Laugh or Cry? Our 4th Winter of 2013

Here is the weather forecast for Dallas, Tx during our upcoming visit:

How is this our 4th winter this year, you ask?

Well, we began the year in (1)Tucson, which albeit does not have the harshest of all winters, but does have cooler climes.  Just as things were starting to get hot, hot, hot in AZ, we headed to (2) Fort, Collins, Colorado, a place that greeted us with two huge snowstorms in MAY.  When we finally got over that and started to bust out our summer finest, we headed to (3) Nairobi, Kenya, which was experiencing it’s coldest winter in recent memory.  (Being in the southern hemisphere means Kenyan winter is in American summer.  You know how it works.)  And finally, we now head to (4) Dallas, TX with the anticipated temps recorded above.  It looks like we’ll eek out the year without any more snow, but for a girl like me who doesn’t even really own proper winter gear, four winters is plenty!

Fetishizing the Poor

When SC and MI visited Nairobi most of our decisions were easy.  Go see elephants at the orphanage?  Heck yes!  Go in search of rhinos in the national park?  Definitely!  Check out the arts scene?  We’re in!  But one question loomed over their visit: How do I show a more accurate portrayal of the true lives of Nairobians if all you are seeing are tourist attractions and my home?  How does a visitor learn about the alternate reality of Nairobi’s slums without turning peoples’ lives into another kind of attraction?  Is there a such thing as an appropriate and respectful way to see how the other half lives?

Well, we hemmed and hawed about this decision going back and forth.  We really wanted to see areas like Kibera, one of the largest informal settlements in East Africa that happens to be located not far from my house.  On the other hand, it wasn’t worth seeing if we were going to be disrespectful.  We knew that we weren’t going to be able to volunteer anywhere in the amount of time we had.  So… I got in touch with a friend of mine who has worked in and around Kibera for the last 10+ years.  She hooked us up with a friend of hers who works in Kibera today and who walked us through, telling us some of the history for a few hours.  (I will tell you more about this trip in another post.)

In the end, did we succeed in sobering our vision of Nairobi while respecting the people who live informally?  I still don’t know.

Here’s what I do know.  The idea of “poverty tourism” is happening in many places in the world and very differently than the way we did it.  A friend of mine recently posted an article about a lodge in South Africa, where companies or individuals can come and “live like they’re in a slum”.  Each home has small quarters made out of rustic materials.  But these visitors don’t actually have to deal with the challenges of living informally; in this lodge there is electricity, running water, and even wifi.  “Pretending to be poor” by eschewing some of your material comforts for a few days does not bring you closer to the lives experienced by people who are actually in poverty.  It doesn’t help you understand how poverty is institutionalized or how it is maintained.  This kind of tourism isn’t respectful of peoples’ homes or lifestyles.

But I’m not sure our visit was either.  I don’t know if we had earned the right to parade through a part of town where there wasn’t anything for us, where we would be disgusted by the open sewage ravines or the rotting fish heads and where we’d marvel at how bustling the community seemed.  I don’t think we did much harm either.  We did donate a little something to the organization whose employee took us around.  So I am left with my original quandary: how does someone get a more realistic vision of a place that is so uneven (like Nairobi) without turning ourselves into voyeurs and into others’ as an object of entertainment for us.

An Honest Conversation on Domestic Wages

As many of you know, I am part of a facebook group of Nairobi moms (called mums here, and don’t you forget it.)  Occasionally, someone will post something to the group that really riles up the crowd and there will be lots and lots of comments flowing from it.  Once such comment was made last night.

To “translate”, the woman above, Sherry, is asking if it is really possible that nannies get paid between $360-$580 USD per month.  She is obviously incredulous.  She clearly has NO IDEA how much childcare costs in the US.  For the record, at the highest, we’ve paid upwards of $1200 USD per month for full time care in CO and that did not include evenings, weekends, date nights, or sick days for only ONE child.  (We only sustained that expense for one month.)  I know friends who have paid much more than that in higher end markets.

But what interests me is that following Sherry’s remark was a fairly honest disclosure from these (mostly) Kenyan mums about paying their domestic helpers.  Many women “liked” a commenter who said that it was true that people get paid terrible amounts (2, 3, 4K) but that it depends on how much the family has to pay the worker.  One woman owned up to paying her nanny 37K ($430 USD).  Many others felt like if you pay your nanny more, then you can depend on them to do more tasks.  Yet others warned that paying your nanny really does not correlate to how well they take care of your kids.  Maintaining a respectful relationship is the only way to ensure good workers.

None of the comments made were anything new to me.  But what did interest me was that it became clear that there are two markets out there for domestic workers.  There are those who work for “peanuts,” as it was mentioned by the commenters, and there are those who work for wages that might be acceptable.  If you were one of those workers in the “peanuts” category, you might not even know that there was another market out there or how to break into it.

Job’s Refuge

I think I’ve always known about domestic violence.  When we were little our clothes that didn’t fit anymore and discarded toys went to Job’s Refuge – a place described to me as a “battered women’s shelter”.  I knew it had nothing to do with making cakes and cookies.  I know that my dad had something to do with the establishment of this important place.  I must have rationalized the existence of a women’s and children’s shelter, and the violence that it implied, in the same way that I understood other crimes.  Some people beat their spouses like other steal and yet others commit other heinous acts.  But domestic violence really goes beyond other crimes.  When women (or men, or children) are assaulted or violated in their own homes by the people who supposedly love them most, the perpetrators take away the very essence of security from their lives.  Stolen from the victims is the notion of trust and of safety.  I don’t know how those feelings can ever be recovered.  How could I have possibly understood this as a child and why didn’t I ask out loud, How can something so terrible exist in our society?

