Diesel.

Happy World AIDS Day!

In brief (because you don’t want anything else…I know you don’t), the work on the water, sanitation and hygiene program in rural primary schools that Shadi and I are both working on has kicked into overdrive for me. The partners here, facilitated by me, have been trying to transform what has been an applied research project into a scaled, government-led intervention.  As it happens, the scaling part was already in the works thanks to the UK’s Department for International Development and the Kenyan Ministry of Education.  What we’ve been trying to do is figure out how that process can be made effective and sustainable.  It’s honestly (as almost always with development) an open guess as to whether or not it works.  I’ll let you know in three years.  Luckily, this project is all about learning and we’ll definitely do that.

Those of you following such things know that I’ve also been spending time working on my other blog which feeds my new found obsession in sustainable agriculture.

Other than that, Shadi and I head to Kampala this weekend which will be fun.  We’re going to see our friends Sarah and Jon (their blog is here…who doesn’t have one or three these days?) and possibly see a Boyz II Men concert.  Yes, I said Boyz II Men.

As with government, the impact of business on society isn’t always good.  But sometimes it is, and it could be even more so.  Personally, I’ve almost never been interested in business as a profession.  Instead, I’ve been drawn to the public and nonprofit sectors.  I guess I never really got it.  What’s the point?

Here are two examples of what I mean:

1. I was taking a seminar in Atlanta with a marketer who works at Coca-Cola.  We exchanged the usual career summary.  The Coke marketer said something to the effect of, “Wow, that must be really gratifying.  All I do is sell sugar water.”  My immediate reaction was along the lines of a recent post by Alanna Sheikh about some of the less positive aspects of humanitarian and development work (worth checking out).  My second reaction was, yeah well, I don’t want to sell sugar water either.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m actually a fan of the occasional Coke classic or perhaps better a Stoney Tangawizi, a ginger soda available here in Kenya where sodas actually contain real sugar and not corn syrup.  The rub is that I need to feel like what I’m doing could conceivably be having a lasting positive impact on the world.  Humanitarian and development work often doesn’t, but at least that’s the goal.

2. I used to freelance as an associate producer for CNN International.  Working for CNN has its perks.  It sounds impressive and makes you instantly interesting when meeting new people.  You also get to feel “in the know,” and it’s exciting when there’s big news happening in front of your eyes.  Finally, during special times (i.e. the last week) when everyone works lots of overtime, they sometimes purchase large quantities of free burritos for the newsroom folks.  What was ultimately unsatisfying was the entire raison d’etre of the while thing.  In the end, it was all about pumping up the ratings so we could beat out Fox News and sell more expensive ads.  Again, I don’t really have a problem with journalism.  I think it’s an incredibly noble profession.  I’m writing a blog for crying out loud.  My problem, is that if you asked anyone in the building why they wanted to be a journalist, not one of them would have said it was because they wanted to sell more expensive ads.  And yet that was the goal.  Not to create a more informed populace.  As Edward R. Murrow said, as long as “[an advertiser] invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or letting the public decide.”  There is no core mission based on any journalistic ethic to television news (outside of PBS).  It is all geared to raise ratings and make more dollars.  I’ve personally seen the very tangible consequences this has for the quality of our news, but I’ll leave that for a future post.

We think of business as existing for the purpose of making money, and that’s usually what it is.  But it doesn’t have to be and I’m confident that it eventually won’t be.  Already there are great examples of companies moving towards a core mission that goes beyond increasing share price.  Here in Kenya, there’s a company called Kickstart that sells foot pumps (they named it the Moneymaker pump) for small scale irrigation to increase agricultural productivity while creating jobs.  You can see them all over the place.  They make money, but they have a goal beyond money.  On a smaller scale, my friend Bart through his NGO Emerging Humanity has started a farm and several spin-off businesses with local youth who used to be on the streets.  They also would like to make money while improving people’s lives.  Bart also goes out of his way to employ permaculture techniques on the farm as a way of leaving the soil richer than they found it.  In the U.S., companies such as Whole Foods and miriade upscale urban restaurants are trying to support local farmers as both a way to be more environmentally responsible and improve the health (and taste) of their food.  Google is determined to produce its own energy in a bid to not be evil.

