Resume Building

I never expected the word ‘agriculture’ to appear on my resume as often as it does. In fact, when the concept of a resume first met my unwitting mind, agriculture was probably the least likely word to appear on it. As a child and then a teenager, I never gave much critical consideration to what sort of job I wanted to have when I would grow up. For a long time a combination of action toys, war movies, and a victor’s reading of history planted in me the idea of being a soldier. That vague plan was abandoned sometime during adolescence when I realized that there is no black and white in world affairs, and there is no such thing as a glorious battle. For a couple of years, perhaps from the ages of nine to ten or eleven I was drawn to becoming a comic book artist, but my talent never passed far beyond the ability to create scruffy looking faces in the margins of my notebooks. My interest in the comic books themselves waned in the middle school years, and that fancy died out.

My one distinct memory of agricultural planning occurred when I was perhaps five or six years old, sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car with a good friend. I decided that we would one day have a farm together. This decision was predicated on my then love for animals, and the premise that on a farm one could have a wide assortment of them. This experience was the only mental preparation I had done for a career quite literally in the field. Beyond these passing thoughts, no real plans for employment ever developed in my mind. School always seemed to provide something to do the next year. Now, some twelve years or so from the time I first tried vainly to encapsulate experience on a sheet of paper in order to get a job, the amount of time I have spent wandering through fields with farmers is somewhat astounding. It is odd both in that such an experience ever happened to a kid from the suburbs with little applicable knowledge, and in that said kid kept going back.

I enjoy my time in the field. I enjoy growing plants, hoeing rows, plowing up an acre of land, and walking around inspecting crops. I enjoy driving tractors and planning management schemes, thinking about logistics and having my hands in the soil. Yet there are many things I enjoy just as much as the aspects of agricultural work that have not kept me in their respective fields. I enjoy languages, but I’m not a linguist. I enjoy games, but I’m not a game designer, nor a gambler. As much as I enjoy being on farms and would love to have my own, those things that I enjoy about the field are not what have kept me there. What have kept me going back are the small farmer, and the idea of justice.

In comparison to the world I come from, there is a beauty in the relationship between the farmer’s labor and the fruit it bears. I do not intend to romanticize the condition of billions of people living in poverty. Quite the contrary, I have found in my years working with populations of small farmers that there is nothing romantic about the life. It does strike me, however, as a lifestyle of reason. There is a clear relationship between the labor, the weather, the crop, the animal, and the land. You take what you are given, and you do what you can with it. There is a meritocracy in it, not to say that a farmer deserves too little rain or poor soils, but that given those conditions, a farmer can affect their outcomes in a way that is proportional to their knowledge and labor. Obviously, no amount of labor can make up for the rains not falling, but the inputs and outputs of the small farm are close and understandable.

If, as John Rawls put it, justice is fairness, then provided inputs are in fair and direct proportion to the outcome, it is a just outcome. A farmer puts labor into growing a crop. Without that labor, the crop would not bear fruit. Up to the natural limits available to the farmer, such as the amount of water or nutrients he or she can access, the farmer’s labor is the factor that makes the difference in the outcome. There is a just relationship between the labor and the outcome, provided that the labor is the limiting factor, not the elements. Does this mean that for some people, poverty is a fair outcome? For those who put no effort in, is it just that they live in poverty?

The failure of our world to reach this ideal of justice is not in its outcomes; it is in the opportunities provided and the lack of balance in the relative inputs and outcomes for various people. A small farmer can work very hard, strive to attain more knowledge, put that knowledge into practice, and still earn a dollar a day. An investment banker can work very hard, strive to attain more knowledge, put that knowledge into practice, and earn thousands upon thousands of dollars a day. The difference between the two is not the amount of labor they put in nor intelligence they possess, but the opportunities available to them. Equality of opportunity is the goal to strive for if one wants to live in a just world; equality of outcomes is not.

Perhaps the relationship between the inputs and outcomes of various jobs is skewed and unfair, providing more fiscal compensation than their true value merits. CEO compensation packages spring to mind. Overcompensation, however, is not the heart of the matter; it is a symptom. The problem is that the limiting factors themselves, the opportunities, are unfairly distributed to begin with. I would like to live in a world without poverty, but I would rather live in a just world. In a just world it is possible that there would be no poverty, but the burden would lie upon each person, not upon society. If society can provide the conditions for justice- a fair opportunity- then the outcomes would be up to the intelligence and labor of the individuals.

It is likely that educating small farmers and providing them with opportunities is not the most efficient way to a just world, but I never claimed to be the most intelligent person on earth. Going the other way by telling people in certain professions that they are overcompensated for their labor will not get you very far. The small farmer’s is the one profession I know to have a fair field to play upon, all other things being equal. The problem is that not all other things are equal, and poverty is a terrible outcome.

Great Expectations

On Sunday we moved. It was not a difficult process, from one furnished apartment to another, and it only took one tuk-tuk, or rickshaw ride to carry all of our things to our new home. The new surroundings are quite comfortable by any standards, and I likely have more amenities than a large proportion of Kenya’s population. It is a two bedroom, one bath half of a duplex, larger than any apartment I ever had back in the U.S. Two beds, a couch and two easy chairs, a book shelf, a coffee table, an inconspicuous rug, assorted remarkably tasteful decorations and side tables, and a couple of squeaky fans compliment the recent renovation. Located just a fifteen minute walk from my office, it seems too good to be true.

But not all is so easy, for not all challenges have revealed themselves. On the first night in our new home, we unpack our belongings along with the few new items purchased to fill any gaps in the furnishings. A new water filter, ice trays, and a handful of sponges and soaps all make their way into the kitchen. It is apparent that the stove and small refrigerator are not nearly as new as the paint on the walls. They are chipped and stained with use, and the rubber in the joins has begun to dry and crack. Luckily my misgivings about the refrigerator are calmed when we plug it in and flip the switch on the outlet. It begins to buzz and hum and our recently purchased groceries go in.

Later that evening we look to the stove to prepare for dinner. Three of the four burners have all of their components. One is conspicuously incomplete, missing the black ceramic plate that splits the flow of gas into a wide circle of flame. This fourth may not help with cooking dinner, but if we ever have need of a Bunsen burner, we should be covered. The oven appears to be electric, and also appears to be completely non-functioning, given the jumble of wires hanging uselessly out the back. Neither of these are real problems, as I cannot remember ever needing all four burners, and it never is cool enough to seriously consider baking.

Next to the oven sits the large orange gas tank. It feels heavy, indicating it is almost full. I lift the rubber hose connected to the back of the stove and go to put it over the nozzle of the tank when I notice the white substance plugging the hole where the gas should come out. I am unfamiliar with this particular type of nozzle. Perhaps they put a plug in to guard against leaks. I scrape the white stuff with my fingernail. It feels like chalk or plaster. Perhaps it is some new kind of filter, allowing gas to pass out but nothing to get in and block the flow. That is an unlikely possibility, given the apparent age of the rest of the tank, but I try putting the hose over the end anyway and opening the valves. No gas comes through. I close the valves, pull the hose off and look at the white plug again. Plaster. It has to be plaster, but why would anyone put plaster in the nozzle of a gas tank? My short fingernails can’t reach any further into the opening, so I grab a spare screw and prepare to scratch or drill a hole.

As soon as the screw puts pressure on the chalky white substance, it crumbles and gives way like a paper-thin wall. Out pour a tiny dead spider and an enormous dead grub. I probably killed them when I opened the gas valve. I’m not sure what they were doing in there together, nor which of them constructed the barrier, but at least the gas blockage has been dealt with. Or so I think.

After cleaning out the nozzle and replacing the hose I open the valves again and try to light the stove. Nothing. No gas moving out. Try again. Nothing. I remove the burners and open the top of the stove, checking that all the pipes are going in the right direction and that turning the knobs on the front of the range actually opens another valve. It’s getting late. We’re hungry. The pipes appear to be in the right place. The range gets put back together. The hose is reattached. The valves are opened. No gas comes through, and our first dinner in our new home ends up being two melted and re-cooled candy bars, thanks to our loudly buzzing fridge.

Quite often it seems that our happiness is dependent more upon our expectations than the objective circumstances we find our selves in. Thankfully my girlfriend and I have enough perspective and our senses of humor are strong enough that we were not left devastated by our low-grade chocolate dinner. That said, a working stove would have rounded out an overall better dining experience. The same concept holds true with birthday presents, family vacations, and development projects. It is all too easy to fall into latching on to the latest idea as the cure for the ailments of the developing world. With each iteration of big words and projections, expectations are raised. This may be necessary in the world of fundraising, where once a bandwagon is big enough it reaches the critical mass needed to possibly make an impact on a large scale. For the people targeted by these projects however, such great expectations can create as many problems as opportunities.

