A long-overdue update

The optimistic tone of my previous post seems rather cruel now, with all that has happened. If you’re reading this blog, you probably know about the recent post-election violence in Kenya. In brief, from Reuters:

Dec. 27 – Voters elect a new president and parliament. Most opinion polls put Kibaki’s opposition rival Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement in the lead.

Dec. 30 – The Electoral Commission of Kenya declares Kibaki winner of the election and he is hurriedly sworn in.

Dec. 31 – The government floods the streets with security forces and maintains a ban on live TV broadcasts after riots convulse the nation.

Jan. 1 – A mob torches a church, killing about 30 villagers.

Jan. 2 – Kibaki’s government accuses Odinga’s backers of “ethnic cleansing” as the death toll from tribal violence rises.

Things have been very up and down since the two sides even started TALKING about talking. It’s really disheartening to see how quickly a country can destabilize once the tribal card is played, and I’ve watched Kenya descend into tumult from afar with a growing sense of gloom about the whole situation. So much for setting the bar for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. What an awful thing for all those who have been affected by the violence – the hundreds killed, certainly, but also the people who’ve been displaced by the thousands.  It’s senseless.

The outcome of all of this is that I will be going to Tanzania after all (I never posted on this before, but my plans to travel to Karatu and the Village Wellness Project after my program concludes were more or less cut off at the knees by the high cost of travel from Nairobi to Arusha and then back to England). There will be about 40 of us total in the program, and we will be based about 21 km outside of Moshi, Tanzania, on the south slopes of the Kilimanjaro foothills. The same plain that is called the Masai Mara in Kenya is the Serengeti south of the border; thus, I will quite literally be living “where Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.” Ha! Here’s hoping my classmates don’t tire of Toto too easily (and that their tolerance also extends to Tanner and my planned renditions of “Circle of Life” at sunrise).

Anyway, proximity to a slightly bigger town does come with its benefits, as aforementioned bottomless font of optimism Tanner has reminded me that we’ll probably get more relaxed cultural interaction and a lot of chances to practice Swahili on our own. The program is staying the same (since the ecology is virtually identical), hopefully including the extended camping trips. No worries – lion tracking is STILL ON. We might even get to the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp in Kenya if things settle down enough that crossing the border becomes a safe possibility. Fortunately, the Masai are relatively apolitical, so southern Kenya has been relatively calm during all of this madness.

The start date of my program has been pushed back a little bit as a result of the location switch, so I have a little extra time on my hands (how much, nobody is sure, as SFS has yet to commit to a specific date…but I’ll know in the next few days). This means I’ve gone back to do some work for Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, my summer haunt! This job in turn will be funding the adventure I have plotted post-SFS (which still should be wrapping up on or around May 8): I will, barring any major problems with schedules or funds, be traveling to visit a few buddies completing their study abroad in more traditional locales – namely, York and London (and Liverpool! Beatles tours YES!) UK; Paris, France; and Berlin, Germany. SO excited.

More on that later. Quite tired…now that I’m a working woman again, I’ve been getting up at 5:30 AM. Eeek.

Less than a month until Tanzania!

 

More from The Economist: Election lessons

This article is an interesting take on the potential impact of a fair and peaceful elections process in Kenya for the rest of Africa.  South Africa is discussed specifically, but the piece more generally submits that:

Whoever wins, what matters next is that the result should be accepted by the loser and Kenyans should be seen to endorse the principle of peaceful competition. Most of Africa has left behind the era of the one-party state, but its people have yet to be fully persuaded that multi-party politics need not be chaotic….If a country as complex and poor as Kenya can hold genuine elections without civil strife, then any country in Africa can. This is its chance to set an example.

Odinga and Kibaki go head-to-head on the 27th. Does the experienced insider or the young, energetic presence win in the end? (And does this sound weirdly like a current political question in the US? If Odinga was less of a divisive figure…)

Anyway, I highly recommend checking out the December 22nd-January 4th issue of The Economist (“Special Holiday Double Issue!”).  Because there’s some good Africa coverage, but mostly because they may have published the most ridiculous sentence of news that I have ever read: “A group of masked, militant French winemakers has attacked foreign tankers of wine, bricked up a public building and caused small explosions at supermarkets.”

