Epilogue: Avoid Morning Sex

I thought the previous post would be the last one. I guess I’m like Brett Favre. I happened across of piece of sheer and utter brilliance and I feel compelled to write about it.

There’s a building outside the place I’m staying in Uganda that has a large message printed on its side: “Avoid Morning Sex Africa” we would pass it laughing everyday on the way to work and speculate about its meaning. We came up with a few theories:

1.     People are less likely to use condoms in the morning because they’re more lazy.

2.     There is a greater chance of conception with morning sex as opposed to night sex.

3.     If you cut out morning sex, that’s half the day, and maybe then you’re cutting out half the sex, which reduces the birth rate.

4.     People should be at work in the morning making a living, not having sex.

As you can see none of these explanations were satisfactory. Most  of them were wrong and nonsensical, but we all had our own theories and we would argue them on the way to work.

I’m leaving pretty soon and I was too curious to go home without knowing. I went into the shop to ask what the sign meant. They were selling large paintings. The artist was there but he wouldn’t give me a strait answer about the meaning of the sign. He told me that the shop was owned by Kibi, (pronounced “Chee-bee”) the man is the foreman of the painting I’ve been doing. Kibi is a brilliant man. He grew up in a poor fishing village and now leads tourist groups. He reads Shakespeare and loves biographies. He just ran the London marathon and is one of the best conversationalists I’ve ever met. He picks your brain about everything you know, and so many interesting tourists come through the organization he’s amassed a store of knowledge about everything from shooting a rifle to the American tax system.

Kibi told me it means nothing. It has no medical, social, or cultural background. Kibi wanted to write something that would attract tourists to his shop. He told me he used to make up things to tell tourists who were passing through. People often photograph the shop and it’s been in foreign newspapers and on websites. And it doesn’t mean anything. It’s true though, we had been spending hours arguing with each other about the meaning of the sign. It’s the most brilliant marketing technique I’ve ever heard of.

I asked Kibi if it has helped business. He frowned and said not too much because he built the door on the wrong side and didn’t put any windows in the shop. He’s right—in all the time we spent arguing about the meaning we never thought about going into the shop. We didn’t even know it was a shop, it just looks like something that an NGO painted on a building.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to articulate this, but to me, this story sums up my view of Africa pretty well. There are many complicated layers to life here. There’s a basic layer of understanding, seeing the world around you through the prism of the worldview you’ve had growing up. When you do this a lot of things here look really confusing. You start rationalizing what you’re seeing, trying to make things make sense within your worldview. You can be satisfied with this or you can be curious and ask someone who actually knows. If you can find someone like that, you’ll find out that what you’re seeing makes a lot of sense, just not in the way you were thinking about it. You see the brilliance and agency of African people and the ways they’re adapting to Western influence. They’re incorporating it in their lives, changing it, using it. You’ve read about how African people all do this or don’t do that, but you start to see people in all their complexity, like a man who writes the perfect statement to get tourists curious, talking, and interested but builds a door on the opposite side from the road and puts no windows in his shop. It’s been an amazing and life-changing time. I’ve grown up. I’m definitely finished now, if you take anything away from this blogging project, remember to always avoid morning sex.

See you again

I'll be on the plane home in a couple of days. It feels like I've been away from the US forever. There are a lot of things I'm excited for like seeing my family and eating Steak and Shake, but there are a lot of things I'm not looking forward to.

• Not having people jump up and down, wave to me, and scream "howareyou?" at the top of their lungs when I walk by just because I'm a mzungu.
• Not being able to play with every kid I see on the street for fear of being arrested.
• Not being able to eat mangos off any tree whenever I want.
• Not being able to have 300,000 units of currency in my wallet.
• Not being able to feed the monkeys.
• Not being able to bargain for ten minutes over the price of a plastic bag.
• Not being able to show card tricks to people who believe in witchcraft.
• Not being able to buy vodka in a plastic bag.
• Not being able to buy chickens in a plastic bag.
• Not being in Africa

Thanks for reading, if you've enjoyed reading this blog as much as I've enjoyed writing it, I've done a good job. I was going to entitle this post "goodbye," but there is no word for goodbye in Swahili, instead the standard parting sentiment is kwaheri ya kuonana or see you again.
I'll be spending the summer in Chicago and St. Louis. I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Aaron

