begin with.
If Kibaki comes with a political present, he might get into the Maasai's good graces, however. The exact nature of this present is the subject of much speculation. A few have suggested it might be the deed to some of the white-0wned land bordering on the group ranch. The more popular prediction, however, is the promotion of Mukogodo from division to district (akin, in a sense, to promoting something from a municipality to a county). This would give the Maasai their own district, which is something they greatly desire, as they make up just 10% of Laikipia District's population and are dominated politically by the Kikuyu and other sedentary groups. As a district, the area would get more funds, more schools, electricity, communication and transport links, and prestige. As much as the locals think it will happen, though, it seems terribly implausible to me. Laikipia is a relatively small district, but it has about 330,000 people; Mukogodo, by contrast, has about 20,000. Dol Dol, the only real town in the division, has about 1,500 people and is only linked to the rest of Kenya by a tortuous, 45km road that takes over an hour to drive and is sometimes impassable in the rainy season. Still, the people in Dol Dol hope.
At the very least, the visit has already made village life more interesting. On Tuesday, I was in a store talking to some friends when a police officer came in and asked me what I was doing in town, whether my documents were in order, and how long I was planning to stay in Dol Dol. I took this as the routine questioning of foreigners in a town that sees very few, and though it was much more forward and tactless than I've come to expect to from Keynans, I didn't think much of it. However, the rumor quickly spread around town that I had been questioned because of police suspicion that I was there to spy on the president. I swear to you, God and the Mukogodo Divisional Police Officer that I'm not a spy, but so long as I'm not locked up on Tuesday, I'll post here about the presidential visit next week or the week after.
The big national story, which has gotten some airtime internationally on the BBC and CNN, is the Mungiki killings near Nairobi. The Mungiki are a secret organization with the raison d'etre of promoting radical Kikuyu nationalism and female circumcision. Although banned by the government, they claim (dubiously, most people say) to have a membership in the hundreds of thousands. Usually they spend their time strong-arming minibus drivers into paying protection money and conducting mass circumcisions, but around election time their portfolio expands. In a country where voting goes along ethnic lines, the ability to suppress the voting by minority groups is beneficial; consequently, the Mungiki are sometimes stirred into action to kill some non-Kikuyus and intimidate others into staying home from the polls. It's also alleged that the Mungiki have been hired by some leaders to assassinate rival politicians. When six bodies turned up beheaded around Nairobi last week, the blame immediately fell on the Mungiki. The resulting investigation has resulted in two former MPs being arrested for their connections to the group, and two current MPs are being questioned. The Mungiki have vowed to assert themselves more in the coming months, and have announced some sort of rally for next weekend, though one might question why a secret organization would stage a mass rally.
Speaking of mass rallies, the big news in Dol Dol this week is President Mwai Kibaki's vist to town this coming Tuesday. This will be the first presidential visit to Dol Dol. Everyone I know in town is dashing between meetings to prepare for the event; Kibaki will be greeted by a whole day's worth of Maasai dancing, singing and theater prepared by the community groups. The local government has been making its own preparations. The last few days, tractors and huge trucks carrying fresh dirt have rolled into town, ready to repair and grade the cracked, rutted roads for the VIPs' arrival. This has actually embittered many local residents, who are pretty hostile to this government to begin with.
If Kibaki comes with a political present, he might get into the Maasai's good graces, however. The exact nature of this present is the subject of much speculation. A few have suggested it might be the deed to some of the white-0wned land bordering on the group ranch. The more popular prediction, however, is the promotion of Mukogodo from division to district (akin, in a sense, to promoting something from a municipality to a county). This would give the Maasai their own district, which is something they greatly desire, as they make up just 10% of Laikipia District's population and are dominated politically by the Kikuyu and other sedentary groups. As a district, the area would get more funds, more schools, electricity, communication and transport links, and prestige. As much as the locals think it will happen, though, it seems terribly implausible to me. Laikipia is a relatively small district, but it has about 330,000 people; Mukogodo, by contrast, has about 20,000. Dol Dol, the only real town in the division, has about 1,500 people and is only linked to the rest of Kenya by a tortuous, 45km road that takes over an hour to drive and is sometimes impassable in the rainy season. Still, the people in Dol Dol hope.
