Orderly Chaos

I live inside a concrete house with concrete grates or bars across all the windows. To reach the house I enter a compound through a large metal gate guarded by a watchman. I then pass through a spiked metal gate that protects the house and car, through a metal door, and finally reach our front door. All armed with the equivalent of multiple deadbolts. My house is the Nairobi norm.

My host mom’s name is Mama Sylvia. She’s 58, and a retired banker. My host sister, Shiela, is 27, a medical student, and works in her free time. Her husband died suddenly on his way home from a business trip three years ago. I have a host brother who I haven’t met, who lives elsewhere with his family, and another host-sister who studies in Russia. There is a woman, Ida, who comes three or four times a week to do the laundry, clean the house, and cook for the family. The family is Meru, a tribe closely related to the better-known Kikuyus, located near Mt. Kenya. They are also devoutly Christian. They pray any time any group of people gets together, no matter how large or small and no matter the occasion, once everyone has arrived and once the meeting is over. Sometimes the prayer is short (a minute or two). Sometimes I look at the clock ten minutes later and they’re still at it.

We had the whole Jew talk the first day here: “Do you go to church?” “No, I’m Jewish. I go to synagogue.” “Oh. What does that mean?” “It means that you believe the savior had already come, and we believe he is yet to come. So we believe in god, and there’s too much historical evidence to deny that Jesus existed, but we don’t believe he was the savior.” “So you don’t believe in salvation?” “No, not really.” “What about the bible?” “We have the old testament.” “Only the old testament?” “Yep.” “Did you bring it with you? Can I see it?” “No, I left it at home so it wouldn’t get dirty.” “Oh.” So now my host mom is appalled that I don’t attend synagogue every Saturday. (Sorry Rabbi Joey.)

I thought Jews had set the bar for keeping their guests well-fed. I was wrong. Because, you see, not having leftovers at a Jewish meal is somewhat of a sin. It means that obviously there was not enough food and your guests left hungry. In a Kenyan household, however, to have leftovers means that you obviously didn’t like your food and didn’t get enough to eat, and now said leftovers will be wasted. So, they pile your plate with enough food to feed a family and expect you to eat it all. And then give you more. Luckily Mama Sylvia has had other students in the past. “You Americans, you all eat so little!” she says, and lets me serve myself. Which is probably for the best, since my bodily functions decided to go schitzo on me somewhere during my first week here and have yet to settle down.

When I arrived, I discovered that the dress code in Kenya is pretty much the opposite of Ecuador. On the islands, I was dressed conservatively. By the end of my stay, I walking around town in ratty shorts and a swimsuit top. Here, I soon discovered that anything above the knees is right along the lines of sacrilege unless you’re going for a run or chilling in the house (without men present). If you’re a Mzungu (white person), all the better to keep yourself covered- you already draw enough stares. So much for the shorts and skirts I packed; luckily clothes in the market are about $2.

The TV is always on, even when no one’s watching. Usually it’s on a channel devoted 24/7 to a reality show called Big Brother Africa, where a bunch of people from all over Africa have been stuck in a house and each week one of them gets voted off (and into a barn) by the continent. When it’s not on Big Brother, it’s on Dr. Phil, cartoons (yep, they’ve got Looney Tunes in Africa), the news, or In the Name of Love, a horrible Mexican sitcom dubbed in English that’s all the rage.

Car accidents are the 3rd most common cause of death in the country. No wonder, since there’s no speed limit, most roads haven’t seen repairs in 20 years, and seatbelts are only hastily fastened if the car or bus is flagged down by the cops. There are no traffic lights outside of the city. Inside of the city, approximately 50% are functional (and wholly ignored). In addition, crosswalks may as well not exist. You simply step out into the traffic and place your faith in knowing that if a car hits you, the driver and its occupants will most likely find themselves burned to death by mob justice.

I read this thing a couple semesters ago that was talking about how well countries have done in developing national identity over tribalism. It said that if you ask someone from Tanzania who they are, they will say “Tanzanian” first and then give the name of their tribe. If you ask a Kenyan, however, the tribal identity will be mentioned first. Which brings me to the current situation in Kenya. Because, you see, the results of the ten-year census were just released, and the Luo are somewhat peeved to find themselves the fourth-largest tribe in the country. Their leaders have therefore issued proclamations that the Luo are to abandon family planning and have as many babies as possible in the name of embiggening the tribe and adding as many votes as possible. Never mind that the leaders earn millions of shillings a year while many people can barely support the one or two kids they already have. Oh, and the Muslims are pissed because it named them as only 4% of the population, complete with numbers that quite plainly do not add up.

