In Kampala rain puddles and refuse pile up like wasted promises. It is a dusty sarcophagus of a city, its edges coated in burnt-red clay, as if something long abandoned were being carelessly unearthed. African cities like Kampala lack a vertical axis; they spread out horizontally into the bare hillsides, no building taller than ten stories. The buildings themselves are half Havanna and half downtown Fort Langley: Soviet-inspired Brutalism meets Pioneer Theme Park, with three decades of war layered on like a torn bandage. Indian cities are maybe uglier, definitely busier and smellier, but they have a manic dynamism Kampala and Nairobi lack. Indian cities are cancerous - they proliferate; turn away for a moment and they will wash over you, victorious. Kampala has jettisoned the illusion of forward movement. There is always more noise and more traffic and more people than yesterday, but it is largely movement without purpose, movement made to alleviate a long boredom, like shifting one's weight from foot to foot, endlessly. The artist Robert Smithson would have loved it here, an entire city dedicated to his pet project, entropy; proof that things must indeed run down, an antidote in crumbling concrete and abandoned engine block to the mirror-shined fetish that dominates Western cities: Eternal Progress Forever And Ever, Amen.
We eat at packed middle-class restaurants that remind me of the Ovaltine Cafe on East Hastings: cigarette stained ceiling, dark decaying wood, tepid tea sugared with wasted time. These are places where human vulnerability shifts to the forefront of the mind. Kampala in general is like that: one walks through its streets as if in the past, but without a sense of nostalgia. There is no yearning for an idealized history here, no frightened turning away from the future; it is rather that the future has simply not found fertile soil here. There is a yesterday and a now but no tomorrow. The city and its people seem stuck between an impossible to escape past and an equally impossible to envision future. The hope that is said to have infused the county a decade ago has gone, a memory rubbed to keep one warm on a moist evening.
Like most things in Africa, accommodation in Kampala falls between extremes: there are the pricey tourist enclaves set in idyllic (trellis of Begonia, neo-colonial brickwork) but stifling gated compounds in neighbourhoods similar to Vancouver's Shaughnessy; or there are the vast concrete and corrugated steel transport hotels lurking over the matatu stands and night markets downtown. Our hotel, the 'Sun City', would be a good place to bunker down in were one engaged in a month or two long urban guerrilla siege. This being Uganda, it was likely once used as such. Hotels like this provide complimentary filthy sandals to keep one's feet off the complimentary filthy floor.
Our room is painted the New Autumn Collection Colour of Leper Flesh, a daring blend of pasty greenish grey-brown augmented by highlights of grease stain, spittle and mould. Single bare bulb. Were I Kafka or Camus I would claim it a fitting place to hang oneself in. Above the bed someone has scrawled something in Aramaic, likely: "Allah will flay the infidel sinners." But we are married, so Allah permits us to sleep in peace. Dayna has grown delightfully fond of a Raid-like aerosol product; she sprays the room down and we listen for the squirmy plop-plop of dropping carapaces. Nope, no Buddhists here. We kill things - sometimes gleefully.
Down the lightless hall the hookers lounge chain-smoking on a musty collapsed sofa. Acid wash miniskirts, big hair, pink lipstick matching pink fingernails matching pink stilettos. They twitch and titter like garish flamingos, all show. Terminal boredom is a terrible affliction, perhaps one of the worst - and the Sun City hookers command a variety of exhausted boredom entirely their own.
A skinny guy with a head too big for his body, dressed in a baggy sports jersey and fake Nikes, is pulling a woman up the stairs. She is carrying one of her soiled pink high-heels, and the clumpy awkwardness of being dragged upstairs in one shoe is slowing her. The guy is impatient, wheezing and tugging alternately at her hand, arm, shoulder; she is doing a weird sideways wobble, trying both to hurry and not fall on her face. Neither speaks nor smiles; their faces are like two people nearly asleep in front of the television. The silence and absence of expression turn the slapstick absurdity of their movement into something wretched and surreal; and you've seen it all before but tonight you're thinking: "What art is worth this sadness? What line or image or object?"
The night market stretches for ten square blocks beneath us. A man below is screeching into a megaphone of such shitty quality that his words blur into one long prehensile moan of distortion. His tone suggests he is delivering a racist rant to a crowd of incensed bigots, but every now and then he slows for a moment and utters a solemn "Amen." Kampala has a large Roman Catholic population; the animists of the jungle found it a relatively small spiritual step to the mutilation and brimstone of Catholicism. A few buildings over a woman is singing from a balcony. Her voice is an unfulfilled desire, it undermines the screaming man's righteousness, softens it, and returns it to him with wings. Further off the unsurprising thud of bass issues from a nightclub opened illegally in an abandoned building. There is also a parade of drunken drums somewhere, epileptic, and the constant subterranean crash of traffic. Noise is a city like Kampala.
The front of the hotel is where transport trucks unload their wares to be sorted and sold to the market vendors. Gangs of sullen labourers sit idly for hours, then leap up to unload cargo: stacks of empty buckets, bags of shoes, rugs, cushions, boxes of unknown contents - all carried on their heads. When a truck arrives the sidewalk vanishes and we have to crawl over people and crates to reach the street. Heavy boxes are thrown at random from the roofs of trucks, and if one lands on you, tough shit. At night the entire place is converted into an open-air kitchen with bonfires of garbage to cook over. The labourers and drivers eat, smoke and gamble, served stewed goat and plantain on squares of discarded cardboard scavenged by street-kids. The men, satiated and drunk, punch at one another, or snatch greedily at the huddle of teetering pink-lipped hookers, urging them into alleys and truck-cabs. A drunk throws a harmlessly irritating arm around me and yells: "You Muzungo! Me black man! Me like you!". "Good!" I yell back, smiling, and we share a few intimate moments of the drunk man smothering/sober man escaping dance.
The naked baby is sitting plump-bottomed in the muck on the sidewalk, her outstretched hand no bigger than a pack of matches; you are nudged by someone in the crowd and forced to step directly over her, lifting your leg up and over precisely, as if to avoid trampling a lovely flower in a friend's garden, and you think: "I am stepping over a child." And when the thought fades you are grateful for a while, and then that fades, also.