If you want to read more about the concept of “sustainable capitalism” (though not necessarily mission-driven), check out the op-ed by Al Gore and David Blood today in the Wall Street Journal. They cite a wonderful quote from Bobby Kennedy that I’ll close with:

“the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Shadi and I watched the election last night with a big group of Americans.  It was a great night, but with little sleep.  The Indiana poll didn’t close until 3am our time.  It didn’t take long until we knew what was happening though.  Once Obama took Pennsylvania, everyone went crazy.  When Ohio sealed the deal, we cried.

We’re all international travelers (I think we’d say world citizens), and we breathed a collective sigh of relief that as Americans we’d elected someone who represented the future and not the past of our country.  For all of us, it was incredibly moving to see our nation in the catharsis that had to follow the train wreck of the last eight years.

I sincerely hope that President-elect Obama will follow through on his instinctive search for consensus and his proclivity to spur new service and sacrifice from Americans.  He will need to do this with a clear understanding of where America has fallen behind in everything from diplomacy to scientific research and innovation.

After Obama’s acceptance speech, we drove around Kisumu.  The sense of pride here is palpable.  Everyone smiled and yelled “Obama!” at us and waved posters of Barack and Michelle being public role models for the importance of HIV testing in 2006 when they visited Kisumu.  It was great fun.  We stopped and watched an impromptu parade.  It took only a few hours for word to get around that tomorrow had been declared an official Kenyan holiday honoring Barack Obama’s achievements.  I’ll post a few more pictures below. If there are more celebrations later, I’ll post from those as well.

A man honors Obama's Illinois roots.

Quick, take a picture of the American!

Senator Obama is well-represented in Kisumu.

Bumper stickers are everywhere; there are people selling Obama buttons outside the grocery stores.  On one road, there’s a three story tall billboard with Barack standing in front of the Capitol Building (see above). Chickens were pecking around its base.  Shadi got two text messages today from Kenyan colleagues asking her when she’s going to vote.  It’s hard to escape Obamania in Kisumu.  But honestly, I think it’s hard to escape Obamania in the world.  Here’s a smattering of stories I’ve gotten from different corners:

Yvonne, a Congolese woman who lives in Kisumu came over the other day.  She broke down crying over Obama’s possible election.  She said that everyone in Congo hopes that he can bring peace, and that they think he can.  This broke my heart as does all news from the Congo these days.

In Atlanta, one of my friends was canvassing a neighborhood for the campaign and started talking to an older African American man.  He talked about how nervous he was, but said he was so excited for this change.  “I mean, that is me up there,” he said referring to Obama.

Another friend of mine has a sister who lives in California and has a son named Bryant who’s mixed black and white.  The family was watching a television special on Obama when Bryant looked over at his mother and said, “Wait, I could be president?”

James who drives a tuk tuk in Kisumu has eight Obama bumper stickers on his tuk tuk.  Tonight, when he was driving us home, he asked me what Obama’s chances were.  I told him they were very good and asked where the big celebrations would be.  He told me and then said, “Change we can believe in.  That’s a nice slogan.  It’s a slogan for all of us.”

If Obama is elected, the U.S. certainly won’t have moved past its racial problems.  War in the Congo almost certainly won’t stop.  But symbols and hope are powerful things.  As Shadi says, “Today, everyone in Kisumu has their head a little higher.”

He might not be able to vote but he can sell buttons--yes he can.

To Shadi’s infinite delight, there was almost always a cute cat lounging somewhere in the cafe.  Street cats in Turkey are everywhere, but they seem reasonably well cared for, and often they’re even fed by store owners.  Very rarely did we see one that looked too thin or sick.