At the very least, the visit has already made village life more interesting. On Tuesday, I was in a store talking to some friends when a police officer came in and asked me what I was doing in town, whether my documents were in order, and how long I was planning to stay in Dol Dol. I took this as the routine questioning of foreigners in a town that sees very few, and though it was much more forward and tactless than I've come to expect to from Keynans, I didn't think much of it. However, the rumor quickly spread around town that I had been questioned because of police suspicion that I was there to spy on the president. I swear to you, God and the Mukogodo Divisional Police Officer that I'm not a spy, but so long as I'm not locked up on Tuesday, I'll post here about the presidential visit next week or the week after.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Kenya and the Other
So I've seen Dol Dol, and what a place to have seen. If God made Dol Dol, he started with the same blueprints he used in Arizona but took a break after laying out the climate and topography to drink a six-pack or two. When He got back, He got to work on the flora and fauna and the results were understandably strange: the cacti grow 35 feet tall, the locusts are neon blue and 8 inches long, and the deer and jackrabbits of Arizona have been replaced by zebras, gazelles, giraffes, camels (all of which I've seen in the last week) and elephants (which I have not seen, but which chased my friend's minibus yesterday). The town itself isn't much: a few schools, government offices, butcheries, and a row of stores. The Maasai themselves, many wearing their traditional red clothing and elaborate jewelry, provide the town's color. You'll see them in town shopping or on the hills outside town with their herds of cows and goats.
As you'd expect in a small town, everyone here is friendly. I've been meeting with a lot of the youth groups, and one took me out to their projects in the countryside. Out there they slaughtered a goat (I took pictures) and roasted it for me. Here, they slaughter animals through strangulation so that they can preserve the blood for drinking. Ah, but I digress. I'm picking up some Maa, but a lot of people speak English. The English here is oddly colored by development discourse. If you want to organize people to go to a pub, you "mobilize them". A local chief, whom we incidentally ran into while he was wearing army fatigues and carrying an M-16 through the forest is limited in his English to "What are your recommendations?", "field study", and "testable hypothesis." Strange place.
The youth groups I've been working with have called the area "The Other", as in "There's Kenya, and then there's The Other." The Other starts where the paved road ends, where the electrical lines stop, where the cell network dies, and where the government loses interest. That's a few miles outside Nanyuki.
My house is an example of that government neglect. It's part of a fenced compound built by the government 20 years, just outside town. The compound contains a huge granary and the houses designed to house the granary workers. The problem? The Maasai don't grow any grain and don't consume much either. The granary, which is easily the biggest building in town, has sat empty for two decades, and the houses have long ago been sold to private citizens. The result is that I'm living relatively well for Dol Dol: a squat toilet, a camp stove, two bedrooms, a living room, two gas lamps and running water once a week. Still, things are funny in The Other.
I'm back in Kenya (Nanyuki, in this case) for the weekend to meet with my boss, shower, shave, check the internet and drink something cold. I'll keep you posted.
As you'd expect in a small town, everyone here is friendly. I've been meeting with a lot of the youth groups, and one took me out to their projects in the countryside. Out there they slaughtered a goat (I took pictures) and roasted it for me. Here, they slaughter animals through strangulation so that they can preserve the blood for drinking. Ah, but I digress. I'm picking up some Maa, but a lot of people speak English. The English here is oddly colored by development discourse. If you want to organize people to go to a pub, you "mobilize them". A local chief, whom we incidentally ran into while he was wearing army fatigues and carrying an M-16 through the forest is limited in his English to "What are your recommendations?", "field study", and "testable hypothesis." Strange place.
The youth groups I've been working with have called the area "The Other", as in "There's Kenya, and then there's The Other." The Other starts where the paved road ends, where the electrical lines stop, where the cell network dies, and where the government loses interest. That's a few miles outside Nanyuki.
