This morning I woke up thinking of work. Tucked in the mountain town of Moossoori, a town built by the British as a holiday launch point, my head is literally in the clouds 6,000 feet tucked into the Himalayas. Fresh air, hot tea, dew on the trees, valleys funnel clouds along their way, my mind wanders to the sublime, beauty and things disconnected entirely. I dream of home, literature, writing, friends, love, my family, career goals - self absorbed topics of contemplation - topics that are important and feel to be invited by these surroundings. And, being here, I want to inhabit this space with all of me, think about what it would be like to move to a mountain town and live the life that I supposedly purport, grow my own food, write, smile, and live in a state of contentment. But then I think about why I am here, and it is for exactly the opposite reason, to prepare me to engage, to enhance my skills so as to effectuate "good" change in a lasting way, not a way that is entirely self focused. We came to this town because of a world-renowned Hindi language school. Indeed, this step is the antithesis of what my mind has slipped to since arriving last night. I am nervous because Hindi is such a different language, but also because it this process is a very symbolic step, it signifies a real measure of preparation for a fast-approaching work start date. My days now have structure and consequence, we are no longer sitting around talking of everything and nothing, no more orientation, massive groups of white people, arranged travel, planned meals, English speakers.
Furthermore, I need to learn this language. In three weeks I don’t expect to become fluent, but I do feel the weight of expectation at my host organization and the fact that acquiring this skill directly impacts my ability to meet those expectations, do my job well, and walk away at the end of 9 months with a concrete skill. Surely I have enthusiasm, some experience, a great support network, etc. but it is stupid of me to think I can do workers organizing or help an organization to that end without speaking some of the language, ignoring the fact that Gujarati and not Hindi really ought to be my focus. I very much feel this pressure.
So, I go forward with full enthusiasm, sincere intentions of learning and the understanding that it takes much time. Beneath the anxiety of worrying about my job, ability to learn Hindi, living on the other side of the world for a year, eating new foods, meeting women, staying healthy, this anxiety around learning language is telling of a new concern in my life because the list above is not new or exhaustive but healthy and expected, a proper exercise for a thinking person going through change. What pushes me the most is that the task of learning Hindi is not an assignment, not a paper, it exists not in the tangentially connected world of campus life but in a very real sense, in the real world and is impacting on me as a professional going forward. This new mindset is one that I am working to understand, to understand that from here on out, the onus is mine, for better or worse, and translates into real terms, terms that make me better at certain jobs, more hirable, efficient, knowledgeable, savvy, productive, and in turn happy with the outcomes that I am able to get. Fake it until you make it doesn’t apply here, but rather I need to learn and make it, faking it will not suffice. In short, my work matters and I need to take it seriously.
Sitting in the clouds, literally, becomes problematic, an ironic place to engage with real life skills acquisition if for no other reason than its symbolism. In life, the challenge lies, how do I balance between these clouds and the disconnect they offer, and the real world that exists all around me. The implications are many, thinking of career, money, location, partnership, how do I remain happy, invested in literature, love, family, writing, art, nonsense, things that matter and matter deeply to me while at the same time, not lost, disconnected, clueless as to the reality on the ground. Setting it up like this creates a false dichotomy, nothing is this black and white, but it is helpful for me to think about as a young person now figuring out his life. The clouds this morning asked all these questions and what better place to think about them. Off to language school to work on them for now.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Two Weeks Now, Some Thoughts
As the plane descended, the city came into focus. My boarding pass read Heathrow to Delhi. Half British, half Indian nationals, the staff was put together for a flight bound to India. Food requests switched, the norm veg and the exception meat. Baseball caps traded, in large part, for turbans. I knew I was on my way to India and I still today know that I am sitting here, the languages around me different, signs foreign, and a map that indicates thousands of miles between me and home are constant in my mind. We touch down, the PA crackles and a polite British accent welcomes us all to Delhi's international airport. All the signs are screaming at me but I know I’ve landed not because our wheels are on the ground or the ground staff is Indian, I know we've landed because as I step onto the extended jet way my glasses fog. It is not raining and the sun in shining, my glasses should not be fogging like they did on rainy days in 7th grade on the public bus home. It is that hot and humid. This is the weather people have told me about, the Delhi heat, sweet air that hangs out at the equator, heat that packing lists have tried to prepare my lightweight pants for and guide books warn me about. I inhale. The air is different, I am in India; now I know.