An unexpected Istanbul indulgence came in the form of music.  I had picked up a great cd by Mercan Dede last time I was in Turkey, and I’d read a NYTimes article about the music scene there before we went.  We sampled a cafe named Badehane one night when a band called Native Project was playing.  As we sat in the narrow corner alley outside of the cafe drinking tea, the gypsie music mixed with Latin beats pulsed out.  It was beautiful and the lighting was unreal.  A week later we returned to the same place to see Selim Sesler, a more traditional gypsie music practitioner, and his band play.  This time we got there early to get a table inside.  It was unreal.  As the clarinet and violin got more rowdy, young Turks (male and female) stood on chairs, belly-dancing in the small and crowded room.  It was unbelievably fun.  Our best music experience, though, came on the street as we a saw Turkish folk band named Kara Güneş on Istiklal Cadessi, a pedestrian only street that’s the center of the Taksim night life.  They had the same kind of breathless emotional folk that Iron and Wine have, but Middle Eastern style.  We stood watching them for almost thirty minutes and eventually bought (an excellent) cd from them.  Passers-by were captivated as were we, and a big crowd developed.

Other than that, there were a thousand small experiences that made Istanbul magical.  There was the accordian player who walked down the street below our apartment playing beautiful music one morning for no apparent reason other than to do it.  There was the Kurdish man with the small fruit stand maybe 20 feet from our front door when we walked out selling the biggest, juiciest figs (and a bunch of other fruit, but I like figs) that you’ve ever seen.  All in all, I can’t say enough about Istanbul. We vowed that if we ever become independently wealthy, we’re going to buy a small apartment there.  If you’re reading this now, you should go visit!

A bit of background.  For those of you who don’t know, Shadi is a Baha’i.  In Iran, Baha’is have it worse than any other religious minority, even including Jews who also don’t have it so great.  They are prohibited from attending colleges, and their marriages are only unofficially recognized.  Sometimes, the situation escalates to arbitrary arrests or executions, which is happening now (for more information, see the official Baha’i website or Human Rights Watch).  As a consequence of this persecution, Shadi hasn’t traveled back to Iran since she and her parents paid smugglers to sneak them to Pakistan when she was five.  We traveled to Istanbul primarily to reconnect with family members who she hasn’t seen since then.  For their safety, I won’t reference specific names in this post.

Of everyone, we arrived in Istanbul first and settled into one of the apartments where some of us were staying in a small quiet neighborhood down the hill from Taksim square.  Shadi’s family arrived as we were walking up the stairs to head out and buy some fresh-made bread to go with dinner.  At first we did not in fact know that this was them, though we realized very quickly.  In a flash, Shadi and her cousin were hugging, tears running down both of their faces.  For my part, I don’t believe I’d fully absorbed what this moment would mean despite several conversations with Shadi beforehand.  I was almost immediately captured in the emotional web of it, and got teary myself while I was hugging and kissing everyone (three kisses each, alternating cheeks is the norm).

The next 30 minutes were a virtual blur of introductions and trying to somewhat awkwardly get to know each other speaking broken Persian and English in turn.  All in all though, I felt more at home than I could have thought possible.  I had been worried about a huge cultural divide.  I have a lot of exposure to Persians (especially Persian Baha’is) in Atlanta, but many of them were born in the States or have lived there for decades.  What I found was that I was as comfortable with them as I’ve ever been with anybody–and they immediately embraced me as a member of the family.

I want to say a couple of words on how they live in Iran as Baha’is.  While specific and visible Baha’is are periodically persecuted, the majority are tolerated enough that they can have somewhat normal lives.  In fact, they all seemed fairly positive.  The biggest caveat to this is that in the back of their minds, they are always weighing the cost that if they stay, their children won’t be able to attend college.  At the same time, they feel that the Iranian government imposes these strictures just to get them to leave.  They are put in the position of weighing the well-being of their children against the well-being of their faith and succumbing to an injust system.  Since the adults weren’t able to attend university either, they have to make do with non-professional jobs only.  They are, however, fairly successful, showing that smart people with good families can thrive in any environment.  One of them, for instance, owns two autoparts stores.

I had an excellent time getting exposure to a slightly more raw version of Iranian culture than I get with Shadi or her parents.  This ranged from the amusing–family apologizing to me when sitting in front of me on a bus because their back was to me–to the completely touching–the welcome and warm embrace I felt from them from the get-go with constant emotional and physical (lots of hugs and kisses) affection.

