Africa Day Five
(Tuesday 12/14/99)
This time I
promise to be brief. Actually, I don’t
have much choice, as today is Saturday and I’ve got to catch up. I’ve also forgotten a fair amount of detail
with the passage of time. So there are
really only two things that I remember about this day and here they are:
Today we spent
most of the day looking for a place to live.
We walked around Millimani with Julius, the caretaker of the guesthouse,
and his friend Jackson, stopping at places that he thought were vacant and
talking to the askaris (guards).
I’m not sure how many we looked at or how far we walked, as I’ve said,
the streets of Millimani are very confusing.
We saw a couple that were too nice, a couple that were too small, a
couple that were not really vacant and one that couldd be just right.
It became clear
after a little while why Jackson was accompanying us: he was looking for a
job. Almost everything here works on an
intricate system of favors and connections.
If someone has a job they try to get as many of their family and friends
related jobs. Julius was trying to get
Jackson a job as our askari when the time came to hire security. After that Jackson will try to get one of
his people a job as a gardener or something, and so forth.
Since we know
Julius and he has been helping us out, he sort of has the inside track on any
hiring that we may do. People with more
tenuous connections with us have also tried.
A couple maids, an askari or two, and driver have all said that they
have relatives or friends that would be perfect for us. We’ve been told that we will continue to receive
solicitations for jobs for a long time to come, even if the positions are
clearly filled. One of Kim’s co-workers
who has lived here for four years still gets them.
I don’t think that
there is anything wrong with the system.
It’s not really that different from how things get done in the
States. I guess the biggest difference
is the frequency and the persistence with which it occurs. Universally, the people that have lived here
for awhile attest that it will drive you crazy.
So that was a
large part of our day.
The second part of
the day involved just going to town to go to the store and coming back. The going there, and the going to the store
portions went just fine. Coming back
was a little more problematic…
There are these
things called Matatu. They are
basically, privately owned public transportation. The first couple of days we were here I thought that the term
referred only to the mini-buses that I had seen, but it apparently also
includes any vehicle, car, jeep, station wagon, mini-van, or pick-up truck used
for the purpose of moving people from one place to another. Most of the cars are beaters, but some of
the vans are in a little better shape.
Here’s how it
works:
You stand by the
side of the road. A matatu pulls up
honking to see if you are interested.
If you wave them down they pull over.
There is usually one driver and one to three assistants. The driver, obviously, drives and the
assistants handle baggage, money, and are in charge of fitting as many people
as possible in to the vehicle. You do
know, that when I say as many people as possible I mean it don’t you?
We got in at Oginga
Odinga Road asking multiple times whether or not the matatu was going to Dunga
Junction, which is a major intersection right near the guesthouse. We climbed in the backmost of four rows of bench
seats and paid our ten shillings. We
started off towards Millimani, and then we went through it and then we were
past it. And then we were in a
particularly strange part of town. On the
left side was a huge sprawling slum.
Lots and lots of people living in crowded shacks and huts. I still can’t get used to just how many
people there are here! On the right
side were the luxurious houses, green gardens and smooth paved streets of
Millimani. Separating the two there was
only the bumpy dirt and rock road (Ring Road we later discovered, as it rings
Millimani) we were on. Of course, every
Millimani house along the road had huge walls with no gate facing the slum
side.
Every block or so
we took on a couple of people and lost one or two. It became more and more crowded.
I counted at our peak twenty-nine people, including the driver, two
assistants hanging out the open sliding side door and one hanging on to the
rear bumper. Twenty-nine people who do
not have reliable access to bathing facilities packed on top of each other in a
slow moving, beater mini-van driving down a very bumpy, dusty road in the
afternoon sun for half an hour is very hot stinky hunk of discomfort for your
ten shillings.
This may sound a
little strange, but…some time near the end of summer, after Kim and I were playing
ultimate Frisbee in Ann Arbor, Kim caught a whiff of my funk (and there was a
good deal of it as I was playing very hard) and she said something that I
thought was very strange at the time.
She said that I smelled African.
She said that Africans had a very distinct body odor and that I smelled
almost exactly the same
At the time I
remember being a little put off by her comment, but sitting there on the matatu
with twenty seven sweaty African people I had to admit that she was right. I really do smell just like an African. It’s pretty uncanny really…I think that
there is more than a bit of destiny here…(Josh do you remember when I told you
that my body chemistry had changed and I now smelled kind of “spicy”? That’s what I’m talking about!!!)
We drove a long
way. Actually, we didn’t drive that far
- it just took a really long time, mostly because people wanted to get off at
exactly the right spot. We would stop
and unload a person, which sometimes involved four or five people climbing out
and climbing back in, and then we would drive ten more meters and unload
someone else. A five-minute ride turned
in to half an hour.
I absolutely
promise to get a picture of one of these things on here. They are truly amazing.
That’s it for
today…See I controlled myself somewhat.