19 September
Last night I ran in to the Dragoman crew, John and Tony, in an internet cafe as John was scrambling to locate all of the trip participants - the ripple effect of the airport situation in the states has complicated things. I noticed he had some Dragoman documents sitting next to his computer and introduced myself, which simplified his life a bit - apparently I was listed among the missing. I once was lost but now am found.
The neighborhood is engaging in both its color and its rawness. Obviously catering to the needs and desires of young western travelers is big business: the blocks in this part of town are built of backpacker flophouses, cheap restaurants and bars full of hookers. I didn't venture far last night, being both exhausted and cautious about wandering around by myself at night in a place I know so little about. But I've got the better part of two days to explore and plan to make the most of them.
Stuff is seriously cheap here - eight rands to the dollar, and rand prices seem to be only slightly higher than dollar prices back home.
A final disclaimer: Given the restraints of sporadic, dodgy and
expensive internet access, I likely won't be able to answer many emails
in any great length. But please don't take my brevity as a sign that I
don't appreciate receiving email - I certainly do.
21 September
Cape Town, at least this part of it: Waikiki mixed with Tijuana and multiplied by San Francisco's Mission district. Lots of fences, serious fences, eight foot tall close-meshed razor wire-topped affairs, often sporting multiple strands of electrification, wrapped around businesses, residences, schools, empty lots, you name it. And lots of spiky things stuck on top of other things that someone doesn't want someone else to be sitting on. Apparently South Africa takes private property very seriously.
The group: Eight passengers, three crew, six men, five women, one couple (for now), representing (or at least hailing from) Denmark, France, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Zimbabwe, England, Holland and America.
First sighting of animals that I had previously only seen in zoos: Baboons, lots of them, sitting around eating yellow flowers. And then an ostrich, which was likely an escapee from an ostrich farm, but still, an ostrich, walking around right there in front of me. And then a bunch of hydrexes (or at least that's what the person who told me what they were called sounded like he was saying), marmot-looking and -sized things that I was told (by the same person who told me that they're called hydrexes) are the closest living relative of the elephant. I personally didn't see the resemblance, but whatever. And then penguins. All of this as a part of a day trip to the Cape of Good Hope, a dramatic and very windy place where expansive plateaus of what we would call chaparral end abruptly hundreds of feet above pounding rolls of seriously pissed-off waves.
We're still in Cape Town tonight, but tomorrow we get going for real, camping somewhere or other. Which is fine with me, because I'm getting a little Boered here. Did everyone get that? Sorry. I'll probably regret sending that out as soon as I do, but for now I find myself amusing. Anyway, the next internet oasis is nine days up the road from here, so I'll be pretty much incommunicado until then.
Take care all.
3 October
Ha! Our first day out and we get stuck to the differential in wet sand. Notice I wrote "differential" and not "differentials" - as it turns out, Dragoman doesn't use four wheel drive trucks until up towards Kenya, since the roads down here, while mostly dirt, are generally pretty solid. But the campground we pulled in to wasn't, and that second differential would have come in very handy. We dug and dug and put the sand mats down and just spun ourselves in deeper. If we had been truly out in the middle of nowhere we would have gotten out eventually with a whole lot more digging. But as it was we were near a farm and paid the nice Afrikaner farmer for the use of a couple of his tractors. "Nice" as in very nice to we of European descent - but to his native African workers he was a complete prick. It was disorienting the way he'd speak to us quietly and warmly and then bark over his shoulder at his workers like they were convicts, a disturbing reminder of where we are. I guess I'm just used to the subtler, more covert style of American racism. The saddest thing was the way his workers just stared at him blankly while he ordered them around and then did what they were told to do without question. I'm not criticizing them at all for their docile acceptance of their situation - they were older, rural, and the product of a system which only took the first real steps towards meaningful change seven years ago. But it was hard to watch, and the angry indignant part of me would have found it very gratifying to see one of them hit the bastard with his shovel.
Another data point: This morning we stopped in Springbok for groceries and I went next door to get a pre-paid phone card. Since we were about to cross the border in to Namibia, I asked the woman behind the counter if phone cards purchased in South Africa would work in Namibia; she wasn't sure, and directed me to a man who was stocking the shelves. I asked him, and by way of a reply he said to me in a heavy Afrikaans accent "There is one thing that you have to remember: South Africa is in Africa. Namibia is in Africa." Ignoring the fact that those were two things, not one, I said "Yes?" He continued with his explanation: "Do you know the color black?" Thinking "Oh, Christ..." I replied that yes, I did. Looking very satisfied, he concluded his lesson by saying that "This is black Africa. Nothing works in black Africa." He and I were the only white people in the store, of course.
(By the way, I hope I don't give the impression that I was blind to everything beyond the racism in South Africa - but it was very striking...)
Depending on where you get your information, the Fish River Canyon is either the second or third largest in the world, behind the Grand Canyon and in front of or behind some canyon in South America. Exactly what "largest" means is also a little hazy. Second/third deepest, widest, longest? Second/third in the number of hot dogs it would take to fill it up? Regardless, it's a very big hole. And to my mind it's more appealing then the Grand Canyon, since, though less colorful, there is hardly anyone here and no development to speak of. We had intended to hike down to the bottom and back, but the canyon is closed. I guess it must be its day off. So we're just dangling our legs over the edge for a while.
It occurred to me last night that, being in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, I was seeing stars that I'd never seen before. I like that. Everything I'm seeing here I'm seeing for the first time, of course - but stars are different. I don't expect to see new things in the sky.
Barking geckos are about two inches long and produce an amazing amount
of sound, groups of five to ten descending chirpy croaks in quick
succession repeated every thirty seconds or so. They start yammering at
each other around dusk and go for half the night. And there are a lot of
them around: a rough guess would be one in every hundred square feet of
desert floor. At any given time there must be hundreds within earshot,
and the overall effect is show-stopping. The sheer number of the
pseudo-random croaks necessarily gives the impression of alternating
periods of organization and chaos, as if they were trying to pass
unified waves of croaking from east to west and north to south which
collide and disperse right above my head. I've never heard anything like
it. Add to this the full moon and a good rock to sit on and suddenly my
butt's gone numb because I've been there for hours.
