well, here i am in kenya.

The Dangers of the Obama Presidency – II

2008-11-12T16:26:00.000+03:00

I stayed up to watch the first Obama press conference (shown on Al Jazeera, and with lots of commentary before and after). And we can say, the man has style. Big time style. One of the Al Jazeera commentators (a Brit) just kept going on about how Presidential he had seemed, and such a great demeanor, and what a relief it was to not be cringing and embarrassed, as he used to be when Bush gave his very few press conferences.

I’m a bit concerned that he came into the press conference with a list of the reporters that he was going to call on (no, that did not include Al Jazeera). I knew that his candidacy was marked by a very close control over the media portrayal of him. I was hoping that would not continue….

And what’s up with these super close ties to the Israeli state? And he’s been enthusiastic about biofuels from ethanol (read: let’s support corn farmers without paying attention to actual carbon impact of this fuel).

Okay, I admit, I am giddy at the prospect of getting to be critical about the Obama administration. This is so much better than being hopelessly depressed over the Bush administration!

The Dangers of the Obama Presidency - I

2008-11-12T15:57:00.000+03:00

I mocked some Canadians. I believe I said something like:

HA! We have Obama and you have ….HARPER! HA!

This was unkind. The Canadians in question were from Quebec, and therefore did not really care. Still, though, that does not really justify it. In my defense, I was drunk on the giddy feeling of no longer feeling morally and culturally inferior to my northern neighbors.

(In retrospect, my ‘northern neighbors’ now are Ethiopia, and it’s kind of funny, because I totally feel like Ethiopia is totally culturally superior to any of my backgrounds. On the other hand, Ethiopia doesn’t exactly hold a moral card over anyone right now – they are like the Guantanamo Bay of Africa, holding political prisoners from all over in extremely obscure and likely bad conditions.)

fireworks!

2008-11-05T19:26:00.001+03:00

dude, we hardly ever get fireworks in Nairobi! well, with the exception of Diwali, and that's only in certain parts of town. I'm still at work on a conference call, but either there was just a massive gun battle with cannons or fireworks are going off!!!!

WOOOOH!!!!

Kenya is ecstatic

2008-11-05T18:37:00.000+03:00

Kenya

is ecstatic. Completely. Dancing on the streets, dancing pretty much everywhere. I have done several victory laps through my office, flying my Obama 2008 kanga. I have hugged everyone in the office, and burst into tears several times during the day.

Yes, it is true, President Kibaki has named November 6 a national holiday. People are So Proud. It is the only thing on the news, everyone on the street talking about. On my walk to work, I had so many neighbors and people greet me with congratulations and shared expressions of joy. It is a great feeling.

It’s true I missed out on being bombarded by the full Campaign Effect – no commercials, infomercials, or signs in yards. But I certainly did not miss out on the Obama excitement. Someone, I don’t know who, paid for Obama billboards around Nairobi, including pictoral shots on the new Jumbo-tron type electronic billboard that is on the Hallie Sellassie /Uhuru Highway roundabout. The news has covered the elections quite thoroughly (perhaps too thoroughly - see earlier post). In Western Kenya, church leaders held an ecumenical prayer service, in which they prayed for the hearts of Republicans to be changed. People in rural Kenya know about the electoral voting system in the States. There are Swahili and Jaluo songs about Obama, there are Obama shirts and buttons and cloth, there are a million Obama matatus (mini-buses).

So today is the culmination of a whole lot of momentum and excitement. I would love to be back in the States, but I can count myself lucky to be here in Kenya.

I AM excited about Obama...but....

2008-10-31T11:09:00.002+03:00

Last night on the news, they spent at least 20 minutes on Obama stories. The entire first 14 minutes of the newscast were on Obama, and then there was a follow up story on his relatives in Kenya. This despite the fact that there is some serious news developing these days....

- The Waki Commission, led by a former judge to explore the post-election violence, produced a report that people need to be held to account for what they did, and suggested names of persons responsible for organizing major violence (those names are in a sealed envelope and have not yet been revealed). The report also held that if those people were not brought to court in Kenya, they should be indicted by the International Criminal Court. Yesterday a majority of MPs and the major ODM party came out against the Waki Commission report, ostensibly because there is no need to 'reopen wounds that are just starting to heal', and also because Kenya must 'hold on to its sovereignty' and not give it up to the ICC. But everyone knows, everyone knows that it is because these same politicians would be shown to have instigated and paid for much of the violence.
- In other news, the Kenyan police stopped a bus with a guy who was carrying 600 bomb detonators to a part of north eastern Kenya that is Somaliland, where there has been a lot of violence lately, including human rights violations by police against civilians.
- Oh, and the DRC is descending into chaos extremely rapidly. Thousands and thousands of people are displaced in eastern Congo.

So as much as I am Extremely Pro-Obama, I'm going to question the choice of the news editors last night.

2008-10-22T17:07:00.000+03:00

i am sooooo embarrassed that I first wrote "Carol Mosley Braun" instead of "Cynthia McKinney." So SO embarrassed. Sorry about that.

What I have to say about the US Election

2008-10-21T13:11:00.002+03:00

To my brother who wants to vote for Cynthia McKinney (who totally rocks the house and is an amazing, amazing person and running with the Greens)

I know what the polls say, but I don’t trust the polls. Don’t trust ‘em in Kenya; don’t trust ‘em in the USA. I know that Obama isn’t everything we would want him to be, but he does advocate for corporate regulation, a government that ensures essential services, and a less powerful executive and more independent judiciary and legislative. I remember 8 years ago I felt like there probably wasn’t that much of a difference between Bush and Gore, and WOW I was WRONG.

To folks who are still ‘on the fence’

I really think you are missing the point, here. Obama and McCain have really different views of what government is for, how a country should be a country, and the goals of the Presidency. But in any case, Colin Powell has endorsed Obama, so it seems to me that that ought to convince you fence sitters.

Happy World Food Day!

2008-10-16T13:59:00.002+03:00

also being referred to as "World Foodless Day."

Here is a press release from Via Campesina on World Food Day:

We can end the food crisis!

(Maputo, October 15, 2008) We can only end the food crisis through the principles of food sovereignty and agroecology. This is the focus of the Vía Campesina in Maputo, as its 5^th Congress gets underway with a Youth Assembly for rural youth from all over the world.

There are many young people who want to start out in agriculture using agroecological farming methods, based on autonomous principles of sustainable production and local marketing of produce. Current policies, however, make this difficult, and favour industrial production methods.

Today, the 16th of October, 2008, the FAO World Food Day, the Via Campesina offers a message of hope in the face of the world food crisis.

The crisis is a direct result of the industrial and export-based agricultural model, at the expense of millions of rural workers and the population as a whole, in every region of the world. But the crisis can be overcome if we abandon this model, which drives out rural workers, destroys biodiversity and the environment, and results in hunger and poverty in the world. The food crisis is the most dramatic link in the chain of crises generated by the neo-liberal economic system – the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the financial crisis, the biodiversity crisis, etc.. It is time for a change of direction, starting with agriculture itself.

The alternative is food sovereignty, which allows peoples to develop their own agricultural and food policies, which favour local and sustainable rural production, and equitable distribution of healthy food to support their own people.

The Vía Campesina reiterates this message in the midst of discussions taking place during its 5th Conference in Maputo (Mozambique), attended by over 600 representatives of small farmer and rural worker organizationss from all over the world.

60% of all food consumed in Mozambique is imported, and the scourge of hunger and malnutrition is everyhere in this country. Mozambique, like every country in the world, needs food sovereignty and support for its sustainable peasant production sector - using environmentally-friendly means – to feed its own population and put an end to hunger.

Today on World Food Day, the Via Campeina Youth Assembly stresses the urgent need of new generations of farmers to have to access to farm land and means of production. It has become clear that many young people want to farm, using the principles of agroecology, yet are still unable to do so. The Via Campesina urges governments to improve access to land, credit and support for these young people, because the future of agriculture and food production depends on them. In other words, the food crisis cannot be solved if young people are not given a wide-ranging role in agriculture based on food sovereignty and agroecological models.

For more information: Isabelle Delforge (e-mail: idelforge@viacampesina.org, +258 829628439) www.viacampesina.org

Fever + Moby Dick = Questionable Results

2008-09-09T13:41:00.002+03:00

Since coming to

Kenya

, I get horribly sick about once a year. Not at all dangerously sick, not at all seriously sick, just dramatically sick. The kind where I inevitably end up collapsed on the kitchen floor, sweating and shaking and wondering how I’ll ever get back to my bed. I don’t know if it is that Kenya lends itself to picking up more extreme bugs, or if I’m just generally more dramatic in Kenya. I think it’s a bit of both.

Most of the time I was sick I was: sleeping; lying in bed reading Moby Dick; lying in bed thinking of how to win a million dollars.

First I should say, Moby Dick is awesome. But a strange side effect of reading it over several feverish days plus one daytime television session of Survivor while eating toast was this monomaniacal fixation on winning a million dollars.

Can’t say I’ve spent very much of my life thinking of what I could do with lots of money, but once I started thinking about it (and ‘thinking’ is a strong term for the loose ranging loops of fancy), it was hard to stop. Lots of good causes out there.

But how, you might ask, will you win a million dollars? If I remember correctly, I had a 3 part plan:

1) Win Survivor
2) Win an Olympic gold medal.
3) Win a Nobel Prize. Any of ‘em.

Yeah.

#3 – Win a Nobel Prize – I think this was more of an acknowledgment that it comes with a million dollars. Even in my deepest delirium, I had no plan for how to get one.

#2 – Win the Olympics – Yeah. You know, I’m pretty sure a gold medal does NOT come with a million dollars. But for some reason, I thought it would. So I thought about what sport I could ‘realistically’ master in the next 4 years and compete at the age of 33, and I came up with….the parallel bars.
Yep. I think primarily because the announcers would have so many great talking points on me – wow, imagine, such mastery in just a few years! and at her age! and she doesn’t even have very good depth perception!

#1 – But it didn’t even matter that numbers 2 and 3 were pretty long shots, because I was convinced that I had the winning strategy for Survivor. So the episode of Survivor I saw while eating toast was the last of some season (12? 22? 44?), and it was the usual where you had everyone on the jury complaining about how the final 2 weren’t ‘worthy’ and were ‘weak’ and had just ‘ridden coattails’ to get to the end.

“Oh shut up,” I said in my head. I do a lot of talking out loud in my head when I’m sick. “If you hadn’t bloody well knocked out everyone who seemed to be a threat, this wouldn’t have happened. This show is so predictable.”

Later as I was lying in bed, not sleeping, not reading, just lying there as I do when I’m sick, I came up with my grand strategy. Looking back, it’s a bit thin. At the time, it seemed as deep as was necessary. My plan was to go on the show and tell my fellow contestants: look people, our strategy should be to Make Good Television. Somehow, this appeal to their deeper Televised instincts would inspire everyone to greater heights, and instead of just voting out the obvious, we’d vote out the people who weren’t contributing to the overall structural drama. And my contribution would be from constantly doing meta-commentary on the role of Survivor in American cultural life and how we reflected and impacted American life. Which, in retrospect, even if the rest of my strategy succeeded, would likely not keep me on any island for very long.

since I last blogged….politics keep happening

2008-07-17T20:23:00.002+03:00

There’s been an entire political scandal since I lost wrote. I mean, I knew it had been a while, but this really puts it in perspective!

So there is a fancy hotel in town, The Grand Regency. It’s fancy. It was built with money that was siphoned from the government in a previous Scandal (I think it was the Goldenberg scandal….might have been the Anglo-Leasing one, though). Anyways, it had to do with government contracts going out for projects that never existed, and payments for constructing a building with 27 floors but it is built with 21 floors (that’s the Times Tower downtown), and for doing all kinds of things that never happen or happened only part-way, etc. Billions of shillings. So the Grand Regency was built with that money by Pattni, a guy who was right in the midst of that former Scandal, and was supposedly in jail for a number of years over it (but he was pretty much out and about) and then was released and said he’d been Saved and founded a church franchise that is raking in billions of shillings. Anyways, because Grand Regency was built with dirty money, the government of Kenya took it into receivership.

A month or so ago, it was revealed that the Grand Regency had been sold to the Libyan government. The scandalous parts are:
- how much was it actually sold for? So first they said 2.8 billion shillings. But then it was maybe actually just 1.9 billion. Or, no, wait, it was 2.8. No, it was definitely 1.9. Or maybe it was sold for 2.8 billion and the government is actually going to receive 1.9 because the rest is already pocketed. It still isn’t clear to me.
- does that represent a fair price? Some people say it was valued at 8 billion. Some people say an entire chain of fancy fancy hotels was sold for 1.3 billion. A lot of people talked endlessly about this.
- who was it sold to? First they said the Libyan government. Then it was just the Qadhafi family. And then it supposedly was just 3 random Libyan guys with mustaches who looked like they had been pulled from their kiosks in Kisumu and told to stand in front of the TV cameras. And then finally the Libyan embassy confirmed that it was, indeed, the Libyan government.
- did the sale go through the proper channels? No. It was sold without getting the express permission of Parliament.

Amos Kimunya, the Minister of Finance, has been forced to step down over the scandal. He was the Minister of Finance for 5 years total, and he had a reputation of being clean and smart. That was part of what seemed so strange about the whole Scandal – it was kind of stupid. But on the other hand, looking back, there were quite a lot of Scandals under his watch, so maybe he wasn’t so squeaky clean.

And that’s my understanding of the Latest Scandal. A new Minister of Finance has been named, the Libyan government owns a fancy hotel in Nairobi, and everyone else in the halls of power are breathing a collective sigh of relief that they didn’t get caught this time.

(Beaker is distressed that there has been Another Big Scandal)

since I last blogged…Africa/Europe trade negotiations grind onwards

2008-07-17T20:06:00.001+03:00

The other night I dreamt that I was sitting at my parents’ kitchen table with my family, telling them what I’d been doing while I was in Kenya. At the end, they said: So basically, you didn’t achieve anything. I woke up very sad. Also, in my dream I had pierced ears, which was really confusing for me because I couldn’t remember when that had happened.

Well, it’s true, those pesky Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) negotiations keep inching closer towards finalizing some Truly Bad Deals for Africa. There was a lot of pressure at the end of last year, with the European Commission threatening to suspend trade preferences for African exports if they didn’t sign something before 2008. So most of the African countries that aren’t Least Developed Countries ended up initialing “Interim” or “Framework” EPAs – agreements that just cover trade in goods.

This year, the EC is focused on getting those Interim EPAs actually signed, and even more so, getting EVERYONE to sign on to “Comprehensive” EPAs, which include service liberalisation and restrictions on investment regulation and intellectual property rights regimes and all kinds of other nasty stuff that doesn’t belong in a Free Trade Agreement anyways. Oh, and promises of Development Aid from the European Union.

But there is good news.
~ None of the Interim EPAs have actually been signed yet. An initialed treaty is not a signed treaty, so there is still space to either change the initialed text or to pull out altogether.
~ The delay in the negotiations means that African countries could sign up for a preferential trade scheme (GSP+) starting at the beginning of 2009, and just skip out on an EPA altogether without losing most of their European export markets.
~ More and more people and institutions are pointing out how Truly Bad the draft EPAs are. In the past few weeks, a French parliamentarian published an extremely critical and well researched document looking at the development impacts of EPAs & Sarkozy gave it a pretty positive response; Joseph Stiglitz told the world that EPAs are a bad idea; a massive on-line petition against the Caribbean community’s EPA is growing; Angola, Namibia and South Africa are standing up against the EC’s pressure tactics….