To close with an amusing anecdote: I knew that Iranians were famous for pre-trip planning and bringing everything a group might need on a trip, but I had no idea how far it could go.  The first night they came over, it was revealed that they brought a huge variety of Iranian sweets, a rice cooker and a bag of rice from Iran (both of these big because God knows there’s no rice in Turkey!), an already made fresh herb khoresh (stew) in a casserole dish, a bag of dried apricots grown on the farm of Shadi’s aunt and uncle, Iranian black tea, and a huge bag of flatbread that would last us through the trip when supplemented with the excellent Turkish bread widely available.  This theme would keep coming back to us.  At later meals, we found that there were at least two huge batches of fresh, homemade yogurt transported from Iran, paneer (Iranian feta), canned Iranian tuna in oil,  canned mixes for making more khoresh and walnuts.  When we travelled to Edirne to visit a Baha’i holy sight by bus, Shadi’s aunt brought out a thermos of tea she’d made that morning as well as (on three separate occasions) enough juice boxes for all 14 of us to have one.  In my mind, I envisioned a Mary Poppins bag with endless amounts of Persian goodies emerging.  The only way I can square the reality is that every person who came from Iran must have brought one suitcase full of nothing but food.

Several of these wonder meals were eaten with all 14 of us packed into a small hotel room with a sofre (table cloth) spread over one of the beds.  Fresh chai was of course served about every 20 minutes from an electric kettle borrowed from our apartment.  As the food would wind down, different members of the group would start telling stories and jokes that would soon have the whole room in stitches.  While I (and perhaps Shadi) were occasionally sad that we weren’t able to indulge in some of the amazing Turkish fare on offer, I do believe that we probably ended up feeding a group of 14 for only several dollars for several meals.  Add that to the quality time and bonding it represented, and it was nothing short of miraculous.  Once everyone left save Shadi and I, the magic of having a huge new family transitioned into the magic of Istanbul, but that’s for another post.

Instead of stopping for lunch, we paused on the side of the road and bought a bunch of bananas and a bag of sugar cane chunks to gnaw on, spitting it out the window as we drained the juice out of it. Edriss played a tape of Somali music. The music sounded more Middle Eastern than anything with lots of violin. Unlike more polished fare out of Egypt or Turkey, it had a raw and striving sort of edge to it that seemed to fit the life I saw passing by through the open window.

Getting further from Nairobi, we went through some very lush areas with greenhouses growing flowers for export to Europe, field of pineapple owned by American companies, and stretches of coffee. As we continued, the land became less lush. Gradually, the beautiful green hills gave way to brushy flatlands full of acacia trees. Small rivers gave way to dry river beds and small dips in the land with pools that only gather water during rains. Eventually there weren’t many trees and the landscape was reduced to three colors: faded green brush with the red Kenyan dirt showing through more and more, all set against a vivid blue sky. I wouldn’t call it beautiful though it might be in the right mood. But it was certainly fascinating.

The life of the people changed just as the landscape did. People got visibly poorer as we drove. They also got more sparse. Industry gave way to banana, sugarcane and mango sellers, 40 people at once all competing to sell the same goods. As we pulled over, the more entrepreneurial people swarmed around our windows offering their goods. Eventually, subsistence farming gave way to small groups of cattle, camels, or goats foraging the dry bushes. More often than not, the herder was a small boy with a stick next to camels three times his height. Sometimes they carried a bow or a spear. I asked Edriss and Jack about the weapons. “Hyenas,” they said. Often as we were driving by, the boys would make motions with their hands as if holding an imaginary cup, asking for water. I looked at my water bottle, stamped with the logo from the Fairview Hotel in Nairobi. I think I paid 150 shillings (almost $3) for that bottle at the hotel. If I’d been alone, I probably would have given it to them, but I was too embarrassed or maybe didn’t think it would make enough difference to ask them to stop the car.

Women and small children could be seen carrying jerry cans or small cups for the youngest children with water from the small surface ponds. The ponds, usually red with the dirt in them, are where the animals get their water too. They don’t always water in them, but the rainy season just started. My companions said that a couple of weeks ago, there wasn’t even this modest amount of greenery. The women wearing brightly covered long robes and head coverings in the Muslim style contrasted sharply with their drab environments. We passed a stopped bus at one point headed back towards Nairobi. The women in their brightly colored clothes were gathered beside it, hoisting identical yellow jerry cans towards the windows trying to attract the passengers’ attention. Jack told me they were selling camel milk.

