My Commute October 26, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Washington DC.Tags: UNEP, UNEP-RONA, Washington DC, whitman college, whitman college magazine, biking down the capitol, biking in dc, Walla Walla
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This is something I wrote for the Whitman College Magazine which will be coming out in mid-December so that’s when I’ll be autographing copies. JUST KIDDING!
Editor’s Note: Whitman students who wish to learn about the U.S. government, foreign policy or community organizing may apply through the Study Abroad office to attend the Whitman-affiliated American University Washington Semester Program, based on a thematic seminar with an internship component. Lisa Curtis ’10 was midway through the program when she wrote this column in October.
By Lisa Curtis ’10
When I ride down country roads through the wheat fields with the rest of the Whitman cycling team, the most frequently heard exclamation is not “car up,” it’s “tractor ahead.”
I often think longingly of those endless miles of empty road while I’m weaving my bike through traffic here in Washington D.C. But then I ride past the White House, and I realize that D.C. is a pretty cool place, too.
A lot more has changed than just the scenery since I decided to spend a semester of my junior year in the urban studies program at American University. Most of my friends decided to spend this semester in a foreign country. Sometimes I feel like I did, too; this other Washington is a world apart from Walla Walla.
For one thing, my wardrobe has changed. Instead of riding a road bike with fancy clip-in shoes and spandex, I ride a red beach cruiser in a suit and matching red heels. No longer do I travel leisurely through endless miles of wheat fields with nothing holding me back but the lingering thought of the homework I should be doing. Now I frantically push my heels into the pedals, urging my little red bike to go faster so that I can get to work on time.
It’s not such a bad commute. I begin my journey at the top of Capitol Hill in a tiny apartment that I share with five other politics majors. Then I ride my bike down the National Mall, soaring past smartly dressed congressional staff and confused-looking tourists.
I slow my bike as I pass the Newseum. At the entrance of this new museum dedicated to the news are the front pages from major papers from across the world. Sometimes I stop altogether if I find an especially interesting headline. Like most people in D.C., I am obsessed with the news. Discussions on current events and political debates don’t just occur in the classroom here; in fact, they occur most often at parties or at the five o’clock happy hours that D.C. is so famous for.
However, I never pause at the Newseum for too long. Interning at the United Nations Environment Programme is not a job I want to be late for. It’s a dream come true to work alongside people from all over the world who are doing more than their share to make this world a better place. 
I play a small part in all of this. My task is to work on UNEP’s new climate change education campaign for North America, called “Kick the Carbon Habit.” The campaign is spearheaded by 20 regional coordinators from around the United States and Canada who will lead educational events in their communities, specifically targeting elementary and middle-school audiences. I was lucky to be chosen as the regional coordinator for Washington, Oregon and Alaska, but since I’m in D.C. for the semester, I’m helping to coordinate all of the logistics for a conference to launch the campaign. It’s a lot of work, but the sense of excitement that I get from thinking about what this campaign can accomplish keeps me working hard.
At the end of the day I leave the office and head down the elevator. Before I leave the building I change out of my suit and put on jeans and a bright red button-up shirt that says “Nandos.” Nando’s is a South African/Portuguese restaurant where I work as a hostess.
This is a wardrobe change with a specific purpose. I change clothes before I arrive at the restaurant so that the people I work with don’t see me in a suit. Most of the Nandos employees are the same age as me but, instead of attending college, they are busy attending to the needs of their kids. Like me, most of them have a second job, but most of their jobs don’t involve sitting in front of a computer.
One out of five people in D.C. live at or below the poverty lines, making our nation’s capitol the jurisdiction with the third-highest rate of poverty in the nation. It’s a statistic I think about a lot as I ride my bike past all of the people in suits on their way to the Capitol.
I’ve learned a lot of statistics recently through the International Environment and Development seminar that I attend the three days a week when I’m not at my internship. I’ve learned that the United States spends more money on the military that the rest of the world combined but less of our budget on foreign assistance than any other developed country.
Recently in class, my professor has emphasized the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries. Not only will global foreign assistance money decrease, so will tourism, prices of nonessential commodities (such as roses) and credit to finance development projects. As my professor summed up in an extremely depressing lecture, “We can expect to see an increase of crime, political conflict and starvation in the developing world in the coming months.”