12 October
When I first signed up for this trip I had thought that Dragoman was a company that ran rough trips through remote and exotic places, which it is; what I didn't realize is that they are just one of dozens of outfits that do "overland" trips, which, I've learned, is the official name for what I'm on.
Apparently the whole overland thing got its start back in the sixties with informal hippie buses doing magical mystery tours from Europe to Nepal and India. Time passed, a business opportunity was perceived, and a new branch grew on the tourism industry tree. One of the results of which being that at some of the campgrounds near the more popular points of interest - Fish River Canyon, for instance, or the Etosha game park - there might be four or five trucks from other overland companies, each of which seem to appeal to a different demographic. Some, like Dragoman, attract a lot of people like me, young to middle-aged professional types on hiatus hoping to find a balance between adventure and convenience. Others cater to an older retiree crowd, and still others have apparently remained true to the roots of overlanding, running loads of tie-dyed neo-hippies in trucks that are one step away from both farm machinery and the junkyard.
Dragoman is one of the oldest and largest overland companies, and I've been impressed so far with the quality and professionalism of the company in general and our trip's leaders in particular. But the realities of running a business have forced Dragoman to adopt one fairly frustrating policy: the group can not vote to change the itinerary, to skip one place in favor of staying longer in another or to take an unplanned side trip. It hasn't always been this way, there used to be a lot more flexibility. But inevitably people sued because what they saw on their trip didn't exactly match what was in the trip description and Dragoman was forced to cover its ass. So now, though we of course are not obliged to take part in any of the advertised activities, the policy is to give us all the opportunity to do so, whether we want it or not. And this necessarily means sticking to a pretty rigid schedule. Thanks a lot, litigious whiners of the world. You all suck.
And speaking of advertised activities, I personally opted to skip all of them - skydiving, quadcycling, and sandboarding - during our two day stay in Swakopmund, choosing instead to wander around the town, getting a sense of what life is like there, as well as a decent haircut and a shitty pair of running shoes (six blisters the first time I ran in them), sitting around in cafes eating German pastries (there is still a heavy German presence in Namibia) and talking with locals about everything from the World Trade center attacks to whether kudu or oryx makes the better biltong (spiced dried meat, I tried the kudu and passed on the oryx). I figured that since there are plenty of parachutes and quadcycles in the states but no Swakopmunds I should make the most of it while I was in one.
Yesterday we went to a cheetah rescue/breeding center. Ranchers down here generally shoot cheetahs on sight, but one family has decided to turn their ranch in to a cheetah haven. The guy who runs the place is a little intense; at odds with the Namibian government over his breeding program, he informed us, in the course of a half-crocked and expletive-laden spiel to drum up financial support for his expansion plans, that he'd shoot anyone who tried to take his cheetahs away and that he cares more about animal rights than he does about human rights. Um, sure, I'll be sending him a big check just as soon as I get home...
But aside from the suicidal public relations, it was quite an entertaining place, with more cheetahs than you could shake a terrified springbok at. They'd fenced in several very large areas of natural veldt for the wild ones and had four tame ones wandering around in their backyard which would happily dermabrade any exposed skin with their 60 grit tongues if you let them. They liked getting scratched behind the ears like house cats and had a purr that could be heard ten feet away, though we were warned not to look them in the eyes and to quickly back off if they displayed any of the standard signs of feline annoyance - twitching tails, flattened ears, two inch claws ripping the carotids out of your neck, etc.
Things I've learned so far:
- 27 degrees C means "pleasant", 32 means "hot", 39 means "stinking hot", and it's 39 a lot in Namibia.
- There's not much point in taking pictures of stunning sunrises and sunsets here because there's generally one of each every day.
- You can hear the bones crunch when a lion eats a springbok thirty feet
away from you.
22 October
At one point the hippo trail we were following actually led to some - at least ten ton's worth, given that there were five of them and an adult generally weighs between three and five thousand pounds. It was an unforgettable encounter. They're hugely impressive animals with a call that's a cross between a pig's oink shifted down five octaves and the lowest note from a cathedral's pipe organ. It carries for miles and you can feel it in your stomach. When they're in the water there's little indication of the massive gray bulk lurking just below the cavernous nostrils and silly little flappity ears. Hippobergs, and deserving of as much respect as the ice variety: hippos kill more people in Africa than any other non-mosquito animal. And there we sat in our tippy little boats a stone's throw away from five bellowing, territorial Mac truck loads of them telling us in no uncertain terms to go away. We did.
I didn't come here to see animals, but at this point I've seen just about everything from the Southern Africa section of the zoo except a leopard. And my favorite? The warthog. They're the cutest ugly animal I've ever seen, and scrappy: a big one might weigh no more than eighty pounds but will stand its ground - or at least most of it - against elephants, rhinos, buffalo, anything that doesn't actually want to eat it. Like most piggy things they're relatively clever, and they do this hilarious move where they get down on their front knees and creep along like that, rooting around for whatever it is that warthogs root around for. They don't care how ugly or silly they look; they do what they do and the rest of the animals are free to go pound sand if they don't like it. I like warthogs. Also ants.
The town of Victoria Falls is a place in which I'm glad to be and of which I'll be glad to be out. It exists to sell. The first indication of this are the dozens of black market currency changers that pull you in as many directions as you near the town center. Hello sir hello change dollars best rate 260 okay come with me to special office hello okay this way to special office special rate 270 hello hello. (The official exchange rate is 55 Zim dollars to one U.S. and a "special office" is a stairwell or alley out of the legal eye.) I personally find the mayhem to be exhilarating, challenging and sad - an opportunity for foreigners like me to feel rich at the expense of an ailing economy.
