Leaving Ethiopia and early Kenya - Feb - March 2007

CULTURE?


‘DO OR DIE’ the large headlines in one of the numerous Kenyan newspapers screamed on the Saturday. For an Englishman, this is an expression often used, but for a Kenyan not so fluid in English, it must have been a bit mysterious. Too many deaths from unnatural causes makes one interpret it differently… However, the difference in cultural interpretation was soon explained. The headline was referring to the World Cross-Country Races to be held in Mombasa that day. Fortunately Kenya won the overall team prize and no one had to die. In conservative Ethiopia that headline would have been impossible.

Now that I have left Ethiopia, I can see so clearly the cultural differences between the two countries. And this is not referring to the very many more isolated communities (tribes is the new non-PC word which anthropologists may not use) in both countries, which have such immensely different ways of life, but the differences between those people who have absorbed the ‘Western’ way of life. In Ethiopia they can still not speak ‘proper’ English and are totally unaware of the fact, especially in their printed literature. The Kenyans have embraced English with relish and it is such a pleasure to once again understand what people say first time round! And in Uganda, where it is the official language and all schooling is though English, the joy of being able to communicate easily is great! However, the Ugandans are now aware of the fact that they have begun to loose their heritage and the first few years in Primary school are now reverting to the local languages.

The Ethiopian love of Bureaucracy is so stifling that it impedes their move to ‘westernize’ but, at the same time, it reflects a reluctance to change. The Orthodox Church has a very defining stranglehold too. When church services go on for 9 hours and one has to stand throughout and the service is loudly broadcast from clock towers from 3.30 a.m. onwards on one of the many Saints’ days, thus keeping one awake, it cannot lead to ‘progress’. I am not advocating that the Western way of life is necessarily 'progress', but it is understood to be so by those who adopt its clothes, technology and educational aspirations. Other elements are ignored. As an example: I wanted to see some famous but relatively remote stelae on my way south towards the Kenyan border. This involved getting a ‘ticket’ for the anthropomorphic stelae at Tutufela from the nearest administrative town (Dilla) and then a bus to a turnoff 30 minutes away. After walking about 2 miles (5km), I got to the field of about 300 stelae and a ‘custodian’ took my ticket and proudly showed his companion the official ‘stamp’ on it. Neither was literate, but the all-important stamp was the clincher. However, to get to the next set of stelae at nearby Tututi (with over 1200 phallic stelae), it would have involved taking another bus to another administrative district for a ticket and then to return to near the first turnoff and repeat the process again. I had been willing to do this mad thing, but after the first visit I was so demoralized by the incessant begging and demands made by the relatively isolated farming community, that I felt nervous of being dismissive of them and feared that my vulnerability was at risk. I say this only because the unthinking bureaucracy, which isolates visitors from money-earning enterprises, is so self-defeating. But you try to tell that to an Ethiopian! They just cannot understand it when I say that they can make life easier for themselves! The Kenyans, on the other hand, have embraced the Western way of administration and despite many scams and trying to get as much money as possible from you as a mzungu (I am no longer a faranji), they adhere to some order. And things are done with a smile and 'no hard feelings'. The occasional Kenyan beggars just greet you with a smile and say ’how are you?’

The last few days south of Addis were spent trying to get fish in the Southern Rift Valley Lakes (a small bait-like fish I dissected had to be named St Valentines Day as it was un-named by the locals) and to slowly travel towards the Kenyan border. Sadly, lack of days on my passport meant a much quicker journey than planned and I will simply have to return another day…

I had entered the Southern Region, which, like the other 13 Regions in Ethiopia, had been designated and given much autonomy when the current government overthrew the Communist Régime in 1991. Trying to keep everyone happy and to accurately reflect the different societies living there, this Region is called Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional Government. How is that for a mouthful every time you want to mention them?! One of the main agricultural products and food supplies is enset, a banana-like plant which is cropped when 8 years old. After much pounding, sifting, boiling, drying and pummeling of the whole root/trunk, the resultant blob is wrapped in its banana-like leaves and consumed or buried. This food can last up to 20 years, so there is never famine in southwest Ethiopia.

