Changing Perspectives Caused by Nutella

My time in Kenya has been a learning experience, from when my feet touched Kenyan soil to the moments I think I understand the city I live in and then I get humbled yet again with another unknown. Therefore, I have learned a lot of lessons here and have experienced challenging situations. However, sometimes the most simplistic actions can have big consequences. For me, while eating Nutella in the office that was bought for me by friends, I began to think about privilege. These thoughts became a few different rants in my journal and I am now sharing my thoughts here.

So what does Nutella show of my situation here in Kenya? For starters, it shows the money I have and the materialism that is in our culture. I “need” chocolate, which is of course ludicrous to say. It is like an Italian man said to me the other day at a gala for the NGO I am volunteering with, “they aren’t suffering because they don’t have television, Western music and washing machines, but we think they are because they lack this. I ‘suffer’ when I don’t have orange juice in the morning or these fucking cigarettes every day. They aren’t suffering and we should learn from them and their way of life instead of imposing ours”. This shows an experienced development practitioner’s thoughts on a student coming over on a program like this, and indeed all development practitioners. We waste our money while they get by with what they have. I should be learning from them how to consume, to appreciate live without needing sugar and chocolate once a week to brighten myself up.

Secondly, my Nutella shows the individualistic Western culture we find so easy to live. In Kenya, they share while my birthday Nutella shows me that I am apparently more interested in myself than others. It is almost finished and no else has touched it. That wouldn’t happen here, not only because of moderation but also because of their love of visitors, family and friends. They would let people share in their bounty, no matter how sparse it is. I have turned down enough thirds at various friends to know that fact. While I do recognize the fact that I am white, perceived as automatically rich and able to alleviate their suffering and am therefore treated better, the generosity of spirit I find in Kenya’s along with the generosity of limited material wealth comes from a communal outlook on life that many of us in Canada and the West too often overlook. This individualism is often one step away from greed or gluttony and these are pits that Kenyans are certainly not immune to. So why does it seem like they start off a lot farther away from these downfalls then we do in individualistic societies?

Lastly, Nutella reveals to me my love of comfort. If I was given one spoonful, I wouldn’t be as happy as dictating my own amount. And yet from all the people I see everyday and what this extra money would mean to them, how can I justify this gluttony and selfishness? Comfort should be secondary to what it does for others and the reality is that my Nutella binge does nothing for anyone apart from myself and the chocolate fat cats in Switzerland. While I am certainly not going to live a Buddhist live to compensate for this, I will strive to be more aware of where my money goes and to decrease my own needs for personal comforts. After all, we vote every day with our money and I hope to vote for a world where equality is more common place for everybody to access the same comforts that I have. If decreasing my own amounts help, I hope that I can make that decision.

I think a single jar of Nutella has taught me quite a bit about the materialism in Canada and the importance that Kenyans place on community and generosity. The privileges that we have are not necessarily deserved but the important point to me is what you do with those privileges. I hope this realization will help to change my attitude back in Canada, not just in Kenya where there is a constant reminder of the materialism that divides our two worlds. I wish to use the privileges that I have to be more generous with human connections. A study was once done where people were given one hundred dollars and split in two groups. One group spent the money on themselves while the other group was told to spend the money on others and each group’s happiness was measured after the activity. The happiest group was the one that shared their wealth and this is the lesson that I finally hope to learn because of my Nutella-spawned questioning into privilege. The lesson will stick this time but acknowledging the problem is only half the battle. I have a bloody, chocolaty massacre left if I truly intend to change.  

Guilt and the White Man's Burden

         My time in Kenya has gone by in a whirlwind and I have grown used to the fact that Caucasian people are often looked at as walking moneybags, members of a more privileged world. Although the divide between the developed and developing worlds is well known, the distinction between the rich and the middle class in Canada is not understood here. The amount of people asking for help can be overwhelming and even friends that I have made here ask for help, whether a request for a water bottle that they think I can do without or blatant requests for money. Unfortunately, these expectations cannot all be met and this forms part of the mythical ``white man`s burden`` that is felt in the developing world.

          The white man`s burden concerns the colonial past of the countries like Kenya and the horrible treatment their people suffered under the colonial powers of Europe. This colonial past has largely constructed how the world is built today and the types of programs that send privileged, largely white young volunteers to the ``developing`` world to help out, volunteers like me. The white man`s burden is about the guilt that we feel when we see the position that our ancestors put on other people in the world and the feeling that you are somehow responsible for this, along with the image this conveys to others that the white man is powerful and rich. I have been frustrated with this idea since the time I arrived because the guilt has weighed on me. I have been questioning the decisions I make in my everyday life back home and what effect they have on the human faces I see every day here and the millions like them across the world. How do I transform this guilt into something positive?

