Crevasses, Frontier Towns and Living in the Wild West

'Nairobbery' is the cliche for the stresses of Kenya's capital, but after four years here I wouldn't say it really hits the target.  And the time my bag was stolen in a shopping mall, it was recovered a day later with a somewhat restrained 3000 KSh (around $40) - only a part-payment - taken from the more substantial wodge of cash with which I'd been planning to do the week's shop.  Yet sitting yesterday in a gathering of the expat accompanying partners from Tom's work the quiet talk in twos and threes was of the stresses of life here.
'In twenty five years of overseas postings, some to very difficult places, this is the hardest.'
Another: 'This is the posting which made us decide to change track and head back to the UK again.'
But which are the facets that so stress here?

Chewing the fat with some Mum mates last week as we swapped stories of outlandish encounters here, one, who had grown up in Africa and lived in some fairly wayward European countries, said, musingly,
'I get from my childhood I may 'need' to pay a bribe, a 'fine' when I'm in the wrong. But the thing is, here there isn't really the rule of law. Here, the fine is levied without there needing to be any offence at all.'
A survey published this week by Transparency International reported that 70% of Kenyans asked agreed they had paid a bribe to a public official this year, - the third highest rated country in the world, after Sierra Leone and Yemen.  They can't ALL have done something wrong.   And the impact of that is, I think, as with a bullying teacher who lashes out without reason, others scurry past with eyes downcast, heads down, hoping they won't be the ones to trigger the quixotic temper today. If you trigger the mine you're on your own with it.  'Too bad' people may hiss from the side of their mouth, as they scurry past but basically, survival of the fittest, sauve qui peut, and you're on your own.

A good mate, settled here for some twenty years, describes Nairobi as a frontier town. Which conjures up dodgy backstreets and shady dealings. Another recalled how her friends in well-ordered (but still African) Cape Town called Nairobi 'the Wild West'. Not Somalia or South Sudan where the laws are yet to be drafted. But somewhere, I'd say from a worm's eye view, where having the letter of the law on your side doesn't stand for much.  Enforcement is what counts and your ability to enforce by fair means or foul.  And all too often it isn't the sheriff with the ten gallon hat who rides into town to enforce the mutually agreed law but someone with their own personal agenda. Or no one at all.

It's not something you might see on first, or even second glance.  Tourists passing through can marvel at the malls and chic dress shops. Those here on short-term contracts may breathe a sigh of relief and steam on well-trammelled routes between Gipsys bar, the United Nations complex in Gigiri and the sleek consultants' hangout, Art Cafe.  But a few months in, you hear the horror stories which betray chasms and neglect.  Of a Kenyan professional who had a car accident on the main,busy Thika highway after dark, but not late, on a Saturday night. And who was discovered dead in the car next morning, as no one had reported the incident or gone to investigate as it careered off the road. The security briefings at which you are told, should you see someone lying injured in the middle of the road, to drive on by, - even, some say, to drive over the body to escape if need be, - as it could be a scam in which you get carjacked - or you get lynched for having caused the accident. Children abandonned or orphaned, living independently on the streets, or in their villages.

A well-respected Head of Science at an international school working here for the last twenty seven years, had his work permit renewal rejected a few months ago.  He sat at home off the books for three weeks while representations were made.  And then got it re-issued.
'They were just chancing their arm with the school authorities,' he said wryly, a week later. He was just collateral damage. But for him, his family, possible deprivation of his income, question marks over his country of residence of twenty seven years, for no transparent reason at all. A mate of mine described her long-ongoing divorce case. Her ex-husband boasted to her he had bribed the family court. So he is getting away with truly minimal payments for upkeep of their children, despite his comfortable income.  But what can she do? Not much in effect. Another very well-connected mate detailed the saga of the land in a prime development area left her ten years ago. How the deeds were stolen when they were lodged with the courts. How driving past after a tip off the plots had been re-fenced and divided up - a sign someone else was trying to grab the land and make a fast buck.  All around us, plots of land bear painted signs 'This plot is not for sale', so no one can pretend to be the owner and 'sell' it on to an innocent buyer.

