Africa Day Two
(Saturday
12/11/99)
Jet lag is a big problem
for me. It takes me a week or more to overcome. I can go to sleep at eight at
night, wake up at two in the morning go back to sleep at four or five, wake up
at noon and crave a nap by five in the afternoon. As I have previously
mentioned it also makes the ground squishy for awhile, a feeling I quite enjoy.
It feels like walking in one of those moonwalk things that they have at
carnivals.
As I said
previously, I woke up with dawn. Since people keep their own livestock here,
the dawn was announced by the crowing of the roosters. What I didn’t mention
was that after a restless hour or so I went back to sleep for a couple more
hours. I may have spoken to some of you about the anti-malarial drug Larium
before I left. For those that haven’t heard, Larium is one of a couple of drugs
that can help you from getting malaria. It’s a brand name, I don’t quite
remember the chemical name. Side effects include intense nightmares, psychotic
episodes, and mood change, but these occur in a very low percentage of people.
. I took Larium for a couple of weeks in October on a trial basis to see I
would have any of the serious side effects. I didn’t have any problems until
the tail end of the third week, when I started to have increasingly paranoid
dreams. I don’t get them every night, but I do get them from time to time.
Mostly they are of scary subjects, but don’t leave me genuinely frightened.
Only once or twice did I actually think someone was at the door coming in to
try and kill me when I woke up. And the snakes, always with the damn snakes.
Deadly cobras everyone of them. I wish I hadn’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark so
many times when I was a kid. Anyway… this night it was just the zombies that
were after me and when I woke up they were gone, so the beginning of the day
wasn’t so terrible.
Did I mention that
we sleep in mosquito nets?
It’s pretty darn
cool, kind of like sleeping in a comfortable breezy tent.
Here’s a mighty cool looking
picture that Kim took unbeknownest to me. You’ll have to believe me that
I am wearing a pair of shorts in this picture.
Enough of all this
stuff…Here’s the interesting stuff:
We went in to the
city today. For me this was a really big deal. It is very easy when you are sitting
around the house to forget where you are. The more enclosed the room, the less
of a view out the window you have, the more normal things seem. It’s just as if
Kim and I are sitting around the table in Ann Arbor talking after dinner,
rather than Kenya. But you can’t do that if you are in the city. I can already
tell that I am going to have to concentrate on going out, as it was difficult
for me.
We left the house
at about noon walking towards town. We aren’t really very far away at all,
maybe a twenty minute casual walk. It was difficult just walking in one way for
me. After all, as a passenger protected by the frame of the car I was still
afraid for my life. It seemed no stretch of the imagination for one of the cars
that was zipping by to clip me or Kim en route. It was quite distracting. As I
have said the roads were also fairly crowded with pedestrians. Kim says that
during the week it is a lot more crowded. It turns out that it is also a
holiday weekend being Kenyan independence day (Jamhuri Day) on Sunday, so many
Kenyans and most of the resident aliens are on holiday.
I going off track
to avoid something a little bit here. I’d best come out and say it: I was quite
uncomfortable walking around town. Kisumu is not a little village. It has most
modern amenities, it has decent (for Africa) roads, it has steady electricity,
in short, it is a small African city. But by American standards the people here
are so poor. I felt so embarrassed to be rich. I have never really felt rich
before. I mean, I have felt pretty well off before; I have never wanted for
anything material. I have never felt affluent before. I don’t care for it very
much.
It was hard to
look people in the eye.
Kim said,
"Jambo"(hello) to some of the people we passed and several of them responded.
Several didn’t. I didn’t feel like people were particularly glad to see us. I
had the distinct impression that there was a negative to neutral reaction from
most of the people we saw. In the short time since this I happened I have
thought about it a great deal and here goes:
I think that these
two things, the feelings of being rich and of not be liked, are going to the
most difficult aspects of living here for me. The heat I can deal with, it’s no
worse so far then Michigan in August. The food has been pretty good so far, I
have found a couple of things that I like and that is pretty much all I have
ever needed. The housing situation is better than I could have imagined, I
don’t really feel the sting of leaving the world’s greatest apartment at all
(although I still think the spiral staircase was pretty cool)
But, I feel bad
when I go out in public. I know this will get easier eventually, but in the
meantime it’s hard.