          My answer to this question that I have been asking for three months is to use the guilt to inspire yourself and others into doing something good for the world. It is like one of the lessons of the book Tuesdays with Morrie: if you don`t believe in the culture, don`t buy into it. Instead, live a life for causes you believe in, family and friends you love and a community you can be a part of. Instead of ideas like this, people often just feel shame for the problems of the world instead of finding ways to solve those problems. The emphasis should be on transforming shame and guilt into helping out in the small ways that make a difference in the world, from volunteering at local soup kitchens to larger issues such as taking part in global movements or purchasing fair trade items. If more people see the importance of these issues and revert from living the culture of consumerism that economically keeps other countries in the world suppressed, positive global changes can occur to lift humans out of poverty.

          Despite this hope, I recognize that fixing global issues such as poverty is much more complex than purchasing fair trade coffee. That is why hope is so important to me, the need to believe that others will understand the message, at all levels of class, influence and power. Personally I am taking responsibility to change how I live when I get back home. I can live more simply and give back more to communities I think will make a local and global difference. This is a minor price to pay when I have seen the circumstances in which people live here, an example being four people sleeping on one mattress.

          A quote I have always liked is courageous people never surrender hope. If I encounter apathy when I get back home, I will hopefully remember the courage of many of the people I have met here in Nairobi and their steadfast dedication to struggle in their lives to give a better life for their kids. I hope to help them.

Teaching A Man To Fish Is Not Enough

A Kenyan the other day was trying to explain the precepts of Kenyan business to me, abou the concern for making money and especially easy money. This is why crime and corruption are easy to find here because the easy way out is accepted, shortcuts are rewarded and society suffers. What about the average Joe that lives his live as honestly as possible? The businesses that he works at in both the formal and informal economy suffer because of these shortcuts. The opportunities available dwindle because of the reward of shortcuts and these opportunities in the slums of Nairobi are already small enough.

The old biblical quote of “give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life” does not take these limits into account. While the lesson from this of empowerment and self-reliance is important, it does not talk about resources available and competition. In the slums of Nairobi, opportunity for everyone is limited. Moments of creativity and innovation certainly happen, such as the revolutionary M Pesa system which transfers money over mobile phones. But the economic system that separates the developed and developing worlds shows that when rich people gain opportunities, the poor suffer.

Part of the problem with opportunity is the amount of competition between people to grab their piece of the pie. Going back to the ‘teach a man to fish’ quote, this type of action is hard when fifty people are competing for the same fish. An example of this occurred when my three fellow Waterloo students and I went to the tourist hotspot Masai Market to purchase gifts for friends back home. These people’s livelihoods come from selling items, from jewelry to paintings, to rich tourists coming through Nairobi. At one point, I literally had two men arguing who was third and fourth in line to take me to their stall and try to sell me their wares. I also daily pass multiple identical stalls selling the same items, from vegetables to clothes. Some vendors would later go home that day and tell their family that they did not make enough and they would need to tighten their belts for a week. This is counteracted by other vendors that did well with what was bought and might raise themselves out of the slums. But in Kenya I am seeing far more separation than balance.

An example of this separation is the big companies that have factories in an industrial area near my place. Products as diverse as Goodyear tires and Sara Lee cakes are made by locals to serve all of East Africa. The profits of these companies go to the West while the workers return to their families in their dirty homes in the slums. These employees are not being taught how to fish as much as working in a machine that creates special fish that they will never use or eat. Can an answer be the idea of sustainable livelihoods and more people living within their means and the means of their environment? The inhabitants of the slums need to set attainable goals for their businesses and work together to achieve balance. Yet, so much of the competition is ruthless and puts the individual first. How do we get Nairobi and its three million inhabitants to care for each other at all class levels? How can business be used to protect humans rather than benefit some while exploiting others? Maybe more important than teaching others how to fish is ensuring that the world we live in has enough fish for everyone.

They Are The Future

The children are always the brightest parts of my days here in Kenya, for they are seemingly everywhere with their unbridled enthusiasm. I have been visiting schools and teaching classes virtually every weekday for two months and I have learned a lot about the education system in Kenya as well as the promise of the youth. Unfortunately, I am visiting schools and kids in the slums of Nairobi where opportunities are scarce and the promise of youth is sometimes not achieved. I volunteer for an organization called Education for Life that aims to teach the kids life skills and promote strong character development. Just like the words of Abraham Lincoln say, “in whatever you do, be the best you can be”. We are trying to give the children the tools to do this, but the culture of poverty can be hard to overcome.