Kampala spreads across seven hills. At night blackouts sweep through, entire neighbourhoods winking salaciously. The last step out of the hotel and onto the street isn't there. It's not broken - it isn't there, as if the builder suddenly ran out of concrete and said: "Fuck it. A two foot drop here is fine." But a two-foot drop is sometimes decidedly unfine, like when it's as dark as only an unelectrified African capital can be, when darkness takes on the symbolic tone and quality of something other than itself, when it reaches out and touches back, and you are stumbling hands-out, feelers-out, trying to remember where that seven-foot deep pit you noticed earlier is, because it would amuse the crowd of nearly invisible drivers, labourers and hookers if the muzungo fell into the pit and got all broke up. But instead you make it to the missing step and are hassled one last time in that uniquely African way: "I'm hassling you, yes, but I'm hassling you in such an insincere and disinterested manner because we both know that, ultimately, this is all your fault, and I am therefore absolutely entitled to hassle you, obligated even, and you cannot get uncomfortable or remotely frustrated with my hassling you, since of course this is your fault, and the only thing that can maybe change this is for you to give me something, anything, right now, which of course I shouldn't even have to ask for because I deserve it, it is owed. And besides, muzungo, the real issue is not the missing bottom step or the pit or the baby or even my hassling you, no, the real issue is what the fuck are you doing on the street of an African city after dark?!"
And walking up to your room past the shot-gun guard you begin thinking of warm cinnamon buns, sticky and sweet and as large as your hand.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Samburu Man
In Northern Kenya's Loroghi Hills the sky is a torpid white cauldron that stretches to world's edge, and it feels as if we and the spent land are suspended upside-down above this mass of torched emptiness, prey to an absurd and terrible inversion that will send us plummeting upward to scorch and boil. Walking, we come across an aged Samburu man standing forlorn in scrappy shrub a few feet off the trail. When he shifts his weight a vague, ambiguous greyness invades the space where his body once was, as if the land requires a few moments to replace the form of itself that has become absent.
He is as gaunt as drought foliage, skin a taught sheath through which one can read the famine inscription of bone, joint, cartilage. A precisely etched gallery of lines traces back from his eyes and mouth toward gently trembling stretched earlobes, awkward and sensual, a brief feminine intrusion of Baroque finery on an otherwise implacable shield of war. The absence of lower incisors marks his tribal affiliation, as does the garland of earth-toned beads he wears over a limp double-breasted dinner jacket and plaid dress-shirt he has tucked carefully into a skirt of scarlet and amber. He sighs into a five-foot length of flaking rebar, favouring his left foot, which is seeping and foul, swollen hard into a sandal of recycled tire rubber.
Or greeting: "Sopa Apame!" (Hello, Respected Father), fails to elicit the usual grin, and we falter. He swings a long arm Northward, expectantly, and murmurs faltering vowels to our guide. Samburu is a hill language that carries well on wind, lilting and hopeful, a rain shower on bleached mud. Later, we learn the man is searching for a lost goat, hobbling club-footed over the thirsty ruins of riverbeds, through Acacia groves where tufts of torn goat hair hang like offerings in the undergrowth, searching.
The Samburu are pastoralists: semi-nomadic herders of goat (and for the wealthy, cattle). Like many Kenyans they survive on a two-meal-a-day diet of ugali, a thick porridge of maize flour and water. Occasionally they will slaughter one of their herd to prevent starvation. Samburu are born hungry, grow into proud adulthood hungry, and die in familial hunger. What does it feel like, to fold yourself softly around your hunger every evening? Samburu dead are not buried (what a stupid waste of vital energy, to dig for a dead man), but are laid unadorned in bush a short distance from their village, to fed what passes in night
Two years now without the verdant rains. Patches of maize stutter new growth a few timid inches into seething air and fall back, brittle and exhausted. A middle-class Samburu man may have twenty goats. In drought he will slaughter one per month, which means he and his will starve in just under two years without enough rain to cultivate maize. A poor Samburu may have only a few goats; he and his will die much sooner. Life here is still like that; the rural mathematics of starvation are forever serene and inviolable: you cast filmy eyes skyward for assistance, and if it doesn't arrive the old equation settles around you, an impossibly dark rumour.
Or, perhaps, you are forced to enter the cash economy through the back door, by buying a sack of tasteless fortified wheat flour from the local vendor, who bought it from the money-licking politician, who had the foresight to commandeer the entire shipment when it was donated in goodwill for free distribution. But where to get the cash for that sack of flour? Well, you and your young son can beg and steal in the highway town a few miles away. You can sell your daughters, and finally your wife, to the oily long-fingered pimps who serve the jolly-drunk tourists, pretentious pink aid workers, ridiculous bureaucrats and businessmen with leaky smiles in Nairobi - a city like most in Africa, where those blessed with the blind luck of being born on a different continent, and those blessed with the fortitude necessary to tenderly cultivate their greed can co-mingle in fulfillment of appetites far more luxurious than the need for lumpy flour paste.
The club-footed Samburu man, limping regal in desperation, ceases speaking and leans back into the land. Respected Father -
is this all of you? your life now nothing
but a battered tin pot for me to fill
with the seasonal cadence of sufferings
I imagine upon you?
Shallow furrow of foot-path, saline earth crease,
brackish scum of lip, the myth of joy
and unbroken skin?
Is it all the long thirst, the long wait?
Respected father, will you find your skin-ribbed goat
bleating lone in bony hillside?
Will your success delay decisions that cling to your neck
like bloated insects? Will the chanting rains arrive,
a gift from some equally waning and precarious divinity?
He is as gaunt as drought foliage, skin a taught sheath through which one can read the famine inscription of bone, joint, cartilage. A precisely etched gallery of lines traces back from his eyes and mouth toward gently trembling stretched earlobes, awkward and sensual, a brief feminine intrusion of Baroque finery on an otherwise implacable shield of war. The absence of lower incisors marks his tribal affiliation, as does the garland of earth-toned beads he wears over a limp double-breasted dinner jacket and plaid dress-shirt he has tucked carefully into a skirt of scarlet and amber. He sighs into a five-foot length of flaking rebar, favouring his left foot, which is seeping and foul, swollen hard into a sandal of recycled tire rubber.