One of the
offshoots of this is that I don’t know if I will be able to photograph or video
any of this. Right now I can’t imagine doing it, it would just be too rude.
Maybe when I’m more comfortable or know more people I’ll be able to do it, but
for now…I just can’t. I’ll take pictures on safari, of landscape and so forth,
but I don’t know that I can take pictures of people and how they live. I don’t
know if I can properly explain….I just feel so set apart from everyone here
already, by skin obviously, but more importantly by wealth, and I don’t want to
behave like a rude tourist in a place that I’m going to be living for some
time. I guess the longer I live here the more right I feel that I have to
picture what would be my home also.
I’ve never felt
this way before. When I lived in Japan I never would of thought twice of taking
a picture of something. Not to perpetuate stereotypes or anything, but more
likely than not if I was going to take a picture of something in Japan, then I
would have to wait in line behind half a dozen Japanese people already taking
the same picture. Just today I took a picture for a couple of African guys on
the lake (which I’ll leave for another day) and that was great.
We walked around
for some time. We walked down the main road, Oginga Odinga Road (don’t you love
that name, it rolls off the tongue marvelously). Although I haven’t been there
since I was very young, the town reminds me of Mexico. The streets are very
wide. Everything is dirty and run down, but functional. People are selling
things on the sidewalk. There are taxi stands with beater cars and cardboard
taxi signs. There are beggar boys and madmen. Handpainted signs advertising
televisions, bicycles, religion, and haircuts. Photocopying is apparently a
growth industry here, there are signs for it up and down the street.
And there are
people everywhere. Kim pointed out that it’s not necessarily that there are
more people than there are in an American town, it’s just that most of them
aren’t using cars. They are walking around town, and around their
neighborhoods. Both activities which don’t happen in an American town, or at
least not in the same numbers. We Americans, I think, spend quite a bit of time
in our houses, in communication with others mainly through television and the
internet. Maybe that is overstating things a bit, but I can’t get over the
contrast with the number of people out and about here.
We walked down to
a real market. I have never experienced anything like it. It looks, smells and
sounds exactly like you thing it would. There are hundreds of people selling
things, from fruits to vegetables to plastic bags, from little roadside shacks
or on cement counters under a large tin roofed market building. When we walked
the merchants would get up off of their little stools or the ground and start
in on us.
"Hello! How
are you?" "Pineapple? Good Pineapple!" "Papaya?
Papaya?"
We looked around
and bought some rather wilted looking lettuce, some oranges, some pineapple,
and some little strange bananas called "Sheet" (which, we discovered
later, was not a misnomer) At each of these stops we, and by we I mean Kim,
negotiated over the price. They try to overcharge everyone, but particularly
Mzungu (white folks). So they would start a high price and Kim would laugh and
say, "That’s too much! How about …. It’s a fair price." And they
would go back and forth a little bit before settling.
Now, I have read
about this (it comes up in most of the fantasy/Dungeons & Dragons stuff I
read when I was younger) but I’ve never seen it in action. I was impressed. I
know that it is expected, and that not doing would be a cultural mistake, but
it’s hard to get excited about a ten shilling difference between their price
and a fair price. That’s about 14 cents. I am not the kind of person that seeks
out or enjoys conflict. I’d much rather avoid it. It is certainly worth 14
cents not to fight about it. 14 cents doesn’t mean anything to me, but it does
to them. So on one hand I’d really like to just give them the extra money. On
the other hand…well…I don’t know. I know that you are not supposed to, and Kim
certainly doesn’t. This is something I need to think a bit more about. I am
sure I’ll have to write about it again, I’m sure you’re excited…
We walked out with
our produce and walked through a little square back towards the center of town.