Sometimes, when I’m living on the happiest college campus in the country, it’s easy to forget that not everyone has such a good life. In D.C. I am not experiencing life in an inner-city ghetto or a poverty-stricken developing country, but I am coming into contact with the people who shape the policy that either ignores or helps to alleviate poverty. It’s difficult for me to respond to the question of why I am interested in development. I can’t imagine not being interested in helping those less fortunate.
Someday, hopefully, I’ll be back in D.C., but instead of riding my bike past the Capitol, I’ll be walking in the door.
Lisa Curtis ’10 is a politics-environmental studies major from Alameda, Calif.
Seeing through the Smoke September 29, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Washington DC.Tags: Add new tag, greenjobsnow, anacostia, homocide in DC, green jobs, green jobs mobilization, green for all, van jones, UNEP, UNEP-RONA, Kick the Carbon Habit Education Campaign, Capitol Hill
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I decided that the best way to travel to a Green Jobs Now event would be to ride my bike. Despite the ominous gray clouds and my total lack of familiarity with the Washington DC area, I hopped on my little red bike and headed in the general direction of Anacostia. Anacostia is unlike the rest of DC in that while are a few famous monuments in Anacostia (such as abolitionist Fredrick Douglass’s home), Anacostia’ s main source of fame is from its infamously high homicide rates.
There were 28 other Green Job events in the Washington DC area, many of them closer to my neighborhood and all of them in much safer parts of town. But the idea of Green for All, the idea that
a national effort to curb global warming and oil dependence can simultaneously create well-paid green-collar jobs, safer streets and healthier communities
made me choose the event in the community that needs green jobs the most.
I almost gave up my journey before I got there. I rode my bike to the Anacostia River Waterfront, an area that is currently undergoing some massive gentrification. I rode to the edge of the polluted, dirty river and pulled out my map, trying to figure out where I was supposed to be going. I flagged down a nearby security guard to ask for directions.
“Wait, you want to go to Anacostia?” He asked, taken aback. “You know that’s a rough neighborhood right?”
After I convinced the guard that I did indeed wish to go to Anacostia, he convinced me to park my bike and take the metro the rest of the way, so as to attract less attention. I hesitantly locked my pretty red bike to a bike rack on the side of a Safeway. Next to my bike was another bike that had been parked but now no longer had a seat or tires.
I paused for a minute before descending down the escalator. So far, everyone I had spoken with, including a security guard, had told me to not go to Anacostia. Was I being overly idealistic and naïve to the point of being unsafe? I decided that I would at least go to the Anacostia metro station and check it out the station.
The station seemed like any other and so I asked the station manager directions to the church where the event was being held. As it turned out, the event was right across from the metro and I felt my spirits rise when I saw big signs that said “Green Jobs Now.”
Sitting in the grass, I listened to speaker after speaker drive home the same basic point: transiting to a green economy isn’t just good for the environment; it’s good for America. To my astonishment, towards the end of the event a well-dressed man pulled up in a cab. It took me a second to register that this was one of the men that I admire the most in this world, Van Jones. After he gave an inspiring speech, I was managed to grab his attention before he hopped back into his cab. I briefly congratulated him for generally being amazing and then I told him about what I am doing.
I told him that I am currently working to coordinate the conference logistics for UNEP’s new Kick the Carbon Habit Education Campaign. I handed him a description of the campaign, telling him that Green Jobs wasn’t incorporated into the campaign but that I really, really want it to be. He gave me his card and a few names of people that I should contact and jumped into the cab.
I didn’t just get to talk to Van, I also got to speak with amazing people from 1 Sky, Eco-Green Living, Cool Capital Challenge, Chesapeake Climate Action, Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light and Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative about our new campaign. I was especially curious to hear their thoughts on my idea to launch the campaign in Washington DC by visiting elementary schools in Anacostia and doing environmental education. A lot of the people I spoke with seemed excited and Cool Capital Challenge even suggested a partnership.
