Читать книгу My Maasai Life - Robin Wiszowaty - Страница 8

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Culture Shock in Nairobi Life

Everyone is s taring at me. A crowd of bodies surrounds at all angles, a collision of voices whisper and laugh at what I assume must be me. Wildly self-conscious, I shove my hands deep into my pockets, feeling my face grow hot, wishing I knew how to sink into the crowd, invisible.

It’s like the first day of school all over again, only this September it’s my first time taking Nairobi’s public transit on my own. Up till now my host family has accompanied me, but from here forward I refuse to have my hand held as I find my way around the city—even though I’m not entirely sure which bus to take. I chalk up my uneasiness to an overactive imagination and compel myself to stand taller, trying to look as if I know what I’m doing.

Every morning at seven o’clock I embark on a two-hour commute across Nairobi, hopping a Nissan minibus—called a matatu—through town to the Nazarene Church on Ngong Road. There I meet with other University of Minnesota students for Swahili lessons, classes on Kenyan culture and sessions where we share ideas for our individual research projects. From my host family’s home in a suburb on the west side, it takes about fifteen minutes by foot to reach the first matatu stop, called a “stage.” There I join the crowd at the curbside and find shade from the sun—already blinding despite the early hour—beneath a signboard advertising a cellular phone company.

Calls and shouts from the matatus ring on all sides. Everyone is a potential passenger, the prey of aggressive matatu operators.

“Beba beba beba beba!” Be carried here!

The matatus don’t depart until the operators had maximized their profit by squeezing in as many passengers and as much cargo as they can, so along with a driver each has a type of scout, working to get bodies in seats as quickly as possible. With pleading shouts the scouts yank urgently at the elbows of potential passengers, coaxing them inside. Once the cars are full, they surge along the four-lane Uhuru highway to their destination at the city centre, then refill all over again. The more trips the matatu operators make, the more money they earn. Each fare is ten shillings, about twelve American cents.

As I wait for the matatu for route 115 to arrive, I hear calls from vendors nearby.

“Kumi kumi kumi!” Come, come, come!

A small kiosk is set up next to the matatu stage, where a clever business woman sells cut-up papaya, pineapple, mango and passion fruit to those waiting. “Thirty shillings, fruit salad!” she calls. “Thirty shillings only!” Even though I’ve been told we’re on the brink of the area’s rainy season, the heat is still exhausting, and at the equivalent of about forty cents this fresh fruit is a welcome treat.

“Beba beba beba!” Carry, carry, carry!

With its engine revving and honks blasting like bullhorns, the route 115 minibus pulls up, trailing dirty exhaust. Men and women in business suits shove past me, cutting in line to board. I’m pretty sure this is my route, but amid the chaos I can’t know for sure.

“Moja mwengine! Moja mwengine!” One more!

The noise is overpowering. Several more matatus pull up, each fighting to cut off the other, blasting music to attract potential passengers. Neon lights and graffiti drawings of American rappers colour the matatus, along with slogans ranging from Jesus Saves All to Baby Got Back. Lost in this disorienting scene, I allow myself to be hauled by the bicep into a matatu emblazoned with the slogan We Be Jammin. My feet are barely inside before the matatu pulls away.

The bus is jammed beyond capacity—as with all matatus, what would be typically a nine-seat vehicle has been refitted with benches for eighteen, though often more bodies spill from open doors and windows. I hold my breath against the thick scent of body odour as I climb toward the back, toppling into people as the matatu jerks, switching gears and hurtling off. My apologies go unacknowledged, and people simply give way the best they can. The experience is a far cry from Chicago’s Pace suburban bus service or the shuttle buses at college, where every other seat would be free.

I squeeze into the back row, squished among three adults and two children. A stranger hands a bag to hold on my lap, though I can’t tell to whom it belongs.

Conversations fly in all directions as we barrel down Uhuru Highway, voices raised over the blaring music. I have no idea what anyone around me is saying, so all I can do is concentrate on breathing through my mouth to avoid swallowing the clouds of black exhaust seeping from passing cars. Despite my best attempts to brace myself, hunched among these bodies and bags, my head slams over and over against the unpadded roof as we weave in and out of lanes. Holding my breath, I work up the courage to inhale, yet find it nearly impossible in the stagnant, pungent air. To my amazement, no one seems the least bit inclined to open a window.

