Tag: Kenya

99 problems but love ain’t one of them

I moved with a spring in my step, a bunch of fresh red roses in my hand from the city market, and a heart-shaped chocolate bar. It was Valentine’s Day and I had the proverbial 99 problems but the lack of someone special to spend it with was not one of them. I passed a few women in flowery red dresses on the city streets, but in my neighbourhood – Tena estate, Nairobi – it was only the employees at a hairdressing salon who were dressed for the occasion. For most, it was just another humdrum day.

There’s an increasing cynicism about relationships among young men and women in the city. Women are sick of the traditional role society has expected them to play over the ages, and they’re fighting back by becoming more independent. It’s unsettling to some men, who feel threatened by their partners’ careers and independence. A common, blunt refrain among women is: “All men are players” while men retort: “A girl is yours only when you are with her.”

If love is in the air in Nairobi, it’s a very suspicious kind of love.

On Valentine’s evening, my girlfriend Karen and I joined my buddy and his girlfriend at Tribeka, a popular club in the city. The atmosphere was romantic and electric; everyone here had come to celebrate. Across the table, a guy had swept his girlfriend off her feet and they were kissing like there was no one else was in the room. Another guy near our table wasn’t so lucky – all he got on this special night was a thunderous slap from his partner.  She probably found out that the rose he’d given her wasn’t really from him.

You see, it’s silly season in Kenya: election time. The front-running Jubilee party took the opportunity to hand out free roses to Nairobi residents – which guys readily passed on to the girls they had their sights set on, relieved that they didn’t have to fork out for them. Most people are still recovering from the Christmas shopping sprees that have left holes in their wallets.

Meanwhile, women expect men to woo them on Valentine’s Day – and every other day. My male friends blame the barrage of Mexican soap operas on our television screens for creating unrealistic expectations of them and their budgets. We would never be caught dead watching The Power of Destiny with our girlfriends, so we’re totally clueless about how to be a knight in shining armour, Don Juan and Bill Gates all rolled into one.

Businesses in Nairobi are quick to capitalise on Valentine’s Day with promotions and gifts galore. (sxc.hu)

Earlier that day I stopped at the supermarket for ice cream. The store was draped in red, and two women in red T-shirts were managing a stall at the entrance, selling teddy bears, chardonnay, whisky, cards and chocolates. I bought chocolates – but they told me I was only the second guy to have purchased something from them that day. They’d received most of their support from women.

I learnt that some women had a trick up their sleeves for this day. They run to the shops before work to purchase expensive flowers and fine wines. At noon, the delivery man arrives at their offices to deliver a “surprise”, while their colleagues ooh and aah at their treats. These women are paying for their own gifts if only to keep up appearances.

The night before Valentine’s, I went to the local pub to watch the Real Madrid and Manchester United game. One guy left early, saying he promised his partner he’d be home by 7pm. Another lamented having to budget for school fees and a special gift for his wife. An older guy said his wife of nine years, who’d never demanded gifts or expressed interest in celebrating Valentine’s before, was now expecting him to come home with something big.

I consider myself lucky then, to have a girlfriend who was sincerely happy to receive just a bunch of red roses and chocolates on February 14. In return, she gave me a single red rose and a big smile. No matter how cynical I am about love, I think I may have found the rare woman most of my friends are searching for.

Munene Kilongi is a freelance writer and videographer. He blogs at  thepeculiarkenyan.wordpress.com

Making ends meet in Umoja

Salma is tired of running her mitumba (pre-owned) clothing stall in Umoja, Nairobi. She says business isn’t what it used to be and she spends too much time chasing the credit deals she has with her regular clients. They love the clothes, she says, but they never want to pay.

And when it rains, she has to go to the clients, through the endless traffic jam, rather than wait for them because they are reluctant to venture into the mud and sludge of the rickety market where her jua kali (informal) stall stands. And it’s been raining a lot again.

Salma’s clothes come from the huge bales offloaded at Mombasa, dispatched by Oxfam and similar charities around the world. The bales are transported from Mombasa and emptied by the mamas at the Kikomba market, near town, where Salma is a regular.

At Kikomba, most of the clothes are sold for a hundred shillings (R10) or slightly more. But then there are the numbers that the mamas know will sell at five times the 1 000 shillings that Salma’s willing to pay. These are mostly from design-house job lots. Burberry, Guess and Next are common, and lots of Italian names she doesn’t even know. Among the shoes, she sometimes finds Prada. In Nairobi, Salma is one of few sources for prêt-à-porter clothes from Paris! Her clients know it. And her clients will pay. In time.