Each day is filled with moments like this, constant barrages of obvious signs that scream of another country, world, set of religions, movies, languages, foods, customs, but my armor deflects most of the obvious indicators. Kenya arises here, my encounters with the non-American world informing my mind of some of the intricacies that lie beneath the presence of slums, open sewers, the faces of statistics we too often read about. Yet I know this is not Kenya, it is not the Bronx, Scotland, this new land that greets me with unique cologne in each breath is incomprehensibly different from anywhere I’ve been. So, before trying to understand those major differences, over 5,000 years of recorded history, what 1.2 billion people even means, thoughts about development, modernity, governance, I am stuck in this thick air trying to first understand how to engage with the small things. As I exit restaurants I am not taken with the wide streets and impressive infrastructure - such is noted in a book somewhere, to be found out later -- or auto rigshaws, the apparently different thing, or even the auditions of uniformed men with waxed mustaches and wads of chewing tobacco as they bicker for my business. What takes me, what I focus on for its insight, knowledge on pushing me to be better able to adjust, is the resilience of everything we - Westerners - give up on, the cars my family has gotten rid of, dumped refrigerators, wires, engines, phones, radios... here, things don’t break, repairmen are everywhere and nothing is ever on its last leg, always salvageable. This is telling.
Two weeks in, these are the things I notice, trying to get my mind around what I can, see what is different and what is the same. Underground passages, train stations, still house people who are without homes, men sleep on the bare sidewalk, cozied up in a blanket for the night, wholly without shelter. I’ve seen homelessness before, bashed over the head by its ubiquity on the streets of Kenya, especially amongst orphans. I know people are homeless all over the world, and this is a sad reality that will continue to exist. But never before have I been so bothered by the presence of an infant, a new way of encountering homelessness and the often times concomitant begging. At stop lights, choked in smog, noses running and clothes dirty babies are used as a competitive advantage in a game that often links looking the most desperate to monetary success. Young women's hips often set the stage, babies slung on hips, pawns in a negotiation for money, a prop to pull a heartstring, a surety for soliciting funds. Surely many of these families need the money they get from begging, but in the justice of my mind, babies, innocent, ought not play a part in this -- better left home with grandma or sister. Presumptuous perhaps. In the end, as the woman holds her child on one hip and taps me with her free hand, wrinkled with her burdens, her clothing saturated with dirt, face pleading, I give her money, aware that I may have been worked, but really just feeling empty inside, truly and wholly sad.
We roll off into a cacophony of horns - in India, they say, you can drive without brakes but not without horn -- passing bollywood billboards, the fully extended leg of a cyclist as his pedal comes full circle, a glistening sweaty back of a day laborer, kiosks, malls, mansions, hotels, embassies, baboons, motorbikes, roundabouts, sandals, shapely shadows of leaves I’ve never seen, policemen, buses gurgling black diesel emissions, intoxicating colors of women's saris. As we ride I try to get away from any and all preparation that I've had, to avoid the tendency to exotisize the foreign, fetishism the different. My challenges lie in each person I pass, yearning to understand each one as they fit into this complicated Indian fabric each as human beings, seeing laborers not as laborers, but as husbands and fathers, politicians not at officials but people, women not as victims of gender bias but IT professionals, all fallible, all implicated through their interactions, histories, and converging futures in a larger scheme that I too am now a part of.
Each day is filled with moments like this, constant barrages of obvious signs that scream of another country, world, set of religions, movies, languages, foods, customs, but my armor deflects most of the obvious indicators. Kenya arises here, my encounters with the non-American world informing my mind of some of the intricacies that lie beneath the presence of slums, open sewers, the faces of statistics we too often read about. Yet I know this is not Kenya, it is not the Bronx, Scotland, this new land that greets me with unique cologne in each breath is incomprehensibly different from anywhere I’ve been. So, before trying to understand those major differences, over 5,000 years of recorded history, what 1.2 billion people even means, thoughts about development, modernity, governance, I am stuck in this thick air trying to first understand how to engage with the small things. As I exit restaurants I am not taken with the wide streets and impressive infrastructure - such is noted in a book somewhere, to be found out later -- or auto rigshaws, the apparently different thing, or even the auditions of uniformed men with waxed mustaches and wads of chewing tobacco as they bicker for my business. What takes me, what I focus on for its insight, knowledge on pushing me to be better able to adjust, is the resilience of everything we - Westerners - give up on, the cars my family has gotten rid of, dumped refrigerators, wires, engines, phones, radios... here, things don’t break, repairmen are everywhere and nothing is ever on its last leg, always salvageable. This is telling.