Throughout the history of the development industry communication with targeted populations has not been crystal clear. The interpretation of a message will always depend upon the previous experiences of the interpreter. The greater the differences in experience between those creating a message and those hearing it, the greater can be the difference in the interpretation, and hence expectations generated. What you say and what is heard are not always the same things when speaking to your coworker at the water cooler. When the message is generated by the moneyed donor or the scholarly professor, and received by the semi-nomadic tribesman, the orphaned urban youth, or the small farmer the difference in what is said and what is heard is potentially that much greater.

I work for an organization that plants trees with small farmers. This activity holds a great amount of potential to generate income for rural families and to help halt certain environmental woes such as desertification. People should know that the potential impact is great, but it cannot end poverty on its own. Such rhetoric, though perhaps useful in motivating donors, only sets up the targets of development projects for disappointment.

While in the field, I walk a line between the desire to motivate people to be excited about the projects we do, and the need to ensure that we manage the farmers’ expectations fairly. I cannot help but be seen as someone in a position of more power than those people I work to serve. My education, my speech, my nationality, economic background and skin color all point to my being in a position to make changes happen. It is radically unfair that it is so, but so it is. And in that position, it is my responsibility to speak plainly, to explain clearly while not talking down, to motivate without planting false hopes, and to work enthusiastically on a project that will take years to bear fruit.

Despite these responsibilities of good development practice, at the end of the day each individual has the capacity to base their happiness either upon their prior expectations, or upon a more objective idea of their wellbeing. In that light, a stove that does not cook, a refrigerator that can’t make ice, a leaking roof and a rubble filled toilet that will only flush twice a day are things that can either make you pine for those things you don’t have, or remind you of those things you do. A few hundred trees on a small farm plot will never buy someone a Mercedes or cure malaria, but it might pay for a high school education, a clean water system, or keep someone invested enough in their community to have them see options beyond moving to a slum in a major city. Those, at least, are some of my expectations.

Town and Country

Pelé, Hermán and I were up well before the break of dawn. We would spend the morning in the field, from around six until around one p.m. Then we would go back to their home for lunch and a siesta. Sometime around three they would head back to the field and I would move on to visit another farmer or family. This morning we were up early and the weeding had to be done. The cotton field that Pelé and Hermán worked together was a good kilometer away from their home, and we would set out after drinking máte, just as the sky was getting lighter over Misiones to the east.

Before leaving the patio where we often ate together, Pelé took a small plastic bottle from his coat pocket and took a swig. He offered it to Hermán and I, and we each refused, so he took another in our honor. To start the motor, he said. The old soda bottle was refilled on a daily basis with caña, a sugar alcohol like rum only sweeter. Pelé spent a good amount of his time in a mild state of inebriation, and several times a week was stumbling drunk. He was not an angry drunk, nor a mean drunk. If anything he was a happy-sad drunk, who delighted in the company of others, resented his position as the town drunk, and had no idea how to not be seen as a bit of a buffoon. He was a short, strong, and funny man, not a deep thinker, but a quick wit, and despite him being some thirty or forty years my senior and perpetually intoxicated, he was one of the best friends I had in the two years I lived in southern Paraguay.

Pelé was far from the greatest farmer in the world, and he never took to my suggestions of planning crop rotations or using green manures. But despite his alcoholism, which likely inhibited any large leaps forward in his lifestyle, he provided his wife Dominga and daughter Vicki with a decent standard of living. The amount of work done was greatly improved by Hermán’s arrival as the son-in-law, but even without Hermán, Pelé managed. Outside of the occasional day labor on the nearby ranch, he will never be employed by anyone. He owns no land. If he lived in the United States, he would likely be a homeless man.

In the developed world, there are few if any positions in the professional workplace where it is acceptable to arrive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. This does not mean that people do not get away with it, or that functioning alcoholics don’t manage to keep their problems under wraps, or that some people never look the other way at such behavior. Overall, though, in a developed economic system that has amounted centuries of specialization in multitudes of professions, there is no place for a person to be operating as inefficiently as they do when they are drunk.

The world of the small farmer, either at a subsistence or small holding cash crop level, does not have the same professional culture. Showing up on time is not an issue. Of course you go to the field early, because it is incredibly hot in the middle of the day. But if work needs to get done in the middle of the day, it will get done. If that work can be done at another hour, it will likely get done at the other hour. You can hoe a good number of rows with a few shots of hard alcohol in you. You might not do the best you can, but it will get done. You take a break when you want to take a break. You drink when you can afford it. There is always work to do.

A job is a different cultural animal. A job tells you when to work. It tells you when to stop. It tells you how you must be while doing that work. At the organization I work for in Kenya, our extension agents range from those around twenty years old to those in their fifties who have spent all their lives working on a farm, and from those fresh out of high school to those who did not complete middle school. In that population the difference between the developed economy sense of work and the small farm sense of work manifests itself in myriad ways.

Two weeks ago we fired one of our field extension agents for showing up drunk. He apparently is an alcoholic, and his intoxication at work had occurred several times before being brought to the attention of his superiors. Today I ran a training session at his farm, and when I greeted him he seemed cheery and not at all upset over the matter. Perhaps he was covering up disappointment, or perhaps for him the idea of a job was a novelty that just did not work out. I was reminded of my friend Pelé, whom I last saw a couple of years ago while working back in Paraguay. He had not changed too much in the intervening years. He still holds his own in the manual labor department, and still makes lewd jokes at regular intervals. He still spends his pocket change on caña, he still makes a lot of noise or falls off his horse when drunk, and he still gets into the occasional yelling match or fistfight with his rivals of forty years. But he does look older, Dominga looks a little more tired, and Hermán and Vicki have long since moved to Buenos Aires in search of jobs.

Viewed in a harsh light the history of development is one of people being left behind. In a way it is the inevitable flip side of someone getting ahead. You can’t have one without the other. You go to the town; you leave the country. Like the law of conservation of matter and energy, it can appear that development is a zero-sum game. But in the face of that cynical equation stands the human being. The ability to learn and grow is the ability to empower one’s self without disempowering others. It may not always work out that way, but the potential lies waiting, not only in the youth getting his or her first job, but also in the farmer of forty years, open to the possibilities that are out there.

Risk Management

My father first brought me to Kenya when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I confess that at the time, I probably did not understand the benefit to me of such an endeavor. Why couldn’t I just stay home where I could do what I wanted to do (Nintendo) and not be killed by snakes (spitting cobra)? Perhaps it was in some way character building, but to understand that you would need to have a concept of character, which I was lacking. I did have an innate grasp of laziness and fear, and I was able to display a professional level of ingratitude (destined for greatness!) all of which culminated in what my dad would lovingly describe as a ‘rotten kid.’

Being a late bloomer, I was still more a boy than a man-child, and I remember the concept of Africa as a whole being frightening. This trip was an enormous thing, and in the run up to departure time I was scared of the enormity of it. The magnitude of those risks I faced appeared to invalidate the benefits of the trip, of which I had no idea to begin with. On my arrival, however, the large, overarching irrational fears began to melt away in the face of concrete experience. Once in Kenya there was nothing of which I remember being particularly frightened. I ate, slept, breathed, rode in cars, and so on, pretty much the same as back home. The overwhelming fear of the massive unknown was quickly dispelled, and I could enjoy the experience.

Now, considerably older but only slightly more mature, the idea of living in Kenya for an extended period brought me no fear. I have lived in and travelled through enough countries to know that even if there are deadly snakes, they don’t usually search you out. The enormity of the unknown was replaced with the knowledge and expectation that certain things would be similar or different from what I had experienced previously, and I would be able to manage those things each in their own time.

And then I rode in matatus. When you are a child, there is so much that is out of your control that you are simply accustomed to situations where you do not have any say in the outcome. As you grow, you gain more and more say over aspects of your day-to-day life. At some point, you might even end up with that greatest of all illusions, the idea of complete control. To have this false sense of control shaken can leave a person infuriated or stimulated, but at a very basic level it is frightening. Now I get frightened when sitting in a matatu to Mombasa.

