KENya WeeKENd

Friday:
went to Eritrean hip-hop show. Now, for those of you who have never been to an Eritrean hip-hop show (Carol, u been?) it is prettttty awesome. Actually, just the pre-show is awesome: the DJ's play all the latest Kikuyu club jams, and there's a series of "amateur night"-type performances by Swahili rappers. Kikuyu, btw, is the largest tribe/ethnic group in Kenya, and for some background, let my pause here to excerpt Michela Wrong:

"[the Kikuyu] hail themselves as 'the Jews of Kenya,' envied and hated in equal measure for that entrepreneurial zeal. But there's a difference: Europe's Jews never combined economic influence with political power. The Kikuyu have done just that, providing two of Kenya's three presidents. And their current predicament can be traced to that double-fisted grip on the nation-state and the resentment it stirs among their compatriots."

Muy interesante, no? Anyway, the headliner at the Eritrean club was this dude named, "Nameless" (don't ask). I asked one of my co-workers about him and she was like, "he used to be good a few years ago. Kind of like your Snoop Dogg." Ouch. "Now he's married to one of our best female singers, kind of like your Jay-Z." Nice.

We ate at the Eritrean place beforehand, and I must admit that i can discern no difference between Ethiopian food and Eritrean food, as appalling as that may be to some of my Ethiopian/Eritrean friends. my apologies. the DJ was really killin it tho, and i could tell even without knowing the songs, which is how i could tell in the first place, u know? the crowd was just INTO it. unfortunately, we left before seeing Nameless bc it was 1 am and he still hadn't come on and one of our friends was sick, but not rap sick, sick sick.

Saturday:
Real quick: I tried to go to the office to do some work, but alas, no powa ("no one electric company should have all that POWER"). Instead, I went to my first Kikuyu wedding ("nice day for...a Kikuyu weddding"). What was funny was that i planned to go to Nairobi's Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, but ended-up instead at St. Paul's University Catholic Church (official motto: "rise and evangelize." I'm not making that up). oh well. at least i was with "the Jews of Kenya."

the wedding had everything a wedding should have: DJ, cake, and drunk uncles making speeches and having to have their mics cut off (five minutes into his monologue he literally said, "wait. I wanna say something." haha. everyone was loving it, except maybe his wife). there were also women in incredible beehive-size African hats, which made me think about church-hats in Af-Am churches in the States. there was also outdoor congo-line dancing, which made me wonder if "congo-lines" are from the Congo.

that's pretty much it.

Gnong Hills

sorry to cross-reference, but just made a new FB album with pics from Gnong hills. there's like 80 pictures, and the blog only lets u upload 5 at time, ergo...

"Kitengella, Kitengella, Kitengella"

sung to the tune of "Black and Yellow"
pictures from the glass blowing factory/artists colony, Kitengella. when looking at the blazing infernos, keep in mind that they were playing the Supremes anthology.


this became a wine glass


love the col-ours


some like it hot


Justin, Devon, Brett: roommates past and present


color me bad


boom


who dat?

Action Shots

because i have friends who are truly gifted photographers, i thought i'd post their lens' version of what went down. a two-part installment. this is Mt. Longanot


touch the sky


"who's that guyyy...la la la la, la la la la"


jump around


insert academic post-colonial reference here


"Finalllly.....The Rock, HAS COME BACK to Mt. Longonot, Kenya!!!!!"

Mt. Longonot

I climbed Kenya's Mt. Longonot with some friends this weekend on three hours sleep (that time difference will getcha when u trying to talk to the States) but it was all good. it was more than good. proof below, in picture form.

