Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Africa, Health, Inequality, Life, Mombasa, Poverty, Sickness
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” — Albert Einstein
I am sorry.
There is nothing clever or amusing about this post. It is not particularly well-written either. If anything, it rambles through inanities, towards a self-serving, self-righteous semi-conclusion that probably will not make you feel very good. If anything, you may feel emptier. In all likelihood, you won’t feel anything at all. Just so you know.
On our first weekend on project, with time already draining rapidly away, my fellow volunteers and I decided to shake off the dust of the city, and take a few days away. We headed to a nearby beach called “Tiwi,” with intentions of sitting in the sun and swimming in the sea, while developing a plan for our time in Mombassa, and bonding a little as a group. For the first day and a half, everything was brilliant. The resort, called “Twiga Lodge” was simple, but comfortable and secluded, and we were laughing among the waves, sipping fresh coconuts, in no time. Personally, I had been having a difficult time setting my attitude on an even keel. A frantic month in Toronto, an intense sickness on arrival in Africa and the day-to-day challenges of life in a city like Mombassa, had me struggling to remain positive.
As always, I found my hero in the sea. Floating in the heat of the day, and wading in the cool of sunset, I re-connected with the energy of being and of being alive, and in it, re-discovered my inner calm. All things go.
On Saturday night, after a great day of reading and relaxing, we took off to a nearby tourist town called Diani Beach, thinking it high time we got silly drunk, and danced like fools. With disco time still a couple hours away, and feeling the chilling vibes around me, I grabbed a big cushioned couch by the ocean, and fell asleep in preparation for the night ahead. When I woke up 30 minutes later, life was not quite so rosy. I puked myself empty at the bar, but felt pretty good, so concluded that I had simply eaten something unfortunate. Still, I figured my night was over, so headed back to our ‘resort’ to get some sleep. I puked when I got back, slowly drank half a liter of water, and went to bed. The next couple hours were a constant cycle of drink-puke-drink-puke-drink-sleep-puke, as I fought, and failed, to hydrate myself. All well and good, except around 1:00am, it started coming out the other end like an open faucet. At 3:00am, dehydration started to kick in, and I found I couldn’t stand up straight anymore, and was having trouble concentrating. I’ve had my share of tropical diseases over the past two years, but as liters of water poured out me, and I couldn’t get any to stay in for more than five minutes, I became afraid for my life for the first time.
Good time to have a nurse for a roommate! She gave me a Gravol, and told me to stop trying to drink and just get to sleep, so I did, and that was nice. I woke up feeling a whole lot better, and managed to eat a little breakfast, and to get some liquid to stay down for an hour or so. T’wasn’t meant to be, however, as after an hour or so, the clouds came back in, and my ‘I will maybe head to the hospital later this afternoon’ turned into ‘I am leaving right now for the closest hospital I can get to.’
That hospital, as it happened, was the Diani Beach Hospital. As soon as I arrived, the nurse took my temperature three times to make sure she had it correct (all the symptoms of malaria, but no fever), and I was talking to a friendly Indian doctor within 15 minutes. He took one listen to my stomach and said “oh my, there is a war going on in there, you have a severe intestinal infection and we need to treat you right now.”
The friendly and courteous staff soon whisked me down the spotless hallway to my own private room, where two nurses and an orderly greeted me, and set about taking care of my every need, while I had a fight with my cell-phone, trying to contact my insurance company to make sure they would cover all this. The next day and a half disappeared as I lay in my comfortable bed, with a digital air conditioner blowing down on me, eating delicious meals and watching DVD’s and satellite TV on my flat screen TV. All the while, I was visited every hour by staff checking my health and my comfort level to ensure that I was healing to the best of my ability. So it came to pass that, after my first two nights of hospitalization since my birth, I stepped out the doors of the hospital happy, healthy and eager to get back to work. So it came to pass.
While in Kenya, we have been placed in home-stays, living and eating with local families. Our family is made up of Mr. and Mrs. Kalou, and a rotating contingent of their sons and nephews, aged 16-26 or so. Today (Nov 26), Mrs. Kalou’s sister passed away after a long battle with illness, leaving two teenaged children and a vast extended family behind to mourn her. This sister had spent many months battling a mystery illness in her chest, which the doctors failed to diagnose. There was speculation of T.B., but the basic tests came back negative. A few days ago, they performed a chest x-ray, and found that one of her lungs was virtually non-existent, eaten away by what appeared to be cancer. That was never confirmed, as this afternoon her oxygen ran out, and while a family member was rushing to a nearby private hospital to buy some more, she died. After six-months of hospitalization, fighting a sickness in her chest, she finally received a chest x-ray. There is some outrage among the family, but it is overshadowed by resignation. “This is what happens,” they sigh “at the public hospital.” So it came to pass.