At the end of a very fulfilling day I took the metro back to Anacostia Riverfront and rode my bike back towards Capitol Hill. As I headed back, I saw a side of the Capitol that I have never seen before and that I doubt I will ever forget. Framing the Capitol were two towering smokestacks emitting a black smoke that seemed to entwine the gleaming white building in a toxic embrace.
As I later found out, my metaphor wasn’t so far from the truth; the pair of smokestacks is the Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning plant that is operated by Congress to heat and cool famous government buildings in the area such as the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and the Capitol itself. It also happens to be a major emitter of nitrogen oxide which exacerbates respiratory diseases such as asthma. In a city where 9.2 percent of the adults (8 percent nationwide) and 11 percent of the children have asthma (9 percent nationwide), it is a testament to the skewed politics of Congress that it still exists.
I stopped riding my bike for a second, the enthusiasm and hope that the Green Jobs event had given me suddenly dwindling. The need for the transformation to a green economy is clear, but will the decision-makers on the hill ever see through the smoke? Suddenly it wasn’t Anacostia that scared me…
Pretend Professional September 6, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Washington DC.1 comment so far
When I was younger, my sister and I used to play “pretend” a lot. We’d pretend to be everything from princesses to animals, often changing our characters mid-game when we tired of them. But the one pretend game we never got tired of was “playing grown-up.” The game would begin with my sister and me sneaking into our mom’s closet, giggling as we borrowed heels, jewelry and oversized shirts that we belted at the waist as a dress. Before putting on our freshly looted goods, we would slather make-up across our faces, turning them into a mask of colors that much more closely resembled San Francisco drag queens than the magazine models we aspired to. After we deemed ourselves properly made-up, we would put on the rest of our ensemble and walk around the house, giggling as our heels clicked on the kitchen floor. Not all of our stolen goods were visible; wrapped around our heads as invisible shawls were airs of self-importance and maturity stolen from adults we had studied and movies we had watched.
Every morning in my new apartment in Washington DC, I sneak into my own closet, stealthily pulling clothes from hangers as my three roommates sleep soundly in bunk beds next to me. It’s usually still dark in the room but I have no trouble choosing from my spare selection of my mandatory “business casual” suit pant or skirt combination. Finding the right shoes is a little harder since I have to grab both flip-flops and the right color heels. Flip-flops and suits is a DC phenomenon, nowhere else in the world will you find so many women dressed impeccably down to their feet, at which point, they’re wearing flip-flops or sneakers. Their real shoes, of course, are hidden in the oversized purses that almost every DC woman owns.
After debating for a few minutes over which pair of heels to wear, I do my make-up. That is a sentence that did not exist in my life at Whitman. I wore heels once at Whitman and everyone asked me why I was so dressed up. I reserved “doing my make-up” for special occasions; last semester it wasn’t uncommon for me to roll out of bed 10 minutes before my class.
But DC is a different world and so once I’ve completed my costume, I walk 6 blocks to the Union Station Metro. My metro destination differs daily, on Monday and Tuesday’s I go to my internship. The rest of the week varies constantly, I could either be at the American University campus, or, more commonly, at the office of an international organization that deals with development.
My internship is at the United Nations Environmental Programme Regional Office for North America, the shortened version of all that being UNEP RONA office. DC people love acronyms, perhaps stemming from the fact that they live in a city with a name that is almost always shortened (how often do you hear people saying “District of Columbia”?). I LOVE my job. Over the summer I applied to be one of UNEP/RONA’s regional coordinators for their new campaign on climate change. Then, once I got to DC, I realized I needed an internship. Since the intern who had been spearheading the campaign went back to school, UNEP/RONA realized that they needed an intern. It was perfect.
I’m equally in love with my class. I said “class” singular although technically I have 2 other classes that meet around once a month. My main class is my International Environment and Development Seminar taught by the amazing professor Heather Heckel. In our first week of class we visited the Smithsonian museum of Natural History where we listened to a lecture by Smithsonian Curator Dr. Megonigal on how soil is cool. It was actually a lot more interesting than it sounds, I learned that there is 2x the amount of carbon in the soil as in the atmosphere so when permafrost melts or the rainforest is cut down, there is a lot of C02 released. Thursday was even more exciting, we visited the Earth Conservation Corps at Anacostia River, an organization that, in my opinion, really epitomizes what environmental justice is all about. This week we visited the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, listened to lecture on foreign policy by the esteemed diplomat Ambassador Thomas Pickering, visited the Bank Information Center,an organization that works to make the World Bank more socially responsible and then heard a lecture from Colman McCarthy the founder of the Center for Teaching Peace who said really interesting things like “Unless we teach our children peace, someone will teach them violence.”