What scares and stresses me is how individuals can fall through the cracks. Individuals who could be me and mine.  Just because there was solid ground there a moment ago, oh look theres a swallow hole and 'Where's she gone?' How so many choose to look away from tricky situations, from distress, and walk on by rather than stop, do the difficult thing, have the tricky conversation, offer support.

I was told of a newly arrived young expat wife, arriving in Nairobi some two months after her husband. Her husband lost his job within a month of her arrival, but didn't tell her. Carried on with the motions of going to work while trying to find something new. As well we all might. While she carried on trying to settle in a new country, make a new home, surrounded by other expat spouses who knew the reality of her situation, that she didn't know, but they didn't feel they could tell her on such a brief acquaintance.

Or thinking of the new mum on the playground a week before the end of the summer term.  We swapped phone numbers, she came to coffee, we had a nice chat. Then came the summer holidays. Six weeks into the autumn term I realised it wasn't just that our kid's after school activities no longer overlapped. Not that she'd got a driver and no longer did the school run herself. Not that she was always in the gym when I phoned. Or 'out'.  She wasn't here any more.  That might not matter in Europe. But here, where networks and security are key, well it felt it really did.
'Oh yes, the partners her husband was working with changed their plans just after he'd arrived. So they had to turn round and go home.'
Its not that life is changeable that distresses me. But that I, others, no one noticed she wasn't there.  No one sent out a search party.  Stuck, in distress, in a car after an accident, and those passing by don't stop, to look and help.

I think its particularly hard if you work here in a regional role, - if Nairobi is your base and your home, but not where you spend most of your time. If you're regularly away in DRC, or Uganda, in Somaliland or South Sudan. A few days after the earthquake in Haiti I suddenly realised that the family of a mate of mine were based in Haiti. There had been wall to wall coverage of the earthquake. But because she's often away, I hadn't made the connection to her. I felt I knew her well, but we'd always met elsewhere. I'd never been to her home, didn't know where she lived. Five days after the earthquake, when I went to see her, it turned out both her parents were still trapped in the family house. That her siblings had had to give up digging by hand to get them out, as really all hope had been lost. She had been in contact with friends and family by skype, by phone. But no one in Nairobi had yet been to see her. No one from her office, which was five minutes walk away. Nor of her other friends. No one at all as she went through a double bereavement, and loss of all income for the rest of her family. A friend from her choir came later on that day. But what an indictment of a city, of a community.

The image which sums the stresses up for me is high altitude climbing. Above the snowline. A place where the air is thin. Things may look stable on the surface, but crevasses can open up. Things can go awry, and there you are, dependent on yourself and your team. If you're lucky you've put in enough, have built the strong relationships, have lucked upon a group with the mentality that if you fall into a crevasse others will pull together and pull you out.  Harambee, its called in Swahili, - the mentality by which villages host events to pay for unforeseen funerals, to contribute school fees for talented children who otherwise wouldn't go to high school. But that's a choice. And somehow here, all too often I'd say its seen as value-free, if, imperilled as the rest of the team is too, they turn around, and rather than rescuing you, they instead cut the rope and walk away. Traumatised maybe but uninvolved.

When Mum Turned into a Monster

When the children were small, storytime was my favourite bit of the day.  Hopefully a 20 minute respite when high-energy chasing-his-tail-in-circles SecondBorn would come and snuggle on a lap, when three year older FirstBorn would huddle up on the other side. When, if not peace, then a cessation in hostilities, would fall.  And some books depicted the reality we, the family, were living.  'When Mum turned into a Monster' by Joanna Harris stands out.