My house is an example of that government neglect. It's part of a fenced compound built by the government 20 years, just outside town. The compound contains a huge granary and the houses designed to house the granary workers. The problem? The Maasai don't grow any grain and don't consume much either. The granary, which is easily the biggest building in town, has sat empty for two decades, and the houses have long ago been sold to private citizens. The result is that I'm living relatively well for Dol Dol: a squat toilet, a camp stove, two bedrooms, a living room, two gas lamps and running water once a week. Still, things are funny in The Other.
I'm back in Kenya (Nanyuki, in this case) for the weekend to meet with my boss, shower, shave, check the internet and drink something cold. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
My 21st birthday and an empty death threat
I always thought I'd celebrate my 21st birthday at Wildflower's. It's a dreary place, but it's Pennington's only bar. Instead, I got a death threat from a white rancher, which is an altogether more memorable experience. It might even make me an honorary Maasai. Whites might represent 1% of Laikipia's population, but they cause the lion's share of the area's problems. They own huge tracts of the best land, expropriated long ago from the Maasai, and they keep the indigenous population from using it. The Maasai have staged protests, land invasions, and filed suit against the ranchers. My dispute, though, wasn't so high-minded.
Four of us were celebrating my birthday at the Sportman's Arms pub, when an sixty-ish white rancher introduced himself and asked if Viv, the other intern, was my wife. Finding out she wasn't, he cut between us, turned his back to me, and started talking to her. Apparently, he was talking about how the rape of Maasai women by the British military was an understandable and forgiveable phenomenon. As he got handsier and handsier and she looked more and more distressed, I decided to engage him in a little manly conversation to diffuse the situation. I am not a fighter, and as you'll see my usual tactic of gentle humor might not be well-suited for Kenya. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what he kept on the ranch. I grunted knowingly as he said, "Cattle, goats, sheep..." but I raised an eyebrow as he leaned in and said, "and between you and me, 22 women." This is where the trouble began.
He turned his back to me again and resumed his pursuit of Viv, but I tapped him on the shoulder and joked "Viv's my friend, I know her pretty well. She's picky. I just don't think she's gonna be number 23." The conversation between us continued on, and soon Solomon came over and started arguing with him in Swahili. The rancher switched back to English and said, "I love women, but I crush men." As he said this, he bent his index finger, crushing tiny, hypothetical men between the second and third knuckle. "I'll shoot and kill you and you," he said, pointing at me, then Solomon. Solomon yelled that we should leave, and stormed out down the the stairs. Without a Maasai to pick on, the rancher lost interest and joined another table, where he was laughing and backslapping his friends a moment later. Apparently this is pretty typical behavior for the ranchers,
and the threats are always empty (so don't worry, parental unit). It's easy to understand why they're universally loathed in these parts, though.
Lydia attributed Solomon's anger to his Maasai-ness. This is part of what seems like Kenya's favorite game: attributing fairly typical human behavior to certain tribal groups. For instance, you'll hear "Maasai men are protective of women," or "The Kikuyu like to earn money." There's also a game Kenyans play where they attribute rather fantastic attributes to certain groups. I've heard, "All Luos drive Hummers" and "Germans eat people [watch out, Mar!]." The truth, though, is that the exact same situation could have, and has, happened in Montreal- maybe without the racial overtones.
Anyway, my birthday improved greatly from there, with healthy quantities of Tusker and meat consumed and an unhealthy amount of dancing. I'd love to keep you abreast of the Nanyuki club scene, but alas I'm leaving for Dol Dol tomorrow, and will be out of touch with the world for a week or two. As it turns out, there's a Yale Ph.D candidate in Dol Dol now who's working on the same issues I'm tackling in my internship paper. I take this as a sign of divine blessing for my endeavor, and thus I do not fear the white rancher.