In the afternoons, Salma usually leaves her stall in the care of three unemployed youngsters whom she pays 100 bob each (R10) for the shift. They tolerate the afternoon teens who come to the stall, try everything on, but never buy a thing.

But Salma will be back in Umoja in time to meet her regular clients as they come past in the evening. She knows her clients well, and knows who to call when she’s found what. And she’s usually right. But once she’s agreed on a bargain price with a client, she’ll often be told, “Sina pesa saa hii!” (I don’t have money now!). And this usually happens after Salma has packed the garment. So she gets tied into another credit deal that runs for a month at least. Salma says that business isn’t what it used to be.

“Maisha ni ngumu!” (Life is hard!) she exclaims. “I work for my small money.”

Salma at her stall in Umoja. (Brian Rath)
Clothes for sale at an informal market in Nairobi. (Flickr/computerwhiz417)

Her stall opens at 7am. It stays open till 7pm. After packing up and paying the guy to take her stock to the store, she’ll go shopping for fresh vegetables and groceries, and get home by 8pm. She’ll cook and eat, and by 9.30pm will have fallen asleep in front of the TV. She’ll maybe wake around 2am and drag herself off to bed. And she’ll be up before 5am again.

She says she can’t carry on doing this for little return. Business is not what it used to be.

Ultimately, Salma wants to settle near the sea and she wants to learn to swim. She loves the beach and she swears she would quickly lose the extra 10kg just because of the ‘coasto’ lifestyle.

She’s Muslim, so she’s salama (at peace) among the Swahilis at the coast and she’s thought of opening a mitumba stall in Mombasa, where there are few stalls. But her ideal business would be to sell African print-couture in the upmarket coastal town of Malindi. If she could get enough money for Malindi, she would concentrate on her own designs.

She knows she could do well because every time she gets the cash to buy fabrics, and the time to guide the sewing fundi in making up the dresses, she sells them within a day, before her bigger clients have even seen them. She could make her eclectic African necklaces in Malindi too, but she just doesn’t have the time in Nairobi.

Salma has a sister living in the States, another in South Africa, and both are doing well. But her dad is old and he wants her nearby, so Salma is struggling in Kenya. Still, she enjoys her life. When the clients have paid, usually in the first week of the new month, she goes out to have fun with her late-twenties and 30-something friends. They’re a mixed bunch, Muslims and Christians alike, a few with kids but most not. One or two of them are married. They usually go clubbing and might dance to house or R&B at some place in the hip suburb of Westlands. Salma prefers drinking spirits to beer –  Napoleon brandy and Sprite.

Even if Salma drinks and doesn’t ever wear the austere black abaya (popularly, the ‘bui bui’) or veil when out, she’s an otherwise devoted Muslim: She’s up every morning before five in her ‘bui-bui’ and a thick red scarf that she wraps around her head in the style of a Tuareg nomad. She puts her red Maasai blanket on the floor as her prayer mat and she reads passages from Qur’an for an hour, daily before daybreak.

Salma tells me that during the holy month of Ramadan, she was at the head-grinding blender from 4am so she could make her fresh vegetable ‘smoothie’ and eat a chapatti before the sun was out. She cooks many dishes but admits that she lacks the patience to make good chapattis. And she laughs a bit when relating how the noise of the blender drove her neighbours nuts before sunrise. It was only the Somali sisters in the flat upstairs who understood.

On the advent of Eid ul Adha in October last year, she cooked the customary pilau rice and goat meat as a special treat for a few invited friends. It was an honour to be invited but I could see she had battled to provide. With no alcohol present, she bought Coke and Sprite, warm, from the shop across the dusty road. But afterwards, tired and stressed, she admitted that “a Guinness would be great”.

Salma is tired of running her mitumba stall in Umoja, just outside Nairobi.  “It’s time to leave this place,” she says. Business is not what it used to be.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly. 

Kenya 101 for dummies

“You cross the equator as you drive down to Mombasa,” the tourist says with authority. He is adamant, he will not be corrected.

“The tour bus driver stopped a few kilometres after Voi,” he continues, “and all seven of us stepped out of the minibus and crossed some imaginary line called the equator.” He has photos to prove it! I do not have the heart to ask him if he had seen the “You are now crossing the equator” sign off the road. I could imagine him and his travelling companions haranguing the hapless driver, insisting that they really did want to cross the equator.

