daily life: a commentary

Although Mombasa enjoys its reputation for having a slow pace of life - in every sense of the word, from its relaxed (some may argue nonexistant) sense of time and space to the very slow unspeed its residents walk - the people here work hard. They work to get by, they work so their children can attend a decent primary school, and they work with their hands because technology's time-saving traps have no place here.

If not working with their hands, they're working out of a sense of community ownership. Or they're commuting, attending a meeting, or manning a duka, a shop, hands idle but bodies dedicated to the cause.

Or maybe they're not working. Widows and AIDS victims number in plenty here, and unemployment is high.

But for most people, every day is long and unfulfilling. The girl who works the cybercafe works from 8 AM - 8 PM every day but Sunday. No, Sunday is not a day of rest. Sunday is a day of laundry and cleaning and church. She gets paid 3000 Ksh month, the equivalent of $43 US dollars. Her son's nursery school fees are 750 ksh per month.

Fatuma, who runs the MCI pharmacy, works from 8 - 7:30 PM every day but Sunday. Sunday she only works till 1 PM. For this, she gets paid 3250 Kenyan shillings per month.

Mama Kibibi isn't paid at all: she volunteers her time as a Community Health Worker Monday through Saturday, 8 - 3 PM. She has 2 weeks off around Christmas.

The pace is relaxed for most people, though, in line with the culture - a 2-hour lunch, lots of chatting, chai. Social life overlaps with work. Here clocks provide a vague sense of daily order, but spare time is not strained through an hour glass. Sunday is too short even to drag your feet, so Monday isn't compartmentalized.

As an American, I feel as though I straddle the line between the relaxed work-week of Europe and the long work-week of this place. I feel guilty if I waste time "on the clock", but even a 2-day weekend feels too short. We keep work-time and play-time separate, look forward to Friday and drag our feet back to Monday. I feel like a lazy mzungu with my long weekends and complaining, even though I help with cooking and laundry and dishes. My effort meets with pleasant surprise. "Kira is so hard-working!", Mama Kibibi says; an anomaly of the lazy Western world.

It's not exactly strenous, and it all runs together: work a little, chat a little, work a little, chat a little, and then walk home. Walking home consists of walking a little, chatting a little, stopping to make exclamations, stopping to poke at vegetables, buying vegetables, walking a little, buying meat, stopping at someone's house, chatting a little, stopping to buy some more vegetables.
Then you go home, you wash the laundry from the day before. Someone comes to visit; you chat and give them lentils to sort, or rice. You wash laundry for an hour, squeezing out the soapy water and hanging the clothing to dry. You wash last night's dishes. You chat with the neighbor as you cook dinner. The actual eating part doesn't happen until right before bed, whether by force of habit or because there is more chatting to be done, I don't know. But eventually a pathetically bad Nigerian movie is put on, maybe about a dwarf whose girlfriend cheats on him with a normal-sized man, or about a jealous man who gets a witch-doctor to make his successful brother go mad so he can steal his house and money. Don't worry, the heartless brother is the one who goes mad in the end, after the wife of the madman prays for 7 days to restore her husband's sanity.

Then you rinse the grease off your fingers, eat your 3rd banana of the day, and go to bed.

Remember, this isn't a definitive study on Life in Kenya. This is just the way my host family lives. Me, my life isn't quite like that. It's a slight variation because chatting in Swahili isn't really my thing. So multiply the boredom and mild confusion, take out 3/4 of the chatting, and there you have it: my life in Kenya.

Public Transportation

A word about public transportation: it's insane. Laughable in its ridiculousity. Each mode is as entertaining as the name it is known by - Matatu, Tuktuk, Pikipiki. I live an hour outside Mombasa city center, which means several times a week I find myself gritting my teeth and boarding a matatu to the ferry. Matatus are reminiscent of 60s VW vans, but with 15 seats crammed inside. They're supposed to be equipped with seatbelts, but one time I found a working belt and clipped it over my lap, and the man sitting in front of me had the laugh of his life. At least there is usually no need to worry about looking like a stupid mzungu, since the interior of the van is so dilapidated that there are no seatbelts at all. Anyway, these deathvans bounce along the pitted roads, careening to avoid the ever-present bicyclists, tuktuks, pedestrians and men pulling carts (Men pulling carts, by the way, are kind of like the Kenyan version of ice cream trucks. They fill up big wooden carts with jugs of water, and pull the carts with 2 poles whittled from tree branches. It's the closest thing to water pipes to be found in rural areas, at least until the World Bank barges in, drool dripping from the corner of its shit-eating grin, a mere 2 years from now). The road, crammed as it is with people and carts and "cars" all trying to pass one another, seems like a madhouse of complete oblivion and chaos. But I think it might actually be controlled chaos, because accidents seem rare enough. Someone always weaves out of the way at the last moment. All the same, everytime I squeeze myself into a matatu I wonder if I should be calling my loved ones for a last goodbye. Last week, my matatu actually had to swerve off the road to avoid a head-on collision with a truck that was barreling down our lane. But your average run-of-the-mill trip involves the matatu driving on the wrong side of the road, toward an oncoming vehicle, until it either passes the cart or slams on its brakes and swerves back behind it.