Four of us were celebrating my birthday at the Sportman's Arms pub, when an sixty-ish white rancher introduced himself and asked if Viv, the other intern, was my wife. Finding out she wasn't, he cut between us, turned his back to me, and started talking to her. Apparently, he was talking about how the rape of Maasai women by the British military was an understandable and forgiveable phenomenon. As he got handsier and handsier and she looked more and more distressed, I decided to engage him in a little manly conversation to diffuse the situation. I am not a fighter, and as you'll see my usual tactic of gentle humor might not be well-suited for Kenya. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what he kept on the ranch. I grunted knowingly as he said, "Cattle, goats, sheep..." but I raised an eyebrow as he leaned in and said, "and between you and me, 22 women." This is where the trouble began.
He turned his back to me again and resumed his pursuit of Viv, but I tapped him on the shoulder and joked "Viv's my friend, I know her pretty well. She's picky. I just don't think she's gonna be number 23." The conversation between us continued on, and soon Solomon came over and started arguing with him in Swahili. The rancher switched back to English and said, "I love women, but I crush men." As he said this, he bent his index finger, crushing tiny, hypothetical men between the second and third knuckle. "I'll shoot and kill you and you," he said, pointing at me, then Solomon. Solomon yelled that we should leave, and stormed out down the the stairs. Without a Maasai to pick on, the rancher lost interest and joined another table, where he was laughing and backslapping his friends a moment later. Apparently this is pretty typical behavior for the ranchers,
and the threats are always empty (so don't worry, parental unit). It's easy to understand why they're universally loathed in these parts, though.
Lydia attributed Solomon's anger to his Maasai-ness. This is part of what seems like Kenya's favorite game: attributing fairly typical human behavior to certain tribal groups. For instance, you'll hear "Maasai men are protective of women," or "The Kikuyu like to earn money." There's also a game Kenyans play where they attribute rather fantastic attributes to certain groups. I've heard, "All Luos drive Hummers" and "Germans eat people [watch out, Mar!]." The truth, though, is that the exact same situation could have, and has, happened in Montreal- maybe without the racial overtones.
Anyway, my birthday improved greatly from there, with healthy quantities of Tusker and meat consumed and an unhealthy amount of dancing. I'd love to keep you abreast of the Nanyuki club scene, but alas I'm leaving for Dol Dol tomorrow, and will be out of touch with the world for a week or two. As it turns out, there's a Yale Ph.D candidate in Dol Dol now who's working on the same issues I'm tackling in my internship paper. I take this as a sign of divine blessing for my endeavor, and thus I do not fear the white rancher.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Moving Upcountry
Nairobi has come and gone. We arrived Monday night, and by Wednesday we were leaving the city behind us. This is no great loss. Sprawling and disjointed, Nairobi is a weird place. In the area we stayed, Upper Hill, rotting wooden food stalls share space with large walled villas on half-acre plots which are cast in perpetual shade by new 20-story office towers being erected in the neighborhood. Downtown, there are two parallel streets, 100 yards apart, leading the National Museum. One is bounded by a big leafy park and a row of thick shade trees. The other is lined with maybe 100 unlicensed auto mechanics, and the noxious air there is filled with welding sparks and the gravel road and sidewalk are sodden with motor oil.
For their part, Nairobians seem preoccupied with the same things North American urbanites are: traffic and crime. They complain bitterly about the congestion caused by the sprawling new middle class suburbs- of course, the city of millions has been expanding ever since it was founded as a supply depot just a century ago, but until recently the new arrivals were too poor to crowed the streets with their Renaults and Land Cruisers. However, if traffic is getting worse, I'm happy to say that crime is getting better. Only a few years ago, Nairobians were afraid to carry a purse or pull out a cell phone anywhere in public; once can safely do both simultaneously. What was the city's elegant solution? As someone put it, "The police now, they shoot robbers. Even if you just steal a cell phone, they kill you."