Uganda

Our program has ended and I'm alone in Uganda working with Softpower, an organization that supplements local education by painting schools, providing after school activities, and providing health care.
This Uganda place is pretty nice. The kids get so excited when you walk by that the literally jump up and down while they yell Mzungu! Mzungu! The country is poorer than Kenya but people are incredibly generous. It's not uncommon for someone to invite me to try some of his mangos or jackfruit. Jackfruit looks like something out of Avatar. It grows to be about as big as a droopy basketball (how's that for an image?) and has small green spikes all over it. Inside it looks like what I picture the inside of a small intestine looking like. It has a bunch of fruit with little fruit feely fingers popping out. It tastes like banana and pineapple.
We've been working at a primary school painting. They have signs up all over the school reminding the kids about such basics as, "Say no to gifts for sex," "Change your behavior now!" and, "Faithfulness is good."
Class is not in session so all the kids come and paint with us every day. They are really terrible painters. I turned around a few days ago and a kid was painting the ground with a roller. If you don't watch they go and paint the desks and often each other.
But what the lack in painting ability they make up for in entertainment. I've taught them to actually use my name instead of just calling me Mzungu. They always want me to stop painting and take pictures of them and they've started staging fake fights for me to film. They run up to me and say, "Let me photo you!" I say, "No I will photo you now. Later you can photo me." They get very excited. If you sing the "Waka waka" song by Shakira they start dancing. I have a video that I'll put on Facebook soon.
For the last few days the only volunteers have been me and an Italian girl named Cecilia. (pronounced Chechilia) She's funny. A few days ago we were in town leaving an Indian supermarket. She said, "There are so many Indians in this town. They have so much power. They are like the Peesians in Italy." I said, "really?" She said, "Oh yes. They are everywhere in Italy. In the park, in the city. They are everywhere. I really hate them." I started thinking Who are the Peesians? Is she saying Persians? Do the Persians even exist anymore? Is she just talking about Arabs? This girl is racist. After about ten minutes of ranting about Peesians I finally asked her what Peesians were. She made a flapping motion with her arms and I realized she had been talking about pigeons the whole time.
I'm staying at a touristy place but I plan to go to a homestay next week. My room shares a border with a Ugandan shop. Last Saturday they had loud music playing. Really loud. I thought there was a full live band right outside my window. They would play about 10 seconds of a looped beat for 20 minutes. At 1 am I tried to go to sleep with the music playing. At 4 am I went to check out what was happening. The shop is a small shack made of uneven planks of wood. There were 5 people there and 2 speakers that were taller than me. They were not dancing. I went back to my room and they turned the music off at 6 am. I have no idea what was happening.
But as they say here, it's nice. I miss home still, but Jinja is an unbelievable place. Went rafting yesterday on class 5 rapids, flipped about 6 times. On the last rapid, Melissa, who is visiting from WashU, flipped out of the raft up in the air and landed on the overturned raft, all of which was caught on film.

Goodnight and goodluck,

Aaron

Old Africa Magazine

            I apologize for not updating for a while and I apologize even more for starting off the entry that way. I’ve been living with a missionary in the bush for the last three weeks working for a magazine called Old Africa. (oldafricamagazine.com)

Working for the magazine has basically taken me on a tour of colonial Kenya. I have met the only man ever to represent Kenya in downhill skiing at the Olympics. I went to Nairobi Royal Golf Course, a course in the heart of the city that shares a border with Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa. From one of the holes you can see over the eight foot wall that separates them into the dense forest of corrugated metal roofs. I’ve read all kinds of stories about pet lions and visits by the king.

It’s been a hippo filled time—until yesterday I think I had a 10-day hippo sighting streak going. Hippos kill more people in Africa than any animal other than mosquitoes (because of malaria) They look really funny, like obese sausages with skinny little legs. Usually their bellies almost drag on the ground. As a sign near Lake Naivasha proclaims, however, hippo feet are short and round but long enough to touch the ground. They can run up to 30 mph, which is faster than Usain Bolt. A single bite from a grown hippo can split a human into three pieces. On top of that they are easily annoyed.

My hippo sightings started on Lake Victoria. I left my tent to go to dinner and there was a hippo grazing a few feet from the tent. Luckily he was content to just chew grass and look at me. Most recently, there has been a large bull hippo wandering about the lawn of the house I’m living at every night. It’s as big as a small car but whenever we shine lights on it, it prances away, slightly frightened and annoyed, into the bush.

            The one bad thing is that hippos are very dangerous and this area also has a lot of African buffalo, which are the third most deadly animal, so I can’t go outside after dark.

            I’ll be volunteering for a few weeks in Uganda building schools after this, then I go back to Chicago. I'm excited to get back.