Other highlights of the wknd included my first Shabbat in Africa, courtesy of friend and fellow JDS alum Jon Lerner (man can cook), and dialoguing with some Kenyan friends about race and racism in America. really interesting

Carol comin thru in two weeks. oh yes

Nairobi goings-ons

query: Why haven't I been writing more about Kenya? I've never been to Sub-Saharan Africa before, I've never lived in Nairobi before, and yet I'm writing about things that I could write about from my basement in suburban Maryland (eg, Jay-Z and The Supremes). The short answer is that almost all the incredible things that happen here occur in my office at work. But there are some good times outside the office, too, so lemme give a quick run down on those:

Yesterday I went to Kintengella Glass, a artist's workshop/glass-making studio about 45 min from where I stay at. It was fantastical in the fairy-tale sense; there were sculptures of lizards the size of a car, the path was speckled with bubbles of colored glass stones, and the buildings looked like someone had stolen the architectural plans from a community of Keebler elves.

Inside, there were about 6 Kenyan dudes making wine glasses, vases, tumblers, and other fancy glass things I don't know the names of. And wouldn't you know it...they were blasting ENTIRE Diana Ross and The Supremes albums as they ran about from one blazing furnace to the next. It was kinda really, really dope. Watching the artistry was really captivating too; there's a lot of teamwork and finesse and intensity to the process. Like, at one point someone dropped one of the pieces they were working on and everyone stopped what they were doing and ran over to try and save. I felt like I was watching an arts-and-crafts version of ER. I was also told that one of the guys there was "the only Samburu glass-blower in the world." Given that the Saburu tribe consists of about 60,000 people, or so I'm told, I believe it.

Besides being transported to a magical glass-blowing world (literally transported, actually. we had to drive for about 20 min over straight rocks through a Masai village), there have been some "interesting" cultural exchanges here as well. Unfortunately, a lot of them have revolved around money. So, the security guards at my building are funny dudes, and I like to crack jokes w/them when we see each other. But then they're like, "so when are you gonna bring me some food? I'm hungry." and i'm like, "ahhhh...maybe later?" and since then I've given them some fruit but I don't really want the relationship to be about that, u know?

One time me and security fellas were talking and this random dude came up to me and asked for money. I was like "sorry man." and then i turned to one of the guys after he left and he was like, "yea that sucks. so, when are you gonna bring me some food?" But it hasn't spoiled anything yet, and I still really like those guys.

Last time I took a taxi, I talked with the cabbie about racial profiling and economic inequality in Kenya. then he ended the conversation with, "so since you are Muzungu (white foreigner), I will overcharge you for this ride."

July 4th here was fun. I chilled with some of my Muzungu friends. Pics below.

"Never Change"

A highly underrated track from the quintessential Jay album, "The Blueprint." Features a pre-fame Kanye West. Was just listening to this today and one of the verses caught me:

"we keep weed to smoke/
we all fish, better teach ya folk/
give em money to eat, then next week he's broke.
cause when you sleep, he’s reaching for your throat/
word on the street, you reap what you sow"

There's a lot I like about this.

Exhibit A: It exudes the dynamic between "the sacred and the profane" that Cornel West ascribes to Blues. The Biblical allusion "you reap what you sow" right after he talks about smokin weed. And more specifically, right after he talks about "we" smokin weed. That's one of my favorite aspects of rap: that it speaks collectively. So that when Jay does somethin, its because thats what people do; He just happens to do it better than everyone else. If I had to describe the one idea that encapsulates Jay's style, that's it. And what's great about that is that it is both simple and blameless: you would do this too if you could, but you can't. at least not like me. I'm peerless and innocent at the same time. so forgive me my success.

I also like the idea of the social imperative of collective liberation. You can see that idea expressed as: "if you don't teach people to help themselves, they're not gonna have shit. if they don't have shit, they're not gonna be happy. if they're not happy, then they gonna come for you, as someone who does have shit. so it's in your best interest to help them help themselves."

This reminds me of a recent exchange I had with Tej where this quote came up:
"If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." -Lila Watson
I think that's put more optimistically than Jay puts it, but the idea is the same. MLK's "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Finally, I love the use of the ancient Chinese proverb "teach a man to fish" in the context of the "word on the street." It just speaks to the universality of classic wisdom/common sense, and the philosophy you can sometimes hear in rappers if you keep listenin past "weed to smoke."