Well, goodbye to all that. We rode up to Nanyuki in the back of the organization's 20-year old Land Rover, a four-hire ride through Kenya's agricultural heartland. We passed palm groves, field of sisal and pineapple plantations, all laid out on soil so red that it would make Georgians hang their heads in shame. It reminded me a little of western Ecuador, but it was poorer: the rows of children walking home from school along the highway were barefoot, and the ploughing was done by animals, not machines. At some point, shortly after being mobbed by two-dozen banana vendors in Kiganjo, we climbed a ridge and emerged in a completely different landscape: the Laikipia plateau, my new home. The throngs of matatus (minibusses) and pedestrians slackened off in this sparse landscape, but with its gentle rises, thick grasslands and shade trees, it's not difficult to see what attracted white settlers 100 years ago: it is comfortingly familiar. Unlike the malarial land to the south with its banana trees and rice paddies, here the settlers could enjoy a gentler climate and expansive plains to keep their cattle. They even imported trout from England to stock Laikipia's streams.
Rising (just a little) from this landscape is Nanyuki. Nanyuki is home to 40,000 people- mostly Kikuyu migrants- but it can feel much smaller. Pretty much everything is located along the highway or one of a handful of cross streets. The tallest building is five stories. Three banks, innumerable bars, a few restaurants, a handful of small hotels, a row of craftsmen's kiosks, a second-hand clothes market, two men selling shoes on the sidewalk, two Indian-owned dry goods stores, three cripples begging, a cyber cafe, 125 cell phone shops, a dozen street children and a vegetable store: this is Nanyuki's commercial life. I do genuinely like Nanyuki, though, for its lack of pretensions. Here, unlike Nairobi, there is no one dressed like a corporal in the King's African Rifles using white-gloved hands to open the door of cars arriving at the Hilton, nor are there Indian businessmen bustling around in Armani suits, talking on their Razrs.
Anyone who travels these days to a developing country seems obligated to write something about the collision between the modern world and the traditional one. If I were inclined to follow suit, a small city or a big country town like Nanyuki would be the perfect setting for such a vignette. I could tell about the Maasai tribesman who bicycled down the street in full regalia, carrying a traditional staff, and then entered the Safaricom store, perhaps to buy more minutes for his cell phone. I could tell you about the radio statio that plays traditional songs of the Luo people interspersed with the best of Jason Mraz. I could tell you that in an unmarked, unelectrified hamlet in the midst of a pineapple grove about 10 miles south of the equator, the only commercial enterprise is Thriller's Exquisite Luxurious Fish 'n Chips Pub. Not only that, but if I were a great thinker like Tom Friedman, I could tie these vignettes together to build a theory explaining the future of the global economy and the political order. But I'm not, and I won't. Instead, I'll tell you about a haunted hotel.
Our first night in Nanyuki, we stayed in Simba's Lodge, located on the outskirts of town near the orphanage. It is a big walled compound containing a series of cement buildings. Upon check-in, we were greeted by a half-dozen workers, fressed in faded tuxedos and frayed, gold bow ties, who escorted us to our room, the only one of 30 to be occupied that night. Again at dinner, we were alone in a dining room that could fit 100, and seven or eight workers, dressed again in tuxes, watched us eat. I decided the place was creepy. Then, sometime before dawn, I awoke to a faint but haunting noise that I could not place. I sat up in bed, my pulse spiking and a knot forming in my stomach. It was only after a few moments' concentration that I deciphered the noise was the muzzein's call to prayer being broadcasted to Nanyuki's Muslims. I fell back to a peaceful sleep and later ate breakfast in the again empty dining room, where a TV had now been turned on to an African soap opera in which one protagoinst had AIDS and another attacked a rival in love with a machete. This was all a refreshing departure from the night before, but we still changed to a different place for the weekend.
What about work, you say? Right now the organization's staff is scattered around the world (New York, Ghana, Dol Dol) so I've only been partially briefed on what's going on, but I'll probably be leaving for Dol Dol on Sunday. Before then, I have to buy my supplies to take there. I also have to find rubber boots for the afternoon thunder storms that you can see rolling off Mt. Kenya from 15 miles away and which turn Nanyuki's dirt sidewalks and sidestreets into muddy bogs.
You can tell a woman is a regular in Nanyuki, I'm told, if she can walk in the mud with heels on. I'm still searching for the male equivalent.