Two people got sick. Two people went to the hospital. One had to fight to get a moment of peace. One had to fight to get any attention at all. One spent the day today smiling and laughing, supporting local youth as they worked to strengthen their country. One spent the final moments of their life choking and fighting to breathe. Two lives full of family and friends, hope and desire, love and pain.
One life now.
Only one, because one was born in a country where the people are white and one was born in a country where the people are black. Love and pain. Hope and desire. Family and friends. Life and death.
This is human life – the gift of a moment; of awareness and thought and feeling. Human life for you and for me. So goes human life – for some and not for others.
My doctor told me that my infection was severe, and that without treatment, things would have been very bad. I remember standing in my hospital room, after I got bored of watching BBC World News’ ceaseless repetition. I was looking out my window, past the flowers on my balcony, and the high, barbed-wire fence beyond, at a dusty little back-road, where African life marched ever-onward. I remember thinking myself a stranger in this land, yet receiving a level of treatment far surpassing that available to those faces walking by, carrying on with smiles and grimaces and distant, vacant stares. They were oblivious to me and all that I am, as I sat there in a paradise of health, mere feet from their world of laughter and toil and doubt.
I wondered if they knew how life could be lived in their land, if one were so blessed as to be born with money. I wondered how it felt to live perpetually in a darkness of uncertainty, with little hope of dawn, while on all sides one inescapably lay witness to the rich and the bored as they indulged and indulged and indulged. I wondered how it felt to sleep with an empty stomach or to watch a loved one die, and know that the world really just didn’t give a shit? I wondered about this word, “inequality,” and what it felt like to live on the losing end. I stood, high in my ivory tower, after a hot fresh shower, wearing a clean, pressed gown, with 21 C air blowing gently down, comforting my weakest hour. I stood, looking down through tinted glass, on our world’s lowest class, thinking indulgent, abstract, privileged thoughts, wondering how it was to be of the ‘have-nots.’
The average Kenyan lives on approximately $680 USD/year.
Approximately 60% of Kenyans live on less than $1.00/day.
My hospital bill for two days was approximately $1,500 USD.
What of numbers?
The truth is that I am alive, while every minute or so, a shadow is cast over the lives of a family of simple Kenyans, with hopes and dreams, by the entirely preventable death of a loved one. By “preventable” I mean to say that they would be alive if they had enough money, or if anyone in the world cared enough about their life to save them. The truth is that nobody in the world cares about them, except other poor people. Parents lose children. Children lose parents. Of every 1000 children born, 120 of them won’t see their fifth birthday. The road goes ever on and on.
Here’s a fun fact: Every major ICU in Canada has between 5 and 10 people living in it without functioning livers or kidneys. These people will never leave their ICU beds, yet we the taxpayers keep them alive at a cost of $10,000/person/day. We do this, I assume, because we as Canadians believe that all human lives are important, and should be protected whenever possible. We do this, I assume, to protect the emotions of their families, who just can’t seem to face the raw, absolute truth that everyone must someday die. A low end estimate puts the cost of keeping this handful of “refusing-to-face-reality” people, and their “refusing-to-face-reality” families in peaceful, vegetative oblivion, at about half a billion dollars a year. It’s probably twice that. I would encourage you to take a moment to consider how many actual lives could actually be saved for half a billion dollars.
What does it mean to be Canadian?
What does it mean to be a human being?
Which comes first?
What will become of all those parentless children? Who will provide them with shelter and food and clothing? Who will take them to the hospital when they are sick? Who will pay for their education? Who will provide role-models, and support their ambitions? Family members can help, but as more as more and more weight is placed on fewer and fewer shoulders, a brighter tomorrow is pushed aside by a burden today. Look into Africa’s future, and what do you see? Look into Africa’s future, and what do you see? Look into Africa’s future, and what do you see? All animals on Animal Farm are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
I am sorry. There is nothing clever or amusing about this post. It is not particularly well-written either. If anything, it rambles through inanities, towards a self-serving, self-righteous semi-conclusion that probably will not make you feel very good. If anything, you may feel emptier. In all likelihood, you won’t feel anything at all. Just so you know.