My org in the NYT Magazine

Check-out this NYT's Magazine feature on the org I'm working for this summer, RefugePoint. Those my co-workers in the photos! small office. big ups!!!

Rain Today

It's raining so hard here that the thunder is setting off the car alarms. for real.

Poem in Eastleigh

Smoke emanating from no discernible source.

like clotheslines/ Strung-out. hung out to dry.

/Garbage piled high, and a mile wide.

Litter as leisure. little to relieve, either./

Relive? once is enough. No pause, and without a breather./

Fever pitch reached. cease and desist. / Deceased and missed.

Repeat./

As the mist rises. from where? where we resist.

Smoke emanating from no discernible source. And this.

Warmbodys reviewed in The New Yorker

I was reading The New Yorker, and I realized that I can't get through a page w/o coming across a word that--not only do i not know what it means--i've never even heard of it before (Lazlow phrased that just right). I'm also baffled by their use of umlauts. Are they just really strict grammarians, or is there like "another" English for people who think that a one-frame, caption-free cartoon of a dog looking into a hand-mirror is funny? "Reestablish" with an umlaut over the "e"? Really? but maybe im just late.

I do, however, love the conceit of the writing. And as I was listenin to my Warmbodys Weekend joints at the time, a thought occurred. Yes, my own. So as a tribute to my two favorite writers (the first being Benjy and, the second being everyone who's ever written for the New Yorker combined) I thought I'd take a crack at reviewing a Warmbodys track, New Yorker style. Ahem.

"Those privy to the deevolution (umlaut over the second e) of Warmbodys' lyricism will find warm counter-points in the still-rising motifs of their latest concept album, an abbreviated Bildungsroman that sparkles with abated intentionality. While previous works sought to blossom in soil already well-cultivated, their latest proposal reflects a warmer approach to song-writing that produces a virtual fait accompli.

As a producer, Young Hebrew Brother evokes a Chekhovian deprecation. This is nowhere more evident than "Friday (My Only Weapon)," a beat so replete with interwoven ideologies that it must be tempered by a Chaucerian fabliau to retain its own modesty. Note this: a shuddering tour-de-force maintains a single monosonic consistency (pitch-pipe, hitchhike, what women like, thick-type, skin-tight, in-flight, insights, and mixed-right), only to have its virtuosity sublimated within a ribald rejoinder: "now I'm taking blows to the head like my penis in a fist-fight."

This reflects a more pervasive ambiguity, or perhaps a self-conscious awareness of the irrepressibility of form. For his part, Tox implies a stunning renvoi within the dialectics of a Petrarchan Sonnet. Posing at once a problem and its solution, Tox parlays, "romantic mood, it's semantics dude/ I'm the man on the Titanic who didn't like the food." The evocation of Jewish vaudeville is indicative of a new-wave of Jewish rap avant-garde.

The measure of a withering revivalism is assuredly the panache of its resurgence."

ok that was fun. Now on to the Cartoon Caption contest.

Politics

The main topic of the day, as always in Kenya, is politics. EVERYONE here reads the political news in the newspaper, it's not even a class thing (is it in the U.S.? i feel like it is), and I see the janitor in my building pouring over the newspaper on his breaks (maybe that shouldn't surprise me?). So at lunch today I went to my spot and ordered Ugali, a Kenyan staple ("you can't not eat it and survive," a co-worker told me. side note: it tastes like Matzah balls w/o the soup. really. Rabbi Bienenstock would love it here see prev post). But anywayz, while I was eating it and not not surviving, I saw the Kenyan parliament broadcast on television. Some observations:

1) The bottom-right of the screen had a sign-language interpreter. I'm not a big C-Span watcher, but I'm pretty sure we don't have that.

2) The subject of the session were some "misappropriated funds" from the health/education funds that, miraculously, the Speaker claimed would not affect the budget. That's the kinda money i wanna have; the kind that when u lose it u still have the same amount u had before.

