Things That Eat Poo In the Choo, and Things That Don�t

November 28, 2005. Monday, 10:29pm.

Kenyans are afraid of the weirdest things: slugs and chameleons, two of the
slowest creatures on earth, and both non-biting. I found a chameleon on the
road the other day and picked it up. It rode on my finger for 3km into town.

Along the way two old women saw it, tripped, and dropped the loads they were
carrying on their heads. Kids refused to come near me and forgot to scream
�Chinese!� as I walked by. Old men wouldn�t let me enter their shops unless
I left the chameleon outside. A 25-year-old man squealed like a soprano and
ducked behind a vendor stall full of vegetables. Sambu, the public health
officer, passed in a matatu pointing and laughing at the chameleon on my
finger � until I extended my hand to give him a better look. He and the man
sitting next to him started waving their hands frantically, shaking their
heads and backing up in their seats to get away from this apparently very
dangerous creature.

I really can�t figure out this irrational fear of slow-moving things,
although it helps to think about my fear of cockroaches. But the difference
is that cockroaches aren�t slow. They�re frighteningly mobile over land and
air, and they�re all shiny and mahogany colored and have that gross
Paleolithic exoskeleton, with weird spiny things sticking out all over, and
those shifty antennae. And they make that gross clicking sound whenever they
touch anything because they have a HARD EXOSKELETON THAT BANGS AGAINST
STUFF. GROSS.

Also cockroaches live in the choo. Anything that lives in the choo should be
feared. Anything that likes dark, stinky, damp places full of poo and pee
should be feared, especially because if a cockroach comes out and flies into
your leg or arse while you�re straddled there doing your business, you know
he�s covered in choo bits, and now you are too.

Chameleons, on the other hand, live in the forest. They�re pretty and green,
and sometimes they turn blue or orange or brown or red. They don�t eat poo
like the cockroach I saw eating poo in the choo in Kitui. Chameleons also
have eyeballs that move independently of each other. They can look you up
and down with one eye and scan the sky for their next meal with the other.
And they have long sticky tongues for catching flies and insects. How cool
is that?

Slugs also live in the choo, but not in the pit part. They hang out on the
walls and doors because it�s cool and dry. One day I saw one in the choo and
nudged it onto a stick because I thought it was a banana slug. Turns out it
was just a brownish slug, shaped just like a banana slug but not bright
yellow. My co-workers wouldn�t come near me, and one person suggested that
we get some salt so we could watch it die.

Well I finally figured out why I occasionally feel short of breath walking
around my village: I live 1,950 meters above sea level. That�s higher than
Denver. It also explains why I might freeze to death in Africa despite the
fact that I�m on the equator.

A few years ago a friend of mine went to southern Africa. He came back and
said, �You know, wife-beating is so common in Africa that I bet there are
African women who feel neglected if their husbands don�t beat them.� It
sounded ludicrous, and I thought he was over-rationalizing a hypothetical
situation. I was offended and disgusted by the suggestion that women are so
stupid that they could take being beaten as a sign of their husband�s love.

Last week someone told me that some women in Kenya get upset if it has been
awhile since their husbands beat them. �They start to wonder what�s wrong.
They start thinking their husband has stopped paying attention to them.�

�How does that happen?� I asked. �How does a woman come to think this way?�

�I don�t know,� he said.

In surveys of Kenyan women and girls, researchers consistently find that
most women believe it�s their responsibility not to tempt a man, and that
men bear no responsibility for their actions when it comes to sex. Lots of
women still believe that if they don�t dress modestly around the house that
they will cause their father or brother to rape them.

I find that a lot of women seem to embrace traditional gender roles just as
much as men do. My co-worker Justine, who is a counselor at the VCT, sees
labor divided clearly along gender lines, and wholeheartedly embraces her
role in the house. She�s even a bit territorial about it. When Hillary was
de-feathering chickens for Thanksgiving, she got upset and tried to kick him
out of the kitchen.

�Why are you doing women�s work?� she said. �You�re a man; go watch TV.�

Jomo Kenyatta Fairgrounds, Kisumu

Second straight day in Kisumu, my laptop is in the shop for "repairs," which makes me really nervous considering that the dude told me, "Our copy of Windows XP is pirated." I'm not used to the heat here, so I fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon trying to keep cool under the fan in my hotel room. Woke up at 4:30 sweating even more than before. Was really in need of some ball-point pen therapy.

Walked with my sketchpad and ball-point pen to Jomo Kenyatta Fairgrounds in the middle of town. It was a bit depressing at first; not as scenic as the parks in Bangkok or Boston, and mostly full of drunks and idlers sleeping in the grass. Sat there for almost two hours drawing, an easy mzungu target, but not a single person asked me for money. A street kid even came over, after rummaging through the garbage cans behind me, and watched me draw.

"Good," he said. "Good, good." He seemed content to be impressed with my drawing, and went away. Wow, how cynical am I?

Thanksgiving Aftermath

November 25, 2005. Friday, 9:51pm.

Electricity is out on the school compound until at least Monday. My neighbor the headmaster told me they forgot to pay the bill. I had the paraffin lamp going for a few hours but it has gotten too cold to leave the windows cracked to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, so I am lighting my house with my laptop screen.

Well Thanksgiving dinner was a great success and I made enough food to feed everyone I invited, as well as random party crashers and 12 extra kids and housekeepers. We weren’t able to locate a suitable turkey--they’re few and far between in my village and the guy who had one was asking 2500 Ksh for it--so we got two chickens instead, after running around for ten minutes chasing them. I took them aside and said, “Hey buds, I hope you speak English because I don’t know how to say this in Kiswahili. You know, God put you on this earth to be food, so I want to thank you for sacrificing your life for our Thanksgiving dinner. Hillary is good at slaughtering chickens; he’ll be quick and you won’t feel a thing, and I know you’ll taste great, so thank you.” They were Kenyan chickens so I figured they would probably get the God reference. And I didn’t let them down; Hillary was done in five minutes and they were both delicious. The stuffing was also a surprise hit, and everyone was baffled by the idea that you can make pie from a pumpkin.

Menu: butter-herb roasted chickens (2), green beans and carrot julienne in garlic herb vinaigrette, garlic mashed potatoes, autumn spice sweet potatoes, Carolina cole slaw (which I forgot to serve because there was already so much food), Mom’s avocado tomato salad, turkey stuffing sans turkey, chicken giblet gravy, pumpkin pie, no-bake chocolate cookies (Peace Corps recipe).

Speaking of Peace Corps recipes, I found a recipe in the Peace Corps cookbook for making cheese. It says to boil milk with a small piece of cow stomach before aging. It sounded simple enough, until I was told that cows have four stomachs. Now I don’t know which stomach to ask for at the butcher’s, or if it even matters. (On top of that, I always thought that cows had seven stomachs.)