Peace and love.
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Africa, Chaos, Heat, Malaria, Mombassa, Mosquitoes, Persistence, Sweat
Today is the 20th day of November, 2009. It is 8:01pm, and outside my window, the words of Allah, as written by the Prophet [peace be upon him], are ringing forth from a crackly loudspeaker over the homes and businesses of the bustling Mombassa suburb of Bamburi. Sung with divine passion by a young, high-pitched voice, the sacred words are joined beautifully in chorus by countless other points of sound; voices of equal passion, deep and strong, near and far. In this, the land of Swahili, none can claim that God is not loved, feared and respected.
I am hiding, now, under a royal blue mosquito net, hunkered down in defense against creatures less than 1/1000th my size. These little bastards kill millions of the world’s poorest people, and try though I might, it a rare day that I manage to protect my life-blood from their unquenchable thirst. There are hundreds of varieties of mosquitoes in Mombassa, though in only a few does malaria make its home. With each bite that I scratch, I wonder if 5-10 days from now, the life will rapidly begin to drain from my body as my vital organs collapse under the weight of a tiny, suckling bite. I wonder, but do little except hide under my royal blue mosquito net, tucked-in 360 degrees around me, and try my best not to think about the terrible sickness wrought in the dead of night by those that prey on human flesh. They attack the net in swarms, heard but not seen, dozens of high-pitched buzzings in the darkness. They attack the net methodically, up and down and up and down, searching for a weak-spot, searching for a way inside. I hear them in my dreams, and try my best not to shift in my sleep, as they will bite through the net if it touches my skin. When I wake, there are 6 inside the net, bellies swollen with my blood. I have no idea how they got inside, and I am forced daily to tackle great moral questions about the sanctity of life. With a blood thirst of my own, I go hunting for revenge, my own redness streaking my hands as I destroy the lives of those who would use me for food. They are trapped inside my net, and have nowhere to run. My hands are fast, and my clench is strong. So much for the sanctity of life. God, I don’t want malaria again.
I am writing these words on a laptop computer provided by Y.C.I. The written word is my sanctuary, and in it I find a deep peace and personal wholeness. This is the first time since my arrival in Mombassa, 10 days ago, that I have been able to partake in this most sacred of personal indulgences. Five minutes ago, the laptop battery flashed critical, and I was forced to make an impossible choice: computer or fan. Humanity should not have to face such decisions. Already, individual beads of sweat have banded together on my forehead, and begun the treacherous journey down my face, neck and chest. Gathering reinforcements at every turn, my shirt is starting to soak through, front and back, as the land of eternal sweat re-claims the territory granted temporary reprieve under the life-giving breath of the now-idle fan. I sleep like a hot-dog, turning constantly, fan-drying one side of my body, and then the other. Still, the fan can never touch where body touches bed-sheet, and in minutes, an inescapable cold and wet outline of my body is dripped into the sheet and foam mattress below. Curled in a ball trying not to touch the net in a not-quite-big-enough-bed, lying in cold pool of my own sweat, sleep never comes easy. Still, I can’t complain, because at least I have the fan … except when the power goes out, which it does, on and off and on and off and on and off, every day or two. Did I mention that I love it here?
Though I sweat constantly, all day, it is really only an annoyance at sleeping and waking. Waking at 5:00am to the competing sounds of the morning call-to-prayer bellowing out of Mombassa’s hundreds of Mosques, the crowing of dozens of random, neighborhood roosters and crows, and the first honks of the soon-to-be-unbroken stream of car-horns, is not so bad. Waking up at 5:00, shivering in 30 C heat, sticky with two day’s grime and sweat and the dirt of an African city coating my body is much less enjoyable. I consider waking, and taking a semi-cold shower out of a bucket of semi-clean water, but decide that rolling over and trying to sleep some more is a better idea. Sometimes it even works. After a simple breakfast of milk-tea and bread with Blue-Band, an un-refrigerated margarine-like topping, my roommate and I depart with friendly greetings to and from our host family.
“Hah-bar-ee Zah Ass-who-boo-ee?” – How is the morning?
“N-zoo-ree Sah-nah!” – Very fine!
