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

Nairobi

It's been a while, but it's been a tame few weeks compared to the rest of the semester. I've been living in a homestay in Nairobi (the capital city) for three weeks now. The family I'm with is more American than I am: they own three SUVs and watch WWE and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It's been very comfortable, and I don't have a lot to say besides a few observations:

• Nairobi is too small. I've been stopped three times now for 45 minutes because of the president's motorcade. He drives through the busiest streets at rush hour with a motorcade that is almost a mile long. It is so long because he is trying to outdo the prime minister, so every time the PM adds a car to his own motorcade, the president adds one to his. I told my host mom he should get a helicopter and she said her friend was put in jail for saying that.
• Nairobi is too small. Today I was having drinks with a friend of the family and his friend. A random man came up to the friend and greeted him warmly in Swahili and left. It turns out the friend plays one of the main characters on Tahiti High, one of the most popular shows in East Africa.
• Camels don't speak English. I was in a park in Nairobi a while ago and there was a man offering camel rides for about $3. I jumped at the opportunity. He told me that the camel speaks English, so just say stop, left, and right and you should be okay. He sent me on my way. The camel spoke no english and walked one speed down the central pathway in a very crowded park. For some reason there was barbed wire on both sides of the path in a public park. Everyone had to scatter to get out of my way and avoid cutting themselves on the barbed wire. I almost knocked over an ice cream cart, and all the local people were giving me dirty looks.
• Some Kenyan people are really nice and they want your money. I've had several long conversations with random people on the street who I thought were genuinely interested in talking to me. At the end of the conversation they invariably produce a petition asking for money for some diseased person who almost definitely doesn't exist.
• Ostrich bites hurt. I went to the animal orphanage and one of the trainers asked if I wanted to feed the ostrich because I'm a Whitey. The ostrich basically attacked my peanut filled hands giving me a moderately sized bruise. I don't hold it against him/ her because he/she doesn't have any parents.
• Slums. We went to Kibera a couple weeks ago, the largest slum in East Africa. It was staggering-- there's no comparison anywhere in America. The population density is slightly less than New York City with no multi story buildings. The smell is powerful, as is the sight from the top of a centrally located hill: an uncountable number of rusted corrugated metal sheets make up the roofs of an uncountable number of shacks. The northern border of the slum is a large luxury golf course.
• I want to stay here for a long time. I've just decided to go backpacking at the end of the semester through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique. I'm hoping to get an internship for the rest of the summer.
• Taco Bell isn't really Taco Bell. There's one in Nairobi, but it's a product of lax copyright laws.

That's all I have for now. Tomorrow we go to Amboseli National Park to see a bunch of animals and live with Maasai tribesman. After that we'll be in Mombasa for a week for our "spring break."

Aaron

Hunting and Gathering

After a lot of serious self-reflection, I decided I'm not ready to drop everything and go live as a hunter gatherer, but only because I'm bad at a lot of the necessary survival skills. We just got back from living with the Hadza, a group of hunter gatherers in Tanzania. My image of hunter gatherers was a bunch of people collecting berries from sunrise to sundown. Wrong. The women are able to gather enough roots to provide a days worth of nutrients for themselves and the men in only a few hours of foraging.

Men, on the other hand, "hunt" all day long. We went on a "hunt" with them, but I suspect it was really a honey gathering mission, because honey is what makes the world go round for the Hadza. They kept telling us we were hunting giraffe and there was one just over this ridge, but all we ever did was collect honey.

Before going we had read that the honey from the valley where the Hadza stay is highly valuable, but no other group has tried to harvest it. I wondered why, but then I saw the collection of the honey and I understood. This is the process:

• beehives are located within trees
• When the Hadza spot the telltale signs of a beehive (not sure what these are, I assume they're bees and maybe a buzzing sound) they build a fire
• They climb the tree
• They use an axe to hack a hole in the tree about a foot below the beehive
• They put a smoking log from the fire into the hole
• The smoke rises, slightly disorienting the bees but mostly just pissing them off and getting them to buzz around
• When most of the bees have left the hive, the Hadza man simply reaches up into the hole and grabs huge pieces of honeycomb. Needless to say, they suffer numerous bee stings, they just don't give a shit

The honey is by far the best I've ever tasted, but they eat so much. On our hunt we found four different beehives and collected honey from all of them. At the last one, one of the men came up to me and told me that the bees were very dangerous and pointed to his eyes. I found out later that those bees are the type that specifically try to sting you in your eyes. (notice the frightened look on my face in the picture above.) I probably ate the equivalent of two of those bear-shaped bottles of honey. On the hunt I went on we ate all the honey we collected (they told me they consume over 20 pounds of honey a week), but the Hadza usually trade it to neighboring tribes for four-inch long nails that they pound into arrowheads and marijuana that they smoke. And a lot.