In it cousins in freshly ironed dresses give an hour's notice of an unanticipated visit. The family has been press-ganged into tidying up. Fairy cakes and jam sandwiches have been made. Piles of papers have been stuffed into cupboards, bedrooms have been hoovered. Ten minutes till they arrive, and the son and daughter are let off the leash 'To do something quiet.'  Which they interpret as setting up a muddy assault course in the garden using duvets, cushions and tablecloths and taking random bites out of fairy cakes.

The next picture is of a mother transformed with green spikes, monster head, green crocodile tail and snake gorgon hair. Screaming. And though mollified eventually by the children pulling together, as the freshly ironed cousins sit round the tea-table, we see the mother's tail poking out from under the tablecloth, gone but not forgotten.  A satisfying read, which the kids loved as much as I did.
September has been an angry month. That Mum has been a frequent alter ego.  But why, I wonder.  Why do I feel so stretched, arid and inflexible, when in many ways I am so much more settled?  No one factor is the killer. Together they break the camel's back.

* Our one day on, one day off powercuts are continuing.  It feels to have been over a year at this frequency, without warning.  Several blocks of flats are being built on our road and it seems that no sooner has the cabling been upgraded and installed to one lot, then it all comes down to add capacity for the next.

* The AccessKenya email transmitter is on another electricity spur to ours. So either we have a powercut (ie no radio mast) or the transmitter does (no internet access). If you log on at 625 am you get heady access to the internet - but within a maximum of 3 minutes, off it goes again.  I've phoned, pleaded, been logged, pushed, requested credit for our lack of access, in vain.  Today the engineers turned up.
'Give us your largest spanner and pliers so we can sort this job out.'
Engineers regularly arrive without the basic bits in the toolkit - or indeed any toolkit - and disappear off again, tutting the while, when you inform them you don't have an industrial size spanner for removing bolts from aerial masts either.

* SecondBorn has moved up the school to year five. Keys on a chain round his neck and the need for organisational skills to have the right exercise book and equipment in the right room at the right time. Not a happy transition. And the homework after a long, long day. A plague on all your houses.

The Kenyan school system is not a child-centred one. What the teacher says, goes.  And while our kids, in a British curriculum school, are taught by many inspirational, creative, caring teachers, they also have far too much to do with several who shirk responsibilities, rule by fear, push blame onto children rather than acknowledging minor misdemeanours, enforce rigid regulations while failing to apply them to themselves, and even who fail to teach at all.  I don't mind supporting with homework. See it as part of a parent's job description some of the time.  But object, massively, to large chunks of the weekend being taken up teaching SecondBorn the lessons his exercise book suggests he was to be taught in school, - except that the teacher, specialist and being paid for the job, has handed out photocopies, failed to explain them, handed out a worksheet, insisted on silence, and ignored any troublesome, messy requests for support or explanation.

* My career guidance business has taken off.  Lots of individual clients, and from them, individual cheques to the business account. Hurrah - even she can't moan at that can she? 

But the Kenyan banking system have adopted a new system with cheques. Any minor amendment or inaccuracy, - 'thousand' spelt wrongly, any crossing out or overriding the date e.g. changing 23 to 24 September, - misspelling the company name - and the cheque is refused.  My bank isn't far away. 10 minutes drive. But there is never any parking within half a mile, and if there is, you have to pay 140 KSh. You queue for over an hour in over-intimate queues to reach the counter.  Have the cheques accepted, receive a receipt. Breathe a sigh of relief. And a day or two later receive a phone call.

'Your cheque is rejected.  The system does not accept it. They have spelt 'thousand' wrongly.' Or
'It is not made out to your company.'  (Well it is, but the client has added the word Kenya to the account - correctly - its just your bank staff set up the bank account in the wrong name....)
Of the four cheques I have paid in this month three have been rejected.