Edriss seemed determined to make sure I returned with a good impression of Somalis. “These pastoralists are very brave. Sometimes, they walk 100 kilometers alone without fear.” Another time, I asked about what looked like giant mud castles made out of the red dirt. “Homes for termites. There is a Somali saying that where you see one of these, a Somali man can live there.” Jack asked him for clarification. “Somali men work very hard, and they need nothing more than a termite to survive.”

Later, we saw a large cluster of lush greenery that looked very out of place. “This is a plant that is good for nothing. It grows well with no water and it takes over. If goats eat it, the milk is bad. I don’t know who brought it here. I think it is American or maybe Israeli. I think it is from Israel.” When we got to Garissa town, Edriss said, “Somalis are not people you need to worry about. When this election happened here, Somalis didn’t do anything. This was for the Kikuyus and the Luos. Somalis are peaceful.”

Nothing seemed more important to Edriss than to clear Somalis of the reputation of their war-torn home, perhaps particularly because I’m America and because America has played a big and largely ignored role in the region. In one sense, this was as painful as the scapegoating of America and Israel for the existence of a random, unwanted weed in the Horn of Africa. It brings out the divisions and huge gulfs that still drive the world. In another, it was hopeful. He wanted to make a connection with me, to let me know that we are all people in the same boat. It was his way of extending a hand to someone he thought might see the world differently and bring us all a little closer together.

I was just sitting on one of Salma’s soft couches in her large living room, one side of which is generally open to the garden.  Only the iron gates, so ubiquitous in Nairobi, block us from her beautiful garden out back.  Despite the size of the room, it has a cozy feel due to the dark hardwood floors, the stuffed bookshelves, and the wall hangings and the large carpet—remnants of Ethiopia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Chad, Nepal—gathered from a life spent moving from one country to the next.  One of her dog’s, a huge and lumbering yellow lab named Shona, is curled up sleepily against one of my feet, relieving at least that bit of my hide from the slight chill of the Nairobi nighttime. 

I’ve just been reading Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams of My Father, the one he wrote before he decided to run for president.  It’s a beautiful book.  While his experiences, meandering thoughts, and analysis about race are impressive, I’ve started to focus more on the level of detail he seems to have absorbed in each of his experiences and locations.  I’ve just arrived at his first trip back to Kenya to see his father’s home.  Today, Barack’s lesson to me is that beauty and experience are made up of the small details that build into a cohesive whole.  I’ve resolved that I’m going to notice—and hopefully write—about more of them. 

Our routine here is one that is tenuous.  It relies on the good will of politicians and their friends who lounge in similarly comfortable paradises to the one Shadi and I are in now but whose decisions will decide the fate of millions living in huts, struggling sometimes to find clean water, and—always the top priority in Kenya—send their children to good schools.  These men will decide whether we go back to our apartment and garden in Kisumu, whether we stay here, or whether we abscond and head back home with roadblocks, machetes, and a country falling apart in our wake.  And yet, unlike much of the last two months, it is a routine nonetheless. 

We wake up in the morning, shower, eat some toast or eggs, and Adams who is Salma’s incredibly friendly driver and gardener kindly drops us off at a café with internet.  We sit there all day getting what work we can done.  Some days, I might travel to the CARE office or a restaurant to interview someone for my consultancy.  At the end of the day, we catch a cab “home” to eat dinner with Salma and her daughter Ruhi.  After dinner, we might watch an episode of the “West Wing.” 