Other thoughts:

Obama's Kenyan father came up in convo, and I, being American, assumed they would take that as a source of pride (who wouldn't want to be associated with America? not serious.). In fact, the woman I was talking to said they were ashamed of Obama's father. Why? "Because he got a woman pregnant and didn't raise the baby. What kind of example of Kenyan fatherhood is that?" Never thought about it that way, but yea, totally. See prev post re: Love Child.

Lastly, a Somali friend asked me if I was Spanish. Now, over the course of my life I've gotten, "what are you?" and "what're you mixed with" ("baking soda," i usually respond) but this dude guessed my Chilean roots right off the bat. "How'd you know?" I said. "I watch a lot of futball," he replied. That doesn't really have anything to do with politics, unless you count Identity Politics. Which I do.

Religion

Jewish practices that seemed like archaic, irrational rituals to us in Jewish Day School have oddly crystallized into meaning here in Kenya.

Two examples:

1. I remember in 9th Grade Rabbi Bienenstock told us how he could never be alone in a room with a woman who was not his wife, and if he was, he had to leave the door open. This applied even during teacher-student and extra-curricular meetings. The reactions ranged from "that's sexist" (the girls) to "that's stupid" (the boys). But here in Nairobi I've come to find that that is in fact standard practice among some of the most liberal international refugee NGOs. If a male NGO-worker is meeting with a female refugee, he is by protocol required to act as if he in an Orthodox Jew.

2. When keeping Kosher, you're required to wait a certain number of hours (it varies) between eating meat and milk. The reactions in Jewish Day School ranged from "that makes total sense" (the religious kids) to "that's stupid" (everyone else). But now in the Yoga class I'm taking here in Nairobi, the teacher tells us to wait at least two hours between when we eat and when we do yoga. Rabbi Bienenstock would love it here.

In no particular order

Some stuff:

I went to see a play/poetry reading about Kenyan national identity. It was called "homecoming." I wanted to find a description of the play and post it here, but when I googled "Kenya Homecoming" all I got was 3,400,000 results for "Kanye Homecoming." Oh well. It was really interesting, and had the (somewhat expected) elements that most poetry readings have: jabs at colonialism, anger about racial profiling at airports, and a love story told through an extended metaphor (in this case, surprisingly, science). Afterwards we all went for beers at the bar above the theatre, which would've been normal except for the fact that we were in a Middle School. really. it was like a private Prep School, where on the first floor were crayon drawings of "The Wind in the Willows" and on the second floor were fly-ly dressed Kenyan dudes taking shots and shouting at the television. Nice juxtaposition, actually. Come to think of it, maybe the whole thing was a performance piece and the afterparty was actually the play. But i digress.

Some other things I've did: I went to the "arboretum," which is this beautiful natural park by the Nairobi statehouse. I went on a Sunday, which was my good luck bc everyone was either having a picnic or worshipping something, and both were cool to see. There were groups of people singing in a way I've really only seen on television, and I mean that in the most non-consumerist way possible. It was all beautiful. Except that one crew of faithful people who were just sitting on a log being reprimanded in Swahili by someone clearly displeased with their "naughty/nice" ratio that week. They looked less like devoted attendees at a sermon and more like trouble-makers at recess put in ecclesiastical time-out.

I still don't know how to tip here. I had a beer at the bar and gave the bartender 10% and she literally made the sign of the cross. I'm like, "is this a good thing or a bad thing"?

I went to Nairobi Central Park. It's like New York's, but with less references to John Lennon. I got stopped a lot on the street downtown. Imagine if Times Square only had one tourist a day, and that tourist was wearing a sandwich board that said, "I am the only tourist you will see today." ok its not that bad.

In sum, here are some pictures of my apartment.






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Love Child

This post has nothing to do with Kenya. It's about Diana Ross and the Supremes. More specifically, it argues that the song "Love Child" is one of the most under appreciated pieces of social commentary in the history of American popular music.