So I’ve still got hope.

(photo from a march in Lisbon in December at the Europe/Africa Summit. There was a klezmer band! How great is THAT?)

since I last blogged…I got older

2008-07-17T19:18:00.002+03:00

I turned 29. So I’m trying to think of a good slogan for my year. I really operate well with defined goals, and I think I’ve had pretty good success with my New-Years-slogans (that one year I really did eat a lot more beets), so I thought maybe it would give me more direction to do that with my Birthday-year.

My overall goal for the year: Be Less Risk-Averse.

I thought about it on my walk to work today. So far, I have:

29: What’s the worst that can happen? I think this is catchy, and has a good tone. But on the other hand, the question sort of begs for answers, and I can think of far too many very horrifying things that I don’t want to have happen this year. The point is, I shouldn’t be focusing on the small likelihood of those horrifying things, I should be focusing on the larger likelihood that when I take risks it leads to good things (and mildly disappointing but not so horrifying and probably ultimately character building things). (Oh, I’m not talking about Wild Risks – I’m thinking more like Talk to More People, and Take More Emotional Risks, and Apply to Interesting Jobs Even if You Don’t Think You’ll Be Hired. Things like that.)

29: Because You Need To Grow A Backbone At Some Point That’s probably too negative, and I’ll just end up with a bad feeling inside instead of directed and inspired.

Soon You Will Be 30…Shouldn’t You Have Written A Novel By Now? Hmm. I think I was in a ‘negative space’ on my walk to work today. It has to do with my head being Way Too Full of the most recent WTO negotiating texts. Ugh.

MUPPETS! I just thought of that one. I’m kind of tired right now, but I have to say, it’s looking pretty good! I mean, Muppets. I’m feeling better just thinking about them. Jim Henson died young from overworking (well, from pneumonia. But he wouldn’t have died of pneumonia if he had stopped working and rested). So within the slogan there are all these layers, like:
- Working hard is good, because you can achieve great things (like the Muppets); but don’t work so hard you kill yourself
- I bet Jim Henson could have prevented the movie industry from being so stupid about CGI effects. Or at least would have shown them another way to be. Let’s go to more puppet shows this year.
- You know, I really like how you can tell what Muppets are thinking because they are such physical beings. So maybe it’s okay that everyone in a meeting room knows exactly what I’m thinking just by looking at me.
- I’m really feeling Pigs in Space right now. I wonder what that means.
- Did you know that for The Dark Crystal they totally created a world and its ecosystems and inhabitants, and then they thought up a plot? True, it’s not the best plot, but it is a truly inspired world – all the pieces of the ecological and social and political communities really fit together. That’s something inspirational.
- Muppets take risks.

Well, MUPPETS! is definitely winning by my count. But before I settle on it, any suggestions?

BORN in the USA

2008-04-25T15:08:00.002+03:00

Well, I do appreciate being an American. I don’t have as many American friends in Nairobi any more – people have moved on, Nairobi being a transient city – and pretty much the only Americans I am around are when I occasionally see other MCCers, which doesn’t happen terribly often. But there were Americans in Accra for UNCTAD and for the Civil Society Forum, and I found that I Really Enjoyed Being Around Them. I didn’t actually spend much time with Americans, but I really got into embracing my American Identity. I said “Dude!” a lot more than I usually do; I actually said “Bless You” when a colleague sneezed (NOT something I’ve done in a long time); I was really feeling happy to be an American on the cusp of a regime change (Obama! Obama! Pennsylvania? How could you let me down?).

Maybe also it was that I had the added ‘glamour’ of being around a bunch of white people (which was weird in and of itself) and being the One Who Lives in “Africa”. Yes, I let myself fall into the trap of just accepting the looks that some folks who work for NGOs in Europe or North America give when I say I live in Nairobi….it’s this look that involves admiration and curiosity and maybe envy…as opposed to nipping that in the bud. After all, there is nothing intrinsically noble about living in Kenya as an ex-pat working for an NGO; I think it’s rather hard to live in Nairobi as an ex-pat and not have one’s life be rather ignoble. But no, instead of trying to somehow express that and wipe that look off anyone’s face, I just accepted it.

How exactly does one work off penance for that?

politics

2008-04-15T09:23:00.001+03:00

Written on Saturday (April 12): Kibaki and Raila had stopped talks and were both grandstanding, threatening to drop out of the “Grand Coalition” government

Everyone is annoyed and frustrated. I think I can say that with a high degree of confidence, unfortunately. Lots of folk are frustrated with the Politicians – the ‘hardliners’ on both side who are refusing to take what could have been at least a short-term solution and make it work.

I think everyone recognized that the February “coalition government” solution was a short-term solution. It wasn’t going to work the way that it does in Germany or other places where coalitions rule together. But still, I didn’t think it was going to be this short.

In the meantime, there are still THOUSANDS of people in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps who are convinced that they cannot go back to their homes, their farms, their jobs, their schools, or their lives.

Written on Sunday (April 13): Kibaki and Raila announce that they have come to an agreement, and they name a 40 member cabinet. That’s right – 40 ministries, with 40 ministers. Also, a Prime Minister (Raila).

Well, it’s amazing how grateful one can be for a bad deal, when the day before it seemed like there would be no deal at all. I guess it’s a good tactic – make everyone worry that the leaders are going to whip their respective populaces into a frenzy again….and then agree to something everyone knows is a huge waste of money but which is a lot better than civil war.

Twenty four new ministries have been pulled out of…anatomically correct but impolite places to mention here. I mean, some of them are potentially good ideas...sure, northeast Kenya needs more attention, but I have serious doubts that the new Ministry for NorthEast Kenya will do much to help that area. I guess we’ll see.

Written on Monday (April 14): Mungiki members block many of the major roads in and around Nairobi, burning cars and protesting the death of the jailed Mungiki leader’s wife and her driver. Police shoot 12 suspected Mungiki; others are killed in the cross-fire.

Okay. First of all, man, it is discouraging to wake up the day after the government has named a 40 member cabinet with the argument that it has to be that big in order to appease all of the parts of Kenya, to wake up from that to an SMS from the US Embassy that ‘gangs of youth are clashing with police’ and blocking roads in Nairobi. Sigh.

So the Mungiki. They are a “sect” – because they were originally focused around reviving Kikuyu religious beliefs and practices. As a way to reclaim heritage, as a way to shake off the cloak of colonial repression…pretty much good stuff, as far as my post-colonial white sensibilities are concerned. Fast forward to today, and the Mungiki is a Gang. A Gang that controls a lot of the matatu routes, that provides most of the basic services of the Kikuyu slums, that holds initiation ceremonies and that depends a lot less on their traditional spiritual beliefs than it does on the fear of what will happen to you and your family if you cross them.

The Mungiki mobilized big time during the elections, and in the post-election mayhem they did a lot more ‘recruiting’ – in some areas, young Kikuyu men who refused to join were killed. All of the militia were being pumped with money from politicians and big men during this time also. Now we are back to a time of ‘peace’ in which we have a Grand Coalition, but we’ve also got Grand Militia. This is going to be a problem for a while...

In Memory of Stephen Otieng

2008-04-03T15:03:00.000+03:00

Stephen was a part of the African civil society movement striving for economic justice. He worked for SEATINI Uganda, working on EPAs, on the connection between the environment and human rights, on trade policies…He was smart and funny, and now he is dead.

He was found in his locked apartment on Tuesday, dead from multiple stab wounds. His old laptop was missing, and his phone. We don’t know what happened. The police are looking into it, but so far this seems to primarily involve asking the family and work colleagues for payments.

I was in Kampala when they found Stephen. SEATINI had planned with us a regional meeting for groups involved in the Stop EPA movement, to strategize for the rest of 2008. We had to go ahead with the meeting – there were 50 participants already there from 10 countries in the region. Because we took up a lot of SEATINI’s responsibilities for the meeting, I didn’t attend the funeral. So in my mind, Stephen is still Whole.

We miss Stephen. We already miss his contributions to the Stop EPAs campaign, and I know that within Uganda his contributions are being sorely missed among the activist and research communities. I am angry – angry at the killers and primarily at the police. On the whole, though, I and others are very deeply sad to lose Stephen in such a fashion.

Food, continued

2008-04-03T14:27:00.003+03:00

More good food.

Kampala, Uganda

- Starches – I LOVE Kampala. It’s the perfect sized city (about the side of Pittsburgh or Portland). Probably if I lived in Uganda the sheer politeness of everyone would drive me totally crazy, but it is such a welcome relief from Nairobi. It’s slower and quieter, a bit dustier and less electricity, but they make up for it with beautiful green hills and a wider variety of starches than in Kenya. There is a lot of matoke – a variety of bananas that are boiled or fried, often the boiled version is mashed. Mmm. And then there is a lot more ‘brown’ ugali than you’ll find in most parts of Kenya (other than western Kenya). This is ugali made from other grains, usually finger millet. More protein, more vitamins, more tasty.
- Groundnut sauce – Somehow they make it fluffy kind of. And usually the peanuts are pounded with the red skins still on them, so that makes the sauce sort of pink. So good with matoke.
- Bananas – I hate bananas in the US. I love bananas in East Africa. They might be different, or I might just have a different attitude.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

- All of the food (except the raw meat) – so….good…..
- Tejj – Honey wine. Drinking it makes you feel like a greek god (well, yes, it is potent. But I’ve never drunk very much, so I can’t say whether or not one would eventually feel that one has power to intervene in the lives of mortals. It’s more the fact that it is honey wine, and tasty honey wine, that makes me feel that way)
- Coffee – I reckon Ethiopians have drunk coffee longer than anyone else in the world, seeing as it originated in Ethiopia. Up country they have coffee ceremonies three times a day. These are a people who take coffee seriously, and well they should.

Accra, Ghana.

You know how West Africans tend to be really tall and big? It might be because they have the best food in Africa.

- Red Red – Fried plantain, bean and tomato sauce, fish. The whole thing as spicy as you can take it.
- Jollof Rice – Chicken, rice, vegetables, the whole thing as spicy as you can take it.
- Shiroo – the chili sauce that makes everything so very good.

FOOD - Kenya

2008-04-03T12:35:00.001+03:00

(sorry - had computer problems where i couldn't cut and paste, so couldn't blog for a while..)

I do like food. And, happily, I have eaten a LOT of good food in the past 2+ years as an MCCer.

Nairobi

- Passionfruit Avocado juice – As previously mentioned, this is a divine combination. Okay, yes, for the benefit of my gourmet relatives (hi Karen!) it’s probably a puree from the avocado. But whatever you call it, it is dang tasty. Passionfruit – known as ‘passion’ in these parts - is a tangy fruit, and it balances nicely with the smooth avocado. If you ever find yourself in the Jomo Kenyatta airport, go all the way down past Gate 14 and you’ll find a Java House that usually has it. Enjoy!

- Indian Food – In plenty, relatively cheap, and extremely tasty. Kenya has a large population of “Indians” / “Asians”. I insist on referring to them as Kenyan Indians – I mean, a lot of them are 3^rd or 4^th generation Kenyans. Well, that’s a topic for another blog. For now, let’s talk about Diamond Plaza - an open-air square surrounded by dozens of Indian restaurants that are cheap and tasty, and fun because everyone in Nairobi comes to Diamond Plaza – the Kenyans, the Kenyan Indians, the wazungu, the Somalis, the Ethiopians… is a good time.

- Irio / Mokimo – in my opinion, the best of the limited starch options in Kenya. Potatoes, mashed up with beans and something green (up country it would be pumpkin leaves, in town it is usually peas) and add maize.

North Rift Valley

- Ugali - I’m not a huge fan of ugali, the basic starch of Kenya. It’s maize flour, boiled with water and cooked and stirred until it is very very thick. You eat with your right hand – pinch off a bunch, squish in your palm, eat. Very filling, but not very much protein or anything else. The best ugali I’ve ever had – maybe one of the few times I can say that I’ve really enjoyed ugali – was at Naomi’s place. She is one of the farmers in the leadership of the Uasin Gishu SmallScale Farmer’s Group, and she lives on a farm that is about 1 ½ ha if I remember correctly. That is not big. She had a separate cooking hut, with a stove built where the fire was up off the ground, and underneath she would incubate eggs or, in this case, let the ugali sit, so that it kind of baked in the pot. Man, that was some really good ugali – all crusty on the outside. Mmm.

- Ghee – Well, most people don’t have refrigerators once you leave Nairobi (and for that matter, lots don’t have them in Nairobi), which explains in part the rarity of butter and the commonality of Blue Band, a palm oil margarine. So dairy farmers tend not to make butter, but one time when I was staying at Hellen’s we made ghee. It involves making butter and then cooking it over a fire, stirring very very briskly the whole time until it separate into clear oil (ghee) and little pellets kind of that can also be used for cooking. Tasty, and doesn’t need to be refrigerated.

- Honey – Kenyan bees are still alive, and they are producing great honey.

Living in Nairobi

2008-03-11T12:13:00.002+03:00

For a long time after coming to Kenya, when people asked me “How do you like living in Nairobi?”, I said things like: ….oh, well, you know, it’s very different from where I’ve ever lived before. Or: oh, well, Nairobi, you know, it’s not a very warm and welcoming city. Or: oh, well, it’s good, it’s good. I mean, it’s not an easy city to live in. You know. But, yeah, it’s fine.

Sometime in the last few months, I’m not even sure when, I started answering with: Oh, man! I love Nairobi! Nairobi is great!

Some of things I think have changed my mind:

- taking matatus isn’t a big stress or expenditure of energy any more
- passionfruit-avocado juice
- managing to make some friends
- at a bus rest stop in Nakuru at 1am in the morning during a trip up country by night bus, I ran into a group of hip hop musicians I know from working on a Stop EPAs concert
- when I came back from Kampala and Lusaka, I really thought everyone would be very cynical about the power-sharing deal between Kibaki and Raila. Instead, everyone is determined to be hopeful, to be joyful about this opportunity for peace in Kenya.
- yes, it takes a lot longer to navigate the sidewalks and streets of downtown since the hawkers took over in November. But if you aren’t in a huge hurry, it’s kind of nice to have anything you could possibly want there on the sidewalk and spilling into the streets – oranges and sweet potatoes, stuffed animals, bedding, books, plastic containers, underwear, jeans, plates, handkerchiefs, sweets, plastic bags, charcoal, bibles... They were supposed to be relocated to a new ‘market’ area 2 weeks ago, but they ain’t moving.
- the National Reference and Lending Library – I don’t know if I would have been able to make the move from Kahawa to Nairobi without the intervention of a public library in my life
- radio stations that play Kenyan hip hop

Kenya strikes a deal

2008-02-29T14:54:00.000+03:00

I’ve been at meetings on the outskirts of Kampala all week. On Wednesday, I was in meetings from 8:30am till 11:30pm, and Kofi Annan announced that he was suspending the talks between PNU (Kibaki government) and ODM (Raila opposition). On Thursday, I was only in meetings from 8:45am till 10pm, and

Kenya

announced that Kibaki and Raila had struck a deal, making Raila a Prime Minister with executive powers.

So things are better, definitely better. In fact, one can almost function under those conditions. But still, things are not ‘normalized’ yet, and there is a ways to go yet till we’ll be operating at our maximum ability.

