Hujambo!

If you own a restaurant or store and you’re planning to sell cold drinks, Coca Cola will give you a free refrigerator. I guess it’s a good deal but there’s one condition: you can only stock Coca Cola products in the fridge. Sure, Coca Cola’s product line includes something for everyone (even water, Dasani!), but don’t even think about sticking a 7-up or a left-over hamburger in there, man! I’ve been paying attention for a few weeks now and I can’t remember seeing this rule violated. Certainly, the little store at our college has a small fridge and you’d never catch us stocking it with anything but Coca Cola products. The same goes for all the cafes I frequent in Tala.

I wonder what the consequence is if you get caught with an Alvaro (soda from East African Breweries), a Red Bull, or a 7-up in your Coca Cola fridge? Who knows, but it cracks me up to think about the plethora of laws broken every day all over Kenya. To name a few:

• Urinating in public (possibly even on the “No Peeing” sign)
• Littering! (usually next to the “Keep Kenya Clean” sign)
• Smoking in public (yes, it’s illegal)
• Carrying extra passengers in matatus (public transport vehicles)
• Bribing police

It’s pretty comical, but is the Coca Cola man really that scary? Could an encounter with the big, bad Coca Cola man be worse than a fine for peeing on a wall? What about being sent to jail for stealing (or worse, mob justice)?

I just saw an article in Science Daily which talks about a “Digital Dark Age.” The introduction sums up the idea:

“What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive?”

The article mentions 8-inch floppy disks as an example. Remember those, from the 1980s and ’90s? They were the floppy disks which were actually “floppy,” not those 3.5-inch ones some old people still use today. The “floppy disks” of this era are CDs, DVDs, and flash disks, and you may not foresee them going away any time soon, but it’s inevitable; what happens when those are phased out for “newer, better” storage formats? The year is 2020: where will you find somewhere to plug in your now-ancient USB flash disk (let alone your circa-2001 floppy disk)?
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I was in Nairobi this weekend and some friends and I happened to stop by Carnivore for “Rock Night.” I had never been to Carnivore before, and all I had heard about it was that they serve crazy meat like giraffe, alligator, rhino, and who knows what else. I guess “game meat” is the proper term, maybe someone can enlighten me. I’m still not sure about the meat part because we were their for the dancing. Who knew it was a restaurant by day and a club by night!

Because it was “Rock Night” I put on the only “rock” shirt I have, a Ramones shirt I had just randomly found earlier that day for 150 shillings ($2). Most of you know that my taste in music is a bit extreme, so what may seem like “rock” to the average Kenyan sounds like a lullaby to me. The music on the dance floor was about 50% rock and then some crunk rap and even some trance house music. The place was packed and the crowd was lively so dancing was a lot of fun. I was surprised when I found that a local coffee chain has a little kiosk near the bar because, of course, my drink of choice is not alcohol or soda!
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You’ve probably heard that Barack Obama’s father is from Kenya, so there’s a sort of Obama-mania around here. Here’s how most of my conversations go with the locals:

Local: “Do you think Obama will win?”
Me: “Yes, but I’m not going to vote for him.”
Local: “What? Why not?”
Me: “Why should I vote for him?”
Local: “HE’S KENYAN!!!”
Me: “But that’s not what Democracy is about…”

One teen-aged girl proceeded to ask me if I hate black people.  I told her that I don’t care if the next president of the United States is white, black, green, or a tree.  American politics make it so that any candidate with drastically different ideas has absolutely no chance to get elected.

I’m reading David Barsamian’s collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy, The Chequebook and the Cruise-Missile, and I came across something that made me crack up:

“But still, how are you going to persuade a Naga sadhu–whose life mission has been to stand naked on one leg for twenty years or to tow a car with his penis–that he can’t live without Coca-Cola?” page 17

… a reference to the uphill battle the West faces in its quest to develop countries like India. “Develop,” of course, means that companies like Walmart are trying to create a demand for big box stores, processed foods, iPods, etc. It’s an uphill battle because India is essentially still one massive “wilderness.” With the possible exception of booming twenty-four hour cities like Bangalore and Mumbai there there is just no concept of supermarkets. For whatever the reason, people would rather eat a dosa or an idli than a McDonald’s hamburger, even if it is a “Masala Chicken Burger.” Read more