I started thinking about "Love Child" when I woke-up unexpectedly at 4 in the morning and decided to make a beat sampling it. Obviously my beat was dope, but i also learned that there's some real deep messages in the song, that i see as breakin-down into five parts:

1. It is, to my knowledge, the only number-one Billboard song (1968) with a central focus on pregnancy. I mean, when was the last time ANY song, #1 or otherwise, referred to, "the child we may be creating"? Keep in mind this is before Roe v. Wade. Also keep in mind that the pill had only recently become legally available for MARRIED women everywhere (1965, Griswold v. Connecticut) but was still not available to UNMARRIED women in many States until 1972 (Eisenstadt v. Baird).

2. It's also, i think, the only number-one Billboard song to advocate abstinence. Even more interesting, its not Christian/religious abstinence, but practical, "sensible" abstinence: she doesn't want to have sex with the guy not bc G-d says no, but bc she straight-up doesn't want to get pregnant. respect.

3. She doesn't want to have sex with him, YET SHE STILL LOVES HIM. This may be the last (first?) time in American music that someone sung a song about not having sex with someone, ha. for real though, compare more recent reasons pop singers cite for not wanting to have sex with somebody: "a scrub is a guy who thinks hes fly..." and "is it worth it? Lemme work it...". In contrast, Diana lets her man know its not about that ("u think that i dont feel love, but what i feel for u is real love") she just don't want that baby.

4. the social stigma of out-of-wedlock children: "in others eyes I see reflected a hurt, scorned, and rejected love child" and "I shared the guilt my momma knew." Damn. usually the most powerful raw emotional material in music is reserved for break-ups, cheating, unrequited love, etc. but this is about a mother-daughter relationship in the context of a single-parent home. pretty heavy social-issues for pop.

5. a woman's view of poverty: "i started school, in a worn, torn dress that somebody threw out." for reasons i dont quite understand, there have always been more songs about being poor by men than by women. this is just another reason why Ms. Ross once introduced "Love Child" as "the song our managers said would never make it."

ok heres the video. a little corny (but it was pre-MTV!), a little Blaxploitation (it was Motown!), but i still see the value in the message. i also love that no one in the video is wearing shoes (why?).

Next on NairobiHomi: Elvis Presley's, "In the Ghetto." Jk. prolly just more about Kenya. but i will say that the Elvis song does confirm the correlation between crime and abortion/unwanted children described in "Freakanomics," which i just read.

btw, when i was writing this post there were some (what sounded like) Muslim calls-to-prayer happening outside my window and some sporadic screaming that i believe (hope) concerned a soccer game. ok now this post is about Kenya.

Nairobi Bike Video

my kinda ish

First Pix

taken from my balcony: a view with no room?

beautiful clothing.


a lil closer.


a nice woman i met in the road.


What about Hollering?


That purple stuff.


Kid on bike, like the blue.


pool is good place to charge your phone.


apartments across from mine.


rush hour.


he gone.

Locks and Laundry

So my apartment has a cleaning person, who allegedly comes five days a week. I say "allegedly" because I've never see her, but my bed is made whenever i come home, something I am def not used to. I write this person notes in the morning about what needs to be cleaned. And then I come home and it's clean. that's it.

pretty, luxurious yea? Well there are two caveats that prevent me from fully enjoying this Nairobi standard (and by standard, I mean, standard for rich people). The first is that they won't wash "undergarments." While every other item of laundry is totally cool, there is a big taboo in Kenya about washing other people's "delicates." The dry cleaners won't even do it. And on the list of things I need washed, I would have to say that boxers are number one (no pun). I mean, to paraphrase a rap line, "I got jeans I ain't even washed yet." But drawers is another thing entirely, and is pretty consistently in the "i need to wash this" category. So it's gonna be a lot of hand-washing in the tub, which will allow me to pretend that I don't have every other single amenity taken care of while i'm here.