What Happened While Kenya Dropped Off the Radar of the International News

2008-02-22T13:47:00.000+03:00

The last number of weeks have been fairly quiet. I’ve been able to go back to life as almost-normal – using matatus to get around, not insisting to myself that I get home before dark, visiting friends, etc. But of course, it has not been the quiet of peace – it has been the quiet of a whole nation holding their breaths, waiting to see what will come of the Annan-led negotiations/mediations.

In the meantime, Kenya was on the move. Not ‘on the move’ in the sense of getting ahead. ‘On the move’ in the sense of everyone literally packing up and moving to ‘safe’ places. Throughout Nairobi, people switched neighborhoods for fear of being attacked or burnt for living in the ‘wrong’ part of town. Across the nation, people made their way “back to their ancestral homes” – a way to describe moving back to the part of Kenya that historically held the primary tribe you are identified with, moving away from the land you may have bought a few years ago or which your grandfather may have been relocated to when he came out of the forest after independence, whose original land was taken away already - divvied up in the immediate spoils of post-independence freedom.

While this was happening, militia have been solidifying their positions of authority in the rural areas and in the slums of the cities. It is the prevalence of these militia that I find particularly frightening, and where a lot of the potential for future violence lies.

Websites

2008-02-08T17:07:00.000+03:00

Check out the 2 new links on the side of webpage here -
- Kwani? blog - Kwani? is a great collective of writers based here in Nairobi. They hold open mic poetry readings once a month that are always fun to go to (a wide, wide, WIDE range of poems and talents), and have a number of great publications. The blog contains good writers writing about what has been happening here in Kenya.
- Peace in Kenya - information about what is happening to help us move towards peace in Kenya.

Concerned Citizens for Peace

2008-02-08T17:04:00.000+03:00

Since the outbreaks of violence, a growing group of citizens have been meeting three times a week to try to find a way towards peace in Kenya. They are a loose collective of citizens, NGOs, professional associations, CBOs, learning institutions, etc. The group meets three mornings a week, and I attended today for the first time. The meetings are open, and intended to support the political dialogue (they are non-affiliated), spread positive messages to dissuade violence and retaliation, gather information on the violence, and engage the mass media. The flowers for peace at Uhuru Park is one of their initiatives – Uhuru Park was the place where ODM rallies kept being called and it has essentially been cordoned off by military police. They started a movement of placing flowers at one part of the park called Freedom Corner (where we held our Stop EPA day tomato smashing event), placing flowers in commemoration of the lives lost since the election. It has been a really powerful thing – well covered in the national press, and with all sides (including the military police) placing flowers.

This morning there were probably around 60 people present. Folks brought up ideas of initiatives and then others would chip in to give advice, or support, and side meetings were scheduled for following up. Ideas included some kind of visible call to peace to the negotiators at Serena Hotel, a Peace and Love concert tour among the informal settlements, folks planning for actions on Valentines Day, folks working with the Law Society of Kenya to develop a legal framework for addressing the landlord & tenant issues, kids heading to Eldoret to work with the Universities there to initiate peace-building actions and counseling, Concerned Kenyan Writers passing on their plans, etc.

It was great to be surrounded by people who are active and involved in bringing peace to Kenya – who are concerned, but also not willing to let their fear of what may happen get in the way of taking concrete steps towards peace. Even though I literally did not have anything to bring to the plans or discussions, it felt really good to be there. I’m feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time.

Uncertainties

2008-02-05T09:24:00.000+03:00

One of the women that I buy vegetables and fruit from tells me daily that Jesus must be coming soon because the world is going to pieces. So far, 2008 is that kind of year. In Chad, there is extensive, indiscriminate fighting as rebels attempt to take control. In Uganda, a building under construction collapsed last week. In Rwanda this weekend there was a major earthquake. In Kenya, we slide a bit further every day into something ugly and raw.

There is a voice in my head which says that this is a test of my faith – whether I can hold on to my faith in the midst of such suffering and confusion and helplessness. I hate this voice. I don’t believe it is right at all, but that’s not why I hate it – I hate it because when I hear it, I am struck by the overwhelming sense that this is a test that I am failing.

Lent is coming. Part of me wants to put on sackcloth and repent, repent to God and the heavens and just see if it will all stop.* No, that’s not where I think peace will come from; no, I don’t think that God is punishing Kenya for turning from the Path of Righteousness. But oh, we have a long, long way to go yet towards peace and we seem to be driving ourselves further away each day. I watch the 9pm news, and realize that things were worse today than yesterday, that more people have died, that more people are homeless, that hatred is further entrenched and the negotiations are nowhere closer to concrete answers. I turn off the tv and sit in my apartment and listen to the sirens outside and what I want is to make a deal. I want to make a deal with God, with the Universe, with whoever will listen to me. I want an entity that will take whatever small allegiance I can claim, whatever pathetic promises I can offer, weigh these, and agree in return to call the whole thing off.

This is not my faith. I don’t believe that we are ruled by a God who makes such deals – I don’t want my life to be ruled by a God willing to make such deals.

But oh I want to make a deal. I am tired, and I have shelter and enough food. I am lonely, and I have friends here and I don’t have to worry about anyone hating me for my ethnicity. I am close to desperate, and I know this is bad because this is going to go on a lot longer and there is a good chance it is going to get much worse.

Well, it’s past my bedtime. I want to keep listening to Edgar Meyer play Bach cello suites on the double bass until everything gets better. But instead I’m going to brush my teeth and go to sleep and most likely I will wake up tomorrow morning in Nairobi, Kenya, which is still a place worth praying for and working in, a place that is still under God’s love and care.

*Actually, the Nairobi high fashion community has been creating and marketing sackcloth clothing the past few weeks. There was a piece on the news about it, and they showed how you can pair sackcloth tops and tunics with bright beads.

interesting BBC page

2008-01-31T16:56:00.000+03:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7215303.stm – An interesting collection of quotes from Kenyan politicians and world leaders.

Another MP has been shot dead. Eldoret and Kisumu are erupting...the neighborhood around my office is fairly quiet today, so let's hope that's the case throughout Nairobi.

Seems like the MP was with a woman and her husband/boyfriend (who happened to be a POLICEMAN) shot them both. The bad thing is that, even if this is just a love triangle, it's still a policeman killing an MP, which is just not good. Especially now, and especially here.

Otherwise, it's a beautiful sunny day, I didn't have to pay a late fee on my library books because they lost all records that the books were late, and I'm listening to a really excellent Modest Mouse album from Cory and Nathaniel. Yep - trying to be aware of the melting down of the social fabric around me and the terrible plight of thousands of Kenyans, and yet not respond by giving up all hope on life.

reflections after a weekend of the news and watching Gangs of New York

2008-01-28T09:26:00.000+03:00

Ethnic Violence, the news says, and I know that when I was back in the States I was so confused and horrified by that label, because it implies a people fighting another people for no reason but the blood that runs in them.

But of course, it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all. There is hatred, but it is not pure; it is never pure. There are the power imbalances. There are the injustices, built into the post-colonial system, and there is the simple fact that power breeds power, that money breeds money, that people worked hard and bought land from others. And ultimately, there is the deep knowledge that you have suffered, you have starved; that you need a leg up, and that you are more likely to get there by accepting a hand from above and climbing over the bodies around you, that you have more of a chance by cutting down your neighbor than you ever will by trying to cut down the ones at the top. And that all forms of cutting down are more at your grasp than any kind of building up, because you aren’t the ones who get to build in this country, in most countries.

There is no pure (baseless) hatred, and there is no pure (righteous) justice here. There is just fire, a destructive fire, not a refining fire. It does not matter who won the election any more. It does not matter that there was an election – most people say that they will never vote again, not if this is what happens when they vote. What matters is that both sides have ancient (not so ancient, 60 years is not so ancient) grievances, that both sides have now shed blood, and that fire is so temptingly close.

It is easier to be a pacifist in America. Here, I just feel passive. Of course I am arguing against hate talk, arguing with my co-workers, with my neighbors, with all sides, trying to make them see the injustices on both sides. But I am mostly just…passive. I don’t belong here. I am privileged to be here, I am grateful to be here, but I don’t belong here. I am not part of the solution. I am the elite, part of the untouchables, and what would happen if we were touched anyways? If the people in power – the Kibakis and the Railas and the ex-pats with all their pat solutions and advice – if we were targeted, like an ethnic group? It would not bring down the country’s structures to start again and build something better this time. It would fuel the flames, but it would not be a clean fire.

I believe it is not too late, that the fires can be doused and something whole still salvaged, something more whole built with the pieces that are left. But I am starting to believe this the way that I believe in God.

Lord, I believe; help me in my disbelief.

Reflections from Dr. Ray Downing

2008-01-28T09:16:00.000+03:00

Ray Downing agreed to let me post an email of his on this blog. Ray and Janet have lived in Upper Rift Valley in Kenya for years now, and have practiced ‘community medicine’ in throughout East Africa and in the States, including New York City. I appreciate Ray's reflections on the situation in Kenya (and I recommend his books, too).

---

Yesterday was Epiphany. Epiphany means appearance or manifestation; in the Church, the appearance of Jesus, his manifestation as Messiah, and the revealing that He is not for Israel only, but for all nations. The last week in Kenya seems to demonstrate the reverse, a sort of Devil's Epiphany, the appearance of killing and burning and chaos, the manifestation of evil. It's been bad.
I think there has been an epiphany here, but of a different sort. The question near the surface of so many commentators is, "We expect this sort of thing in Somalia or Liberia or Congo - but how could this happen in Kenya, a country with a stable democracy and such a strong economy?" In fact, the election itself was remarkably close, and orderly - until the tallying. What happened?
One Kenyan commentator said these events exposed Kenya's "thin veneer of civilization", and I think the comment points us in an interesting direction, depending on what we mean by "civilization". If by civilization we mean a strong (Western-style) democracy, then Kenya had that: political parties, free press, campaigns, pre-election polls, elections, the works. All the things we in the rich West have said make up a strong democracy. Were all these just a "thin veneer" in Kenya? What happened?
There is a clue in Kenya's other piece of civilization, the "strong economy". I have been struck by news reports that speak of Kenya as "an east African economic powerhouse with an average growth rate of 5 percent" - and in the same sentence tell us the country still struggles with poverty, without noting the contradiction. Another news report explains: "Although the Kenyan economy grew at a rapid pace, so did economic inequality, resulting in a concentration of wealth in a small oligarchical elite, while most Kenyans earn less than $1 a day." A strong economy that has not confronted and addressed poverty is in fact not a strong economy; it is a "thin veneer" of economic strength. The epiphany is that this has now been revealed.
So what about democracy? The real question is "what about Western-style democracy", the sort we keep insisting on. And again, we sense a "thin veneer" - but we must be careful about concluding that democracy is only a thin veneer here, and that underneath people are fundamentally undemocratic. Quite the contrary. "Kenya," a friend wrote, "has borrowed bits and pieces over the past century or so from the West, and has pasted these fragments together with a glue that does not withstand high political temperatures. It conforms, generally, to all modern sector fragility." What is being revealed in this epiphany is the fragility of Western political and economic "solutions" for Africa.
So where does that leave us? Not with a grand "solution", but only the logical working out of the above epiphany that Western-style political and economic civilization is a veneer here. The obvious question is: a veneer over what? I don't think it's a veneer over the violence we are seeing this week; that violence is simply a sign of the veneer cracking and breaking. Our question remains: what is under the veneer, under the violence? Has it ever occurred to us to look?
By "us" here I mean those Westerners who have worked here, and others who will undoubtedly flock into Kenya now to help: peace teams, negotiators, humanitarian feeding efforts, disease fighting specialists, and the like. There is a clear script for how to help: make sure the displaced people have food and shelter, help them return home when it's safe, document the atrocities, bring those responsible to justice. Yes, that is all important. But I think we have a unique opportunity now to look under the veneer, now that is has cracked. And there are these startling starting-places:
- In a community near here torn by ethnic violence, why would a Luhya woman shelter in her home a Kikuyu woman who had just delivered a baby - knowing that if some in the community found out, her house would likely be burnt?
- When we sang Kenya's National Anthem in church on New Year's Day, my first response was that national politics don't belong in church - until I realized that the Kenya's National Anthem is a prayer set to a traditional African melody.
- And this: why has there been no killing yet in Webuye, where we live? Why, in this Luhya town deep in the heart of western Kenya, are Kikuyu shops remaining open? Why, when some youths from another ethnic group came trying to incite violence, did the youth here refuse?

The answers to Kenya's problems are in Kenya. In fact, God is in Kenya, though sometimes in disguise. One of the best things we can offer Kenya is to look for God here, to document not the atrocities but the epiphanies of God here. The heart of Africa is too rich and too beautiful to be covered by veneers. It's time for us to admit that we have too often only tried to develop and repair these veneers of civilization. It's time to look at what is working well underneath the veneer, and to ask why.

--

the thin line

2008-01-24T15:21:00.000+03:00

When I first came to Kenya, I was really struck by how narrow the margins are – cars tear past each other with less than a hand’s breadth space; pedestrians walk across roads by timing traffic perfectly to cross between vehicles. The gap between the rich and the poor may be immense, but the space between us is minimal compared to the States – slums are right next to posh areas. The difference between a good harvest and a disastrous one is one rainfall away. The gap between a live chicken and your dinner is generally always smaller than in the States. Even the thin veneer between life and death seems even thinner here.

I guess I adapted to narrower margins. I walked the streets without getting hit; I rode the matatus without constantly tensing for a crash; I got used to passing desperately poor people as I walked towards the Hilton for yet another government negotiating meeting.

But in the past few weeks I have been struck again by how thin the margins really are. In the formal sector, scores of people have already been laid off – a few weeks of slow business because of protests and political turmoil has left most small and medium businesses crippled and unable to keep on full staff. In the informal sector (newspaper sellers, shoe shiners, folks who sell vegetables and fix cars, make crafts and mend clothes), families are simply going hungry.

At the hiss of a tear gas canister, protesters turn into mobs. A car becomes an inferno. A small business is transformed into ashes. Frustration becomes fury, and the desire to destroy something, anything.

How thin is the line between tolerance and hatred? I’m still not sure. Most of the killing, especially the mass killings at the beginning, was definitely organized, and committed by gangs of young men who were possibly paid by politicians. But still, the anger and vehemence that comes out when I talk politics with folks is breathtaking. At times, it seems like the conflict is only peripherally about whether the election was rigged – rather, it goes all the way down and back to land and resource disbursement during colonialism and during the initial post-colonialism years. And more than the actual initial disbursements would be the perceptions of different communities – of why and how people have acquired land and power.

We're all hoping that something comes out of the "talks" currently happening between the two sides (there is debate whether they are 'mediation' or 'negotiations' or what. Also, the two sides have not yet sat down together - the mediators shuttle back and forth). Uganda's Museveni is here, talking supposedly as a mediator, but compeletely separately from the Kofi Annan- led talks. Well, one way or the other, there needs to be resolution and a strong call for peace and reconciliation.

"Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none"

2008-01-17T16:09:00.000+03:00

The situation continues to change each day in Kenya, without any very large shifts. I have been reluctant to write about the current crisis because I still don't have any useful theories about why this is happening, I don't have any ideas of how to go forward towards peace and a just governance system, and I don't know always know what is happening.

I am fine and safe, as are pretty much all ex-pats and the middle and upper classes in Nairobi. In Nairobi, it is the people trapped in Kibera, Mathare, and the other poor settlements who are really suffering.