It hasn’t quite hit me that my new life is real. Living on my own in an apartment, cooking my own food and working at an office where I wear a suit seems to be a lifestyle just as borrowed as my mother’s clothes. But I like this life and for the next four months, until I go back to Whitman, I can play pretend.
Homeless and Human Rights August 23, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Bay Area.Tags: affordable housing, Bay Area, berkeley, homelessness, human rights, peopl's park, people
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August 15th 2008
Being home is really nice. A lot of things are different; water now arrives consistently and is warm without containing the faint smell of a charcoal stove, I no longer tuck my bed inside of a large mosquito net before sleeping, there aren’t locks on every door and I don’t padlock my room after I leave it (I did so in Kenya as per requested of my Mama), now when I speak Swahili people look at me funny and I no longer feel like a celebrity every time I walk down the street. Which, to tell the truth, I don’t walk down the street because everywhere I need to go would be a really, really long walk from my middle-of-nowhere suburban house in Alameda and now I tend to be under the impression that I “don’t have time” for such activities. However, one thing has stayed the same: I still get asked for money by poor people on the street.
Yesterday I went to People’s Park in Berkeley with some friends. People’s Park was created in the late 1960s as a result of protests by UC Berkeley students and community members over attempts to turn the park into a parking lot. Today, however, CAL students are warned to stay away from the park as it is said to be too dangerous, especially at night. The park serves mainly serves mainly as a daytime sanctuary for Berkeley’s large homeless population who take advantage of meals offered by East Bay Food Not Bombs.
As I was walking on Telegraph Avenue towards the park I was stopped three different times by people asking me for money. The first time was by a man leaning against a store. He didn’t seem to be particularly bad-off, his clothes were clean and he even looked a little chubby. The second time was by a group of punk looking twenty-somethings who were holding a cardboard sign with the words “I’m not going to lie…it’s for beer” scribbled across it. To both of these requests I responded “I don’t believe in hand-outs.”
The third request was from an exceptionally dirty looking man with matted dreads that seemed to overwhelm his smaller frame. But instead of asking me for money, he asked me if I wanted to buy a copy of “Street Spirit,” a publication of the American Friends Service Committee that writes about “Justice News and Homeless Blues in the Bay Area.” All of the profits go towards helping the homeless.
I bought a copy and after hanging out with my friends for a bit, I got a chance to read it. One article, by Western Regional Advocacy Project advocate Paul Boden, shocked me. According to Boden,
“In 2008, an estimated 3.5 million Americans will live without housing.”
Boden finds it ironic that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the New Deal but neither McCain nor Obama have placed much emphasis on combating homelessness.
I think Obama has done a slightly better job than McCain, Obama at least has poverty listed as one of his main issues unlike McCain.
But the thing that really surprised me about the article was that the re-emergence of massive homelessness is directly related to massive funding cuts for housing but our current response to homelessness is to create anti-homeless laws and ordinances often using “quality of life” legislation
As Boden says,
“Outlawing homelessness won’t make it go away. Nothing ends homelessness like a home. Homelessness reappeared because funding for federal affordable housing has been cut by $54 billion a year since 1978”
Anti-homeless laws and ordinances could actually be said to be worsening homelessness. Here’s how: A homeless man sleeps outdoors and receives a ticket for the infraction. He doesn’t appear in court and/or can’t pay the find so a misdemeanor warrant is issued. The second time he is caught sleeping outdoors, the outstanding warrant leads to his arrest. He spends a few days in jail and is then released. Except, now he has a criminal record which makes it harder for him to get public housing, Social Security benefits, General Assistance benefits and a job.
Recently in Fresno homeless and their allies won a $2.3 million settlement after charging that city officials routinely seized and destroyed the property of homeless people; essential items such as medications, wheelchairs, birth certificates and other personal papers.