They probably hunt in earnest when they don't have four loud tourists tromping around behind them. In fact, a Hadza man's only possessions are the clothes on his back, an axe (for collecting honey), and handmade bows and arrows. They put a strong natural poison on the arrow just below the arrow head. They hunt every animal except elephants because their poison isn't strong enough to kill elephants. I met an old man who told me he'd killed over 20 giraffes in his life.

We're taught from a very young age that the history of life on earth is: 

1. big bang
2. lava
3. bacteria
4. fish
5. lizards
6. mammals
7. chimpanzees
8. hunter gatherers
9. farmers
10. modern man

What I learned from this week is that that's false. We're not the next step in the evolutionary process-- we represent a radical break from the hunter gatherers. The simple difference between our societies is that they don't believe in the concept of personal wealth. Because they don't believe in wealth they have an egalitarian society; the men don't control the wealth, so they don't subjugate the women. We split up into four groups and hunted and the only thing anyone caught all day was a hyrax, a guinea pig like creature, but they shared it equally between everyone-- it didn't matter who caught it. When they make decisions, everyone in the group gets a say, and they usually come to a consensus.

They don't lead hard lives-- if they do any hard manual labor, it's only for a couple hours a day. The rest of the time is spent hunting/collecting honey, or singing and dancing. They were also very easy to interact with on a personal level even though most of us know very little Swahili. Every single other group of people in Tanzania has had serious drought and starvation in the last 50 years except the Hadza.

The first night I was there we were talking to the Hadza around a fire. One of the men, Moshi, told us there were no kids in the camp because they had all gone out to collect fruit three days ago. I was a little alarmed by that and I asked when they would be back. He said he didn't know, but that it had been raining for the last three days, and where they went there is no shelter from the rain, so he thought they would probably return soon. Now I was a little horrified and I asked if they had asked permission to go. He started laughing hysterically and said, "why would they ask for permission? There is nothing wrong with collecting fruit!" Kids acquire all the necessary survival skills by the time they're seven or eight years old, and it's not uncommon for them to go out by themselves.

The Hadza are only located about 30 miles south of the Laetoli footprints, the oldest archaeological evidence of homo sapiens. There is evidence that their valley has been inhabited constantly for over 100,000 years, and the land looks pretty much the same as it did 100,000 years ago. Just something to think about in the context of global warming.

In other news, the little kids there were just like the kids Meru in that they cried every time I came close to them. I also didn't shower all week.

Aaron

Hell's Gate

Just got back from Hell's Gate National Park, the place where the Lion King and one of the Tombraider movies were filmed. We got there at 7:00 am and stayed until 6:00 pm. There are no fences in the park and we saw zebras, giraffes, Antelopes, Warthogs, Buffalos, Elands, and a bunch of birds. There are leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas in the park but we didn't see any. Also saw the gorge where Mufasa died. It was pretty treacherous in all fairness.
The absence of fences and the presence of deadly animals made me think a lot about self defense, and how I would fight the different animals. This is the Aaron Lesser guide to survival in the African wilderness based entirely on thoughts I had while deliriously wandering around in the sun today.
For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume you have access to a slightly sharp and sturdy stick and a large rock.
Leopards, cheetahs, and other big cats: Stare into the cats eyes. Do not break eye contact. If you have yarn or anything like that, use it. Wait for the cat to charge (it will) and hold your sharpened stick at a 45 degree angle to the ground. The rest should take care of itself.
Warthogs: Make sure you stay on your feet. Short, quick kicks to the head should make the warthog lose its appetite for mischief pretty quickly.
Hyenas: Despite their reputation, these are really dangerous. Be sombre and firm with hyenas.
Buffalo: I have no idea what I would do if a buffalo charged me.
Giraffe: It's all about the legs, hit the knees with your stick. Make sure you don't stand about 10 feet from the giraffe because then you're in the wheelhouse of its deadly swinging neck bashes.
Zebra: Your best bet is to execute a leaping mount. You'll know the zebra that was meant for you because it will try to kill you.
Antelope: Duck and cover, they just jump over you.

