Category: Kenya | Page 16

Kenya, Music, Rants

Rastafarianism is a Religion

If smoking weed, growing dreadlocks, and listening to Bob Marley sounds good to you, you just might be a Rastafarian! There’s a lot more to it than that, but I’ll be damned if I ever meet a “Rasta” who can explain it without mentioning reggae music or marijuana. It’s quite popular here in Kenya, but after meeting dozens of self-proclaimed Rastafarians I still always wonder: do these guys know that Rastafarianism is a religion, or is it just what the cool kids do?

While its roots are in the Back to Africa and black nationalism movements popularized by Marcus Garvey in the 1930s, it has evolved into much more than just a “black hippie” movement. In a nutshell, Rastafarianism is a Judeo–Christian religion that purports the late Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was the second coming of Jesus Christ (and therefore God incarnate). This and other Rastafarian beliefs are backed by verses from their holy scripture, the Bible.

Kenya

They Don’t Sleep There Anymore

Muddy street where the refugees used to sleep

The refugees who have been sleeping on my street have vanished. I came home a few days ago and was surprised to see all of their stuff was gone and they were nowhere to be found. The only thing remaining was one of the soggy cardboard boxes they used to sleep on.

Kenya

They Do Sleep there…

So it turns out the refugees down the street are refugees and they do sleep there on the side of the road. Call me naïve, but it wasn’t always obvious to me (and nobody has explained any of this to me). I’ve seen bunches of them come and go pretty regularly since I moved to this part of Nairobi a year ago—a handful cooking dinner here, a few in sleeping bags there, but never for more than a couple days at a time. The latest bunch has got to be at least twenty people, though, and they’ve been there for at least a month now.

In the last couple of days I’ve accidentally talked to a few of them… I’m just so used to bumbling along Church Road talking to everyone that it was bound to happen eventually. The first guy was from Burundi, and the second guy was from Congo. This would definitely explain why they speak Swahili. And whattaya know, I speak Swahili! Enough, at least, to figure out what’s going on.