Two weeks in, these are the things I notice, trying to get my mind around what I can, see what is different and what is the same. Underground passages, train stations, still house people who are without homes, men sleep on the bare sidewalk, cozied up in a blanket for the night, wholly without shelter. I’ve seen homelessness before, bashed over the head by its ubiquity on the streets of Kenya, especially amongst orphans. I know people are homeless all over the world, and this is a sad reality that will continue to exist. But never before have I been so bothered by the presence of an infant, a new way of encountering homelessness and the often times concomitant begging. At stop lights, choked in smog, noses running and clothes dirty babies are used as a competitive advantage in a game that often links looking the most desperate to monetary success. Young women's hips often set the stage, babies slung on hips, pawns in a negotiation for money, a prop to pull a heartstring, a surety for soliciting funds. Surely many of these families need the money they get from begging, but in the justice of my mind, babies, innocent, ought not play a part in this -- better left home with grandma or sister. Presumptuous perhaps. In the end, as the woman holds her child on one hip and taps me with her free hand, wrinkled with her burdens, her clothing saturated with dirt, face pleading, I give her money, aware that I may have been worked, but really just feeling empty inside, truly and wholly sad.
We roll off into a cacophony of horns - in India, they say, you can drive without brakes but not without horn -- passing bollywood billboards, the fully extended leg of a cyclist as his pedal comes full circle, a glistening sweaty back of a day laborer, kiosks, malls, mansions, hotels, embassies, baboons, motorbikes, roundabouts, sandals, shapely shadows of leaves I’ve never seen, policemen, buses gurgling black diesel emissions, intoxicating colors of women's saris. As we ride I try to get away from any and all preparation that I've had, to avoid the tendency to exotisize the foreign, fetishism the different. My challenges lie in each person I pass, yearning to understand each one as they fit into this complicated Indian fabric each as human beings, seeing laborers not as laborers, but as husbands and fathers, politicians not at officials but people, women not as victims of gender bias but IT professionals, all fallible, all implicated through their interactions, histories, and converging futures in a larger scheme that I too am now a part of.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
It is official. Today at 8:57 a.m. it was empirically proven that there is no correlation between intelligence and the capital letters postdating one’s name. In the university setting and the world over there is a gross assumption that an individual’s smarts can be equated with the prestige of their major, profession, or number of degrees they hold. The majority of the people who believe this have the Ms, Ds, PHs, Js, and BAs after their names and send their children to college, perpetuating a self fulfilling societal farce that masks pedanticity as intelligence.
My appointment is at 8:15 a.m. Blood pressure, no pain, a solid temperature, (and) I am ushered into the exam room. Crappy cologne first, then the doctor himself; sporting a navy blue polo shirt with vertical rows of sailing flags, a detective’s moustache, and high school county championship ring he asks me if I am ready.
I am as ready as I am going to be.
He escorts me to another room where he confuses my right foot for my left foot several times, finally drooling iodine all over my ingrown toenail. Running before walking, he now puts on his exam gloves. Clumsily, he fills the syringe and proceeds to jab my foot six times, obviously unsure about what he is doing, like a toddler who struggles to play with a toy that is meant for a child three years older, a Looney Tunes character trying to blow out its tail.
His plastic hospital I.D. card shimmers on the counter: First Name, Last Name, M.D.
Twenty minutes and my toe is numb. Hunting for the scissors and gauze, he puts gloves on and does the procedure. At one point he yelps, “Wow! Look at all the pus,” the medical professional response to an infected wound. Gloves bloody, he pours through every cabinet in the room wiping blood on all the handles and some of the cabinet doors. My toe hurts but I pinch myself to make sure this is actually happening. A doctor wiping blood all over a room, surely sanitary and surely an 11-year-old knows not to do that.
He can’t find the bottle of alcohol he is looking for so picks up a can that is lying around. Holding it upside down he flips it in the air, displaying that he’s still got his high school finesse, reads it, chuckles, proud of himself, and squirts some white soap on my foot.
No, not actually empirical, but telling. This man has being practicing medicine for decades. He told me so. He has those prestigious, awe-inspiring initials after his name yet he is one of the least competent individuals I have ever met.
Coming off a week of orientation for incoming freshman where I met countless pre-med students, students who want to be lawyers and joint J.D./Ph.D.s, today was a harrowing experience that typifies a crippling lack of creativity within the adolescent/young professional mindset. Intellect, pursuit out of curiosity not a teleological, career obsessed, money making impetus for learning, is lost. Students care about their grades but not their minds. The majority of undergraduates obsess over internships, jobs, grades, and graduate school before they ask questions that might make them better writers, thinkers, or more holistic young adults. Such is the climate of college campuses today and it is blinding, rendering most students unable to function in non traditional capacities and non traditionally in professional careers. Able to pay for Kaplan and get into med school sure, but to think for themselves, take a risk, read a book that is not assigned or on Oprah’s book club, no. Worst of all, this literally mind-numbing set of expectations has become the norm – the laudable norm, the revered doctor, the brilliant lawyer, you must be smart of you have a PhD.
