Mzungu on the black continent

It's been an interesting week here. Right when it started to feel like I had a daily schedule set down, the violence that broke out in Nakuru and Naivasha made its way to Nairobi, and two members of Parliament were shot in about 48 hours. The first was definitely politically motivated, but the second shooting was attributed to the MP's affair with the murderer's wife. There's probably little truth in that. At any rate, as bad as things were looking last week, Nairobi has stayed fairly calm. Western Kenya is still a mess and the roads are dangerous; there’s no telling when things will heal over there. When we leave Nairobi for our excursions, we’ll be flying.

I did hear an interesting opinion the other day, though. My African IR professor sat next to me on the bus to USIU, and we talked quite a lot. She thinks the only resolution to this conflict will come through the sort of de-tribalization that Rwanda underwent. The British screwed things up horribly after independence – the land they seized from the tribes in the Rift Valley was sold off to the Kikuyus, the only ethnic group with the money to buy it. Now the other tribes resent the Kikuyus' ownership of their land, and the only way around the conflict will be to take tribalism out of the picture. That's her opinion, anyway. Who knows?

Anyway, life is good, classes are fine, and I'm really really excited about my externship. I'm working with a group called the Center for Domestic Training and Development (it has a website if you want to look it up, but I'll be sure to talk about it in depth in one of my future blogs). It does work very similar to that of ONE DC, where I was volunteering last semester. On Friday we took a trip to a place called the Giraffe Center, where you can play with the endangered giraffes they breed. Fantastic photo op, since you can put a pellet of food between your lips and they'll “kiss” you. Meanwhile, we've been going out plenty and making friends. I'm feeling great overall, and am already starting to worry about the day I'll have to leave.

I wanted to talk for a bit about what it's like for us being wazungu (Europeans/foreigners) in Kenya. Though I'm describing my own experiences, all of us share these to some extent.

The only thing that has really bothered me about Kenya is the attention I get no matter where I am. I've never been stared at so much in my life, and it does get tiring when fully half the people I pass on the street try to stop me and talk to me. This is partly out of genuine interest, I think, but also because white skin screams money. There are TONS of beggars and pickpockets in Nairobi, and wazungu are targeted much more frequently than Kenyans. Every time we go out to a bar or club, someone has a thief try to steal their phone (I think only one phone has actually been taken so far, though). I've had two attempts on my phone at clubs and one attempt at my purse on a busy street. I stay pretty aware of my surroundings though, so I've been able to escape bad situations for the most part.

The thievery is a lot worse since the election, which is why we weren't allowed to ride matatus for so long. Violence has affected the tourism industry significantly, so people have turned to stealing in order to feed their families. Matatus are a prime location to pickpocket people, but if you're careful, you're in very little danger. But all of this means that wazungu attract even more attention than usual. Vendors on the street see a white face and will yell at me through the crowd (“mzungu”, “madam”, “sista”, etc.) to bring me over and try to sell me something.

Being white means I can get away with a lot, as sad as that is. Europeans get very preferential treatment at times (because even we students have a lot of money by Kenyan standards), but we're also taken advantage of. The pickpocketing is only one side of it. Taxi drivers I don't know personally will charge me double the usual fare. Vendors at the market will try to charge me three or four times the going rate for an item. I'm not a bad barterer, but there's a price level I can't get below, since I look like a tourist no matter how much Kiswahili I speak. It's frustrating at times.

At USIU, the American students are treated like celebrities. This is largely because American girls have a reputation for being easy and very rich. It's unfortunate, particularly because it makes it extremely hard to know who is being genuine. That's the case outside of USIU as well, actually, so it sort of slows down the process of making friends.

The assumption that white people are wealthy frustrates me to no end. It really demonstrates how colonization and centuries of exploitation has skewed perceptions of Westerners. It doesn't matter if you're Kenyan-born, if you're a student, if you're poor by American standards; if you have white skin, you're a walking bank that can be taken full advantage of. Drives me mad.

Anyway, that's it for today. There's so much more to talk about, but I only feel capable of tackling one topic per day.