At the edge of the square, directly across the street from the main market, was
a large pile of rubbish and compost which was slowly burning and smoldering. It
sent up quite a stench. It looked like everything that didn’t get sold in time
and spoiled went in to this pile.
At the other end of
the little square we walked past the first thing that actually scared me, two
military men with machine guns. I have never been very comfortable with guns in
general. Even when living in Ann Arbor, walking behind a DPS cop with a gun was
a little freaky. I just think that it’s strange to be sharing the sidewalk with
a person that has a machine designed solely for killing other human beings
attached to his belt. And they don’t even need to really use them in Ann Arbor.
But seeing a men carrying guns designed to kill lots of people at one time, and
looking as if they were ready to do so, was more than a little scary.
We stopped in at
the patio restaurant of an expensive hotel and rested for a little bit. We
ordered a coke, a milkshake and a fruit plate. It was probably an hour all
together that we were there waiting for menus, our orders and the bill. I
consider myself a pretty laid back guy in a lot of respects, but after a little
while I did get a little anxious. African time….(As a side note (as if almost
everything I write isn’t a side note) Kim says that there really is such a
thing as African time. 7 in the morning is 1( as in 1 hour after sunrise), noon
is 6, and 6 in the evening is 12, which is about sunset. At that point it flips
to 1 in the evening for 7 pm, etc... Actually it’s much better than
western-style time. Who has ever believed that a new day starts at midnight.
Shouldn’t it start sunrise?)
Anyway…while we
were waiting around for our snack and relaxing, I expressed my genuine distress
at seeing the soldiers with their well worn guns and she laughed. I had thought
I was being a wuss about it, but not that much…She laughed and said that most
likely the guns didn’t have any bullets in them because they couldn’t afford
them.
On the way back home
we stopped in a couple of the stores to look around, and were fairly surprised.
There are at least three supermarkets in town. The one that we stopped in had
more people working there than they had customers. There would be three or four
employees just sort of hanging out in each aisle. They didn’t seem to be doing
much, but they could presumably help you out if you needed it. The Western
style customer service has not quite made it here yet, and let’s hope some of
the more obnoxious aspects of it, phone automation systems for example, never
do. While not as clean or as modern as an American supermarket, it was still
set up in a recognizable fashion and, more important to us, had recognizable
products. Chips Ahoy!!! They have Chips Ahoy! And Mountain Dew, Spaghetti and
spaghetti sauces and dozens of other American stuff. Most of it is much cheaper
than in the US. Go figure, it’s cheaper to get Kellogg’s Corn Flakes in Kisumu,
Kenya than it would be in Battle Creak, Michigan.
This was sort of a
mixed discovery. I’m all for a level of comfort, but at the same time one the
biggest reasons for me to do this (besides of course, Kim, the biggest of all
reasons) is to get out and try new things. To expand my capabilities, and one
of the greatest expansions that I need is in the area of food. For those of you
that know me well, you know I don’t exactly have a cast iron stomach or
especially adventurous taste in food. Once I find something that I like in an
ethnicity of food, I usually don’t venture out from its safety. Thai food,
that’s Beef and Basil. Italian food, can’t go wrong with pasta and marinara
sauce. Chinese, Mongolian beef. Mexican, beef tacos with soft flour shells. At
some point I’ll set up an adjacent web-page explaining The Unified Condiment
Theory of Food in detail…in the mean time, suffice it to say that I need to
break some new ground here and being able to order a coke where ever I go won’t
help (hypocrite me, I’m drinking one right now.)
We did, however,
pick up some pasta and sauce for a future dinner and then went home. As Kim
took a nap I started writing. As uninteresting a picture as it is, here’s me
doing just that . More interesting than that is a picture of the
sunset off of the balcony at the front of the house .
After re-heating
the really good dinner from the night before and watching the English news
(Man, the weather cracks me up) we called it a night.