The ‘capital’ of SNNPRG is called Awassa and is probably the most beautiful town in Ethiopia. My walking boots which had split and were ready to be thrown out, were expertly mended by a shoe-shine boy and my hair, which needed to be trimmed, was roughly and to great hilarity, sawn into shape by blunt scissors. I bought two blouses (one pretty and one practical), and was thus ready to leave this incredibly cheap country. I had hired a bicycle for the day and a puncture, swiftly mended on the side of the road, cost 1 Birr! My final burglary in Ethiopia was also performed with consummate skill: I had just checked into a lovely old lakeside hotel in Awassa. The famous Ethiopian bird life was overwhelming and Colobus and Vervet monkeys swung in the trees around the bungalows. I threw my bags onto the bed, opened the small rucsac and then decided to go to the en suite bathroom. By the time I returned to my bag a minute later, I could not find the pack of cards I was sure I had pulled out of the rucsac. What else was missing?! I dashed to the door to see the culprit. Nothing! Then I noticed, amongst the lush plants, were strewn 54 playing cards and their torn box. Poor monkey must have been very disappointed with his theft!

Arriving too late to cross the border, my final night in Ethiopia was pleasantly spent on the northern side of Moyale. I would not have decent coffee again for a long time! Next morning was Saturday and the only weekly bus to Nairobi left at 9am. However, the Ethiopians, in their love for order and unwillingness to compromise, only opened their side of the border at 9am. When I finally emerged from the endless form-filling demands and crossed the border, it was 9.45 and the bus had left!

A truck was eventually found and I was lifted onto the metal pipe structure over the back, which was filled with large plastic containers of diesel being ‘smuggled’ into Kenya. This ‘cage’ was shared with many others and I can assure you that hanging from ropes and being bumped over impossible roads for 8 hours with fellow passengers smoking and throwing matches and butts onto the diesel containers below, is not the most pleasant of ways to travel! We often had to stop at roadblocks (bribes being paid?) and have armed guards with us, as there is still a bit of banditry going on in these parts.

We left the intensely farmed and overpopulated land of Ethiopia with its tall fluted anthills for the flat, dry and sparsely inhabited semi desert with sensuously shaped anthills. My eyes could scan the horizon once again!

My cultural exposure started the minute a very kind member of 5W (Women Welcome Women WorldWide) and her husband collected me in Marsabit that night. They are Muslims and had built their own house. Twin boys of 12 kindly shared their room with me. The house is calm and ordered and individual family prayers are said without fuss from behind the settee. On the Sunday the boys, dressed in spotlessly clean jelabas (?) went off to the Madrassa (?) to study the Koran and the husband disappeared for the rest of the day. We went shopping in the market and I used my ‘Muslim-dress’ and shawl to cover up, as it was just so ‘right’ to do so. In the house with no piped water or kitchen as we know it, I was kindly shown how to use a small quantity of water with which to wash and how to use the urine-only indoor toilet. It was the end of the dry season and they still had water because they had installed an immense underground tank to collect rainwater. I was told that the majority of people in town had to walk many miles to collect their water.

As Marsabit is isolated and trucks do not generally stop there but continue through the night, it took 5 hours of patient waiting at the local petrol station before a small truck drew up. It only had two Italian mzungus and an Indian driver in the cab and nothing/nobody in the back! I hitched and they kindly let me jump into the rattling, bumping empty truck. Only after the 6 hours of deafening shake-up (two gun-wielding guards joined us for part of the trip) did I realize how my poor rucsac had been shaken and damaged because it was so loose. Normally, vehicles are so crowded that everything is tightly packed. The story behind this empty truck was once again revealing of the intransigence of the Ethiopians. The two Italian men had been traveling down and up Africa for months in their own two 4x4s. Nowhere else, having crossed 25 borders, were they refused a visa and told to get one two days’ drive back. The poor chaps therefore had to hire the Indian and his truck and travel for two days back to Nairobi, get the visas and then return. Needless to say, they were furious and I thought of them a few days later when I heard that this road had been closed because there had been ‘rebel-activity’ shortly after we passed. But it is far from the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency and I am in no way exposing myself to areas of danger…. Coward!