Well as you’ve probably heard, the constitutional referendum went off peacefully and the No/Orange team won by a 15% margin. People say that despite having been conducted peacefully, the referendum has divided the country along tribal lines. President Kibaki, who led the Yes/Banana camp, gracefully conceded victory to his opponents with a big scowl on his face, and the same evening announced that ‘in order to restore cohesiveness’ in his government, he was dissolving his Cabinet, which used to be composed of people from different tribes. A lot of Kenyans suspect the new lineup will be composed mainly of members of his tribe, the Kikuyus, one of the few tribes that voted overwhelmingly for Yes. Campaign rhetoric leading up to the November 21 vote got nasty, with politicians calling each other uncircumcised boys, Satan, and mavu ya kuku (chicken shit). Yes leaders took cheap shots at tribes who supported the No team, and vice versa. One MP from the Yes side described Luos, most of whom supported the No team, as people who ‘hate us because we’re hard-working. Luos just go fishing, and fish is free, and then they ask the government for relief maize to make ugali.’ And pre-referendum clashes tended to occur in towns where tribes who supported opposing teams lived together. In Eldoret there were clashes between Kalenjins (No) and Kikuyus (Yes), while to the east in Burnt Forest there were clashes between Kalenjins (No) and Luhyas (Yes).

Historically the Kalenjins and Kikuyus are at odds because the former president, Moi, was a Kalenjin, and widely despised after over two decades of rule. When Moi
retired, Kenyans rejoiced by voting opposition party candidate Mwai Kibaki into office in Kenya’s first democratic election. Kibaki won by a landslide in 2002, and the victory restored political power to the Kikuyus. (The Kikuyu Jomo Kenyatta served as the first post-colonial president of Kenya, and was succeeded by then-Vice President Moi after his death.) The odd thing is that even Kalenjins will speak bitterly about Moi, who they feel abandoned his own people while granting political favors to the Kikuyus, who as a tribe have prospered in the last few decades. Supporters of Moi argue that the man is unfairly blamed for the corruption of people he appointed to manage his development projects, most of which collapsed and sent lots of communities into economic ruin.

Um, so I don’t know where I was going with that short political history. There is a lot of tribalism here, and the referendum only put it on display for everyone to see. During pre-service training our Kenyan instructors led a session about tribal stereotypes, which nearly every Kenyan I’ve talked to since has confirmed to be true:

* Kikuyus are all thieves. That’s why Nairobi is so dangerous, because all the Kikuyus moved there and started robbing people.
* Kikuyus are all businessmen. All the shops that aren’t owned by Mwindies
are owned by Kikuyus.
* Mwindies (Indian immigrants and Kenyans descended from Indian immigrants)
are all businessmen. They employ black Kenyans, treat them horribly, make
lots of money and send it all back to India instead of spending it in Kenya
to stimulate the economy.
* Kambas are all witch doctors. The most evil witchcraft is practiced in
Ukambani (land of the Kambas).
* Kamba women are the best lovers. But don’t make them angry because they
will go to a witch doctor and tell them to put a curse on you.
* Maasai are the most brave warriors. They cling stubbornly to their
traditions, still living nomadically and herding cattle and practicing
female genital mutilation.
* Meru men have the worst tempers. They also treat women poorly.
* Kalenjins love milk. This is what makes them the world’s fastest runners.
If you go to a Kalenjin’s house they won’t serve you water, they’ll serve
you milk. If you’re a really special and honored guest they will serve you
sour milk, which has been aged in a hollowed-out gourd and soured with
charcoal. Apparently it’s delicious but looks disgusting.
* Kalenjins are very shy and resistant to outside influence. They tend not
to marry outside their tribe.
* Luhyas love to eat chicken. They have elaborate rules about who gets to
eat what part of the chicken depending on gender, age and occasion.
* Luhyas are very open, hospitable and gregarious people.
* Luos are fishermen. They live around Lake Victoria and trade fish for sex
and spread HIV with their immoral, polygamous, wife-inheriting ways.
* Luos are snobby and materialistic. A Luo may be starving but would rather
spend his next shilling on nice clothes or a TV. They also prefer to speak
English and feel like it’s beneath them to speak Kiswahili.
* Swahili women are the most beautiful in Kenya. Swahili men are all truck
drivers.
* Swahili people are warm and hospitable because they live on the coast and
it’s beautiful there and the area attracts lots of tourists.
* Somalis are despicable refugees.

Oh Yeah Another Thing

This is sad. I don't know if it's my computer or Yahoo Mail but the Reply
button doesn't work! So I'm trying to reply to people's emails but I can't.
I have to cut and paste your email address and email text into a Compose
screen. And I'm running out of time on my surf card. So to everyone who
replied to my photos (uh, I mean, Jon's photos) I will try to reply to you
soon. Ugh.

And happy early birthday Stella!

A Note To PCV Steve B's Friend Dave in CA

Hey Dave, I know this is a weird way to try to reach you but I don't know
how to reply to your comment since you posted anonymously. I also sent Steve
an SMS asking for your contact info but never heard back. He must be pretty
busy with all the boda boys and border crossings and hookers. :P

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk to you more about doing a letter exchange with
the students in Menlo Park. Just let me know how to reach you. Hope all is
great back in the Bay. I miss it! Happy Thanksgiving!

Sharing

November 22, 2005, Tuesday, 12:27pm.

One day Hillary and I were at a school doing community outreach. We were waiting for the students to get out of their classes so we could herd them into an assembly room for our program. There was a pile of boulders under a tree and we decided we wanted to wait there. Hillary started scaling one rock and saw some bees swarming around a hive in the tree.

He came back down and said, “We better not disturb those bees. They are very aggressive and can even sting you until you die.”

“Oh, you have killer bees in Africa?” I said. “We have them in some parts of the U.S. They come from…um…”

Oh yeah. They come from Africa.
***
Last week I told Hillary that if the Peace Corps evacuates us after the referendum that he could have all the stuff I left behind.

‘Oh, that would be terrible,’ he said. ‘The best thing you could give me is your contact information.’

This is a man who lives in a mud-and-dung hut smaller than my single-room house that I complain about, and shares it with his wife and three kids. I thought maybe he was just being nice, but then I remembered that he comes from a culture that is not shy about asking for things.

‘Give me your postcards of San Francisco.’

‘Um, you want my postcards?’

‘Yes, give me your postcards. I want them.’

I’ve given away half of my postcards. There will always be cheap San Francisco postcards in Chinatown anyway.

I really think there’s a whole set of cultural norms about sharing in Kenya that I’ll never understand. The things that I consider freeloading seem to be known as sharing or kindness here. And everyone feels like they’re entitled to what you have.

My neighbor Nehemiah came over one night to borrow my cell phone. (Here you buy a chip that stores your phone book, messages, and how much credit you still have to make calls, and can fit into any phone, so lots of people just buy a chip and use a simu ya jamii—basically a public mobile phone—when they want to check their messages.) I let him borrow it, not knowing any better. A few nights later he asked to borrow it again, this time overnight. I agreed on the condition that he return it before I left for work in the morning, which he did. A few nights later he borrowed my phone again, and kept it overnight again.