                This culture starts with the schools we visit. Many of them are informal schools, ones that serve the children and communities that cannot or go to the packed government run schools, the schools with purported “free” education that do not reach parts of the poorest slums. Informal schools run by churches or funded by foreign governments I have visited are as small as the Great Hall in the SLC, with 250 kids cramming into tiny classrooms and the noise level too loud to learn in. Corruption in the government is hurting the government schools as well. I went to a press conference last week led by Kenyan and international NGOs that condemned the Kenyan government from losing around 60 million US Dollars within the Ministry of Education by their officials. This corruption scandal has undermined Kenya’s education system and international reputation, to the point where England has pulled their funding of education to the government and Canada, among other countries, is threatening to do so. Meanwhile, the average Kenyan child is in need of better education to make the most of their life.

                The children of Nairobi’s slums are extremely affected by economics, resulting in the reality of child labour. I have heard people here openly acknowledge that while child labour is wrong, it is practiced because people often have no other choice. Children work at stalls and participate in the informal economy because they either need to provide for their family and for younger siblings or to pay for their schooling. A high school my friend volunteers at specifically caters to youth in the area whose parents cannot pay school fees, either through lack of funds or not being around. The school is subsidized by local charities and the teachers themselves, but it is not unusual for teachers to walk by their students on the street on a school day because they need to work in order to go to school the next term. These youth understand the importance of education; it is an opportunity for a better life.

                Sometimes all of these obstacles seem too big to be overcome but then I start thinking of the positives. One of the biggest is that the youth often take it upon themselves to change. I am involved in a program that teaches entrepreneurship skills to youth and these youth are grasping this opportunity to gain new skills and build a foundation for their future. They are encouraged to change their lives and those will be the citizens of Kenya that will be important to the country’s development over the next thirty years. But can the lack of opportunity still provide encouragement elsewhere? What is stronger, the human capacity to live in community with each other or the animalistic instinct to survive by any means necessary? What will the children of tomorrow do?

Female Empowerment from a Man's Perspective

Of the different economic, political, cultural and social issues I expected to learn about in Kenya, it was a shock to see how many of these tied in to gender issues. I have been disappointed to see that women are not treated equally here but investing in females has proven to be a smart move in the past to fix social problems that have a wide effect. An example of this is Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization started in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus that catered almost solely to women. It lent small loans to groups of women because they were dependable and would invest the money wisely and the bank became a cultural phenomenon, leading to Yunus winning the Nobel Prize for Economics. The key to this is giving women a role in decision making with economic impacts at the small scale that causes positive social impacts. Often these improvements start from small initiatives and an example here in Kenya has to do with female sanitary pads.

 Girls in Kenyan schools stay home three to six days per month when they do not have sanitary pads and this can cause a major problem with their education. A small initiative that one fellow student from the University of Waterloo has started here in Kenya has been to bring over reusable pads made out of fabric that can be reused over many cycles along with the patterns for girls to sew the pads themselves. As we are involved with an organization that visits twenty different schools in the slums and teaches them life skills, we can give the pads to girls in need along with teaching them about menstruation and proper hygiene. This is a small initiative that can hopefully educate many women over time about these issues and empower females to depend on themselves. This is often a problem in Kenya, where women are not self-reliant. I have been to classes where girls have been asked when they want to be married and their answers are eighteen because that would mean they can rely on the man and ensure a secure future. How do we empower these women to realize that there is more to their future?

                An organization that has started called the Girl Effect hopes to address the developing world’s young girls and their specific problems. It deals with raising girls out of poverty and investing in education, which will over time increase the standard of living for her and her family while breaking the cycle of poverty. It suggests way to fight the problems that the developing world’s girls have, from fighting illiteracy to the problems of HIV and young pregnancies. These problems are the challenges being faced and the awareness that this organization is trying to spread needs to be paired with grassroots organizations to address these issues.

                When you come from a nation of strong and confident females you notice the vulnerability and shyness of females here. The goal for the Girl Effect is to show what can happen when girls escape poverty, how the power of one girl can change the lives of many through education. Kenya has put out a goal for the country called Vision 2030 that has specific goals regarding the empowerment of women, including a Women Enterprise Fund, increasing the amount of women in political and economic decision-making realms and create a better power equity structure between genders. What is now needed is to combine these goals and the small education initiatives to change how females are treated and how self-reliant they will become over time. Kenya is attempting to invest in women so hopefully the girls I am teaching in class will gain independence from the shackles of their current situation in the future.

For more information on the Girl Effect go to http://www.girleffect.org/learn/the-revolution.

Desperation, Real and Perceived (IMPRINT ARTICLE)

          I have been in the Kariobangi slums of Nairobi, Kenya for almost two weeks now, with three months ahead of me. Four of us from the University of Waterloo are living in an apartment building in the Riverside area of the Kariobangi slums and though we are uplifted by the positivity and hope of the Kenyan people, we also see desperation daily. The poverty of living daily among sewage and few material possessions with thousands of similar stories is around every corner.  Everywhere you look from our roof you see garbage and debilitated houses and we are separated from that because we are mazungos, white people. This difference means that we have money and opportunities for the future that others do not have. I witness desperation while I have none. Our separation from this desperation is apparent every day in our attempt to live in community with our Kenyan brethren.

