Home Sweet Home

I used to think the place Africa held in my heart was based in a romanticized notion of an exotic land far from home. But I’m tired of discrediting how I feel about the continent. The truth of the matter is I have felt more at home in Nairobi in my first 24 hours here than I did in the past year and a half in Canada. There’s no reason not to love being in a place where people smile regularly; where your view on the world matters more than what you wear; where you can eat non-processed food and where most foreigners are here out of some desire – well-placed or not – to create positive change.

Everything has been super smooth so far - I taught the official at the visa counter at the airport a few words of Arabic; all four of my bags arrived unscathed; the immigration officer believed me when I assured him that all the contents were destined for Dubai and he need not worry what I was bringing into Kenya; and the guest house envoy was waiting for me with my name scribbled onto a piece of cardbaord in what looked like kid’s writing.

The guest house staff greet me with "Good morning! I am fine" every day, before I sit down to an eggs and beef sausage breakfast, along with the best instant coffee I've ever had. (as you well know, I've drank my fair share of instant coffee).

I walk to work in less than half an hour. The UN Complex is not quite what I expected. Much more human actually, with trees, and green space, and little pools of water with lilypads. (The buildings, though, are as ugly as you might imagine - grey concrete block labelled, creatively, "A", "B", etc... I'm in "Block X"). In the evening -- not that I work long hours or anything -- the place becomes an auditorium of birds and insects who chirp so loud it's overpowering, even from inside the office.

The training has been very informal. More than anything, it's a chance for me to meet with all my bosses and get a sense of direction before heading for the desert - where I will be working in a small office, mostly independently. My bosses (yes, very plural) and colleagues have been very welcoming - to the point, surprise, surprise - that I wish I was posted in Nairobi instead.

I've already run into a bit of UN bureaucracy though. When I asked how I was to be paid – I’ve so far spent hundreds of dollars for which I need to be re-imbursed and am supposed to be receiving a daily stipend to cover my accomodation here - my supervisor looked surprised.

“Didn’t they give you some money?"

“No, I haven’t been given anything.”

The finance officer's response was worse: “I have no idea! Isn’t she supposed to get the money from Geneva? Ask Geneva!”

Otherwise, the first couple days have been really good. People are super nice. The job looks super interesting. (God, Diaz, I keep saying "super this" and "super that" - you're rubbing off!) I've got tons of reading to do to get up to speed on the region, and to understand the ins and outs of humanitarian technicalities (acute malnutrition vs. chronic malnutrition) but I’m excited to get to really throw myself into something. And the people here seem really eager to make me feel like part of a team, and -- equally importantly -- to make me feel needed.

I got to enjoy a bit of Nairobi over the weekend - had some githeri (a stew of beans, maize, carrots and potatos), chapatti and nyama choma (roasted meat); bought some soap-stone plates at the market; watched the Kenya-Guinea Bissau CON qualifer; and spent time with old acquaintances and new colleagues.

It's nice to be home.

The Indulgence Begins

I understand the young kids these days have more sophisticated methods of communicating than an old-school blogspot page. But something about the name “Heba’s adventures in Senegal” makes it hard to let this good old thing go. So you are now witnessing a revival. My last post here was two years ago. Since then, I biked around the Mediterranean, moved back to Canada, worked at the CBC, and am now about to start a new gig at the UN’s humanitarian news and analysis service, IRIN (www.irinnews.org), based in Dubai and covering the Middle East. (Funny – this blog started with my internship at IRIN in Dakar). Granted, Dubai is no Senegal, and it certainly isn’t Chad or Sudan. But I suspect it will come with a great number of eye-opening experiences of its own kind. Thus warranting said blog.

Now, I promise you, I didn’t want to do this – especially not in my first post. This, of course, being suggesting in any way that I have experienced a superior existence since I left Canada or that you are worse off while reading this at home – but the last 24 hours have just been too good to keep quiet. And it’s a bit fitting that the Dubai chapter of this blog should start in such fashion – so here we go.

