No big theme today, in part because I don't know enough about what I saw to give useful commentary, in part because some pictures were supposed to be sent out around the same time I posted. But alas, I blew up at the first world internet cafe jockeys today when their server ate my story, and now when I go back they say there's something wrong with my account, and they can't access it unless I have my receipt. Do I have my receipt? No. So I'm typing this at the third world internet cafe, where when it starts raining outside, they throw a trash bag over you monitor. Good gravy. But on with the show:
There are supposed to be 2.5 million in Nairobi, but it's felt like a smaller city than that to me. Yesterday morning I figured out one reason why: 800,000 people live in Kibera, the city’s oldest, biggest shantytown—that’s saying something.
Kibera runs right up against two nice areas: a golf club that employees tell me is owned by the Queen of England, and the Nairobi residence of the much-disliked former president Daniel Arap Moi. The club seems a good neighbor during the current water crisis: Over a hundred Kenyans were lined up at the club's gate with margarine colored buckets, and employees of the course were siphoning water from a well to fill them. When shantyfolk got too rowdy, the employees spray them with water. Shantyfolk scream, giggle, run, then regroup and try to absorb the stream of water into their buckets. “If we didn’t do this, they would climb over the wall and drain our lakes,” one Kenyan employee told me. “They should be thanking us, but instead, they hit us,” said another Kenyan. “These people!”
No one had a definite answer for why the ex-president had chosen to live next to the city’s oldest, biggest slum. “He likes the smell,” was the answer I liked most, because it fit. Moi spent his decades in office fleecing the country while slums like this pancaked across Nairobi and its outskirts. The idea of him laying in bed, savoring the smell of filth and poverty he created, seems appropriately Sauron-like.
Speaking of filth, our guide through Kibera took us on a shortcut to the golf course’s gate which entailed walking through a 100-yard, 3-foot wide corridor between buildings--all the while our path was bisected by a river of yuck. At some points, as much as ten feet at a time, the river flowed into an unbroken pipe, and I would pull my ball cap from my mouth, breathe, and glory in the wonder that is piped sewage. But then the pipe would turn back into a trough, and the cap would return.
We met Janice, who showed us her son and her home, a shanty about the size of a fullsize van interior, the walls made of slabs of sheet metal. It had two single beds: one for Janice's three oldest kids, one for Janice, her husband, and her youngest. There was a table the size of a TV tray, two chairs, and probably 5 square feet of unused floorspace left over--in la casa de Janice, you gotta shimmy around. A landlord charges her 2000 shillings a month, about $30. Janice told us how when her children see white people, they think we are Africans who’ve powdered their skin and put on wigs. Also how her crazy Muslim inlaws think it's scandalous that she wears pants.
The only thing about Kibera that was different from a Unicef commercial was its internal economy. One shanty had deep-fried pastries of some sort, one offered furniture, many hung dead chickens. One had a TV/VCR, and advertised two Jean Claude Van Damme movies people could watch for a price. My guide told me that it offered pornography too, but that costs more.
"It costs more in America, too!" He laughed. "Why is that? It is so cheap to make." Our accents are different, so we mzungus (white people) usually learn to speak to Kenyans without contractions.
"Yes, very cheap."
"But all over the world, they get people to pay more for it. Why?"
"Well in Kenya, all pornography is illegal."
"Does that stop it?"
He laughed.
Goats, kittens, dogs with stained paws everywhere. I don't know why, it was the dog with the poop-stained paws that almost made me belch up breakfast. I know you all can't wait for these pictures.