A few days later he asked to borrow 200 shillings. I agreed on the condition that he pay it back within a week. The next night he also asked to borrow my phone. I thought, ‘This dude now borrows my phone every night, and he owes me 200 shillings.’ And that’s only half the story. Around the same time, some of the girls at the school stopped me as I was walking to my house and asked to borrow my phone charger. I gave it to them, and they returned it the next morning.

A week later a different group of girls came to my door asking to borrow my phone. I gave it to them, and they said they would return it in an hour, which they did. But then they started borrowing the phone every other night, then every night. One night they came to borrow my phone, but Nehemiah had it.

‘Look, you’re going to have to start finding another phone to borrow every once in awhile,’ I said. ‘Between you and everyone else on this compound who is borrowing my phone, I never have my phone.’

The girls nodded and apologized, but I heard them whispering to each other when they left.

When Nehemiah returned my phone, I said, ‘You know, you use my phone more than I do.’ Which is not exactly true, but I didn’t care because he still owed me 200 shillings.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ he said.’ Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trouble you.’

He was really embarrassed. No one has borrowed my phone since that night, but I sense that people took my reaction to be a bit harsh and selfish.

As much as people make a beeline to me to ask for money and everything else under the sun that they think I came here to pass out for free, they’re also constantly asking each other for handouts, especially if they have a relative who has a job. People here help each other out when they don’t have money to spare. When I ask why they’ve just given their cousin 100 shillings when their own family is starving because the maize did poorly this year, they just shrug sheepishly. ‘Some people are very good at asking for things,’ they say.

The Kenyans on the Peace Corps staff go through hell every time they go home to their villages, because all their relatives (and everyone in a Kenyan village is related) expect that because this person works for an American organization that he or she has enough money to share with everyone.

I’m also noticing that some Kenyans have no concept of basic personal finance. Like, if they get money, they don’t necessarily spend it on their most pressing need. They spend it on a trip to Eldoret to eat fried chicken. So maybe this is also what allows them to give money to their relatives or a neighbor instead of saving it for the next time their kid gets sick. Maybe it’s more appropriate to say that some people’s definition of ‘most pressing need’ is who’s right in their face rather than what’s really important in the big picture.

Kenyans do favors that strike me as things they don’t need to be doing for people they don’t know. An example of this happened last week, when a guy came to the VCT with a piece of paper containing some questions. He said a student at the school of social work had a class assignment that was due that day. The student didn’t have time to come in person, so she sent this guy to the VCT to see if anyone could help her. The assignment was to interview a counselor about some of the challenges he or she has faced in her work. The messenger guy handed my co-worker the list of questions, and my co-worker started writing out all the answers.

Now if I were in that situation I would say, ‘Tell that lady to get her own matakos* over here and do her assignment. Why should she send someone here to ask someone else to do her homework for her just because for whatever reason she couldn’t get her act together to come here in person and complete the assignment by the due date?’ And I told my co-worker this. He just nodded vaguely and kept writing, probably baffled by what a selfish American I am.

So I don’t know. I think there are some things that are so ingrained in each of us that we’ll never be able to see them clearly enough to fully understand why we are who we are, and therefore, why we aren’t who we aren’t. Whatever those things are, are probably the same things that make me impatient on those days when a gang of street kids in Kisumu march at me with their palms outstretched, ordering, ‘Mzungu, give me fifty bob.’ Hell, if I were in their shoes I’d probably do the same thing. Shoes? Street kids don’t have shoes. This is why I’ll never develop a completely non-judgmental compassion for people. How can I possibly understand what it’s like not to have shoes when it doesn’t even occur to me that it’s possible not to have shoes?

Thinking back to the story about the school assignment, I just remembered something Hillary told me once: ‘We Africans don’t quarrel much about time.’

It doesn’t solve the whole mystery, but it does help me understand about 2% more than I did before. I think that’s the current rate of cultural discovery for me here in Kenya.

* Matakos = butt cheeks

Battening Down the Hatches

What does battening down the hatches mean anyway?

Had a nice pre-Thanksgiving meal with some other PCVs last week. We made
pineapple curry, pizza, cheesecake, ice cream pie and stuffing. We went over
to one of the staff houses at the Indiana University campus in Eldoret,
which is like a little oasis of America, to use their kitchen and dining
room. Wireless internet!! (Currently broken) Flushing toilets!! Dogs!! I
went into the walk-in pantry where the school has stocked up on provisions
in case the referendum goes haywire, and caught another Peace Corps
volunteer, who will remain unnamed, with a 2-gallon Tupperware of cashews
between her knees and her mouth stuffed full of nuts. Who's been in the bush
too long? "Hands off the parmesan cheese and pumpkin pie mix. Those are for
the students," someone warned us. We were only allowed to use the items that
can be found locally.

Anyway, the government re-opened the Kalenjin radio station under heavy
pressure, so people here have calmed down. Both teams have also called for
peace after the referendum, and have appealed to everyone to accept the
results as they are announced. It's a bit worrisome, though; lots of people
have switched to the Yes side after receiving bribes, so no one is really
sure if the election results will be a truly democratic expression of the
people's will. But at least I've recovered a bit from my bout of bitterness;
the ice cream pie and stuffing may have had something to do with it.

Not Exactly CARE International

November 17, 2005, Thursday. 9:07pm.

Saw the good pastor again today, unfortunately. Not only is he always asking me to give him things or to accept Jesus Christ, but I also think he doesn’t actually understand anything I say.

“How are you?” he said.
“Fine.”
“How’s the work?”
“Good.”
“How’s the work?”
“Good.”
“Work. How is it?”
“Good.”
“I mean, how’s the work?”
“I said work is nzuri.”
“Ah, good. We shall meet again.”
“That guy acts so drunk sometimes,” Hillary said.

Went to Kisumu a couple days ago and came back completely bitter about everything. First someone tried to pickpocket me. Fortunately pickpockets in Kenya really suck at their job, and I turned around when there was a tug on my backpack that felt like a hoard of rabid monkeys trying to climb inside. It was a close call, though; one compartment was completely unzipped with valuable possessions exposed. This wasn”t even the first incident; someone tried the same rabid monkey technique in Eldoret, also with unsuccessful results.

I stayed with another volunteer (“Pete”) who is your stereotypical New Yorker - high strung, neurotic, impatient and bitter. His bitterness validated my bitterness.

"What’s with all the entitled begging in this country? What’s with all the corruption? What’s with all the harassment?"

He said once he got so frustrated with a man who was harassing him for money that he screamed, “STOP BEGGING! GET A JOB! WHERE’S YOUR WIFE? HOW CAN YOU SIT HERE ALL DAY DOING NOTHING WHEN SHE’S WORKING SO HARD AT HOME??”

