June 5, 2007

funny phrases

“You look like a statue.”
“You look like a doll.”
“Your feet are so clean.”

All funny phrases that’ve been said to me. These Kikuyu women crowed around a friend and I at a roadside fruit market outside of the city. They were inspecting me intently. What did they see? “Her feet are so clean,” they tell my friend. “Leave her here with us.” “No, I’m not leaving her here,” my friend tells them! What do I make of such a strange interaction?

Sometimes I don’t know where I am. Nothing makes sense. I have no frame of reference for understanding. Everything needs translation – even English!

ghetto heaven

Sometimes I’m just hanging on by my fingertips to the ledge of Africa, trying to survive this place. This is Africa, I tell myself. What do you expect? Forget what you’ve left behind…the riches of an American heaven…

Driving back to Nairobi by bus from Mombasa this weekend, we passed a highway town with this sign:

Ghetto Heaven Bar

Cracked me up. Ghetto heaven. What a ghetto heaven Africa is indeed. A paradise lost. You can see what it used to be, what its Maker intended it to be, but what it’s become? Ghetto heaven. Spoiled rivers by plastic bags and pollution. Landscapes littered with leggy giraffes, shanty towns, and the endless poor. The endless poor – sitting, standing, staring, wandering about the ghetto heaven streets all day long. Do they work? Are there jobs? Is there purpose in their lives?

“What are the most pressing national challenges (Kenya) faces? We have today 10 million Kenyans between the ages of 10 and 18. It means that between now and the 2012 elections, we need to have created eight million jobs. We are looking at the prospect of unemployment rising from two million to five million by 2012.”

Imagine that stat coming into reality here!

“The consequences of five million unemployed energetic and disillusioned young people is crime, rural destitution, urban squalor and the potential of political strife too dire to contemplate. Youth unemployment is the greatest threat to political stability.” (Uhuru Kenyatta in the Daily Nation, March 16, 07)

Diani Beach

Went to Diani Beach, South Coast Mombasa this weekend with some girlfriends from the office for a wedding and also to see our New Life Home – Mombasa. What an adventure.

I am so happy to be back in Nairobi if you can believe that. The trip was exhausting. Both ways – coming and going – we traveled in the pouring rain over pot-holed roads. We left by night bus from Nairobi on Thursday and traveled all moonlit night for 9 hours to Mombasa. I slept most of the way, so the trip there was fast. The moon lit the landscape beautifully.

Coming home to Nairobi was not so easy. We left Diani Beach as it had just started to rain. Ended up with the craziest of crazy matatu (public minivan) drivers, passing other drivers on the highway at high speeds in the torrential rain. The town bridge was “down” due to the rain, so our driver pulled off the main highway and onto this side road. The side road was completely flooded – a river. There’s another matatu 50 yards into this river road, stalled out. People are outside, waist deep in water, pushing it. As they are pushing the car, they wave to our crazy driver to come. Come?! I think, Are you nuts? I’m quickly thinking that our driver has proven himself to have limited cause-and-effect thinking and the friend next to me leans over and says, “You can start praying.” I said, “Don’t let him go that way. You need a boat to pass there.” So everyone at this point starts talking in Kiswahili and I’m left out of the loop. After a few minutes debate and internal praying, we back out. Thank God.

My friends later teased me that it would’ve been OK to go that way. Said we would’ve just sat in the car and let them push. They laughed at me for saying something. Cultural clash. We ended up finding an alternative, non-flooded route and making it to our bus barely on time, but it’s a hard call – trying to figure out what things to let go and what things to speak up on. Things are so different here.

spoiled?

The road trip was like this during the day – baobab tree, shrub, shrub, baobab, shrub, baobab, shrub, shrub…

I’ll take flying any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Call me spoiled – my Kenyan friends do – “Guy, Janay, you’re spoiled girl.” Yup.

beach boys

One thing we don’t have much of in the States are annoying beach boys. They come up to “befriend” you in order to offer you something for sale, or a marriage proposal, or some other come on. Madame hello. Hello … pretty lady – hello --?

I finally told one – “Look, I want to be alone, OK?”

“Yes, but we’re never alone,” he says referencing the sky with his arms. “There’s God and the angels.”

“Yes, and I just want to be with them now, OK?” I say.

OK. Sawa. He leaves.

You feel mean, but it has to be done! It’s tiring to always be on your guard. There’s little rest even in restful places here.

witches

Saturday night a group of us sat at the beach’s edge under the full moon and a witch came out. No joke. A witch.

It was a single woman. She picked up a large bunch of shrubs or flowers and began waving them over the water’s edge in this rhythmic way. At times she would run, arms held out in front of her, as if her wrists were bound by ropes and something was pulling her forward. She stomped, talked, moved in strangely patterned and chaotic ways. It was creepy to watch. Something spine-tingly and evil about it. My Kenyan friends seemed scared – “Don’t look. Oh, Lord – what’s this? Witchcraft,” they agreed. They’re familiar with it.

Greater is He who’s in you than he who’s in the world, we said in agreement.

The place we were staying at was a Christian retreat center called The Word of Life. The woman walked right through the property and stood on the beach cursing and calling on evil spirits with such boldness.

It’s timely that I saw this because the last pastor that I heard spoke briefly about witchcraft in Kenya – how strong it is as a religion and how many “high level officials” openly practice it.

I think we take it so lightly in the States – charmed, entertained and bewitched by it…

There’s spiritual power in witchcraft. That’s why they practice it here.

suitcases in the corner

It’s so symbolic that I’ve lived with suitcases in the corner of my living room all this time – always there – in the corner of my eye, in the back of my mind. I’m here. I’m not. I’m leaving. I’m staying. I’m gone. I’m present.

The suitcases in the corner are coming out again soon.

I wonder, Can people invest in such a person? How attached can you really get to a nomad unless you’re a nomad, too?

My friends here say – “This is your home. Next time you come, come to stay. Forever and ever. The states are your birth country. This is your marital country.” (They want me to marry a Kenyan – they have an agenda.)

“Somewhere in the world there is someone missing you. Your mom? Your family?” they ask.

“Yes,” I say. But I sure have grown to love Africa and my friends here and the babies. Heart stealers. This see you later will be hard.

The shared grief of the suitcases-in-the-corner life.

London

I have this crazy picture in my head of getting to the London airport – the first sign of civilized ground in 6 months – and kissing it. Isn’t that sick?