Even with bodies pressing against me on all sides, I feel alone. Everyone is a stranger. These streets are unfamiliar. I am far from my friends, my bed, the familiar neighbourhood I could navigate with my eyes closed, everything I’d ever known. And yet, with total chaos surrounding me, pounding music playing so loud the entire matatu vibrates with pumping bass, a small girl absentmindedly clutching my leg for balance—here I am truly alive. This is what I wanted! This is what I came for!

The matatu hits a pothole and all of us are bounced from our seats, once again smacking our heads against the roof. The girl clutching my leg and I exchange smiles and she takes my hand. I inhale deeply, breathing in the smell of burning garbage, diesel fumes . . . and freedom.

Nairobi: the sprawling metropolis often called “The Green City in the Sun.” (Photo courtesy Kim Plewes.)

The University of Minnesota had placed me for two months with a temporary host family in Westlands, a relatively affluent suburb outside of Nairobi. The family fed and housed me, but our relationship was generally icy. When I tried to make conversation or share stories, they were uninterested. I came to see that they were hosting a Western student for the money not to embrace a visitor from another culture.

Truthfully, that was fine with me, since my priorities lay elsewhere. Soon I would be matched with a new family in a rural area, where I would be immersed in the local culture and observe the conditions there first-hand. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I knew for sure, once I got there, my real education would begin.

Before that, however, I had to go through eight weeks of classes and meetings across town with other American students like me, studying in a range of different fields and disciplines. My class was led by Dr. Mohamud Jama, associate professor at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, and adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. His encouragement had me excited about the months to come.

There was only a slight catch: unlike most of my classmates, I had no formal training in the field of international development and, to complete the course and receive full credit, I was expected to write extensively about the topic and eventually produce an eighty-page paper. The idea was daunting, to say the least. I hoped my time in this rural community would help me learn more about successful international development practices.

One afternoon I was walking through downtown Nairobi when I encountered someone who stopped me in my tracks.

A tall, thin man was headed down the sidewalk toward me, his colourful appearance standing in stark contrast against the grey backdrop of surrounding glass skyscrapers. Two long cotton scarves were draped across his bare chest, cascading all the way to his knees, held together at his waist by a beaded belt. To my shock, he was laden with weapons: a long knife encased in a red-dyed cow hide and a wooden club hung from his belt, with a bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back. He held a thin staff in one hand and a metal spear in the other. His pierced and stretched earlobes dangled almost halfway to his shoulders.

As he looked right and left, shrinking from avoid oncoming traffic, I wondered who this spectacular man might be and what had brought him to Nairobi. What does he think of the wide streets, the big crowds of people, the running water or tall sky-scrapers?

As we passed, the push of the busy crowd propelled me forward, yet I could smell from him a strong odour like raw milk and a smoky scent, like a campfire. The man seemed entirely out of place—almost as much as me.

I knew that in Kenya I’d be experiencing a culture and way of life unlike anything I’d seen. Leading up to leaving North America I’d been so focused on orchestrating my escape I hadn’t anticipated the cultural differences—or how deeply submerged in poverty Nairobi truly was. The kiosk workers with whom I spoke every day didn’t work to buy designer clothes; they sold bananas in the morning to put food in their children’s mouths at night. Often they even lived in their kiosks with their children. Many bathed in an above-ground sewer system—the same one into which I often saw people urinating. They washed their clothes by hand, lived amid litter in the streets and breathed air so polluted you had to remove black build-up from your nostrils after a day on the streets.

Everywhere people pleaded for me to purchase their wares. Children followed me constantly with hands outstretched, begging in broken English: “Sister, sister, please. My tummy is hungry. Five shillings, ten shillings. Please, sister.” Chatting with the guy who worked at the matatu stage in the mornings, I was surprised to learn he lived in a poverty-ravaged slum, just minutes from the comfortable home where I was living.

Walking Nairobi’s streets, I manoeuvred around people sprawled on the trash-smeared concrete, their leprosy-wracked and underfed bodies, some missing limbs, sleeping in the middle of crowded streets—mistreated, neglected bodies that held human souls capable of compassion and love. Yet people simply stepped right past them.