For their part, Nairobians seem preoccupied with the same things North American urbanites are: traffic and crime. They complain bitterly about the congestion caused by the sprawling new middle class suburbs- of course, the city of millions has been expanding ever since it was founded as a supply depot just a century ago, but until recently the new arrivals were too poor to crowed the streets with their Renaults and Land Cruisers. However, if traffic is getting worse, I'm happy to say that crime is getting better. Only a few years ago, Nairobians were afraid to carry a purse or pull out a cell phone anywhere in public; once can safely do both simultaneously. What was the city's elegant solution? As someone put it, "The police now, they shoot robbers. Even if you just steal a cell phone, they kill you."
Well, goodbye to all that. We rode up to Nanyuki in the back of the organization's 20-year old Land Rover, a four-hire ride through Kenya's agricultural heartland. We passed palm groves, field of sisal and pineapple plantations, all laid out on soil so red that it would make Georgians hang their heads in shame. It reminded me a little of western Ecuador, but it was poorer: the rows of children walking home from school along the highway were barefoot, and the ploughing was done by animals, not machines. At some point, shortly after being mobbed by two-dozen banana vendors in Kiganjo, we climbed a ridge and emerged in a completely different landscape: the Laikipia plateau, my new home. The throngs of matatus (minibusses) and pedestrians slackened off in this sparse landscape, but with its gentle rises, thick grasslands and shade trees, it's not difficult to see what attracted white settlers 100 years ago: it is comfortingly familiar. Unlike the malarial land to the south with its banana trees and rice paddies, here the settlers could enjoy a gentler climate and expansive plains to keep their cattle. They even imported trout from England to stock Laikipia's streams.
Rising (just a little) from this landscape is Nanyuki. Nanyuki is home to 40,000 people- mostly Kikuyu migrants- but it can feel much smaller. Pretty much everything is located along the highway or one of a handful of cross streets. The tallest building is five stories. Three banks, innumerable bars, a few restaurants, a handful of small hotels, a row of craftsmen's kiosks, a second-hand clothes market, two men selling shoes on the sidewalk, two Indian-owned dry goods stores, three cripples begging, a cyber cafe, 125 cell phone shops, a dozen street children and a vegetable store: this is Nanyuki's commercial life. I do genuinely like Nanyuki, though, for its lack of pretensions. Here, unlike Nairobi, there is no one dressed like a corporal in the King's African Rifles using white-gloved hands to open the door of cars arriving at the Hilton, nor are there Indian businessmen bustling around in Armani suits, talking on their Razrs.
Anyone who travels these days to a developing country seems obligated to write something about the collision between the modern world and the traditional one. If I were inclined to follow suit, a small city or a big country town like Nanyuki would be the perfect setting for such a vignette. I could tell about the Maasai tribesman who bicycled down the street in full regalia, carrying a traditional staff, and then entered the Safaricom store, perhaps to buy more minutes for his cell phone. I could tell you about the radio statio that plays traditional songs of the Luo people interspersed with the best of Jason Mraz. I could tell you that in an unmarked, unelectrified hamlet in the midst of a pineapple grove about 10 miles south of the equator, the only commercial enterprise is Thriller's Exquisite Luxurious Fish 'n Chips Pub. Not only that, but if I were a great thinker like Tom Friedman, I could tie these vignettes together to build a theory explaining the future of the global economy and the political order. But I'm not, and I won't. Instead, I'll tell you about a haunted hotel.
Our first night in Nanyuki, we stayed in Simba's Lodge, located on the outskirts of town near the orphanage. It is a big walled compound containing a series of cement buildings. Upon check-in, we were greeted by a half-dozen workers, fressed in faded tuxedos and frayed, gold bow ties, who escorted us to our room, the only one of 30 to be occupied that night. Again at dinner, we were alone in a dining room that could fit 100, and seven or eight workers, dressed again in tuxes, watched us eat. I decided the place was creepy. Then, sometime before dawn, I awoke to a faint but haunting noise that I could not place. I sat up in bed, my pulse spiking and a knot forming in my stomach. It was only after a few moments' concentration that I deciphered the noise was the muzzein's call to prayer being broadcasted to Nanyuki's Muslims. I fell back to a peaceful sleep and later ate breakfast in the again empty dining room, where a TV had now been turned on to an African soap opera in which one protagoinst had AIDS and another attacked a rival in love with a machete. This was all a refreshing departure from the night before, but we still changed to a different place for the weekend.