The poor, worn-down driver might have debated with himself on whether to leave them on the wayside for the man-eaters of Tsavo to find them, or to bend a geographical fact just a little bit.

“Would this lie change the face of the world and stop the mother of all wars?” he might have pondered. Most probably not, so he left the authoritative tourist in his ignorant bliss, with photos to prove it.

For the record, dear tourist, you cross the equator while driving away from Mombasa, away from Nairobi, heading up north. When you reach the equator, a sign by the road will let you know that you are now crossing the imaginary line. And you will have photos to prove it.

Tourists at the equator. (Marc Samsom/Flickr)

Kenya is an English-speaking country because the British Empire paid us a visit once upon a time and stayed for longer than three days. That also answers your query about why my English is sooo good. We do not have tribal languages – nowhere in Africa will you find anyone speaking a tribal language. We have African languages. Like you, we have mother tongues, national languages, and official languages. But if you insist on asking, dear tourist …

“How do you say ‘Hello’ in Kenyan?”
“We don’t.”
“You don’t?” There’s a look of incredulity on her face. “You don’t say ‘Hello’ in Kenyan?”
“I mean, we don’t speak Kenyan. No one speaks Kenyan.”

I’ll give the girl some credit. She at least knows where Kenya is located in Africa. Kenya, a country of great wildlife, authentic photo safaris, pristine white beaches, coconut trees, the Maasai, an ocean with waters of 28°C and the fastest long-distance runners (Aren’t they simply amazing?).

However, Kenya is more than that. Reading up a little on my country before coming to visit will go a long way. A good travel guide is a must. Do us Kenyans a favour by going to the market place, daring to take local transport and trying out our local dishes, however strange they may appear to be. That is how we say “Hello” in Kenyan.

We have a fair amount of sunshine, given that Kenya lies in the tropics. However, when it gets muggy in Europe with the mercury caressing +40°C, do not assume that the heat wave does not bother me since I “must be used to the heat in Africa” in the same way I do not assume that you, having grown up in mild climates, must be used to wintry subzero temperatures.

It’s true that we have extraordinary long-distance runners in Kenya and our athletes excel all over the marathon map. But what is not true is this: I am a Kenyan, therefore I run. All of us did not grow up running many kilometres to school barefoot, up hills and down valleys. It is also not true that the reason for our athletic prowess lies in the water. Rather, it lies with the lions. Yes, Simba and his pride. We Kenyans are perpetually running away from our ferocious, man-starved lions, for many kilometres on end, up hills and down valleys.

(I’m kidding.)

Kenya – and by extension, Africa – is not a bubbling petri dish of pathogenic bacteria that could decimate the human race any second now. If you, dear tourist, are concerned about la tourista (traveller’s diarrhoea), rest assured that Africa has no monopoly on this. It’s also to be found in London, Paris, Tokyo, or New York, where you probably come from.

You can sleep comfortably knowing that we not only have water in Kenya, but we also know how to boil and filter it to make it fit for consumption. We wash our fruits and vegetables; we even wash our hands. With soap. Looking for Evian? You should try our brands of bottled mineral water sourced from our own mineral springs.

Now for a little geography lesson.

If you are French and wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you’ll have to go to Tanzania. Of course you can land in Nairobi and then drive all the way down to Tanzania. You can see Mount Kilimanjaro very well from Kenya, no fear. But trust me on this one: Mount Kilimanjaro is very much in Tanzania. Disregard what the travel agencies advertise, ignore the “Kenya: Do a Safari! Climb Kilimanjaro!” posters in the Parisian metro. Check your map of East Africa. See that sudden detour on the Kenya-Tanzania border that starts at the coastline heading inland? That’s where the map drawers went “oops!” and skirted around Mount Kilimanjaro. Or perhaps they hiccuped over their nth beer, causing their fingers to slip, and ended up with a straight-but-uneven border. Whatever the case, if you see “Visit Kenya! Visit Mount Kilimanjaro!” on a tourist brochure don’t get your geography all tangled up.

But do pack your bags and come visit. Come see – not climb – the mountain while heading down to Mombasa. Come speak Kenyan with us! The journey will be worth the destination.

Jean Thévenet, a work-at-home mum, was born and raised in Kenya. She now lives in France and blogs at http://hearthmother.blogspot.com.