Aaron

Warning: This May Be Educational

It recently occurred to me that some people might be interested in actually hearing about what's happening in this part of the world as opposed to snippets of my own life here. As the title implies, this may be educational, so if you're not into that sort of thing, stop reading.
More than anything else, this program has been a survey of the people of Kenya. We've lived with/alongside rural farmers, pastoralists (cattle herders), hunter gatherers, and wealthy city-goers. The emphasis in the course has been on the future. The future looks incredibly bleak for the pastoralist Maasai. They lost more land than any ethnic group during colonialism, and they continue to sell their land. To practice sustainable pastoralism you must be semi-nomadic. Because the Maasai have needed to grow crops to supplement their incomes, they have started staying in one place. This leads to overgrazing, and there are many large patches of ground in south-eastern Kenya that are barren. They look like what I picture Mars looking like. Land usage trends show that pastoralism will die out soon if several trends are not corrected.
The outlook for the hunter gatherers we stayed with is better. There is an NGO that works specifically to make sure they keep their land. Nevertheless, because of population pressure, pastoralists and farmers from neighboring groups move onto land illegally by bribing officials. Cattle or crops mean reduced wildlife, but gathering forms a larger part of their diet, so as long as they retain their land, they can survive.
The outlook for the survival of rural farmers is good, but that's a relative term. Kenya is experiencing rapid population growth, and farms that used to be large have been divided between sons through the generations to the point where many are too small to support a family just trying to subsist. This leads many people to go to the cities. There will, however, always be farmers. The question is, will they continue to be heavily marginalized (the man I stayed with sold coffee beans at $0.60 a kilo. A kilo will make 10 cups of coffee. 1 cup of coffee at WashU is like $4. You do the math.) and will they continue to live in a system where they are constantly wishing to become urban elite, or better yet, like Americans. They worshipped America, and if I ever tried to tell them any negatives, they didn't believe me. It wasn't so much America they worshipped as the image of America, specifically, the American Dream.
The urbanites worshipped America in a different way. The original goal of colonization was to create a captive market for goods. The effects of that are still highly visible. There are not very many U.S. based companies here, but most companies are imitations of western companies. There is fake Taco Bell in the center of Nairobi. All the cultural pollution that we produce (Jersey Shore, SUVs, WWE wrestling, Real Housewives of Atlanta) is consumed heavily by the wealthy urban population.

Kenya has elections every 5 years. The last one was in 2007, and a disputed outcome led to riots that caused the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of tens of thousands. If you do the math, the next election will be next year. There are many questions surrounding the election, but the most important is whether or not it will be peaceful. 

In the U.S. we often hear the [insert African country name here] politics described as "tribal." The political situation here is endlessly complicated, but what I've learned has convinced me it is not tribal. Kenyans must deal with a scarcity of resources unknown on a large scale in the U.S. Because of this, their voting patterns are motivated by rational self interest. The question in the U.S. is, "which candidate most accurately represents my views?" or, "which candidate is the best leader?" In Kenya, the question is, "which candidate will be the most successful at getting resources to me?" Obviously, limited resources mean there are not enough to go around, and people vote for candidates who they think will get them the resources. Whether it is because of tribal, regional, or economic reasons, people will vote for the candidate they feel closest to. On a day to day basis, Kenyans discuss politics without stopping, but it's never about what candidates stance is on abortion or gay marriage, but whether or not the person will win, and whether or not he/she will be corrupt.

Six Kenyans were recently indicted by the International Criminal Court (The Hague) for their role in the post-election violence of 2007. Several of those six were among the hand picked predecessors for the current president, Mwai Kibaki. If they actually stand trial in May as they're supposed to, they will not be eligible to run for president. Because of this, Kibaki's government has deflected the issue away from the fact that thousands of people died and many more were displaced (and still have nowhere to go) to the fact that the ICC is treating Kenya like a colony. The government is organizing a protest of the ICC and the indictments for this Monday, and they hope to get 1 to 2 million people in the streets of Nairobi, blocking the busiest highway. Only last week, several hundred students held a peaceful demonstration on that same highway and were fired upon with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Sorry, I just needed to clear all that from my system. It was like word vomit. Sorry if I reeled you in with semi-interesting stories about the craziness that is living here and then you had to slog through this mess. I just wanted to let you know that there is more to this trip than touching baby elephants and sleeping on cowskin. Let me know if you have any questions.

Aaron

Riot

Yesterday I was walking back to class from an Ethiopian restaurant when I saw a large group of people blocking the intersection near our school which is the largest intersection in Nairobi. We were told they were university students angry because they thought one of their classmates had been taken by the government. They were just standing around and there were a bunch of police there standing at ease. We returned to our school and watched from just outside.
I was looking over a 5-foot tall concrete wall about 100 yards from the intersection. The students would not let any cars pass unless they had children in them. Every once in a while they began to chant, but it never lasted long. At about 2:00 a large group of people left the intersection, and we thought the protest was over. At about 2:30 we saw everyone who was still there (probably about 100 people) run to one side of the intersection and start whooping hysterically. A few seconds later we heard what sounded like gunshots. Everyone in the intersection started running. We ducked down behind the concrete wall so only our eyes and up were exposed, and I saw a police truck fly into the intersection at 30 mph with a large mortar on top shooting tear gas. A few students tried throwing rocks at the car but they were already running away. The police turned the corner and started coming towards us. We decided that was a good time to run and started sprinting back to our school and ducked inside just as they were closing the gate. Two canisters of tear gas exploded in the school's parking lot and seeped into the classroom we were all staying in.
So we were stuck in our school building which does have a security guard, but its fences are 3 foot tall hedges. Or building is enclosed by the street where the riots were happening and the university on three sides. Some kids who were upstairs watching got rocks thrown at them. We spent the rest of the day on the school grounds listening to sporadic gunshots before we were given clearance to leave at around 10:00 pm at night. We were told this happens twice a year.
Otherwise, I don't have very much perspective on the riot. It looked like a very peaceful protest which was broken up with excessive violence, but the protestors were blocking the busiest street in the most economically important city. It also appeared that most of the protestors went home before the police arrived and the people who really started rioting were violent and excited the whole time. I'm mostly just writing this to let mommy and daddy know I'm okay because I know St. Lawrence sent you an email about the riot. We also had a riot day from school today.
On a different note I touched a baby elephant today which was cool but I was expecting them to be softer.