In Osiola, I stayed with a local 5W member whose family is strongly Roman Catholic (this church is even stronger in Uganda) and who is a teacher at the local school in the nearby army barracks. The small two-bedroom house is home for five people, but they insisted on giving me a room to myself! Lovely local food was prepared and explained and one was introduced to many curious neighbours and visitors. Such hospitality is to be encountered over and over again. An adjacent Evangelical church was having a weeklong recruitment (?) and the loudspeakers were directly outside the window. One just had to think of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s loudhailers and the various other Evangelical outpourings I had to endure in West Africa, to know that this will not be the last time…I knew somebody in Ethiopia who was part of a movement to stop these loud overnight services and even in Uganda, there was talk of curbing them. The following day was peacefully spent with the local RC priest giving up his busy schedule to drive us around. Evidence of the devastating floods in this semi-desert area just a few weeks before could be seen outside the village.

I was now in a less isolated area and it was only a bus ride away to Nanyuki where the cousin of a friend in the UK met me. She had conveniently come to town to attend her yoga lesson and after getting soft cheeses and wine (hey, I am supposed to be in ‘primitive’ Africa!), we drove to their glorious homestead which would sit comfortably in Surrey. All the time, Mount Kenya with its snow-white glaciers caught one’s attention as it loomed on the nearby horizon. These ‘ex-pat’ flower-farmers are members of the permanent generations who have kept their love of Kenya and their way of life alive. Children go to boarding schools (often the secondary ones in South Africa) and entertainment is around the estate with tennis court, horses etc. or at the local, exclusive Club where all manner of facilities are available. Needless to say, it was a tremendous joy to mix in my own culture once again. It sounds snobbish, but one cannot deny one’s upbringing and I am not adverse to a bit of western luxury! Just to have knives and forks in place around a place-setting can be mighty pleasing! The flower farming industry is very impressive and, contrary to the current ‘anti-air miles’ movement in Europe, the flowers and vegetables grown here are still cheaper to produce and use less energy than if they were to be grown in Europe. The only way to show protest is to not buy such items out of season, but our tastes have evolved with refrigeration to such an extent that we in the West expect to get flowers, avocadoes, green beans and tomatoes throughout the year. And yes, the farmers commute with their private airplanes between farms and pay low wages to thousands of workers. On the other hand, if they did not take the risks (weather, change in fashion, disease, low yield, cost of pesticides, fertilizers and airfreight), then the thousands of workers who are feeding large families but without constant managerial cares, will be totally unemployed. I explained this risk-taking to a local woman much later when she mentioned the profits of these farmers to me. Ironically, she had employed 30 people herself a few years ago and spoke with longing about her little industry, which had gone bankrupt because one of her clients did not pay the bill for goods she had supplied. When I explained that the white farmers have the same worries and could also go bankrupt if they did not manage things carefully, her face lit up and she said,”oh, now I understand”. Despite this whitewash, I am very concerned about the depletion of water where the local Rift Valley Lakes are used for irrigation. That is another argument which saddens me immensely, although it is not just the exploiting farmers who are responsible for water-loss, depleted fish–stocks, degraded water-quality, increased diseases and so on. Poor Lake Victoria is dying at a very rapid rate.

Arriving in the CBD of Nairobi was a real culture shock! Broad, clean and smooth pavements, no beggars or hawkers, endless little eating places and Internet cafes (oh, sorry, they are called cyber cafes here) made one reel with wonder! This is a real western-style city center and I have not seen anything similar for a long time. Lagos and Accra were too ‘African’ in their busyness. So, OK, the city authorities have made it illegal to beg or sell on the streets (beggars appear at night) as the city is the financial capital of Africa and appearances have to be maintained. Ex-pats live in comfortable, protected suburbs and the streets are crowded with rush-hour traffic and endless busses packed with workers. People are very smartly dressed and the women have incredibly ornate/intricate hairstyles. One can say it is a mixture of many cultures, but, sadly, they still maintain their separateness. Despite a large group of people who have integrated, there is still a cultural divide which makes the Indian shopkeepers and white businessmen separate from the many different local cultures who man the offices and shops. I think of South Africa which is far more integrated and where the large white population means that there are e.g. shop assistants of all nations serving together in a supermarket/dress shop. Later, in Uganda, I am pleasantly surprised by the far better mix of people throughout. The Colonial culture in Kenya was far too well established for members to give up their ‘rights’, whereas the Protectorate status of Uganda meant that the mzungus never owned land and only furthered the administrative aspects in the country.

