My Maasai Life. Robin Wiszowaty
and, because I was simply fascinated by his life experience, so unfathomable to me.
The next day he and a few other boys sat with me on the curb by an open-air market close by my host family’s house. Their English was about as limited as my Swahili, but we still managed to understand one another. Each of the boys sipped small packets filled with milk I’d bought for them—a small price to pay, I thought, for fascinating conversation.
Because we’d arranged to meet in this upscale neighbourhood, Moses wasn’t huffing glue today. But normally, he said, he spent most of his time in the slums and any money he could find on what he called his “gum”; huffing it took away his incessant hunger, made his body feel good and helped him forget the cold. It was, he said, the most efficient use of his money. Even though he knew inhaling the toxic substance could cause serious, irreparable damage to his young body and brain, in his desperation he clung to the numbness provided by its high. His father had died of aids and his mother was now also sick, so she couldn’t afford to provide food for Moses and his siblings. With no way of surviving at home, Moses had to leave his village for the big city. Here Moses found other children who lived on the streets, having also fled their homes.
Moses pointed various kids out to me, knowing each of their stories. “That guy’s parents both died. This guy just ran away from home for fun. This other guy doesn’t even know how he got here.”
Depending on the day and season, street life presented a range of serious dangers, from violence between street kids to malnutrition and disease from the brutal conditions. Later that winter, in January 2003, the newly elected government representing the National Alliance of Rainbow Coalition, or narc, would send large trucks into Nairobi’s streets, rounding up street children and taking them to state-sponsored facilities. I found out then that Moses himself avoided the trucks but later spent several intermittent sentences in city jail; he told me this never changed his preference to live on the streets.
Now, though, in those early days in Nairobi, I thought about how homeless people were regarded in North America, recalling how saddened I’d been to learn in school that children make up about a third of the homeless in America. It never made sense to me, when the commonly held stereotype of the homeless had more to do with mental illness or addiction, not a desperate underfed child on the street clutching a teddy bear, like one homeless child I’d seen here. How was this allowed to happen? How could people so young even survive?
Brenda was working with a development organization in the slums just outside of Kibera, and she invited me to tour the slum and see the true picture, away from the disturbing images shown in television commercials: children’s wracked bodies, their open sores and bloated bellies, their weak efforts at swatting circling flies as they lay limp against flaking mud walls, while a groomed celebrity spokesperson pleaded on their behalf. Yet in the pit of my stomach, I felt apprehensive. Would I be welcome? Could I handle seeing such poverty?
Walking with Brenda through Kibera’s narrow streets, it was impossible to ignore the suspicious glares of the slum’s dwellers. Garbage was strewn along rows of tiny houses and through corridors formed by sheets of grimy, rusted tin siding. The stench of sewage hung heavy as we stepped carefully through red-brown puddles of dirt and recent rain. Green plastic bags were caught on rocks every few steps, leftovers of last night’s “flying toilets”—Kibera’s solution to a lack of public sanitation. I’d heard of people relieving themselves into bags at night, then throwing them out of the window; the evidence was all around us as we continued forward, careful not to slip in the mud.
But heading farther through the streets, a different story emerged. Echoes of children’s shrieked laughter rang everywhere. Mamas in vibrant headscarves popped their heads from doorways, calling their kids for dinner, while other women worked makeshift vendor stands, selling fresh fried dough for five shillings; the smell of the cooking oil wafted mouth-watering aromas. Entrepreneurial men worked shoeshine booths and cobblers clustered on street corners. More and more children chased one another through these elaborate corridors, dodging the litter as they splashed through the streaming gutters.
A group of boys, dodging one another, accidentally bumped me. “Sorry!” they called back breathlessly, dashing away.
With Brenda as my guide, we visited some families’ residences. The small houses, really only shacks, were made of corrugated tin walls and roofs with floors made either of hardened red clay or, sometimes, concrete. Some houses had simple, peeling paint jobs; many did not.
An average home was roughly three metres by three metres, half the size of my bathroom at home, with a curtain typically hung across the centre to fashion a bedroom separate from the sitting room or kitchen. Despite the close quarters, every home felt welcoming, personalized with decorations, wall-hangings or newspaper clippings. Floral patterned- fabrics were laid over couches and tiny televisions, tuned to whatever stations their limited reception could get, ran off car batteries. These furnishings almost masked my view of their unstocked cupboards, their ragged clothes, their unspoken desperation.
I tried to put myself in their place. Could I ever feel comfortable living in such a place, sleeping on a tiny mattress, with sewage streaming at my doorstep? A neighbourhood perpetually covered in mud and garbage and flying toilets? No running water, let alone no operating flush toilets or garbage collection? Could I ever call a place like this my home? Each family kept a twenty litre jerry can, called a mitungi, to carry water. It cost five shillings to fill it up at the shared water tank—roughly the equivalent of more than twice what my family back in Chicago paid for clean water piped directly into our home.
I was stunned, paralyzed, comparing the lifestyle I’d led back home with the experiences of those I saw in Kibera: those sick, starving, struggling just to survive. At home we raided our kitchen cabinets, which spilled with cartons of groceries, only to moan, “There’s nothing to eat!” But here families often really had nothing to eat. Portions were strictly regulated and budgeted. Back in Schaumberg, my sister Erin and I often complained about having “nothing to wear,” while piles of disregarded clothes tumbled from our closets. Here children wore cast-off clothes, most donated by Americans and sold in bulk throughout the developing world. Many wore clothes handmade by their mothers.
Nonetheless, for all that was different, just as much was the same between our worlds, half a world away. Families worried about their children as they slept, played, cooked, hosted visitors, hoped for the future—just as people everywhere, getting on with their lives.
My two months in Nairobi passed in a whirlwind of emotion. Everything was new and strange. But most of my time was spent readying myself for my true destination, only a few quick matatu rides away. As the end of my orientation period approached, I picked up the basic essentials I would need: a year’s worth of tampons, a few loose-fitting skirts from the second-hand clothes market, a Swahili dictionary, malaria pills and not much else. I emailed a quick goodbye to my parents, saying I didn’t know when I would be able to contact them next but assuring them I would do my best to be safe. Then, with my immediate future again uncertain, I was on my way.
3
My New Family
Weighed down by my s tuffed backpack, I stepped out of the neon-green matatu into the street of Soko, a market town to the southwest near the Great Rift Valley. Morning was just breaking when I had boarded in Nairobi two hours before, but the sun now shone hot and unforgiving. The town was quiet, with the streets mostly vacant except for a few stray dogs, and the merchant stalls were empty. It was Sunday morning, and most Kenyans in this region, being devout Christians, were in church.
I wiped dust from my eyes as I tripped along the uphill road, thankful the rain was still holding off. My feet felt clumsy on the unfamiliar terrain and my pack shifted awkwardly as I staggered under the year’s worth of supplies. The stares of local townspeople made me stumble even more as I made my way from the matatu stage to the main intersection. There gaudy advertisements for Coca-Cola and cell phone company Safaricom splashed across roofs, alongside crates of produce and other wares.
Heading west as I’d been instructed, I found a waiting