Sorry if this seems scattered, I'm writing this while watching the super bowl and I've been awake and in the sun for a lot of hours. I'm watching the game at the U.S. embassy. There's a law that all bars in Kenya must close at 11:00 pm, but because this bar is technically U.S. territory, no rules.
We're watching the game on AFN, (Armed Forces Network) a network that caters specifically to American soldiers abroad. None of the regularly scheduled commercials are on. Instead there's just Colin Powell and someone named Robert M. Gates looking right into my eyes thanking me for my sacrifice to the country and telling me that I'm enabling everyone to watch back home. I'm starting to feel guilty because this praise is obviously not meant for me. Besides that there are a few racist commercials about a Chinese sensei teaching a soldier about benefits he can get when he returns from duty as well as a two second commercial promoting House.
On a side note, I really liked all the patriotism before the game. I have a few suggestions for next year:

• Have celebrities read every word of the constitution and all the amendments, preferably one word at a time.
• Instead of yellow flags have the officials throw American flags when someone commits a penalty.
• Have a Toby Keith be the honorary quarterback for a play.
• Burn an effigy of King George III.

This happened: my political science professor introduced himself and said he had three official kids, paused, and then did not elaborate.
Until next time.

Aaron

Dreams...

I'm going to live on the farm for a week tomorrow so I'll be outside of communication, but I'm taking Lariam (a malaria medication) which produces crazy dreams and psychosis in some instances. Here's the dream I had a couple nights ago:

I'm looking out my window and I see a jet black llama. It looks right at me. Then there are a herd of black llamas. They run over a hill. Suddenly someone yells, "Look! A unicorn!" One of the llamas has transformed into a unicorn. It's black with a gold horn. Suddenly, a beam of light falls from the sky and lands on Chris (a kid on the trip) Now he's wearing a white and gold robe like the pope. I have two thought simultaneously:
1. Chris is superman
2. King Arthur - Harry Potter - Chris
Now I'm driving somewhere with Chris. We get to Wendy's and get out of the car but I point out that we're in a handicapped zone. Instead of getting back into the car he reaches under it and drags it into a regular space. I realize that the Bears-Seahawks game is about to start and I ask if Chris will take me there. He carries me like a newlywed and flies away from Wendy's. We start to sink and he explains he's now losing his power. He puts me on the ground and I'm immediately captured by a skinnier version of Gary Coleman. He takes me to see Sinnary (the director of the Kenya program) but he's evil, and he is about to kill me. I wake up.

What does it all mean?

Ripped off abroad

My interaction with a street merchant:
Merchant: Those are nice glasses. How much did you pay for them?
Me: $3
Merchant: Can I wear them?
[I give him the glasses]
Merchant: That's a nice hat. How much was it?
Me: I don't remember. Cheap. I got it in China.
Merchant: Can I wear it?
[the merchant is now wearing my sunglasses and my hat]
Merchant: I'll trade you anything I own for these things
Me: No. I need those things back or I'll get a sunburn.
Merchant: Where are you from?
Me: Chicago
Merchant: I'll be back. Have you ever met him?
Me: Schwarzenegger? Nope.
Merchant: (obviously dissapointed) Oh. Ok. Well look at this box. Do you like it?
Me: It's a nice box.
Merchant: Ok. I will write down how much I want for it. Then you write down how much you will pay. Then I come down like a Masaai from a tree and you come up like a lion from the bushes.
Me: I don't have any money.
Merchant: It's ok. Just for practice. My first price is 18,000 shillings (US $2,500)
Me: I don't know where to start.
Merchant: You have to be a hard bargainer. Start low.
Me: 1 shilling.
Merchant: You are a funny man. Because you look honest I'll give you a better price. 12,000 shillings (US $1650)
Me: 500 shillings
Merchant: American dollars? 500 American dollars?
Me: No.
Merchant: Ok, you are getting better. I will now reduce my price to 5,000 shillings.
Me: 1,000 shillings
Merchant: You are crazy. I will give you my final offer. 2,000 shillings. I can't go any lower.
Me: 1,700 shillings.
Merchant: Ok. Now what if you give me that hat as well, what will you pay then?
Me: I need that hat or else I'll get a sunburn.
Merchant: But supposing you did...
Me: 1,000 shilllings.
Merchant: Sold. 1,000 shillings and the hat.
[He starts wrapping the box up.]
Me: I thought this was just for practice. I seriously don't have any money. I have 100 shillings and I need it to take the bus home. Can I have my sunglasses and hat back. I don't want to get a sunburn.
[I meet up with the rest of the group. I find out that another merchant offered a girl the same box for 700 shillings as his starting price and gave her a free gift.]