I often felt numb, as though observing myself in the same way I observed these surrounding scenes. Every day I saw something that shocked me. I didn’t know how to take it all in, or how to articulate it when I wrote to my family. Instead, I read emails from my mother about the weekly sales at Kohl’s, how disappointing a new TV series was, how my alma mater football team was faring that season. How could I share what was going on here in Nairobi when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? I pictured my mom at her office, seeing my name in her email inbox and then excitedly opening my message. She would call over all her fellow workers to share the news: her daughter was still safe and doing well.

But what if I wrote to her about the man with elephantiasis of the leg I’d passed on the street the day before? A chill shot down my spine and my breath caught in my throat when I saw him, slumped on the sidewalk. My face contorted as I fought to hold back tears and nausea at the same time. I fought to look away, but couldn’t help but gape at the swollen, deformed figure lying before me. His thighs looked like the base of a tree trunk and his darkening skin was bursting at the seams, like a balloon ready to pop. His foot was so swollen that the toes nearly disappeared inside the distended flesh. I wondered: How can he even turn over? His foot must be impossible to even lift! Can he walk? How does he stand the pain?

Then he caught me openly gawking and met my gaze with a toothless smile and a trembling palm held out in hope of a couple of shillings.

How could I possibly explain to Mom just how gutted I felt in that moment? There seemed no way to share the flood of questions racing through my mind: Where does he sleep at night? What can he afford with just a few shillings? Or how do I even explain the unexpected contradiction, that even in agony his eyes held a gentle mystique, seeming to assure me all would be okay? Or how do I explain the bitter irony, that his smile was providing comfort and reassurance while I—healthy, with money in my wallet—stood stunned, unable to help him? And what about all the other sick, wounded Kenyans I saw? Do Kenyans have public health care? And if they don’t . . . what did they do?

How could I possibly even begin to share all the disheartening scenes I saw almost everywhere I went in this strange city?

I was a part of it now; there was no turning back. I couldn’t avoid the brutal reality; in fact, I didn’t want to avoid it. Although there were no easy answers, no understanding, no logic—only corruption, greed and ignorance—this was a world I wanted to learn more about. Right now I didn’t know how to share with my loved ones back home. Instead, I was learning to keep a million secrets with myself. But maybe someday I’d know how to tell them.

The days in Nairobi began to run into one another. Yet some experiences stood out, like the first day I was moved to actual tears.

I’d come to Kenyatta Market with my classmate Brenda to buy a sweater from the second-hand clothing market. It was a maze of stalls, vendors selling all sorts of used clothes, everything from fine-tailored business attire to Nike running shoes and Gap sweatshirts.

During my stay in Nairobi, I brimmed with anticipation while preparing to head to Maasailand for a full year.

As we strolled through the busy market, two street boys approached, asking for five shillings. Brenda took a glance at them, then declined casually, just as we both often did.

“Sina pesa,” she said. I don’t have any money.

Clearly, this was an outright lie. I’d been taught to say the same thing, because when there are two beggars there are ten and, when there are ten, there are still more ready to pounce. But even after saying it countless times, it still felt wrong. Compared to the people we passed on the street, we might as well have been driving bmw convertibles with the top down, flashing designer clothes and sparkling jewellery, tossing stacks of cash . . . then saying “sina pesa” while craning our heads for a better view of the dejected locals.

One street man nearby overheard us. Missing most of his teeth, his clothes hung as if they hadn’t been washed for weeks, and his hair was so dirty it was knotting into dreadlocks. Glaring at us, he said in Swahili, “What are you doing in Kenya, if you can’t help us?”

Despite my halting comprehension of the language, I understood his question. What was I doing here? Was I here to help Kenyans? I couldn’t remember any sort of altruistic impulse as my reason for being me here. I only pictured myself three months earlier, curled up on my family room couch reading books on cultural sensitivity, or shopping in neighbourhood department stores for appropriate clothing, thinking this was a chance for me to enlarge my experience and pick up others’ points of view. I’d been driven simply by a desire to escape not to improve the lives of these poor people.

I had no answer for this man. His piercing stare lingered, awaiting an explanation. It was all I could do to turn my head to avoid meeting his eyes. Brenda and I quickly rushed away, still wishing there was some sort of answer, any answer, to give.

By the time Brenda and I parted ways to return home from our shopping trip it was raining, with a chill in the autumn air. I hurried down a side street to catch a matatu back to the suburbs, my rain-soaked pants sticking to my legs and my hands jammed in my pockets.