While in Nairobi, I read about the sudden and total destruction of ‘illegal’ squatters’ homes one night. It left 3000 people homeless without any form of compensation. It was being done in the guise of making Nairobi beautiful. There is a ministry of Beautification and Tree-planting which is only denying the local inhabitants a relaxed way of life. Thus the visitor can say; “Nairobi is one of the most beautiful cities in the world”. In the streets outside my hotel, while I was there, the authorities had dug great holes in the pavements and planted small decorative trees with cement surrounds which took up about half of the pavement width. This on over-crowded pavements! The tradition of beautification for the visitor is universal (think of London which is already being transformed in the East End for the 2012 Olympic Games) and I was amused in Addis Ababa when the street railings were suddenly given red and white paint for the African Union Conference earlier this year. The beggars in sensitive streets were removed for three days. In Mombasa there was frenzied activity to redesign and plant the parks and streets for the World Cross-Country races (a few weeks later when I returned after the event, the hastily planted shrubs looked very sad). In Kampala the activity to prepare hotel rooms and beautify the streets for the Commonwealth Heads of State Conference in November is a daily item in the newspapers. The Queen has to be very used to the smell of freshly-painted walls…

I settled into Nairobi and enjoyed visits to the ex-pat suburb of Karen (Karen Blixen’s house is an interesting museum of those early days) where Cynthia, the anthropologist I had befriended in Addis, was a constantly welcoming hostess. Such a pleasure to have interesting conversations and to borrow books!

The Indian Ocean lured, however. As a child and during my student days much time was spent in battling the waves of this beloved ocean on the east coast of South Africa. Here on the equator, there is hardly any surf and one has the compensation of snorkeling over coral reefs instead. The train to Mombasa was an experience I repeated quite a few times during the following weeks. It is sadly neglected and the so-called improvements promised by the SA Company which took over in 2006, have not materialized. But the remnants of the Colonial era are potent and I enjoyed the experience despite the lack of lighting and awareness that things could be stolen while one was in the restaurant car or sleeping.

In Mombasa I decided to ‘push out the boat’ and joined a tourist group who were taken south for a few hours and then into a boat from which we could float next to the local dolphins and drop over the side to snorkel over the coral. This is a Marine Park and it is good to know that the area is being protected. On the island we were given very elaborate courses of crustaceans and the tourists were given an exciting walk through the local village. Well, being used to this, it was just so embarrassing for me to see how every doorway is festooned with things to sell at hugely inflated prices. But the visitors could go home and say they had ’slummed it’. What upset me more though was the fact that I had been amongst the beautifully slim Ethiopians for so long and had not been exposed to ‘normal’ tourists for so long. Thus I was a bit horrified to say the least at having to face these half-naked bloated white bodies from the West. Apart form the insult to the culture of their host country, what the locals must think of our sedentary and over-fed lives, I dare not imagine!

Escaping the over-touristy south, I moved north towards Lamu, the centre of over-touristy exploitation! But on the way, I found a magnificent estuary with a small hotel on the edge of the water where I was the only guest. One could have a beer and meals under the terrace roof and watch the sun set over the water and bush. Walks along the edge of the tidal estuary lead to the sea and a ride in a dugout catamaran on the sublimely peaceful estuary was just heaven! For those who need a total ‘away-from-it-all’ experience, this is it! And for a spoilt traveler like me who really does not need a ‘break’, it is still magical and worth using for the unwinding we all need. Remember the name Kilifi….

Lamu is all it is renowned for….An island in a protected archipelago with an Islamic town of tiny alleyways where one can generally touch both sides of the high buildings, where the 3000 donkeys are the only means of transport and one can eat freshly caught fish, hire a boat to go to the many islands and snorkel or just swim and play by the white sandy beaches.

After Lamu I took the train from Nairobi in a westerly direction to the shores of Lake Victoria. Here the 5W members who live in Kisumu and environs entertained me royally. Days were spent in going from one home to another, always being offered margarined bread and sweet milky tea, or a meal of local produce. It was fascinating and I was humbled to be so spoilt. The 5W members are all part of the local Quaker Friends’ congregation. However, when one thinks of the aims of George Fox to have a quiet, contemplative gathering in a hall, one will not find it here! The Sunday services throughout the morning are designed to attract the young people of today. Thus the preacher was enthusiastic in his loud and very active lessons/prayers and singing. The congregation danced and waved and generally filled the church with deafening noise for long sessions. T.I.A. as they say; This Is Africa.

It occurred to me that I had been exposed to many different cultures within a short time. Perhaps this chapter does not do justice to them, but I am aware of the fact that one has to tread gently…