Kenyan Journal #5: Kuna Au Hakuna Hapa

Habari ya hali ya hewa? (How's the weather?, lit. News of the state of the air?)

In Wundanyi the rains have begun. On Saturday evening thunder clouds rolled in, and the first rain since I arrived became a downpour. The power went out and stayed out until noon on Sunday, and has continued to be tenuous ever since. The phone lines have become very noisy, which is interrupting our email connection frequently enough that I'm not sure when you'll receive this. It has rained every day since Saturday, usually a downpour in the late afternoon.

On the radio the BBC is covering the war in Iraq non-stop, the French and German stations are covering protests against the war non-stop, and I'm not even listening to Voice of America. Mary-Lou and Barbara, I miss you.

I've had a lot of emails asking me what Kenyans think of the war, but the answer isn't that interesting. They feel pretty much the way most of the world, including Canada, feels. They don't like Bush, they don't like Hussein, they don't think the war is justified and they are worried about the Iraqi people and the economy.

But on to the main topic. Most of you are probably wondering what exactly the main topic is. In Kiswahili "ku" is the infinitive prefix of a verb, in other words it's the English word "to". "Na" is the verb "be" and "ha" is an impersonal negation. So hakuna matata means "there are no worries", and kuna au hakuna means "To be or not to be". Hapa means "here".

So far my journals have been about the practicalities of everyday life and some of the more interesting events since leaving Canada. But after a month and a half of letting Kenya percolate, I've finally got something to say about the people around me and about the very fact that I'm here.

The idea of the developing world, particularly with the implications that calling it that way carry, has been on my mind for a few years now. I've asked myself many times what are the appropriate things to do to help the developing world. I've asked myself what my role should be, and how developed world lifestyles, politics and economics are affecting the developing world. Recently it dawned on me that in all these questions, I'd never asked myself why there is a development gap in the first place. But being here, it just popped into my head: "These people are smart, they're hard-working, they have natural resources, they have access to the ocean for transportation, and every thing else that Europeans had access to. So why did Europe become the developed world, while just across the Mediterranean people are still dying of malaria, cooking over coal stoves, and fetching their water in buckets from the stream?" Why didn't Britain become a colony of Kenya's instead of the other way around?

If I had asked myself that question before coming here, I probably would have tritely said imperialism or maybe technology. But that doesn't provide a deep enough answer. Why was Europe more technologically advanced? It went through a Dark Age during which knowledge from the earlier intellectuals was preserved almost entirely by the Arabs, who traded throughout the Indian Ocean, including in Kenya. Gunpowder might be another easy answer, but the Chinese, who traded with the Arabs, had that long before the Europeans. And where did the world-wide imperialism of Europe come from? You don't have to read much African history to realise that the the lust for conquest isn't only a European trait. Shaka of the Zulus is perhaps the most famous example, but there are many other tribes with strong warrior and conqueror traditions, like Kenya's Maasai.

So what made the difference? I don't have any concrete ideas, but the question is a lot more complex than a first glance suggests and it seems to have ramifications for the choices that I (and both worlds) make today.

That's actually the conclusion of a long train of confusion, the percolation of which has me even more puzzled. Describing Canada to Kenyans has been tricky. Do I tell them how much better the standard of living is? How much richer we are? How do I explain that my salary makes me rich in Kenya but poor in Canada? Do I tell them that Canadians spend 600 KSh on a movie (for comparison, that's 240 medium sized tomatoes)?

But it goes beyond money and wealth. When I explain that we too were a British colony, do I add that we were given our indepence without having to fight for it? And almost a hundred years before Kenya? When I talk about how multi-cultural Canada is, do I point out that one reason Kenya has comparatively fewer people with university degrees is that Canada's immigration policy favours a Kenyan brain drain?

Yet when I step back from my thoughts and re-enter Wundanyi, I find that people here are happy, and so am I. And is it my place to bring my view of what the standard of living should be to their attention? Yes, it's true that life-expectancy is higher in Canada, but we still die. And yes, we make more money and are better-educated, but we have higher rates of mental illness and even the mentally healthy don't seem any happier than Kenyans.