No, I won’t give context.

 

Kenya signs trade pact with EU

From Afrique en ligne:

Kenya has signed an interim trade agreement with the European Union (EU) pending the sealing of a comprehensive pact early next year in a move aimed at saving investments worth US$1 billion, a senior trade ministry official said in Nairobi on Friday.

“The much-feared disruption of trade between the European Union and Kenya after 31 December has now been put to rest. Kenya, along with other East African Community (EAC) states, has sealed the first deal towards a full agreement,” said David Nalo, Trade and Industry Permanent Secretary.

 

In other news, things are getting tumultuous around the presidential primaries…

 

Such an English major.

Things that only a third-year English major would say (all of which have come out of my mouth recently. Yeah, I know.) :

“Oops! I conflated your two email addresses!”

(To a fat squirrel): “Hie, thou brazen furry!”

“But what IS the ‘bodiless serpent’?!”

 

Vaccine update: Rabies sucks.

That’s about all. Tanner and I are being whiny about how we’re all feverish from our vaccinations; I haven’t really had a problem until now, but my first rabies shot gave me a splitting headache. I start my typhoid pills shortly too – you take those before bed so that you (with any luck) sleep through the nausea they induce. Anyway, we’re trying not to be babies about it all, but it is a little odd to think about the number of diseases introduced to our respective systems in the last few weeks.

Last night was the big pre-departure meeting for everyone going abroad next semester. There are all of seven or eight of us going to Africa (out of around 120 going abroad for the spring). I think Tanner and I (Tanner being my buddy who is also going to SFS Kenya) are the most removed from normalcy, except for maybe one of our other friends going to Botswana. The SFS National Park site is about an hour outside of Nairobi (though we generally won’t be going into the city for anything); the base they’ve been using as their main location is the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp, about four hours outside of Nairobi and in the foothills of Kili, near Kimana. KBC has intermittent internet and the NPS has none; each site has one phone, for emergency use only; neither location has power except for in the chumba (the main building) from 6-11 PM, or hot water. Army showers should make it easy to wake up in the morning! Some pictures:

The Kilimanjaro Bush Camp

Banda (each is shared by 4 students)

View of Kilimanjaro from KBC

Anyway, because of the State Department travel warning on Kenya, we’re two of the lucky Bowdoin students going abroad who have to sign/have our parents sign a second waiver (the other few are the ones going to Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Israel, also countries that have travel warnings standing). It basically says “if something bad happens, we told you it might!” Which I would find more comical if I didn’t have to ask my mother to read the warning as part of the deal. The second paragraph in particular is a bit intense.

Regardless, this is all so worth it. I find myself remembering every so often that this is really going to happen, and I get so excited that I reread the field guide and packing list that SFS sent me when I was accepted. Vaccines and questionably safe airports aside, I’m sure I wouldn’t be nearly this excited if I was going somewhere else. I think the hardest part might be coming back, quite honestly.

To quote Tanner himself: “Cause we’re gonna have learned how to live without all the luxuries we have here, but everyone else is gonna be like, lets go watch tv for 6 hours and then waste some hot water.” Plus we won’t have wildlife living alongside us (at least not to the same degree! apparently sometimes zebras get inside SFS’s fences).

I love Bowdoin. But I’m really looking forward to venturing to the bush of the Southern Hemisphere to track some elephants as a major break from everything else. I’m crawling out of my skin. I really, really can’t wait to be there.

 

Bearded monkeys = new favorite/cutest animals

Well, this isn’t necessarily directly relevant to southern Kenya (where I’ll be), but still news in Kenyan biological studies!

Scientists recently discovered a new population of Debrazza’s monkeys in northeastern Kenya; previously, the species was thought to be near extinction.

Now really. Monkeys. With beards. Is that not the most adorable thing you’ve seen all day?

 

Shots don’t hurt THAT much.

Well, it’s been a while and my travel prep is moving along at a speedy pace. I’ve gotten most of my shots now – Yellow Fever was the only one that had any real pain associated with it, for the record, and that was just a strange, intense, stinging that faded quickly. Actually, it was the flu shot that wound up being sore. Now, to be fair, I haven’t started rabies yet. Apparently those shots do actually make you sick. More on this phenomenon later, after the hypothetical becomes the reality.