I could have picked out all the logical fallacies with my politically correct filter, but instead I just laughed, and for a long time. Yeah, the blame falls on vestiges of white racism and colonial oppression, on corruption, on poverty, on foreign aid agencies. But when you’re walking past a gauntlet of 40-year-old adult men screaming, “Ching chong wang dong,” at you because they think it’s a clever way to demean you and at the same time they think it will make you want to give them money to take you on their bicycle taxi, you don’t really care what kind of compassionate explanation there is for the existence of idiocy in Kenya. Instead it’s hilarious and gratifying to hear stories of people who actually have the presence of mind, in a moment of harassment, to spit back venom.

I think it’s typical for most people, when they first arrive in Kenya, to tiptoe lightly in the name of cultural sensitivity. And I think its normal for most people, when they’ve lived in Kenya for a few months, to say to hell with cultural sensitivity. One reason I like visiting Pete is because his modus operandus is speaking his mind, New York style. He may offend far more Kenyans than I do, but he has probably preserved more of his sanity than I have. It reminds me that you can actually get away with a lot of things that may *seem* culturally insensitive, and that when you think about it more, you realize, oh yeah, it *is* culturally insensitive, but who really cares? Because that 16-year-old street urchin in Nakuru who was gyrating lewdly in front of me while grabbing his crotch and unzipping his pants wasn”t doing it out of cultural sensitivity. So do I feel like a bit of a bully when I threaten to punch him, and he runs away? No. Or when a 26-year-old idler has the misfortune of being the tenth person in the last two minutes to sneer, “Ching chong China,” as I walk through the market, and I scream back, “WHAT THE *%#$ IS YOUR PROBLEM, @&&hole??” do I feel like a jerk when he lowers his head and sulks away because his friends are laughing at him? Not really.

I may be a hypocrite for not letting go of situations where people assume I’m Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean or Jet Li, while having no problems embracing stereotypes that work to my advantage. But I don’t really care. I’ve been told that sometimes when I walk around my village people whisper, “Don’t mess with the China. She can kill you with her karate.” Fine with me.

Or when I was stuck in a town 30 minutes outside my village, waiting for a matatu in the pouring rain, looking like a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest, and one of the road crew struck up a conversation with me in Chinese. After a few minutes he introduced himself, explained that he was with the Chinese company paving the road (duh) and that he was heading to the workers’ camp in my village. He offered me a ride home in their huge orange dump truck. Like an idiot, I actually spent five whole seconds thinking, “How will this make the Kenyans around me feel? They’ll see me as just another rich foreigner who speeds away in a private vehicle while they’re left in the rain. And on top of that, once I get into that Chinese truck, Kenyans will never, ever come to understand that I’m American.”

Then common sense kicked in. I’m cold and wet down to my panties and covered in
mud, and I’m worried that a bunch of people who don’t even know me will
think I’m from China? WHO CARES? (Although I never reconciled the rich-foreigner-in-a-private-vehicle part of it.) Being mistaken as a Chinese construction worker is a small price to pay to be at home taking a warm bath, putting on dry clothes and drinking tea.

So I clambered up into the cab of the dump truck with five chain-smoking Chinese guys with bad teeth, and their Kenyan driver. It might be the first and last time in my life I’ll ever get to use English, Chinese and Swahili in the same conversation. And for some reason when one of the workers pointed at the Kenyan and said to me in Chinese, “This guy stinks really bad,” it made me a little homesick for San Francisco and all the rude Cantonese women on the MUNI buses.

The Latest From the Front Lines

Well it's a weird bipolar existence, hearing news of tension and clashes
around the country and walking around my village surrounded by the usual
bucolic scene of docile cows and frolicking monkeys and birds twittering in
the forest and idlers in the town center staring motionlessly as I walk by.
The latest news is that the government (Yes camp) shut down the Kalenjin
radio station, KAS-FM, which is the tribe I live with (I know, I've called
them Nandis before; Nandis are a subtribe of the Kalenjin, and this whole
area is a huge No camp, but I digress). In response there were riots in
Eldoret yesterday, a Kalenjin town. What is the country coming to when the
Kalenjins, the shyest and most passive tribe I've ever met, are rioting?
There are rumors that the Luo radio station will be the next to be shut
down, Luos being the tribe in Nyanza and Western Provinces, both heavily No
camps.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who sent me little updates on their lives. Boy
have I missed a lot! And sometimes the little updates just beg more
questions. Why are you moving to Beijing? How did you end up in Cambodia?
And of course, you got married???

I'm off to try to write a proposal for my VCT, but I don't know how an
organization with a completely corrupt financial history is supposed to get
money from any funder with half a brain. Ugh.

Fired Over a Fire

Our Division Officer, basically a high-ranking police officer responsible for settling land and domestic disputes in the administrative division, Aldai, has been fired for not putting a stop to the Orange supporters who set the Banana podium on fire last weekend. Locals say it was a political move to make an example of those leaders who don't support the Kenyan President and his government, who are pro-banana.

Well I've already started getting anxious about the Thanksgiving dinner I'm supposed to make for ten of my co-workers. Logically you'd think since they've never had an American Thanksgiving before that they wouldn't know any better if I screwed up the food, but I think a black, turkey-shaped lump in the middle of the table is a universal symbol of kitchen failure. If anyone out there has a simple recipe for stuffing, can you email it my way?

Turkeys and Pineapples and Five Hours of Church

November 12, 2005. Saturday, 10:11pm.

The Yes (banana) team had a rally today in my village, a No (orange) stronghold. Even last night people had set the podium on fire that the Yes team erected for today’s rally. Last week when I heard about plans for today’s rally, I told my co-workers that I didn’t want to be anywhere near it, so Hillary suggested that I spend the day in his village, about 5 km away.

That’s how I ended up in church today. I guess Seventh-Day Adventists aren’t so strict about a woman wearing trousers when she contributes money to their harambee, which is basically a community fundraiser. I realized today that the reason I don’t go to church is not because I don’t agree with Christian ideology, but because I fear dying of boredom. I actually read the entire book of Matthew, plus half of Ephesians and random passages from Luke, Acts, Revelations, Romans and John, just to pass the time during the sermon. And also because I didn’t feel comfortable pulling out the book I actually wanted to read, entitled “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” in large letters on the cover. I mean, it took five hours for the pastor to read and reflect on ten verses, and I nearly got through the entire New Testament on my own. The opening passages of Matthew tells the story of Christ’s miraculous conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, and how Joseph doubted it at first but was eventually convinced of his fiancee’s purity. It made me think of a Chris Rock monologue (I think) where he says, “Man, Joseph was the biggest sucker!” I laughed out loud right in the middle of the service. Because, really.

I miss knowing how to make people laugh. I’m sure Kenyans are funny to each other, but I still haven’t figured out what makes Kenyans laugh. It’s not deadpan sarcasm, I learned. My co-worker asked last week if I was for the orange or banana team. Since Peace Corps volunteers aren’t allowed to be political in their host country, I said, “I’m on the pineapple team.” He looked at me for a long time, then said slowly so that I wouldn’t get confused, “There-is-no-pineapple-team. There-is-only-orange-and-banana.” Maybe a one-woman pineapple team isn’t the most hilarious concept, but come on. Work with me!