Or greeting: "Sopa Apame!" (Hello, Respected Father), fails to elicit the usual grin, and we falter. He swings a long arm Northward, expectantly, and murmurs faltering vowels to our guide. Samburu is a hill language that carries well on wind, lilting and hopeful, a rain shower on bleached mud. Later, we learn the man is searching for a lost goat, hobbling club-footed over the thirsty ruins of riverbeds, through Acacia groves where tufts of torn goat hair hang like offerings in the undergrowth, searching.
The Samburu are pastoralists: semi-nomadic herders of goat (and for the wealthy, cattle). Like many Kenyans they survive on a two-meal-a-day diet of ugali, a thick porridge of maize flour and water. Occasionally they will slaughter one of their herd to prevent starvation. Samburu are born hungry, grow into proud adulthood hungry, and die in familial hunger. What does it feel like, to fold yourself softly around your hunger every evening? Samburu dead are not buried (what a stupid waste of vital energy, to dig for a dead man), but are laid unadorned in bush a short distance from their village, to fed what passes in night
Two years now without the verdant rains. Patches of maize stutter new growth a few timid inches into seething air and fall back, brittle and exhausted. A middle-class Samburu man may have twenty goats. In drought he will slaughter one per month, which means he and his will starve in just under two years without enough rain to cultivate maize. A poor Samburu may have only a few goats; he and his will die much sooner. Life here is still like that; the rural mathematics of starvation are forever serene and inviolable: you cast filmy eyes skyward for assistance, and if it doesn't arrive the old equation settles around you, an impossibly dark rumour.
Or, perhaps, you are forced to enter the cash economy through the back door, by buying a sack of tasteless fortified wheat flour from the local vendor, who bought it from the money-licking politician, who had the foresight to commandeer the entire shipment when it was donated in goodwill for free distribution. But where to get the cash for that sack of flour? Well, you and your young son can beg and steal in the highway town a few miles away. You can sell your daughters, and finally your wife, to the oily long-fingered pimps who serve the jolly-drunk tourists, pretentious pink aid workers, ridiculous bureaucrats and businessmen with leaky smiles in Nairobi - a city like most in Africa, where those blessed with the blind luck of being born on a different continent, and those blessed with the fortitude necessary to tenderly cultivate their greed can co-mingle in fulfillment of appetites far more luxurious than the need for lumpy flour paste.
The club-footed Samburu man, limping regal in desperation, ceases speaking and leans back into the land. Respected Father -
is this all of you? your life now nothing
but a battered tin pot for me to fill
with the seasonal cadence of sufferings
I imagine upon you?
Shallow furrow of foot-path, saline earth crease,
brackish scum of lip, the myth of joy
and unbroken skin?
Is it all the long thirst, the long wait?
Respected father, will you find your skin-ribbed goat
bleating lone in bony hillside?
Will your success delay decisions that cling to your neck
like bloated insects? Will the chanting rains arrive,
a gift from some equally waning and precarious divinity?
Loroghi Hills Trek
Perhaps, had we known our trek would take us through a region of open tribal warfare, we would have reconsidered our route. But in our ignorance the term 'tribal warfare' carried the ring of the grandiose: clashing battalions, hollering sergeants, pomp. Surely an ongoing war would be newsworthy, and therefore utterly avoidable? As we learned, the reality is much more provisional, much more poorly defined.
Tribal warfare in Northern Kenya goes something like this: first, there is a natural demarcation line of some kind, a ridge or river or other shift in terrain, that has defined distinct tribal boundaries for remembered time. Second, there is suffering - usually hunger caused by drought. Finally, there is conflict, a few men approaching in darkness intent capturing more prosperous, livable land. There are no bulletins, no reporters. The tension coats you like dust in the throat, creating a rime of suffocating fear, but the physical violence itself is hurried, a periphery of movement, feet in muck, muzzle-flash.
As tourists we called the demarcation line Lesiolo - World's View, a high point at 3000m for views over the Northern Rift and into the Suguta Valley, one of the hottest and most arid of all earth's blasted regions. Sweltering below, in the rainshadow of the Samburu Hills we were trekking in, lay the land of the Pokot people. The day before we arrived several Pokot men had stalked over the ridge to claim a chunk of green Samburu territory in which to graze their dying goats. Two Pokot and one Samburu man lost their lives, shot and hacked.
"How often does this happen?" I asked Valance, our generous Samburu guide, as I sat munching sour oranges and imagining swiftly approaching warriors.
"About once a month." he answered, shrugging. Speaking to a rural Kenyan about tribal conflict is like discussing blistered heels or the hilarity of rutting livestock: it's the natural order of things, as predictable and mundane as a camel fart, and therefore not worth talking about much.
"Once a month, eh? No shit." was my patently half-assed reply, while thinking: "In other words, fucking constantly. Thanks for the heads up."
So we spent two of four days gaping with typical Canadian naivete at the armaments on display: the AK-47's, as common and attractive in their sheer strangeness as beads on Samburu women, the viciously sleek and coveted M-16's, and a variety of chunky, girthy-looking things that looked like they shot potatoes and were loaded with a plunger.
To say that being a muzungo (white) tourist has many substantial privileges is a fucking grand understatement. My most beloved and despised privilege is that every local, in every country, assumes you to be a complete, yammering fool. (In India: "What?! You don't know how to wipe your ass with your fingers?? Fool!" In Nepal: "What?! You don't know how to build a water-powered wooden turbine to create a lathe to spin a new water vessel?? Fool!" In Kenya: What?! You don't know how to load an AK or butcher a goat with a stick?? Fool!") Playing the role cast for me, that of muzungo-fool, is often rather liberating. The fool is permitted - expected, even - to overstep propriety by asking what would under normal circumstances be considered outstandingly stupid and insulting questions. Dayna's classic fool-inquiry to date, addressed to a long-lobed, body-painted, spear-carrying, skirted Samburu man: "Sooo...do you wear underwear underneath that?!". You go girl.
