The first thing that impressed me about the Kenyan chicken farmers was that even though I wasn’t interested in buying a chicken, they still sat me down inside their tumbledown shack and offered a cup of tea. The second thing was that even though these men were just scraping by, selling eggs and corn on the streets of the second-biggest slum in Nairobi, one of them had an email address, and he made me promise to email him pictures of each of his friends holding up their prize chickens. I was so late in getting back to the Mercy Care School that the worried principal almost sent his teachers out into the slums looking for me. Although I felt embarrassed by the concern over my safety, I also knew that I needed to experience more of Africa than I would while on safari, even if I presently stood out as the only white man within ten square miles.
For those of you who are wondering how I went from Nevada to Kenya in less than a week, some backstory is probably necessary. A friend of my family in New York paid to reserve space on a safari for semi-professional photographers in the Masai Mara Wildlife Preserve. Unfortunately, this summer the man suffered a fractured vertebrae after an unfortunate incident involving a ladder, a gazebo, and gravity. The tour company was unwilling to refund his money because the departure date was only six weeks away, and since no other relatives could take the time off, I was sent an email inquiring whether I wanted a free trip to the northern Serengeti Plains. A free African safari. Free.
Needless to say, six weeks later I walked into Los Angeles International Airport with thirty pounds of borrowed photographic equipment, bound for Kenya. I get compensated for my newspaper articles in frequent flyer miles rather than cash, which is how I managed to afford the airline ticket. But because I hadn’t been able to book the flight in advance, the best itinerary I could find took two entire days to complete and deposited me in Nairobi one day early. I found a place to stay in the foreign city using the website couchsurfing.com, which connects people like myself with hosts who are willing to let travelers stay in their houses free of charge. My host’s apartment hadn’t had running water in over a month, but her fellow renters were friendly and considerate, and the bed in the upstairs guest room looked irresistible after my exhausting journey.
My jetlagged body told me it was time to sleep, but the sun had just started to shine on Kenya’s capital city, so we squeezed onto a crowded van and headed for the downtown district. My host worked for a non-profit organization that focused on arms control and peace-building, and she helped orient me to the social realities of life in East Africa. Gazing out the window of the van, I was amazed at how clean and well-dressed each person looked, without exception, even though the city’s infrastructure – the roads and concrete buildings – seemed to be crumbling around them. Businessmen in the sharpest suits were literally walking through rubble to get to work. It appeared as if each Kenyan was trying to individually leap across the divide separating the First and Third Worlds, while the nation itself was falling behind.
Two Africas co-existed here… one showed signs of hardship, and the other of prosperity, but the latter vision was still only a dream for all but the most affluent of citizens. Desperate children sold peanuts to drivers stuck in traffic, while above them, stylish billboards advertised safari tours and cell phone plans. Both SUVs and hand-drawn carts moved through the city, highlighting the economic disparity that had contributed to political unrest during the last elections.
Thanks to my host, I was invited by a principal to visit a school of 500 students in the Mathare slums, where absolutely everyone had been left behind. I arrived in time for lunch, which was a hearty rice-and-peas concoction cooked in two giant metal cauldrons heated by firewood. The students didn’t know what to do with me, until I pulled out my tinwhistle in the courtyard and played them a jazzy song. That gathered a massive audience. The smallest children spoke one of the few English phrases they had been taught, over and over: “How are you? How are you? How are you?” When I turned the question back on them, the response was always, “Fine.” Every time.
The principal was trying to give his students the skills they would need to break out of the cycle of poverty, but financial resources were scarce, and opportunities for employment in the surrounding community were equally limited. When I grew tired of swinging kids around and playing soccer in the courtyard, I left the school and went to see more of the neighborhood where the students lived. The area was a chaotic assemblage of corrugated metal shacks, trash piles, and apartment buildings strewn with colorful clotheslines. I walked a busy street, lined on both sides with vendors struggling to make a living, but surprisingly, no one in the slums tried to sell me anything, apart from one of the chicken farmers. I was mostly ignored, which felt weird considering I hadn’t seen another Caucasian outdoors since I left the airport.
If I started a conversation with someone, however, they inevitably asked for my opinion of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan. I believe the future that Barack promised to America in his speeches echoed the hope most Kenyans had of breaching the barrier between the Third and First Worlds within their own country. A half-Kenyan president of the United States would be a powerful inspirational image to countless Africans, perhaps moreso in the slums of Nairobi than anywhere else.
Exhausted from entertaining children, I crawled into bed that evening and fell asleep for almost thirteen hours. The next day, I began to experience the part of Africa that was advertised on all those billboards… the part that was out of reach for all but the wealthiest of Kenyans. A short flight brought fifty of us to a small airstrip in the Masai Mara National Preserve, and although I knew I’d be sleeping in a canvas tent, I hadn’t expected that the tent would feature twin beds, a polished wooden floor, a bathroom, a tiled shower, electricity, and a front deck that overlooked the Talek River. I felt a bout of culture shock coming on, especially when a woman came by to ask if we wanted hot water bottles placed in our beds to warm them before bedtime. An electric fence kept marauding hippos and buffalos from charging up the riverbank, and we were advised to keep our tents zippered tightly to prevent monkeys from ransacking our luggage.
Our first lunch and all subsequent meals were all-you-can-eat buffets, with three chefs on hand to grill and stir fry the main courses to our exact specifications. I sat amongst doctors, real estate agents and insurance company executives and devoured far more food than any other guest. I couldn’t help myself; I knew I was exhibiting a stereotypical lower-class mentality, which was to overeat because times of scarcity might be right around the corner. My first day in Nairobi had impacted me greatly, it would seem. I’d had a taste of life in the slums, but for the next twelve days I would try to adjust to a life of privilege and luxury. To do otherwise would be ungracious to my benefactor with the broken back. Above all, I wanted to have memories of Kenya that went beyond photographs of leopards, lions and monkeys. I wanted memories of both worlds - the rich and the poor - and I resolved to seek them out with a spirit of sincere humility and sincere gratitude.