Accuracy in banking matters. But this accuracy isn't seen as a two way pact. Last visit to the bank I picked up my new ATM card. Drawn on a company account, instead it is made out to a new identity (?maybe MonsterMum) consisting of my first name and my wildly misspelt middle name.  No sniff of a surname.  I'm not complaining.  Doubtless vendors will check it against my ID card (made out in a different, more accurate, name - and despite the discrepancy, accept it nonetheless.)

* Botched haircuts (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/haircuts.html), uninvited new roofs (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/guerilla-roofs.html), staff turnover, sackings & retirement.

* And it's taken me three weeks to calm down enough to write about the final fireworks with BigCorporate.

I worked for them at their marble headquarters two days a week for a year. Had my successes lauded - the students I supported to get full fees scholarships to US elite colleges were featured on tv, presented to the President, the subject of double page features in influential broadsheets.  True my hand in this wasn't acknowledged. Well as the only non-Kenyan, - as only the second non-Kenyan to ever work in BigCorporate - that's maybe understandable. But irking.

And once my work permit was agreed, afixed in my passport, I presented my invoices at the rate we'd agreed. Waited. Reminded, represented. Submitted the next too.  Secured written agreement that all was in hand, invoices with Finance, agreed. Went on leave.  Returned five days short of a year that I'd been working for BigCorporate, to discover that my bank account was bare.  Emailed a calm but persistent email to all my managers (attaching further copies of the invoices) noting that I'd welcome immediate payment and an explanation.  Two days, no response.

I saw red. 'Leave it with us,' they'd said. But really. It had been left with them for a year. Still no sense of urgency. Now no sense of collegiality. That even if it wasn't their priority, if it was mine, and I'd waited a year, bust a gut for them, been successful, was a scarce skilled resource, even if a deadweight member of the team, maybe they should act, today.

Recalled the tale of an OldKenyaHand waiting for key paperwork, when in her case bribes were what was wanted. How she'd prepared the way by going to the toilet. Brought a flask of tea, several packs of sandwiches, a weighty tome to read. Arrived as the office opened, was clear, persistent, and refused to budge.  And eventually, ten hours later, as the office manager wanted to go home too, her finalised paperwork was produced, without a bribe.

So in my case I gatecrashed two meetings.  Popped to the toilet, then placed myself in the UberBigBoss's executive office. Showed him the email chain. Re-presented the invoices. Repeated, again and again, that it had now been a year without payment and that that was more than enough. 

It was rude in a Kenyan context where status, gender and seniority really matter.  It would have been rude in a UK context too.  The security guard was alarmed, unclear what to do with this red-faced middle-aged angry mzungu woman. But to treat someone who had (till then) been a key and integrated member of the team like that is beyond the pale - at least in my culture. 

But it worked. The electronic payment was in my bank account that afternoon. A miracle in Kenya.

I get that accidents happen. I get that, in Kenya, multiple accidents happen. Multiple invoices, payment orders, direct requests, urgent emails get shelved, or lost, or sat on and wilfully suppressed. Over twelve months. The job doesn't necessarily receive the wage you negotiated.  Clients try and bargain you down once you've finished the job to their satisfaction. Down to nothing in some cases.  People don't say thank you. The attitude is that staff are two a penny.
'There are far more where you came from.' 
But I also think its a sign of a culture where with seniority comes not needing to dirty your hands, or to demonstrate mastery, to chase, or to oversee implementation, to be responsible for the performance of your staff or yourself. Seniority just Is.  No further requirements. Where attention to detail isn't valued. Where the difference between ill-focused going through the motions and performing a good job isn't valued.  Where what is valued is to come up with a rousing vision rather than to follow through on it, or to look back and identify what went wrong or could be done better.  And that's actually why they needed me, because in US college applications, spinning an empty line without analysis, evidence, articulation, coaching or grounded attention to detail just isn't enough.

Well it feels better to get that rant off my chest! Here's to a brighter, monster-free, tomorrow.

Ladies of Leisure? Why such heavy weather?