More often than not, our daytime internetting is at a place called the River Café, which merits a few words of its own.  When you turn into the driveway, you immediately dip down a steep hill.  The drive is lined with tropical flowers, and you cross over a small branch.  At the bottom, to get to the restaurant you must walk by a small pond filled with lilly-pads and through a beautiful nursery tended by gardeners wearing the standard green jumpsuits all gardeners here have.  When you enter the café proper, it is a tall barn-like design with no closed-in walls, just a pole frame.  The peaked roof is made of translucent black canvas.  Under the roof, there are potted plants in terra cotta pots and small wood stoves for chillier days.  Art by local artists is perched on shelves.  Birds chirp faintly all around while tasteful jazz or classical African music plays.  In front of the kitchen, the Kenyan mother and daughter who own and run the place sit with their laptops crunching numbers and making orders to replenish supplies.  A small river oozes by a couple meters from your table.  Across the river are large, luxurious houses with balconies and painstakingly manicured gardens, the kind you’d expect to see in an English cottage.  These women had a beautiful vision, and now that vision is our main office. 

Today, we walked Salma and Ruhi’s dogs in a park located inside of the compound where many of the U.S. embassy staff live.  It looked like Marietta: well kept but drab landscaping interspersed with picnic tables and communal grills.  There was a sign warning people to pick up after their dog.  But for the banana trees in place of the dogwoods, you might be fooled.  

Last weekend, we took Ruhi to the horse show she was competing in while Salma was busy planning for Condoleezza’s visit to pressurize the Kenyan negotiations.  The place was crawling with 12 year old blonde girls with British accents, all dressed in their black felt-covered helmets, tight leggings, and ties, their riding crops dangling from their wrists.  Ruhi was the only non-white competitor with no Kenyans to be seen.  In Nairobi, it’s easy to immerse yourself in a fake world or even completely forget where you are. 

One day at the café, a group of five men sits at the round table next to ours.  Almost everyone that comes in stops for a second to say hello to the table’s occupants.  They are clearly well known.  We pick up snippets of the men’s conversation.  They are clearly friends in normal times.  To give this conversation some context, most of the fish in Kenya comes from Kisumu, the home of the Luo tribe in western Kenya. 

“You guys are fooling yourselves thinking that you won this election.  Everybody, even your people know it was stolen.  You know, you can’t survive on your own.  Everything will fall apart.  Without us, your multi-million dollar fish export market is gone.”  The speaker has a more eloquent and impassioned delivery in his words than his companions do. 

“They aren’t just your fish.  We transport them.  We make the export contracts.” 

“But if we don’t catch any fish, there isn’t anything to sell.” 

“Maybe we’ll just go and catch the fish ourselves.” 

“You’ll need a visa.”  The other men chuckle nervously at the implication that the country has already split.  The Luo man continues, “You know, when we take Nairobi, this whole thing will be over.” 

The forcefulness of the comment and the potential violent future it implies seem to suck what little bonhomie ever existed from the group.  It’s not long before the Luo excuses himself from the table, saying a polite goodbye to everyone there. 

Our new routine is comforting compared to our early days in Nairobi when it seemed like everywhere we looked, there was something to remind us that neighbors could launch at each other any second.  We have something of a normal life.  But every now and again, there is an incident like the one at the café that sneaks under the façade to remind us that our comfort is tenuous at best. Sometimes it feels like life has assumed a more normal ebb and flow, but this is more like a dammed river, the destruction of the dam only one newscast away.  Still, illusion has its uses in maintaining sanity and productivity, so we embrace it for now. 

I leave you with some of Barack’s words describing Nairobi’s contradictions and perhaps presaging the pent up rage we see now: 

“The city center was smaller than I’d expected, with much of the colonial architecture still intact: row after row of worn, whitewashed stucco from the days when Nairobi was little more than an outpost to service British railway construction.  Alongside these buildings, another city emerged, a city of high-rise offices and elegant shops, hotels with lobbies that seemed barely distinguishable from their counterparts in Singapore or Atlanta.  It was an intoxicating, elusive mixture, a contrast that seemed to repeat itself wherever we went: in front of the Mercedes-Benz dealership, where a train of Masai women passed by on the way to market, their heads shaven clean, their slender bodies wrapped in red shukas, their earlobes elongated and ringed with bright beads; or at the entrance to an open-air mosque, where we watched a group of bank officers carefully remove their wing-tipped shows and bathe their feet before joining farmers and ditch diggers in afternoon prayer.  It was as if Nairobi’s history refused to settle in orderly layers, as if what was then and what was now fell in constant, noisy collision.”