Then I heard it: a sharp yelp from an intersection about ten metres up the street. Drawing closer, I could see two street boys hovering over a third boy lying on the ground. Keeping my distance, I continued on my way. It wasn’t an uncommon scene: I’d seen many street boys harass one another, stealing one another’s little food or the glue they sniffed. Yet the third boy’s cries echoed through the empty street, his quick yelps turning to desperate, wordless pleas as the others beat him with sticks. The sound seized my heart as I drew nearer, both with fear for my own safety and in alarm at the scene unfolding before me.

Then I saw what the boys were after: the fallen boy’s jeans. He struggled on the ground, outnumbered and overpowered as they stole the only protection he had against the night’s cold. He fought in vain until his attackers successfully yanked off his jeans and ran away, the echoes of their feet smacking pavement ringing down the empty street. Their victim tried to chase after them in his bare feet, but to no avail. For him, it was a harsh lesson in survival of the fittest.

No one helped the boy. I certainly didn’t. I’d only watched in astonishment, not knowing what to do. I was clearly larger than his attackers and could probably have fended them off. But then what? More street boys would likely come to their help, and then it wouldn’t be me against two; it would be me against eight, maybe more. And if I did get the boy’s pants back, nothing would stop him from being robbed again minutes later, after I’d returned to my home—a home with running water, a stocked refrigerator, warm blankets and a window I could shut to keep out the cold.

Empathy was overruled by desperation, and desperation created chaos. It wasn’t just happening here, at the corner of Koinange and Muindi Mbingu streets. It was happening across town, across the hundred various slums within Nairobi, across the country, around the world. I didn’t know where I stood in this equation. I’d never been so desperate that I might steal someone’s only pair of pants yet neither had I ever to defend myself against such an attack. I had never had to defend else from physical attack. I didn’t know what the outcome would be if I did.

I had so many questions. The voices inside my head wouldn’t shut up as I continually asked myself questions I couldn’t answer. Why were so many kids living on the streets? What was the government doing about it? Were international aid organizations assisting? Did the kids make enough money to live even at a subsistence level? Did they make any money at all? What happened to them at night? How did they get this way? And, most of all, what could I do?

I met many children throughout Nairobi, as street children were unafraid about approaching strangers, begging for handouts. There was a group of boys who lived along the route from my home to my matatu stage and, after running into the same recognizable faces, I began to often stop and talk with them. One afternoon I met Moses, a ten-year-old boy who lived on the streets. He was immediately endearing, brimming with charisma. We made plans to have a proper chat, both so I could potentially include his story in my research and, because I was simply fascinated by his life experience, so unfathomable to me.

The next day he and a few other boys sat with me on the curb by an open-air market close by my host family’s house. Their English was about as limited as my Swahili, but we still managed to understand one another. Each of the boys sipped small packets filled with milk I’d bought for them—a small price to pay, I thought, for fascinating conversation.

Because we’d arranged to meet in this upscale neighbourhood, Moses wasn’t huffing glue today. But normally, he said, he spent most of his time in the slums and any money he could find on what he called his “gum”; huffing it took away his incessant hunger, made his body feel good and helped him forget the cold. It was, he said, the most efficient use of his money. Even though he knew inhaling the toxic substance could cause serious, irreparable damage to his young body and brain, in his desperation he clung to the numbness provided by its high. His father had died of aids and his mother was now also sick, so she couldn’t afford to provide food for Moses and his siblings. With no way of surviving at home, Moses had to leave his village for the big city. Here Moses found other children who lived on the streets, having also fled their homes.

Moses pointed various kids out to me, knowing each of their stories. “That guy’s parents both died. This guy just ran away from home for fun. This other guy doesn’t even know how he got here.”

Depending on the day and season, street life presented a range of serious dangers, from violence between street kids to malnutrition and disease from the brutal conditions. Later that winter, in January 2003, the newly elected government representing the National Alliance of Rainbow Coalition, or narc, would send large trucks into Nairobi’s streets, rounding up street children and taking them to state-sponsored facilities. I found out then that Moses himself avoided the trucks but later spent several intermittent sentences in city jail; he told me this never changed his preference to live on the streets.

Now, though, in those early days in Nairobi, I thought about how homeless people were regarded in North America, recalling how saddened I’d been to learn in school that children make up about a third of the homeless in America. It never made sense to me, when the commonly held stereotype of the homeless had more to do with mental illness or addiction, not a desperate underfed child on the street clutching a teddy bear, like one homeless child I’d seen here. How was this allowed to happen? How could people so young even survive?