Sunday, Mama Sylvia took me to a meeting with several other women who have formed a typical support group. These women are, for the most part, all of the same family. They’ve formed a sort of microfinance operation within their group: every month, they put a small amount of money into a combined bank account. From that account, they may take out loans. The close relationships that are valued within Kenyan families assure that loans are repaid. The money also serves to cover emergencies, like funerals, or large events, like weddings, that may come up.

Wednesday, Madeline Albright and Tom Daschel were in town to mark the passing of the new constitution and assert the States’ support and aid in implementing said legislation. We attended a town-hall lecture/discussion at the University of Nairobi, where we were promptly informed that our questions would not be called upon. Anyway, Señor Daschel gave an incredibly overrehearsed speech on the dawn of Democracy in Kenya, complete with anecdotes about our dear founding fathers and offensively slow well-meaning hand gestures implying we were idiots. If it was meant to be firey and rousing, it was an epic fail; then again, the last political talk I attended involved Obama on the campaign trail. Madam Albright humbly proceeded to restore a little of my faith in the US ambassadorial committee by skipping over the condescending blabber and focusing on the fact that we were in an academic setting, which she loved, because she was able to learn about the mindset of the country through the students and the questions they asked. Questions followed– How do we make sure everyone follows the constitution (corrupted leaders, anyone?), How do we get people to make decisions based on knowledge rather than on cash, How can we be educated when our textbooks date to 7 BC (Yo, you with the money. Give us better technology.), How can women gain more powerful positions in politics, Should we deal with terrorists outside the constitution like the US and Guantanamo, Should we use force to implement democracies in places like the US did in Iraq? I don’t remember Daschel’s answers. Obviously they didn’t make much of an impression. Madeline, however, was extremely sharp. She turned the demand for educational materials back to the students, telling them to elect the people who would put resources toward what they wanted (and kick them out if they didn’t follow through), and that if you’re studying history, books written in 7 BC are relevant. On the subject of female politicians, she declared there was a special place in Hell for women who didn’t help and support each other. And then she started doing her dance to avoid offending the higher-ups. She made it pretty clear that Obama was working on pulling out of Iraq and that neither of them had been on “the administration” that went in the first place, and left it at that. On the subject of law-abiding leaders, she simply told the audience that no one is above the constitution. Which left everyone kind of miffed, because she said nothing about the how-to or the what to do about it or the fingers that were being pointed. Which, then again, makes sense, since she was meeting with said leaders later in the day, and Hey: the US and Kenya just got to be good friends again since we have a Luo president. Long live the politics of using a lot of words to say nothing and offend no one and retain world peace.

Friday was the wedding of Mama Sylvia’s best friend Jennifer’s daughter Carol (also a Meru). In the morning, the women from the family of the husband, Mungai, (who is Kikuyu) came and formed a crowd outside the gates of her house, singing and clapping as they waited to receive her. Inside the gates, her family sang as they prepared to pass her to her husband’s family. Eventually the gates were opened and the families came together, forming an aisle and laying down scarves as a carpet so the bride’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground. She was escorted out to the car by her mother, and then we all piled into matatus (12-person vans) to drive to the church, up in the high country somewhere. About half of the guests arrived to the church after the couple exchanged vows, courtesy of several unexplained stops and a couple wrong turns by the caravan along the way. Upon our arrival, we found a tiny overflowing church with people sprawled on the surrounding lawn, waiting for the service to finish, vows having been exchanged some time before. The reception, was held close by in the middle of a golf course. Of the 300 or so guests, Meru were seated on one side and Kikuyu on the other. Giant plates heaping with food were served, along with additional plates of meat placed around the tables “to share.” Buffets were kept open for seconds, thirds, fourths… and then platters of fruit were served. I do not understand how Africans eat so much. Dancing ensued, by the women and then the men. Only after everyone had finished did the bridal party arrive. As they ate, speeches were given: who had come farthest, where the guests were from, what the union meant for the families of the two tribes, appreciation for the parents, recognition of Carol and Mungai’s accomplishments, and presentation of a honeymoon to Atlanta, with stipulations that the two nights in the Marriot had better be used to make babies, and they weren’t to receive visitors for six months because they would be too busy. Jennifer presented Carol with a basket to carry her baked goods in, a thermos for tea, and cooking spoons to keep her family well-fed. The behemoth 4-tiered cake was then cut: Carol first tasted it, to make sure her cooking was good enough to feed her husband. Then she fed Mungai, promising to always keep him fed. Mungai then returned the favor, promising always to provide for her. The second and third tiers were then presented to the parents on either side, and the rest was finally cut into bite-sized chunks and passed through the crowd. The bride threw the bouquet, a prayer was said to close the ceremony, and the afterparty began.