I liked this article on Pambazuka - http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45291 "Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none" – this is not about a people's movement being suppressed by an illegitimate ruling government. It is about people with power fighting over power, using a long history of unequal power relations to inflame their supporters (and, yes, paying gangs of young men to kill and burn or to kill and burn in retaliation).

In the meantime, Kenya is suffering a serious economic hit, many farmers' crops have been destroyed and their livestock burnt or stolen, homes are burnt to the ground, businesses are closed throughout much of Kenya. Tensions are beyond stretching point between tribes and yet not between economic classes - Kenya's degree of inequity (gap between poor and rich) is 10th in the world, and is largely accepted within Kenya as how life is and must be.

Ways to Help

MCC is supporting the immediate emergency responses of providing food, clothing, water, etc to the many internally displaced people and will continue to support the initiatives for peace in Kenya. If you can, please support MCC by donating to MCC, earmarked as Response to post-election violence in Kenya ( http://www.mcc.org/donate/)

Before going to ACORD, I worked closely with farmer groups in the Uashin Gishu district, in North Rift Valley, where much of the violence is occurring. Some of the farmers in the Uasin Gishu Small Scale Farmers group have been displaced and their homes destroyed. If you would like to chip in to the pot to help them start over, let me know. This is an informal giving of friends of the farmers, so this would not be tax-deductible.

Kenya post-elections

2007-12-31T06:29:00.000+03:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/world/africa/30kenya.html

I am in the States for Christmas and haven't been able to get in touch with friends in Nairobi. We all had such hopes for this election, and it is going exactly as we hoped it would not. Please pray that this resolves peacefully, as soon as possible, and with as just results as possible. Oh my.

TASARA!

2007-11-15T12:26:00.000+03:00

Tasara also came and visited, and I said that if one visited me, I would put their picture on my blog. (Sorry, Tasara, for the long delay.) I kind of lost the pictures - had put them on friends' laptop, etc etc.

Doesn't Tasara look happy?

When YOU come to visit, you will also be happy. I will take you to Amani Ya Juu (where we are in this picture), where they sell great stuff made by refugee women living in Kenya, and they have a beautiful compound where it is green and really relaxing to sit and drink some Stoneys (ginger soda).

Google Reader

2007-11-15T12:02:00.000+03:00

I have 99 emails flagged as "urgent", 31 of which I need to actually respond to, most of the rest are documents I really need to read. sigh.

It's hard keeping up with information, eh?
And it's also hard to keep up with blogs. Some people don't update their blogs very often. (And by 'people', I mean 'me.') And s people update them so often you can't keep track.

So, my new favorite thing in the world is Google Reader, keeping track of website updates for me.

My Google Reader keeps track of the following websites for me:

- The Eash Scott Family (http://eashscottfam.blogspot.com) - brother and sister-in-law's musings on family and life. Really, really good, funny, AND excellent photos of my nephews)

- The Nest (www.thenesthome.com) - Home for children whose mothers are in prison, and also some abandoned babies (and some abandoned babies who have grown up into children). Run by good friends. In German and English, so excellent for those of us who really need to work on our German!

- The Trade Observatory (www. tradeobservatory.org) - I love IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy). I mean, i LOVE them. I want to have little IATP babies, who will be thoughtful and accurate and minnesotan yet international. They keep track of trade negotiations, etc with this website.

- The Bretton Woods Project (www.brettonwoodsproject.org) - Tracking the Bretton Woods institutions - IMF and World Bank mainly. Based in UK. Good studies.

- Bilaterals.org (www.bilaterals.org) - Tracking all of those pesky trade negotiations and agreements that are not the WTO. Really, really important. I tell you, FTAs are the new WTO, man.

- AU Monitor - (www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor) - Pambazuka is great website tracking and commenting on what's happening in African civil society and any social movements. AU Monitor keeps track of what is happening at the African Union and the associated institutions.

- Grist news (www.grist.org) - US on-line news of all that is happening Environmental-wise, served with a bit of wry cynicism and joking despair. Actually, they hit on a pretty good tone - hard to walk line of funny between just state of despair and state of cynicism.

that's my Google Reader. Any suggestions of what else to add?

Notes on Kampala

2007-11-08T16:40:00.000+03:00

Are you ready for CHOGM? The Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting is coming to Kampala this November. And the city is going CRAZY! I have NEVER been in a city as clean as Kampala is right now – no rubbish anywhere. Streets are being redone, hotels are still being built, the ‘thugs’ are being carted up and shipped to a ‘rehabilitation camp’ outside of the city limits... And everywhere there are billboards asking: Are you ready for CHOGM? or Let’s Embrace CHOGM. Let’s Embrace the World. or Uganda has been ready for centuries (I’m not sure what this one means, actually).

Just Say No To Sugar Daddies: Cross-Generational Sex Stops with YOU! Speaking of billboards, this series of billboards around town are extremely well made, very professional, and have big labelled pictures: Sugar Daddy, Sugar Baby, Community Members. Or maybe Concerned Community Members. I don’t remember. In the newspapers I also came across references to ‘cross-generational sex’. I don’t think I’d heard that phrase before, but it has become part of the common parlance of Kampala, I guess.

Museveini is referred to as ‘M7’ in shortened newspaper headlines. Kind of clever. The Inspector Governor General (or Inspector General Governor – not sure about the order) fired the Attorney General while I was in Kampala. When I asked a Ugandan how long he has been the President, she paused for quite a while, asked another Ugandan, who didn’t know for sure, and then said, ‘Well, I guess 21 years. Well. I guess we don’t really think about that any more. But yes, 21 years. A long time!’ The front page headline one day was ‘Museveini says he doesn’t need 5 million’ – referring to the Mo Abrahim prize to former African Heads of State, rewarding them for good governance and whatnot. ‘Look at me,’ says Museveini, ‘I don’t need 5 million. I am very rich.’

COBRA SQUAD!

2007-11-08T12:27:00.001+03:00

I moved my tv around the apartment until I found a spot where I can pick up Citizen station, because Ruthpearl and some other CSO people got spots in the audience for a very popular political talkshow on that station and they were going to try to squeeze EPAs into the conversation about poverty & equality in Kenya (they did a pretty good job, although Ruthpearl never got called on – they kept showing shots of her raising her hand, but the host was for some reason ignoring her). Now I can kind of pick up NTV, too, which means I can get COBRA SQUAD – a new Kenyan cop drama. Caught the last half of it this Sunday. Pretty good, especially for a domestic show. Definitely better done than those 4 hour Nigerian movies (in my estimation. Although probably if I watched them more I could really get into Nollywood. I mean, millions of people do. There must be something to it). My only complaint from the 15 minutes I saw of Cobra Squad is that it has an overly dramatic musical score. Really, really dramatic music for offering some juice, pouring the juice, and then drinking the juice. I kept thinking - the Juice Is Poisoned! The Juice is Poisoned! But it wasn't. She was just being a polite hostess.

Speaking of musical scores to Kenyan television, a trivia show “Who’s the Smarter One Now” (it pits 3 men against 3 women, and almost always the men win, mainly because they risk strategic amounts of money instead of always 500 shillings) – anyways, it uses very familiar music. “Where do I know that music from?” I wondered. Well, it’s the music from that one quiz show, what is it called…not “what’s my line”. Originally with Regis. It was a cultural phenomenon, but somehow I missed out on it. Like, I was in Canada that summer or something. I just looked it up on-line – “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. It uses that music. Other shows (like the news) use music from American shows also. I am just really pretty sure they ain’t paying nobody for those rights, if they are even available, which if I had taken more than just 1 day of Intellectual Property Rights, I would maybe know. I regret not taking IPR.

Solaris

2007-11-08T09:16:00.000+03:00

So I was at a housewarming party for a new ACORD colleague, who has been in Kenya for one month and who has met at least 50 people who were all at her housewarming party. She has gone on horseback riding safaris several times, goes out on the town 3-4 times during the week, has started a non-profit in Kibera, and is generally a very friendly but very driven person.

Anyways, I talked for a while to a Russian who works for the Russian embassy. We talked for a good solid 10 minutes – quite possibly 20 – about Solaris, which I had recently seen. He talked about having been in a Moscow cinema to see it when it first came out, how within the first 15 minutes 15% of the audience had left, another 20 minutes and half of the folks had left, at the end there were 15 people and they were only left because they were sleeping. But still, it is a really good movie. Based on the book by that Polish guy, Lem someboday, neither of us could remember his last name. Good things about the movie. Etc etc etc. Solaris, Solaris, Solaris.

So after talking 10 to 20 minutes about Solaris, he says, without missing a beat, ‘I have made a mistake because of the whiskey. You are talking about Solaris. I am talking about (some other movie whose name I forget – also russian, also science fiction, but not at all Solaris).’ I spent a significant amount of time talking to a drunk Russian about Solaris, who kept touching my leg while making points about Solaris, and he wasn’t even talking about Solaris!

I was then trapped into talking for a short while with a seriously sleezy guy in an altered state (and unfortunately the partner of a co-worker) who kept saying things like ‘if I say Habari yako? what do you say? Huh? Huh?’ until I said something about not having to prove my Kiswahili to anyone, man, and walked away.

I think I’m going to have a dinner or something at my house for co-workers and have it be an alcohol free party. ha HA! Just sit back and watch how people interact without social lubricants.

Stop EPAs!

2007-10-18T15:48:00.000+03:00

I am a little late, but I thought some folks might be interested to hear some of what happened here in Kenya on September 27, which was the global Stop EPAs day.

We gathered at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park (the main park in downtown Nairobi, and a very historic area - lots of free speech and political change events have happened there). 2 oil drums had been painted by University of Nairobi students to look like a giant tin of tomato paste from Italy and a giant tin of milk powder from Holland. Farmers were present from the Kenya Small Scale Farmers' Forum, as well as lots of other folks from the Nairobi civil society scene. Moses Shaha, the chair of the KESSFF spoke some about EPAs, and then farmers got together and "crushed" some of their produce (tomatoes, bananas, beans, etc) with the giant tins of "European Imported Food", demonstrating the potential impact of EPAs and trade liberalization on Kenya's small scale farmers.

It was fun. Ruthpearl got arrested ahead of time by the Nairobi City Council and we had to pay a ridiculous amount of money in "licenses" for wearing "branded t-shirts" and passing out fliers, etc. Ah well. She got out. And Ruthpearl is really the best person to get arrested. She talked her way right out of the cells and into the head office.

We got lots of good press, especially internationally (BBC, Reuters, etc). And we squashed some tomatoes and stood up against more of the police who came with big trucks to haul us all away despite us having permits, and even though I forgot to put on sunscreen I did not get burned.

Success!

AFRICA HAVE YOUR SAY!

2007-10-05T17:35:00.000+03:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/africa_have_your_say/default.stm

Check it!
BBC program Africa Have Your Say had a one hour pan-African conversation on EPAs!!

You know, Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations. The thing I spend all day every day fighting. Those.

I was in the Nairobi BBC studio for the live broadcast! They had a number of us lined up to speak in Nairobi, but only got to John Ochola from Econews Africa. Actually, I asked NOT to speak because, while i feel that I represent fairly well an African organization, I do not exactly represent African civil society.

Anyways - only up on the BBC for a week, I think. Enjoy it while you can!

a strange side-effect of being in Kenya...

2007-10-05T17:20:00.000+03:00

...is that I have gotten used to certain spellings, like “programme.”

Now, when I read the word “program” it looks too short and I end up reading it as “pogrom”, which is really not the same thing at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom

Goodness.

Goals are Set; “Benchmarks’ are Achieved

2007-09-10T12:59:00.000+03:00

By some miracle, I managed to watch all of Pres. Bush’s speech to the…oh, I forget who it was to. One of the veteran-type organizations in Amercia. Anyways, it was his speech wherein he further threatened, kind of, Iran, and said how great things were, relatively, in Iraq, and then made lots of justifications for not reaching the Benchmarks, which maybe would have sounded better if he hadn’t had that whine in his voice.

So, in that spirit, let’s revisit those August goals:

Fill out career counselor forms
Find some breakdancing!
Get office to have a potluck

1. Career Counselor tests: Yes! I did fill out the career counselor tests. And they were FASCINATING! There were 3 of them – the first one was a straight forward Strong Interest Inventory Test, the second involved picking between kind of straight forward choices (ex: I would rather write a major novel or play than be the chairperson of a board. A. True; B. I don’t know; C. False); the third one was just crazy. You had to pick between 2 choices which one was More True for you. Example: A. When I get mad, I feel like throwing and breaking things, B. I like to avoid responsibilities and obligations. Example: A. I like to help people in need, B. I like to do a job as well as I can and thoroughly. So the whole thing was extremely interesting, and complicated, and I surely am curious for the results.

2. Breakdancing: See, now, it was not really about finding breakdancing. It was about finding out if there is breakdancing in Nairobi. And I have effectively found out that, no, there is not breakdancing in Nairobi. I know this because I just helped with a training on explaining EPAs to some of the underground hip hop artists in Nairobi. No breakdancing.

3. Potluck: Again, I think we should look beyond the simple fact of whether I did or, as the case may be, did not have a potluck, and we should look to the reasons for a potluck. Potlucks are all about getting people together outside of the office and fellowshipping. So while a potluck did not happen, Valerie did have a going-away shindig at a lounge next to Club Afrique, and most of the office showed up.

September goals:
- talk to career counselor, gain new perspective and motivation for my life
- have a party for my new coffeetable (oh but it is so beautiful)(Valerie gave it to me when she was packing up her stuff)(I had always complimented her on it/demanded that it be used for doing puzzles)
- cut back on consumption of refined and processed sugar

I get involved in the US Presidential race!

2007-08-16T17:20:00.000+03:00

Well, in a minimal, cyber-guilt kind of way.

Check out the sidebar and the nifty looking green picture of Bill Richardson. Click on it to read an interview with Bill on www.grist.org - a great on-line environmental publication - about his vision for a green presidency.

Seeing as I'm in Kenya, I've missed all the Candidate debates, all the newspaper articles, all the press, etc. But from what I hear, I'm still not missing any coverage of Bill Richardson.....because there isn't any.

I ain't saying I'm all that knowledgable about him. I am not. But I just have a good feeling about this guy. (Not a good "this guy will get elected" feeling. Just a good general feeling.)

Well, maybe he will make it on to Obama's ticket. Ooh! Obama/Richardson '08!

I'm done here. At work but it is hard to concentrate because for the ENTIRE afternoon there has been a loudly amplified Crusade somewhere in the city, and it is really giving me a headache.

That's right - they still call 'em Crusades round these parts! Apparently saving souls for Jesus is synonymous with yelling at people through an amplification system.

2007-08-14T17:26:00.000+03:00

Hannah Dueck came to Kenya in June!!! And she had many adventures.

If you come to Kenya and visit me, I will put YOUR picture on my blog, too. And you will also have adventures: adventures are pretty much guaranteed.

Goals are set; Goals are achieved

2007-08-14T17:18:00.000+03:00

My laptop and camera and USB stick were stolen in early June on the midnight streets of Nairobi. Sigh. Hence the lack of anything, ever, on this or on Books! Yeah!. Pole sana. I’m thinking of getting a new laptop when I go to the States over Christmas, but in the meantime I should be doing a better job of emailing/blogging/communicating-with-people-who-aren’t-sitting-within-a-4-foot-radius-from-me.

