The intensity of African life

“In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death.” – Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, a parting gift from my Aunt Marylee.

Life in Africa does seem far more intense. The act of living is more difficult, requires more strength and more work; it is not simply living, but surviving. Sometimes it seems as though people here have no purpose, that the minute actions of each day do not really achieve much. Women walk to the market each day to get maize or beans, they walk home, they nurse the babies, they cook and clean…and that is all. When we spent 3 hours cooking lunch as I wrote last Thursday, it felt as though it were a waste of time, a purposeless action. But I am starting to see that the purpose of all tasks here seem to be one goal: living. The task of living is all consuming, and there is little time for anything else. When the end goal of your every action is simply your life, then every action is more intense.

Monday I went to Nairobi and purchased sweaters for some of the kids, thanks to an extremely generous donation! In all, 23 sweaters were purchased. This is a great help to many of the children, and they are all very grateful. 11 of the kids live in the orphanage, so I should be able to get a photo of them with the new sweaters. The other 12 live in surrounding areas, so Eric and I will go around giving them out during the coming week. Tuesday we went to hand out some of the sweaters at the primary schools in the surrounding villages. The kids in these villages have seen mzungus before but it is rare, so when we arrive, we are like celebrities. They run after us, shaking our hands and laughing and squealing, their high pitched voices screaming in Kikuyu. They are both excited and scared to approach us, and if they touch us they pull their hands back as if burned and run away giggling. Being in Kenya has taught me so much about children and I absolutely am in love with them all. They are so innocent and uncorrupted by greed and malice and power. If I had to name the thing I will miss the most in Kenya, it will be the children, their voices calling out high-pitched imitations of English (“How are YOU?” “Hallo! Bye Bye!”) and their small hands in mine.

My experience in Nairobi was interesting. I went alone and met Eric there…on the way, my matatu got into an accident and I definitely feared for my life for a second. Morgan and I have joked that the most deadly thing in Africa is the matatu. If you are walking in the streets, they do not stop and you have to run to not hit them (traffic laws seem to be kind of nonexistent here and there are no speed limits or stop signs). If you are riding in one, they go too fast, they do not use seatbelts, and they cram 23+ people into a 15 person van so its not the easiest to get out of if it were, say, on fire. Anyway, we all got out of the matatu and got another one, but its difficult for me because I do not speak the language and am immediately surrounded by hawkers who see mzungus as a meal ticket. Eventually I find a new matatu and make it to Nairobi.

When I get to Nairobi, Eric and I walk to a massive open air market where thousands of people are selling second hand clothing and shoes. Let me interject here – when you donate clothes to charity, it does not look like they actually are donated to people here, for the most part. Instead, they are actually sold and provide a living for many people. While this might seem like a scam – someone is profiting off of your charity – you should instead see it as someone’s livelihood. Your charity is not providing someone with a shirt, but with a business and regular income. This is far better than a shirt.

As we walk through the market, I am met with the usual gaping stares and pointing. Eric used to have a stall here before he worked at WWB, and he had a lot of friends still working at the market who were excited to meet him. At the stall where we bought the sweaters, I got two marriage proposals. Many of Eric’s friends greeted him Kyalo (Pronounced Challo) which is his tribal name and they assumed that I was his mzungu wife (a claim he did not seem to dismiss! Eric has told me he wants to marry a mzungu). As soon as they saw me they just laughed and laughed and said “Where did you find this mzungu? Why did you bring the mzungu?” People were taking my picture and were trying to shake my hand all over the place.

The market was typical of African markets – open air, stalls made of wooden sticks and plastic bags, ravines of filthy water, trash and human excrement running through the path. Women and men sit among their wares, wrapped in beautiful African cloth and talking and laughing. Buyers come and browse and purchase large bolts of fabric, thread, clothing and shoes. As a mzungu, I am grabbed and lunged at; in fact it was the first time (other than the matatu accident) where I felt scared. I was certain to clutch my bag close to me. After we bought the sweaters, we walk to the edge of the market and through a slum to catch a matatu (but a far bigger one this time – some in the city are more like buses than anything, pumping Kenyan rap music excessively loud). This area was pretty disgusting but also enlightening to see how people here live and work. Shacks made of cardboard and steel, trash everywhere, children running naked through the area. I would never have felt safe walking here without Eric, and would never venture here after dark, even if I were with 10 strong Kenyan men. It is the opposite of much of what I have written in this blog; there is suffering there, and squalor, and it is very much a picture of the antithesis to rural life in Kenya. It is quite staggering to see.

Nairobi is dirty, strewn with litter and dust, the streets choked with cars, buses, matatus and endless lines of people all trying to get somewhere. It is vast and crowded, busy and poor. The city seems to be a combination between first and third world (if I may use such outdated terms) as there are some tall buildings and strong stores, but they are ever surrounded by the dirt of Kenya and the millions of tiny storefronts that sell phone credit, candy, newspaper and assorted random junk. They all sell the exact same things, so I have wondered how they make any money at all…I used to doubt that the economic model of perfect competition actually exists in the world but it appears to exist here; many sellers with exactly the same product, and no seller can make a profit in the long run.

Well anyway, after we get on the matatu outside the slum, we take it to a clinic for children with cerebral palsy. We had little time but enough for the supervisor to explain to me how broke the clinic is; they rely on donors primarily for their income, and medicine and physical therapy for the kids is insanely expensive. Things like exercise balls are prices far above what we pay in the US because they must be imported and there is virtually no demand. I used part of my parents donation to give them Ksh1000, a small sum but helpful nonetheless. One of the problems at the clinic is that those families that can afford care will go to expensive clinics, and thus are unwilling to donate to the free clinic (which provides care for free, asking parents to donate ksh500 if possible). The clinic requires half a million shillings per month. Another problem is that in Kenya, like much of Africa, despite a firm belief in the church and Christianity, people here believe that if something bad happens to you, it is likely a curse that someone has put on you, or it is God punishing you. It’s a culture that sometimes ignores science (and this is evident in the HIV/AIDS pandemic) that leads parents to abandon a child with cerebral palsy (a cursed child), and especially leads fathers to desert their wives who give birth to such a child. It’s a terribly sad story.