What about work, you say? Right now the organization's staff is scattered around the world (New York, Ghana, Dol Dol) so I've only been partially briefed on what's going on, but I'll probably be leaving for Dol Dol on Sunday. Before then, I have to buy my supplies to take there. I also have to find rubber boots for the afternoon thunder storms that you can see rolling off Mt. Kenya from 15 miles away and which turn Nanyuki's dirt sidewalks and sidestreets into muddy bogs.
You can tell a woman is a regular in Nanyuki, I'm told, if she can walk in the mud with heels on. I'm still searching for the male equivalent.
Monday, May 7, 2007
An introduction and a primer in Maa
What does ol-ashumpai mean? Nothing, really.
There are something like 50 languages spoken in Kenya, and to my great fortune, the Maasai and Samburu I'll be working with speak one of the most difficult: Maa. It's highly tonal, and Maa-English translation dictionaries come with elaborate diagrams of the mouth, nose and throat with arrows and suggestions for how to make Maa noises. Good transliterations of Maa sentences are fascinating-looking things with backwards "c's", horizontal lines bisecting words at a time and accents sprouting at improbable angles from improbable letters
"Ol-ashumpai" is a bad transliteration for the Maa phrase for a white person. The real transliteration requires symbols that my computer can't make and yours can't read. I just wanted to avoid titling this blog some Kenya-related pun, like "Kenya Dig It?". So in that regard, this is success.
As a tangent, the Maasai used to have a much more colorful term for white colonists: "iloridaa enjekat" which translates as "those who confine their farts"- a derogatory reference to the pants-centric sartorial choices of British soldiers. Cole, I think the Maasai are your natural support bloc should you run another campaign based on your opposition to pants.
All of this linguistic dabbling is just a distraction. As much as I like travelling, I hate preparing for it. Drawing up lists, packing, making hotel reservations- who needs it? Far better to try to wrap your tongue, throat and nose around "karbobo naainyala endaa". True, lots of things need to be done before I leave on Sunday, but I can immediately think of dozens of situations in which I'll need to tell a Maasai "It is squirrels that have destroyed the food" in his native tongue. Of course, that could be the mefloquine talking. Mefloquine speaks Maa.
There are something like 50 languages spoken in Kenya, and to my great fortune, the Maasai and Samburu I'll be working with speak one of the most difficult: Maa. It's highly tonal, and Maa-English translation dictionaries come with elaborate diagrams of the mouth, nose and throat with arrows and suggestions for how to make Maa noises. Good transliterations of Maa sentences are fascinating-looking things with backwards "c's", horizontal lines bisecting words at a time and accents sprouting at improbable angles from improbable letters
"Ol-ashumpai" is a bad transliteration for the Maa phrase for a white person. The real transliteration requires symbols that my computer can't make and yours can't read. I just wanted to avoid titling this blog some Kenya-related pun, like "Kenya Dig It?". So in that regard, this is success.
As a tangent, the Maasai used to have a much more colorful term for white colonists: "iloridaa enjekat" which translates as "those who confine their farts"- a derogatory reference to the pants-centric sartorial choices of British soldiers. Cole, I think the Maasai are your natural support bloc should you run another campaign based on your opposition to pants.
All of this linguistic dabbling is just a distraction. As much as I like travelling, I hate preparing for it. Drawing up lists, packing, making hotel reservations- who needs it? Far better to try to wrap your tongue, throat and nose around "karbobo naainyala endaa". True, lots of things need to be done before I leave on Sunday, but I can immediately think of dozens of situations in which I'll need to tell a Maasai "It is squirrels that have destroyed the food" in his native tongue. Of course, that could be the mefloquine talking. Mefloquine speaks Maa.
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