Twenty U.S. dollars buys you and inch-thick stack of colorful Zim notes - the 500 featuring a picture of a coal-fired power plant, the 100 a huge dam with gushing spillways - which you can then use to purchase the town's primary product, the falls themselves. For 1,100 Zim you can actually just go look at them, but most people choose to head downstream a bit and antagonize their adrenal glands through any of a several techniques - bungi jumping from the bridge over the gorge below the falls, for instance, or rappelling down its sides, or running the rapids at the bottom of it. There are a dozen or more agencies that will gladly set you up with a multi-day package that includes all of the above, and to gain an edge on the competition I saw one that promised "All the beer you can drink!" for the rafting portion.
Now anyone that knows me at all knows that adrenaline is one of my most
cherished hormones, but the way that the unique power and scale of the
falls seems to have gotten a little lost in the marketing of all the
"extreme" activities associated with them leaves me with a bad taste in
my mouth. So here I sit, 1,100 Zim lighter and merely looking at the
falls, quite content to be writing on paper wet from the mist.
28 October
All of which is of particular interest to me because I've decided to
stay here for a while and let the group go on without me. I can rejoin
them at any time, but for now I feel the need to observe Africa less and
participate in it more. I have some contacts provided by someone who's
lived here (thanks, Valerie) and some inspiration provided by a
remarkable person I met in Victoria Falls (you know who you are) and
plenty of options. I might find some volunteer work to do, maybe
teaching here in Harare or building something out in the countryside
somewhere. I might jettison the 50% of my stuff I don't need and join
the backpacker crowd or load it all on a little motorcycle and buy a
map. Or maybe I'll just be a lazy ex-pat for a month or two and feel
what it's like to live somewhere so different than home. I'll keep
everyone posted on what I decide to do and how it's going once I'm doing
it.
29 October
I was promised last night by the proprietress of a local Zimbabwean
restaurant that if I returned tonight she'd let me help her cook. I plan
to call her on the offer. Presumably I'll help do up some sadza, the
maize flour paste that is to Zimbabwean cuisine what rice is to Chinese.
Beyond that I'm not sure what I'll be getting up to, though odds are
it'll involve chickens (hopefully pre-killed) and/or offal. If nothing
else, I should gain some insight in to just what it was that those rats
I saw running in and out of the kitchen last night found so fascinating
about the place. Wish me luck.
31 October
I've got money all over me today. There's $Z 200.00 in my wallet, a pacifier for would-be muggers. A more thorough thief would encounter my second level of obfuscation, the $Z 1000.00 stuffed in to the bottom of my back pocket. If he kept going he'd find the $Z 1000.00 in my shirt pocket and if he went for my backpack he'd get another $Z 500, a broken umbrella and a half empty bottle of water. Woo-hoo, knock yourself out, chief! Of course if he's willing to pants me - and I'd don't even want to contemplate why he'd want to do that - he'd hit the jackpot (no, not that): my money belt stuffed with 100 $Z 100.00 notes. Total take: $Z 12,700, or about $US 49.00.
And while we're on the subject of crime: I've been warned repeatedly not to walk alone at night in Harare. Not even the two blocks down to my favorite internet cafe? No, sir, not even two blocks. Let me call you a taxi. Okay, fine, it's only forty cents US. But the other day I bought a walking stick - ebony, for all intents and purposes as hard and heavy as iron - thinking that if I found myself in a situation where I absolutely had to walk alone at night a nice big stick in my hand would make me a less attractive target.
Well last night I looked up from computer number 10 - my favorite, the one on which I've clandestinely installed various useful bits of software - and found that it had gone good and dark outside. And me without my stick. Did I have them call me a taxi? Of course not, it was only two little blocks and not even 9:00 yet.
I was a block away from my hotel when three men crossed with what appeared to be sudden and great intent from their side of the street to mine. I thought "Oops. Here we go. I'm fucked." I did my best not to break my stride, mentally preparing myself to hand it over with style and composure - and then they walked right past me, talking amongst themselves, apparently completely uninterested in me. I did not get mugged.
But the non-event did make obvious to me my naivete. Let's assume that the three men actually had been muggers and I had had my big bad stick with me. Odds are that instead of just taking my money they would have first beaten the crap out of me with my own stick and then taken my money.
So. The moral of this story is twofold: 1) Don't walk around Harare alone at night with a stick that's larger than one you wouldn't mind being beaten with and 2) Don't walk around Harare alone at night at all, dumb ass; call a taxi, even if it is only two little blocks.
I'll fill everyone in on the ongoing cooking lessons and my new Auntie
Tabu in some future mailing - right now I've got to head downtown and do
some shopping. Not only do I need to pick up a fully functional umbrella
- the rainy season has officially begun - but I want to ditch these very
practical pants with the zip-off legs in favor of a few pair that don't
scream "Tourist!" quite so loudly.
3 November
This king sends a group of soldiers out on a long and dangerous journey to deliver a priceless vase to somewhere that's a long and dangerous journey away. He also sends a wise old monk along because the story wouldn't work without one.
The soldiers are all understandably obsessed with the vase; it's so fragile, so valuable, and their only reason for being where they are. Half way through the trip they get to arguing about who among them is best qualified to carry the vase. Of course a struggle ensues, of course the vase ends up shattered on the ground, and of course the soldiers are absolutely horrified. But the monk just claps his hands, smiles and says "Ha! Now at last the journey can truly begin!"
I was carrying a very beautiful, very expensive but very heavy vase overflowing with the grand idea that I would come as close to seeing Africa end-to-end as was possible in seven months. Letting the truck go on without me last week was my way of trying to smash that vase and allow the journey to begin.
Bear with me for a bit and I'll explain why I bought a suit, a tie and a pair of dress shoes yesterday.