"Sooo...how much for an AK?" I asked Valance, as we picked our way through scratchy undergrowth. I had to suppress the desire to do a little Homie-G Gangster hand fling as I spoke, as I was secretly reciting the immortal lines of the great poet MC Ren: "Not the right hand/cuz I'm The Hand, Itself/Every time/I pull an AK off the shelf."
"About 80,000.00 shillings." ($1000.00CAN)
"No shit! That's expensive." Gone were my dreams of trading a loaf of bread for an AK and rolling mad shit back home in the Suburu. Bummer. "Sooo...how do people get that much money?"
"The government gives the weapons to us, Shooloo." My name, tough for even the most sober English speaker, is unpronounceable to three quarters of the world. Such is life.
"No shit. The government? Why?"
"The government trains a few men from every tribe to be guards, and gives them weapons."
"No shit. Like community policing?"
Valance missed the joke, but I was - as usual - thinking myself fairly clever. I glanced back to see if Dayna, my loving cleverness-indicator, agreed. It seemed she did not. Valance continued: "Yes. But the guns change everything. They make it much easier to kill, so now there is more killing. A man with a gun cannot be trusted...even if you once knew him, with a gun he cannot be trusted."
This was fantastic news for us, considering every second man was packing. I was reminded of a high-school history lesson, something about how the introduction of the machine gun during the First World War created modern warfare by simplifying killing. Before long-range weaponry it was 'whites of their eyes' and all that.
"Sooo...the government gives you guns to shoot the Pokot, who are coming to steal your ancestral land. But why does it give guns to the Pokot?"
Valance smiled: polite, empty, and decided to indulge the muzungo-fool: "Because the government wants us all dead, and it's easier for them this way."
This was the expected response, and I was ready: "So the government wants you all dead? Then why don't you and the Pokot and everyone else get rid of this government? I mean, you're trained, you have the good guns they gave you, right?"
Valance stopped walking for a moment. The question was so thoroughly idiotic, so immeasurably foreign, created by a lifetime of peaceful sleeps and full-bellied mornings, that he needed to see if I was joking. I wasn't: I wanted to hear - after reading so much Ra!Ra! revolutionary bullshit and listening to the sluggish anthems of bed-wetting brick throwers who somehow manage to pervert a well-founded and justified concern for social equity into scratching a circled "A" onto the hood of a new SUV; after years of watching bookworn students, lifelong members of the MLF (The Machiatto Liberation Front) gather ritualistically on soggy lawns, folks who want to bring down the Capitalist/Imperialist Empire but sure-as-shit don't mind those fat student loans - I wanted to hear the dejection, hopelessness and fear in the voice of the man next to me. I needed its untheoretical realness, its truth.
Tribal warfare in Northern Kenya goes something like this: first, there is a natural demarcation line of some kind, a ridge or river or other shift in terrain, that has defined distinct tribal boundaries for remembered time. Second, there is suffering - usually hunger caused by drought. Finally, there is conflict, a few men approaching in darkness intent capturing more prosperous, livable land. There are no bulletins, no reporters. The tension coats you like dust in the throat, creating a rime of suffocating fear, but the physical violence itself is hurried, a periphery of movement, feet in muck, muzzle-flash.
As tourists we called the demarcation line Lesiolo - World's View, a high point at 3000m for views over the Northern Rift and into the Suguta Valley, one of the hottest and most arid of all earth's blasted regions. Sweltering below, in the rainshadow of the Samburu Hills we were trekking in, lay the land of the Pokot people. The day before we arrived several Pokot men had stalked over the ridge to claim a chunk of green Samburu territory in which to graze their dying goats. Two Pokot and one Samburu man lost their lives, shot and hacked.
"How often does this happen?" I asked Valance, our generous Samburu guide, as I sat munching sour oranges and imagining swiftly approaching warriors.
"About once a month." he answered, shrugging. Speaking to a rural Kenyan about tribal conflict is like discussing blistered heels or the hilarity of rutting livestock: it's the natural order of things, as predictable and mundane as a camel fart, and therefore not worth talking about much.
"Once a month, eh? No shit." was my patently half-assed reply, while thinking: "In other words, fucking constantly. Thanks for the heads up."
So we spent two of four days gaping with typical Canadian naivete at the armaments on display: the AK-47's, as common and attractive in their sheer strangeness as beads on Samburu women, the viciously sleek and coveted M-16's, and a variety of chunky, girthy-looking things that looked like they shot potatoes and were loaded with a plunger.
To say that being a muzungo (white) tourist has many substantial privileges is a fucking grand understatement. My most beloved and despised privilege is that every local, in every country, assumes you to be a complete, yammering fool. (In India: "What?! You don't know how to wipe your ass with your fingers?? Fool!" In Nepal: "What?! You don't know how to build a water-powered wooden turbine to create a lathe to spin a new water vessel?? Fool!" In Kenya: What?! You don't know how to load an AK or butcher a goat with a stick?? Fool!") Playing the role cast for me, that of muzungo-fool, is often rather liberating. The fool is permitted - expected, even - to overstep propriety by asking what would under normal circumstances be considered outstandingly stupid and insulting questions. Dayna's classic fool-inquiry to date, addressed to a long-lobed, body-painted, spear-carrying, skirted Samburu man: "Sooo...do you wear underwear underneath that?!". You go girl.
"Sooo...how much for an AK?" I asked Valance, as we picked our way through scratchy undergrowth. I had to suppress the desire to do a little Homie-G Gangster hand fling as I spoke, as I was secretly reciting the immortal lines of the great poet MC Ren: "Not the right hand/cuz I'm The Hand, Itself/Every time/I pull an AK off the shelf."
"About 80,000.00 shillings." ($1000.00CAN)
"No shit! That's expensive." Gone were my dreams of trading a loaf of bread for an AK and rolling mad shit back home in the Suburu. Bummer. "Sooo...how do people get that much money?"
"The government gives the weapons to us, Shooloo." My name, tough for even the most sober English speaker, is unpronounceable to three quarters of the world. Such is life.