Consciously or not, we calculate our risks. Whether to forego a future benefit based upon the possibility of a negative outcome depends upon how great the probabilities of those outcomes are and upon their respective magnitudes. To facilitate the movement of people and goods along the Kenyan coast you can lay down a strip of asphalt, allowing commerce to progress quickly. This strip of asphalt, however, creates the possibility of fatal automobile accidents, which did not occur when goods were carried by foot or animal and ferried across the mouths of rivers. Is that negative possibility worth the benefit of the faster transportation? One could further argue that laying down that strip of asphalt between major population centers not only creates the possibility of fatal accidents, but makes them as close to a certainty as anything can be. Is that certainty, that some people will be killed on the highway, worth the benefit of the faster transportation?

Planners and policy makers might try to mitigate the risks by doing things such as creating a median, a passing lane, or a pedestrian overpass. Or they would, you assume, if there was a budget for it. Or maybe they would not. It seems that there is a budget for keeping the strip of asphalt in good enough condition that vehicles can attain very high speeds, but not enough to paint a line down the middle of the road. But why, they might ask, paint that line when it will not stop accidents? There are accidents on expensive four-lane highways with medians, and there are accidents on the two lane highways with no divider. If you miss hitting a person by two feet while driving sixty miles an hour it is the same as missing that person by twenty feet while driving thirty miles an hour. So say the numbers.

Seen from afar, the risk is almost always worth the benefit. It is highly unlikely that you will be in the matatu that crashes in a ball of flame or mangled metal, even if it is highly likely that one of those things will happen. Yet when you approach a blind curve and the driver passes a petrol tanker by hugging the edge of the asphalt at sixty miles per hour, you are forced to reconsider those risk management calculations.

I put my life in the hands of my driver, who seems to have not considered this situation in much depth, and also in the hands of every other driver on the road. This is apparent to me as we swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid the enormous lorry that has tipped over. No longer scared of a great unknown, I concentrate more on the specific fear of partaking in a high-speed collision. I could have spent my Saturday afternoon sitting at home, with an infinitesimally small possibility of being killed by a matatu, but it was worth it to take the risk. At least it’s not boring.

Kids pile into the matatu, and are passed from one person to another to make room for a bag of grain. Unless they are babies, they are at least somewhat aware that the matatu might crash. But this is not a shocking realization to them. They are accustomed to not being in control. It does not bother them.

I am not in favor of claiming that ignorance is bliss, nor of relinquishing decisions to the fates. Overall I am glad for my small amount of control over the regular happenings in my life. It can be unsettling at times to have this shaken, but may be beneficial in terms of keeping us grounded. Thinking back to when my dad brought me to Kenya, I remember confronting the large irrational fear of the unknown and becoming comfortable with stepping into the world. It did not increase my control over anything, but it did broaden my perspective. It was a valuable experience, just as my explorations of nearby cities may prove to be. It is also good to remember that once you are in the back seat of the matatu, there’s nothing you can do but try to enjoy the ride. There’s always something new on the road.

A Less than Historic Day

On August 21, 2010, I completed my first triathlon. It was a half triathlon, to be precise, but why quibble about the details? It was three sports together, and it is done. You can call me a triathlete. I am proud to have completed it, especially considering several key factors working against me. First, I am not in very good shape. This could be overcome with a rigorous training regimen, but that discounts the second thing working against me, namely that I decided to compete in the event a full hour and ten minutes before the starting gun went off. Finally there was my bicycle.

A triathlon is a swim-bike-run race, and of these, my strongest suit is by far swimming. My plan was to do respectably in the swimming, hold my position in the bicycling, and with any luck complete the running. The logic proceeded thusly: In college I regularly swam up to two miles a day. In the last eight years, I have swum at least three times. So that part should be no problem. Bicycling- well, you never forget how to ride a bike, and my friend’s bike will be back from the shop by the time the race starts, so I should be okay there as well. Running on the other hand is where I expect everyone to pass me by. So much for training and preparation.

This race consisted of a 750m swim, a 20+km bike ride, and a 5km run. I got off to a strong start in the water, not taking the lead, but at least holding my own for a good ways. At some point I realized that, this being the mouth of Kilifi creek, I would not have a wall to push off, and 750 meters is a long way to swim. Still, by conveniently switching to the breaststroke a third of the way through, I managed to swallow less water and finish at least in the upper 75% of the pack, possibly even in the upper 50%. It was hard to tell exactly where I stood as I made my way on rubber legs to my friends who stood by my bicycle.

Standard procedure at this point, I believe, is to have some water, put on your shoes, and get going. Never to be one who does things by the prescribed method, I took a nice five minute break to catch my breath, have a little more water, and advise the people who sped by me to take it easy, don’t make any rookie mistakes. Finally it was time to get on my bike and to be on my way up the dirt trail. A flying start was not in the works, but a wobbly start was just as good, and I was off.

“Standi! Standi!” yelled the kids who I rode by for the first few minutes. Not knowing what that meant in Swahili I took it as words of encouragement. “Thank you!” I responded, pushing my way up the hill from the beach to the main loop around the sisal plantation. After passing a few more groups of kids who helpfully pointed at my back wheel, I realized the jangling sound my bike was producing was from the kickstand being down, bouncing on the rocks and the dirt. 'Standi' means kickstand. Duly noted. A quick kick with my left foot and I was still moving, not having missed a pedal push. A minute later there was more jangling, and more shouts of “Standi!” and regular pattern soon emerged of me kicking the stand up, and the stand falling down.

Somewhere around kilometer four, where the path around the Mnarani plantation opens up and you can see past the few scattered luxury villas out over the Indian Ocean, I realized my back tire was completely flat. It was still moving, but it was completely flat. By kilometer five, where you yell your number to a race official who is making sure no one takes any short cuts, I still had not been passed by anyone. Not a bad showing on a flat tire and a dragging kickstand, but it was not to last. The second half of the first lap saw me get left behind, as pedaling my bike with its flat tire became more and more difficult. One friend who passed by said, “Ouch, you’re not going to make the second lap on that.”

“Oh yeah?” my spirit responded.

“Yeah,” replied reality.

By the end of my first lap I was firmly in last place, and the leaders were passing me by again, completing the bicycle portion and moving on to the running. Cries of “Standi!” were joined by shouts of “Puncture!” indicating my back tire. The thought crossed my mind of simply stopping there at the finish line. It was excusable. My back tire was flat, and I was out of the competition. But then I thought, “What the hell, I’ll keep going,” and that proved enough reasoning to keep me pushing through. I have found that I don’t have a very strong competitive streak, but my ‘Oh, what the hell’ streak is fairly well developed.

So I proceeded to begin the second lap, slowly trudging over the dirt roads, taking in the nice views, smiling at the cries of “Standi!” and “Puncture!” and the quizzical looks I received from plantation workers and grounds keepers. They stared as if to say, “Didn’t those crazy bicyclists finish their race an hour ago?”

Somewhere around kilometer 17.5, the back tire came off completely. The wheel stopped turning. The bike was dead. I got off and pushed. The final stretch was over a grass airfield, and the tire dragged considerably, so I picked the bike over my shoulder, determined to finish in dramatic fashion. I dropped the bike past the finish line, smiled to my friends who were laughing at my predicament, and began jogging.

By this time, the sun was getting low, and I could take it easy on my lonely trek through the plantation. It was a beautiful day, and I found it quite relaxing to not be racing anyone as I shuffled my feet in some pattern that resembled a run. In the end, I think that my bicycle was actually a saving grace. It spared me the embarrassment of coming in last place on my own merits. It also provided the motivation to keep going. I had originally thought that after swimming, everything was a wash anyway, that I might do the bicycling just for fun, and that in the run I stood no chance. Once I had the bike meltdown, my drive to finish, my stubbornness, took over. By the time I started the run, there was no question that I would complete the whole race.

I made the final turn to come down the airfield and finished it off with a ‘Chariots of Fire’ sprint. The awards ceremony was almost finished, and people applauded, friends laughed and gave high fives. Done. You can put it in the record books. Last place. Saved by the bicycle.

A Historic Day

On August 27, 2010, the new constitution of the Republic of Kenya was officially promulgated. The word ‘promulgate’ comes from the Latin mulgere, meaning to milk, but the constitution was not being milked out to the people. It was instead officially signed into law. In Nairobi the military paraded, and thousands of people gathered to watch and celebrate the event in Uhuru Park.

Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, was a prominent figure at the ceremony. He is also wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity including the genocide in Darfur. This put the new Kenya, a signatory to the International Criminal Court, in a somewhat awkward position on its first day. By international law, they should arrest President al-Bashir and deliver him to The Hague. Practically speaking, things are not quite so cut and dry. Kenya and Sudan share a small section of historically disputed border. The Sudan is known for its disappointment at neither being the mouth nor the source of the Nile, and for its widespread AK-47s.