My toe knows better.
My appointment is at 8:15 a.m. Blood pressure, no pain, a solid temperature, (and) I am ushered into the exam room. Crappy cologne first, then the doctor himself; sporting a navy blue polo shirt with vertical rows of sailing flags, a detective’s moustache, and high school county championship ring he asks me if I am ready.
I am as ready as I am going to be.
He escorts me to another room where he confuses my right foot for my left foot several times, finally drooling iodine all over my ingrown toenail. Running before walking, he now puts on his exam gloves. Clumsily, he fills the syringe and proceeds to jab my foot six times, obviously unsure about what he is doing, like a toddler who struggles to play with a toy that is meant for a child three years older, a Looney Tunes character trying to blow out its tail.
His plastic hospital I.D. card shimmers on the counter: First Name, Last Name, M.D.
Twenty minutes and my toe is numb. Hunting for the scissors and gauze, he puts gloves on and does the procedure. At one point he yelps, “Wow! Look at all the pus,” the medical professional response to an infected wound. Gloves bloody, he pours through every cabinet in the room wiping blood on all the handles and some of the cabinet doors. My toe hurts but I pinch myself to make sure this is actually happening. A doctor wiping blood all over a room, surely sanitary and surely an 11-year-old knows not to do that.
He can’t find the bottle of alcohol he is looking for so picks up a can that is lying around. Holding it upside down he flips it in the air, displaying that he’s still got his high school finesse, reads it, chuckles, proud of himself, and squirts some white soap on my foot.
No, not actually empirical, but telling. This man has being practicing medicine for decades. He told me so. He has those prestigious, awe-inspiring initials after his name yet he is one of the least competent individuals I have ever met.
Coming off a week of orientation for incoming freshman where I met countless pre-med students, students who want to be lawyers and joint J.D./Ph.D.s, today was a harrowing experience that typifies a crippling lack of creativity within the adolescent/young professional mindset. Intellect, pursuit out of curiosity not a teleological, career obsessed, money making impetus for learning, is lost. Students care about their grades but not their minds. The majority of undergraduates obsess over internships, jobs, grades, and graduate school before they ask questions that might make them better writers, thinkers, or more holistic young adults. Such is the climate of college campuses today and it is blinding, rendering most students unable to function in non traditional capacities and non traditionally in professional careers. Able to pay for Kaplan and get into med school sure, but to think for themselves, take a risk, read a book that is not assigned or on Oprah’s book club, no. Worst of all, this literally mind-numbing set of expectations has become the norm – the laudable norm, the revered doctor, the brilliant lawyer, you must be smart of you have a PhD.
My toe knows better.
Friday, August 4, 2006
Pretty Much The Coolest Thing Ever
Complete with soda, too much food, cake and extended family, the pomp of the birthday celebration August 1st was the same as any other I’ve been to but the circumstance was different. It wasn’t my birthday but it was the anniversary of the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. The coolest thing by far.
During the summer of ’05 I volunteered for an NGO in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Nairobi and East Africa. My project finished before the date of my departure so much of my time was dedicated to letting children pet my milky skin, spending time with people, and doing my best to lighten the mood whenever inappropriate. Up to nothing of note, the head of the organization summoned my volunteer title and volunteered me to paint the clinic. Situated within the slum, the clinic provides basic health care on a sliding scale for residents of the community and was in the process of formal registration in the hopes of getting free vaccines from the government. Regulations stipulated that the clinic be white.
Replete with a coverall, paint and brushes, turpentine, no clue, drop clothes, and a foot stool, I set to work. Unlike my jokes or vague development lingo painting the clinic was a tangible contribution. It made me feel good. The work I did in the clinic on August 1st, 2005, however, made me feel even better.
Hopped up on turpentine fumes, I was brushing away, a veritable painting machine -- the Arnold of slum clinic painting like you’d never believe. Most of the patients just stared at my like I was nuts. One patient was different, in far too much pain to notice the connect the dots pattern spackled on my face, eight centimeters preoccupied.
Another volunteer burst into my studio – there is going to be a baby she effervesced. Flashing back to the Miracle of Life video in Mr. Aptekar’s class my initial reaction was: eww. Another couple of minutes and I poked my head in to ask the nurse to ask the woman giving birth if it would be ok for me to sit in. She said yes. With the paint still on my face I gloved up, put on a white coat and did what I thought I was supposed to. “You are doing great momma,” I cooed in English to a Kswahili speaking woman in labor. She froze me with a look, “shut up boy, this is not a sitcom, this is number six and the last” curtly communicated her wrinkled face. My pit stains continued to grow.
