Tag: East Africa

Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church enthrones its new patriarch

Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church last week elected its sixth patriarch, 71-year-old Abune Mathias. Mathias, previously the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, was enthroned on Sunday, March 3 in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a membership of 50 million followers.

Click on the first thumbnail below to view a gallery of the inauguration.

[nggallery id=abune-mathias]

 

Marthe van der Wolf is an Ethiopian/Dutch journalist based in Addis Ababa. She holds an M.Phil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town.

 

The day we buried my father

Red dipladenia: a shrubby climber with glossy leaves and red funnel-shaped flowers. A lively, you-bring-the-sun-out plant.

Last summer, I purchased such a plant for a friend’s garden. Immediately after paying for the plant at the florist’s, a female customer behind me said: “I bought the same a couple of weeks ago to place on my mother’s tomb.” I almost keeled over. Was I committing a faux pas? Not at all. Dipladenias are hardy, low-maintenance plants. All they need is moist soil, good drainage, and bright light. They are good for graveyards and friends’ gardens.

My father is buried at Langata Cemetery on the outskirts of Nairobi. It never occurred to us to check the weather forecast for Langata Cemetery on the day of the burial. It poured and poured after we had tossed the requisite clods of soil on the casket, after the grave diggers had covered the grave and each member of the family had placed a solitary rose on the mound of earth. It would not have made any difference if the weatherman had predicted a squall with a sustained wind speed of 70km/hr. We would still have done what was required of us: lay to rest our beloved pater.

Langata Cemetery is not a place to go to for an afternoon stroll. It would never cross a sane Kenyan’s mind to do so, even if there was no  horrendous Nairobi traffic to contend with, even if one did not have to work one’s way through the huge cemetery, past a few well-kept graves, past a plethora of unkempt graves, past cemented graves, grassy graves, weedy graves, fenced-in graves, graves with wobbly wooden crosses.

The day we buried my father, I forgot my grief for a while and smiled when I saw soft drinks and bottled water vendors. Mourners also get thirsty after standing for a long time under the unrelenting equatorial sun as the priest invokes heaven’s mercies and sometimes drones on and on. Mourners also appreciate a bit of shade, so there were white marquees for rent. Lest we forget, dying is a thriving business – for the living.

General assumption has it that only those without a home (aka land) upcountry are buried in the city, specifically in Langata. Further assumption has it that those buried in Langata are rootless. Their origins are lacking. They were born in Nairobi, more’s the pity.

When my father, before passing on, asked to be buried in Langata, a small tremor ran through the extended family. “But why, oh why?” people murmured. But, whispers ran, he had land (aka roots and origins) upcountry where he was born, raised, and educated. Why was he breaking away with tradition? The explanation given was that it would be easier for his immediate family to visit the grave in Nairobi than upcountry. Secondly, it is impossible to sell land with family graves on it, one does not even dare to think about it.

Now, I am a city brat. I grew up and was educated in Nairobi. Upcountry, our drinking, washing, and bathing water came from a domestic rainwater reservoir. Paraffin and Tilley lamps and candles lit up our evenings. City Brat going upcountry was an epic event. She would be the one groping the walls instinctively at dusk, searching for the light switch. She would be one who would want to iron out a top but couldn’t. She would be the one longing for a hot shower instead of bathing from a plastic basin of warm water. And she would peer into her glass of drinking water trying to see if there was any unclear and present danger in it. She never got used to cooking with a jiko, a charcoal stove with zilch knobs to adjust the heat, or a paraffin stove (oh, the headache-inducing odour!).

City Brat had attended her fair share of upcountry weddings and funerals during the rainy season. There were only five words to describe her impressions of the events: mud, mud, lots of mud. Red mud under your shoes, red mud on your shoes. Red mud on the hem of your skirt, red mud on your trousers. Red mud in the car, lots of red mud under the wheels of the car. Loose red mud, squishy red mud, sticky red mud.

City Brat was eternally grateful to her father for his request to be buried in Langata.

Never once in my childhood and growing-up years did the family ever go to visit and tend to my grandparents’ and various relatives’ graves. I have no idea what happened to my maternal grandmother’s homestead, where she was laid to rest, but I do know that her legacy to my mother was a bunch of bananas from hwell-kept, weedless garden.