It is likely that the arrest of your president by your neighbor on a celebratory cross border visit would not go over very well. From Kenya’s position, do you risk war with your neighbor to assuage a western-dominated body with limited power of enforcement? On the other hand, if the western powers decide to make a big deal over this, it could mean actual repercussions in the terms of U.N. sanctions. But what is the likelihood of the U.N. passing sanctions on one of the few African nations that is taking steps in the direction that the U.N. supports? And have the western powers done anything substantial about the crisis in Darfur for that matter? Al-Bashir is still in charge, and the crisis continues. There will certainly be some strong talk, but that is small potatoes compared to the act of arresting your neighbor’s president. He may be a terrible guy, but no one becomes president without someone thinking he is great, even if it is just his militant cronies. Those cronies seem more likely to make real trouble for Kenya than does the U.N.

Probably those in charge will blame the situation and the ensuing international hullaballoo on some poor official who will get fired. They could also blame it all on al-Bashir himself, who can be written off as unpredictable and defiant. The President of the semi-autonomous Southern Sudan was invited; al-Bashir came instead. What can you do? Some might say you can arrest him, but they are not seeing the big picture. It is better to do nothing and blame someone else. Alternatively they could state that they did not arrest al-Bashir because it was not in their best interests, but that kind of plain talk is not commonplace in any political sphere, west, east, or south.

Al-Bashir’s visit could be viewed in two ways. First it could show Kenya as not quite in the place where it strives to be. The visit represents a blunder of official incompetence, or the acceptance of an immoral regime, neither of which gets high marks. Alternatively, it could show that Kenya is in fact joining the group of leading nations. Taking a cue from countries like the United States and China, Kenya too can ignore international law when it so chooses, because no one will do anything about it if you are big enough to count.

The lasting impact of the day will be the effect of the new constitution on Kenya, and the country taking another step in becoming a leader among African nations. The Omar al-Bashir visit, despite its headline appeal at the moment, will fade into the footnotes of history. Kenya steps into a new position. The constitution serves as a promise to its people to develop justly and fairly, to eschew corruption and nepotism, and to ensure the rights of all.

My snarky remarks and the incidence of international blunders aside, the day marks a new beginning. I confess to having felt some emotion manifest itself in my chest when I saw pieces of the ceremony on the television at the restaurant where I was eating lunch. Kenya’s constitution had absolutely nothing to do with me, and yet I felt something. Had I seen the event on American news, I could write my reaction off to the formulaic and contrived media coverage pushing the right buttons on my sappy side. Instead I saw the Kenyan media coverage, not quite so polished, nor quite so false. This leads me to think that what I felt was something more. I believe that whether or not the constitution lives up to its promise, it was the effort and support of the promise itself that inspired my reaction. I felt a sense of humanity rising above its own failings, pushing itself beyond its instincts for personal preservation, looking towards a brighter future. Despite my disassociation with the specifics of this incidence, I am a part of that humanity. I saw us rising. Some part of me, beneath my affinity for cynical humor and my affectations of having seen this wheel turn round before felt a moment of hope and joy in that promise.

Beliefs are strange things. We can define them and put them into jars to help us sleep at night. We can boil them down to quick phrases to break out in conversation. We can claim we know our own front to back. We can so easily stop questioning them, or get so wrapped up in our everyday lives that we forget what we believe in the first place. On Friday, August 27, 2010, I remembered something that I believe. It had as little or as much to do with the constitution of Kenya as any other specific element of our humanity, other than that the constitution was what set of the thought in my mind. I remembered that underneath all of the day to day jumble, beneath the mess of pragmatic decisions and regular necessities, it is my ideals of peace and justice that give the rest of it purpose. The promulgation of Kenya’s constitution reminded me that in my own life, there is more to strive for than my own needs, more to defend than my property, more to do than poke fun at the failings of mankind, and nothing more essential than my humanity.

Tackling Taboo Territory: A Cultural Commentary

On Culture

The word ‘culture’ in everyday conversation often refers to the shared customs of a group of people. Dance, music, and religious practice all form a part of this concept, but that is not all. At dinner table discussions one hears broad statements referring to preferences and isms belonging to a culture. American culture has instilled in me some aspects of individualism, and also consumerism, for better or for worse. From a folk-anthropological standpoint, culture is something sacred. It should be studied but not criticized or judged. In the most limp-wristed blather, gratuitous wrongs can be brushed off as having been the product of a person’s culture. These overlapping ideas add up to an ambiguous and misunderstood concept of Culture, kept all the more ill defined by the fear of addressing it. To address Culture in any but the most reverent terms is to risk being seen as discriminatory, ethnocentric, racist, or simply as a basic, run of the mill jerk.

From a scientific standpoint, there is no Culture. There is only experience, and the material on which that experience leaves an impression. In other words, there is your central nervous system, which is how experiences are received and processed, and the constant influx of information that is the world around you. Those experiences, in their entirety, are your culture. Your culture is absolutely unique to you. You are the only person who has had all of your experiences. You have been party to shared experiences, from which we derive the popular usage of the word culture, but the whole of it is yours and only yours.

There are those who wish to put people or peoples into glass jars, or have them live in grass huts for eternity, in the name of cultural preservation, or cultural rights. Who are we, they ask, we aggressors and exploiters of the modern world, to destroy their way of life? How dare we impose our culture on their culture? Their culture is something pure and unfettered. Ours is polluted by greed and waste. These long-distance defenders, with their vociferous arguments and vehement fist pounding, have their hearts in a good place. They are criticizing societal ills that deserve criticism. And I agree that anyone should have the right to live as they choose. But culture cannot be preserved. By its very nature it is always in flux. You experience the world constantly, and so your culture is constantly changing. Every moment it changes by infinitesimal increments, as does the culture of every other person on the planet. Trying to preserve culture in some artificial scheme of isolationism or cultural tourism is like trying to capture the entirety of a moment in a photograph. It denies the very nature of the beast. They want to preserve Culture, but Culture does not exist. It never has. There is only the constant change of more than six billion cultures, some overlapping, some more isolated.

Cultural Imperialism

It is a rare politician, professor, economist, or Nobel laureate who will say that development is a cultural issue. For the very reasons outlined above, the desire to avoid the possibility of being seen as a bigot or an imperialist, development has been pushed into a corner of economic opportunity and access to resources. In truth development is just as much an issue of culture as it is of market access or clean water or sanitation.

Before the label of cultural imperialist sticks too firmly to my back, allow a clarification. It is not just the development of the global south (formerly the third world) that is a cultural issue. It is just as much an issue in Europe, the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, and everywhere else. Development, often pigeonholed into economic terms, is at its heart a human issue, and culture is as much a part of the human being as is our health or our market connections. It is one thing to provide people with clean water, it is another to teach them why the water was contaminated, and both are necessary for good development. The error would be to say that it is only the experiences of the west that should be shared. It is a fact that access to clean water has been provided on a much wider scale in the ‘developed world’ than in the ‘developing world.’ That does not mean that there are no lessons of value that could be passed in the other direction.

I have encountered the attitude that if the American system were simply imported to and adopted by a developing country, its problems of development would be resolved. In addition to being rather arrogant, this idea assumes that American (or European or whoever the proponent chooses) systems have reached the pinnacle of achievement. The pyramid is complete, it says. On the contrary, the ideas that work best for our wellbeing wherever we are should be shared, and those that do not work should be left behind. Development in the global south takes on a more urgent air than that in the western world because of enormous economic disparities and grievous health concerns, but development is no less important in the United States or Europe than it is in Kenya. Development is the passing on of those parts of your culture you have found to be true and useful, and leaving behind those that turned out false. It is capacity building. It is education.

Is it imperialism? In the international context it does come with gross differences in power and wealth. Development has been linked to military objectives and alliances. Aid packages have come with strings attached. It certainly has been a branch of the imperial charter. Historically, cultural imperialism came from the view of one side knowing and having all, and the other side knowing and having very little. Carrots are offered with provisions for friendly economic policies or security agreements. But the exchange of ideas is not always a one-way street. I see my work more as empowerment than as forcing practices onto people, and I have consistently learned more from those I teach than I think they have learned from me. My own culture has been changed by my experiences in different countries and by the people with whom I have worked. With more accurate information comes a stronger capacity to choose both for me and for those I have worked with. It goes both ways. We get a better picture of the world around us, and we choose how to act, today more knowledgeable than yesterday. The only things holding back our development could be false information, the withholding of the truth, or a closed mind. If we eschew these, each of our choices will be more informed than the last. There is choice in what practices to adopt and what to pass on. There is a process of cultural selection at work in all of our interactions. Development is our cultural evolution.