Rock on down to Electric Avenue

Disco lights shine through the jet of piss arching from the groin of an ill-mannered youth to the dusty face of the street. The lights spectacularly change the urine’s usual beer-tinted jaundice to a glorious mix of green, red, blue, pink and, yes, purple, in rapid succession. It is the randomised colours of the rainbow, a celebration of life.

After a record-breaking long piss, the arc lazily breaks into a straight line of a trickle, then splutters to a sudden stop. A quick shake follows, breaching the mandatory three, and becomes a small act of self-gratification. Etiquette kicks in; he zips and the games begin.

Welcome to Electric Avenue, the epicentre of Nairobi’s nightlife.

The city’s classes are well represented in the sample here: clowns, ladies and gentlemen of the night, civil servants, wannabe artists, cooks and watchmen, corporate and chief executive types, taxi drivers, students, informal pharmacists and their victims — and even some grannies. On Electric Avenue, they are all sexogenerians.

The sun goes down, as a matter of habit, at a few minutes to seven. It is a vagary of living close to the equator and a chime for the aficionados of the nightly arts to serenade the town. Participant observation is the best way to appreciate the unfolding drama.

Behold the street wildlife. There is a pageant of antelopes. They glide by high in seven-inch heels, balancing their unearthly forms in bipedal locomotion. They seem to have no kneecaps. Waistlines are kept within bounds with “figure belts” — that remnant of the Eighties, minus the trademark butterfly of that befuddled decade. A delicate neckline peeks above the forced cleavage. The skin at the bottom of the neck is given texture by rashes, a virulent symptom of black skin angrily reacting to dead or fake Indian hair. It is the kind of picture that appears on the Men against Weaves and Extensions Facebook group, collateral damage for the battle between contrived aesthetics and dermatology.

The lions sit easy in wait for game. Their flaccid tummies sag with gravity. Too heavy to climb high trees, they go for low-hanging fruit. Darker hair means more years. Like Mugabe, like Gaddafi, like Biya, the shoe polish-like dye to blame. Their big bright collars pop out of their brightly coloured shirts to frame their fat napes, double chins and rotund cheeks, like a coconut fruit popping from the bum of a fully unfurled peacock. They might be red-hot gay, if not for their unshapely potbellies or choice of aftershave, or their patent homophobia.

Then there is the matriarchal, late-thirty something, six-strong girl pack sitting at a lone loud table in the middle of the club. These female hyenas are ready to chew off any intruding males’ ears. The crux of the evening’s conversation is punctuated by the occasional complaint about a dark spot that stubbornly refuses to go away, praises for acetone-free nail polish, Woolworths underwear, the wonder-working wrinkle cream and the comfortable seats of the little car. Among mankind, only Steve the mechanic gets positive mention. He knows how to fasten wheel caps.

The lions don’t pay attention, not even to those big handbags that may comfortably conceal a panga, a truncheon and handcuffs beside lipstick tubes, eye pencils and a tubular mini-Steve the mechanic in purple. Only the naive young male hyena may dare intrude, for he senses not the high-octane oestrogen.

But it is the political types that are hilarious to watch. Their sense of aesthetics permits the strutting of 5kg of fat just above the groin with utter impunity. The cheesy meaculpa for these one-packs is that they are a fuel tank for sex machines. No one breaks the news to the emperor about his really big tummy.

Only the button threads straining through the lower buttonholes of their shirts may screech. Maybe, too, the frustrated woman who calls an FM station to complain about the fuel tank and how it has robbed their man of his full glory.

Politicos are the real grains of dust in this city — simultaneously predators, scavengers and parasites — but also ethical agents in a strange moral universe and trendsetters of aesthetics. In their own inelegant way they still manage to set the standards for social aspiration. The title maketh the man; the abbreviated Hon is the most sought after.

Their pointed shoes, known as sharpshooters, are unfamiliar with mud and have broken well into the carpeting in their homes, offices and even their private chambers. They wear the big gold ring, gold-plated oriental watches and the gold bracelet with gold buckles on their belts
and shoes.

At 2am a kind of liturgy is playing out. Some religious rules of a sort are at play. It is time to punish the body. Livers are shrinking. Oral tissue is burning. Lungs labour to manage the balance of smoke and oxygen. Tendons are stretched by contracting muscles. The street gets jam-packed. It is pumping. The party has started all over again. If you missed the song earlier, it is replaying. Tomorrow, your ears will still be throbbing.

Godfrey Chesang lives and loves in Nairobi. This piece was first published in the M&G newspaper. 