Eric and I had the chance to talk for a long time all day, and its great to talk to him because he is a really intelligent person. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in development, and we have the most wonderful conversations about development, politics, religion, economics, Africa and the United States…I am beginning to care deeply about him and hope that we are able to stay in touch when I leave. He shared with me a lot about his past and his family, and the circumstances that led him to work for WWB, in a job that does not really pay that well but allows him to provide for young children. Growing up in an extremely poor household, Eric essentially watched his father work himself to death to feed the family, passing away when Eric was only 10 years old. He has committed himself to working to help children so that they will not have to experience the same tragedy. Eric is a clear example of the resolve and passion of many Africans, who remain happy and joyful despite a troubling and difficult life.

This past weekend we had the monthly microsavings meeting. The microsavings program was begun by a volunteer who was here for around 6 months, nearly 2 years ago. He invited several women from the nearby village Mihang’o and explained to them the program. Basically, you save 10 shillings per day (70 per week) and give it to WWB, who safeguards it. At the end of 52 weeks, with 3640 saved, you earn 10% interest on your savings, bringing your total to 4000 shillings. At this point, you can either continue saving, or you can withdraw your savings and borrow up to 4000 shillings (so basically, the incentive is to first learn to save and show your ability to make weekly or monthly payments, before you get a loan – and, when you get the loan, you also get your savings back so you get 8000 total shillings). Then the women have one year to pay back the loan without interest. After one year, they are charged 10% interest on the remainder. It is a pretty great program, with around 25 women involved, and the women have been able to cooperate and work together to democratically decide how the program will run. Though a volunteer began the program, the women are in control of it, and it is a stunning example of development from within Africa, designed by Africans.

It could be better with more members and more organization, and I have taken some steps to better organize the binder, but I am finding it difficult to do much more. This is because to some extent the staff here simply humor the volunteers…Eric asked us to speak at the meeting but he wanted us to just say things like “Save more money” and “Buy a pig/cow/something to bring in money with your loan.” These are things the women already know! And of course, they will listen politely and profusely thank us for coming, and really we’ve made no difference. This is in part because we are only here for so long and it is unrealistic to expect us to know much more or make better suggestions. It is also just that the program works and the problems faced by the women (theft of their pigs or their bicycle, simply not enough money to save, or someone gets sick and they must use their savings to pay the medical bills) are not something that I know how to solve – at least not yet. And solutions I can offer are often from my western point of view and difficult to really implement here. There are so many cultural barriers to really working with the people here, things that I cannot quite explain in words but just something that I feel. I have trouble communicating with Eric sometimes and its frustrating, and I am not angry with him but with the situation.

“It’s always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitably disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites which they have initially disparaged.” – Peter Godwin describes what I am feeling. But I feel less disappointed and more hopeful because I feel that us first world aid workers may not really be necessary. Africa, I think, no longer needs our old colonialist guilt, it does not need to be viewed as a helpless charity case. It needs to be respected and it needs us to demand responsibility from its leaders. It needs the western world to leave it the heck alone and let it figure out what it needs on its own. Then, if they need our help, if they ask for our help (and I mean the people, not the tyrannical corrupt leaders that treat the treasury as a personal bank account), then we might get involved.

The longer I am here, the more I see how wrong we’ve got it – not just aid workers, not USAID, UNDP, World Bank and IMF, not just missionaries, not just NGOs…we’ve all got it wrong. Its not our job to “fix” Africa. Doing so implies that Africa is not capable on its own, and it implies that only when Africa reaches our definition of “developed” it will be fixed. Our definitions, our concepts, our entire way of looking at the world, perhaps they are all simply not the right definitions for Africa. In fact, Africa, as I have written before, knows better than anyone what they need. You can point me to a thousand civil wars and murderous conflicts that lead the developed world to conclude that Africa is incapable of self governance – and I can point you to the colonialist, imperialist meddling that led to those conflicts. In fact, the very foundations of African states is colonialist in nature – imagine if the colonists had not established nation-states in Africa, but instead kept the traditional political structures in place? We accept nation-states as the only legitimate form of governance, and they “work” for us. We have yet to really see a nation-state model work for Africa, save perhaps in Botswana and maybe South Africa. Personally I think it was simply the wrong type of government to be put in place in this region, but its too late to fix that now. I think maybe our best option is to just back off of telling African states what to do, however, because we are consistently wrong in what we tell them.

This week was the first Sunday I have been at the orphanage, so I was going to go to church with the kids – the service is in the hall where we eat at 10am on Sundays. However, the entire thing is in Kikuyu, so I cannot understand what is going on. They do, however, have the most wonderful songs. They sing often after dinner, and on Fridays before dinner, banging a drum and yelling in Kikuyu. I asked Priscilla what the words mean and she said, they are just saying hello to God and singing praises. They know a few English songs, no doubt taught by past volunteers, such as Lord I Lift Your Name On High (though they do not know the hand signs to go along with this and I am teaching them) and Our God is an Awesome God.

That is all I have for today. Friday I leave for Mombasa with Morgan and Rory (two other volunteers). I will be there until Tuesday night, when we take an overnight bus back to Nairobi.

Happy Fathers Day to my father and to both of my grandfathers! I love you :)