Six Word Saturday

BritPride brims, inside I'm Kenyan.

Given I'm hardly an athlete, I'd forgotten how moving I find the Olympics. And its squared, cubed, I discover when they're held in your country.  There's been the procession of the Olympic torch round the UK, - at the bottom of the road of my childhood home, past the local library and the fishing tackle shop;  through Welwyn Garden City, our smalltown home, past the children's much loved preschool.  When the Torch comes to Sketty, well you know this must be something different.  University of Hertfordshire where I worked till recently, student accommodation fully booked with police officers from around the country on security duty.  A young woman from the children's school in Kenya competing for Britain in the swimming.  The cyclists lining up on The Mall. Driving to work a few weeks ago, and watching a matatu-full of Kenyan athletes, in full team dress, unload outside the British High Commission, and excited, giggling, enter to get their visas.  Somehow it's all more personal this time, it touches me in a different, deeper place.

We've just watched part of the Opening Ceremony, and again I felt that pride at how it had been done. I haven't yet seen the extravaganza, but yes, the NHS for me so deserves its place of honour in our nation's celebration. The parity of ethnicity and gender - that my country has athletes of all races representing it - not the case everywhere. That it was young athletes - the sport's future not its past - who lit the flame. That young people who need their identity strengthened are given this honour, not those with the established weight of success behind them. The flame's honour guard of the 500 workers who helped build the stadium.  They wouldn't have been acknowledged in so many countries. And that each country competing has women athletes on its team, for the first time ever.  As the camera panned in on the Saudi women athletes, well we were all with them.

At BigCorporate I'm one of only two non-Kenyans of thousands of staff. It affects how I see myself.  When I lived in Madagascar, surrounded by tiny, petite, willowy women, that was how I saw myself, till the rude rearrival at Charles De Gaulle airport, when in a stroke I put on two stone and several inches.  And at BigCorporate I'm surrounded by twenty year olds from rural backgrounds, who herded goats on foot, ran tens of miles to primary school and back each day, but thanks to good exam results now work in suits.  They are runners, though for them its nothing special, rather like I'm a driver - it's a means of transport. So for now, in my mind I'm a marathon runner too, I'm a Kenyan who has herded goats, and surrounded by Kenyans who are so conscious of the chasm between success and hopes dashed, I'm out there rooting for them all.

Six Word Saturday is part of a global bloghop hosted by Cate at http://www.showmyface.com/.  Now go there and visit the others!

Six Word Saturday

Fond reencounters favourite toys,  bullish shoppers.

It's the second week of the school holidays. We've been clearing bedrooms, rootling again in the toy cupboard, testing the water on which toys might be dispensed with to be sold at the car boot sale. 

I've been nostalgic. We've decided we won't be moving the toy train set - complete with Thomas, James & Duncan, various engine houses, a turntable, complex tunnels and ring formations - and many happy adult memories, when we come to leave Kenya.  I've been sorting the multiracial duplo firemen, hydrant and firestation - brought back by Tom from a workshop in Norway - the animals - crocodile, monkey, dolphin and more - given by our lovely first childminder, Helen, and the hundreds of duplo pieces. We spent a happy afternoon sorting the picture books, Mog the Forgetful Cat, The Gruffalo, Kipper and Roly the hamster who gets lost in the bedroom and more.
'Oh do you remember?'

When we were last decluttering, prior to coming here, I was unnerved when a schoolmum friend said sternly:
'But surely you'll be saving these for the grandchildren.'
Looking at (then) nine year old Firstborn and six year old SecondBorn, it was hard to believe we'd get to that stage.  This time it was somewhat different. Even ten year old SecondBorn rescued a pile of favourite books, 'Not now Bernard' and others, 'For my children.'
Bless. How lovely he'd want to pass on those special times too.

So it was rosy glow time when I set out for the carboot sale. But sales roles in Kenya are no times for rosy glows.  I set fair prices. Half price  - if in good condition and a year old - or a third or less if much older of what we paid. £40 for over 300 pieces of duplo.  £40 for the trainset, four or five sets combined. Probably around a fifth or a tenth what similar volumes of things would cost here, if they were available.  I get that shoppers can choose whether to buy, or not. Of course. But wealthy Kenyan shoppers are used to having all the power as they bargain, with a seller who'd quite like their children to eat tonight. Are used, many of them, to wiping the floor with their less powerful sellers. And that gets right up my nose.  I'd far rather walk from a sale than let my happy memories with the duplo firemen go with someone who doesn't show me minimal recognition, let alone offering a likelihood of a happy home for the set.