Brenda was working with a development organization in the slums just outside of Kibera, and she invited me to tour the slum and see the true picture, away from the disturbing images shown in television commercials: children’s wracked bodies, their open sores and bloated bellies, their weak efforts at swatting circling flies as they lay limp against flaking mud walls, while a groomed celebrity spokesperson pleaded on their behalf. Yet in the pit of my stomach, I felt apprehensive. Would I be welcome? Could I handle seeing such poverty?

Walking with Brenda through Kibera’s narrow streets, it was impossible to ignore the suspicious glares of the slum’s dwellers. Garbage was strewn along rows of tiny houses and through corridors formed by sheets of grimy, rusted tin siding. The stench of sewage hung heavy as we stepped carefully through red-brown puddles of dirt and recent rain. Green plastic bags were caught on rocks every few steps, leftovers of last night’s “flying toilets”—Kibera’s solution to a lack of public sanitation. I’d heard of people relieving themselves into bags at night, then throwing them out of the window; the evidence was all around us as we continued forward, careful not to slip in the mud.

But heading farther through the streets, a different story emerged. Echoes of children’s shrieked laughter rang everywhere. Mamas in vibrant headscarves popped their heads from doorways, calling their kids for dinner, while other women worked makeshift vendor stands, selling fresh fried dough for five shillings; the smell of the cooking oil wafted mouth-watering aromas. Entrepreneurial men worked shoeshine booths and cobblers clustered on street corners. More and more children chased one another through these elaborate corridors, dodging the litter as they splashed through the streaming gutters.

A group of boys, dodging one another, accidentally bumped me. “Sorry!” they called back breathlessly, dashing away.

With Brenda as my guide, we visited some families’ residences. The small houses, really only shacks, were made of corrugated tin walls and roofs with floors made either of hardened red clay or, sometimes, concrete. Some houses had simple, peeling paint jobs; many did not.

An average home was roughly three metres by three metres, half the size of my bathroom at home, with a curtain typically hung across the centre to fashion a bedroom separate from the sitting room or kitchen. Despite the close quarters, every home felt welcoming, personalized with decorations, wall-hangings or newspaper clippings. Floral patterned- fabrics were laid over couches and tiny televisions, tuned to whatever stations their limited reception could get, ran off car batteries. These furnishings almost masked my view of their unstocked cupboards, their ragged clothes, their unspoken desperation.

I tried to put myself in their place. Could I ever feel comfortable living in such a place, sleeping on a tiny mattress, with sewage streaming at my doorstep? A neighbourhood perpetually covered in mud and garbage and flying toilets? No running water, let alone no operating flush toilets or garbage collection? Could I ever call a place like this my home? Each family kept a twenty litre jerry can, called a mitungi, to carry water. It cost five shillings to fill it up at the shared water tank—roughly the equivalent of more than twice what my family back in Chicago paid for clean water piped directly into our home.

I was stunned, paralyzed, comparing the lifestyle I’d led back home with the experiences of those I saw in Kibera: those sick, starving, struggling just to survive. At home we raided our kitchen cabinets, which spilled with cartons of groceries, only to moan, “There’s nothing to eat!” But here families often really had nothing to eat. Portions were strictly regulated and budgeted. Back in Schaumberg, my sister Erin and I often complained about having “nothing to wear,” while piles of disregarded clothes tumbled from our closets. Here children wore cast-off clothes, most donated by Americans and sold in bulk throughout the developing world. Many wore clothes handmade by their mothers.

Nonetheless, for all that was different, just as much was the same between our worlds, half a world away. Families worried about their children as they slept, played, cooked, hosted visitors, hoped for the future—just as people everywhere, getting on with their lives.

My two months in Nairobi passed in a whirlwind of emotion. Everything was new and strange. But most of my time was spent readying myself for my true destination, only a few quick matatu rides away. As the end of my orientation period approached, I picked up the basic essentials I would need: a year’s worth of tampons, a few loose-fitting skirts from the second-hand clothes market, a Swahili dictionary, malaria pills and not much else. I emailed a quick goodbye to my parents, saying I didn’t know when I would be able to contact them next but assuring them I would do my best to be safe. Then, with my immediate future again uncertain, I was on my way.