So, in a spirit of penitence, here is a short update of what has been going down in Kenya’s capital:

- We are less than 5 months away from the general elections (both Parliament and President), and the major opposition party (or is it a “coalition” – still not clear) has not decided on which of the 10 members who have declared their bid for the Presidency to back. Goodness. And last week the sitting Parliament produced a bill (not yet tabled) to give themselves serious raises and crazy generous severance packages for when they all get kicked out of office. Depressing and ridiculous.

- Do you ever get the feeling that you aren’t “taking advantage” of a place? Lately I feel that way about Nairobi. Like, there must be breakdancing happening somewhere. Why can’t I find it? Is it me? it’s true I don’t have as much Get Up as I would like. Well, that maybe will be an August goal: find the breakdancing.

- Speaking of goals – July goals were met! I wanted to 1. have some very good meals; 2. get in touch with that Career Counselor in Indiana everyone thinks is the cat’s meow; and 3. find the Quakers in Nairobi. And all of those things have happened.

1. good food and good people – especially good food in Ghana (see below);

2. career counselor is sending me packet of tests to take! Here we go career direction;

3. I showed up for a silent meeting of 8 people – half wazungu, half Kenyan – for an hour one Sunday morning. Super welcoming folks, those silent Quaker types.

Conclusion: I like setting achievable goals.

- Oh! I went to Germany (don’t get too excited, now – it was Wiesbaden, the administrative capital of the province of Hesse. I couldn’t find any mohnkuchen (poppyseed cake) the whole time I was there, and they told me that Janosch was out of fashion. Janosch! I tell you.). I was there for the Joint EU/Africa Caribbean Pacific group Parliamentary Assembly. And then went on to Ghana (Accra! go ahead and get excited! it’s a fun place!) for the African Union Summit – which was exciting and hot and humid. Really really humid.

- August goals:

Fill out those career counselor forms

Find some breakdancing!

Get office to have a potluck

what do you hear?

2007-06-01T12:41:00.000+03:00

i wrote this on Madaraka Day - June 1, but have not had much email access since then...

Happy Madaraka Day. I think this was the day that Britain finally said they would leave. Or it is the day the British actually left. Not too certain on that one.

Anyways, I'm celebrating by being at work but not being productive. Argh! But I am only here because of tight deadline and also in hope of taking some days off in a few weeks to visit a friend up country.

So instead I'll ask the question that I was wondering on my walk to work today: what do you hear about Kenya these days? Do you hear anything at all? I used to assume that people in North America pretty much didn't hear about what's happening here, but then sometimes folks will ask about floods, or an evacuation of a group from a slum, and then I get confused. Why do you hear about certain random events? Is it only when there are slow news days?

"Well, it's between this piece on a feline fashion show in Philadelphia or the recent reign of terror in Kenya of the Mungiki sect."

"Aren't we running another 'reign of terror' piece about somewhere else in Africa?"

"Oh, yeah. Cat fashion it is!"

In case you are wondering, yes, we are under a reign of terror of sorts, right now, by the Mungiki sect. It's a Kikuyu group that is supposedly based on certain tenets like anti-colonial influences and pro-Kikuyu traditions, but in reality it is a gang. Well, more than a gang. They are like the mafia, Kenyan style. There is cult stuff that happens, and a lot of loyalty is demanded. They run cartels - matatu touts have to pay every day "protection" fees - and that money is invested into paying off killers, running political campaigns, etc. And they control the water sales and supplies in the major slums and any other services that might exist (folks in Kibera pay 225% more for water than people in Nairobi connected to the main water lines).

Lately they have been beheading people in revenge killings...the matatu touts were organizing to try to stand against the Mungiki. It's gotten worse in the past month. Since the beginning of the year, police have had a standing "shoot to kill" order, which basically has led to lots of "suspects" being gunned down, plenty of by-stander deaths, and police and security not needing to worry about suspects exposing their involvement in robberies, etc. It is depressing and saddening. And it is only going to get worse as the year goes on and we get closer to the elections in December. My theory is that they are becoming bolder because the politicians are already using them to terrorize certain portions of the population, so they effectively can act with impunity.

Last week about 300 "suspected Mungiki" were arrested, but everyone knows that they are mostly not Mungiki at all.

did i mention...

2007-05-24T14:31:00.000+03:00

I went to Europe? Man, I am spectacularly failing to keep up with this blog. Shoot. Or keep anyone up to date. Sorry. Um, yes. I went for work - to Rome for an FAO meeting of the Committee on Commodity Problems, and to the Netherlands for meetings on EPAs (economic partnership agreements, currently being negotiated between the EU and blocks of the african, carribbean and pacific group of courtries). Travelled by myself. Strange culture shock. more on that later ....

or...

2007-05-21T13:54:00.000+03:00

okay, so that experiment failed. I'm going to try again.

ah, it appears I wasn't "accepting the terms of service." let's see if this works now.

oh

2007-05-21T13:39:00.000+03:00

it turns out that it is really easy to add images on Blogger (except for how long it takes to upload). This is an experiment to see if I can actually do that. Pictures! This would be better with pictures. And it would be better if I wrote things. I'll be doing that more soon - has been a really insane number of weeks of insanity with work and friends here having a baby (BABY! SHE ROCKS!). So. Coming soon: more pictures of cows and probably some other things too

I am a better person because of Al Jazeera

2007-04-17T09:21:00.000+03:00

Not that I am qualitatively a better or superior person because I am now more informed on world news. I don’t think there’s necessarily a direct correlation there. Rather, I feel better - healthier and even happier, though the news is rarely happy. I think because it reminds me that I am a world citizen, not just a mzungu (foreigner).
For some reason I’ve got really great reception of this station for the past week. Hooray!

More Politics

2007-04-17T09:15:00.000+03:00

1. Every other week another ODM candidate announces their launch of a campaign to run for President of Kenya. My western Kenya friends tell me (in whispers) that this is a strategy on the part of ODM, to keep secret the actual candidate to protect them from the government’s criticism and “crack-down” until the last moment. From the outside, it just looks like lots of ODM politicians want to be president, and are unwilling to concede to each other.

2. Hillary & Obama. One day at work I had some American politics conversations. A Ugandan co-worker was trying to convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama, because this is a good opportunity to have a female President of the US. I pulled the ol’ “Well, it is a long way until the elections, but I haven’t been so impressed with the positions Hillary has taken as a Senator, and I feel like I align more with Barak’s stances on various issues,” and this elicited “Yes but she is a woman. This is a good opportunity for you to get a woman,” which is true, I suppose. After a while my Ugandan colleague went back to his desk and a Kenyan colleague came over, having heard the end of the conversation. Again, we started talking about Hillary and Obama, and, again, she advised me to vote for Hillary. Somehow it came out that the two of them are both in the Democratic party.
“They are in the same party?”
“Well, yeah. So only one of them will be able to ultimately stand for the Democrat party for the Presidency.”
“Oh. Well, then why doesn’t one of them leave the party and join another party or start a new party?”
“Um, dude. Because it’s not Kenya.”
“Oh, right.”
“There are at least some ideological differences between existing parties.”
“Well, I’m just thinking like a Kenyan.”
“Yep.”
“Oh well.”

The Kenyan colleague is a very good friend, hence my vocabulary and general attitude. I don’t generally go around calling Kenyans “dude.”

3. A few weeks ago I attended a 3 day meeting organizing an Agribusiness Accountability Initiative forum in Africa (AAI is coordinated by the Centre of Concern and National Catholic Rural something something). It was in Karen, an estate close to Nairobi, and participants came from across east and southern africa, with just a few from west africa. It was interesting!
But actually the point is that on one of the nights we were all sitting around (we were staying at a Catholic retreat centre kind of out in the country, so most everyone was around at night, which was nice) and chatting and some people were drinking beer and some people were drinking wine and I was drinking ginger ale (sidenote: as a rule, I don’t drink alcohol when I’m with Kenyan men. Actually, I don’t drink alcohol at conferences as a rule, either. So never mind). Someone decided that we should have a debate, and eventually we settled upon the discussion topic “the Political Emancipation of Africa.” It was extremely interesting to hear people who work on agriculture, trade policy, corporate citizenship, farmer empowerment, etc talk out why they think Africa’s political systems have not yet been emancipated from colonialism/corruption/unjust global financial systems and rules. Especially since people were talking about philosophies, and ideologies - things that you don’t hear African politicians mentioning. It was awesome.
I went to bed before they got around to the Solutions, but from what i gathered the next day, no Grand Solution was found. Maybe next time.

I Do Not Understand the Subtleties of Kenyan Politics

2007-04-03T13:00:00.000+03:00

Kenya’s elections happen every 5 years and everyone - President and MPs - get elected at the same time. The elections are scheduled for this December, and things started heating up a few months ago.

I had a political conversation with a middle-aged Kikuyu man who drives taxis in Nairobi.
Me: So, who do you think will be the next President?
Him: It must be Kibaki. (current President, for 1 term now)
Me: Well now, what about ODM? (the relatively new major opposition party. it formed from a bunch of opposition parties late last year, and predictably now has at least 12 people who are vying to be the ODM Presidential candidate)
Him: No, it cannot be.
Me: Well, what about that Raila Odinga? (one of the many ODM front-runners for Presidential candidate, and a very controversial figure who was jailed and tortured during Moi’s time. He recently imported a Hummer.) People say there would not be a Kenya today without him.
Him: Yes, it is true. He was very important. But he will never be President; he is Luo.
Me: Oh...?
Him: They are not circumcised.
Me: Oh.
Him: Have you ever seen an uncircumcised man?
Me: .....(startled)
Him: Have you ever seen an uncircumcised man?
Me: .....(looking for an escape route)
Him: ...The penis? The penis of an uncircumcised man?
Me: (there is no escape route; i am in a moving taxi) Um, yeah, yeah, sure.
Him: It is like a little boy’s. (chuckles) Yes, just a little boy. How can a boy be the President of our country?
Me: Oh. I see. (just relieved he is not going to show me said body part)
Him: Yes, he cannot be the President.
Me: Okay.
Him: I would vote for him, but that is how people are. That is just how people are.
Me: Well, yes.

kenyan news factoid

2007-03-29T10:03:00.000+03:00

at 7pm there is news in Swahili, at 9pm there is news in English.
When they use clips of interviews, they never translate from Swahili to English or English to Swahili. So if, during the 9pm news, they show clips of Kenyans relating a matatu accident or talking about regional politics, it’s going to be in Swahili and you just have to try to figure out what is going on. And, if during the 7pm news, they show a clip of Richard Branson visiting Kenya and talking to the news or a politician during a press conference, then it’s just going to be in English and everyone is just assumed to understand enough English to handle it.

You know, the thing about writing a blog from Kenya is that I feel like I get to include extremely mundane things like this, because they are mundane things that folks not in Kenya don't necessarily know.

Something New

2007-03-29T09:31:00.000+03:00

Well, go figure. If I slant my TV’s rabbit ears just right, and I am in a patient mood which allows for static and sound and sight going out with a loud ZBBBSHT a couple times a minute, I can get a 3rd television station.

Up to now, I’ve been able to get KTN - owned by the Standard Group, which has not so great news coverage (all Kenyan politics, all the time) and shows 2 different dubbed Spanish-language soap operas, some season of 24 (not sure which), the horrific American show “Threat Matrix” starring the hunky plumber/spy dude from Desperate Housewives as he fights threats from Al-Qaida and eco-terrorists, and a Kenyan political talk show on Thursday evenings which I LOVE because it is the only forum in which there is discussion about issues of concern and policy in this country (and for a while, Angel came on afterwards. that’s right - the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off. I didn’t even know what was going on and it was awesome. But that’s over now) - and I’ve been able to get channel 5, which shows uninspired American, Tanzanian, and Kenyan rap and hip/hoppish music videos all the time. Both of these channels are somewhat fuzzy.
But NOW, now I can get a new channel, which shows:
Al Jazeera (English language) during the day time
Voice of America during the night time

So, of course, the first question is what the heck is up with this station? Not that the two programs are polar opposites, but they are not the most likely pair.

And the second question, is exactly what kind of spin am I being thrown when I watch Al Jazeera news? I mean, don’t get me wrong, in my 2 days of viewing I've become a big fan of their news programs. Brings some balance to my previous news diet of BBC Radio. But still, reporting the news is always done through a cultural filter, right? I’m no media analyst (whoo nelly, i certainly am not), but I think that “objective” or “neutral” news coverage is impossible. So what exactly is going on with Al Jazeera English language news service? Who is the targeted audience?

They had a whole piece on women being discriminated against in Afghanistan, and how completely backward and unacceptable this is, using very strong, critical language. So, um, what’s up with that? And they just did a piece on the rise of right-wing politics in Poland, and promise to do another tomorrow in somewhere in Europe (Ireland? I forget) that was fairly balanced but clearly thought the right-wing political groups were up to No Good. When they do a piece on Iraq or anything at all that Bush says or does and it comes across pretty much like ABC or NBC when they do a piece regarding the Iranian president - somewhat balanced, but with scathing commentary from analysts and with certain phrases.

I’ve heard that Al Jazeera is quite liberal within the world of Arab news. Does anyone have experience with English language Al Jazeera? What’s up with them?

Anyways, I’m just so darn pleased. I just got back from a really intense 3 day workshop, and I want to sit and watch TV (and apparently fart out a blog), and at this time of the day usually my only choice would be “Tyra,” the Tyra Banks talk show, which I’ve seen a few times and which always gets under my skin. She really likes manufacturing moments of shared intimacy with her guests, and it always feels So Awkward to me, although apparently not to Tyra. Tyra. And her ability to go from concerned face to cheery face way too fast. And her multiple clothes changes in the course of one episode.

They are showing a clip of Bush talking right now. He just said “precipitous withdrawal” and he sounded somewhat ridiculous. Now he did the head bob that makes him seem arrogant. Now they have a live interview with a Rear Admiral in Baghdad. I mean, dude! That’s pretty open of them. The admiral has a “great deal of confidence in the president.” The interviewer has a british accent. I can’t tell if he is of “arab” origin, because the screen ain’t that clear. Admiral says it is premature to talk about precipitous withdrawal. How did this phrase become the one that is used? Seems like there are lots of other adjectives that could be used.

Sorry. Rambling. Hooray for 3rd television station!! Hooray for multiple news sources! Oh, they just showed a really good short commercial showing the numbers of landmines in various countries (point at the end: Al Jazeera shows “multiple sides, multiple angles”). Really well done.

Well, that’s all from here. No pithy conclusions.
New slogan for 2007: 'ought seven is nifty; ain’t going to be so pithy.
I think I’ll go eat some bread and go to sleep.

indicators

2007-03-20T09:35:00.000+03:00

After a few months of being in Kenya, I started having a very specific reaction when I watched an American movie. There would always come a moment when I would suddenly be really stressed out and feel like things were wrong, and then I would realize that all the cars were driving on the “wrong” side of the road, and I should just calm down because certainly no one in the movie was having a problem with it.

I recently noticed that I’ve added a new trigger. Last night I saw Music & Lyrics, and i noticed I was having the stressed-out, red-lights-blinking, something-is-wrong reaction. And then I realized why: people were walking in and out of Hugh Grants apartment casually because the deadlock wasn’t engaged (I looked at the door when it was open, and it wasn’t the kind that you can open from the inside but not the outside). Inside my head was the blaring message: “LOCK THE DOOR! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LOCK YOUR DOOR! YOU STUPID, STUPID PEOPLE!”