A fellow PCV sent me an sms today saying Kenya was starting to get on her nerves. We all have our bad days, after all. I wrote back, “Why would Kenya get on your nerves? It’s not like people stare at you as if you’re an animal at the zoo, treat you like you’re here to pass out free money, scream racist names at you, pester you to accept Jesus Christ as your savior, assume that you can get them a U.S. visa, or talk about you as if you can’t hear them. Oh, wait.”

Anyway, I’m back in my village, safe in my house, and the Yes team has cleared town. I am planning a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with some PCVs next weekend, before the official lockdown and week-long moratorium on travel. There won’t be a turkey, but there are rumors of lasagna, Mexican food and ice cream. I invited some friends in my village to celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday with me, on the condition that someone else slaughters the turkey. They are all excited to try American cooking, and I am, too, as I’m not sure how to roast a turkey over a charcoal stove and without a turkey baster. Also I don’t think cranberries, celery or giant marshmallows are available locally, so I may have to improvise with pineapple sauce, kale in the stuffing, and a light dusting of powdered sugar on the yams.

A few days ago I was reading an issue of the New Yorker (Thanks, Pat!) when one of those subscription cards fell out of it. It was printed with a shimmery silver-blue holly-leaf border for Christmas, and I started missing the holidays in the U.S. I’m definitely not missing the Christmas commercials that must already be airing, or the holiday music in an endless loop everywhere you go, but I’m going to miss seeing my friends and family for all our usual holiday habits – eating good food, drinking good wine, gossiping, counting how many of my friends already have kids, catching up on movies, getting in a fight with my family. Ahh, fond times. Actually, I *will* kind of miss the holiday music in an endless loop, but at least this year I can still play the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas over and over on my iPod. So as everyone gears up for the holidays, be sure to send warm holiday greetings my way, and think of me in Africa as I tap all my connections to find a Thanksgiving turkey (as of yet unlocated) and wonder if I’ll actually get my act together to spend Christmas in Mombasa.

Chickens and rhinos

November 10, 2005. Thursday, 6:54pm.

I can’t believe I had a 30 minute conversation with someone today about chicken farming. I’ve gotten a lot of confusing information about African chickens. Apparently there are some hens who lay eggs without yolks, regardless of whether they are fertilized or not. It sounded like one of those dubious local stories, like the one about how if you give a starving man water he’ll die, which is why Nandis always serve guests milk. In the U.S. even unfertilized eggs have yolks. But at least four other people have confirmed that these hens exist. I still haven’t seen one myself, but maybe it’s true, or else there’s a village-wide conspiracy to make me believe it. I am told that different hens are good for different things: laying eggs, hatching chicks, or making a nice soup. The really productive layers (2 eggs a day) won’t brood, and I’m told this has nothing to do with whether the eggs are fertilized or not.

I think my third hen is about to start brooding, but I don’t want her to hatch any chicks so I’ve taken all her eggs. Apparently if a hen starts brooding but has no eggs to sit on, she can sit there indefinitely on her imaginary eggs waiting for them to hatch.

‘Dude, chickens are stoopid!’ I said.

‘That’s why you want to hope that no one ever compares you to a chicken.’

My alternatives are to pour cold water on her every morning or tie her to a post outside so she won’t go into the coop and sit in one of the nesting alcoves. I decided that the humane thing to do is to let her sit on one egg.

Anyway, if there are any small-scale chicken farmers out there, feel free to post a comment and share what you know. Are Kenyans making this stuff up?

Oh yeah I still haven’t named my chickens. I have three hens-two red ones and one black one. I have four chicks now, and I’m expecting five more in the next week or so. Maybe the chicks won’t get names until they’re bigger, though. If a hawk steals any of them, it will be sadder to say, ‘A hawk took Bonzo,’ than to say, ‘A hawk took the yellow one.’

The PHO (Public Health Officer, the head honcho dude in charge of public health projects in our division) took me to see yet another water project right outside town. The group that is building it is writing a proposal asking for 600,000 Ksh (Kenyan shillings) from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), which is government money disbursed by the MPs for grassroots development projects within their constituencies. But CDF is notoriously mismanaged and nepotistic because MPs generally funnel all the funds to projects being managed by their political allies, friends or families, or high profile projects that make them look good politically. So most other worthy projects end up getting nothing. It didn’t occur to me to ask the PHO if he thought this project had any chance of being funded; at the time it seemed a bit rude to allude to the corruption in CDF, even though the entire country knows about it.

I got an sms from another Peace Corps volunteer today that said, ‘Last night I was reading about Kenyan history and it made me want to murder a bunch of people first, and then terminate my service here.’ And I knew the feeling she was referring to, both in the context of Kenyan history and-even more so-in the context of today. Sometimes the odds feel overwhelming when nearly everything that doesn’t work right in this country is caused-and perpetuated-by corruption. Kenya is the second most corrupt country in Africa, after Nigeria. (That statistic makes me wonder exactly how you quantify corruption so that you can actually release rankings.)

A couple weeks ago a woman who works at a small chemist in town (basically a pharmacy selling over-the-counter drugs) came to see me. Whenever someone I
don’t know approaches me saying, ‘I’ve been wanting to come visit you for a long time,’ I know they’re going to ask for money. She gave me the usual sob story about how she’s struggling to pay her kid’s school fees and support her family and that she wants to go back to school to be properly trained to run the chemist, which the public health people have threatened to shut down because she’s not certified. She said she’s willing to do anything-wash my clothes, work as a janitor in an office. This woman finished high school and couldn’t afford to go to college.

The government provides free public education through 8th grade; after that everyone is on her own. Government loans for college students are a tiny fraction of tuition, even at public universities, so a lot of extremely accomplished students just can’t afford to attend. Also, competition is so stiff for the limited slots at public universities that most qualified students never have a chance to get a college degree. You’d think the obvious solution would be to fund more public universities. But noooo’they’re building a new presidential palace as we speak.

Her story got me a bit bummed out. It’s the story of everyone here. They need money. They need options. But their government is so mired in corruption, nepotism and selfish interests that it could care less about helping its own people. In fact, providing people with options - higher education especially - would run counter to being able to retain absolute control.

My role isn’t to solve everyone’s problems; it’s to initiate public health projects that give people skills and information so that they can sustain themselves after I leave. But when people need money today, I can’t help feeling like my job is nearly irrelevant. The woman kept asking if the people I teach will be able to get jobs. We can teach skills but if there’s no one willing to pay for those skills, what good are they? We can’t create jobs. I could hire this woman to wash my clothes, but what about all the other people out there just like her? And if I do hire this woman, what happens to her when I leave? I realize that I’m letting myself feel responsible for things I’m not responsible for, but I feel totally useless right now. I really need to stop feeling this damn compassion thing.