Chama: The economic model that’s all the rage in Kenya

The greying man in his early 50s wore an expensive brown leather jacket and a cream cowboy hat that slouched on his head. He looked at me sideways and asked: “Why are you so keen on hanging out with us?”

Everyone at the table sat up, and five pairs of probing eyes turned in my direction. The booming speakers in the background hummed in a monotonous drone as I cleared my throat.

“I’d like to join your group,” I managed as I returned the old man’s stare, “because we are like-minded.”

It might seem like I was trying to join an exclusive golf club, but all I wanted was to join their chama – the economic empowerment train that is all the rage here in Kenya.

Chama is Swahili for a group of people – anywhere between two and more than 100 – with a common interest in coming together. They can be classified into a few categories: self-help groups, merry-go-rounds, or investment groups in which members pay a certain amount of money every week or month. The money is then used by the group to invest, give members loans or pay them monthly dividends from their micro-savings.

To join a chama, each of which has its own protocols, you have to be introduced by a member. The “board” will then vet you before you are eligible to join.

It was an old friend, with whom I was once in the same chama, who recently tried to convince me to join his new group. During the introductory meeting I was advised that I would be the one who would settle the bills.

I was buying rounds of beer as questions were fired off by the board members.

“How old are you?”

“What do you do?”

“Why should we trust you?”

I made my pitch and my friend backed me up. After the initial scepticism, things were looking good.

In my former chama each of the six members paid R100 every fortnight. At the end of the month, one member went home with R1 200 he had collected from the group. This group was a merry-go-round affair but it broke up because of serial pay defaulters. It’s the reason why new members of any chama always have to be thoroughly vetted: membership is built on mutual trust and understanding.

When our merry-go-round group collapsed my friend held on to a few members from the former group and injected new blood into it. They transformed the old chama into an investment group. The monthly payments shot up to R400, more members were recruited and a constitution with rules and regulations was created. The new chama bought a nightclub and was planning to build a gas station on a plot it owned.

The modern-day chamas have come a long way. They began as groups our mothers formed as away to collect funds to improve our homes. Most people dismissed them as an excuse for our mothers to gossip and drink tea, their favourite brew.

It was in the 1990s – when there was high inflation, savings were wiped out, jobs were lost and the prices of basics like food and rent quadrupled – that these tea parties started to gain some respect. After all, it was money from the chamas that put food on the table and got rent and school fees paid.

The basic premise of our mothers’ chamas was this: never wholly trust banks because they will give you the proverbial umbrella when the sun shines and take it back when it rains.

But a chama is not just an informal bank, it’s family.

If there is a job opening, members will tell other members about it. If you are sick, bereaved or getting married, they will be with you through times good or bad. If you need professional guidance, the wealth of experience of people in different careers helps – and the advice is free.

The evolved, modern chama also has many diff erent versions. There’s a girl I know whose chama exists simply for bonding with friends. The five members pay R30 each and meet at the weekend to gossip and catch up. The host uses the R150 raised to pay for food and refreshments.

Then there is a chama for single professional ladies. Its single purpose is to help pay for the members’ wedding day, if and when it comes.

I even know a guy in a beer chama. He and his four mates used to have one for the road every day after work. Then they did some maths and decided they were spending too much money. Now each member contributes R100 a week, which has reduced their beer intake but increased their savings; every month one member walks home with R1 600.

The most famous investment chama is the Trans-Century group, which was established by 27 leading Kenyan professionals and investors.

The membership fee was between R50 000 and R100 000 – and 11 years later the infrastructure investment company is worth hundreds of millions of rands.

After making my successful pitch to the board, I sat admiring the expansive nightclub my soon-to-be “family” had bought. I was given the rules and regulations.

As a new member I would first have to pay a one-off fee of R8 000 and timely monthly contributions of R400. If I defaulted I would be fined the equivalent of three months’ contributions.

Meetings would be held twice a month and I had to pay R50 for the purchase of refreshments.

Coming to chama meetings with a woman would get me fined a goat or cash in kind, while being drunk and disorderly in front of members was a serious offence. And I would not be able to touch any of my contribution money for the next five years unless it was an emergency situation, in which case I would get a soft loan.

I sat mulling over whether to join, wondering whether it wouldn’t be simpler to join a mutual fund. Then again, joining a chama is not just about the money – it’s about friends.

Munene Kilongi is a freelance writer and videographer based in Nairobi. This post was published in the M&G newspaper.