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.