"No shit. The government? Why?"
"The government trains a few men from every tribe to be guards, and gives them weapons."
"No shit. Like community policing?"
Valance missed the joke, but I was - as usual - thinking myself fairly clever. I glanced back to see if Dayna, my loving cleverness-indicator, agreed. It seemed she did not. Valance continued: "Yes. But the guns change everything. They make it much easier to kill, so now there is more killing. A man with a gun cannot be trusted...even if you once knew him, with a gun he cannot be trusted."
This was fantastic news for us, considering every second man was packing. I was reminded of a high-school history lesson, something about how the introduction of the machine gun during the First World War created modern warfare by simplifying killing. Before long-range weaponry it was 'whites of their eyes' and all that.
"Sooo...the government gives you guns to shoot the Pokot, who are coming to steal your ancestral land. But why does it give guns to the Pokot?"
Valance smiled: polite, empty, and decided to indulge the muzungo-fool: "Because the government wants us all dead, and it's easier for them this way."
This was the expected response, and I was ready: "So the government wants you all dead? Then why don't you and the Pokot and everyone else get rid of this government? I mean, you're trained, you have the good guns they gave you, right?"
Valance stopped walking for a moment. The question was so thoroughly idiotic, so immeasurably foreign, created by a lifetime of peaceful sleeps and full-bellied mornings, that he needed to see if I was joking. I wasn't: I wanted to hear - after reading so much Ra!Ra! revolutionary bullshit and listening to the sluggish anthems of bed-wetting brick throwers who somehow manage to pervert a well-founded and justified concern for social equity into scratching a circled "A" onto the hood of a new SUV; after years of watching bookworn students, lifelong members of the MLF (The Machiatto Liberation Front) gather ritualistically on soggy lawns, folks who want to bring down the Capitalist/Imperialist Empire but sure-as-shit don't mind those fat student loans - I wanted to hear the dejection, hopelessness and fear in the voice of the man next to me. I needed its untheoretical realness, its truth.
Valance answered, his voice a dark corner of an otherwise well-lit room: "Because then there will be war, Shooloo."
I was unrelenting: "But this is already war, Valance. You and the Pokot - you're killing each other, that's war, right? And why are you killing each other? Because you're getting fucked by your government, that's why."
He frowned, worried. I had laid alot of sore-backed blue-collar emphasis on that last expletive, and Valance wasn't happy when I swore: Samburu men don't swear. "Yes, this is war. The Pokot and Samburu - we war. But this way, only a few will die. That way, everyone will die."
And there it was, finally: Truth. If wisdom is being able to distinguish between what is important and what is not, you, Valance (twenty-seven years old, Grade Six education), are one of the wisest people I've ever had the pleasure of speaking to, and I apologize for my foolishness.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Bloodletting and Drinking.
Video says it all.
For those that are squeamish with blood or animal butchering, this may not be the video for you.
For those that are squeamish with blood or animal butchering, this may not be the video for you.
Introducing our eloquent Maasai guide, Zach.
Shilo and I prefer to do things independently, avoiding group tours and guides at all costs. However, walking through Maasai land is not allowed without a local guide, Zach being ours, and we would have been hopelessly lost without him. The trek was along local walking trails between villages--none of which are even on local maps, nor in our Trekking East Africa guidebook.
I so enjoyed our time with both Zach and Patrick (our Nairobi connection) as they were open, frank and curious. Both shared so much with us about their traditions and current living situations.
One of the first conversations Zach and I shared was fairly hefty. He was telling me what Maasai traditions cannot be foregone as they are quintessential in defining what Maasai culture is. One of which is circumcision, both of men and women. Another is men paying a dowry to the bride's family (opposite of India). All Maasai must also have their bottom two middle adult teeth removed---this is an easy ID of all Maasai, as some no longer dress traditionally or stretch their earlobes (other African tribes do this as well).
After sharing, he asked me if any of these practices occur in Canada. I explained that a minority of baby boys are now circumcised shortly after birth in BC. But this was a recent change, as in my generation the majority of males were still circumcised but anyone 5+ years younger were a minoricty if circumcised. He then asks, "and for girls, they are circumcised?". Well no....I explained that in Canada it is considered torture to cut off a female's clitoris......"WHY?" he exclaims.....So I explained that it was the major nerve centre in the genitals, allowing the majority of sexual pleasure to be felt by women, and that in Canada we believe that both men and women have equal right to enjoy sex. This kinda of stunned him. "I cannot believe that women can feel pleasure from sex, they do not ejaculate!"....And so the stage was set.
Nightly we had an open, non judgemental exchange of cultural ideals, beliefs and values. Zach attended and did well in secondary school, he is extremely intelligent and curious, speaks, reads and writes in 3 languages, but there were some ideas that were so entrenched in his belief systems that only very blunt language could be used. For example, his belief of HIV/AIDS and other STDs is that you can only get them from visiting prostitutes. When I explained that it is caused by "germs" being passed from one person to another during sex, period, not just sex with prostitutes, he still didnt quiet understand. As when I said, "so, when you have sex with your girlfriend without a condom and she has chlamydia, your wife can get chlamydia"....."Oh no," he says, "they will never meet!"....."But Zach, they meet through your penis!" I responded, at which Patrick, who had been listening intently, lost it to a fit of giggles. But Zach looked me in the eye, and said "oh". It was a poignant moment. One of many. At the end of the trek, Zach pulled me aside and told me that he was going to try giving his wife a hug when he got home---physical affection is not shared between spouses. I told him I wish I could be a fly on the wall to see her reaction! Patrick comes from the Kikuyu tribe that are far more Westernized, he is Christian, and has attended college so he had a better command of westernized ideals, knowledge and beliefs.
I feel so blessed to have had that time with both Zach and Patrick. I feel like I have gained and incredible insight into tribal practices, inter-tribal racism and violence, and to the history and political state of not only Kenya but East Africa. I thank them both for their warmth, honesty and knowledge.
Dayna
Rift Valley Trek
"Shilo?" I heard the muffled voice of our Masai guide Zak drift into our tent.