And this is why I think I’ve been in Nairobi for too long, and I need to get OUT of the city SOON. Just for a few days. Cities. Man. I mean, I like Nairobi, but yeesh.

um, America?

2007-03-20T09:23:00.000+03:00

I guess I’ve missed more than I thought I had. Lately it has come to my attention that things appear to be really different in America than they were 1 year ago. For example, I hear that the war in Iraq is on the news every day, and is constantly referred to, and that US citizens now feel that they are “at war.” (we were just gearing up to that when I left, as I remember it at least, but it was still somewhat ignored/swept under the rug) I think it is a good thing, except for the sort of mindless patriotic devotion that being “at war” tends to inspire. (I should say that I really don’t have a feel for the atmosphere in the States these days. I just heard that the war is in the news and on the minds of America from some friends who – for very strange reasons – have been able to watch Nightly News with Brian Williams every night from their computer in southern Sudan).

Also, apparently there is a movie called 300? I should explain: I am currently waiting for some other people to read a document so we can go over it together, and my brain is moderately fried, so I thought I would read some BBC news. 300? the biggest opening weekend ever in the US? And Iranians are extremely not happy at the portrayal of thousands of mean Persians getting whooped by 300 white guys. Now, how did this become the largest opening weekend ever, is what I’m wondering. Seriously. What does that mean?

And what’s this about Simon Cowell being bigger than Bruce Springsteen? The BBC said that he said that he is a bigger deal than the Boss and should get 5 times as much money. And that he sells lots more albums.

WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING IN MY COUNTRY? WHY ARE YOU NOT STANDING UP FOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, AND WHY ARE YOU WATCHING WAR MOVIES WITH STUPID NAMES? I’m just confused. Just….confused.

ps - I saw the preview for 300 the other day and I am now, if anything, MORE confused than I was before. Apparently the special effects are innovative and cutting edge, but they seemed pretty just not that great to me. Also, 300 huge white guys in metal speedos? Why are they so naked? I would feel vulnerable. I mean, I realize that America is feeling vulnerable and like there are no “successes” in Iraq, and I suppose this movie represents an opportunity for Americans to temporarily feel like righteous underdogs (instead of impotent overlords) who get to slaughter thousands of Iranians (or their ancient equivalent) with impunity and feel good about it. But are record numbers of Americans really searching that out? I thought record numbers were turning against the war. Again, confused.

kwa Bidii!

2007-03-19T13:45:00.000+03:00

Generally, when I am out and about I try to use what Swahili I have. And, generally, Kenyans are surprised that I know any at all. So many of the white folk in Nairobi don’t know any, and then I suppose those who do know some don’t necessarily use it in Nairobi, where you can usually get by with English.

When I’m talking to people for the first time, they generally ask (or state) that I am learning or have learnt Kiswahili, and my response generally is “Ninajaribu!” (I am trying.) Having celebrated my 1 year anniversary in Kenya last Friday, I took some time for reflection, and it occurred to me that I haven’t really been trying to work on my Swahili all that hard of late. In fact, I’ve managed to forget some of what I learned when I first arrived. And, looking back, I definitely had thought that I would know more than I do after one year.

So I’ve instituted some changes.
1) on Friday I accidentally struck up a conversation with the 2 night guards, and they are delighted that I am trying to learn Swahili, as they are trying to learn English. We ended up standing by the gate and talking for at least a half hour in more or less Swahili (easy topics, though: I walk to work, I do not have a car, I do not really have money to buy a car, I wash my clothes myself, yes I have a “man” and although he is now in America he is going to join me here (this was the first time in a while that I’ve handled the “do you have a man” question in Swahili, so I used the old version, as opposed to my new and updated version in which my man is Canadian and is working in Tanzania but hoping to come soon. It’s a bit harder with the guards, because they keep track of everyone who visits me, so I can’t use the ol’ Yes I am Married line). I’m predicting that those conversations will continue, which will be good so long as I can manage to keep transmitting the clear message of I Have Boundaries No I Will Not Sleep With You.

2) Word of the Day! This is my third day of having a ‘word of the day.” Today’s is “kwa Bidii” – with diligence, or diligently As in, “Ninafanya kazi kwa Bidii” – I am doing work with diligence.
Bidii-ish today. So far I have visited all of my Kenyan colleagues at their desks to announce “Ninafanya kazi kwa Bidii!”; I’ve printed out lots of things I should read but I haven’t actually read any of them; I’ve gone to the library to return a book (another Lord Peter Wimsey mystery!) and pick out a book (short stories by Ken Saro-Wiwa); I’ve taken ½ an hour to compose an email to a farmers organization while simultaneously reading a movie review about Music and Lyrics, which I somehow ended up seeing this weekend (some excellent infectious 80s pop songs were written for the movie, so I enjoyed it despite the fact that hugh grant and drew barrymore completely failed to work their charm on me); and now I am actually writing a blog. I do get some credit for having gone to the library and writing this blog during my lunch hour. But since I haven’t actually eaten my lunch yet, chances are that the hour shall extend past its established temporal limits. tsk tsk.

Well, I think it’s okay - it’s Monday and I’m tired (nimechoka sana) and there aren’t many things that are extremely pressing to be done. At least, not extremely pressing.
So, Tufanye kazi kwa Bidii! (Let us do work diligently) I, for one, am going to diligently eat my sandwich and read the newspaper so I’m caught up on the political machinations that happened over the weekend. Onward, ho!

world social forum

2007-02-23T14:09:00.000+03:00

subtitle: 2 American women were car-jacked and shot and killed today just outside of city centre, and i watched Blood Diamonds and Howl’s Moving Castle.

for life to be like what many of us are accustomed - with manufactured products and food from somewhere other than where you are right at that moment and materials that need to be dry-cleaned and even a democratic system, ie a Western lifestyle such as what is lived in most parts of the US and what is being aspired to and replicated throughout the world including Nairobi - all of that requires a certain amount of machinery. Machinery with lots of gears and squeaky parts, machinery that requires a lot of labor and just as much blood.
So in many parts of the US, it is possible to live with the manufactured products and imported foods and dry cleaned materials and voting rights, and not see the machinery. There is sufficient padding between (many) folks and the machinery, and we can ride along on top and enjoy the scenery, and the grinding gears fade into white noise, and if we want a thrill we can peak under some of the layers of padding and see in and either use economic theory to justify the people sweating down there among the gears or we can say tut and talk about reforming the machinery.
In a place like Kenya, the machinery we’re riding along is a lot smaller than in US cities/societies, and patched together even more haphazardly. Fewer of us are on it, too. And there surely isn’t as much padding. It’s not southern Sudan, where there is almost no padding at all (unless you count the UN’s air conditioned stations), and it’s not even Uganda, with less padding. But there’s less padding in Nairobi than there is in Washington DC or New York or Scottdale PA. Bumpier ride, and it’s a lot harder to forget that you’re on this machine, and that there are people being ground into the gears and reaching to grab onto you to pull themselves out or pull you in.
and i guess to stretch this already painfully stretched image, our machinery here in Kenya is connected to that in the US, and the EU, and all those other countries, and we’re getting some of the waste products of all those imperfect machines.
so that’s it. I don’t know what the answer is - do we pull the whole machinery down and start over again (i guess the anarchic types at the World Social forum would prefer this), do we try to tinker at the machinery and over time change it, but without messing with the gears so much that it stops moving forward (i guess the oxfam-ish types at the World Social Forum would prefer this)

hmm.

ps: wrote this several weeks ago. The police are now blaming the notorious thug that they recently gunned down (see previous post) for ALL of the unsolved car-jackings and killings. Seems a bit Convenient.

Clint Eastwood and the Kenyan evening news

2007-02-23T13:01:00.000+03:00

Last night I watched For a Few Dollars More – the middle film of Sergio Leone’s trilogy of spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. I know, I know, I’m pacifist. Clint is a bounty-killer in the old Southwest. But still, I really dug the movie. I like Clint’s style – all poncho-wearing, beard-growing, cigarillo-chomping. (Not that I would really dig such a person in real life. This isn’t that kind of Valentine’s Day blog) And I love the movie’s style – great music, good evil guy (same actor was the bad guy in A Fistful of Dollars, I think…), close-ups on Clint and he’s all squinting his eyes and wearing a good hat.

After watching the movie, I turned to the 9pm news (I am trying to patch up a patchwork quilt that I inherited from MCC – all the green patches have dissolved. Between having to iron my clothes for work, hemming curtains, and doing mending I’m starting to feel quite domesticated! Anyways, struggling to patch up a quilt is a good excuse to watch spaghetti westerns). Other than Kenyan politics (elections are at the end of this year), the main news for the last few weeks is the “crime wave” sweeping Kenya. In the past 3 months, over 60 people have been killed in violent crimes – usually robberies or car-jackings. That, of course, does not include the many “suspects” who have been gunned down by police. The US recently put a travel advisory on Kenya because of the “rising insecurity” (I guess US citizens are advised to travel at their own risk? something like that. The Kenyan government responded by saying that it wasn’t so bad, and the US must have some ulterior motive for wanting to hurt Kenya.)

So getting back to the news, the anchors spoke about a guy who is believed to have killed multiple times now. There is a bounty on him. And in the village, neighbors attacked his father and maimed his leg (punishing the father for what the son has done). Another main story was about what happened at a funeral recently – a politician was making a political speech (this happens at funerals), and someone claiming to be from a rival party flew down in a helicopter, got out, and started handing out money to the crowd. Of course, this caused something of a riot, and he started to get crushed, so he went back to the helicopter and I think he might have thrown down some money as he was leaving. The other stories on the news were all related to Kenyan politics.

Now, there are lots of reactions one could have to this whole situation. But what struck me last night were the parallels between Clint’s world and Nairobi.
- shoot to kill
- bandits are wanted Dead or Alive, but usually Clint just shot them
- some of the police in For a Few Dollars More are complicit in the banditry
- a sense that killings are rampant

Not so many people wearing ponchos or smoking cigarillos here, though.

ps – Don’t worry about me. I’ve been more careful about walking home well before dusk, not being out by myself at night, trying not to travel at night, etc. But ultimately, there’s only so much you can do to protect yourself. The main thing is to relinquish everything quickly. In that sense, it’s like being back in Portland with all those meth-heads. pps – Yes, you should still visit me. Ignore the travel advisory
p.p.s - I wrote this a week ago. A few days ago the police shot dead the "bandit" and an "accomplice," it is debatable whether he was attempting to turn himself in peacefully. Certainly, he wasn't wearing anything other than a pair of blue boxers. It was 1am in the morning.

...crime & elections...

2007-02-23T12:24:00.000+03:00

Well, there has been a spate of bank robberies over the past few months, and within the past 3 months there have been 50 violent deaths related to carjackings or muggings. This is more than usual. The people perpetrating the crimes are rarely caught, and those who are tend to be gunned down by police and killed.

So what’s the connection between Kenya’s crime wave and the fact that elections are due this December? Is it becoming a campaign focus? Is it related to general feeling of unrest or tension between communities? Sad to say, the widely held theory is that the bank robbery winnings are going towards politicians’ campaign funds.

That’s right. The politicians are hiring thugs (“thugs” being the popular term) to rob banks in order to fund their campaigns. At least, that’s the view of the folks I know and trust.

What isn’t as clear is why all the violent muggings and car-jackings, many of which do not end in death, but some of which do, quite senselessly. Some people think this is also related to campaign time. I’m not so convinced that it is going to campaigners’ pockets - it seems like a piecemeal way to raise funds. But I can easily believe that politicians are stirring up ethnic tensions which are exacerbating existing tensions and contributing to an atmosphere in which violence is more acceptable.

am back! with new blog!

2007-02-23T12:18:00.000+03:00

New Blog!
Actually, you are right, I’ve not done such a good job of keeping up on this one. Like, this is the first time I'm posting in over a month (although that's partially the fault of the World Social Forum and lately I haven't been able to log on. anyways.)
So, why start another blog?
Because that’s one of the great things about the wide open spaces of the internet - there’s lots of room for making dubious decisions. And also, I’ll actually keep up this one, because it’s on BOOKS! That is, books that I’ve read during my time in Kenya. Not all the books, but most of them i reckon.
I’ve been keeping track of what I read since I came here, initially because books were some of the only life-giving things in my life. Then when I was in-between secondments and I had a lot of free time to sit around and mope, I read a lot and started writing comments on the books just for kicks. And then getting a library card got me all excited about continuing to keep track.
I haven’t written about all of the books, and although I’ve gone back through and added some comments, I haven’t done that for all of them.
And then, I like to know what my friends are reading, and what they think about what they are reading. I have no idea if my friends want to know what I’m reading, but that’s the other great thing about the wide open spaces of the internet - you don’t have to venture into some shady areas if you don’t want.
Anyways, here it is: http://booksinkenya.blogspot.com. maybe you can comment on the books that you have also read! or suggest your own! or I set you up as another user so you can post your own blogs on books on the site! Or none of the above, and I happily keep on keeping track for myself. Yep!

neighbors

2007-01-11T16:43:00.000+03:00

A Kenyan family lives in the apartment above me, and the middle child is Walter. Walter is 6 and very self confident and curious. Today he ate some of my toothpaste before i could stop him. sigh.

walter...You must think a lot.
me.... um, what
walter... You live alone. You must just think a lot.

walter to Julia, who is mexican american.... You look Japanese.
julia...Actually, I am mexican.
walter...Well, you look Japanese.
julia....Is it because of my eyes
walter....No.
julia...Is it because of my hair
walter....No. It is your face. You just look Japanese.

I am currently "setting boundaries" (ie, don't eat my toothpaste) with Walter. He certainly is an interesting person to know!

hooray!

2007-01-11T16:37:00.000+03:00

i have a library card! after several months of waiting, i am in possession of a library card to the Kenyan National Reference and Lending Library. It is sort of a sad place, with lots of books donated by the authors during the 1950s, but books is books, and there are still plenty of books to read in the place. Today I checked out a novel by Wole Soyinka, bc i somehow have not yet read anything by him, and The Stepford Wives because i was curious what it was like and also tired of trying to search through the novel stacks which are really close to desks full of Kenyans studying. The Stepford Wives isnt bad. Short and creepy.
Library! I wonder if I like libraries so much because I have commitment issues.
Every time I have been in the library, it has been chock full of Kenyans, who are reading and studying and filling out forms. Way more utilized than even the law school library right before finals, because the seats and desks are really packed in there. I like being in a highly utilized library.

Getting on Matatus

2006-12-10T16:56:00.000+03:00

At rush hour, and especially if it is raining, this isn’t an easy task. For the longest time, I felt quite sheepish; I didn’t want to be the White person elbowing my way into the matatu. Then I started working in another part of Nairobi from where I’m staying, and I started confronting the crowds in the evening, when everyone is tired from the long day and we’re all wet because, yet again, it is raining right when you want to go home. Raining hard. And I’ve stopped seeing myself as the White person pushing her way towards what she wants. Now I’m the tired Person vying for the same last seat as that old mama and the dude in a business suit with his copy of the Daily Nation. I’m not saying that I elbow; I’ve just gotten a lot more tricky and take the risk of standing at the front of the crowd, and thus on the street right where the matatus come racing up. But if you want to get on the matatu, it’s a risk one has to take. And I don’t necessarily bump people out of the way, but I’m not a pushover any more. Before, when an old mama would use her hips to bump me away from the door I would go flying. Not any more. Not any more.

