Hujambo!

I’m watching Avatar. I know, I’m probably the only one in the world who hasn’t seen it yet. It’s a pretty sweet movie, but it’s really hard to miss the socio-political commentary. Right off the bat, the main character is extremely daft; is that how the rest of the world sees Americans? You’d have to be pretty daft yourself to miss the allusions to American conquest of the “New World” (and, uh… the Middle East). The Americans are at it again in the movie, but this time we’re after “unobtainium,” which is selling for 20 million dollars per kilo!

The Navi people of Pandora obviously remind us of the Native Americans, but they also bear semblance to the Maasai people in East Africa; I think it’s the red colors they wear… I wonder if it played any role in the design of the Navi people. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Kenyan culture was used in a blockbuster movie!

Anyways, I’m glad I finally watched it. The graphics were stunning and I was honestly moved several times by cheesy dialog (maybe it’s because I sat and watched it allllll by my lonesome after a long day at work?). I’m also glad it won all those awards, if only so mainstream America could forget about oil, diamonds, coffee, coltan, cocoa, flowers, and “terrorists” for at least two and a half hours and realize the implications of hundreds of years of relentless conquest…
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It’s something I’ve been battling with since I came to Kenya in 2007. This evening I was walking through Uthiru after work and some kids saw me and shouted, “Mzungu!” You’d think I’d be used it by now but alas, even after two years of living in Tala and hearing kids shout that and more at me every day as I walked the two kilometers to the market, it still bothers me. Plenty of well-meaning Kenyans have tried to explain to me that it just means “white person,” but I’m yet to be persuaded; a “mzungu” is a person who comes from the magical country of “zungu.” Huh?

You see, the rules of Swahili say that you prefix the name of a country with an “m” to denote a person who is a native of that country. For example, an “mkenya” is a person from Kenya. An “mtanzania” is a person from Tanzania. I don’t know what a person from America is, because I’ve only heard it like once. I think it’s something like “mamericano,” but that sounds like something you’d order at Starbucks and it’s irrelevant anyways. It’s irrelevant because even if they were yelling “American,” that doesn’t make any sense either. In what universe is it acceptable to yell someone’s country at them as a greeting? Besides, you don’t hear Kenyans yelling “Ugandan!” when a Ugandan dude walks by… they say, “Niaje?!” (what’s up?).

In Kenya, as long as you’re not black or Indian, you’re a mzungu… unless you are Filipino or Japanese (or anything else Asian which is NOT Chinese), in which case you are Jackie Chan and you know karate. Pole sana, guys (so sorry)!

I can’t think of any reason why a police officer in Kenya should get a free ride in a matatu. As far as I know there’s no law that says, “If you see a cop walking, give him a ride.” It happens all the time, though: some cop walking on the side of the road flags a matatu and the guy jumps in. For some reason every non Kenyan I complain to has the gut reaction to tell me that its because cops “serve the public.” Um, hello? Which Kenya do you live in?

Ugh. In the Kenya I live in cops don’t serve the public, they run death squads, beat matatu drivers for turning at the wrong place, and raid gay weddings. The Kenyan police have been consistently rated among the most corrupt institutions in Kenya and even the most corrupt institution in East Africa. I’ve even been hassled by cops a number of times for doing things like not carrying a receipt for my laptop, not wearing a seatbelt, and talking to a friend on the street corner next to my house after dark.
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It’s well established that haggling is ridiculous. There’s nothing new on that front (and it still doesn’t make sense to me), but I am proud to announce that I’ve learned a new tactic: ask them for their “last price” RIGHT AFTER you ask them how much the thing costs.

“Bei ya mwisho?” has revolutionized the way I understand haggling. If the dude says the wooden table costs 3,000 Kenyan shillings (~ 40 US dollars), this tactic gets it immediately down to 2,500. It seems nonsensical but it works; I watched a buddy employ this technique over and over again when we were shopping the other day. We had gone to the Nairobi Ikea (read: dudes in tin shacks on the side of Ngong road making furniture with their hands) in search of a desk for my office (read: living room). In the ened, we knocked off enough money on the table that I decided to throw in a nightstand too!

Funny story: this is the same place I bought my bed frame and my coffee table. After successive visits I now realize I over paid on the coffee table, which explains why he was so excited when I gave him 200 shillings for delivering it. But then again, hiring a pickup truck for delivery costs at least 1,000 shillings, and the coffee table jamaa (dude) actually rode it like 10 km on his bicycle…