'What you need to do is to give me a much better price to get that trainset off your hands,' said one haughty woman offering a third of the reasonable price I was asking.
'Ah but you know, I'd rather give it to the remand home where I know the children have nothing, if I choose to give it away.'
I didn't say it, but I thought it.
It's like at the school's fundraising fete, in which each year raises money for their chosen charity, for our year an orphanage. In my first year, one welldressed woman picked up ten copies of Tatler, clearly marked at 100 KSh a copy.
'That'll be a thousand KSh please.'
Oh dear, but I only have 200 KSh, what do you suggest?'
'Well given that we are all here without pay, selling things we've donated, to raise money for an orphanage where the children don't even have enough to eat, I suggest you put back eight copies so we can see if someone who does have the money will buy them.'
But it isn't the way here. Bargaining is part of the deal. And a seller who behaves as though she has the power to remove the item from an unfair deal, well that really isn't playing the game.

This is part of a global bloghop - Six Word Saturday, run by Cate. To see the others click here: http://www.showmyface.com/

Looking in the Claff Box

Nairobi is wintery cold and grey. Somehow everything is coming apart at the seams even more than usual. Yesterday was a Day of Many Rants.  So things which make us laugh, uproariously, are all the more welcomed.

Since the grenade attacks and heightened security level, security guards check for bombs in Nairobi. But its not the systematic approach I remember from IRA threat days in UK.  Male guards check men, and have the electronic scanner toys. Female guards check women, and just look in your handbag. It's not clear whether the electronic scanner should beep (showing it has a working battery, but might have found something malevolent), or be silent (suggesting it hasn't). Both  are accepted, in an accepting way.  Guards check cars going into prime targets or underground carparks. They have the swish mirrors on sticks, and check that you haven't attached a bomb to the undercarriage. And they systematically check the boot.  Not the contents of the boot.  I've seen them let in pickup trucks full of scrap iron.  They've let me in with the suspicious contents of a cello case and a trombone case, unchecked.  What they check, rigorously, is the tiny hidden flap, where in well ordered boots people keep the accident kit. 

It suggests a certain logic and order to the world. If you had a bomb in there, you'd keep it nicely packed away, tidily.  Like a dolls house. But it so frustrates me.  'If you're going to look, do it properly.'

Yesterday a guard gesticulated through the window:  'I want to look in the claff box.'
Three of us in the car, none of us understood at all.  Two minutes later, still didn't get it. Claff box?
He meant the glove compartment. We opened, he checked.

Two hours later when we left the shopping mall, we giggled watching incoming motorists scratching their heads too. Dumbfounded. 'Claff box?'  And the extra two minutes delay for each car clogged the traffic, gridlock in each direction for ten minutes.   In the drive home someone only had to call 'Claff box' for the rest of us to giggle, uncontrollably. Oh the power of language teachers, rejoice! 

Things You Do In Kenya You Didn't Do at Home

Some situations you just couldn't make up.  A good friend who lived for several years in a country with even more unreliable electricity supply than Kenya described the nighttime scene. 
'We'd read in bed with our headtorches on.  No, we stopped using candles after we set fire to the lampshade for the third time.  But the really key thing is not to turn and look at each other.' 
Stars before your eyes. It got me thinking about the things you do abroad - and get used to - which might appear a tad quirky in your homeland.

Wild driving. I don't take chances. But you have to adapt. Undertaking is the norm. Not infrequent for people to drive the wrong way down the dual carriageway. Commonplace to avoid the jam by driving on the pavement.  I've even evaded gridlock by driving for a mile straddling the drainage ditch. We did nearly shunt the car ahead when in Rwanda - two hours flight but a continent in road manners away - when all the cars stopped nicely at a red traffic light. Oops.

Supply chains and logistics planning.  Keeping tabs on the water and diesel and preordering a bowser before you direly need it. Stockpiling milk and the essentials. There was a month when Nairobi had no butter. I already know which packmule visitors are coming for work in October who could bring some of the Christmas Amazon parcels with them.

Giggling at people's t-shirts.  In our early days here I thought any t-shirt I spotted was worn by the original owner.  Ran after someone in the street wearing a t-shirt from Our UK Town's Second Scout Troop.  Gradually I wisened up. These were mitumba wares, the flotsam and jetsam of UK charity shops, on sale in Kenya. Tom described visiting a village in South Sudan where the whole village was wearing t-shirts from the (cancelled) inaugural marathon walk over the London Wobbly Bridge.  You see lots advertising the less successful charity campaigns. I saw one man wearing one promoting the presence of genital crabs. Not a frequent sight in UK.