In 1966 Auntie Tabu's mother went in to labor in a rural Kenyan village. It was going badly, and in hopes of flagging down a ride to a hospital her sister somehow managed to get her to the edge of the nearest road.
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was the first Vice President of Kenya after independence. Mr. Odinga had a handful of children, one of whom was Beryl, a teenaged girl being driven home from boarding school down the same road where Tabu's mother and future aunt were desperately trying to hitch a ride. Beryl had her driver pick the pair up and accompanied them to the hospital.
The doctor examined Tabu's mother and determined that either the mother or the baby, but not both, could survive the necessary emergency surgery.
The surgery was performed, Tabu's mother died, and that made Tabu an unwelcome baby, the cause of her mother's death. She was given her name, which means "trouble" or "problem" in Swahili, and abandoned in the hospital for six months. Her only visitor during this time was Beryl, who would make the long drive from school to visit her whenever possible.
Eventually Beryl suggested to her father that Tabu be brought to live with the family and he agreed. So Tabu was raised with the Odinga children and eventually married one of her "brothers", thereby making her membership in the Odinga family official.
Mr. Odinga eventually lost his job as Vice President when his Marxist leanings didn't fit in with President Jomo Kenyatta's capitalistic agenda, but he remained a powerful force in Kenyan politics until he died six years ago. Several of his sons went in to politics and one of them, Raila, is a viable contender to replace current president Daniel arap Moi in the upcoming elections.
Beryl now owns The Roots of Africa restaurant just down the street from me - the one that's become the center of my fledgling Zimbabwean social life and at which I'm no longer allowed to pay for meals - and Tabu, her adopted sister and sister-in-law, helps her run the place.
Tabu's father died in his Kenyan village last Tuesday. The following evening I was hanging around in the restaurant after eating dinner when I was honored to be invited to be part of a small gathering of Tabu's friends and extended family, not so much a memorial as a low-key wake. A little drinking, some laughter to go with the condolences, and not too many tears.
Tabu is leaving for Kenya tomorrow (Sunday) to attend her father's funeral and to visit with both her families - the wealthy, educated, politically-connected one in which she was raised and the simple, rural one from which she was born - and I was one of those asked to accompany her.
So I'm off to Kenya for a few weeks, where I'll be both attending a funeral and spending some time with the man who may well be the next president of Kenya.
And that is why I bought a suit yesterday.
NOTE:
6 November
I'm staying in a flat in Jerusalem, one of the many "estates" on the outskirts of Nairobi. The estates were analogous to the townships of apartheid-era South Africa, those designated areas in which native Africans were allowed - i.e. forced - to live. In terms of appearance the estates are a collection of crumbling concrete blocks and tin sheets which would be condemned and bulldozed in America, but that's irrelevant; this is Africa, and the estates are not slums, they're neighborhoods.
I'm here as the guest of two of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga's grandchildren and a friend of theirs - Nicole, Winnie and Stella. The flat in which they live, along with their four children, was his. The room in which we eat is the one in which he held his secret meetings, in which he planned and directed the struggle for independence. The bedroom in which I sleep is the one in which he slept. Though a very humble place, it is very special in Kenyan history, and I have been welcomed in to it as family.
Yesterday I met the Minister of Energy, Jaramogi's son Raila, and presented him with a gift from his sister Beryl in Harare. Oh, and by the way, a correction: I previously said that he was a viable contender to unseat the current president, Daniel arap Moi, in the upcoming elections, but Daniel arap Moi isn't running. So Raila Odinga is a viable contender to beat someone else in the race for president.
Tonight I'm attending a fund raiser with the Odinga clan, and then tomorrow I'm off to another town the name of which I've forgotten to prepare for Tabu's father's funeral on Sunday. At which, by the way, I've been asked to read a brief speech written for the occasion by Beryl, who could not be here.
Attempting to describe Nairobi in general will have to wait; this is all
I have time for now. Although if anyone can explain to me how it is
that, less than two weeks after deciding to stay behind in Harare, I'm
sleeping in the bedroom of one of the founding fathers of modern Kenya,
presenting gifts to one of the most powerful men in the country and
giving a speech on behalf of one of the Odinga children at a funeral for
a man I never met, please let me know. I'm all ears.
9 November
I continue to be at a loss as to where to begin when trying to describe Nairobi. It's so intense. And so photogenic, but I doubt I'd make it two blocks with my camera before it became someone else's - Nairobi is a very dangerous place. Two of the guys I've been hanging around with in Jerusalem, Chellah and Brian, have offered to escort me on an urban photo safari, and I'm going to take them up on their offer. But I could easily spend many days here taking hundreds of pictures, downtown, in the estates, in the markets and the slums. Everywhere I look is contrast, color, action.
Matatus are the primary form of public transportation in Nairobi. They're small buses that seat maybe 20 but through standing, cramming, and sitting on stranger's laps (like mine) often contain 40. They're privately owned and operated and therefore in constant competition for the same passengers. So they race. On roads barely two matatus wide crowded with pedestrians, bicycles, human-drawn carts and wheelchairs they pass each other at 50 MPH. (I happen to know the actual speed because I've been befriended by a few of the matatu drivers - and so am sometimes granted the privilege of riding with them up front in the cab. From there I'm afforded a clear view of both the speedometer and the numerous near death-by-matatu experiences of the pokey.)
When matatus stop they often don't quite, just slowing enough for prospective passengers to grab the handles next to the always-open door as it rolls by. It's then up to them to worm their way in to the bolus of bodies before getting scraped off the outside of the matatu by the next one flying by from the other direction.
Each matatus is decorated differently. Most start with a violently fluorescent base color and are then intricately airbrushed from end to end with everything from psychedelic flame jobs to hip hop-inspired graffiti art. At night they're lit up inside and out with red, green, and blue neon lights, and they all have names: "Top Billin'", "Kid Rose", "Ballin' All Day", "Phat Farm" and "No Mo Worries In Da Ghetto" were a few I noticed on the way in to town this morning. The best - and therefore most densely packed - matatus can be heard coming from a block away because they thump, six or more subwoofers shaking the ground and sending their passenger's insides in to harmonic resonance with rap, reggae and R&B.