Graves are places my family never goes back to.

My father was wrong in his assumption that we would faithfully visit his final earthly abode: no one has made the effort to beat the traffic on the road — also called Langata – that leads to the cemetery. It does not behoove us to grab a matatu – Nairobi’s garish, raucous, travel-at-your-risk-but-what-a-ride! public transport minibuses – and we certainly do not walk with guilt stamped all over our faces since visiting family graves is neither an inherited trait nor a passed-down practice.

But surely my father, a sage, must have known that we would fall terribly short when it came to grave-visiting-and-tending matters. I can only conjecture that deep down in his soul, he, too, was a city brat and would say that a dipladenia clambering up a garden trellis is a beautiful sight to behold.

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.

 

Blessed with the running gene

They call them the sub-seventies: those few people on earth that can run a half marathon (21 kms) in less than 70 minutes. Japhet Kiplagat is a sub-seventy and a friend of mine.

His last half-marathon time on the international circuit was 62 minutes 11 seconds, his personal best, and it took him to the winner’s podium in last year’s Spark Marathon in the Netherlands.

In the recent Nairobi Marathon, Japhet took eleventh place, running among some of the best in the world. In the 1500m trials for the London Olympics, Japhet came fourth, but failed to achieve a qualifying time. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m a marathon runner!”

Japhet is 29 years old, so the time to make his name on the international scene is running out. He laments the fact that Kenya’s government supports only the very best and he knows he could be among them if he didn’t have to hustle a living every day from friends and willing supporters. It detracts from his ability to take running as a serious career.

Japhet lives in a modest house, on a very modest budget, at the top of the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Here, the altitude ensures that the air is thin and lungs have to strain beyond what they would at sea level in London, Boston and New York marathons. Japhet is among the “elites” for the Vancouver Marathon in May 2013 and has set his sights on gold. To achieve it, he aims to become a sub-sixty.

Japhet doing what he does best: running.
Japhet’s rigorous training schedule begins at 6am every morning. (Brian Rath)

Japhet’s next-door neighbour is a marathon runner and so is Maureen, who lives in the house behind his. Maureen is running in Paris in the spring. Their training regimen has them up at 6am and back in the house by 8am, following a rigorous schedule of stretching, running, stretching and running. If they can make the time, they do it again in the evening.

They are all from Kenya’s Kalenjin community, reputed to have the ‘running gene’ that is shared by the best of Kenya’s long distance runners. The Kalenjin are notable for their very dark complexions, slim build and long limbs. Japhet is 6 feet 2 inches tall and his legs seem to make up two-thirds of his body, ending in an ever-present pair of Nike trainers.

Ngong is their training ground, but ‘home’ to Japhet is a small village at the top of Morop Hill, one of the highest points at the edge of the Rift Valley. I was invited to join Japhet and a few of his friends for Christmas. On our way up to the heights, Japhet excused himself from our entourage at Nakuru, still in the southern part of the great Rift. Japhet stayed overnight in Nakuru while we soldiered on up the heights.

He had arranged an appointment with Curtis Pittman, an American marathon trainer who has been funded to train Kenyan runners. They met, and Japhet came beaming up the hills for Christmas, bearing news that Curtis agreed to take him on for 2013.

That Japhet is aiming for greatness is obvious, and, despite the distance, there’s a very good chance he’ll get there. Running is Japhet’s life, and Japhet can run.

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.

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

Impressions of Tanzania: A nation united

I recently needed a refresh of my Kenyan visa with a trip out of the country. I didn’t have money to fly but could afford a road trip somewhere. And I like road trips. So I bussed from Nairobi to Mombasa, then Mombasa to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. From Dar es Salaam, I caught another bus all the way across the north of the country to Arusha. And then I went back to Nairobi.

I did the entire fleeting trip in a record 36 hours, over a weekend, at minimal cost. I saw the entirety of northern Tanzania, ate at many roadside diners, and gauged something about the nature of the people. I even got a new Kenyan visa thrown into the bargain as well.

