Penguin May 21st, 2010
Thus ends my first week in Kenya.
In this review: Westernized, Kibera, NGO City, Looking Forward.
Westernized
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One of the things that I’ve noticed is in how many respects Kenya is like the states.
When I went to church last Sunday, the sermon that was preached could’ve just as easily been preached in virtually any church in the states. The main thing that was different was the worship. It was a bit more lively with a bit more dancing than most churches I’ve been a part of.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at Pristige Plaza. At the ground floor is Nakumatt, the Walmart of Nairobi. There’s a food court on the first floor with different cuisines: Swahilian, Chinese, fried chicken, Italian, etc. There’s also free public wifi. And people will come, set up their laptops, have some tea, and get stuff done or go on Facebook. This one place, Zinc, has a TV playing MTV and music videos. So far, I’ve gotten a block of Avril, I got some Lady GaGa, some Christ Brown, and then other stuff that I’m less familiar with.
Kibera
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My first foray into Kibera wasn’t what I had expected either. Granted, I was on the outskirts of Kibera, so there’s still a lot of it that I haven’t seen. I don’t know why, but I had in my mind something like refugee camps. A lot of people packed into a small space. Yes, there was a lot of people, but a lot of them were going about their business. There were vendors on the side of the road selling food, groceries, or other wears. It’s just that their store fronts are either hole in the walls or just stations at the side of the road.
I think of Kibera as ravaged by poverty, but the reality is that there are people living their lives here as well. Without asking more questions and listening more, I won’t get a clear idea of what it’s actually like living in Kibera.
That’s the imbalance that so much media paints of “problems”. People and their lives become problems become problems to be fixed. Yes there are problems, but life is happening too. There are people who are sick and dying, there are also others who are healthy and living. There are people who are poor, there are others who are doing what they can to get by. It’s a complicated system that can’t fit neatly or easily into a 30 second spot.
And I think that can be translated to every socio-economic “problem” we see around the world. It’s easy to focus on the negative because that’s what pulls on the heart. That’s what gets our sense of justice riled up. And there’s definitely injustice out there. I don’t want to minimize that. But it’s also not that simple. Nothing ever is.
NGO City
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Another thing that I noticed was how many NGOs were operating near Kibera. As we were driving into Kibera on that first day, we passed an area where every building was an NGO office. Development has become an industry in itself. Ken is operating an NGO. And on Thursday, I met Vincent who’s also doing an NGO. His focuses on soccer with the kids. Last Saturday, I grabbed dinner with a few people, and both Rachel and Debra were in development. Even I’m doing development.
I knew that it was something that was done. And I knew that there was a lot of interest in it, but seeing all those offices clustered together was eye opening.
In many respects, development is almost like entrepreneurship. Not that this is a bad thing. But a lot of the principles are the same. Both start with an idea. Both require money. Both require labor. Both require a market. Both require a way to become sustainable.
And it may be the Gen-X cynicism in me, but I question if the answer is another NGO. I know that development is slow. I know it takes time and resources for real change to happen. But there are already so many and new ones sprouting up everyday. I wonder if the answer isn’t more NGOs, but better NGOs. Of course, this is said without actually looking into what the different NGOs are doing. I also don’t want to discredit the work that the NGOs are doing.
So what’s the point of all this? This is just a long way of saying that development is a very viable career path, one that I hadn’t really considered. Not that it makes my deliberations about what career to pursue any easier.
Looking Forward
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Next week, I should begin to settle into my normal schedule. I’ll be starting a new class in the mornings, doing a more intensive workshop with 6 students, 3 days a week, 2 hrs a day.
I’m also going to start doing Bible study and see how that goes.
And within a few weeks, I’ll have settled in and this’ll all have become “work”. I’ll have my daily commute, my daily schedule and routine. And just like that, life will become “normal” again.
What happened:
- shoot for Gwatila’s music video got pushed back to Wednesday
- drank too much tea and had to deal with the caffein crash for the rest of the day
- guy came to measure the bed frame; he cut a board to fit to give the mattress duly needed support
- did laundry
- worked on the treatment of the screenplay. Got to sequence 3 and realized that sequence 3 is a mess
- watched a whole bunch of CSI
It was a good day off.
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Tags: Kenya 2010, Missions, Trips