"Yes Zak?"
"Tonight you are sleeping close with your big knife, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"Then you are sleeping well, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"OK then. Good sleeping Shilo and Dayna!"
"Thank-you Zak."
We were in the middle of Africa's fabled Rift Valley, only a hundred kilometers or so as the crow flies from the fantastic predator-laced plains of the Masai Mara National Reserve. My mouth was ringed with a stubborn red-earth film of warm goat blood. We had just spent the previous four hours turning our campsite into an offal-strewn pen: ten feet to the left of our little tent lay the bloody bed of leaves on which we had butchered a goat. Close beside, in withered grass, we had tossed steaming entrails to lean dogs. Twenty feet further was the still-warm campfire where we had watched sizzling roast goat drippings fall and alight, and where we had left the pile of picked-clean ribs and bone. I ran down the list of nocturnal predators who were at that moment lifting sensitive nostrils into the breeze.
A Masai warrior is never without a weapon. They carry three-foot double-edged swords, six-foot long spears with honed steel heads, or stupid-looking little clubs that look like engorged baby rattles. Zak carried a little baby-rattle club, and proudly claimed he could snap a charging animal's front legs with a single divine throw. I was doubtful. Nevertheless, I drifted into a sleepy heroic fantasy that quickly assumed the easy metaphor that plagues most African images: Zak stepping with ancient courage in front of a charging beast and crippling it with his baby-rattle while I deftly hop on top of the thrashing mass of muscled death and finish it with a decisive slash and stab. Together, we would slay the night-lion of racial and economic injustice...
Clutching my balls in a sweaty left palm and a dagger in my sweaty right, I finally fell asleep.
African sunrises are worth getting up at 4:30AM for, which is great, because by 11:00 it's too fucking hot to hike in the open sun. And it's winter here. Our five-day trek consisted of a series of fast scurries across parched open plains to blessed (and I mean blessed, as in life-giving) mostly-dry river beds and choked watering holes. We eventually began to decipher Zak's jovial descriptions of the next water source: "Plenty of water!" meant there may be a festering ten-foot wide pool of animal muck to slurp into. "A big river!" meant we would dig through gravel for twenty minutes to find some eggy moisture. "No water." was pretty straightforward, and we went without. This fit well with my comfy armchair philosophy that periodically 'going without' some things is good for the spirit.
The life of the Masai people is much about 'going without'. Since the British, they have been 'going without' a majority of their most fertile grazing territory, which was converted into the kind of income-producing 'wild place' we had just spent three days on safari in. With dwindling resources ranging from political corruption, criminal mismanagement and environmental degradation they have been 'going without' safe and reliable drinking water for decades. They are 'going without' effective political representation in Kenya because they told the state to go fuck itself when it tried to appropriate ever more land. They 'go without' a sense of safety anywhere outside their own territory because other tribes target them for being so independent. They are 'going without' roads, electricity, and plumbing. They also 'go without' HIV because they refuse to be tested, and the women 'go without' half of their genitals because they are cut out at the first sign of menses.
We organized the trek to be self-sufficient for five days, carrying our own equipment and food, instead of adding the extra expense of a cook and porter. What we didn't realize was that this meant we would watch our guides (Zak the local Masai and Patrick, our contact from Nairobi) virtually starve for three days. Zak had never tasted Mr. Noodles or fish, and I had never drank warm goat blood or tasted aloe-vera beer. We shared culinary delights. A Masai will butcher a goat when he tires of eating ugali, a slop of boiled unflavoured maize, and white bread dipped in condensed milk. It is therefore a very sacred occasion of joy and full-bellied plenty. I bought the goat at the livestock market for 2000 Kenyan shillings, or about twenty bucks, and it fed our guides for two days. It was a gift and a thank-you...and no, a gift-card would not have sufficed: the Masai won't eat paper.
Dayna in conversation with our guide Patrick at our first camp. Patrick was our Nairobi connection. He is from the Kikuyu tribe, one of the largest in Kenya, and also the one most involved in contemporary business and politics.
A skull.
Dayna and our Masai guide Zak walking past some "Good water!".
Cactus.
Sunrise.
Morning light at a busy Masai village intersection.
Why do I need sunscreen when cutting fresh aloe-vera from a fucking fifteen-foot tall monster-plant is much, much cooler?
A "Big River." Twenty feet upstream the ditch crossed the dirt road, where locals came to wash their trucks and taxis, water their goats and cows, and bathe. We were really, really missing the water filter that self-destructed in Nepal.
A young boy crossing the drinking water.
Market day!
Dayna chillin' with local Masai women. The fuzzy white thing in her pack is an ostrich feather.
Kids!
Masai women at market.
Zak and our tasty goat.
Dayna dresses up for the slaughter: Joe Boxer shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt. (She had just done laundry.)
Kids waiting for some fresh meat.
Zak suffocating the goat. The Masai consider it cruel to use a blade to kill an animal.
As above.
An old man stepped in the help with the butchering. Here he is bleeding the neck into my camping cup.
Patrick is a practicing Christian; this was his first time drinking warm goat blood. He took to it rather easily.
Zak peels a raw kidney for me. Scrumptous!
Sharing some raw kidney with the local kids.
The campsite with our tent in the background.
Zak, happyhappy with some chunks of goat.
Sunrise. Why is this thing underlining all of a sudden?
Roasting meat.
Traditional Masai caked-mud homes. This is kind of a standard arid-climate construction type that we saw all over India as well. Half of the interior is dedicated to raising baby lamb and cow, so the actual living space I would guess at around 50 square feet or less. Your Vancouver apartment is seeming pretty roomy, huh?
Sunrise over the hills.
Looking out over the escarpment of the Rift Valley on the final day.
"Yes Zak?"
"Tonight you are sleeping close with your big knife, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"Then you are sleeping well, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"OK then. Good sleeping Shilo and Dayna!"
"Thank-you Zak."
