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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The monthly rent for my two-bedroom flat in Westlands is 45,000 Kenyan shillings (600 US dollars) per month. Taking into account that the three-bedroom flats cost a considerable amount more, and that everyone’s rental agreements hike their rent by 10% annually, it’s safe to say that the average rent is around 60,000 shillings per month here. With fifteen or so apartments in the complex, whoever owns this place is looking at close to 1,000,000 shillings per month. Why, then, do we pay three askaris (security guards) 4,000 shillings each per month to protect our fancy asses? That’s fifty three dollars!

The security guards work in shifts; one mzee (old man), Musa, works from 6 am to 6 pm, and then two younger guys come for the graveyard shift. They have the mind-numbing job of opening and closing the gate all day, and protecting all of us and our fancy stuff. I doubt there has ever been an incident, but the electric fence ain’t there for looks, man. Inside these walls families live; families with BMWs, big-screen TVs, and children. You’d think those things would be worth more than a couple hundred bucks a month to protect. This is Nairobbery, after all!
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Has anyone seen the movie Sita Sings the Blues? It’s an animated full-length movie which has some interesting ideas behind it; a note from the artist on the official website:

I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

How cool is that? This is the exact idea behind the Linux kernel, the Free Software Foundation, and the FLOSS movement in general. Do what you want with it, as long as what you do with it remains under the same freedoms. It’s not a restriction, it’s a lack of restriction.

Download it and pass it on; it’s free.
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