It is only 100 dusty, uneven meters from the front gate of our home to a main road, but even in so short a distance, African life is in immediate full-color and full-effect. Rare is morning that, while side-stepping random puddles of ‘water’ (it hasn’t rained in a week) and piles of burned, semi-burned or unburned garbage, one isn’t confronted by bands of uniformed school-children, smiling, waving and shouting “Moo-Zun-Guh! [White person!] How ahh you?” Women dressed in full, flowing burkahs, grazing goats and impressively muscular young men pushing huge carts of 20 liter water jugs are not quite so certain, but certainly not unexpected here, or anywhere in Kenya’s second largest city.
Stepping up to the road is like stepping into an ant-hill, as a never-ending stream of Mutatu’s (14-passenger mini-busses that represent the primary mode of urban and inter-urban-transport throughout East Africa and beyond) jostle aggressively for space, and customers, at high-speed, on and off the road. They are joined, on and off the road, by all manner, of cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles, Tuk-Tuks (3-wheel, 3 passenger golf-cart-taxis), livestock and pedestrians, in varying states of disrepair, all in a desperate quest to get there first … wherever that is. The only real ‘road-rule’ seems to be “don’t hit anybody, unless absolutely necessary,” which seems to work surprisingly well, as a natural, peaceful order emerges organically from the chaos.
Mutatu drivers take great pride in decorating their vehicles, so on any given day one may find themselves stuck in a traffic jam in:
- a “Thug-Life” mobile, where U.S. gang-land jargon and images of hip-hop superstars and Hollywood gangsters fight for space on every available surface, inside and out, while Celine Dion blares at maximum volume from the stereo, or
- a “Celtics-mobile,” where basketball posters cover the inner roof, multi-colored, flashing LED light bars line the interior and exterior, and African beats blare at maximum volume, or maybe in
- a “Christ-mobile,” where the padded roof and seats are covered in Bible Verses, while the stereo blares Gangster Rap at maximum volume.
Every journey is a new adventure, and it is only when the vehicle screeches to a halt inches away, horn blaring, with the conductor hanging out the side door babbling “BAMBURIBAMBURIBAMBURIBAMBURI!!!!!!” at the top of his lungs, that one knows which of these vessels of insanity he will be risking his life in over the next 15 or so minutes. Oh, and they will get you just about anywhere for $0.10-$0.50, though prices vary depending on the color of your skin, and it’s not uncommon for the conductors to rob their passengers.
I imagine a lot of this sounds negative and critical, but really it shouldn’t. To deny the challenges of Africa would be to deny reality, and to say that one needs patience and a sense-of-humor to remain sane here, having grown up in a place like Canada, is a profound understatement. Meetings scheduled for 10:00 start at 10:45, many-times each day one must confront all manner of slimy con-men and heart-breaking beggars trying to take their money and to say the hygiene of the food and water is questionable is … well … questionable. On my daily commute, from Baburi to Mombassa-town, I pass three large, urban dump sites, tucked among the houses and shops, where the city’s poorest race against herds of roaming cattle to find precious food scraps among the plastic bags and the stench. But under all the chaos is the beating heart of an incredible city, on an incredible continent. And for every swindler and thief, there are hundreds of honest men and women, with smiles always at the ready, who stare daily in the face of oppressive uncertainty, yet soldier on with inspiring fortitude and positivity. Streets are lined, sometimes 2 or 3 deep, by all manner of small businesses. Daily they struggle to eek out the most basic survival and maybe, just maybe, to move towards a brighter future for their families. They sell 15 small, delicious green oranges for a dollar, or cold Coca-Cola in 300ml glass bottles for $0.30, or hand-made furniture, or used-clothes, or fresh-roasted goat, or Miraa, or recycled tires, or belt-buckles, or anything (and everything) else that they can. Through heat, and sickness, and poverty, with few realistic glimmers of hope on the horizon, they work and they sweat and they laugh. They are what is best about humanity: peaceful, simple, persistent, loving, hospitable, kind. With a depth that can only possibly come to being in the face of an uncertain tomorrow, they are alive.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge
Life’s greatest teachers arise in the most unexpected of places.
The battery is fully charged now. On goes the fan. All praise be to Allah, who is oft forgiving, and most merciful! I love this place!