We were in the middle of Africa's fabled Rift Valley, only a hundred kilometers or so as the crow flies from the fantastic predator-laced plains of the Masai Mara National Reserve. My mouth was ringed with a stubborn red-earth film of warm goat blood. We had just spent the previous four hours turning our campsite into an offal-strewn pen: ten feet to the left of our little tent lay the bloody bed of leaves on which we had butchered a goat. Close beside, in withered grass, we had tossed steaming entrails to lean dogs. Twenty feet further was the still-warm campfire where we had watched sizzling roast goat drippings fall and alight, and where we had left the pile of picked-clean ribs and bone. I ran down the list of nocturnal predators who were at that moment lifting sensitive nostrils into the breeze.
A Masai warrior is never without a weapon. They carry three-foot double-edged swords, six-foot long spears with honed steel heads, or stupid-looking little clubs that look like engorged baby rattles. Zak carried a little baby-rattle club, and proudly claimed he could snap a charging animal's front legs with a single divine throw. I was doubtful. Nevertheless, I drifted into a sleepy heroic fantasy that quickly assumed the easy metaphor that plagues most African images: Zak stepping with ancient courage in front of a charging beast and crippling it with his baby-rattle while I deftly hop on top of the thrashing mass of muscled death and finish it with a decisive slash and stab. Together, we would slay the night-lion of racial and economic injustice...
Clutching my balls in a sweaty left palm and a dagger in my sweaty right, I finally fell asleep.
African sunrises are worth getting up at 4:30AM for, which is great, because by 11:00 it's too fucking hot to hike in the open sun. And it's winter here. Our five-day trek consisted of a series of fast scurries across parched open plains to blessed (and I mean blessed, as in life-giving) mostly-dry river beds and choked watering holes. We eventually began to decipher Zak's jovial descriptions of the next water source: "Plenty of water!" meant there may be a festering ten-foot wide pool of animal muck to slurp into. "A big river!" meant we would dig through gravel for twenty minutes to find some eggy moisture. "No water." was pretty straightforward, and we went without. This fit well with my comfy armchair philosophy that periodically 'going without' some things is good for the spirit.
The life of the Masai people is much about 'going without'. Since the British, they have been 'going without' a majority of their most fertile grazing territory, which was converted into the kind of income-producing 'wild place' we had just spent three days on safari in. With dwindling resources ranging from political corruption, criminal mismanagement and environmental degradation they have been 'going without' safe and reliable drinking water for decades. They are 'going without' effective political representation in Kenya because they told the state to go fuck itself when it tried to appropriate ever more land. They 'go without' a sense of safety anywhere outside their own territory because other tribes target them for being so independent. They are 'going without' roads, electricity, and plumbing. They also 'go without' HIV because they refuse to be tested, and the women 'go without' half of their genitals because they are cut out at the first sign of menses.
We organized the trek to be self-sufficient for five days, carrying our own equipment and food, instead of adding the extra expense of a cook and porter. What we didn't realize was that this meant we would watch our guides (Zak the local Masai and Patrick, our contact from Nairobi) virtually starve for three days. Zak had never tasted Mr. Noodles or fish, and I had never drank warm goat blood or tasted aloe-vera beer. We shared culinary delights. A Masai will butcher a goat when he tires of eating ugali, a slop of boiled unflavoured maize, and white bread dipped in condensed milk. It is therefore a very sacred occasion of joy and full-bellied plenty. I bought the goat at the livestock market for 2000 Kenyan shillings, or about twenty bucks, and it fed our guides for two days. It was a gift and a thank-you...and no, a gift-card would not have sufficed: the Masai won't eat paper.
Dayna in conversation with our guide Patrick at our first camp. Patrick was our Nairobi connection. He is from the Kikuyu tribe, one of the largest in Kenya, and also the one most involved in contemporary business and politics.
A skull.
Dayna and our Masai guide Zak walking past some "Good water!".
Cactus.
Sunrise.
Morning light at a busy Masai village intersection.
Why do I need sunscreen when cutting fresh aloe-vera from a fucking fifteen-foot tall monster-plant is much, much cooler?
A "Big River." Twenty feet upstream the ditch crossed the dirt road, where locals came to wash their trucks and taxis, water their goats and cows, and bathe. We were really, really missing the water filter that self-destructed in Nepal.
A young boy crossing the drinking water.
Market day!
Dayna chillin' with local Masai women. The fuzzy white thing in her pack is an ostrich feather.
Kids!
Masai women at market.
Zak and our tasty goat.
Dayna dresses up for the slaughter: Joe Boxer shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt. (She had just done laundry.)
Kids waiting for some fresh meat.
Zak suffocating the goat. The Masai consider it cruel to use a blade to kill an animal.
As above.
An old man stepped in the help with the butchering. Here he is bleeding the neck into my camping cup.
Patrick is a practicing Christian; this was his first time drinking warm goat blood. He took to it rather easily.
Zak peels a raw kidney for me. Scrumptous!
Sharing some raw kidney with the local kids.
The campsite with our tent in the background.
Zak, happyhappy with some chunks of goat.
Sunrise. Why is this thing underlining all of a sudden?
Roasting meat.
Traditional Masai caked-mud homes. This is kind of a standard arid-climate construction type that we saw all over India as well. Half of the interior is dedicated to raising baby lamb and cow, so the actual living space I would guess at around 50 square feet or less. Your Vancouver apartment is seeming pretty roomy, huh?
Sunrise over the hills.
Looking out over the escarpment of the Rift Valley on the final day.
Buffalo vs Lion
We were so lucky to see at least 4 different groups of lions on our second safari day. I never would have believed that we would have seen lions shitting, mating or hunting.
The following video was captured on total fluke. We were driving through a herd of buffalo when suddenly two lions came darting out of the grass. Apparently, they had been stalking the buffalo, who didn't take kindly to it, and decided to use their numbers to their advantage. The lions and buffalo used our vehicle as a shield playing cat and mouse for over 20 mins before we jetted off to see the secretive leopard!
Simply amazing!
Dayna
The following video was captured on total fluke. We were driving through a herd of buffalo when suddenly two lions came darting out of the grass. Apparently, they had been stalking the buffalo, who didn't take kindly to it, and decided to use their numbers to their advantage. The lions and buffalo used our vehicle as a shield playing cat and mouse for over 20 mins before we jetted off to see the secretive leopard!