Pretending to be a master plumber...electrician...cello teacher....doctor... bank manager.  Back in Britain we had a network of competent, kitemarked handymen. In cases of doubt we could turn to the Yellow Pages.  Here there are the bodies, but sadly, frequently the skills levels in even established firms are dire.  Or the people around us can't afford to buy a consultation with the experienced practitioners. In my time I've stopped electricians standing barefoot in a puddle of water from poking bare wires into the mains power.  Have explained about water pressure and where to site the stopcock to plumbers.  About loans, contingencies and how to stagger repayment. And my books and I have been the go-to-girls for diagnosis and treatment of chicken mites, and for our guards for management of diabetes and production of aids for arthritis at home.

Busking it. Especially with directions. I'm the kind of girl who turns up three hours early for a flight. I would never normally set out on a six hour drive without a clear, documented sense of where I'm going. But that's frequently the case here, because Kenyan directions and those usual in the UK are so different. Kenyan directions ignore all the possible turnings which aren't the right one. The speaker knows where he's going , you should too. None of this 'Take the third left by the drainage ditch.'  So I've adopted a certain unknowing, a trusting that It'll be Alright on the Night. Often it is.

Luxury.  There's a level of luxurious living - of Doing Things Nicely - as was never the case in a household of two working parents with small children just about keeping our heads above water in the UK. Not all the time, nor even often. But on occasion it can take your breath away.  On our luxury safari over the New Year, when they rustled up a full cooked bush breakfast for us with linen tablecloth on a charcoal stove miles from anywhere overlooking the river by the elephant crossing.  Quite quite different from a packet of Tescos scotch eggs in the drizzle in the local park.

And learning of the direst tragedies in people's lives in passing. That never happened in UK either. Yes dire tragedies are universal. But here they are common, are told and then buffeted by the next occurrence, so an incident which struck one hard on first telling is no longer the key magnet of attention, the raw scab to be picked at, by the end of the day.  Guards whose houses and all belongings are swept away in floods.  Newborn babes who die for lack of appropriate, affordable medical attention. Of incest disclosed in an open plan office. Students telling of their years out of school following their forced flight - seven day's walk - from the post election violence, of their mother dying in an IDP camp, of finally saving enough to get back to school by cutting 50kg bales of hay and carrying them 5km on their backs in the full sun, to eventually save 6000 KSh - £40 - for a term's fees.  Tragedies are unusual in UK. They get airtime and attention. We remember them. But here they weave into the human tapestry, not forgotten, but also not remarkable.

Speaking Truth to Power

Many of the stories I was told in Sunday School were of individuals putting heads above parapets and speaking up, regardless of the cost to themselves.  A delegation of American Quakers getting an audience with Hitler in 1938 to protest at treatment of German Jews, and to get permission to evacuate thousands of unaccompanied Jewish children. A former army officer telling of his independent mediation efforts between sides in Biafra's bloody civil war. Representations to the Tsar. Stroppy thorns in sides. For many, unruly rebels sticking their noses in, - why don't you just go home and shut up?

For Quakers all of life is sacramental. And so, if we each have such different life experiences, and yet believe all this in its variety is from God, well then it matters to listen to the experiences of others, - and to speak up and out, to articulate what is going on for each least of us.  So what if uniform consensus is otherwise? So what if authority and the party line decree it differently?  So what if I'd rather maintain an airbrushed perfection by biting back on the key experience which shows me as so different but which, if articulated, would add something to the understanding held by others. Swimming against the tide isn't perforce wrong. Speaking your mind - coming out with your experience - or advocating on behalf of others - may not be comfortable, but is sometimes your duty. 

And so Quakers were the first religious group to set up permanent representations to international agencies.  The logic was that as conscientious objectors many of us did relief work rather than bearing arms.  We were in stricken places many others weren't, saw things it was important that those in power knew.  In the 1920s we established the Quaker United Nations Office, QUNO, to the League of Nations, now the UN.  In my twenties I had a one year internship at the Quaker Council for European Affairs in Brussels, keeping a watching brief on working groups in the European Parliament, lobbying and advocating to the European Union, NATO and the Council of Europe.  I saw that for difficult issues to be become accepted, acceptable, sometimes it took a pigheaded individual to commit, to speak as a broken record, to gather information, to write letters and to advocate for years.  Child soldiers, underage minors being forced to bear arms, is one of the issues on which QUNO has worked with great impact for over twenty years. They've researched reports, built coalitions, hosted working groups, drafted opinions and legislation, changed the landscape - and the lives for tens of thousands of potential child soldiers.  But it all only started after one individual outside the organisation gathered clippings for years, spoke on it whenever she could, - acted as a stoppy advocate, the one with a bee in her bonnet who wouldn't sit down and bite her tongue.