Peace and love!
so apparently i have a blog …
there is much to update you on re: my life over the past 10+ months … but i don’t have time to bother with all that nonsense … so you are just going to have to settle for opening the book at chapter 8, and trust that the crucial details will make themselves obvious …
i am sitting in “Acro Cyber Cafe” … in “Adam’s Arcade” … just off Ngong Road in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa … i am absolutely certain as to why I am in all of these places, except for “Nairobi,” “Kenya” and “Africa” … which has be a little dumbfounded … i have tried shaking myself awake, and even had a go at the old “pinch the cheek” approach, before resorting to the “back and forth face slap” … none of which resulted in me NOT being in Nairobi, Kenya … so i must conclude that I am in fact there … though i have not the slightest idea how that happened …
long distance travel has rapidly become one of my favorite activities … it’s bloody miserable, don’t get me wrong … but that sort of delerium that sets in when you completely lose touch with what day and time it is … or when you were last asleep … or even if you were last asleep … and whether that last thing you ate was breakfast or supper or some kind of crazy 3:00am meal that they only serve on airplanes … is a bit of a mind f**k, and i am such a big fan of mind f**k’s, that if they started a band and went on tour, i would give up my life, buy a grateful dead t-shirt, and become their star roadie …
had an 8 hour stopover in amsterdam, so went out to check out the city for a few hours … that was fun … i think …
i arrived in Nairobi at something like 7:00am, greeted by the smiling face of an old friend …
Top 5 best sights in the world:
1. smiling faces of old friends
2. i am too lazy to finish this list
Kimutai is an amazing fellow, who, after giving me food and a place to sleep off the jet lag, promptly took me out for about 6 liters of beer and a kilogram of roasted meat … we sat in a small little cafe of sorts for quite a lot of hours … laughing and all that wonderful stuff … this cafe was no different than any of the thousands that litter the streets of Africa’s cities, with white, plastic lawn chairs … western r+b and african “country” music blaring … and bathrooms that can only be appropriately defined as ‘damp’ …quite nice really …
in the hours i sat there, i was fortunate to meet a handful of very cool Kenyans … there was Allistair … who studied computer science at the U of A, and now ran his own company … there was a girl … who studied medicine at John’s Hopkins, and was now studying Law at the Univerisity of Nairobi … there was Theuri … who attended university in upstate New York, and received a fellowship to research community health at U of C San Francisco … and finally, there was NgaNga … who studied something I have forgotten at the University of Leeds …we had some great conversations, them and I … about peace and life and ideas …
it’s funny, you know … i have spent my share of time with “development” types … i am speaking of white westerners with big hearts who want to ’save africa’ … they are wonderful people … truly, and i admire so much of what so many of them do … but still, we are racist … so terribly, terribly racist, and to escape the mindset that says “we know better, so let’s help fix them” is a near impossibility …
because really … we don’t know better … and we need to stop trying to fix them …of course, we can help them … because that is how a person should behave towards a brother or a sister in need … we should help them in every way we can … but there is a line between “empowering” and “directing” that, from what i can tell, virtually every western NGO seems to misunderstand … i called it racism earlier, and this is exactly what i think it is … of course, none of these people would openly admit to racism … they are, afterall, the very people who dedicate their lives to helping people of different races … but when one approaches another culture with the point of view that “i know better, and this is what you need to do to be better” … can it be called anything else ??? … the tragedy is that even organizations like Youth Challenge International, with whom i will be working for the next month … who put such a profound emphasis on ‘developing partnerships with local organizations’ … still must abide by a set of government imposed guidelines that say ‘if you want our money, these are the things you need to do’ …
and not only do they need to do them, but they need to be able to provide evidence that they have successfully created some outcome in the communities in which they are working … outcomes, as far as i can tell, can be defined as “changing them to be more like us” … which doesn’t sound racist to me at all …
it’s tragic really, because when you meet people like those bio’d above … and hear their stories and thoughts and ideas … you know deeply that the future of this continent is in the hands of an increasingly intelligent and talented group of young adults … i can only imagine what kind of incredible, uniquely african, world these people could create, if only they weren’t forced to work within a framework that is, in every possible way … not their own … i can only imagine what Africa could become if, for once, white people would get over themselves …
for my part, i plan to f**k s**t up as much as possible over the next month … seizing every possible opportunity to be a pain in the ass by not doing anything that can be better done by locals …
oh, one last thing before i go … having consumed 6 literes of beer … i promptly fell into an enormously gratifying slumber … for about an hour … before spending the remainder of the night in a feverish, shivering sweat … with a pounding head and stiff limbs … and vomiting my stomach dry so many times that i was a little worried about death by dehydration …
welcome to nairobi !!