In case it's not obvious, I love the matatus. They're completely insane.
13 November
First let me say (again) that I truly do appreciate all the email I receive from everyone, and I would like to answer it all - and sometimes I try - but the connections here are so slow that it sometimes takes five minutes just to open a message, and longer to reply - and I've got over 30 in the queue that I want to reply to but just don't have the time or shillings to. So please do write me if you have the urge, and please understand if you don't hear back from me in a timely manner.
Okay so let's see - I'm hoping to find a flat of my own in Jerusalem within the next few days. I'll still be spending a lot of time with the Odinga girls, but as much as I like it there, with four adults, a baby, two two year olds and a seven year old (plus me) all in a two bedroom flat it's a little cramped. No one wants me to leave, but I need to pick up a little space for myself. I'll need to live very frugally to last long in Nairobi - but I'm among people for whom frugality is not optional, and I'm learning about living with less. I'm also learning about how to re-connect the electricity when it gets shut off for non-payment - happens a lot here. I haven't had a hot shower since I've been here, either - getting used to the cold water, kind of like it.
I'm going down to one of the local elementary schools tomorrow or the next day to talk to the headmaster about starting a small computer literacy class for some of the older kids, maybe an after school type thing for motivated ones. I'm planing on offering to provide the machines myself and leave them as donations when I leave Kenya, nothing fancy, boxes I could build for 300 bucks in the states. Not sure if I could build them that cheaply here - not sure if having one of my stateside geeks build up four of them and ship them here would be more economical - not sure if maybe my wonderful generous company Adobe which did not lay me off last week would be interested in a small donation for a very good cause - not sure of a lot of things, but this is my plan, and I've had nothing but positive feedback from everyone I've spoken with about it. I'll let you know what happens.
The funeral was amazing, tiring - bus left at 9:00 PM Saturday, arrived near the village at 7:00 Sunday morning. Then we rode in the back of a pickup another three or four miles, and then on the back of bicycles down a maze of paths that finally got us to the funeral about 9:00. We put on our nice clothes and it all began, went until 5:00, turned in to more of a political rally then a funeral. 400 to 500 people turned out. Then we had to walk back to the main road, maybe another two miles of dirt, where we caught a country matatu, finally arriving at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga's old house in Kisumu - i.e. Nicole's grandma Susan's house - about 9:00, where we spent the night. Up early the next morning for another eight hour bus ride. The point being that the whole funeral thing was memorable but exhausting.
I've got to go now - more details as they develop...
25 November
What do you do when a deeply filthy boy of about seven threatens to smear you with a handful of the shit that he's just deposited on the sidewalk if you don't give him some money?
The hundreds of street kids in Nairobi aren't troubled runaways for the most part but children who have been abandoned to the streets, raised by each other and the need to do whatever their young minds can conceive of to survive. Their behavior is beyond judgement, the natural amorality of the borderline feral. They're just what happens when children are dumped on concrete. They live like rats - not a value judgement, just an observation - and are generally treated as such by the population and government of Nairobi, with the exception that they are not actively exterminated. The streets themselves are left to eventually do the job.
What I did was give the boy nothing; shit's not deadly and I was twice his size. He was bluffing. But my refusal to give had little to do with not wanting to reinforce negative behavior and a whole lot to do with sheer disgust. I'm embarrassed to admit it but it's true: though my memory of his condition is heartbreaking, when I was actually faced with the empty eyes and pathetic handful my reaction was not compassion, it was a desire for him to be out of my sight. Which is the same thing that Nairobi wants.
The other day I ran in to my friend Chellah downtown and he told me that I had just missed seeing a man being beaten nearly - or possibly all of the way - to death for stealing a cell phone. Beaten, kicked, and stomped by a group of public spirited citizens responding to the cry "Thief!" in a manner fairly typical in Nairobi. Out here in the estates thieves are sometimes doused with kerosene and burned alive. I know that's probably hard to believe, but brutal mob justice is an accepted, if not universally endorsed, part of life here.
It's illegal, of course, but the police generally lack both the time and the resources to investigate either the original alleged crime or the subsequent unlawful retribution. The fact is that most of the police have little interest in getting involved in anything that doesn't include some amount of money finding its way in to their pockets. And they also know that if they began questioning people no one would know anything, out of fear of retaliation from, or in support of, the vigilantes.
And so the last time a thief was burned in Jerusalem - less than a year ago, and just across the street from where I'm staying - the corpse laid there for nearly a day before the police even showed up, and when they did it was just to haul the thing away.
And yet, despite the commonplace beatings and occasional executions inflicted on thieves, theft is still rampant, a sign of just how desperate so many people here are.
The tragedy of untimely death here sometimes seems to get crushed beneath the sheer weight of its ubiquity. It's common for people with children to have lost at least one, and the memorial pictures of the young and departed on so many walls often include those of spouses.
But the whole concept of an "untimely" death is an artificial thing which presupposes the independent existence of acceptable and unacceptable times for death to occur. That's not reality. It's the ready access to modern medicines and hospitals, the consistently enforced traffic laws and building codes, the effective crime prevention and relative abundance of safe, nutritious food - in short, the generalized wealth - that affords we Northern Hemispherians the luxury of categorizing deaths as being "timely" or "untimely."
Down here death is not expected to arrive on as tight and predictable a schedule; when it comes it hurts just as much but surprises less. Down here more people are forced to cope with losing more people more often. Down here death is just a bigger part of life.
