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.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
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 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.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, August 20, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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.
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.
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