----------------------

The Bitter and Cynical Version

The truth is that there’s a widespread ignorance about my role in this community. People see a foreigner and assume that our purpose in being here is to give away free money. They think that since Kenya is poor and Westerners are rich, we owe it to them to share our wealth. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that I should pay for something, instead of a Kenyan paying for it, because ‘it benefits the community.’ What kind of manipulative logic is that? I’ve let myself be guilted into feeling like the fair thing to do is to give people my money just because I have more than they do. I don’t know where that feeling comes from. Maybe it’s just liberal middle-class guilt.

Maybe it’s helpful to think about my relationship with homeless people in San Francisco. I rarely give them money. Sometimes I give them food, but no handout solves their problems in any long-term way. I’ve stopped feeling guilty when I walk past a homeless person without giving him anything. Part of it is because homeless people have provided us (non-homeless types) an out - those signs they hold that say, ‘Even a smile helps.’ The homeless would rather be acknowledged through eye contact or a greeting than completely ignored as if they’re less than human. So hell, if smiling is all I have to do, I’m not parting with a dollar I don’t have to part with. And I can walk away guilt-free because I’ve said, ‘Sorry, man, not today,’ with a big smile on my face.

There’s no touchy-feely out in Kenya. People don’t care if you smile and say, ‘Sorry, really. It must be hard.’ Emotional validation has no value here. ‘Just give me the damn money, I don’t care if you’re sorry.’

There was one week when I helped Hillary revise his resume and write a cover letter. He really had no clue how to write a decent resume. Now it glows. I’ve also bailed him out a couple times financially, something I wouldn’t do for anyone else. He thanked me profusely and said he felt like there was really no way he could ever repay me. And in monetary terms, he’s right. But I’ll never be able to repay the things he does for me on a daily basis. His official role may be as my Peace Corps counterpart - a Kenyan who works closely with me on all my projects - but he’s also my cultural advisor (‘Yes, it’s weird even in Kenya for someone to walk into your house without knocking, so tell your neighbors to cut it out,’) my emotional support (‘I just called to say sorry that you’re feeling homesick,’) and my partner in crime (‘You hide the paper, I’ll hide the fuel.’) That sense of security is priceless. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I’m the rhino and he’s the weird bird eating the ticks.

In the long run I think I’ll discover that this symbiotic relationship extends to the rest of the community that I’m living in. But right now I just have to get over the fact that everyone just wants me for my money.

Woman's Work

November 8, 2005. Tuesday, 7:58pm.

One night last week Kroll and I made spaghetti at my house. I set him to work chopping tomatoes, and at one point I observed that if my neighbors came into the room and saw him cooking, they wouldn’t know what to make of it. The next morning I asked him to help me wash the dishes after breakfast.

“Um, I don’t know,” he said jokingly. “That’s womens’ work.”

Since I don’t have a sink in my house, he took all the dishes outside to wash. I overheard the neighbors commenting on the mzungu man doing womens’ work.

Thanks to Kroll the marathoner, I’ve also hoodwinked Hillary into being my running partner. This morning, after my usual 2km of huffing and puffing to keep up with Hillary while he walks next to me, I invited him over to have an American-style breakfast of Earl Grey tea and banana bread.

Hillary talks a lot about the importance of empowering Kenyan women and girls, and trying to change traditional gender roles that trap women in the home doing all the chores and raising the kids while the husbands drink all day and run around with other women. In general, Hillary is just a really nice guy with a matching nice guy face and nice guy listening skills, so a lot of women in his community come to him with their problems. He encourages high school girls to pursue a college degree and cheers them on with comments like, “When I was in school I noticed the girls were always smarter than the boys.” He also encourages girls in his community to apply for a national identity card when they turn 18, which all Kenyans need to have to apply for jobs and to vote. Most rural women, especially those who aren’t educated, don’t see the value of being able to vote because their husbands or brothers tell them what opinions to have anyway. And in many cases if a woman challenges her husband, she gets beaten.

(On a side note, one day Hillary and I were watching a video for a female Christian singer who sings, “Bwana, bwana, nipe uvumilivu.” Which means, “God, give me patience.” The video is about a woman whose husband beats her and her children. Trying not to get upset about the implication that Kenyan women being beaten by their husbands have no other recourse but to ask God for patience, I asked Hillary how common it is for men to beat their wives. He mumbled something that sounded like 90% but didn’t take his eyes off the video.

He’s a big fan of this particular singer we were watching, so I tried to get his attention by saying, “You mean almost every man beats his wife?”

He nodded vaguely, still entranced by the woman on TV begging God for patience. I thought maybe he hadn’t heard correctly, so I said, “Like what, 90 percent?”

He nodded vaguely again, still staring at the TV. Still not convinced he heard me, I said, “You’re saying most men in Kenya beat their wives?”

He said, “Mm,” one of the vaguer variety of mm’s in his repertoire of vague responses. So the verdict is: I’m not sure but I think domestic violence is pretty normal in Kenya.)

Anyway, over the months I’ve given him a thorough overview of gender roles in the U.S., always to enthusiastic nods and fervent agreement. I told him that Kroll helped me cook and wash dishes, and he said, “I think that’s better. Men and women should share equally in the work.”

So this morning after breakfast, Hillary said, “I’d like to help you wash the dishes but I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Men are not supposed to wash dishes,” he said. “What would your neighbors say?”

“You could be an early adopter of equitable gender roles in your community,” I said. “When my neighbors ask what you’re doing, you can say, ‘This is how you can help your wife around the house.’“

“I’ll wash the dishes next time,” he said. “But only inside your house.”

Well, social change is a slow process.

Christianity in Kenya

So the internet has been down in my village for the last, like hundred years. Even today I've been waiting at the post office for the internet to come back up (it's up and down, mostly down). The only good thing that has come out of this is that I met a 25”year”old
runner who was also waiting for the internet to come up. Heh heh heh. :D :D :D

November 6, 2005. Sunday, 9:09am. It must be the fact that it’s Sunday that I’m feeling acutely bitter about Christianity in this country. My neighbors no longer invite me to church, which a normal person might take to be an expression of respect for my spiritual beliefs, but after the whole lesbian pedophile incident, I take it to mean they have given up trying to save my blackened soul, and have decided to leave me to rot in hell, which in their eyes is appropriate retribution for my heathen ways.
For some reason I have run into Pastor G like every single day this past week. Even yesterday when I only stepped out of my house for about 30 minutes, there he was, calling out to me as he was coming out of a shop. Now Pastor G, despite his brand of judgmental, fire”and”brimstone Christianity, still seems willing to be seen talking to me in public, which if he were true to narrow”minded form, he would try to avoid doing because he wouldn’t want to be associated with my Pagan, church”skipping ways. But Pastor G is also a true Kenyan religious leader, and by that I mean he might be just a little bit corrupt. So he sees a mzungu and he thinks, it doesn’t hurt to have friends in economically high places even if her soul is in one of Garth Brooks’ low places. (“I’ve got friends in lowww places”“ yeah you got that reference.) Maybe corrupt isn’t quite the right word for Pastor G, as in truth I haven’t worked with him enough to see
evidence of it. A better word for him is freeloader. Mooch. He came up to me last week and saw that I was carrying my organization’s printer.