Though the term "summer" doesn't actually mean much in Nairobi, given
its proximity to the equator, the fact remains that all of the schools
just shut down last week for three months of summer vacation. Which
pretty much left my plans for teaching computer literacy to kids in the
schools in the "Nice idea, but..." box. So then I thought that maybe I'd
build a few machines and teach the basics to whomever in Jerusalem might
be interested, kids or adults. But it turns out that there's already a
small place here - just a couple of old machines and a modem - that's in
the business of doing exactly that, and as a foreign visitor I'm not
going to do anything that might take business away from the people who
actually live here. So at this point I'm not sure whether or not I'll be
doing anything at all with computers. I have been messing around a lot
with pipes, toilets and wires, though.
10 December
There are many impoverished and underprivileged people in America who never really get a chance, but here there are a whole lot more who don't even have the opportunity to never get a chance because there a simply so few chances available to not be gotten.
Sixty percent of Nairobi's 2.5 million inhabitants live in the slums, sprawling muddy warrens of unplumbed corrugated metal and cardboard. (The Kibera slum alone is home to 700,000, making it the largest such place in the world.) Primary and secondary education is not free here, and many parents must choose between sending their children to school and feeding them. With no capital or possibility of borrowing enough with which to do much, entrepreneurial spirit is stillborn, or at least severely stunted; with no land, people in the city can't subsistence farm, so they subsistence scavenge.
Anyone who pays any attention at all to the world is well aware that the majority of its people exist under some variation of this desperate choicelessness. But the near impossibility of escape is something which, while perhaps indicative of a lack of imagination on my part, I've had to actually live amidst to fully appreciate. Good people the world over do everything they can in their limited power and it will never be enough, not during most of their lifetimes.
And here I am, having chosen to live in a crowded flat in the estates instead of a hotel, riding in matatus instead of taxis, hoping to learn something, to have an authentic experience which will change my perspective on life. Trying to tell myself that I'm not just a rich dilettante, that I'm not just slumming for kicks (even though I'm in the estates, one step up from the real slums). The fact is that at the end of the day I'm a wealthy, privileged observer and at the end of a few more months I'll be returning to my wealthy, privileged life in America with a handful of photographs of other people's realties.
And that's okay, I don't mean to sound so negative about what I'm doing; I'm helping people in various ways that I'll write about some other time, I'm sharing cultural awareness, and I'm learning from people who are learning from me. But those people are no less deserving of my wealth and privilege than I am of their lack of opportunity to acquire them. Clearly, the world is not a fair place. But, as I suggested at the beginning of this ramble, that's kind of an empty statement, because fairness does exist outside of our agreement that it does.
But chance - and therefore luck - is a very real thing that's been
around since the Big Bang. And while I've never felt particularly proud
of being an American - after all, it's not an accomplishment, but just
something that happened to me - I have developed a renewed appreciation
of just how lucky I am to have been born one. And maybe that's what I'm
trying to teach myself.
December 14th
I realize that my position is not easily defensible from a scientific standpoint, since science quite sensibly describes multi-parametered data in a manner indicative of increasing specificity. Kingdom leads to phylum leads to class leads to order and so on down to species, for instance. And since every year has twelve 14ths, one December and is itself unique in history, the "Ordinal Day of Month, Month, Year" format is clearly the one most in compliance with accepted scientific convention.
But so what. I'm more interested in getting the most meaningful information first, and for me that's the month with its associated season. (As a matter of fact, I feel that the year is also arguably of more significance than the ordinal day of the month, but I'll let that one slide; the majority of dates mentioned in casual communication refer to the current year, and I almost always know which one that is without being told.)
So from now on I'll be using the correct "Month, Ordinal Day of Month, Year" format, which I realize will put me at odds with most of the rest of the world. But keep in mind that, while most of the rest of the world is clearly right about the metric system, a good bit of it still insists on driving on the wrong side of the damn road.
Every conscience bears the weight of numerous guilty pleasures. As evidence of this I submit Baywatch, which, while universally ridiculed, sure seems to be on a lot for a show that no one will accept responsibility for watching. I've known adults to hide copies of People between their New Yorkers and Atlantic Monthlies like adolescent boys hide Playboys between their mattresses and box springs, and some people (ahem) have even been known to consume, as single servings, entire pints of Ben And Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.
But both the guilt and the pleasure associated with these dirty little secrets are context-sensitive. For example, allow me to confess: Last week I joined a gym in which I've been spending several hours each day. (In fact, I'm writing this between sets of shoulder presses and curls.)
Most people back home having done the same would likely consider it a positive step and probably not experience it as a source of pleasure, at least not in the same way as they might watching Pamela Whatever-Her-Name-Is-These-Days' fake breasts jiggle around on television or shoveling 6000 cold creamy coffee-flavored calories in to their gobbly gluttonous faces.
But here, where going for a run means first recruiting an escort to avoid having to walk home in my socks after someone decides that my Nikes would look better on him than on me and then risking a nasty case of Black Lung disease from huffing through the permafog of diesel flatulence, a gym, which is usually one of my least favorite places to exercise, takes on an oasis-like quality of pristine security in which I can freely exert to my pounding heart's content. That, along with access to the first hot showers I've had since arriving in Kenya, is the pleasure part.
(By the way, there are no American-style gyms to speak of in Nairobi, just a few five-star hotels which will sell you access to their mediocre facilities. I chose the Hilton because it's the closest to the end of the matatu line.)
And the guilt? I'm paying 10,000 shillings a month for my membership, about $120.00 or twice what the average Nairobi resident who's lucky enough to have a regular job makes during the same period of time, for the privilege of being able to burn off more calories each day than many Kenyans can afford to feed themselves.
But it's not even really the fact that I'm spending money frivolously in the midst of all this need that troubles me; frivolous spending in a poverty-stricken world is the same whether I do it here at Ground Zero or from a safe distance back home. What bothers me is that each morning I sneak off in to a heavily guarded world of climate controlled extravagance which none of my friends here can afford to enter. What bothers me is that each morning I admit to myself by action that, as flattered as I've felt by Jerusalem's acceptance of me, and despite the fact that I shoot pool with the locals and know the names of all the good matatus and crap in a hole in the floor just like everyone else here, I'm still just a wealthy tourist passing through.