1000 Words

The old phrase said a picture is worth a thousand words. A digital photo, by my calculation, is worth between 3 and 17 words. Digital photography has allowed for a glut of picture taking, but the pictures are entirely disposable. It costs nothing to take them and nothing to throw them away. With film, every picture you take is one less picture you can take in the future. You make each one count. The limited chances increase every photo’s value, so you will put more effort into each photo. The additional effort increases that value further. With a potentially infinite supply of digital photos to be taken or tossed, there is no need to put extra effort into each one.

Like different reproductive strategies in different species, with digital photography you can take a ton of pictures with minimal effort and hope some turn out, or you can put a lot of effort into traditional film photography in order to ensure that some will turn out as you like them. The hybrid approach is to increase a digital photo’s value. This requires the extra effort, taking the extra time, and trying to create something using a medium that encourages quantity over quality. The problem is the disposability of the digital picture appeals to our lazy side, and it seems that much more of a bore to take your time with a digital camera when you could take thirty pictures in a few seconds and hope you got at least one good shot.

It is early evening and the sun has finally appeared below the dark clouds that have hung over town since last night. The puddles on the road outside of the house where I live will not dry up before it sets. The sun is low enough in the sky to cast a golden light, particular to evenings after it rains, that throws the shadows into a sharp contrast with the glow on everything the light touches.

The immediate reaction is to reach for my camera. It is a beautiful moment, and if I can just capture it, I can take this with me. If I can preserve it in a picture, the moment does not end. It never works. The magnitude of a moment is impossible to capture. All you get is an image, a piece of it, cut out from the whole. The best I can end up with is a beautiful picture, which is something great in itself, but great for its beauty as a picture, not for the awesomeness of that moment. The act of creating a picture is not to capture a moment that is impossible to capture, but through the expense of your thought and effort, to add your vision of a piece of that moment. More often than not, I end up with pictures that are flat. But if I keep adding the effort into the mix, I may end up with something of value.

This evening, however, I choose not to take out my camera. To put a lens between myself and the light on the walls, trees, and paths outside of my window, removes me from that moment. I cannot take that with me, and I have no desire to pull myself away from it. The camera stays in its case, and the moment passes.

These here are some other pictures I have taken, trying each time to put in at least a little effort, so hopefully they are worth at least a handful of words, though certainly not a thousand. From the top they are: Vitengeni, Vitengeni again, and the Indian Ocean.

Assorted Stories

The Arabuko Sokoke Forest

On the way to Vitengeni we passed through the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, a strip of land five to ten miles wide and thirty or forty miles long. The area, protected by the Kenyan Forest Service, appears to be the one place in the coast region that has not been denuded of trees. It is also home to elephants.

I had not expected to find any of the more exciting wildlife species so close to my place of work. Since my arrival in Kenya I have seen monkeys, large insects, bats, chameleons, several other types of lizards, and one octopus. They were all very nice to see, but they are not big wildlife. With the exception of the octopus, which was entirely out of place according to my preconceived notions of African wildlife, the animals I have seen here are all expected to be around populated areas in tropical countries. But I never expected to be near the sorts of animals that spring to mind when one thinks of an African Safari. Just the possibility of seeing an elephant was fresh and exciting, and for the ten minutes we cut through the forest, I was not thinking at all about the ten candidates for Field Officer that we were to interview that day.

The vegetation in the forest stands in a stark contrast to the surrounding areas. Passing under the electric fence designed to keep the elephants in, it is like entering a different country altogether. The road is a tunnel carved through the dense undergrowth and the large canopy overhead. The air is cooler and moister. The green is darker. We did not see any elephants on the way to or from Vitengeni, but a pile of dung that appeared to weigh around twenty-five pounds testified to their presence, and to their ability to produce deliverables similar in quality and quantity to those of many bureaucracies.


Witchcraft

Witchcraft is real. Even in Kenya, arguably one of the most developed nations in Africa, witchcraft and superstition have a strong presence. I do not believe in hexes or curses, or the power of incantation, but witchcraft is real. It is not always visible, but it is there, lingering in the doubts and fears of a large and poorly educated segment of the populace.

On my first Saturday in Kenya three of my new acquaintances and I went to a local restaurant for lunch. Two others and I sat in a tuk-tuk, or rickshaw, and one on his motorcycle. Rounding a bend in the road and looking toward the intersection ahead I saw the street crowded with people, all running in the same direction, yelling. Not knowing if it was a riot, a terrorist attack, or a parade, we slowed and asked the driver what was happening. He was quiet for a moment before hearing from someone in the crowd that there was a witch. The crowd passed in front of us quickly, and I saw some boys running to catch up, looking almost euphoric at the excitement of the witch-hunt. We turned in the other direction and stopped in front of the restaurant, not understanding what had just passed before us.

Our friend on the motorcycle went to investigate, and returned a few minutes later somewhat dazed by what he had seen. A woman, her clothes just shreds barely clinging to her body, had been chased into a field by the mob. She was raving as hands and stones hit her. Two men in regular clothes got through the crowd to her and held her down, then dragged her to the police station away from the mob.

I imagine that some of the people in the crowd were frightened, and I imagine that some were angry. I hear that the woman was unbalanced or insane. But what I remember seeing with my own eyes were the boys, laughing at the game, as they chased after the witch to kill her.


The Paraguay Roll- Not on the Sushi Menu

When my bus rolled over in Paraguay it was probably going around twenty-five miles per hour. It was large and rickety, and probably could do no more than fifty miles per hour even had it been on pavement. The man who was supposed to be driving was passed out in the front row, and the guardia, the man who usually collects the fare, sat behind the wheel, trying to figure out how to switch gears without grinding the transmission into dust. He also was trying to reach his máte drinking equipment, which was stashed in a glove box four feet to his right.

It was around four in the morning. Apart from myself, the passed out driver, and the guardia acting as substitute driver, the only other person onboard was a kid of about ten on his way to Pilar to go to school for the week. The bus came through my community on Mondays and Fridays, at any hour between three and four thirty in the morning, provided it had not rained recently. If you missed that ride you would wait a few days for the next bus or take a long walk through the sand or mud or both to Humaitá, about ten kilometers away, where at least one bus passed a day, provided it had not rained recently. If you missed that bus you either made the walk back, or spent the night in a hammock on the courtyard of the home of one of the ex-dictator’s ex-lieutenants, but that is another story. This is the bus story, or one of them.

I glanced from one window to another, trying to catch a glimpse of something in the darkness, remembering the ride to Pilar not long before when the sky over the Argentine Chaco was illuminated by bolts of lightning and the clouds appeared out of the blackness, backlit and ominous and beautiful. Now there was nothing out the side windows, and the dim yellow headlights only illuminated twenty feet of dirt in front of us. The guardia, sitting behind the wheel, motioned to the kid to help him reach his máte equipment, and then he himself leaned across to the glove box. I glanced again out the side window. There was still nothing.

Then the headlights shown on the small tree as we were about to run it over and I shouted a warning, I’m not sure in what language. The guardia looked up but we were already over the tree and heading into the ditch. He tried to swerve us back onto the road and I thought it would be the wrong way to turn the wheels given the ditch, and an image of the wheels turning against the slope and losing their hold appeared in my head and I grabbed the handle bar above the seat in front of me as we began to roll. We rolled slowly, and I turned into it, and the seat across the aisle and one row in front of me came crashing down. The kid held on to the pole by the door. The man in the driver’s seat held on to the wheel. The passed out driver fell across the aisle, and we stopped.

We were silent for a moment. The bus was on its side, and its side was on a slope, leaving the wheels pointing up at close to a forty-five degree angle. We rocked a little, as the top of the bus, now sharing the lowest point with my side, rested on a brambly collection of woody shrubs. One of them, not the kid, thought about trying to climb out the bottom and work his way out under the shrubs, but I advised against it. The kid said he was scared, but the real driver, who had sobered up quickly, reassured him. There was nothing to be afraid of. We climbed out a window and jumped off the side of the bus to the side of the road. The wheels were still turning and the guardia climbed back in to turn off the engine. When he came back out it began to set in that they would lose their jobs, and he swore and punched the tire in frustration. The real driver, older, wiser, perhaps still a little drunk, took it more in stride. It was one of those things that happens. He grinned a resigned grin. There was nothing to do about it now. Ten minutes later the bus that passed through Humaitá every day came by and picked the kid and I up. The driver and the guardia stayed with their fallen comrade. The kid sat at the front of the new bus, and I toward the back, and I never saw any of them again.