It's the first day of the school term, after a long, long, long seven week school holiday. While the children trudge schoolwards in shiny new shoes, sharpened pencils in pencilcase, expat mums queue at 755am, noses pressed against the glass of the posh caff which serves frothy cappuccinos, waiting for an 8am opening.

But the conversation isn't of handbags and designer dresses. It's pent up release for seven weeks of pressure cooker steam. Essential for my mental health. Important too for my mates.  Because attempting to live a somewhat ethical expat life is something done in community, something where the input from peers, gentle steers from wiser souls are profoundly helpful.

'Oh you and your staff and your life of luxury in Kenya. Why are you making such heavy weather of it'  say my UK mates.  But things here just aren't so clearcut. So what then at our first coffee of the term?

Employing people, creating employment, but without the safety net of a welfare state, or the boundaries of an office relationship, is the biggest source of stress.

The friend who is funding the stay & treatment in hospital of the child with severe organ damage of a part-time temporary member of staff.  How much can she stump up? But how can she say no? 
'And the staff member, the dad, he's only with us for a month. He doesn't say thank you. That isn't a reason to say no in a case like this. But it adds to the strain.'

The sacked employees (2), given generous payoffs at the start of the holidays, who have now returned to ask for more money as the impact of unemployment in a land without social security bites.  Tensions between good employment practice 'walk away to make a clear break' and putting yourself in another's shoes. 

One former employee for whom 7000 KSh/worth of employment ads had been put up over the key month when new arrivals seek new staff. With his payoff he took himself away on holiday up-country while potential employers were phoning him. Money gone, adverts gone, potential new employer interest gone, he texts his former employer for an additional handout for busfare back to Nairobi. 

Former employees for whom very expensive (several thousand dollars worth of) emergency medical treatment had been paid, who write threatening letters, even threatening letters to colleagues of the former employer.  Former employees,  for whom expensive (six hundred dollars worth of ) medical treatment had been paid - but which, money in hand, they then decide to be less urgent. Refusing reimbursement to employer, 'Its my money now',  they get employers who refuse to comply summonsed to the local police station.

Tales of the recent interview candidate who paused mid-interview, got up, opened and inspected the contents of a few of the interviewer's living room drawers, sat down again and resumed her answer to the question.

Of the new employees offered work to cover childcare for a employer's short term contract, who then text on the day of arrival: 'I'm not coming'.  Who then, when phoned, clarify:
'Oh I am coming for the job, but not today, in three days time.'  [Just as well I didn't start reinterviewing then.] 
Who then on D-Day Plus Three, don't arrive. But this time have their phone switched off to fend off any inconvenient calls.

Of jobseekers who have wept salt tears over friendly unrelated expats:
'Please find me work, today is my last day in the job, I'm desperate.' 
But who when phoned next day, offered busfare and invited for interview the following day to fill an urgent and ongoing need say,
'Well I can't come tomorrow. Or this week. I'll come next Wednesday maybe.'

It sounds a moaning litany. By UK standards some of these, surely, must be dredged up memories from far distant times. Retold, rehashed on each occasion. But far from it. These were the stories that burst forth, that had to be told, boiling jets of water from a geyser, boils to be lanced, steam under pressure, before any could calm down and drink coffee. 

We weren't many -  five at the table.  We aren't Little England jingoists, we strive to be open to the culture we're in, to adapt our ways within it. We aren't newcomers to this expat lark or newcomers to Kenya. Not freshfaced spring chickens, but grizzled women of the world.  Between us we had lived before in Albania, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Madagascar, South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Uganda, France and UK.  We know we are so fortunate by comparison with those we live next to. That's why the boundaries are so porous.  But not rolling in money, truly not. And these pressures are massive and the contortion considerable.

And Kenya confounds expectations. Ruptures boundaries. Lays waste the identity we thought we had, the way we believed we'd behave, the person we wanted to be, even once was.  And picking yourself up, putting yourself back together, refashioning a self that you might on occasion choose to take coffee with, well for that you need friends.