“Justina! Can you print out a book for me?”
“Print a what?”
“I have written a book, it’s really wonderful,” he said. “It has many chapters with advice to men and women about how to live according to the Bible.”
“Well there just aren’t enough messages like that in this country,” I said. “How many pages are we talking?”
“Forty.”
“Okay, bring forty sheets of printer paper, your manuscript on a disk, and extra cash to pay for the ink cartridge.”
Silence.
“Sawa?” I said. Okay? Printing services are 40 shillings per page in my village so he’s getting a deal.
“I have the book on paper,” he said. “You can type it for me.” Typing services cost even more.
“Bring it on a disk or else I can’t print it.”
“Haya,” he said. Okay. “I will bring it. We shall meet.”

One day Pastor G saw some literature from a Bible correspondence course Hillary is taking through the Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA) church.

“Do you know that those are the people who killed Jesus?” said Pastor G.
“Which people?” Hillary said.
“Those who don’t observe the Sabbath,” he said. “Those who go to church on Saturdays.”
“The SDAs?”
“Yes,” said Pastor G. “They are bad people. Be careful what you read.”
Hillary is an SDA. He said, “What denomination do you recommend, then?”
“Pentecostal Assembly of God,” said Pastor G. “We are a good church.”

When I asked Hillary later what the PAGs were, he said that when they receive the word of God in church they fall to the ground, writhing and speaking in tongues. Which sounds like it could be pretty cool, I don’t know. All I know is that Pastor G is a perfect example
of how religious leaders twist the teachings of the Bible to vilify others for no good reason. Why are the PAGs any better Christians than the SDAs, or any less bizarre and cultish? As far as I can tell they’re all a bit weird and repressive, and I judge their judgmentalism. Hillary said he could never take me to his church because they believe that it’s not a woman’s place to wear trousers. What’s really hard to understand, though it’s certainly not limited to Christianity in Africa, is the moral hypocrisy and the apparent disconnect that many people who call themselves Christians seem to have between their own actions and the moral code they claim to adhere to. It’s this disconnect that allows
them to condemn other people while appearing to have no self”awareness of their own moral failings. Maybe it’s just an excuse not to have to take responsibility for their actions. Of course no one is perfectly morally upstanding, but at least I don’t judge people according to ridiculously narrow and arbitrary definitions of right and wrong.

Maybe I haven’t explained exactly why I’m so bitterabout all this. I wouldn’t be so defensive if the following conversation hadn’t happened about two months ago between two people in my community:

“So, I hear that Justina isn’t a Christian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She doesn’t go to church.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well I hear she likes to go around taking pictures of the girls at her school while they’re bathing naked.”
“What??”
“That’s the kind of thing people do when they aren’t Christian.”
“Um…“
“Don’t tell her I told you this.”

I’ve recently formulated the following indignant and vaguely bigoted response to anyone who suggests that there might be something wrong with me because I don’t go to church. It goes:

“This is a country where 80 percent of the population claims to be Christian, yet
your society and economy is being ravaged by corruption and AIDS, both of which are the result of grossly un”Christian behavior. Explain to me then, why you think church will make me a better person rather than an even bigger sinner. Because just based on the
math, it sounds like if I go to church I will certainly end up in hell.”

6:32pm. Oddly enough, I was talking to some of the Chebisaas* girls this afternoon and one of them said, “In our country we have 80% of our people calling themselves Christians. But we still have so much corruption and sin.” They asked me why there is relatively little corruption in the U.S. compared to Kenya. I didn’t know how to answer them. I guess the answer would be complex and subject to debate, and I’d have to emphasize that the operative phrase is relatively little corruption. Most Kenyans are under the impression that there is no crime, no immorality, no poverty and no corruption in the U.S., an idea that every American would find laughable, though it explains why every Kenyan I’ve ever met has asked me to hook them up with a visa to the U.S. They think I live in the Utopian States of America.

I guess you could explain the relatively little corruption as cultural, or historical, or a result of free market capitalism, or any other combination of factors. But what may be more meaningful is to say that the corruption in the U.S. hasn’t incapacitated all our major institutions and market systems like it has in Kenya. (At least not yet.) We all steal office supplies and napkins and taco sauce packets, and maybe we’ve claimed corporate expenses that we didn’t accrue, or lied on insurance applications, or cheated on exams.

The U.S. was founded on the idea that the individual is supreme, and that respecting and protecting individual freedoms is the law’s top priority. We believe in a God-given right to express our opinion, practice whatever religion we believe in, and acquire whatever property we want, without fear of persecution. We believe that we have a moral imperative to defend and enforce (or maybe impose) our definition of individual human rights around the world, regardless of cultural traditions within other borders. It’s the mentality that each person is unique, significant, and therefore entitled to these things. By extension, if someone doesn’t get what they want, they have the power to do something about it. And we have set up institutions (courts, legal systems) to support this.

But then you would think that in a collectivist society like Kenya, people would be even more inclined to strive for the benefit of the whole. How did it come to be then, that a few individuals seized power and withheld opportunities from everyone else? Greed is human nature, I guess, but greed doesn’t necessarily have to strip everyone else of everything they have. Maybe the fact that Kenyan culture de-emphasizes individuals and their ability to assert themselves - people are disempowered by the fact that they’ve never known the possibility of taking control of their lives - is what allows the corrupt to walk all over everyone else. Corruption has now become so entrenched that it’s just the way things work. It’s easier to give a bribe than to fight injustice, and in many cases you lose less. Honesty doesn’t pay. I also think that since power is in the hands of the few,
it’s up to these few people to change things - to put money back into the country’s roads, schools, infrastructure, health care, and social services rather than into their own pockets. * Chebisaas is the name of the girl’s school where I live.


Tribalism

Alfred, my Luhya neighbor, stopped to chat as we passed each other on the road yesterday. This is the guy who got really offended a couple months ago when I assumed he was a Nandi and said, “Chamgei,” which is a greeting in the Nandi language meaning hello or peace or, oh, I don’t know.

The dark irony is that yesterday, after talking to me for ten full minutes in English, he said, “You are from China. How is the road construction going?”

I wanted to say, “Chamgei, you idiot. At least when I assume things wrongly about you I get the freaking hemisphere right, let alone the country.”

But instead I explained patiently, as I’ve explained about 148 thousand times in the last five months, that I’m from America, specifically California.

“Oh, I know! I’m very good in geography,” he said. “California is around…Argentina.”

Yes. You’re a brilliant Luhya. A thousand chamgeis to you.

Travel Advisories and Sheena

It has been awhile since I posted to my blog, so helloooo out there!! Hope you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed you. Well I heard on the news that the U.S. and Japan have both issued travel advisories for Kenya; I think the official advice is, “Don’t Go to Kenya.” It sounds a bit overly cautious to me, but then, I live in a village so remote that most Kenyans wouldn’t know how to find it -- if they’d even ever heard of it.