But from that peak of optimism, the roller coaster must go downhill. Every morning on my way to work I pass a girl who can't be more than fourteen. She sells clothes from her stall, which only has about twenty items, compared to the hundreds at other stalls. She never seems to have any customers, but just sits, or once in a while brings some knitting. I've never seen her reading, and wonder whether she can.

As I passed her on the first few days my thoughts were a mix of guilt and wanting to help. I don't want to be the fish giver, but maybe a book? My second thought was "what kind of program should be available to help her?" Is there an NGO that will teach her to fish for herself?

But every day I don't just walk past her. I also walk past twenty richer clothing stalls, a small electric grain mill, a medium sized bakery and a huge brand new hardware store. And while she may not be able to read and some of the fruit sellers in the market can't make change (often to their own detriment), Wundanyi has its share of university graduates, and even a few people with advanced degrees. And now I wonder, instead of paying out millions in aid, instead of greasing the palms of the dictators before bombing them, maybe the solutions are already here.

And then there's yet another reality check: Wundanyi is in one of the more prosperous areas of rural Kenya, a country that is one of the most prosperous and stable in Africa. Whatever conclusions I may eventually come to based on life here may not be applicable to other parts of the continent, or even the country. Especially if they are based on the local prosperity.

And while I'm questioning the right course of action, I come up against another question "What about culture?" After all, the sensitive thing to do is to preserve the local culture, and not westernise. Well, that's a dream. I teach forty five students each week, and the language, the teaching methods and the software we use are all Western.

It's pretty funny to watch a class of black students putting together a presentation using clip art pictures of white people. The orangey-pink colour used for skin tone seemed like a reasonable approximation to me before, but now seem as far from real skin as neon pink.

The clash between my values and reality had me wondering whether I was even doing the right thing by being here. After a few weeks of incubation another idea occured to me. Instead of re-examining the reality, maybe I should re-examine the values.

I was reminded of watching a teleconference between high school students in Ottawa and Singapore during the summer of '98. The theme was The Global Village and the Canadian students were excited by the incredible opportunity the Global VIllage provided to expand multi-culturalism and all its benefits.

The Singaporeans were much more cautious. They were worried about cultural erosion and media dominance. In the debriefing after the conference, the teacher asked the students what they had learned about the difference between how Canadians saw the Global Village and how the Singaporeans did. One student put the point very concretely "They know all about our media, but you don't see any Singapore media here." Students in Ottawa were understanding the students across the river in Hull better by talking to students half a world away.

Back in present-day Kenya, I started examining what culture is and what cultural change means. The first point that came bubbling up is that cultural change is inevitable. As obvious as that idea seems, it's a direct contradiction of the seemingly equally obvious idea of cultural preservation.

The second point that surfaced is that the culture here isn't exactly Kenyan, at least not in the sense that it all originated in Kenya. For instance, the method of rote-learning that I'm beating my head against daily is a British institution, the same one that my Mom went through during her childhood in Trinidad. Does the fact that it's here make it worth preserving? Not in my books. Another example is the Kiswahili word "Salama". Yep, it means "peaceful" and it's another legacy of the Arab traders who docked in Mombasa. Or a couple examples that will hit close to home for French Immersion grads: when a Kenyan says fiti, bali or cheki she means "fit", "ball" or "check". Can't say that I feel strongly about the value of preserving those. What about other imported cultural traditions? Do they deserve the same efforts at preservation as "native" cultural traditions? And how far back will we draw the line that let's us tell the difference?

The third point is that much of the cultural change within western culture is seen, by most of western culture at least, as positive. The equality movements of recent decades are a major cultural shift that I think are very positive. I'd put the environmental movement in the same category. A bit farther back in history, western political culture shifted from monarchical to democratic, yet another major cultural change that I support. There are cultural changes that I'd rather have done without, but I can't categorise all, or even most, cultural change that way.

So if cultural change can be such a positive force, why is cultural preservation The Right Thing To Do? I'm talking about moderately-paced voluntary change, not the forced kind. Yes, it's not a clear distinction but I do think that it exists.

I guess the first step towards solving this would be putting together a good argument for cultural preservation. And though I feel an emotional basis for that argument, I'm not making much headway on an intellectual one.

Chakula kwa wazo, (Food for thought)
Yaacov

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