As I walked back from the park I passed a few other homeless people. A woman in front of me remarked to her friends “They really need to clean Berkeley up.”
I felt like tapping her on the shoulder and asking exactly how she proposed to “clean” Berkeley because obviously criminalizing homelessness isn’t helping anyone. It’s strange coming back from Kenya where most Kenyans believe that all Americans are rich. In some ways my Kenyan friends are right, why are there 3.5 million people without homes in the 6th richest country (per capita) in the world?
Not Just Another Tourist August 11, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Kenya.Tags: bad clothing choices, biogas, kakamega, kanga, kikoi, making a difference, tourists
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August 10, 2008
Flight to London
A woman just walked by me down the airline aisle wearing a cheetah print jacket, a matching suitcase and a cheesy t-shirt saying “I love Kenya.” To me, she looked absolutely ridiculous. To her, I probably look even more ridiculous.
I’m wearing a brightly colored shawl known as a kikoi wrapped around my shoulders. Barely visible through the kikoi is my equally vibrant kanga shirt. Dangling from my ears are cow-horn earrings and on my feet are bronze colored bejeweled sandals.
My outfit is all part of a plan to shock my parents cleverly contrived by me and my friends. The kanga was sown by Susan, a tailor friend of mine, the kikoi was given to me by my host Mama, the slippers were sold to me by my street friend Mary and the earrings were the fruits of a highly entertaining hour-long bargaining/joking in Kiswahili session at the Masaai Market in Nairobi.
I imagine that both myself and the leopard-print woman think that our choice of clothing represent Kenya. And yet the Kenya experience our clothes represent couldn’t be farther apart. Judging from her seeming desire to be mistaken for an oversized cheetah, I’m assuming that this woman came to Kenya to see the animals. From my own eccentric wardrobe choice, one might infer that I wish to be mistaken for a Kenyan and that I came to Kenya to see an entirely different type of animal.
This woman is most likely satisfied with her adventure, her camera full of pictures and her head full of stories she can recount to all her friends back home. I too am satisfied, but for very different reasons.
My head is full of ideas. Ideas about development, about Western views of Africa, about cultural differences, about energy policies and about the things I will do to translate my ideas into action.
The cheetah woman will most likely be soon forgotten in Kenya, just another muzungu tourist, albeit one with a certain fetish for large felines. Perhaps this is arrogant, but I doubt that I will be so soon forgotten. Just as I will never forget the friends I have made, the family that has indeed become family and the biogas project that I helped start, I sincerely hope that I will never be forgotten.
Don’t Talk to Me About Melting IceCaps August 11, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Kenya.Tags: climate change, environmental justice, global warming, greenland, how to talk about climate change, long flights, melting icecaps
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August 10, 2008
Flight from London to San Francisco
A few minutes ago I happened to glance out the airplane window and was startled to realize that below me was an image I had only previously seen printed next to disturbing newspaper articles about global warming. I’m on the flight from London to San Francisco and we are currently flying over the now infamous melting icecaps of Greenland.
It’s funny how little I care about icecaps. Melting icecaps don’t make me want to stop driving my car or flying on airplanes or even give a second thought to how much energy I consume. To a lesser extent, stories of drowning polar bears have the same effect on me. Species are always going extinct and even if wild polar bears cease to exist I can always get my white fuzzy bear fix at the local zoo.
However, were you to talk to me differently, I might take my eyes of the compelling vision of an endless road of unlimited natural resources and lift my foot off the gas pedal long enough to hear what you had to say. Speak to me of floods, fires and other disasters that although “natural,” are seemingly unnatural both in their force and in their increasingly frequent occurrence. Tell me that these events are disproportionately affecting poor populations, the people that bear the least responsibility for their occurrence.
Speak to me of the effect of changing weather patterns on developing countries, the majority of which are still agriculturally based. Tell me that 75,000 Ethiopian children are on the brink of starvation because the rains came in June instead of in January. Tell me that rising fuel costs coupled with bad harvests have contributed to the 26.6 % inflation in Kenya that has made buying food difficult for many of my Kenyan friends.
Tell me that struggling economies are not just confined Eastern Africa, the entire world is reeling from the surge in oil and food prices. Tell me that demand for both items has increased as will only continue to increase.