Hello

We flew into Nairobi yesterday morning. The sun was rising just as we were landing and I could only see completely undeveloped land basically until we landed. The minute we left the airport we saw a giraffe and a family of baboons on the side of the road.
So ended the most disoriented period of my life. I left Chicago at 2:30 pm central time and got into new york at 5:30 pm eastern time. I met up with other people from the group and we boarded the flight for London at 10:00 pm eastern time. We arrived in London at 10:30 am London time. I watched a Bollywood movie called Dabaang. It's about a corrupt cop who is also a great dancer whose weapon of choice is a firehose. Because we had a nine hour layover I went into the city with a few people from the program. We had a couple pints which further disoriented me. I fell asleep on the ground in Heathrow, and we finally boarded the plane at 7:00 pm London time. We arrived in Kenya at 6:45 am Nairobi time. I think we were travelling for about 30 hours of real time and 40 hours of time-zone adjusted time.
My mom packed me a lunch, but I never ate it because I was never really sure when lunch was. I accidentally smuggled it into Kenya because customs was so lax I didn't realize I went through it. We were driven to our compound which is in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi. Our first rural homestay starts in less than a week. I will be staying with Peter and Helen of the Meru tribe of Mount Kenya. Peter is a farmer and Helen is a nurse. They have one son who is 22 years old and two daughters who work and live in Nairobi.
Going into the city a little later today. I'll put some pictures up soon.

Goodbye

I really wanted my first post to be about hunting lions, drinking cow’s blood, or eating giraffe meat, and I hate writing about anything sentimental, but this feels like the right place to start. I hope this post doesn’t read like the moral at the end of a shitty sitcom. If you have an image of me as a tough guy or an easygoing person, please stop reading now. Or maybe keep going.

            Last night my dad told me he was going to bed, and he would be gone before I left in the morning. I gave him a hug and he wished me luck and told me not to take any unnecessary risks. I just mumbled something about how fast this whole thing has come and he went upstairs. Before that I hadn’t thought about it. I’m going to Kenya. I’m going to Kenya. I went upstairs and laid face down in my bed. My head was spinning. I wasn’t nervous before because I hadn’t been living it. It’s easy to think about going to Kenya. It’s easy to think about not seeing your parents for 4 months or not seeing your friends for 6 or 7 months. It’s easy to think about living in a village in Africa or going to a place where I will stick out, but I’m getting on a plane to go live that. I won’t see my family again for 4 months.

            I’m not getting cold feet; I want to do this and I’m excited, but for lack of a better way of saying it, I’m scared as shit. Hopefully as the program gets into swing I can shift my perspective towards what I’m gaining by going to Kenya, but right now I’m only thinking of what I’m leaving behind. Yesterday, via facebook, I asked everyone to tell me what they wanted as a souvenir. I got a bunch of answers and most of them were jokes, but I’m going to miss that, and you guys, a lot.

            In all seriousness, it’s hard to think about what your family or friends mean to you. I’ve never done it until now, when thinking about it has kind of been forced upon me.  Sorry if you’ve waded through my sentimental bullshit and actually read all the way to here, and I feel a lot better after writing this. Hopefully the next post will be about catching poachers or learning how to use a blow gun.

Love you mom,

Aaron