I meant well but took the hint, content to hold her hand and wipe her forehead. With a strong push, there was another life in the world. In that moment, there was a presence in the room bigger than any individual – in the balance of the Earth, creation, destruction, life, death, I saw a child born. There was no conservation of mass in this equation. A new baby in the world, a new person. Slimy, gross and more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, the recently converted amphibian was handed to me. Thirteen seconds old. My hands were quaking. A new person in the world and I was holding him, before the mother, before the father, as he was taking his first breaths.
As the nurse focused on the mom, I focused on the baby wrapping him in a sweatshirt, cleaning him up, in awe. Newborn topped with a hat, the mother in recovery holding her new son, I was now up to effervescing, writing the word “baby” all over the walls of my masterpiece, a best attempt at trapping a the enormity what just happened.
At the end of the day, exhausted, I cleaned up, washed my hands, got dressed and went to thank the mother. Babbling in a mixture of English and almost Kswahili, I told her thank you, thank you, and thank you, my best attempt failing again, unsure of what really just happened but knowing I was forever indebted to her sharing his birth with me.
Asante sana, mother. I can’t thank you enough.
Your welcome, she said, in a tone of voice that told me how tired her soul was. HIV positive, like her husband, neither employed, there was now another mouth to feed.
What is his name?
She looked up at me, her eyes glowing, a smile more sincere than any I’ve ever seen, 'Baby Aaron.
--
August 1, 2006 was baby Aaron’s 1st birthday -- happy birthday baby Aaron.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Secular Missionaries And A Life Disconnected
Experiencing turbulence, I awoke startled. Tired, cramped, I was ready to land in Kenya but the map said we were just crossing over the Mediterranean. To my left snored a middle aged man wearing a black shirt with bold orange letters that read: Baptists for Botswana.
Missionaries speckle the Kenyan landscape, roaming in Range Rovers, rivaling the cheetah population, wild creatures in the own right as they bible thump their way into the slums proselytizing predatorily on the starving poor, poaching tribal traditions towards the brink of extinction. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world. Kenya is a Christian country. Most mission work that is done in East Africa is headquartered in Nairobi, the largest city between Cape Town and Cairo, the control center for thousands of sentinels seeking to civilize the barbarians, redeem them in Christ.
The presence of Christian missionaries is undeniable, but it is easily eclipsed by the bigger cars, budgets, houses, egos, and bolder t-shirts of the secular missionaries that occupy the gated neighborhoods surrounding the city center. Forget cheetahs, we are the wildebeest. Like the religious work that is headquartered here, any news agency, NGO, micro credit scheme, fair trade organization, women’s empowerment group, or foundation has an East Africa office here. I am a disciple of the secular gospel, doling out condoms, pushing women’s rights, starting sustainable enterprise, empowering youth, in command of all the jargon, the development testaments new and old.
With a faith as strong as a Baptist for Botswana, I believe that the work I do is right, part of a larger plan that will help positively impact the lives of those same starving poor. I choose not to think of my work as predatory, but when I walk through Kibera on a Sunday and hear the sermons, revival meetings, and exorcisms my scoffing at religious mission work doesn’t make my white skin, my presence in the largest slum in East Africa, any less obnoxious. Neither condoms nor communion are helping in the long term.
Both sets of missionaries are equally culpable, both to blame for the problems that aren’t fixed, for living a lifestyle that is entirely disharmonious, prowling the slums by day, be it to convert or vaccinate, and eating $15 dollar meals by night before retreating to a gated compound. Doctrines aside, there is a common baseline that indicts missionaries of all belief systems. There are no simple solutions, and while both sides insist they are right and the other wrong, neither is consistent. Lifestyle is a choice. Inevitably, the most religious and the most secular, both passionate, live disconnected from the work they do, keeping them in business by driving, buying, living, socializing, drinking, sleeping, the system that causes the problems they work to solve.
Missionaries speckle the Kenyan landscape, roaming in Range Rovers, rivaling the cheetah population, wild creatures in the own right as they bible thump their way into the slums proselytizing predatorily on the starving poor, poaching tribal traditions towards the brink of extinction. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world. Kenya is a Christian country. Most mission work that is done in East Africa is headquartered in Nairobi, the largest city between Cape Town and Cairo, the control center for thousands of sentinels seeking to civilize the barbarians, redeem them in Christ.
The presence of Christian missionaries is undeniable, but it is easily eclipsed by the bigger cars, budgets, houses, egos, and bolder t-shirts of the secular missionaries that occupy the gated neighborhoods surrounding the city center. Forget cheetahs, we are the wildebeest. Like the religious work that is headquartered here, any news agency, NGO, micro credit scheme, fair trade organization, women’s empowerment group, or foundation has an East Africa office here. I am a disciple of the secular gospel, doling out condoms, pushing women’s rights, starting sustainable enterprise, empowering youth, in command of all the jargon, the development testaments new and old.