Rain

2006-12-10T16:53:00.000+03:00

Okay, it’s enough rain now. We’ve all got enough, and some parts of Kenya have much too much. No flooding around Nairobi and Central Province, but bad floods and subsequent crocodile and drowning deaths in Coast Province. It’s discouraging to transition from a drought to floods.

(wrote this a week ago. things have calmed down generally, and we're hoping this is the end of the short rains. Kenya's meteorologists say it might rain to the new year, so let's all hope that they are not very good at predicting...)

Christmas List!

2006-11-14T14:50:00.000+03:00

Is it too early to be talking about Christmas? Maybe, maybe. But then, maybe not. And it’s on my mind for some reason. So, if you’re wondering, here are some thoughts...
- a card or letter from you! - it’s a bit different to have someone’s actual handwriting. A lot more better than an email (not that emails aren’t great too.)
- pictures!
- music - anything you’d like to share.
- Spirited Away, or anything else by that director (Howl’s Moving Castle, The Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro). Not so much available in Nairobi.
- if you have a copy of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami) sitting around, I’ve just been feeling like reading it for a couple months and have even asked around at bookstores, but only one place had anything by him, and it was the latest one - Kafka on the Shore - which is okay but not, to me, as good. If you have other books you feel like sending, that’d be welcome too. :-)
- socks - Hard to find and quite expensive here. And mine are starting to get holes (maybe because i was a little too vigorous at the beginning with the whole hand-washing thing).

Okay now. And if you want something specific from Kenya, you just let me know.

Politics and Violence

2006-11-14T14:45:00.000+03:00

Some of you may have heard about the recent spate of gang violence in one of the major slums in Nairobi, Mathari. (Thanks Tasara for directing me to the New York Times article) The article describes how many of the people living in Mathari have picked up their belongings and moved out to escape the killings and the widespread arson of the tin and wood shacks that act as housing. The violence is attributed to a flare up between two major gangs - one starts with an M but i forget the name. The other one is the “Taliban”, which has absolutely no connection to radical Islam; it’s just a scary name. One is Kikuyu (the tribe that is most numerous in Kenya, and from Central Kenya), and the other is Luo (tribe from western Kenya). According to the New York Times, the violence flared up a local issue (possibly tax on chang’aa - local brew that occasionally blinds or kills) and is unlikely to ever go away completely because the animosity is between tribes.

The general feel in Nairobi is that, yes, this is a conflict based on tribal lines. But it goes far beyond gang members. Politicians in Kenya have a history of inciting violence between tribes, and most none too subtly have “thugs.” Folks around here are fairly sure that the current violence has been initiated to drive certain tribes out of Mathari before the 2007 elections, so that a certain party is guaranteed to win in that district.

Politics in Kenya is a strange, strange thing to me. I know it’s more complicated than just tribal lines, but it sure seems to be more complicated in a money/power/favors/personal-gain way. I haven’t seen any differences expressed when it comes to underlying tenets of political theory, or economics, or nothing like that. Everyone generally aspires to Progress, which is defined by the West. Well, things only get weirder and deeper and more complex the longer I stay here. To misquote Reading Rainbow: but don’t take my word for it! come visit me and find out for yourself!

A New Idea for MCC

2006-10-30T12:31:00.000+03:00

John and Julia (MCC Sudan), they are great. And they also pay attention to things like Clothes, and How to Look Professional. They helped me find some Professional Clothes that Suit Me at Toi Market, which is a big ol’ used clothing market here in Kenya (see blog on used clothes. yes, i am benefiting). Not only did they help me pick out clothes, but they told me why those clothes were proper and good for me, and why others are not. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes, and it was all a little bit overwhelming, but i think i’ve remembered the main points.

It occurred to me that I may not be alone - an MCC volunteer trying to be taken seriously but not quite able to show up dressed appropriately for meetings with other NGOs and the like. I’m thinking...new MCC position! Travel the world, helping MCC volunteers dress from their local used clothing markets.

Culture: I get some

2006-10-30T12:25:00.000+03:00

The French cultural centre in downtown Nairobi turns out to be a great place! Promoting French culture, yes, but also Kenyan culture. Friday night I went there for the first time and heard a Kenyan “fusion” band. And while I have at times perhaps implied that the less “fusion” music in the world the better, this was actually a great band which really did fuse sounds together to come u with really good music!

woo s. the letter between o and q has stoed working on my lato. this has haened before, and it eventually came back.

it came back! super!

So, the band was Ijiali, or something like that, and featured lots of interesting Kenyan instruments as well as an accordion played by a white chick named Gisele. We think she was french maybe, but she sang along in Luo, Kiswahili, and English, and she even danced a Luo dance at one point. The band sounded really great and put on a great show as well.

The French centre has an outdoor courtyard with a stage and plenty of room for sitting or dancing. There were West Africans, Kenyans, French ex-pats, and somewhat obnoxious peppy young UN types. All in all, a good time, and it was fun to be downtown at night. I intend to return - free movies (with french subtitles) every monday!

sunday

2006-10-22T14:18:00.000+03:00

about an hour ago i looked around and saw colors again. I got out of bed, brought in my (twice rained upon) laundry from the line, bought some cards to go with presents that have been sitting on the floor for months, cut my fingernails, tidied up my guesthouse room, and finished off the copies of the Mennonite that need to be passed on to the other Mennonites in the Nairobi reading chain.

I feel like I’m a passenger in a bus that just came out of a fog bank and now we can all see the mountain road on which we are driving. I may not be in the driver’s seat, but at least I can concentrate on the road, which somehow has a way of making me feel like I’m helping the driver and influencing what’s happening.

yep. depression = not a good time.

a short update for October

2006-10-14T17:17:00.001+03:00

At the end of September I left FATNEA. The week after leaving I spent doing errands, moving out of my apartment and putting furniture and whatnot in storage, and finishing up a literature review I had promised I would do before leaving. Then I went to the coast of Kenya, south of Mombasa, for about a week to sit in the sun and watch the ocean and sometimes frolic in it. Got back Monday noon (overnight train!) and since then I'm at the Mennonite Guesthouse in Nairobi. Not sure what exactly I've been doing...a little bit of work and fretting about the future, a little bit of relaxing under flowering trees and reading good books, and a little bit of dealing with the collection of sand fly bites I amassed at the coast. I guess that sums it up. I wrote some blogs the other day!

Still don't know what I'm going to do next...can't seem to figure out how to start thinking about it, and for whatever reason still don't feel like I have the energy to face figuring out what happens next. ah well. I'm giving myself more time, and my country representatives are being very understanding.

the purpose of things

2006-10-14T17:17:00.000+03:00

i was talking with a Kenyan friend about safety in Kenya, and she said, “See these tight pants I am wearing under my skirt,” (pulls down skirt a little to show rim of underwear) “Many Kenyan women wear them. They make it harder for men to rape you. It takes them more time, so you have a chance to yell for help.”

thursday morning

2006-10-14T17:15:00.001+03:00

I am sitting on a lounge chair on the Guesthouse grounds. I’ve been reading Snow, the sun comes in and out, and 20 yards away 2 american missionaries are agreeing with each other about Bush’s role in the war on terror, that he is Christian and hence it is unimportant if his actions are unpopular. Because there is a shifting breeze, and because I am reading, I only catch phrases - “rebel forces in the mountains,” “Christianity is”, “Muslims want”. This morning i was wearing sandals, and as i walked out the gate i managed to walk on a bee that stung me in the middle of my left foot. ruth gave me an ice pack and gary said baking soda might help. the ice pack has lost its iciness, so while i lounge halfway in a snow covered town in Turkey swirling with love and art and political islam and halfway in a corner of Nairobi where men are discussing political christianity and christian politics, the middle of my foot is waking up and radiating a pain that a few minutes ago didn’t exist, is now a soft, slow thing, and is threatening to become something harder and brighter altogether.

books

2006-10-14T17:12:00.000+03:00

I want to be a Good Person, who is Interested in the World, and Open to Learning, and it has always seemed to me that part of such a person is reading non-fiction books. Seems like the most expeditious way to learn more about cultures and science and phenomena of the political and social type and all. I get excited about the titles of non-fiction books. In college and law school I tended to check out large numbers of such books with interesting, challenging titles. And then those books would sit on the floor in piles while I read yet another novel.

So the same thing happened when I got to Nairobi. I raided the MBEA and MCC Kenya bookshelves and picked out books on the MauMau revolution and the upcoming Third World revolution and pastoralists and agriculture in Kenya. And I’ve ended up reading novels. Only a few African ones too, and I’m ashamed of that. Instead I’ve been escaping into snow-covered places, landscapes populated with revolutionaries and norse gods and anglican priests.

i recently picked back up one book (A Short History of Islam, by Karen Armstrong), continued reading in one book I borrowed from the MCC Uganda library in Kampala (Tales from a Thousand and One Nights), and chose another from the Guesthouse bookshelves on a whim (Snow, by Orhan Pamuk). For the last week I’ve skipped from the one to the other depending on my mood, and they are each really beautiful and together are even better. I got the Short History of Islam because I’d read a memoir of Karen Armstrong and since I’m even less likely to read a memoir than I am a non-fiction subject book, and because reading the memoir was an engrossing and moving experience, I figured maybe I could get myself to read a non-fiction book about something i really Want to Know about and really Don’t Know about if it was written by Armstrong. Turns out it isn’t helping me understand African islam particularly, but in general the world is making a whole lot more sense now. The role of belief and practice, of politics and history in the Muslim religion, the rise and fall of the communities - I don’t know, man, having a bit of a better understanding of helping give some sort of context to all sorts of things about life in the 21^st century. It also helps interpret the 1001 nights and the Caliphs and prophets who populate the stories, and the expressions of faith and outlooks on life that make them so different from German märchen. And Armstrong’s telling of the secular and religious revolutions in the East are adding to the richness of Snow, a Turkish story in which Turkish secularists, Kurdish Islamic revolutionaries, religious high school youths, atheists, Socialists, Communists, and poets are engaged in a small revolution in a small snowbound city in Turkey.

(ps - the author of Snow, Orhan Pamuk, just won the Nobel Prize for Literature! I feel very cutting edge!)

evidence that we live in a small world

2006-07-14T17:13:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, if you just look around you, it's like being back in Scottdale or Portland.

Okay, not at all, but if you just focus on some of the clothes, it would be possible. Between the ending of the Multi-Fibre Agreement in the early 2000s and lowering of tariffs on used clothes, the Kenyan cotton and textile industry is pretty much dead in the water. There's booming informal business in buying the Massive Bails of Goodwill rejects, donated clothes, etc and selling them at the markets.

Shirts I have seen in the last few months, around and about Nairobi, Kenya:
- a Steelers jacket (sorry Peter, but no, there are no Kenyan Steelers fans. I have tried explaining to people how it was exciting that the steelers won the Super Bowl ("Like winning the World Cup. No, really!") but I usually get blank looks, or surprising comments like "American football...it looks like baseball?" Me: "No." Them: "yes, yes, and they wear big shoulders! Yes, it looks like baseball." Me: "...")
- "I had a blast at Joanna's Bat Mitzvah!" (no, he didn't)
- Oregon t-shirt
- Duquesne Football sweater
- Penn State shirt
- countless volleyball and softball team shirts from small midwestern towns
- and the kicker....a SOUTHMORELAND SCOTTIES T-SHIRT!!!! I didn't actually see that, but Merv Stutzman did. Close enough, man. Close enough.

FOOD

2006-06-30T10:54:00.000+03:00

Well, the food is great. I cook for myself and since they grow tomatoes and greens and onions and ginger and beans, it's pretty much like my food life back in the States, except that out in Kahawa Sukari you can't get dairy products (like cheese) or really much processed food items, which is okay with me for the most part. Although it does mean that I have to bake my own bread. That made me feel pretty darn homey, though, so that's okay. When I was studying Swahili in Nairobi, there were fancy supermarkets all around with things like yogurt and bread, so that was nice. I even bought paneer (that indian cheese) and made a sort of palak paneer. that was a good time.

When I'm out and about for work, etc, I'm eating more "Kenyan" food, which is basically a lot like what I eat, with some differences. Lots of ugali (boiled cornmeal that is stiff), sukuma wiki (greens) cooked with onion and lots of shortening, some irio (like mashed potatoes with greens mixed in and beans and corn = i love it), and then goat stew. I've gone to western Kenya twice now. The first time ate a lot of nyama choma (the official dish of Kenya - a large chunk of meat roasted over a fire with salt water poured on it) and politely drank down this bone marrow soup that was an intense experience. The second time stayed with a family and ate a lot of ugali, beans, potatoes, etc. Also was visiting farmers, so drank chai at a bunch of homes and ate githiri (maize and beans cooked together), chomped on sugar cane, ate small bananas, etc.

Oh, one thing that is different from home is that there is excellent fruit always available. I've had lots of small banana/pineapple/mango/passionfruit. If you want something like apple, you have to pay quite a bit, though. Also, the only baking cocoa powder they have is Cadbury's, meant for drinking, and it has ~flavouring~ in it, which makes me suspicious. cause i'm a snob. when it comes to chocolate. Also, no chocolate chips.

Food! Lately, I've been eating bananas and bread and rice cause I've been a bit sick, but I look forward to getting back into the Food thing. This morning Rose Stutzman made me pancakes that spelled out 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEBBY' - cause it's my birthday! 27. Usually when I'm in a strange place for the summer i don't tell anyone it's my birthday, but i've been telling EVERYONE it's my birthday this year. Birthday!

Classic Cross-Cultural Moments

2006-06-29T21:48:00.000+03:00

(preface: I wrote this two weeks ago, and in the past two weeks I've experienced quite a lot of hospitality within Kahawa Sukari. So you can ignore some of the more melodramatic statements...)

So it turns out that Nairobi is drastically different from rural Kenya. I spent the past week in Western Kenya, around Eldoret. It’s in the Rift Valley, where farmers primarily focus on milk production and growing maize. I spent two days visiting small scale farmers (really small. 1 acre, ½ acre, 0.2 acres, etc) and then two days co-facilitating a workshop on the WTO and agriculture with small scale farmers from across the Uasin Gishu district.

Before this past week, I frequently pondered to myself exactly where was the Classic Kenyan Hospitality that people are always talking about? Because I wasn’t sensing it. Not that I blame any Kenyan for not rejoicing about yet another mzungu moving in, but people on the street in Kahawa Sukari tend to look at me with one of three expressions:
- 1. why are you here?
- 2. you don't belong here,
- 3. well, it wouldn’t be a sin to kill you. (different from a "I want to kill you" look - which i have NOT gotten in Kahawa Sukari. Just that to kill a white person wouldn't be a sin against the laws of nature, Christianity, etc.)

So then I went out to Uasin Gishu and spent two days with Hellen and different leaders in the Uasin Gishu Small Scale Farmer group dropping in on small scale farmers, totally unannounced. Okay, so some of the babies cried when I smiled at them. But on the whole every farmer was gracious and welcoming. They showed off their farm and their livestock, invited us into their homes, answered our questions, gave us tea, and were patient with my attempts to communicate in Swahili. At one place we were served tea and Githari, new beans and old maize cooked together. After the meal, the woman asked us our names - because in their culture they serve food to visitors first and ask them their names only after they have eaten. I mean, that’s really intense, eh? At another shamba, a calf was named “Deborah”, at another one the farmers gave us bananas and hacked sugar cane for us.

