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
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
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
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
Thursday, March 10, 2011
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:
Aaron
- 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.
Aaron
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