With a faith as strong as a Baptist for Botswana, I believe that the work I do is right, part of a larger plan that will help positively impact the lives of those same starving poor. I choose not to think of my work as predatory, but when I walk through Kibera on a Sunday and hear the sermons, revival meetings, and exorcisms my scoffing at religious mission work doesn’t make my white skin, my presence in the largest slum in East Africa, any less obnoxious. Neither condoms nor communion are helping in the long term.
Both sets of missionaries are equally culpable, both to blame for the problems that aren’t fixed, for living a lifestyle that is entirely disharmonious, prowling the slums by day, be it to convert or vaccinate, and eating $15 dollar meals by night before retreating to a gated compound. Doctrines aside, there is a common baseline that indicts missionaries of all belief systems. There are no simple solutions, and while both sides insist they are right and the other wrong, neither is consistent. Lifestyle is a choice. Inevitably, the most religious and the most secular, both passionate, live disconnected from the work they do, keeping them in business by driving, buying, living, socializing, drinking, sleeping, the system that causes the problems they work to solve.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
As the sun rises over Kibera, a balmy mist lingers backlighting exhales, putting second-hand wool hats on. Dew forms on the cocotenies [wheelbarrows] while the men who sleep in them fight the sun for five more minutes of slumber, five more minutes of procrastination from the day labor that might mean eating but definitely means sleeping well. Cool is typical for July in the slum but not the typical vision of Kenya, trading lion postcards for wet paths and shade for jackets.
George Ngeta emerges as the dew retreats. It is cold, but this is home. With an unflappable calm, he stretches, concerned less with the cold and more with the to-do list in his head. Checking it twice, he knows who is nice but refuses to give up on the naughty. Cold suits him. Development literature often babbles on about being of the community, participatory development, tapping indigenous knowledge sets. Usually, there is some talk of thinking outside of the box, of leveling the playing field between Western and Third. Deliberately vague terms or the ideas behind them, despite best efforts, are not working; Ngeta is the creativity that exists within the cracks of ambiguous phrases, the Kris Kringle of development, far out of the box, what is working, a touch of the Fourth world, the North Pole of sustainable enterprise.
Ngeta’s mind didn’t always reside in the North Pole. Born in Western Province, like most people in Kibera, he came looking for excitement but called it work. Luckily, he found work at a hotel cleaning toilets. Stomaching the smell, aware of the hordes of young people flocking to the city, he scrubbed away, humming as he still does today. One night he filled in for the no show DJ, birthing DJ George. Seduced by bright lights and bumping baselines, nightlife consumed him. So too did the less pleasant aspects. After a while, the danger of Nairobi’s nightlife dulled the shine of discos. It wasn’t worth it. In time, he found his reindeer in social work, guiding him to do the work that he does today.
He has been poor, out of work, hungry, drunk. He doesn’t know what it means to be hopeless. His smile communicates his unrelenting optimism.
Sprawling in the shadows of Nairobi’s waning skyline, nobody actually knows Kibera’s population. Except Ngeta. He knows everyone. He knows that there are 822, 328 people in the bordering villages. He would know, constantly bringing them good wishes, sincere hellos, and parcels of distraction. Cause enough for hope. Shaking dreams from his bones he dresses. A hooded sweatshirt, grey and black cap, jeans, and durable shoes. 320KSH in his pocket, he sets out for the day. Grizzly, he hasn’t shaved in a week. He never brings a pen but always needs one. On his left hand around his ring finger prides his luster-free wedding band. Rested upon his melon belly, his hands are clasped with a disarming confidence, raised only to greet. Walking to his workshop ought to take 15 minutes but takes 40. Humming with the blaring reggae from the aging radio in the barber shop, Ngeta takes the time to greet each person as he passes them, “Habari Mami” he coos at the woman frying mandazi, “Niaje Mdos” he defers to the elder fundi, “Sasa!” he intonates at the bundled baby. It is cold, but without asking he knows what his neighbors need, naughty or nice, stopping to show you care, a smile and a greeting warm the soul.
George Ngeta emerges as the dew retreats. It is cold, but this is home. With an unflappable calm, he stretches, concerned less with the cold and more with the to-do list in his head. Checking it twice, he knows who is nice but refuses to give up on the naughty. Cold suits him. Development literature often babbles on about being of the community, participatory development, tapping indigenous knowledge sets. Usually, there is some talk of thinking outside of the box, of leveling the playing field between Western and Third. Deliberately vague terms or the ideas behind them, despite best efforts, are not working; Ngeta is the creativity that exists within the cracks of ambiguous phrases, the Kris Kringle of development, far out of the box, what is working, a touch of the Fourth world, the North Pole of sustainable enterprise.