Help me to understand the policies of my own country. Explain to me why American farmland is increasingly being used to produce fuel rather than food, a process that is not only inefficient but is also driving up agricultural commodity prices worldwide. Tell me why a country with an economy that depends on the supply of cheap energy, has invested such little money in the search for alternative sources of energy or techniques to improve energy efficiency. Tell me that as an American, I consume more than almost anyone else in the world.
Then tell me that stopping rapid climate change is not a radicalist call for a return to the Stone-Age and nor will it entirely destroy economies. Tell me that studies have been done showing that efforts to mitigate climate change are in fact cost-effective if you compare the costs that the world will incur if nothing is done.
Tell me the exciting potential that a global carbon credit trading system could have for developing countries if followed along the lines laid out in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development mechanism. Tell me that Western countries need to stop the addictive food aid that has made countries (African especially) rely on hand-outs and instead promote sources of cheap, locally available, renewable energy (such as biogas) that will help both alleviate the havoc skyrocketing energy prices are having on developing countries and will help the countries that are facing the effects without having contributed much to the problem.
Talk to me like that and I will listen.
Leaving August 11, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Uncategorized.Tags: boda, FSD, kakamega, leaving on a jet plane, making friends, muzungu, SomKen
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August 7th 2008
The funny thing about going places is that you also have to leave places. Sometimes people tell me that I’m “going places.” It’s an interesting phrase, meant to be a compliment as if there was something inherently bad about staying in one place for too long. I love going places but sometimes I wonder if I miss out on some of the benefits of staying places…But don’t worry Mom, I’m coming back home, for now anyways…
I leave Kakamega tomorrow morning. I don’t think it has really hit me yet. My mind cannot comprehend that very soon I will wake up without first removing my mosquito net, eat cereal instead of white bread, drink juice instead of chai, drive my car to go places instead of walking down a dirt road with cows and say “hello” to everyone instead of “jambo”. I’ll miss my celebrity status, I can’t imagine a life where I won’t have little children chanting my name every time I walk by them or young men constantly asking me to marry them.
It’s strange re-reading what I just wrote because 2 months ago my Kenyan lifestyle would sound totally bizarre. But I never went through culture shock here, somehow I always felt right at home. I never got “homesick”, I love my home and I did miss a lot of my family and friends but there was never a moment where I missed home itself.
Kakamega has become a second home. Literally. I feel like I have two families now, an American one and an African one. Leaving my Kenyan family is going to be the hardest part. My Mama is one the most free-spirited, fun, hilarious people I know, she is always making up games for me and the kids to play with her. My Baba is so smart, he knows so much about politics and rural development and is always teaching me new things. And Jackie…Oh wow…I am going to miss that little girl. She is amazing, I absolutely adore her and it makes me so sad that I’m not going to be able to see her grow up. Allan and Marc I haven’t gotten to know as well as they are both a bit quieter but they are fun to play soccer with and very, very nice boys. Allan is Mr.Fix-It, he wants to be a space engineer, I really hope his dream comes true. Marc is the smartest in his class and my god, the kid is always doing homework. I really hope it pays off, I worry for both of them that it won’t because of Kenya’s job market.
Kenya has made me realize that my absolute favorite pastime is making friends. I’ve made so many really great ones in Kenya, many of whom I know simply from talking to everyone I meet. I felt a little like Belle from Beauty in the Beast when she walks down the village street and everyone sings her name. It was a pretty cool feeling…
On my last day in Kenya I walked slowly to work and made a point to tell everyone goodbye. I took pictures with many of them, promising to send them copies of the pictures once I get to America.
There’s the boda (bicycle) drivers who have decided that I must be a white Kenyan since I refuse to reply in English and so have taken to yelling at me in Swahili. Further down the dirt road is Florence, who sells used handbags and always notices when I running late to work. Then there’s Taylor, a guy who always seems to be walking to work at the same time as me and often will talk to me in mixed Swahili/English about the differences between the U.S. and Kenya. At the bottom of the hill is a man wearing a bright blue coat reading “The Nation” who always asks me “Newspaper madam?”