The Magically Expanding School Bus

Hoping to get to Ganze by 8 o’clock, we got to the stage at 7 a.m. and asked which matatu would be going in that direction. There were two sitting side by side, the sliding doors open, the attendants motioning for us to get in as they would be leaving soon. There was only one problem, and that was that both matatus were empty.

Public transportation does not operate on a schedule. It runs on a balance of incentives and disincentives. When there are enough people in the matatu, it starts to move. It also wants to pick up people on the side of the road as it goes. This poses a challenge if another matatu is going in the same direction. Both want to leave first to get the first shot at the people on the side of the road, but neither will leave without a respectable compliment of passengers to guarantee at least some coverage of the base cost of the trip. It is a risk game. Or perhaps the drivers simply leave when they finish their third cup of coffee, or when the card game ends, or whenever they damn well please.

There we were, faced with two empty matatus, both hoping to leave for Ganze. Rickety sliding door number one, or rusty sliding door number two? We picked the one closer to the exit from the stage onto the road. My two companions, taking full advantage of their feminine guile and foreignness, were allowed the front seats next to the empty driver’s seat. I sat two rows back. There is a silent awareness shared amongst all matatu passengers that if you don’t get the privilege of sitting in front, the second of the four rows in back is the best spot. You are less likely to be sat upon by someone than in the first row, and in the rows further back you are more likely to be hitting your head on the ceiling. I also believe that there might, just might, be a tiny bit more legroom in the second row. Not that my legs fit in any of the rows, but that extra millimeter, imagined or not, is a psychological salve. The first row is the worst for legroom, as the engine is directly in front of you, which also makes it the warmest place on the matatu into which you stuff your feet. Window seats are nice for the breeze, but bad for the dust and banging your head on the side beams above the glass as the matatu rolls back and forth on the arched roadway.

Shortly after we climbed in, a woman sat in the front row behind the engine, and a man in an Aloha shirt came and sat next to me. He spoke English well, but was impressed by my dozen words of Kiswahili. I practiced with him for a while. He verified the vocabulary list in my notebook, and occasionally made comments to the woman in front of us that made her laugh. After the initial conversation died out, we sat and waited. No one else boarded the matatu, least of all a driver. Looking at the van next to ours it appeared one person had gone with door number two, sat down in it and was also waiting.

The amount of activity at a matatu stage is proportional to the size of the town or city in which it is located. In Ganze, the stage is a single bench on each side of the road, and occasionally someone sits there with a basket of oranges to sell. I live in a mid-sized town, and there are never fewer than thirty matatus revving their engines, looking for passengers, rearranging their parking situations, and almost running over people. Around the matatus gather their smaller cousins, the tuk-tuks (rickshaws) and the piki-pikis (motorcycles), serving as taxis. There are peanut vendors, watch vendors, soda vendors, and people selling all manner of useless colorful plastic items pegged to a board that they carry with them. Want a hair band? No? How about a battery case? Child’s scissors? Giant paper clip? Three inches of flexible tubing? It is possible that I am exaggerating the scope of these vendors’ wares. I cannot report the items with total accuracy because to inspect the assortment is to make it impossible to convince the vendor that you really don’t want any of it.

It was close to an hour after we boarded and our matatu had not moved. The man in the Aloha shirt next to me disappeared. I tried to see if he had gotten on another matatu, thinking there may be better odds of leaving if we all stuck together in a sort of passengers’ union. He was gone. Then he was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine. We inched forward, then rolled back, trying several different gears as if to figure out which would get us out of the parking lot best. After a few moments it became apparent that he was not our driver who had decided to be social with the back seat passengers. He was just as anxious to get going as the rest of us. Another man came to the driver’s window, shoed him out and climbed in. This guy, it appeared, must be our driver. He revved the engine, rolled us a few feet forward and back, and then got out after a few minutes. Neither of them got back in our matatu.

Another forty-five minutes later my companions looked to me for an opinion on whether we should give up on Ganze and try again another day. Phone calls were made, and we were on the verge of bailing out, when the attendant from our matatu apparently poached customers from the neighboring matatu, causing their attendant to storm to our sliding door and slam it shut before the mutineers could board. Strong words were spoken, placating intermediaries showed up, vendors watched in anticipation, and after our attendant fixed the door which the other attendant had broken, the pirated passengers piled in, along with the real driver, who we had never seen before.

In the U.S, with its notions of cargo space and safety, no more than 8 or 10 people would be allowed in a vehicle of this size. Actually, in the U.S, a vehicle of this size usually holds five, and many vehicles considerably larger hold fewer, but whoever makes the little vans that are turned into matatus managed to fit 15 seats into the boxy frame.

At its most cozy, there were 26 people in our matatu. Children are hauled by a free arm and passed to mothers or crammed into slivers of space like bags of grain. Old women are told that there is plenty of room inside, and once they are in, they can’t turn around because someone else has gotten in behind them. The attendants hang out the side door, arms spread wide to keep anyone from falling out. Somehow the attendants always manage to collect fares as they do this. There can be 25 people packed like sardines between you and the attendant, and somehow their hand, grasping an assortment of bills, will find you. Then they will give you the incorrect change, and smile when you correct them, as if their mistake was not intentional. It’s not so much a dishonest grab at money, because he never told you the price to begin with. It’s more a test to see how much you, the ignorant outsider, will pay. These are individuals of particular talents.

After a long day visiting farms in Ganze, I was not particularly looking forward to the ride back to the coast. I had walked several miles up and down hills, had run out of water, and had not had enough to eat, starting with my skipping breakfast in order to be at the matatu stage by 7 a.m. for a ride that did not leave until 8:45. When the matatu pulled in front of the bench that is the stage in Ganze, I recognized the driver and attendant as the same who had brought my companions and me that morning. My coworkers and I had split up after the morning’s ride, and they had headed back an hour or so earlier. I smiled to the attendant as if we both knew something, and climbed in, hoping that we could at least keep the passenger level below the teens.

To my surprise, the van was almost empty. In addition to the driver and the attendant there was only one other man on board, and I stretched out in luxurious fashion, until it became apparent that that is incredibly uncomfortable in a matatu. We cruised slowly, stopping at junctions for a few moments longer than normal to see if any more passengers would appear. None did. The attendant seemed disappointed. Perhaps he remembered that I knew the actual price of the trip back. More likely he was thinking that someone else, probably the matatu that had taken my coworkers home, had caught all the fares along the roadside. We passed a school, and a crowd of children in threadbare uniforms chased us yelling, ”Taxi! Taxi!” The attendant and the driver mumbled some words between themselves, and we pulled over. Twenty-some school children got on board, giggled, marveled at the white man, and were given a free ride. The attendant, who did not make eye contact with any of the children as he gave them gruff instructions to pile into the back, gazed out the window of the sliding door and smiled. It was a good ride.

The Balancing Act

The soil in much of Palakumi location, Ganze district, is red. It is the red of desert rocks in the American southwest, the red of a sunrise mellowed by a thin layer of clouds in the east, a red that gets in your socks and shoes, and dusts the cuffs of your trousers. As the wind kicks up, the red dust spreads itself over the rest of your clothes, finding seams and pockets in which to deposit itself.

Red color in the earth is usually an indication of an old, weathered soil, with a high proportion of iron oxides and a low nutrient holding capacity. Most of the soil in Palakumi is sandy, like a beach. Sandy soil makes for easy cultivation and tillage, but does not retain much in the way of water or nutrients. The rains do not fall in abundance there. The majority of the vegetation is low bushes and scrub, a few grasses, and some scattered trees. Most of the trees that have been left produce something that was once a cash crop, either coconuts or cashews. They stand in irregular clusters. Buyers no longer come for the cashews since the factory was moved to a different district. A few locals tap the coconuts to make a syrupy alcohol that keeps unemployed young men occupied for the day. The clumps of trees are like little segments of the forest that once spread over the whole region, holding tightly to what is left of the soil. If you pick up a handful of the red sand, it sifts back through your fist without holding any form. It appears, on first analysis, to be relatively devoid of organic material, as if the scattered leaves and grasses break down into nothing and simply disappear.