There have been a number of violent incidents across the country since campaigning began for the constitutional referendum on November 21, usually following a rally for the wrong side. Ten people (or three if you ask the Kenyan media) were killed in Kisumu last weekend because there was a Yes (banana) rally there, and as you know, Kisumu is a strongly No (orange) town. There was an MP (Member of Parliament) whose SUV was set on fire in Kakamega, a mostly No town. The MP was campaigning for the Yes team. No one was injured but the message was clear.

Peace Corps volunteers have been banned from traveling to Kisumu this weekend because there is another rally planned for Sunday, and in general we’ve been advised not to travel anywhere for non”work related reasons. We’ve also been prohibited from leaving our sites the week of the referendum, which sucks because we were all planning to meet up somewhere for a nice American”style Thanksgiving. Now I’ll just have to find a really big chicken in my village and figure out how to roast it over a charcoal stove.

Anyway, my sense is that despite what you see on the state”controlled news here, most of the country is against the proposed constitution. If the No team wins on November 21, the country will smile, nod and go about its business. If the Yes team wins, I think there will be a bit of chaos to say the least, because Kenyans will assume the election was rigged or that bribes were offered to encourage Yes votes. And if there is chaos, I am guessing Peace Corps volunteers will be evacuated, which is a possibility too stressful to think about right now.

Well I went over to a friend’s house today and she invited me in for tea. For some reason in Kenya when you are spontaneously invited for dinner or tea, in most cases, your host will serve you and then stare at the TV ignoring you until you excuse yourself to go home. Maybe it’s their way of avoiding having to make awkward conversation with someone they don’t know very well. Anyway, this woman popped a movie into the VCR, and we spent the next hour-and-a-half watching “Sheena.” Now I don’t know how many people out there have ever heard of this movie; I definitely hadn’t. I wish I could at least tell you what year it was made, but the cover was just a shaky, illegible photocopy, indicating that it was probably a bootleg my friend bought in Chinatown. Uh, I mean, in Kisumu (which, in the context of street vendors, is just one big Chinatown, but with Luos screaming racist names at you because for some reason they think that will persuade you to buy their crappy knockoff stuff.) So it was either made in 1984 or 1964.

“Sheena” stars Tanya Roberts, one of the old Charlie’s Angels, which if I knew anything about American pop culture should tip me off to the year this movie was made, but since I’m pop culturally retarded, maybe someone can help me out by posting a comment. The storyline, as far as I can gather, is about Sheena, a blond chick who is orphaned as a little girl in the African bush, and brought up by a Maasai queen in Samburu, in northern Kenya. The queen can communicate telepathically with all the animals of the savannah, and passes this power on to her white daughter. Sheena grows up knowing only the ways of her adopted African land, but again inexplicably speaks English with an American accent and is the only person in her village who wears skimpy faux”suede hot pants and a tiny toga as opposed to the traditional full-length red robes of the Maasai. (Of course her wardrobe is not inexplicable, it’s just blatantly gratuitous.) And she rides a zebra and swings on vines, which, as far as I know, Kenyans have never done, not to mention the fact that I’m not aware of any viney trees on the savannah. But I could be wrong. And I’m convinced that zebra was actually just a white horse painted with black stripes
because horses are easier to ride than zebras.

Anyway, considering that the movie was made over 20 (or 40?) years ago, I won’t hold it to any reasonable standards of cultural sensitivity or accuracy, but I will have lots of fun making fun of it. Like the way the Maasai are portrayed as mono-syllabic savages who dance around chanting and waving spears and performing unexplained rituals like bringing a seemingly dead man buried up to his neck in the sand back to life. In truth the Maasai are the one tribe in Kenya that has gone to great lengths to preserve their traditions despite the pressures of colonial missionaries and modernization (and this has had both good and bad consequences, as they are the only tribe that still actively practices female circumcision, more accurately referred to by human rights groups as female genital mutilation, or FGM.) And even today they can be seen carrying spears and wearing traditional costumes. Maybe the reviving a dead man from the sand ritual is an actual Maasai practice, who knows. But the movie seems to intend to portray the Maasai as nothing but grunting warriors with backwards ways through the way it consistently refuses to explain anything, but rather seems to just present a bunch of black people dressed funny doing things most Westerners wouldn’t recognize. And of course the white “African” girl ends up with a kind of obnoxious, kind of dumb white guy who teaches her the “proper” ways of the whites, like the idea that mouths are not only for eating, but also for kissing.

Interestingly, the movie is also anachronistic in the way it portrays its African female characters. The Maasai queen was a strong and respected woman in her tribe, which seems really implausible in Kenya. Admittedly I don’t know much about the Maasai or their traditions (beyond the spears and FGM I just mentioned) but unless they are vastly different from every other tribe in Kenya, I don’t see how a woman could hold a position of status the way this queen was portrayed to have done. Also the female characters from Nairobi were strong, domineering types, the type of women Western men fantasize about -- confident and sexually liberated -- which I’ve never seen here, not even once (which is not to say that they don’t exist, especially in Nairobi, but even the ones that do exist are not brash and outspoken like this character, who appeared to be modeled after your choice of American pop diva.) One other scene sticks out in my head, where a Kenyan cop says to his subordinate (who is inexplicably white and not Kenyan, like many of the characters in the film), “I expect you to catch those people.” And the white dude (who is also much older than the Kenyan) says, “You will not be disappointed.” Or at least that’s the gist of their conversation. I have never, ever seen a Kenyan speak to a foreigner with such a tone of authority, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I ascribe this to a pretty universal inferiority complex that still lingers from colonial times. Most Kenyans, especially those in rural areas, don’t feel that it’s their place to tell a foreigner – whom they automatically believe to be more educated, to have more money, and not to be “backwards” – what to do.

What’s even more interesting than all this is the way my friend seemed to accept the movie without questioning its cultural accuracy, and I’m not sure whether to attribute that to an ability to suspend disbelief in the name of entertainment, or to a general lack of awareness of the subtle and not”so”subtle Western bigotry and arrogance contained in the movie. The answer is probably a little of both.

Anyway, I excused myself in the middle of the movie at about the time the bad guys burned down Sheena’s village. (My friend had also started breastfeeding her baby, which in Kenya is perfectly okay to do anytime, anywhere, in the presence of any company. I have seen more boobs on matatus and at markets than on any given day in the women’s locker room at the gym.) Part of me wants to go back and finish the movie to see what other outdated clichés and subtle racism emerges, and the other part of me knows that besides providing that interesting window into the evolution of Western political correctness, I’m not going to get anything else out of finishing it. Well, unless you count being amused by how many types of wildlife they can gather in one scene that would never actually hang out together in their natural habitat. Lions and baboons and zebras and waterbuck”all residents of the savannah, but not drinking buddies. Well, anyway, if anyone out there has finished reading this post and still doesn’t feel like going back to work, feel free to Google the Maasai, specifically the Samburu subtribe, which is what the movie was about, and see what you can find about their traditions. Let me know what you learn.