Simply amazing!
Dayna
More safari pictures
Hi all,
So these shots are not as good as from Shilo's camera, but I was able to grab a few moments that Shilo didn't. Sorry for the graininess, that's the optical zoom :-(
Elephant in mid shake! Quite the sight to see a full size elephant shake out the dust and flys!
Us and the fat hippos, their pink underbellies are super cute.
HYENA! Ugly as I thought!
The elusive black rhino. Very rare to see in the Maasai Mara, on the left is her baby.
Lion, happily shitting right in front of our bus.....I wonder if he is letting us know what he thinks of the 20 safari buses surrounding him and his pride?
I completely agree with Shilo. Other than this amazing opportunity to see the incredible wildlife, safaris suck ass. You are stuck for 3 days in a tin can van, being transported here and there, told when to eat, when to sleep, when to wake....during the safari 9 of us are popping up through the top of the van trying to get the best view point----elbows and heads all in the way. This was the "budget" safari---$330 USD per person! YIKES!
So these shots are not as good as from Shilo's camera, but I was able to grab a few moments that Shilo didn't. Sorry for the graininess, that's the optical zoom :-(
Elephant in mid shake! Quite the sight to see a full size elephant shake out the dust and flys!
Us and the fat hippos, their pink underbellies are super cute.
HYENA! Ugly as I thought!
The elusive black rhino. Very rare to see in the Maasai Mara, on the left is her baby.
Lion, happily shitting right in front of our bus.....I wonder if he is letting us know what he thinks of the 20 safari buses surrounding him and his pride?I completely agree with Shilo. Other than this amazing opportunity to see the incredible wildlife, safaris suck ass. You are stuck for 3 days in a tin can van, being transported here and there, told when to eat, when to sleep, when to wake....during the safari 9 of us are popping up through the top of the van trying to get the best view point----elbows and heads all in the way. This was the "budget" safari---$330 USD per person! YIKES!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Masai Mara Safari.
I will admit to a certain skepticism: I just didn't believe it was possible to lumber into amber-lit grasslands in a coughing diesel van loaded with tourists and see a fucking lion. I mean, c'mon - a fucking lion! We had both decided that the mere sight of a wild lion in the hills would be worth the exorbitant price-tag of the safari, and that anything else we saw would be gravy.
Well, as usual I was wrong, and we were both happily rolling in gravy.
Masai Mara is the most visited National Park in Kenya, and home of the Northern extent of the annual Wildebeast migration. We had planned to arrive in Kenya to see this natural exodus. We weren't disappointed: the migration is a moving flesh buffet for all the major predators, and we were fortunate enough to glimpse them all. Prides of lions lazed around fat and satiated, mating with princely indiscretion and basically being bad-ass. Hyenas skulked in thorny undergrowth and furtively tongued rotting carcasses. Cheetahs played catch with low-flying birds.
Like seeing the Taj Mahal in person, archetypal images unfurled before us in untarnished majesty, in spite of both of us having spent a lifetime watching cheesy wildlife shows. Some things are still vivid enough to supercede their screen reproductions.
It was all a fantastic experience that we will likely never do again. The truth is, safaris suck. I won't go into all the countless reasons this is so for fear of sounding like an unappreciative grump, but trust me, they do. And they are very, very expensive: ours was a so-called 'budget' three-day safari and put us back $330.00US per person. That's a month of travel on the Indian Subcontinent. Worth it? Absolutely...once.
Stage-set: soft cool season rains over the African Savannah.
The main protagonist.
Zebras.
Cheetah.
Zebra and Wildebeast.
Hyenas in the bush.
A lion feast of grass-eating herbivores.
Giraffe. The most bizarre creature ever, with the largest heart in the mammal world. Or something like that: I would think a whale heart is larger? Incorrect useless animal trivia from the guide?
Hippos being stupid and fat.
Elephant. I said: 'Elephant!'.
This spectacle is known locally as Touron Madness.
The elusive Leopard.
Lioness stalking over to her mate in evening light.
Her mate.
Mating. Out of deference to the Mom's, I will politely refrain from uttering the countless inappropriate comments this scene inspired.
Later, lazily lolling lions loved licking lasciviously.
Well, as usual I was wrong, and we were both happily rolling in gravy.
Masai Mara is the most visited National Park in Kenya, and home of the Northern extent of the annual Wildebeast migration. We had planned to arrive in Kenya to see this natural exodus. We weren't disappointed: the migration is a moving flesh buffet for all the major predators, and we were fortunate enough to glimpse them all. Prides of lions lazed around fat and satiated, mating with princely indiscretion and basically being bad-ass. Hyenas skulked in thorny undergrowth and furtively tongued rotting carcasses. Cheetahs played catch with low-flying birds.
Like seeing the Taj Mahal in person, archetypal images unfurled before us in untarnished majesty, in spite of both of us having spent a lifetime watching cheesy wildlife shows. Some things are still vivid enough to supercede their screen reproductions.
It was all a fantastic experience that we will likely never do again. The truth is, safaris suck. I won't go into all the countless reasons this is so for fear of sounding like an unappreciative grump, but trust me, they do. And they are very, very expensive: ours was a so-called 'budget' three-day safari and put us back $330.00US per person. That's a month of travel on the Indian Subcontinent. Worth it? Absolutely...once.
Stage-set: soft cool season rains over the African Savannah.
The main protagonist.
Zebras.
Cheetah.
Zebra and Wildebeast.
Hyenas in the bush.
A lion feast of grass-eating herbivores.
Giraffe. The most bizarre creature ever, with the largest heart in the mammal world. Or something like that: I would think a whale heart is larger? Incorrect useless animal trivia from the guide?
Hippos being stupid and fat.
Elephant. I said: 'Elephant!'.
This spectacle is known locally as Touron Madness.
The elusive Leopard.
Lioness stalking over to her mate in evening light.
Her mate.
Mating. Out of deference to the Mom's, I will politely refrain from uttering the countless inappropriate comments this scene inspired.
Later, lazily lolling lions loved licking lasciviously.
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