Aaron

The Maasai

Just got back from a two week "field trip." First we went south to live with the Maasai. The Maasai are the people everyone thinks of when they think of Africa. They herd cattle, wear brightly colored robes, and carry spears. They rarely hunt for meat, but when they do, they only hunt animals that don't run away when you hunt them. (lions, buffalo)
We spent a night with the Maasai at the start of the week. They live in a village called a boma enclosed by a fence made of thorn bushes. The boma is circular with huts around the outside and pens in the middle for goats and cattle. There were two extended families living in our boma. The huts are made of stick frames smeared with cow or elephant dung. All the cooking is done inside the huts and there are only three windows that are about the size of a CD to let the smoke out.
I arrived at the homestay with another student and a translator named Johnson. Johnson told us the fly problem was due to the milk they keep around the village, but the fly problem was unbelievable. If you sat in one place for more than 10 seconds you would have at least 30 flies crawling on you. The Maasai were used to the flies so they would just let them crawl, and the laughed a lot when my friend and I spent all of our time swatting at flies.
In the late afternoon the goats and cows come home from grazing. They keep the goat mothers separated from their goat children all day, so when they come together it can only be described as a suckling frenzy. They saw each other across a field, starting bleating loudly, and charged full speed at each other. My friend got caught in the stampede but wasn't injured. Just after that happened a Maasai man stumbled up to us and started talking to us in a language we didn't understand. I could smell the alcohol on his breath from 5 feet away. Johnson told us he was the resident drunkard. He'd been drinking kumikumi. The word kumi means 10 in Swahili and kumikumi got its name from the fact that it costs 10 shillings ($ 0.15) a glass. It is distilled alcohol made in a basement somewhere that often includes methane as an ingredient. One glass is supposed to be enough to get a person pretty drunk and it's been known to cause hallucination and blindness. The man kept gesturing to me and grabbing goats and making me take pictures of him holding goats that were trying to scramble away.
Later that night we got a chance to talk with the village elder. First he asked me if we can have more than one wife in America. I said no. He asked why not. I said because the first wife would get angry if you married another wife. He said, "Why don't you just talk to her so she won't get angry?" I decided that the cultural differences were insurmountable with regards to polygamy, but it's interesting that Maasai women are usually thrilled when their husbands take another wife because it means much less work for them to do. In the Maasai culture, a man is supposed to take as many wives as he can, they are a status symbol.
Then the elder asked me if I had any cattle. I said no. He smirked. For the Maasai cattle are the only expression of wealth. They are like a visible bank account. If you are a man with no cattle you have no worth in the community.
Then he asked me if I was married. I said no. He asked me if I would ever take an African wife. I said I didn't know but I'm not a racist. He asked if I wanted to take a wife from his boma. I told him I didn't have any cattle for the bride price. He said that was okay. I said I didn't know how to herd cattle so my wife and I would likely starve. He said that was okay to and extended the offer again. I pretended I didn't understand and changed the subject.
At that point a man crashed into the boma on a bright blue motorcycle wearing a suit. He was the head of the other family in the boma. We talked to him for a little while and went to sleep on a bed made of cow skin.
When we woke up in the morning the man in suit presented us with a 15 year old video camera that he didn't know how to use and asked us to film his cattle and goats so he could watch them later.
We got picked up later that day and went to Amboseli national park. Amboseli has a carrying capacity of about 200 elephants, and there are more than 1,600 in the park. No one know exactly why, but elephants knock down trees from time to time and so the park has been almost entirely cleared of trees which reduces the populations of most other animals. We saw about 200 elephants throughout the day, sometimes as close as 10 feet away, which was pretty amazing. We also saw about 6 hippos, 18 ostriches, 5 warthogs, 1 giraffe, 18 gazelles, 6 baboons, 6 buffalos, and 6 wildebeest(s). I felt like I was playing pokemon snap all day.

Aaron