On the other hand... Between all the exercise and the low-calorie diet here, I might actually be able to fit in to my skinny pants again by the time I get home.
What's wrong with Canada, anyway?
Virtually everyone I meet here wants to go to America, but the majority of them never will because U.S. visas are nearly impossible for Kenyans to obtain due to the fact that most Kenyans can not meet the criteria necessary to obtain one.
A tourist visa will only be issued after an invitation is extended from an American citizen and, more importantly, the hopeful tourist presents proof of significant financial means. I'm told that a current bank statement showing a balance of one million shillings, or about $12,000.00, will suffice. But the invitation itself will also be subject to scrutiny. If I were to go home tomorrow and invite one of my friends from Jerusalem to visit me, the INS would likely want to see evidence of a longer-term association than I have had to date with any of them before issuing a visa. Because for all the INS knows, I just sold an invitation to a complete stranger who intends to disappear in to the crowd once inside America. Nor will acceptance to an American university without a full ride scholarship or an American sponsor willing to take legal financial responsibility for the student do the trick. The fact is that without money, connections, or special skills in demand by an American company a Kenyan can not get in to America.
But Kenya is a part of the British Commonwealth, which means that it's quite easy for a Kenyan to get in to Canada and leads me back to my initial question: What's wrong with Canada, anyway?
"It's too cold." Hmmm. Most of the Kenyans I've spoken with on the subject seem to be primarily interested in the East Coast, Boston, New York, Philadelphia. This in a place where people put on jackets when the temperature drops to 70 degrees and full parkas with hoods and all when it hits 60 degrees in the Highlands. I seriously doubt that they'd be able to tell the difference between Toronto cold and Boston cold.
"There aren't enough black people there." Well, I don't have any demographic statistics handy, but as far as I know Canada doesn't have a reputation for being any less racially tolerant, or more racially intolerant, than America. At any rate, I can't imagine that any racial tensions they might encounter in Canada would be worse than the tribal tensions they already live with in Kenya. And I've heard, from both African Americans and African Africans, that certain less evolved elements of the former community will often treat the latter quite poorly, so having a similarly dark face is no guarantee of welcome and acceptance in America.
"It's too expensive." Again, I don't have any statistics, and I'm sure that the cost of living in Canada varies from place to place just as it does in the states. But I seriously doubt that living in Canada is significantly more expensive in general than living in America.
Don't misunderstand me; it's not like I'm trying to talk anyone out of coming to America. All of my friends here have a standing invitation to visit me any time they're able. But for any Kenyans reading this on the web, please don't be so quick to rule out Canada. Your Commonwealthedness makes it easy for you to get there, their national anthem is prettier than ours, and I've never met a Canadian I didn't like. The fact is that there's nothing wrong with Canada! It's a good place. Almost as good as America, in fact.
(Yes, my Canadian friends, that was a joke.)
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
(Just as an example, let's consider bed making. I don't do it. I'm just going to unmake the damn thing later the same day, so what's the point of making it each morning, of routinely organizing something which, to serve it's intended purpose, must be just as routinely disorganized? I might as well scrub the soles of my shoes with kitchen cleanser each morning before going out. Pointless, pointless, pointless.)
Now to be fair, I must acknowledge the possibility that I'm merely choosing to interpret my own social incompetence as sensible, rational behavior. This has in fact been the subject of many discussions and debates with my shrink(s) as well as with my dear, dear friend with the bad haircut (who charges a lot less than the former, by the way, just a cosmopolitan or three).
On the other hand, I do make my living as a computer programmer (at least on those infrequent occasions when I'm actually there to do so) and so some degree of social ineptitude is to be expected; I have my geek image to maintain, after all. Although on the bed making issue I stand firm: my position is unassailable. Bed making is nothing more than digging holes and filling them back up again. It's no coincidence that some of those most concerned with proper bed making are drill sergeants in military boot camps, individuals whose job it is to indoctrinate young people in to a life of unquestioned adherence to a compendium of rules compiled for the sole purpose of creating unquestioning adherence to a compendium of rules.
Okay, so what does all this have to do with my leaving for India on January 12th? The bed making bit, absolutely nothing; it was just a tangent to my rantlette about my lack of patience with formalized, protracted and expectation-laden conclusions to social interactions (or my interpersonal cluelessness, depending on your point of view; I'm willing to entertain both).
But I did start writing this with the intention of converging from several directions on a clever segue (which has turned out to be tenuous, at best) in to the whole "I'm going to India" thing and how, having woken up one morning to hear the same voice that convinced me to leave the truck in Harare and live in Jerusalem for two months tell me that it's time to go to India, I decided to take its advice. And also that, having made that decision, I feel very much done with this place and wish I could just skip all the farewell parties and get on the plane to Mumbai today. Decide, act. Decide, act. That's how I work best in cases like this. Decide, wait, act - that makes me edgy. Also, I hate goodbyes, and there will be so many of them. They've started already, in fact.
But let me get real for a minute and drop the stuff about mysterious voices telling me when, where and what to do. There are no voices beyond my own best judgement asserting itself, and the reason that it's telling me to leave Nairobi, despite all the friends I'll miss and the eye-opening experiences I continue to have each day, is that I've had enough of being a target. I'm sick to death of walking around with my hackles half up in constant threat assessment mode, paying as much attention to my peripheral vision and the sounds and shadows behind me as I do to what's in front. Of trying to look, act and feel bigger and tougher than I am.