The tuk-tuks (motorized carts) and piki-pikis (motorbikes) aren't much better. The use of helmets is another "law" that we can scoff at and throw out the window. Plus they're more expensive than matatus, which cost 20-50 cents depending.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the ferries! Hundreds of people crammed on a smallish boat with standing room only, for a 20-minute passage that would be 2 minutes if there was a bridge. Watch out for sly pick-pockets standing unnoticed in the throng, waiting to slash your bag. Don't worry, if you notice them stealing your wallet they'll be at the mercy of mob justice within 30 seconds after you cry out, "Mwizi! Thief!". They might be stoned to death or burned alive, but justice is justice, right?

In the end, public transportation is what it is. Its a whole lot easier to go with the flow than to stress out. It's convenient, cheap and it provides jobs. On the bright side, its easy to live without a car here, which is nice since no one can afford one. But I'm finding that "going with the flow" here means not being in a rush. I'm learning to slow down, to walk alongside the rest of Mombasa. It carries its own rhythm, moving at a pace I can't quite explain. Anyway, it works.

The Nashukuru Women's Group

Nashukuru means, "I give thanks". It's the name chosen by a group of widows with a savings and loan program who feed orphans every Saturday. I visited the Nashukuru Women's Group for the first time today, riding a piki-piki 6 km to Dongokundu, through rolling hills dotted with farms and stunted trees. The Nashukuru Women's Group greeted me outside their mud-and-stick shelter with a song. The words, I later learned, meant "Women of Kenya love development! So if you don't like development, you're no friend of Kenya!" They were clapping, laughing, slapping my hands. They gave me, their guest of honor, the bearer of money, a new lesso. It's an uncomfortable position to be in, the privileged mzungu swooping in to help the "3rd world" community, but unlike much of the community, waiting helplessly for aid they feel they deserve, the gift and the song came from a more wholesome sense of appreciation. I hope.

We talked for a few hours, and I think the kitchen garden idea will work well for them. Widows who eke out a living on the land and peddle their farm produce miles away on foot, they pool their money, week after week, for the sake of orphans. I'm impressed by the strength and dedication of these women. And by the community mentality, which seems to be a Kenyan survival skill and fact of life. Religious pressure, social pressure and pressure in school build on each other, enculturating a widespread spirit of volunteerism and community outreach. Without the prevailing willingness of people to help one another here, development work at Bamako initiatives like MCI would not succeed. Given the number of obstacles staring them down - the lack of money and cultural infrastructure to support things like savings, safe sex and hygiene - I think that's the main reason they've succeeded so admirably.

I tasted cassava today, a popular white-fleshed root that was growing in their soon-to-be kitchen garden plot. You can munch on it raw. But they gave me my own giant cassava and Kibibi is boiling it for breakfast. Tastes just like a boiled potato.

waking up

4:45 AM. That's the time, every morning, of the first Muslim call to prayer. I'm stirred awake alongside the rest of the village: you can't hide from a voice carried by a microphone, which I guess is the idea. While no one in my muslim family actually heeds the call, they do use it as an alarm clock. Kibibi and Binti are up before dawn, heating water for the family's baths and brewing chai over the charcoal stove, simmering milk, water, tea leaves and a pinch of ginger. At 6:30 I finally drag myself to the toilet for my daily bucket bath. Cleanliness is an important Muslim value here, and especially important to Kibibi. The daily shower is considered vital, as are clean clothes. Thank God, I say. Hours into the day, dust from the dirt paths cling to sweaty skin. Yet the germ-obsessed West has not fully infiltrated the arena of bacteria: soap is only halfway in vogue. Hands are rinsed with water before and after eating, and Muslim ablutions are performed with water only. And of course there's the socially enforced, "eat with your right hand since you rinse yourself in the toilet with your left". The system works, so it endures. Considering everything, the daily shower - with soap, and lots of it - is much appreciated.

After showering comes breakfast. Good old fashioned white bread, the most unhealthy food since cake was invented. We spread our "supa loaf" with margarine, follow it with a banana, and rinse it all down with a cup of hot chai sweetened with coarse sugar. A spoonful of sugar for me, thank-you-very-much, and a quarter cup of sugar for everyone else.

Then we walk to work. My swahili mama wears a long dress, with a colorful Konga, or Lesso, wrapped around her hips. A matching Lesso is thrown over her shoulders, and she covers her head with a scarf. I'm now the proud owner of 2 lessos myself, and in the market for more. Mama Kibibi brings the leftover chai and bread to share with the ladies at work a few hours later - many people here eat a late breakfast, skip lunch and eat dinner just before bed.

So begins the day.

3 weeks in

Toward the end of my second week at work, I finally came up with a suitable project. It's an immense relief, especially after the frustrations of culture shock. Differing concepts of time, communication difficulties and work structure have made progress slow, and last week I had trouble coping with it. But now I have a goal to work toward! As you may or may not know, this internship is supposed to be an opportunity to work with the community on a "sustainable" project, which ideally should help the build the "capacity" of the community to work toward its own goals. The process is somehow both disillusioning and encouraging.

I'm going to work with a community womens' group that feeds orphans on the weekends. They're all farmers already, and they have extra land at the feeding shelter. So I'm going to facilitate the process of creating a "kitchen garden" that requires very little water (they have no well nearby). That way they can feed the orphans something more nutritious than porridge, and maybe even sell their extra produce at the market so they can expand the feeding program to weekdays - which will help them work toward their eventual goal of building a shelter where the orphans can sleep.