Back at Hellen’s, where i stayed for the week, there were three women in their late teens / early 20s who live there sometimes, I think. One of them had never been close to a mzungu before, and as the week went on she got more bold and touched my hair on my head, exclaimed over the hair on my arms and skin, got freaked out by my hand veins, touched the skin on my feet, wanted to know why my eyelashes weren’t black, etc. They taught me how to make ghee from boiled cream and how to make ugali (the main food of Kenyans). One of the young men who came through the house thought that Hellen had brought me as a wife for one of them, which led to a few awkward situations.

In short, the trip was the classic Cross-Cultural experience that one reads about in essays and poems written by MCCers. It’s the experience that I guess I was anticipating when I heard that MCC was sending me to Kenya.

So I’m still trying to figure out how to live as an MCCer in Nairobi, where hospitality doesn’t drop on my lap, where it’s possible to live almost as though I’m in the US, where I can be as isolated as I want to be. My experiences before coming to Kenya led me to anticipate that Doing Service Abroad would be entirely like my trip to Eldoret (both the good and the uncomfortable and the sad bits). Not only did I expect those types of experiences, but they were the ones which I understood to have Value.

But now I’m back in Nairobi, and if I’m going to live here for another 2 ½ years, I need to find a way to Do Service Abroad here. At some point I need to be able to identify the Value in my experiences here, even if this is not the mythology of Service that I grew up with.

Friday I took a van from Eldoret to Nairobi (6 hours), threaded my way through the crowds downtown to the Thika Road matatus, tried to convince the matatu conductor not to rip me off, and then plodded down the dusty main street of Kahawa Sukari to my apartment. That night I went with Esther (Kenyan NGO woman) and a bunch of folks from RODI (Resources Oriented Development Initiatives - an NGO that is a partner of FATNEA) to a nyama choma place down the road. We ate hunks of roasted meat, tried to talk over the band playing a stream of congolese influenced music in swahili, and then watched some World Cup football. From the crowds of people packed in to watch Ivory Coast play (they lost), I got some hostile stares, some lewd stares, and some curious stares, but was largely ignored. It’s the first time any RODI folks invited me out on the town.

CULTURAL NOTE

2006-06-29T21:46:00.000+03:00

You may be wondering, what are some cultural highlights of Kenya? Perhaps one of the most widely shared cultural experiences within Kenya, uniting tribes and bringing together men and women alike, is the Spanish language soap opera. There are two: Secrete dia Amor (or something like that) and Cuantos est Mia (or something vaguely resembling that - it’s “When You Were Mine” in English). They both play at 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays, opposite each other on the two main channels (one is owned by the Nation, which also puts out the main daily newspaper and Easy FM; I’m not sure who owns the other one, I think the Standard, which is the other daily newspaper). Secrete is from Venezuala, and Cuantos is from Mexico. They are both dubbed into English, although for some reason some of the Secrete character’s dubbed voices have really strong accents, while others sound US American.

I watch Cuantos because that is the channel that has good reception, but when I was in Eldoret staying with a Kenyan family I got to see Secrete. The plots of the two are remarkably similar (okay, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised). Cuantos centers around a young woman, Paloma, who is from humble origins but has worked her way up to a position in the national Coffee Committee (or something like that) and has had a torrid affair with Diego, who is from the main coffee family of Mexico. Diego broke up with her because he couldn’t psychologically handle loving her SO MUCH and he would occasionally go crazy. This has made Paloma go a little crazy herself. Oh, Diego is married but his wife is having an affair with Diego’s sister’s husband (Miguel), and their baby is actually Miguel’s. I think. Um, lots of other side plots involving all of the women of Diego’s family wanting to DESTROY Paloma, and coffee politic stuff, and Paloma’s boss is in love with her in a whiny sort of way. Whereas Secrete centers around a young woman who is from humble origins but has worked her way up in life as well. She has had a torrid affair with this dude, who is also rich, and i think she had a baby with him, but she is now married to some other dude, and the torrid affair guy is also married to someone else. but they still harbor a deep passion for each other, that she is trying to deny. And her husband was bit by a snake (?) and lots of evil women want to destroy the heroine also. Other side plots involving stuff I really didn’t understand from the one time I saw it.

To say that everyone watches either Cuantos or Secrete is not an exaggeration. I’ve stopped asking whether people watch one and started asking which one they watch. In Eldoret I stayed with Hellen Yego, a wonderful woman who has worked with small scale farmers for many years, doing organizing. Sunday night the two of us, a niece, two adult sons, the 9 year old grandson, the daughter of a cousin, and someone whose relationship to the family I never quite figured out ALL sat down to watch Secrete and declare over the plot advancements. I’ve had a couple experiences of walking down the street and hearing a group of people talking about Diego and Paloma. While studying Swahili I stayed in Nairobi at a place without a TV, so I got a month behind on Cuantos, but Esther Bett (another great Kenyan woman who works with small scale farmers, prisoners, women in Northern Kenya, etc) also watches Cuantos so she could get me up to date on what’s happening. Bethany Ropp (former Kenyan MCCer) told me that out in rural Kenya a 1 ½ year old would pretend to cry when his mother would say “Diego! Diego! Yuko Paloma wapi?” (where is Paloma?).

I don’t have any great explanation for what it is about Mexican and Venezualan soaps that capture the attention and devotion of Kenya. But I’m grateful for it. It gives me an opportunity to share in an experience in which it doesn’t matter that I’m a mzungu (white foreigner). There’s not really anything else that I can participate in with others without a huge gap because I’m American. For example, everyone is watching the World Cup, and I am too. And I’m cheering for the African teams of course (GHANA TOTALLY WON YESTERDAY!!!), but there’s still a big gap between me and the Kenyans watching because I’m white and not African.

So hooray for Spanish language soaps. I, for one, am looking forward to tonight. For a while it looked like Paloma might be Diego’s aunt (!) but now it appears not, and Diego declared his renewed love to Paloma over the phone. They are supposed to meet tonight. I predict Trauma and Horror or Family Obligations will prevent one of them from showing up.

(PS - i wrote this two or three weeks ago. Indeed, Paloma's mother was hit by a car, so she didn't show up, but Diego's psychiatrist didn't tell him that Paloma was in the hospital, so he thought she _just_didn't_care. intense stuff, folks.)

Of Farmers and Trade Negotiations and where I fit in

2006-04-17T11:09:00.000+03:00

I thought I'd give an update on the organization to which I am seconded through MCC. I'm at the Food and Trade Network for East Africa (FATNEA).

Technically, FATNEA is a network of NGOs, and I am working at the Secretariat of the network. But since FATNEA is a young network, the Secretariat is operating sort of 1/2 way as a Secretariat (doing region-wide workshops, working with its Members) and 1/2 way as an on-the-ground NGO. Since 2002, FATNEA (the Secretariat) has consisted of the Executive Director and some assistants who help to do logistical work. A week before I came, Victor started as a 'volunteer' - he is Kenyan and has a solid background in agriculture and NGO work. He just finished his masters in NGO planning in the UK. I think in Kenya a "volunteer" is someone who doesn't have a permanent contract and isn't paid a full salary. In this case, it means that Victor is at FATNEA, but will leave if he gets another job. So, for now at least, there's me, Victor, Davis (an assistant who has been with FATNEA since the beginning), and then the Executive Director who is actually based in Zambia as a consultant with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

I didn't meet Thomas (the Exec Director) until this past week. The two weeks before that I just sort of generally got caught up on what the network has done in the past few years and went through some of the materials they have. I also worked with Victor to put together a workplan and Logical Framework for FATNEA for the year (oh man, does anyone have a background in Results Based Management? Cause it's just a crazy way of planning for things. Potentially helpful, potentially verbose and bizarre.)

So now that I've met Thomas and talked some about FATNEA's plans and where I fit in, I have a bit of a better feel for what I will be doing. How about I make up some categories for the tasks
right now.
- Communications - We're developing an electronic newsletter for FATNEA, with info and a way for interest community-based organizations in Eastern Africa (Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya) to connect with each other, learn about relevant agriculture negotiations updates, and get out "best practices" in agriculture techniques, community development, etc. So I'm writing it, getting folks to contribute to it (hopefully, hopefully), and editing it.
- Research and Analysis - I'm supposed to do a big ol' research project on Special Products for Kenya. Interested in what the new WTO category of Special Products are? Check out my attempt to explain them at http://cfgbhongkong2005.blogspot.com/ (the entry entitled: History Unfolds, and I Get to Copy-Edit) and http://www.foodgrainsbank.ca/admin/docs/FJU%20-%20HK%20WTO%20Special%20Issue%203.pdf
Apparently I will travel around Kenya and meet with farmers to collect data and stories about which agriculture products are vital to the livelihood security, rural livelihoods, and food security of Kenya. Tomorrow I start planning out the project, and FATNEA has some contacts at the Ministry of Trade and some NGOs who will hopefully be able to help me. It's exciting, because I wanted to get more on-the-ground experience with these issues that, from a legal work perspective, can be very distant and abstract. But then again, I have no idea how to design this sort of practical research. So, yeah. We'll see how it pans out.
- Planning and Participating in Policy Awareness Workshops - One of the main things that FATNEA has done is hold policy awareness workshops with farmer groups in Kenya. So I'll be helping to put on 6 of them in Kenya this year, plus at least one in Uganda and one in Tanzania. Farmer group reps come together and we explain what is happening with the World Trade Organization and other relevant trade agreement negotiations, how it might explain some of the impacts they are feeling, what it might mean for the future. Then we get feedback from them and together come up with an action plan - what this means for their group (maybe lobbying, maybe strategizing for how to cope with market changes) and what it means for FATNEA (how we can help get their feedback and voices into the negotiations). Exciting stuff, but, again, not something in which I am well versed.
- Fundraising and Organizational Development - but not too much, I don't think. Just helping with the existing proposals and making connections with new potential funders.
- Design a Logo? - if you can think of a good logo for FATNEA, let me know. We're trying to develop one, and for some reason it is up to me to do this. oof.
- just whatever else comes up.

So, that's all exciting and a wee bit overwhelming. I'm hoping that over the next three years, FATNEA becomes a stronger network to the point that the Member organizations will be able to take on some of these tasks, thus having more ownership in the network and so these tasks don't just drop off the map when the 3 year volunteer leaves.

That's the news on FATNEA at the moment. Advice? You no longer have to be a Blogger member to leave comments, so comment away as you wish.
love, debby

In Tea Country

2006-03-25T14:52:00.000+03:00

Hi! I'm spending the weekend with Rose and Merv Stutzmann (MCCers who lived in Scottdale for 7 years so I know them! They are leaving at the beginning of the summer to go back to the US, so I'm enjoying 'em while I've got 'em). They are in the process of adopting a baby who they took in last summer while Rose worked at a place for abandoned children. She had been left in the hospital for 2 months and she was under 2 kg. She looked like an old woman. Now she is a very happy very bouncy 11 month old who is currently pulling on my leg to stand up so she can drool on my pants. I'm a massive fan of this kid. She's a really, really excellent person.

I've been in an Orientation of sorts since i got here. Monday I start work with FATNEA. I'll explain more about what I'll be doing once I start the job since it sure ain't clear at this point what all will be involved. So I've been staying in Nairobi with the country directors and making trips downtown by matatu, meeting Mennonite ex-pats (nearly all of whom are leaving in the next few months), and moving out to Kahawa Sukari. That is the town where I will live and work - it is about a half hour out of Nairobi (or longer, depending on traffic). I have an apartment in a building of 4 apartments, and there is another small building in the compound that is the FATNEA offices. I don't yet have a very good feel for what Kahawa Sukari consists of...you turn off the main road from Nairobi to Thika, and go through a street that is full of dukas (little shops and stalls, mostly with meat (butcheries), bananas, and bizarrely enough hardware supplies), and then reach the beginning of the compounds --- lots and lots of walled compounds. I live on the beginning edge. Apparently Kahawa Sukari was a pretty dangerous place 2 or 3 years ago because rich people lived right next to very poor people. But it's not so dangerous anymore...I'm not sure why, since it still seems like rich compounds (in a relative sense) right next to poor folk. Well, tomorrow I move out there for good, so I'll have the opportunity to explore. As yet, I still don't really know what my life is going to look like.

But it's good we don't know what our future holds, right? And it's encouraging at this point to know that you can't plan who you'll make friends with.

I also can't plan how often I'll be able to blog or email, since I haven't found an internet place in Kahawa Sukari yet. But I'll figure something out. I've been having all sorts of Thoughts on what it's like to experience Nairobi, but I'm too rushed to write about that. But stay tuned...I'm bound to get them out at some point. So far, Tim Godshall is right: in Nairobi, 1/3 of the people are employed to protect 1/3 of the people from the other 1/3 of the people. Also, Nathaniel Pellman is right: you can get anything in Nairobi, for any range of prices. It is apparently very possible to live here almost as though you are in the US - in fact, it's almost easier to do that. There are so many ex-pats in Nairobi, and it's really hard to get to know African Kenyans. So I reckon the big challenge ahead is going to be figuring out how to live recognizing that I'm not in the US.

Okay, that's plenty enough deepness for now.
love, debby

pre-leaving

2006-03-10T02:21:00.000+03:00

I'm leaving in less than 5 days (Tuesday, March 14). I don't have much to say, except that I'm nervous and busy and I'm posting a blog for the sole purpose of having something on here when I refer people to this blog.

This isn't going to be a Super-Snappy or Hip blog, but hopefully it also won't be a Rambling blog. My goal for it is to be primarily an Updating blog. Ooh, and maybe there will be comments! That could be fun.

love,
debby

well, here i am in kenya.

The Dangers of the Obama Presidency – II

The Dangers of the Obama Presidency - I

fireworks!

Kenya is ecstatic

I AM excited about Obama...but....

What I have to say about the US Election

Happy World Food Day!

Fever + Moby Dick = Questionable Results

since I last blogged….politics keep happening

since I last blogged…Africa/Europe trade negotiations grind onwards

since I last blogged…I got older

BORN in the USA

politics

In Memory of Stephen Otieng

Food, continued

FOOD - Kenya

Living in Nairobi

Kenya strikes a deal

What Happened While Kenya Dropped Off the Radar of the International News

Websites

Concerned Citizens for Peace

Uncertainties

interesting BBC page

recommended article

reflections after a weekend of the news and watching Gangs of New York

Reflections from Dr. Ray Downing

the thin line

"Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none"

Kenya post-elections

TASARA!

Google Reader

Notes on Kampala

COBRA SQUAD!

Solaris

Stop EPAs!

AFRICA HAVE YOUR SAY!

a strange side-effect of being in Kenya...

Goals are Set; “Benchmarks’ are Achieved

I get involved in the US Presidential race!

Goals are set; Goals are achieved

what do you hear?

did i mention...

or...

oh

I am a better person because of Al Jazeera

More Politics

I Do Not Understand the Subtleties of Kenyan Politics

kenyan news factoid

Something New

indicators

um, America?

kwa Bidii!

world social forum

Clint Eastwood and the Kenyan evening news

...crime & elections...

am back! with new blog!

neighbors

hooray!

Getting on Matatus

Rain

Christmas List!

Politics and Violence

A New Idea for MCC

Culture: I get some

sunday

a short update for October

the purpose of things

thursday morning

books

evidence that we live in a small world

FOOD

Classic Cross-Cultural Moments

CULTURAL NOTE

Of Farmers and Trade Negotiations and where I fit in

In Tea Country

pre-leaving