would begin.
Before that, however, I had to go through eight weeks of classes and meetings across town with other American students like me, studying in a range of different fields and disciplines. My class was led by Dr. Mohamud Jama, associate professor at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, and adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. His encouragement had me excited about the months to come.
There was only a slight catch: unlike most of my classmates, I had no formal training in the field of international development and, to complete the course and receive full credit, I was expected to write extensively about the topic and eventually produce an eighty-page paper. The idea was daunting, to say the least. I hoped my time in this rural community would help me learn more about successful international development practices.
One afternoon I was walking through downtown Nairobi when I encountered someone who stopped me in my tracks.
A tall, thin man was headed down the sidewalk toward me, his colourful appearance standing in stark contrast against the grey backdrop of surrounding glass skyscrapers. Two long cotton scarves were draped across his bare chest, cascading all the way to his knees, held together at his waist by a beaded belt. To my shock, he was laden with weapons: a long knife encased in a red-dyed cow hide and a wooden club hung from his belt, with a bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back. He held a thin staff in one hand and a metal spear in the other. His pierced and stretched earlobes dangled almost halfway to his shoulders.
As he looked right and left, shrinking from avoid oncoming traffic, I wondered who this spectacular man might be and what had brought him to Nairobi. What does he think of the wide streets, the big crowds of people, the running water or tall sky-scrapers?
As we passed, the push of the busy crowd propelled me forward, yet I could smell from him a strong odour like raw milk and a smoky scent, like a campfire. The man seemed entirely out of place—almost as much as me.
I knew that in Kenya I’d be experiencing a culture and way of life unlike anything I’d seen. Leading up to leaving North America I’d been so focused on orchestrating my escape I hadn’t anticipated the cultural differences—or how deeply submerged in poverty Nairobi truly was. The kiosk workers with whom I spoke every day didn’t work to buy designer clothes; they sold bananas in the morning to put food in their children’s mouths at night. Often they even lived in their kiosks with their children. Many bathed in an above-ground sewer system—the same one into which I often saw people urinating. They washed their clothes by hand, lived amid litter in the streets and breathed air so polluted you had to remove black build-up from your nostrils after a day on the streets.
Everywhere people pleaded for me to purchase their wares. Children followed me constantly with hands outstretched, begging in broken English: “Sister, sister, please. My tummy is hungry. Five shillings, ten shillings. Please, sister.” Chatting with the guy who worked at the matatu stage in the mornings, I was surprised to learn he lived in a poverty-ravaged slum, just minutes from the comfortable home where I was living.
Walking Nairobi’s streets, I manoeuvred around people sprawled on the trash-smeared concrete, their leprosy-wracked and underfed bodies, some missing limbs, sleeping in the middle of crowded streets—mistreated, neglected bodies that held human souls capable of compassion and love. Yet people simply stepped right past them.
I often felt numb, as though observing myself in the same way I observed these surrounding scenes. Every day I saw something that shocked me. I didn’t know how to take it all in, or how to articulate it when I wrote to my family. Instead, I read emails from my mother about the weekly sales at Kohl’s, how disappointing a new TV series was, how my alma mater football team was faring that season. How could I share what was going on here in Nairobi when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? I pictured my mom at her office, seeing my name in her email inbox and then excitedly opening my message. She would call over all her fellow workers to share the news: her daughter was still safe and doing well.
But what if I wrote to her about the man with elephantiasis of the leg I’d passed on the street the day before? A chill shot down my spine and my breath caught in my throat when I saw him, slumped on the sidewalk. My face contorted as I fought to hold back tears and nausea at the same time. I fought to look away, but couldn’t help but gape at the swollen, deformed figure lying before me. His thighs looked like the base of a tree trunk and his darkening skin was bursting at the seams, like a balloon ready to pop. His foot was so swollen that the toes nearly disappeared inside the distended flesh. I wondered: How can he even turn over? His foot must be impossible to even lift! Can he walk? How does he stand the pain?
Then he caught me openly gawking and met my gaze with a toothless smile and a trembling palm held out in hope of a couple of shillings.
How could I possibly explain to Mom just how gutted I felt in that moment? There seemed no way to share the flood of questions racing through my mind: Where does he sleep at night? What can he afford with just a few shillings? Or how do I even explain the unexpected contradiction, that even in agony his eyes held a gentle mystique, seeming to assure me all would be okay? Or how do I explain the bitter irony, that his smile was providing comfort and reassurance while I—healthy, with money in my wallet—stood stunned, unable to help him? And what about all the other sick, wounded Kenyans I saw? Do Kenyans have public health care? And if they don’t . . . what did they do?
How could I possibly even begin to share all the disheartening scenes I saw almost everywhere I went in this strange city?
I was a part of it now; there was no turning back. I couldn’t avoid the brutal reality; in fact, I didn’t want to avoid it. Although there were no easy answers, no understanding, no logic—only corruption, greed and ignorance—this was a world I wanted to learn more about. Right now I didn’t know how to share with my loved ones back home. Instead, I was learning to keep a million secrets with myself. But maybe someday I’d know how to tell them.
The days in Nairobi began to run into one another. Yet some experiences stood out, like the first day I was moved to actual tears.
I’d come to Kenyatta Market with my classmate Brenda to buy a sweater from the second-hand clothing market. It was a maze of stalls, vendors selling all sorts of used clothes, everything from fine-tailored business attire to Nike running shoes and Gap sweatshirts.
During my stay in Nairobi, I brimmed with anticipation while preparing to head to Maasailand for a full year.
As we strolled through the busy market, two street boys approached, asking for five shillings. Brenda took a glance at them, then declined casually, just as we both often did.
“Sina pesa,” she said. I don’t have any money.
Clearly, this was an outright lie. I’d been taught to say the same thing, because when there are two beggars there are ten and, when there are ten, there are still more ready to pounce. But even after saying it countless times, it still felt wrong. Compared to the people we passed on the street, we might as well have been driving bmw convertibles with the top down, flashing designer clothes and sparkling jewellery, tossing stacks of cash . . . then saying “sina pesa” while craning our heads for a better view of the dejected locals.
One street man nearby overheard us. Missing most of his teeth, his clothes hung as if they hadn’t been washed for weeks, and his hair was so dirty it was knotting into dreadlocks. Glaring at us, he said in Swahili, “What are you doing in Kenya, if you can’t help us?”
Despite my halting comprehension of the language,