Soil organic matter is integral to a healthy agro-ecosystem. Organic matter can bind mineral particles together, helping aggregation and increasing porosity. Organic matter can tie up nutrients so they are not immediately available to plants, but it can also build up a long-term store, increasing the overall nutrient holding capacity of the soil. Organic matter provides a balance between the benefits and drawbacks of both sandy and clay soils and a buffer to shifts in soil pH. Without organic matter, sandy soils like those I saw in Palakumi can see nutrients quickly leached away, and crops, without the aid of substantial inputs, will grow poorly.

And yet when Gabriel hears that Ganze or Kilifi districts are the poorest in the country, he disagrees. He tells Benson and I that there are riches waiting to be tapped right here, from the ground under our feet. He, a farmer and retired teacher, sees potential in this dry, red soil. He says the metric that they use to measure wealth is flawed. Benson nods in agreement. He is an extension agent with whom I have been walking across the community, visiting farmers participating in our organization’s program. More than any other element of my first impression of Ganze district, it is the optimism and the belief in the ability to move forward that I find striking and valuable to take with me. Gabriel, Benson and I sit for a couple of hours at the end of a long day, discussing myriad topics, from the upcoming Constitutional Referendum in Kenya to agricultural practices in the United States.

At the end of my stay in Palakumi location, my feelings are mixed. I am optimistic about the participation of the farmers in the program and their enthusiasm. I am eager to begin work in my role of developing training programs for the extension agents with whom I work. At the same time I am concerned about the expectations that are in place already. Managing the expectations of the people who pull their livelihood from that dry, sandy, red soil, may prove to be as much of a challenge as the logistics of delivering trees to our expanding network of farmers and extension workers. If expectations are not managed well, even results that the organization would deem a success could turn out to be a failure in the farmers' eyes.

The challenges facing any development project are innumerable. Creating a problem definition helps in that it gives structure to a project, and yet it hinders in that it allows for the exclusion of elements integral to the human, natural, and agricultural ecologies at work. It is all too easy for the organization, on the path to completing its goals, to ignore those factors that are outside the scope of its problem definition. As in the soil, where a balance of sand, silt, clay, organic material, air and water make a healthy system, a development organization must strive to balance the factors pushing and pulling it in different directions. From the expectations of program participants and donors, to the science and logistics behind the operations, to the mundane details of the budget, it is imperative to allow for a sharp focus on the task at hand without losing that task's place in the broader picture. Looking forward, I try to balance my optimism with caution, my assumptions with an open mind, and the limited scope of my training project with the breadth of Gabriel’s everyday life in Palakumi location, Ganze district. In the end, hoping not to sound too much of a reductionist, I have come to think that balance itself is a goal. When we speak of sustainability, that ill-defined concept so popular in the vocabularies of development, economics, and environmental management, it may be valuable to keep that goal in mind. Balance in the soil, balance in the organization, and balance in development as a whole.

Qualified Labor

The sub-machinegun in the fat woman’s hands pointed in every direction but up. As she chuckled, the barrel would loll lazily up and down like a rowboat at sea. When she shifted her weight from one side of the seat to the other the target would switch from my kneecap to my lower abdomen and back. My limited knowledge of anatomy, gleaned from a pair of wilderness medical courses, half forgotten biology classes, and emergency room dramas, filled in the details. Bang! A bullet shatters my femur, the inferior vena cava ruptures, and I bleed to death on the way to a malaria clinic- the nearest place with clean bandages. Pop! The bullet passes through my lower intestine then hipbone, and I die a week later of a lingering infection brought on by gall spillage into the rest of my body. Crack! The bullet only cuts through my shinbone under the knee, and aside from never being able to walk straight again, I recover. This seems the best option that presents itself as the gun completes its pendulum swing.

Actually the best option is that the foot-long clip protruding out from in front of the trigger guard has no bullets in it. That is sometimes the case in developing nations when security guards must provide their own weapon and ammunition. Or perhaps it is not a real gun at all, but an elaborate replica, sold to the woman at a substantially lower price than the real thing, intended to do no more than discourage would-be thieves. That would be nice.

I had eyed the gun and its gross mishandling as the woman entered the bank. I smiled in a state of surreal bemusement to my coworker sitting next to me. We had been waiting on the bench for a friend who was at the teller. As the woman passed us we glanced at each other, both hoping that she and her spiraling firearm would not sit down. It was not to be. The woman wore a green jacket and a camouflaged skirt. The jacket was the kind you see in a full dress military parade. The skirt was the kind you see at monster truck rally or wet t-shirt contest. She smiled merrily as she chatted with a bank employee who she knew. I could not tell if she was on duty or coming to collect her pay. The only thing I could tell was that she had no concern for gun safety.

The only gun I have ever fired was a .22 caliber hunting rifle. Given the size of the shells and the rate of fire, you could assume that it was intended only to bring down animals under around two hundred pounds that could be killed with a single shot. A person can be killed with a .22, but a moose, bear or wild boar would likely end up very angry at the sudden inconvenience of a bullet in the backside. The gun I fired was adept at punching holes in paper targets at up to 100 yards. Further away than that and the targets were safe, as long as it was I behind the trigger. The process of removing a spent cartridge and getting the next one in the chamber ready to fire took at the least a second, and more if you wanted to aim the second shot.

At the rifle range, firearm safety is paramount. When the voice over the loudspeaker calls for guns to be lain down, they are lain down, chambers open and empty. There is no touching the guns until the voice says the range is clear and gives the go ahead to begin shooting again. A gun in the hand was carried unloaded, preferably in a case, always pointed either at the ground or the sky. It may be the case that in the fifteen-plus years since I have been to the rifle range, safety regulations have changed. Perhaps now it is standard protocol to let the barrel of your gun swing past every person in range. If so, the guard at the bank followed safety standards to the letter.

The possibility of a sweaty palm dropping the weapon that now sat two empty seats away and spraying bullets all over one side of the room was both very real and somehow hilarious. The jolly, rotund, heavily armed and camouflaged woman had all the necessary qualifications to play Aunt Jemima in a syrup commercial. This Aunt Jemima makes pancakes for the Zapatistas and conjures Che Guevara’s ghost. Or she blithely puts the rebels in the square out of their proletarian misery as she smiles in a matronly manner to General Dictatopolous, telling him to wipe the maple syrup away from the corner of his mouth.

Her employment in the position of security guard meant that someone saw this woman as qualified to provide protection for the largest concentration of wealth in a fifty-mile radius. Any person with a preconceived notion of how a security guard should behave would be quite surprised at this hire. She could not move quickly, she was oblivious to her surroundings, and she handled a weapon capable of slaughtering every person in the room as if she were burping a baby. But so it goes.

Qualifications are relative. Relatives often get hired instead of qualified people. Job security is a political issue, not a performance issue. That is unless you screw up so royally that it makes headlines, in which case it is still a political issue, only now performance factors in to the politics. A job can support a person’s family as well as their own self; to not have a job is to live in poverty. Anyone would rather keep a job than lose it. Given these premises, it makes sense to simply not do your job, because in doing it, you run the greater risk of screwing up and getting fired. Show up, exist quietly, and collect your paycheck. And so it takes a half hour to deposit money at the bank, and the security guards may pose a greater threat to life and limb than armed robbers.

Some combination of the serious and the ridiculous, curiosity and the desire to avoid socially awkward escape to the other side of the teller kept us in our seats. Of course it would have been prudent to simply wait outside, putting a thick cement wall between the potential machine-gunning and us. But the woman had not been fired yet, which means she had yet to let any stray bullets hit anyone. Given the circumstances, that made her pretty well qualified to handle the weapon. One can take comfort in that. One can also take comfort in the air conditioning inside the bank, but outside the bank you might die of heat stroke, so why take such a risk?

The Great Divide

One of the perks of working in the field of international development is the opportunity, every once in a while, to find a little slice of personal paradise. Being stationed in or regularly travelling to remote locations allows for the exploration of places untapped by the developed world. At times, either at work or play, you can reasonably fool yourself into thinking that no one else has experienced what you are doing. For a brief moment, you imagine there is something unique and groundbreaking to your time and place, and that your presence there is special. It is to be the first to climb a cliff face, or to stumble on a secluded cataract in a forgotten ravine. You blend an element of fantasy into the surrounding reality, and find a momentary escape coupled with adrenaline, endorphins, or simple relaxation.

