Cooking up some Nonsense.

Mombasa is a bustling port city located in southeastern Kenya home to quite the salad bowl of Arab, Indian, and upcountry Kenyans. Throw in some amazing Arab spices, a bit of heat, and you’ve discovered the Swahili culture, a largely Islamic way of life very distinct from the overwhelming Christian presence in Nairobi. We only spent a night in Mombasa before shipping out to the small coastal village of Shirazi, but staying right on the coast in this fresh new place was to inviting to pass up. So a few us decided to take a walk around.

This idea of walking and talking is quickly becoming my most cherished pastime here in Kenya. My friend Luke is very good at striking up conversation with random people, and we’ve both decided that exploring Nairobi is where it’s at. We can often talk of street smarts and book smarts, but I think there is an altogether separate brilliance that comes from the ability to connect with people through conversation. I’ve found that my most interesting and exciting experiences have come out of walking around town and talking with people I meet. The formalized “cultural” experiences offered by my program can only go so far to paint reality. And besides, hearing stories from people is just dandy. It’s been hard to step out of my comfort zone though, especially when Kiswahili gets involved. Stepping off that ledge has been like jumping off a 100-foot cliff into a pool of orange jell-o. You’re at the top looking down and thinking, “that’s a long drop and what if that orange stuff is lava?” But then you jump, it’s awesome, and you can eat all the orange jell-o you want.

The night I spent in Mombasa helped foster this newfound idea. A few of us were down by the water talking and checking out the moon when we heard some laughter close by. Our jabbering had woken up a homeless dude who was sleeping on the pier. Rather than just say sorry and walk back to the hostel, my friend Luke started chatting with the dude. His name was Jerry. We spent a good hour sitting there by the water talking with him. Whether or not his stories were true didn’t matter, his optimistic and refreshing perspective was mad bomb diggity. He talked of travels to Panama hiding aboard a cargo ship and his struggle to live without a home or family in Mombasa. He talked and we listened.

The next day we drove the two hours south to Shirazi. We spent 9 days there living with different families, studying Kiswahili in the morning, and doing whatever in the afternoon. I lived with a baba and mama who were older and had some children living with families of their own. The eldest daughter was staying with us while she cared for her newborn son. A 6 year-old boy named Idriss also lived with us. Along with his crew of rugrats, we spent our afternoons throwing disc and trying to knock cashew nuts out of trees.

Just like the rest of the world, soccer was a big deal in Shirazi. A lot of the teenagers in our families played on the local team, and one evening I got to hop in the back of a big yellow truck with 40 players and superfans. We sped off at top speeds, dodging mango branches and piki-pikis (motorcycles) as we traveled to a nearby village for a game. Flying down the road hooting and hollering with a bunch of Kenyans was quite the grand ol’ time. By the time we reached the soccer pitch, the whole truck was singing the Remember the Titans rally song. Big intimidation factor.

Mission, let’s get to the kitchen. This became my goal in Shirazi because for me the kitchen represented a separation between the men and women of the family. There were times throughout the week when I got really frustrated with my host father because he would just sit around and do nothing while my host mama worked tirelessly. She worked so darn hard. All day, everyday. This seemed to be the family dynamic in many of the homes around town. And it really ticked me off at times. Idriss, Baba, and I even ate separately from the women of the house. I was determined to spend some time with my mama by helping cook. It usually resulted in my non-English speaking mama laughing at me while I fumbled about, but it was a way for me to break away from the distinct gender roles. If I had seen a woman tell her husband to make his own darn dinner one night, it probably would’ve given me as much satisfaction as dropping some sweet cliff in the Utah backcountry.

Besides the patriarchal system, there was some extreme chillaxing going on in this little village. The relaxed attitude in Shirazi was so polarized that it can only be described as extreme. I had a real hard time getting used to the fact that Shirazi folk (especially the men) spent a lot of time resting and that everything was SO much slower than anything I was used to. Before this I thought of myself as pretty relaxed, but compared to most peeps in Shirazi, I may just as well have been running around with an Epipen in my leg the whole time. Hammocks would be a hit there. The slow pace of life may be in part due to the amount of time it takes to do things in a place without many of the amenities we take for granted in the US. No available laundry machine? Alright, let’s spend the next 5 hours washing our clothes by hand. No easy-bake oven? Let’s spend an hour looking for firewood and then grill some fish. I experienced this a bit in Nairobi, but Shirazi really drove home the idea that for many the basic daily tasks of life become the focus of each and every day.