***

The road to Dar es Salaam runs past a distant Indian Ocean with crowds of coconut palms on the shoreline. Ragtag kids are just chilling out near the road, or playing ball in the yard of a village, surrounded by banana palms. Mothers are hanging up their washing, dads perhaps meeting with friends in the shade outside. A few small grocery shops and makuti (palm frond) bars punctuate the smooth journey on good roads.

Arriving in Dar es Salaam in the late afternoon, and having already been on the road for the entire day, I quickly enlisted a guy to help me find a local place to stay. In what was probably a half hour of walking Dar, we decided on a hotel overlooking a small sandy village that seemed undisturbed, living at the edge of the city.

I walked around a bit as dusk fell. It was obviously safe in the village as well as in the small part of the city at its fringe. No one even looked at me except to greet. I bought some dates at a fruit market, drank soda at a sidewalk cafe and ate an early dinner as dark descended.

I had pilau rice and masala fish at a family restaurant run from the covered veranda of their flat-roofed family home, where I drank bottled water in the absence of any beer on the menu. It made sense to be sitting outside in the humid night.

Through the evening, all around me, people sat outside, under cover from the drizzle, on benches, chatting in the damp darkness. Others passed, seeming always on some mission or other: men in Muslim headgear, women in multicoloured, patterned veils. There was constant activity as people crossed in angular paths, avoiding errant boda-bodas (motorbike taxis) on the road.

Urban East African Islam, peaceful and serene.

I slept early and checked out early to catch a bus direct to Arusha. A well-powered luxury bus took twenty of us the huge distance to Arusha, travelling comfortably quickly on the broad clean tarmac.

On the way, the vegetation changed to African savannah. Thorn trees and a carpet of green grass in the rain. Copses of hills with a backdrop of distant mountains. A few zebras and giraffes on the plain aside Maasai herders and morans (warriors) loping in the bush. And Maasai-style conservation all the way: thousands of newly planted trees.

The bus arrived in Arusha in the dark, and in the rain. I was expecting cash in the morning, to get me out the country and through the border so the boda-boda guy dropped me at a three-star place in the centre of town where, unusually, I was able to negotiate to stay the night and only pay in the morning.

By 10am, the cash I’d been promised from Kenya hadn’t arrived, so with not much else to do but wait, I wandered around Arusha a bit. And the experience of Arusha in the rain was enchanting.

One street down from the hotel, an informal market of banged-together split-pole stalls and homespun wooden trailers ran all day. The sellers, some of them older mamas, but some of them mothers with young kids, sat sheltered in the constant drizzle, busying themselves amidst spirited chatting and vigorous laughter. They were trading fruit and vegetables between themselves more than with anyone else, eating avocados and pineapples in the rain.

Everyone was in wonderment that I spoke some Swahili and most engaged me in brief conversation, usually asking where I was from.

“Mimi ni Muafrika kutoka kusini,” (I’m an African from the south) I’d say, and they would usually laugh with a nod when I assented to the recurrent question of “Mandela?”.

They giggled at my Nairobi Swahili, a language that contrasts with the soft, lyrical style of theirs. But I was at least able to converse with them a bit in the notable absence of English. We were all at ease.

I was greeted warmly, sometimes quizzically, when asking for directions to the bank ATMs, and then to the only money transfer place still open. Both times I asked, the guys walked with me to the place, just so that we could chat.

The entire experience of Tanzania was without incident and salama sana (very peaceful). I saw no one begging and no one asked me for a thing. Only a Maasai mama selling jewellery at the Namanga border post wouldn’t let me go.

There’s a lot going on in Tanzania that’s promising and the country is recovering from its socialist slump. The roads are good and Dar es Salaam is obviously growing rapidly. Arusha is also the permanent headquarters of the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.

There were no images of African disease and famine to take home, and despite the simplicity of many Tanzanians’ lives, the people I spoke to were happy. And even if Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (African socialism) wasn’t the greatest economic success, that he produced a tribeless society is remarkable. Tanzanians no longer learn a mother-tongue language first. Swahili is their common language, giving them a singular identity. And what I experienced during this visit – and the two before it – was a joyous people, a people at peace with themselves. It’s not like that in Kenya at all.

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.