Ngeta’s mind didn’t always reside in the North Pole. Born in Western Province, like most people in Kibera, he came looking for excitement but called it work. Luckily, he found work at a hotel cleaning toilets. Stomaching the smell, aware of the hordes of young people flocking to the city, he scrubbed away, humming as he still does today. One night he filled in for the no show DJ, birthing DJ George. Seduced by bright lights and bumping baselines, nightlife consumed him. So too did the less pleasant aspects. After a while, the danger of Nairobi’s nightlife dulled the shine of discos. It wasn’t worth it. In time, he found his reindeer in social work, guiding him to do the work that he does today.
He has been poor, out of work, hungry, drunk. He doesn’t know what it means to be hopeless. His smile communicates his unrelenting optimism.
Sprawling in the shadows of Nairobi’s waning skyline, nobody actually knows Kibera’s population. Except Ngeta. He knows everyone. He knows that there are 822, 328 people in the bordering villages. He would know, constantly bringing them good wishes, sincere hellos, and parcels of distraction. Cause enough for hope. Shaking dreams from his bones he dresses. A hooded sweatshirt, grey and black cap, jeans, and durable shoes. 320KSH in his pocket, he sets out for the day. Grizzly, he hasn’t shaved in a week. He never brings a pen but always needs one. On his left hand around his ring finger prides his luster-free wedding band. Rested upon his melon belly, his hands are clasped with a disarming confidence, raised only to greet. Walking to his workshop ought to take 15 minutes but takes 40. Humming with the blaring reggae from the aging radio in the barber shop, Ngeta takes the time to greet each person as he passes them, “Habari Mami” he coos at the woman frying mandazi, “Niaje Mdos” he defers to the elder fundi, “Sasa!” he intonates at the bundled baby. It is cold, but without asking he knows what his neighbors need, naughty or nice, stopping to show you care, a smile and a greeting warm the soul.
Monday, July 3, 2006
Can't you see that it's just raining, Jack Johnson croons, there ain't not need to go outside. Solitaire bores me and his word-drawn pictures of infatuation take my mind to women past, the gap between love and the idea of love, and the drought in my love life. Drought in my sex life. It hasn't rained in a while.
Clicking and tapping, the sounds of the keyboard and rain on the window sing the harmony meant to accompany the song and my interior monologue. I feel sorry for myself, lonely, and wanting. It is companionship I lack. I want someone to reassure me, not to ask but know what's bothering me, beauty like a Marquez sentence, a reason not to go outside. Like the weather, these thoughts are always present and always changing, sunny and hopeful some days, cloudy and melancholy others. Today my mood is grey, waxing pathetic in step with the guitar rhythm. It seems natural. I have come to expect these bouts of loneliness. I've not grown taller in a couple of years but these tempestuous horizons seem right, post-pubescent growing pains of a 21-year-old in a foreign land, unsure of who to trust, what to believe, wishing there was an easy answer, someone to console him in a primal way, quelling the anxiety that constantly spreads with the mechanical regularity of his beating heart.
All this from the rain.
More than anything, the sad rain pines on about the importance of detail. Perfect companionship that flourishes on the details of the counterpart. Partners who complement, make happy, communicate with their eyes, know through their touch, trigger inside jokes with random words, love through living. Indeed, it is the small things. Small things that I think I miss because of the mood I summon from the rain highlight the screaming disconnect between my reactions and realities, a gaping hole between my fairytale life and truth in front of me. My reactions to small things are the most obvious indicators of ignorance. Large signs, Welcome to Nairobi, seeing poverty, hearing Kiswahili, speaking with Kenyans, tell me I am in Kenya but the small things tell me that I am in a real place, a different place, a country, city and slum that is not an entry in the Lonely Planet or coordinate location on a map but a contrasting reality. Something as massive and amorphous as poverty, a slum of ~1 million, are thoughts that loom larger than logic. Palpable yes, different certainly, harrowing and unforgettable but easily ignored because poverty is so impersonal, too massive, untouchable, entirely unfounded within most Westerner's database of reactions. So it is the small things that make it real. Contrasting reactions to the exact same things allow me to understand that I really don't understand. Poverty is too big, but I know what reactions are triggered by rain and a grey day. Prompted by the small things, my reactions are telling of the extent to which my mind is simply conditioned differently. It rains and I pine while tomorrow the mud paths will be impassable. Sex-life; companionship; these romantic notions of what life ought to be are in and of themselves different realities in my mind than they are for most Kenyans. Moreover, the rain, a natural event, a small thing, a common occurrence worldwide, means something so different to me in my head than it does in life here.