In my time in Brussels I and my fellow intern had sought to adapt, to wear smooth suits, to adopt the polished subjunctive in our French.  But what a change to my perspective when I shepherded my first Study Tour of activists from different EU countries round the European institutions and NATO. They didn't exude Eurochic airbrushed polish. Rather the opposite. But what power, as Jessie, a feisty Quaker woman in her seventies and a cardigan, grey hair in a bun, drawing on a lifetime of informed & grounded peace activism, listened politely to the NATO speakers, asked the quiet insightful question, followed up with statistics, insights and with a follow-up question from another tack, got the three professionals who had treated her with such disdain to pay attention.  Even to reconsider.  Again and again during that week grounded individuals from the grassroots, community workers, activists, letter writers for Amnesty, drew on their local experience on an issue, backed it up with evidence and anecdotes, rounded out the perspective of the Brussels legislators, were appreciated as such.
As the t-shirt says, 'Democracy isn't a spectator sport.'

This week I spoke with a potential student politician. He's impressive, principled, articulate, a do-er.  He stood last year for a prominent sabbatical position at one of Kenya's elite universities. Surprisingly for me, for a student position, that takes money. Himself from a humble background, wary of standing on a party ticket and of getting cash for favours from adult politicians, getting coopted, he spent all his savings plus money from friends on his campaign - 150,000 KSh, a massive amount, £1200, nearly a year's wages for a teacher.  Others, he told me, had spent up to 500,000 KSh and had also been unelected. Because to get elected, on a multi-campus university costs money - for trips to the up-country campuses, to get your campaign out, to borrow cars to carry your team.  Though so much?
'I want to be elected for my policies, for my track record on what I've achieved for students,' he said. 'But lots of my peers give their vote on other things. On the ethnicity and tribal background of the candidate.  On whether you're a member of the Student Christian Union Society.  On the value of the car that you use to transport your team to the elections.  One of the candidates borrowed a limo. That got him a lot of votes.'  My friend's independence cost him dear. He received phonecalls from adult politicians telling him to withdraw his candidacy if he wasn't prepared to stand on their party ticket, or to leave the coast clear for their endorsed candidate. That's a scary deal in this country where violence can be just below the surface.  'Yes I got very scared. Yes I got depressed.  But I did stand and did well last year and I'm going to stand again this year, I think it matters.'

I think its far easier to speak up in a professional context, when you have a business card, a role, a job description and organisation behind you.  But it's also part of being a Mum, and as for a student politician, that's where its harder. Things are less clearcut. You aren't acting on a memo or mandate, could be stepping out of line.  This week I drew my line in the sand.  Spoke to a mother of an boy two years older, who'd humiliated SecondBorn on his birthday and failed to apologise. Was calm, but direct. The mother didn't take it well. It's not at all the way on the Kenyan playground, though it was reciprocal and welcomed in UK.  Face, status, appearances matter as much here as they did in Brussels.  She called me aggressive. Denied that her son could ever do the like. Said SecondBorn was a pain. Shouted at me for walking away from her.  I retreated and cried behind a tree. Replayed the conversation again and again in my head. And later that evening we got a letter of apology from the boy, who had then admitted it to his mother, - though the mother never apologised for her behaviour, and later blanked me in the playground.  I know its far smaller scale than any of the courageous examples I grew up with. But at its heart is a shared willingness to look foolish, to be potentially unlikeable and disliked, to say 'This far and no further.'

John Woolman, a prosperous shopkeeper, realised the harm caused by slavery, and for the last years of his life wore undyed cloth. Cloth which didn't provide a market for goods made by slaves.  I imagine him standing in his shop, looking, and feeling a fool. Willing to make that painful stand for something bigger. 

In my year in Brussels I spent a week standing outside Eurosatory, the major global arms fair held in Paris.  We were a handful of demonstrators from across Europe, standing singly at different entrances, inviting conversation rather than shouting slogans.  I remember feeling an idiot. Wishing for more bodies to give us the appearance of more strength. But by the third day individual arms dealers would sidle up for a chat. I remember one French arms dealer in particular.
'I don't quite know how I got here,' he said.  'This isn't what I want for my life.  I used to own a cafe in Montmatre, but was persuaded to get into this by some clients. And now here I am, and I don't feel I can get out again.'
There was something so unthreatening about an idiot demonstrator standing individually outside a global arms fair, holding a candle which kept going out in the wind,  that somehow, individuals felt they could come and discuss their dilemmas and confusion.

For change to happen, individuals need to take tiny uncomfortable steps. And others need to be willing to speak out however uncomfortable, to look a lonesome fool, to come out as the Mum of a boy who might be perceived as a pain, but to be at ease with this persona. You might find him a pain, but he still shouldn't be humiliated.  I might look an idiot and be standing all alone, but I still have experience to share which is valid. I may not be on a party ticket, nor have a limo, but my voice still counts and I'm not withdrawing my candidacy no matter how much you threaten.