Wrestling With Lions - Africa Day Four
(Monday 12/13/99)
I am trying very
hard to catch up here, so I may be a little more brief than I’d like (probably
as brief as you’d prefer, though!) I am actually writing four days after the
fact, so I’d like to catch up quickly so I don’t lose any details.
The day started
off poorly. As I was making some lunch
or breakfast (the line gets a little blurry when you wake up a bit later in the
day, say at noon) I stepped on a big sliver of glass. It wasn’t a big deal really, but my first thoughts were “infection
leads to gangrene leads to AMPUTATION!”
I pulled it out
and we cleaned my foot thoroughly with soap and water, as we did not have any
antiseptic (it’s in our huge shipment of boxes en route.) I’m not sure if I mentioned this yet, but we
don’t drink the water here. Anytime we
want water to drink or use with food in any way, we boil it and then put it in
this large water filter thing. I call
untreated water poisonous water. Half
way through washing out my cut with the poisonous water I realized that this
might not be the most medically sound practice. If it can make you sick to brush your teeth with this water,
wouldn’t it make sense that pouring it into an open wound would be a bad thing? This set off a whole new round of panic.
Kim, who, mind
you, is a doctor, but not a real doctor, calmed me down and
explained that you can only get sick from ingesting the water. Of course, a couple of minutes after she
gave me her expert medical opinion, she was using strapping tape as a
bandage. My suspicions are growing...
Toe Surgery (the
pink and blue blobs to the left are the scissors and packing tape)
Anyway, the point
of the story, if somewhat poorly made (give me a break, I’m trying to hustle
here), is that I freaked out over something that I wouldn’t have thought twice
about if I was back in the States. In
some instances I believe that it is certainly justified. There are definitely times that you have to
be more cautious than usual, but I jumped the gun a little bit on this one I
think.
We left the
guesthouse to go into town to look for a stereo. Everything runs off the British electrical system, which is a
different voltage, and I think, a different AC phase. To top it off they have different shaped plugs here also. If you want to run something from the US
here you have to have a transformer, a plug adaptor and a surge protector, as
they don’t have the steadiest output here either. Some things we wanted to take with us, but others we thought
would be easily available here. Oh, and
then there is the television thing.
Kenya also uses the European/British television system, PAL. US televisions and VCRs don’t work
here. If you want to play American
tapes, which, thanks to Zac’s priceless Simpson’s tapes, I will, then you have
to get a “multi-system” that handles both systems. You’d think that they would have figured this problem out years
ago, and it is only going to get worse with digital television, I’m sure. Anyway, we set out to buy a CD
player/stereo. As it was Kenyan Independence
Day, Jamhuri Day, a good number of the stores were closed.
As we walked
through town we picked up two street boys.
I have never felt more confused and lost in my actions as I was with
these two boys. They were in really bad
shape. They both had clothes that were
hanging in rags off their bodies.
Although I don’t know if they had any diseases really, it could have
been malnutrition, but they didn’t look well.
They had bumps on their face and runny eyes. Although these boys didn’t look like those pictures of African
children that you see in a famine, with stick arms and legs and ironically huge
bellies, to look at them was to have your heart broken. I don’t know how to tell you how bad I felt
for them.
They followed us a
dozen blocks and when we went in to a store they waited for us. We ended up talking to a security guard, and
he hollered them off, but as soon as we were out of sight of the guard they
came back. One of them spoke pretty
good English. He gave a running
commentary on the places that we passed.
“Those are shoes,”
he’d say at a shoe store.
“Clothes. You buy clothes?” he’d say at a clothing
store.
“I’m hungry? Can you give you some money?” he’d say
throughout.
If I am to be
honest here, and I do try, then I must say that I don’t know how much of my
feelings have to do with a genuine concern for their well being and how much it
had to do with my own personal discomfort by their presence and
persistence. I think I felt most
uncomfortable because we were forced to either give them money or be rude to
them or ignore them. Since I talked to
them when they first came up to us, it was impossible to successfully ignore
them. Once they felt as if we were
paying attention to them they couldn’t be shaken by just not interacting with
them.
Some of you my
find it hard to believe, but it is so hard for me to be deliberately rude to
someone, particularly a stranger, and particularly, I suppose, a kid. I don’t think I’m necessarily the
friendliest person you’ve ever met, and I have been known to be rude, on
occasion, to close friends, but strangers are a different story. I guess I’ve got to really like you before I
can be mean to you.
My natural
response to people I meet on the street is bewildered politeness. I’m usually so genuinely surprised that
someone is talking to me that I verbally panic a little bit, but in an overly
polite way. So when these boys came up
to me, my first confused reaction was to be nice to them. But I knew right away that all they wanted
from me was money. And I knew right
away that I shouldn’t give it to them., but I don’t know for sure why I
shouldn’t and maybe, I still am not sure.
Anyone that lives
in or has visited any city, even Ann Arbor, knows this dilemma. When a homeless guy comes up and asks you
for money, what do you do? I feel bad
for these guys: living on the streets can’t be much fun. Anyone who’s doing it, for whatever reason,
has my sympathy. I admit that it is
harder to feel that sympathy for people with problems like drug abuse or mental
problems. But then again, wouldn’t you
have to have problems of one kind or another to live on the street at all? It’s even worse when they become, in some
way, more human. For example, if you
actually look them in the eye as you say, “Sorry, man. Can’t help you.” Or if they actually talk to you instead of just holding out a cup
or something. Or if they’re funny or
have some other kind of “hook.”.
I have always
rationalized not giving money to homeless people because I think that they would
take that money straight to the liquor store or a dealer. Working next to Maize ‘n’ Brew has certainly
solidified that conviction. On the same
tack, street kids in Africa are notorious glue-sniffers. Looking at these kids, it was easy enough to
believe. The one that was talking in
particular had something wrong with him, maybe. I don’t know if he was really high or if I was manufacturing
evidence based on what I was told was going to be true. It’s impossible to know the difference in this
situation.
The other
rationalization for not giving money to these kids is that if you give money to
them it just makes it harder for them and for the other white people that they
meet. I guess the argument is, perhaps
insultingly, along the lines of why you shouldn’t give food to animals when you
are out camping. You’ve all heard it
before, so I won’t go over it again.
But I didn’t see any of these boys following other Kenyans for blocks,
just wazungu, and in that way, at least, it holds to some degree.
But man, these
were just kids; kids who didn’t have a fraction of the opportunity of even the
least well-off American. It is hard not
to be melodramatic with the symbolic incarnation of African misfortune
following you down the street begging you for help that you’re not going to
give. It’s also hard for me not to deal
with the experience by talking or writing about it and making it a narrative
drama with a great deal of digression.
I guess I’ve
gotten away from the reality of the situation by going off on a pseudo-liberal
rant of sorts. I’ve gotten away from what
happened, and will continue to happen until I figure out a way to deal with
it. What happened is that I didn’t know
what to do and mostly hid, behind Kim.
When I poked my head out I only made things worse. As with most things, it will get better with
experience. I have confidence that I
will find a way to approach this that I will find socially, morally and
personally defensible, or at least an approach that I can live with.
I’ve gone on a bit
here, so I’ll give you a break.
And here’s a link
to 12.13.99
Part Two