There was a lot of swimming in the mangrove forest-surrounded harbor and brushing my teeth under the stars. Dinner sometimes became a hazardous activity as I burned my fingers in stemming hot ugali (ground maize-staple along the coast) and then stabbed myself with fish spines. Yowzer. From my food pyramid perspective, my family in Shirazi did not eat very nutritiously. Maybe this was partly because they couldn’t afford all the veggies and fruits, but they also seemed to be making a decision to eat lots of meat and grains. This ugali stuff, for instance, has just about as much nutritional value as a toothpick. But people love it. I bet my family would say that they eat well, which makes me wonder if our accepted ideas of a nutritional diet are as universal as we think they are.

Maybe the nutritional value of a diet should be determined by what the goals of the day seem to be. I value foods that give me the energy to adequately perform the work of the day. Yet I also import foods like mad and screw up lots of people’s lives and home environments (indirectly) to get that banana and my daily dose of potassium. I may be called a Taker. I take the situation in my environment and mold it to fit my own needs or wants. My family living in Shirazi eats whatever fruit happens to be in season. Rather than alter their environment they adapt to fit into it. They could be called the Leavers. I think there needs to be much more overlap between the Takers and Leavers, and that they both have something to learn from each other.

We ate some saucy fish and tried to climb a baobob tree. And that’s a wrap on Shirazi.

We returned to Mombasa for 5 days of guest lectures, rooftop laundry washing, and more swimming. We had a fair amount of free time to do whatever, and the narrow streets of the Old Town area became a bit of playground while we were there. One afternoon it started to monsoon while a couple of us were walking amongst these narrow streets squished together by the overgrowth of homes and buildings. It was invigorating. If there had been a stampede of wild goats I would’ve been totally ready to sprint along.

The chai that I had every morning in Shirazi was top-notch, probably better than peanut butter in liquid form. Back in Mombasa, my friend Kags and I were determined to replicate the magic in a mug that was Shirazi chai. We wheeled and dealed for the numerous spices (cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, other good stuff) and bought some pure Kenyan tea in the spice market. We’ve yet to perfect the art of chai-making, but we’ll get there. All chaimasters start out making hot water with a hint of cinnamon flavor.

Since returning to Nairobi on Sunday I’ve been researching up the wazoo. It’s time to decide on an Independent Study Project idea. Basically, we’re given a month to pursue a research topic of our choice and then pump out a massive paper. You can do anything and go anywhere in Kenya. I’ve become very interested in the civil society working in Kenya, and specifically the ability of the press to coerce accountability and transparency within different power structures. Hopefully, I’ll be working with an independent press in Kakuma Refugee Camp for my project. It’s become apparent that the political class in Kenya is also the business class, which produces the corruption that is so rampant in Kenya. This corruption is a stark indicator of impunity within the government, but the lack of accountability extends beyond the national governing body.

In Kenya, development/aid projects are so intertwined with every aspect of life. From free lunch for students to television programs, foreign development organizations are pumping money into Kenya as if that’s just how it should be forever. To some, the whole development field can be seen as a parallel government with no accountability. Often development project managers are only truly accountable to themselves. The donors can be persuaded that everything is running smoothly and the people receiving help have no means to project their voice. Sometimes the only impetus to do ANY meaningful work is to get more funding. In the refugee camp, the independent press (http://kakuma.wordpress.com/) I’ve found has a very tense relationship with the UN and other NGOs running the camp. I want to explore why this is and explore how people living in the camp can have a stronger voice to keep the development agencies accountable to those they are trying to help. It’s still in the works, and getting permission to go to the camp takes a bit of grunt work, but hopefully it’ll work out.

Wherever you are in this green and blue place, I hope your time is beached as. Here’s a lil’ somethin’ somethin’ as you go on your way:

“If they’d nurtured and cared for human nonsense over the ages the way they did intelligence, it might have turned into something of special value.” -Yevgeny Zamyatin