Then there’s the small cyber café located inside the SomKen gas station where I spend entirely too much of my time but enjoy every second, joking and laughing with Ken, Ash, Nelly, Vincent and all of the other guys that work there. Across the street from the SomKen is Midland, the commodity supply store that Divyesh owns. I’ve spent a good portion of my time there as well, sitting behind the iron bars that separate the employees from the customers, waiting for Div to finish talking on the phone so I can get his help on the biogas project. Divyesh is someone who I immediately wrote off as arrogant and annoying but who has become one of my best friends in Kenya and has been absolutely invaluable to the project.
Down the street from Midland is Mary, the woman who always tells me I need to come and look at these beautiful new shoes she’s just gotten. I’ve resisted temptation for the majority of my trip but Mary has talked me into buying a few (really cute!) new pairs. After Mary’s shop are my random street friends who always talk Sheng (slang) to me and who unfailingly laugh at my reply.
Around the corner is Jessica, a woman who sells fruit and who is constantly telling me I’m crazy for walking around in the rain. Then there’s the cd store that is always blasting music and where I once danced briefly with a boda driver, much to the amusement of all the other bodas. Then there’s the guys who stand in a circle playing some sort of game and who are always trying to get me to come closer. Then off course there’s Susan, the tailor who made me a dress and a true “Kenyan” shirt.
Of course there’s my children, the ones that chant my name. I wonder if they’ll notice that I’m not there tomorrow. I gave them candy today as a sort of farewell present and was subsequently mobbed by children who appeared out of nowhere. One of the children grabbed the bag of candy and ran away, causing me to run after her and chastise her in broken Swahili for “bad manners.” I bought more candy and was once again surrounded. I wonder if they’ll remember me when they get older. If they do they’ll know me as “Eliza,” I never could get them to pronounce my real name…
I’ll miss all the dirty jokes, excited conversations about biogas and general fun at CARD. I’m really going to miss Alfred, the guy who helped spearhead the biogas project with me and who I really, really admire. I’ll miss Felix’s unwavering enthusiasm about life and I even think I’ll miss George’s crude pick-up lines.
I’ll miss the guys at the bakery that give me yummy cheese rolls and the guy on the street who sells me grilled corn and loves to speak to me in rapid Kiswahili that I pretend to understand.
Then there’s Peter, the FSD Program Director who talks too fast and is always in a hurry. And Angie, oh god I’ll miss Angie. Angie’s been the one who has comforted me when I broke down, whose taught me so much about Kenyan politics and sustainable development in general and who I respect and love hanging out with. And the other interns. Well…them I’ll see maybe…I mean America’s not that big…
Maybe I’ll come back to Kenya. Actually that’s not a maybe. I will come back. How or how soon I have no idea but there are too many people in Kenya I love for me to stay away for too long. If the really cheesy line “home is where the heart is” is true, then I have a feeling my heart is going to look like chopped up little pieces of liver, spread all around the globe. Now how’s that for a metaphor?
A Lovely Couple Political Hours in a Gas Station August 11, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Kenya.Tags: boda drivers, Kenya, Politics, rain
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July 31 2008
At around three in the afternoon I found myself standing under an overhang in a gas station, shoulder to shoulder with at least fifty Kenyans. It was raining hard so we had all come to the conclusion that wherever we had to be or whatever we had to do could wait until after the rains. I stayed there for around an hour and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Being a muzungu (white person), I attracted a lot of attention. No one could understand why I hadn’t just taken a taxi or at the very least why I wouldn’t just buy an umbrella. Stupidly, when I was packing for Kenya, I had generalized that “Africa” is hot so there’s no need to pack an umbrella. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the opposite side of the world also has opposite seasons. August is the “long rains season” and is by far the coldest season in Kenya.
As I stood at the gas station I kept rubbing my arms, trying to keep warm. This prompted one of the boda (bicycle) drivers to remark, “Oh so you people get cold too!”
This was one of the many great remarks I got while standing at the gas station. Instead of spending my money buying an umbrella from the guy walking around hawking them, I bought a newspaper to read instead. It ended up not really being just for me as all the guys I was standing around were reading over my shoulder as I flipped through the paper. Finally I asked them if they wanted to read it and gave them each a section. Kenyans love news. Even the Kiswahili greeting ‘Habari yako’ meaning ‘how are you’ technically means “What is your news?”. My Mama says that if she doesn’t read the newspaper and watch the 9:00 news she feels like her day is incomplete.