I am thinking a lot about this today because Lydiah, our nanny/housekeeper, has told me that her daughter is being beaten by her husband.  She feels that she must act to defend her daughter and grandchildren.  But what is the right path?  I have told her that in my opinion a man who can beat his wife is a very violent person, and I fear for her safety.  And yet, as a mother, I sympathize completely with her wanting to do something.  So tomorrow she will go upcountry to the village where her daughter lives and determine whether she must collect her daughter and grandchildren or whether she will just show her face as a warning to her son-in-law that she is capable of taking them all away.

As far as I know, there are very limited spaces in shelters in Nairobi for victims of domestic violence.  Without strong family bonds, a person like Lydiah’s daughter would have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go.  Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to East Africa, but it is a global problem that spans race, ethnicity, nationality and class lines. 

How Do You Know….

…. that it’s Christmastime in Nairobi?

Well, they’ve moved the condoms up toward the checkout line at our grocery store.  (They were previously hiding in the alcohol room behind the counter.  Much more accessible here.)

The Visitors

I was totally incommunicado over the last week because of my lovely visitors (let’s call them Santa Claus and Millennium Investors) came to Nairobi.  You have no idea how awesome it feels when people stop their normal and busy lives, get on long-ass flights that are non-too-cheap, and brave travelers diarrhea (yep) just to see say hi in person.  Well SC and MI did the Nairobi whirlwind tour because they were only here for 5 days and there is no way to do everything in that amount of time.  But here are some highlights:

- The giraffe center.  Man, this place never disappoints.  Both MI and SC got giraffe kisses and we left with a new slogan: “No food, no friendship.”

- Since SC is a foster parent of an orphan elephant through the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, we were all able to to go the evening, private viewing of the elephants where we put them to bed and sang lullabies.  OK, so there really weren’t lullabies involved, but there was honest-to-god elephant trunk petting and those babies are super cute.    One keeper told us that we needed to have love in our hearts.  Elephants know your intentions, so they have to be pure.  (I think I’m getting the actual wording wrong, but it was something like that.)  Why do baby elephants turn us into mush?

- Some good food, some interesting art, lots and lots of traffic (it is Nairobi, after all). 

And then there were a few hiccups that make great stories.

Like remember the time that we were in the National Park (an area populated with lions, snakes, hippos, flamingoes, scary looking vulture-ish birds, rhinos, etc…) and we were low on gas, and then couldn’t seem to find the gate to exit the park.  And then we hit a rock and the check engine light came on.  And it crossed our minds that we might not make it outta there alive.  Fun in retrospect.  A tad scary in reality.

And remember that other time when we went to Hells Gate National Park and there seemed to be a storm brewing so we rented bikes and hauled ass over gravel “roads” in bikes that didn’t really fit our bodies. Ouch!  And then we went hiking on steep wet rocks (Not the smartest move ever) until we were confronted by a gigantic mud flow.  So we got the hell outta there.  Yea, mud flows are cool and scary.

And remember when we were navigating our way through a city where people drive on the “wrong” (ie right) side of the street and we got so confused by rights and lefts that we just gave up and started pointing this way and that?

And finally, remember the time when we wanted to get some souvenirs from the market and we were so accosted by the “shop” owners (cuz they really were just showing their wares on blankets on the ground, not really in shops) that we started to get all mean and tough saying stuff like, “take it or leave it,” and “I’m walking outta here in 10 seconds?” 

Remember those times?

MI and SC will have to remind me of all the rest that made this an epic trip.  Thanks for coming.  We appreciated it!

A Weekend in Addis–Still Some Jumpy Nerves

First, the jumpy nerves:  Upon return to Nairobi from our weekend in Addis Ababa, we hit the grocery store for a a mega-shop.  After all, we needed the important stuff for our very important visitors arriving tonight.  Well, Sunday is a busy day at our local grocery and just when we were almost finished, the power died… in the busy grocery store.   It was pitch black.  Considering our recent history of an attack in a mall much like the one we were in and in the exact same store across town… I was freaked.  In retrospect, I’m actually disappointed that I didn’t move quicker.  It took me a whole 3… maybe 4 seconds to pick J out of the shopping cart and start moving.  The lights came back on 6 or 7 seconds later; with babe in arms I hadn’t gotten far.   Thankfully, there was no danger.  What would you have done in a similar situation?

All in all, I’m glad to know that my reflexes work, even if not quite as fast as I would have hoped. 

Second, you may have wondered: what the heck were we doing in Ethiopia for a weekend?  Well, we like the food and wanted to get a more authentic taste!  That is both true and insufficient.  It also happened that our visas were set to expire, so out of the EAC we went in order to renew them.  And we had a really lovely time.  The pool at the Hilton was perfect for J (he dipped twice on Saturday), the food was authentic and fabuloso, and the little bit of the city that we actually saw seemed a bit more approachable than the crazy/hectic pace of Nairobi.  The grass is always greener, I guess.  I hope we’ll have an opportunity to return and learn more about Hallie Selassie and the Lucy discovery – two people (or humanoid, in the case of Lucy) who have made Ethiopia great. 

All is quiet on the home front.  J is down to sleep for the night and DW is taking a snooze before he picks up our guests who arrive at the airport just after midnight.  I was told that my bro would, “never speak to me again” if we aren’t there to get him at the airport.  I reminded him that even if we didn’t get him that his trip wouldn’t be wasted because the lions are very hungry at night….

Don’t worry – we’ll be there barring any unforeseen  circumstances.