Conveniently forgotten are certain facts: that you are the first to ascend the cliff face not because it is an impossible climb, nor because none have been there before you. You are the first because no one within a hundred kilometers ever had a climbing rope, and no one saw the need to climb that cliff when there is a perfectly easy path up the back slope. Similarly, every local knows the waterfall that you have found and thinks it nothing more special than a somewhat inconvenient place to wash their clothes. In the moment, though, you aid yourself with a small willful loss of perspective, and the results are either a sense of accomplishment, slightly misguided self-importance, or just a good story. There is a small divide between reality and your experience of it, and none are left the worse for it.

Enter tourism. No longer is your cliff face untouched, and you find your waterfall on a postcard. Gone is the isolation of the moment; gone is your minor fantasy. But tourism brings its benefits. It boosts the economy, taking in wealth from other places and distributing it here and there, almost haphazardly, but distributing it nonetheless. The surplus of available labor recedes slightly, and new opportunities arise. The loss of your sense of importance is a small price to pay, and the little divide between your fantasy and reality is washed away.

Were your artificially inflated moments of greatness the only sacrifice for increased economic wellbeing, all would be fine, but this is the developing world. In the developing world the power of wealth is exponentially greater than in a world where the rule of law protects all people equally. In the developing world the lines between help and hindrance, the legal and the lawless, a poor girl and a prostitute, are all blurred. Within the developing world there is the great divide.

The great divide sits between the traveler or expatriate, the outsider, and the country around them. The great divide is between the deep history of people and land and the superficial observations of the itinerant visitor. The great divide lies between the expectations of the observer and the forces driving the objects in view. Any outsider looking for the divide to be bridged from the other side will be disappointed.

In a dance club outside of Mombasa, the western world has plunked itself down with an unconvincing thud, and the beacons of a globalized society gyrate and shout in time with a thumping background noise. The expatriates and visitors who want to find some semblance of what they left behind are met with a quizzical hybrid of the familiar and the strange. Some immerse themselves in the familiar, using the same ignorance, willful or lazy, that allows the person at the waterfall to imagine that they are the first to discover it. Now instead of overlooking the laundry spread on a nearby rock, they overlook the disparities of wealth and power in the room. They overlook the rail-thin girls’ obedience to the middle-aged businessmen and concentrate on finding a good margarita. They leave the club much as they would leave any bar back home, only with a vague sense that not everything was as it seemed. Other visitors indulge in the strange, taking advantage of the position that they find themselves in, giving commands and debauching themselves until they catch their plane back to their normal place on the totem pole. Finally, some of the outsiders stay, making a life, for better or worse, from a de facto position of economic power, but often without making headway into the social strata around them. These expatriates are still tourists. They are tourists because they do not understand anything beyond the great divide that separates them from the vast majority of the people who cannot enter the club. They may stay for ten or twenty years, or for the rest of their lives, but until they make the effort to cross the divide, they will always be tourists.

Some travelers say that they do not want to simply be a tourist. Perhaps they want a better story to go home with, or to get pictures that no one else has. Perhaps they feel an ethical imperative to be more than another economic blip that drips dollars, euros or pounds along their way. Perhaps they cannot ignore the moral infractions and disparities in power that are illuminated, but at times supported, by tourism. Perhaps they are idealists.

To be more than simply a tourist takes effort. To break that mold demands more than visiting out of the way locations where other travelers do not go. In Kenya, the people of tribes, classes and political parties know hundreds of years of history. Like anyone’s history, theirs is not a perfect knowledge of past facts, but a perspective provided to each individual from a lifetime of input. It is a history of conflicts, successes and failures, and peoples living and moving across the land. To be more than a tourist here requires attempts to understand that perspective, and to see past the surface. That is what it is to try to bridge the great divide. It may take years, and it may seem impossible, but there is just as much need to bridge the divide as there is need for the material advantages of development. The first step on the bridge is to realize that you arrive a tourist, knowing nothing, but open to learning. To keep an open mind takes serious effort, but no one said this would be easy. If a vacation is what you're looking for, there are plenty of tourist destinations out there.

On First Impressions

The taxi ride from the Mombasa airport to Kilifi took a little over an hour. I chatted intermittently with the driver about music and life in Kenya, but my attention was tuned more to the scenes passing outside my window. As we jostled through the crowded streets on the outskirts of the city, the first images that sank into my mind struck me as odd not because of any sense of the exotic, but rather because of their familiarity. Kenya looked just like Paraguay.

At the time of the cab ride in question, I had spent just about three years of my life in Paraguay. I had been in Kenya for an hour and forty-five minutes. Paraguay is a landlocked country in the middle of South America. Kenya is on the east coast of Africa. Paraguay hugs the Tropic of Capricorn while the equator passes through Kenya. The elevation in Kenya climbs from sea level to highlands and Mount Kenya’s peak reaches well over 5000 meters. Paraguay has the elevation changes of your average pancake, with perhaps a sliver of melting butter pushed to one side representing the country’s highest point at 755 meters. Paraguay’s population is just over six million people, and Kenya’s approaches 39 million. Kenya is home to over forty distinct tribes of people. With the exception of some very small indigenous minorities, the people of Paraguay are basically one big tribe, in that they are a group distinct from their neighbors on all sides, virtually all mestizos, of mixed Spanish and Guaraní backgrounds, and they identify themselves as Paraguayos. Before my drive to Kilifi, I would have said that Paraguay and Kenya had little more in common than belonging to that loosely defined group of nations known as the developing world. Yet even with foreknowledge of these drastic differences, through the window of my taxi, I could not keep from seeing similarities wherever I looked.

The sides of Mombasa’s roads were packed with vendors selling all manner of goods that I thought I had seen before. From bruised vegetables stacked in wooden crates to cheap plastic goods, car tires and multi-purpose tubing, the curbside wares all were known to me beforehand. Men pulling overloaded crates blurred the line between the pedestrian shop fronts and the edge of the road. An overabundance of corrugated metal made familiar rooftops and fences, while the occasional abandoned construction project, a gutted hotel or office building, gave hints of graft, laundering and tax evasion that leave similar skeletons in several Paraguayan cities.

As we pushed into more rural stretches of road I thought I recognized the grasses, bushes and trees on embankments and in ditches. Corn grew in fields lain out to fit irregular contours and property lines as it does on the small peri-urban farms outside of Asunción. I identified leucaena, a leguminous tree that can provide significant benefits to agricultural soils and can be used as supplementary forage for animals, but when left to its own devices becomes an aggressive weed. I had managed a stand of leucaena in Paraguay, and here it was, thousands of miles and an ocean away, greeting me. Goats were tied to trees and fence posts in a remarkably familiar vignette. Even the traffic patterns were similar to those I had experienced in my years on the island in the middle of South America. The tragedy of the commons manifests itself regularly in poorly regulated traffic conditions all across the developing world, so the similarity in driving styles can be ascribed more to human nature than any national preference, but this notwithstanding, the number of similar sights, sounds, and even smells struck such familiar ground that an unprovoked thought popped into my mind, saying, “Kenya is just like Paraguay!”

Of course Kenya is not just like Paraguay; they are quite different. I knew as soon as the thought existed that it was untrue, and yet it was the first thought that came to my mind. I only remember it now because it made me chuckle to myself. As far as first impressions go, it was no brilliant insight.

The term ‘first impression’ is actually a misnomer. Given the colloquial meaning of the phrase, it would be more accurate to say first conclusions. When you ask for a friend’s first impressions of a new job, or place, or potential romantic interest, you are not asking for the first thing that person saw or heard, but what they then thought about that data. But the word ‘impression’ implies something that acted upon your senses, so the true first impressions are just the sensory input you receive, the sights, smells, sounds and so forth. It is the identification of these inputs or the reactions they provoke that in everyday speech we call first impressions. My first impressions of Kenya were the images outside my window, but if asked for my first impressions, I would respond that I at first thought it looked quite a bit like Paraguay, only with African people occupying the place of South Americans.

These first impressions are actually the conclusions of split second reasoning often based upon quick associations with past experiences. So people with different past experience will have different first impressions when confronted with the same data. Only when presented with more information and using some sort of rational thought could the prejudice of previous experience be overcome. Given the limited evidence presented in a first encounter, one would seem naïve to claim that they always trust their first impressions. This does not mean that one should never trust their first impressions or that those impressions are worthless. Rather, it seems that first impressions can tell a person a good deal, but must be viewed in the context of their previous experience. These early conclusions or instant associations may say more about the viewer than the object in view. I would be lying if I said my first impressions of Kenya were not positive, but if this train of thought has brought me to any conclusion, it is that perhaps it is best to reserve judgment until further impressions are made.