          One situation in particular sticks out. When we went into the city center of Nairobi to explore, two young girls started following us to beg for money. The Kenyan director of our organization Education for Life named George told us to never give the kids money because it perpetuates the poverty they live in. It is one thing to be taught this lesson between the well-off and another to follow it among the poor. We have all walked by a homeless person without sparing any change and later felt bad about it. As one girl followed me for five minutes, I finally gave her some small change although that didn’t absolve any of my bad feelings. I keep asking myself why I was born in my situation and she was born in Kenya. I have to believe it is for a reason, that we can all do something good with our position.

These differences in position were never more apparent than on Friday, when I went to the clinic with what I was convinced was malaria. Even though I am on anti-malarial pills, my hands and arms had begun to be covered in small red dots on Wednesday. I hoped they were an allergy but as I grew increasingly weak, I began to think they could be malaria because I woke up a few times with the bug net off my bed and body. Coworkers also thought they might be bug bites so I was whisked in to see a doctor on Friday, got a blood test and had to wait an hour, totally drained and depressed while waiting for the results. Despite my money and precautions, I was convinced I had malaria, a disease which can cause lifelong problems. I had the money to get the best healthcare possible and was better off than the millions who die from this every year, so why was I so scared? These desperate moments I had do not compare to the desperation I see in the shacks I walk by every day, the youth with no jobs and a dismal future.

My few desperate moments were for naught. Ultimately, I didn’t have malaria, just an allergic reaction that looked worse than it was. However, my first two weeks have shown me the separation that exists in our world first hand. My brush with disease in the developing world does not come close to what they undergo daily. I suppose this trip will show me the depth of our separation and whether I can be a part of the generation that will close this gap. And from what I have seen, I need to be. Desperation is scary, to see and experience.

Sawa Sawa, Kenya So Far

      Sawa means alright in Swahili, and that is where I am at now. I have grown accustomed to my new life in Kenya and I am now at the point where I can have an even mind and put some of my thoughts to paper. It has been the strangest experience I have ever undertaken so far in my life. I have been shocked so far by the Kenya I have seen so far because of stark contrasts. We in Canada live in a world of convenience and it seems everywhere I look, things are hard. Education is hard, buying and making food is hard, traveling is hard, living is seemingly hard. So why are the vast majority of the people so happy, and why do I see so much hope?

     My work has been with the Education for Life organization located in the Kariobangi, Huruma and Korogocho slums in Nairobi, Kenya. The organization mostly goes around to schools and teaches life skills that students do not necessarily receive from parents, guardians and teachers in the hectic and desperate world that a lot of the people in the slums live in. I have been involved in dealing with some of the most enthusiastic children I have ever met so far, especially since many of them rarely see a mazungo, the word for white guys which I hear around corner. I can safely expect that most times I hear raised voices on the street, it is about us, the white people that stand out so much. However, Education for Life has been a haven because of the difference I feel like I will be able to make over this summer, both in the people around me and in my own life.I will be helping out in three grade four to six classes each week, helping them discuss the issues they face in the slums and helping to ensure that they will become high character individuals in a difficult society. I will also be leading a weekly Youth Alive Club, where I will be in charge of leading a group of thirty kids in developing their talents and showing them that learning can be fun. I am also involved in working with youth that are setting up small businesses in Nairobi because of specific skills they have, such as woodworking and auto mechanics, and in overlooking garbage collection systems.

      I am extremely gracious at all the smiles and greetings I have been receiving the last five days, opposed to what I thought were malicious chants the first couple of days when I did not understand the language as well. Heads are turning but as I am greeting them in their language and smiling, I am receiving positive greetings back. What I attribute this to is that I think most Kenyans realize the position I was born in and instead of resenting me for it, they want to greet me and be nice to me. I think this mostly has to do with hope, where people live their lives as best they can and fight for improvement, whether for themselves or their children. I hate giving up and I think resiliency is an admirable quality of the Kenyan people. Maybe that is why they are such good long distance runners.

     Those are my immediate thoughts and I hope this blog was not too jumbled, I will write a cohesive post about what I have learned so far about corruption in Kenya in the next few days as well. Those are some of my first thoughts on what has so far been a humbling experience. I never realized how big the world's population was until I saw what is behind some of the numbers on poverty I have been researching for three years. But just like these Kenyans, I wish to live with hope for the future. There is one quote I have always really liked,"the courageous never surrender hope". I will try to live up to this while in the slums of Nairobi.