New Girls and Boys

A new intake of 250 18 year old interns arrived at BigCorporate yesterday. Its a Big Day, not just for them. When I worked in universities I used to love Freshers Week, the sense of new beginnings of new intakes, the sense of vulnerable students emerging from the chrysallis, testing their wings in this new, threatening but exciting environment.  Within a fortnight people would have regained the spring in their step.  But I used to love those early days, when giving a broad smile at the university bus stop could noticeably slow the rapid breathing of an anxious new arrival, when giving an induction lecture which acknowledged the understandable worries, but also painted a picture of the potential and the opportunities during three years of study could make a sea of faces lighten, brighten, relax a little.

I know new beginnings are difficult for everyone. In UK there would also be the care-leaver, arriving independently, without mother, granny and Uncle Sam in the car with the potplants. There would also be the international student arriving via National Express coach, having run the gauntlet of immigration at Heathrow, discovering for the first time quite how chilly October mornings in Hertfordshire can be. But somehow, in UK, the shared experiences are more universal, the playing field is more level I think.

Yesterday I watched the interns arriving with their suitcases, ready for a fortnight's induction. Coming from each district in Kenya, most are from up-country, small villages, light years from the shining lights of Nairobi.  Many had never been to Nairobi before. It's a scary endeavour for the first time.  A friend, now polished, sophisticated, resilient, told me of her first trip to Nairobi, where she'd come to seek work, aged 18.  How she'd arrived on the matatu at the central bus station. Had tried to follow the directions on her scrumpled bit of paper. Had asked a woman for directions, who had taken her to a bus, told her to ride to the end of the line, and while she was on the bus, set up a robbery at the other end. How my friend was led into the forest, and robbed of everything, even her new shoes and skirt. How howling and only half dressed, she was picked up by kindly motorist, bought a skirt and helped to find her way to her relatives. The big city, its traffic, masses, anonymity, and city ways, is an intimidating place for new arrivals.

So I guess its no surprise that many of the new interns were delivered to the door by their quaking mums, also far from at ease. Not exactly helicopter parenting this, more justifiable accompanying through a maze which is alien to the family.  And at lunchtime as I squeezed through the lunch queue to get to the lift, the body language, the involuntary recoil, suggested to me that for not a few I was maybe the first mzungu, the first white person, whom they'd ever seen in the flesh.

A friend grumbled on Monday of her experiences at our gym at the weekend.  Ever keen to maximise profits, the gym has taken to hosting weddings on a Saturday, also the peak time for its regular gym-going clientelle to venture onto the treadmill. This wedding had many guests from up-country. Bemused by Nairobi ways, they'd taken time out from the festivities to tour the facilities, including the changing rooms. And had stood in the changing rooms, pointing at their first sight of white skin and giggling, as my friend tried to strip off her shorts.

One of last year's interns, now be-suited, smooth, competent and confident, explained to me recently his transition over 18 months.  'You have to understand Catrin, until my first day at work I'd never been in a big building or a smart institution, never even been into a bank before.  I thought banks were for people with lots of money. I didn't realise you could save 10 KSh at a time. I was terrified on my first day at work, utterly terrified.'

I suppose what surprises me is how rapid the transition, the accretion of new ways, can be in Kenya. A Friend in the Quaker meeting, a pillar of established middle class society, ministered a while ago on his learning from his barefoot youth spent herding cattle and goats.  Nairobi is full of glitzy malls, sophisticated suits, blackberrys and sushi bars.  And also full of those who, if you asked them, would tell of their first day in the big city, their shocks and surprises.