The second caveat is that I see the room-service lifestyle as a trade-off with the security realities. I literally have to lock my door with a padlock, on a separate iron door, in addition to the deadbolt and the normal doorknob lock on the regular door. The lock to open the doorknob lock is actually hilarious; it's like a "Secret Garden"-looking key that some victorian woman would wear around her neck and give to her betrothed. So it takes me like twenty minutes to enter and exit my apartment. And similarly, we have a nice porch, but it is entirely fenced-in from top to bottom by this iron gate. And we're on the fifth floor! i guess it's just so the Kenyan SpiderMan doesn't get any ideas.

The other security deal is that I basically have to live like a reverse vampire here, i.e., off the streets when the sun sets. If u want to do "something" after 7 PM, u gotta call a taxi. that feels kinda limiting. but i only been here for a few days, so maybe i can get used to it. It's just that sitting in a taxi is so much less comfortable without clean underwear. jk.

Steppin Out

My second full day in Kenya. Some reflections (eternal).

There are these buses called "Mutatus" that take people around the city, and while I haven't ridden one yet, I've been entertained by the designs their drivers paint on em. One I saw today had "Kanye West" written in pretty slick font all over it I almost thought it was the actual tour bus. When I pointed it out to a co-worker, she responded, "oh that's nothing. I once saw a Mutatu with 'Klu Klux Klan' written on it in beautiful calligraphy." Ok, so apparently people don't always know what they're writing on the side of their Mutatus. But when I asked a Kenyan colleague if he knew who Kanye was, he said, "oh yes. He is an international music personality." Well said.

I also noticed that every single barbershop in Kenya has this same picture of Ludacris outside the shop. No idea. Bottom-line though: I can't wait to get my haircut by the Kenyan Cedric the Entertainer.

I'm also gettin into the food here. I went to the grocery store the other day and was kinda overwhelmed. I picked up a can that said "beans in tomato sauce." I looked at the ingredients. It said: "beans, tomato sauce." I was left with many questions. "What kind of beans? What's in the tomato sauce?" These imponderables eluded me. I bought it anyway.

One unfortunate incident coming home from the grocery store. It was gettin kinda dark, and somebody came up behind me and grabbed my grocery bag. "let me hold that for you" he said. He didn't get aggressive or anything, and dropped the bag when I gave him this look like, "what is going on here." but he was like "why are you scared?" and I was like, "Because I didn't expect someone to come up behind me and grab my groceries." But he just left after asking for money and me sayin I gotta go.

Unrelatedly, someone told me that every Kenyan has a different English accent. This seems true, but they all speak excellent English. Hopefully this means they will be tolerant of my plan to "learn Swahili by repeating anything anyone says to me in Swahili back to them." I'll let you know how that pans out.

Arrive On Arrival

"Survival Got Me Buggin, But I'm Alive on Arrival"

Oh yes. I'm back on the blog like I'm back on the block. The best rapper at Harvard Law is in Kenya for three months, and he intends to write somethin. Let's begin at the beginning.

I was the last person to check-in for my flight. They actually closed the ticket-counter, and opened it up only out of the goodness of their Dutch hearts (I flew KLM "Royal Dutch Airlines." Food, not bad). Mad traffic on the way to the airport, and I wouldn't have made it at all if it weren't for the extraordinary driving efforts of my father, such efforts not excluding reversing off the highway. I started watching "Eat, Pray, Love" on the plane, but lets just say the book was better than the movie.

Ok, Kenya. I stay at this apartment with one co-worker and one woman who works for the Clinton Foundation. My work while I'm here is refugee protection. My style while I'm here is effective humanitarian worker with a good nature.

Why the name of this blog? Homi = homey (idk if that was clear). "Nairobi Wan Kanobi" was too long to write. Some people call Nairobi, "Nai-robbery," but that's a little much even for me.
some Swahili while we're at it:
"Jambo" means hello (Carol: remember that from the movie?)
"Asante San" means thank you (Caryn: remember Rafiki from the Lion King, "Asante San a squashed banana?" Well someone actually gave me a banana and so I said "Asante San"!).

"Karibu Kenya" means "welcome to Kenya" (Everybody!).