Perhaps my favorite part of Kenya is that people don’t just read the news, they love to discuss it. In America, a lot of my friends get tired of me trying to talk politics all the time. Here, I talk politics with everyone. It always strikes me as really interesting that a lot of people in America don’t care at all about politics and don’t even think its worth their time to vote. Here in Kenya politics is a matter of life or death, seriously, this past election period neighbors killed each other over political differences.
“You’re So Fat!” August 5, 2008
Posted by Lisa in Uncategorized.4 comments
July 30, 2008
Unbeknownst to me as soon as I set foot inside my house my host Mom had set a goal for herself. Her goal has been to make me “kubwa, like a real African woman.” She told me that when she first saw me she thought that I looked like a starving child. I told her that was pretty ironic since the first thing I ever heard about Africa was that the “starving African children” really needed me to finish all the food on my plate.
It seems as though my mom has accomplished her goal…For the past couple of weeks, she has been telling me that I am fat. She says this excitedly, proud of herself for making me “kubwa.”
Kubwa means big. The first time my Mama told me I was getting kubwa I brushed her off and told her she was wrong. Then, just to make myself feel better, I went running. During the school year I usually go running everyday. My first week in Kenya I went running three times and then I sprained my ankle. My “sprained ankle” became justification for not running again for the next month. Somehow I managed to convince myself that I walk far enough to work, there’s no need to get up early and deal with catcalls every two seconds from the boda drivers.
I also managed to convince myself that my diet is healthy because I don’t eat sweets. In the morning, I drink two cups of whole (literally straight from the cow) milk tea with three teaspoons of sugar in each and then I usually eat a couple of pieces of whole white bread with either full-fat butter or peanut butter along with an orange or multiple bananas. Lunch is iffy, if I’m with an American then I’ll eat a real lunch, if not I either go to the bakery and buy grilled corn off the street or, like today, I eat “wild lunch.” “Wild lunch” is what the guys I work with eat, basically it’s the cheapest thing you can buy. Today that consisted of cow hooves and ugali and tomatoes, it was interesting to say the least…Then I come home and drink another two cups of tea with tons of sugar and usually eat more fruit and maybe another piece of bread. For dinner we usually have meat and either rice, chapati (think oily tortilla) or ugali (think flour and water).
Apparently this diet has began to take its toll, today my Mama told me that a bunch of her friends have been congratulating her on making me fat. I freaked out a little bit when she told me this:
“Does everyone really think I’m fat?” I asked.
“Not fat bad. It’s good! Besides aren’t all you people fat?” She replied, referring to the well-deserved stereotype that Americans are fat. She loves to refer to Americans as “you people” and frequently tells me about all the strange things that “us people” do.
I then proceeded to explain to her the complicated issue that although America is one of the fattest countries in the world, we are also the most weight obsessed. I told her about the problems a lot of girls I know have with food, telling her that some of them even starve themselves in order to be skinny. I told her that it wasn’t okay to call someone fat in America, that we say “plus-size” or a “bigger” person. I told her that I really, really didn’t want to be fat or even “kubwa” when I went back to America.
I told her all of this in front of my nine-year old sister Jackie. When I finished my rant, Jackie told Mama that she “didn’t want dinner because she wanted to lose weight too.”
Needless to say, I felt horrible. What was wrong with me that I had made a nine-year old think that she needs to lose weight? I realized that even though I claimed to hate the American doctrine of “skinny=pretty” I was buying into it and furthermore I was selling it!
I made Jacks look at me and I told her that she was the most beautiful little girl I knew and that she was absolutely the perfect size and that she shouldn’t ever stop eating because then she wouldn’t have the energy to play with me all the time.
Then I decided that maybe my Kenyan “diet” wasn’t so bad. Maybe instead of children in America being told to finish their plates for the “starving children in Africa” (as if food was a problem of resource shortage instead of a problem of distribution) African children should be told to finish their plates because American women don’t know how to.