The other day a duo of pickpockets intentionally caused a passenger jam with me in between them as we were all exiting a matatu. The one behind me went for my Velcroed pocket, a lame attempt which I both felt and heard. I slapped his hand away and called him a fuckhead and tried to stare him down but he wouldn't even look at me. After we all hit the pavement I went straight for him and got in his face, yelling about how he was a fucking pickpocket (like that was news to anyone) and giving him a solid shove against the matatu. No one, not he or his buddies, did anything; they could see that I was one disproportionately pissed-off mzungu overdosed on adrenaline.
The point of that story is that I really wanted to get in to it with him, and I'm a guy who hasn't been in a fight since a half-hearted playground scuffle with John Richards in the sixth grade. But this place, this place is changing me. I'm a big flashing white neon sign that says "Dumb mzungu here, rob me cheat me con me!" and I swear to God I have had way more than enough of it. I walk around at night with my big ebony walking stick considering whether I should go for the knees first and then the head if he still feels like walking or just go straight for the head and (hopefully) be done with it.
This is a violent, predatory town in which I'm at the bottom of the food chain by virtue of my color and assumed wealth (like I actually carry any money with me at night...). And I do not like the effect it's having on me. I'm finding that I actually want someone to fuck with me so they'll learn the hard way that, while I may be white, I'm no naive Hiltonian mzungu here for a safari and certainly not worth the trouble and pain it will cost them to tangle with me.
This is pure foolishness, of course, because there are some very dangerous people - and even more dangerous groups of them - in this town for whom I'm no match. But more importantly, this is not the me I've ever been nor the one I want to be. Anyone who knows me at all knows this. I will be only too glad to feel whatever latent primal aggressive tendencies that have been brought to the surface by the past two months of living in this environment of constant threat and mistrust sink back down in to my inner Neanderthal where they belong.
Which brings me to India. My sudden decision to jump continents isn't just a move to distance myself from the negative effect that life in Nairobi is having on me. For starters, Mumbai is no place to find peace and quiet; its population is equal to that of the entire country of Kenya and is home to a thriving community of pickpockets and con men, although I'm told there is very little violent crime there. But I don't plan on hanging around for longer than it takes to orient myself and secure train passage to Bodhgaya where, as it turns out, the Dalai Lama will be staying and speaking during the second half of January. And I'd be very interested in hearing what he has to say, provided he has it to say in English, of course.
But that's not why I've picked Bodhgaya as my primary destination - I didn't even know the DL was going to be there when I made my decision. I chose Bodhgaya because it's small, relatively remote, off the main tourist trail and, as the place where the Buddha allegedly attained enlightenment, the site of many monasteries and their monks from all over the Buddhist world. It seems likely to be place where I doubt I'll be needing my stick for anything besides walking.
So backing up and reading over what I've written so far I see that I've covered a lot of ground and that it really doesn't all hang together so well. I'm guessing it'd be worth a "C" or so in a lower division writing course. But what the hell, I'm among friends, right? And I lack the will to do any major surgery at this point.
But to wrap it up, I'll summarize the salient, rambling, details: 1) It's time for me to leave Nairobi, because, while exciting, it's stimulating a facet of my personality that I'd prefer to remain recessive. 2) Once I've decided to leave a place I like to do so quickly and with a minimum of fuss, but, regrettably, I have to wait another two weeks before leaving and there's no such thing as a fussless departure in Kenya. 3) I've chosen India as my next destination because A) I've always wanted to go there and B) while I hope that I've never been pretentious enough to refer to myself as a "Buddhist", a term which generally carries the attendant implication of the deification of the dead man we call the Buddha, of all the wisdom traditions that I've studied in my amateurish way, Zen Buddhism has for many years resonated with me most consistently. Zen's a long way from the Buddhism taught by the Buddha himself, generally unconcerned with complex cosmologies, karma, reincarnation, Nirvana and anything else much beyond a practice which is designed to help make one better at being wherever one happens to be. But still, Zen evolved from the traditions started by the Buddha in Bodhgaya, so the place does hold some intrigue for me.
(As an aside, I feel compelled to mention the fact that I have serious problems with the deification of any human being, dead or alive, however great their insights, teaching and gifts to the world in terms of moral and ethical philosophies on which to base civilized behavior. My apologies in advance for offending the sensibilities of those whose I will undoubtedly offend, but I include in this category Christ, Mohammed, the full litany of Catholic saints and the Pope himself, a good and pious man whom people the world over nonetheless seem to regularly confuse with God. I don't reject their wisdom, but they're people. Very special people, but still: just people.)
But. At any rate. Returning from yet another tangential blither, let me
say that while I would hardly consider my trip to India (and to Bodhgaya
specifically) to be a spiritual pilgrimage, I do think that it might be
a pleasant change of pace to spend some time in a safe, quiet place full
of Buddhists from all over the world and which is, incidentally, no
where near the border with Pakistan.
Friday, January 11th, 2002
- It's not impolite to pick your nose here at any time. Middle of a conversation, something up there's bugging you, take care of it. I'll miss that.
- Though sometimes I'm highly conscious of my whiteness, particularly in situations where it makes me appear as prey to thugs, at other times I completely forget about it, and I like that. Until I see a picture of me and some of my Kenyan friends - and then I think "Damn I'm white!"
- I'll miss the handshakes. There are dozens. Slaps and claps and fist pops and doubles. And I'll particularly miss the fact that there are so many matatu workers and Jerusalem residents and coffee shoppers and touts and general people on the streets who recognize me and know my name and slap and shake and bump with me just like a real Nairobian.
- I'll miss both my acceptance and celebrity status here.
- I'll miss the danger, the adrenaline, the taking of precautions that mzungus aren't expected to be bright enough to take, the laughing to myself as I feel a pickpocket's hand going for a pocket which I emptied before even getting on a the matatu.
- I'll miss the look on people's faces when I tell them that No, I don't live in the Hilton or the Regency, I live in a flat in Jerusalem and take the #23 matatu every day just like they do. Instant connection.
- I won't miss all the litter. Though I'm hardly going somewhere that I
expect to find less.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2002
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