how does it feel … to be without a home … a complete unknown … like a rolling stone ???

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 !!