Anyway, I’m attempting to plan a European adventure for 8-9 days before I have to be in Nairobi, since Tucker is living in Berlin all year and a) I miss him lots and b) when am I ever going to have the chance to stay that cheaply (as in apartment-crashing) in Berlin again? SFS let me know that I could pick up the group flight to Nairobi from London, and flights to Heathrow from most major airports in continental Europe run at about $71, so hopefully this will all work out – cross your fingers. Of course, I’ll be at Bowdoin for a few days in mid-January, and hopefully get a few days in NC/SC before that…basically my life from January-May is one big itinerary of cool places. And that will probably extend through the summer, as with any luck I’ll be staying up here in Maine for the summer. More on all of this later.

3 months until Kenya!

 

The Arusha-Baltimore connection

The Arusha Times ran a picture of Dr. Wilbroad Slaa, who runs the Village Wellness Project in Karatu, Tanzania – where I hope to go for about a month after my SFS program in Kenya wraps – attending a lunch with John Tolmie and Mary Pat Seurkamp at College of Notre Dame.   In other words, my past workplace in Baltimore has intersected with my future workplace in Tanzania. Sweet.

 

There’s something about Isak Dinesen…

You know, I have a lot of conflicting feelings and opinions regarding the book Out of Africa.  Hemingway called it the best (only?) good book written about the continent; on the other hand, I sometimes have to put it down in frustration with how Dinesen deals with actual Africans (being that she is, in the end, a colonist, no matter how much she claims to feel at home in Kenya). The bottom line, though, is that she is an incredibly evocative writer with a really interesting style of storytelling. Some of her unique qualities have a lot to do with the fact that she’s a Dane writing in English, but a lot of it is just her sense for words. Anyway, I’m always struck by this reflective passage:

“If I know a song of Africa, — I thought, — of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a color that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?”

Beautiful. And now: back to Auden, and some work that, weirdly, aligns with this more than a little bit.

 

Election season in Kenya

From Reuters:

Dancing and singing in a Nairobi park, tens of thousands of Kenyans launched the opposition’s election campaign on Saturday buoyed by opinion polls putting their leader ahead of President Mwai Kibaki.

Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) candidate Raila Odinga accused Kibaki of tribalism and broken promises, and vowed a new start for east Africa’s largest economy if he wins in December.

“Forty years after independence we are still very far from achieving the dream of the founding fathers,” he told a whooping crowd at Uhuru (Freedom) Park.

“Corruption still thrives, tribalism is still there, and our people are poorer. Kibaki has failed the test.”

At a smaller rally in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru, the 75-year-old president urged voters to give him a second five-year term because of measures like free primary education.

“Let the work continue,” he told the crowd. “I am now asking you for a second term. When I finish I will go home and farm, and you will be able to elect a young man of your choice.”

Four surveys have given Odinga, a charismatic former political prisoner, between 47 and 43 percent ratings, versus Kibaki’s 42 to 34.

Kibaki comes from Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and many perceive Odinga’s party as an alliance against the Kikuyu from other ethnic groups, including his own Luo group.

“People say I’m tribalist. But when I endorsed Kibaki in 2002, didn’t I know he was a Kikuyu?” Odinga said. “I have very many Kikuyu friends. Even my son is marrying a Kikuyu girl.”

From early morning, his supporters poured into Nairobi on buses and foot, decked in orange. City-centre traffic was halted by youths dancing in the street.

Odinga vowed to help Kenyans by keeping prices down, paying police better and reforming the constitution.

Kibaki’s administration brought in some hope post-Moi, but has yet to deliver on a lot of his promises. Tribalism (especially tribal violence) and corruption have been serious issues in the last few years – the new constitution he proposed and promised to institute in 100 days failed, mostly because of tribal tensions. The Economist states unequivocally that the private sector is in the best place to provide services to the population…no surprise on their take, but the government really hasn’t been able to do much about the newest issues, like the rising Islamist militancy (especially in Nairobi and I think near Mombasa) and population boom.

If Odinga actually wants to be successful, he’s going to have to do more than just critique Kibaki – he’s going to need to seriously re-evaluate his policy. Otherwise he’ll probably just go the way of Kibaki (elected from the opposition party in a landslide vote) himself.