Sheets now. A crowd gathers below the canopy at the entrance to our compound. Miles, not just a window, gate, electrical fence, guard dog, are wedged between me and the people I see reaching for umbrellas, jogging for shelter, covering new hair dos. Running for shelter, rushing to get home, stay dry, stay clean, stay warm, most of the people I look down on don't look so different from a crowd in midtown when the skies open. But, chances are their reactions are different. Frolicking in the rain is only fun when you know you can warm up afterwards. It is even more fun when warming up is an assumption. A warm shower, a dry home, a cup of tea made with clean water, inviting clothing. People in Kibera don’t chase rainbows.
What does the rain mean to you if you live in a structure made of mud, don’t have running water, an extra pair of shoes, or paved road to your house. What does the rain mean to you if you can't open your business, or your child will get sick? What does the rain mean if it is your drinking water?
I don’t know. It is probably not a prompt to feel pathetic in the confines of your warm home. I don’t know. That is the whole point. The small things point out: I have no idea.
Clicking and tapping, the sounds of the keyboard and rain on the window sing the harmony meant to accompany the song and my interior monologue. I feel sorry for myself, lonely, and wanting. It is companionship I lack. I want someone to reassure me, not to ask but know what's bothering me, beauty like a Marquez sentence, a reason not to go outside. Like the weather, these thoughts are always present and always changing, sunny and hopeful some days, cloudy and melancholy others. Today my mood is grey, waxing pathetic in step with the guitar rhythm. It seems natural. I have come to expect these bouts of loneliness. I've not grown taller in a couple of years but these tempestuous horizons seem right, post-pubescent growing pains of a 21-year-old in a foreign land, unsure of who to trust, what to believe, wishing there was an easy answer, someone to console him in a primal way, quelling the anxiety that constantly spreads with the mechanical regularity of his beating heart.
All this from the rain.
More than anything, the sad rain pines on about the importance of detail. Perfect companionship that flourishes on the details of the counterpart. Partners who complement, make happy, communicate with their eyes, know through their touch, trigger inside jokes with random words, love through living. Indeed, it is the small things. Small things that I think I miss because of the mood I summon from the rain highlight the screaming disconnect between my reactions and realities, a gaping hole between my fairytale life and truth in front of me. My reactions to small things are the most obvious indicators of ignorance. Large signs, Welcome to Nairobi, seeing poverty, hearing Kiswahili, speaking with Kenyans, tell me I am in Kenya but the small things tell me that I am in a real place, a different place, a country, city and slum that is not an entry in the Lonely Planet or coordinate location on a map but a contrasting reality. Something as massive and amorphous as poverty, a slum of ~1 million, are thoughts that loom larger than logic. Palpable yes, different certainly, harrowing and unforgettable but easily ignored because poverty is so impersonal, too massive, untouchable, entirely unfounded within most Westerner's database of reactions. So it is the small things that make it real. Contrasting reactions to the exact same things allow me to understand that I really don't understand. Poverty is too big, but I know what reactions are triggered by rain and a grey day. Prompted by the small things, my reactions are telling of the extent to which my mind is simply conditioned differently. It rains and I pine while tomorrow the mud paths will be impassable. Sex-life; companionship; these romantic notions of what life ought to be are in and of themselves different realities in my mind than they are for most Kenyans. Moreover, the rain, a natural event, a small thing, a common occurrence worldwide, means something so different to me in my head than it does in life here.
Sheets now. A crowd gathers below the canopy at the entrance to our compound. Miles, not just a window, gate, electrical fence, guard dog, are wedged between me and the people I see reaching for umbrellas, jogging for shelter, covering new hair dos. Running for shelter, rushing to get home, stay dry, stay clean, stay warm, most of the people I look down on don't look so different from a crowd in midtown when the skies open. But, chances are their reactions are different. Frolicking in the rain is only fun when you know you can warm up afterwards. It is even more fun when warming up is an assumption. A warm shower, a dry home, a cup of tea made with clean water, inviting clothing. People in Kibera don’t chase rainbows.
What does the rain mean to you if you live in a structure made of mud, don’t have running water, an extra pair of shoes, or paved road to your house. What does the rain mean to you if you can't open your business, or your child will get sick? What does the rain mean if it is your drinking water?
I don’t know. It is probably not a prompt to feel pathetic in the confines of your warm home. I don’t know. That is the whole point. The small things point out: I have no idea.
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