First class.
(CORRECTION: Apparently first class and business class are not synonymous. It was business class - not that it makes any difference to me, but just so I don't start hearing all the lectures about the UN throwing money away).

It is not, as I had previously convinced myself, a waste of money on spoiled businessmen and politicians who no longer know how to interact with commoners. It is, my friends, flying made dignified.

It began with the Air Canada Lounge in Ottawa: unlimited food and drink, internet, magazines, etc. But anyone who has flown Porter has tasted a bit of that.

First class on the plane, however, is a whole other matter. The 40-minute flight from Ottawa to Toronto came with a “Welcome Ms. Aly”, refreshments before my butt even touched the seat and a tasty chicken wrap served on elegant dinnerware.

In Toronto, another lounge. More food and drink.

Then, on the Toronto-Heathrow leg: paradise.

There were so many buttons on my bed-seat, I didn’t know what to touch first. I spent at least 15 minutes opening and closing all the gadgets and compartments in my little apartment. I reclined and straightened up my chair – back and forth, back and forth – giggled and closed my eyes, smiling.

There were about five options for dinner and when the steward came by – the old lady in the seat ahead of me said he had a “holy air” to him – I was expecting my roasted chicken with mushroom sauce and wild rice, with butternut squash on the side.

I was wrapped up in a charming documentary about 82-year-old New York Times Style Photographer Bill Cunningham – “doing away with fashion would be like doing away with civilization” – and I looked down to find an appetizer instead: an exquisitely-twirled tower of smoked salmon with capers and a cilantro-mustard sauce.... fresh bread... salad ... etc. It was so beautiful, I wanted to take a picture, but was just too comfortable in my bed to get up for the camera.

By the time the main course came and went, I was so full I needed to lie down – which, of course, I did.

But then I heard those blessed words in the distance: “Would you like a selection of cheeses?”

Need I say more?

And cheese wasn’t dessert. The warm chocolate pecan pie came later.

I imagine those who travel first class all the time have learned how to refuse some these offerings. I have not yet developed this aptitude. And so I sat there, terrified that there was still more to come. (On the Heathrow-Nairobi leg, the steward just rode back and forth down the aisle: “Can I get you anything now?” ... “How about now?”)

Before I left Canada, I spent a lot of time grumbling about the consumerism and overly indulgent society of palm-tree-shaped-islands that I was entering into.

I would like to formally take those grumbles back.

Isiolo

A couple weeks ago, I headed up to a central Kenyan town called Isiolo, about a four-hour drive from the capital, Nairobi. I was going to research a story about insurgents from Somalia's civil war recruiting Kenyans to fight with them. I had been told that a young boy (a Kenyan who is ethnically Somali) from a village near Isiolo had blown himself up in Somalia's war, and I was going to meet the family. It was ... quite an experience.

I was supposed to leave Nairobi with an elder from this village and a Somali civil society activist at 6am. I barely slept the night before and woke up before the break of dawn to be ready on time. I arranged to rent a car and they were to meet me and the car downtown at 6am so we could get on the road early and possibly come back the same day. At 6am, I called them from downtown to see if they knew the exact corner we were meeting at. The village elder was still sleeping. They arrived at 7am, with another pleasant surprise. We still had to go back to the elder's home in Nairobi to pick up his wife and son. (Apparently he couldn't go back to the village without his wife because she's the only one that can cook for him). That took two more hours. I should have known that Somalis are worse than Egyptians when it comes to timing.

The ride there was in and of itself interesting. Along the way, huge trucks raced by carrying kilograms and kilograms of a stimulating plant called khat. It is illegal in many countries, but a staple among Somalis. Thew chew it daily - no, hourly - and I guess it gets them kind of high, but in a natural way. I was once told any interview past noon with a Somali would always be "lacking in details"... but I was also told by someone else, the best way to get information from a Somali is to chew with them.

The khat export business has become quite something. The plant, grown in central Kenya, is sold in Somalia and as far as the UK. Apparently, the trucks carrying the stuff don't stop until they reach their destination. Because of the "sensitive" nature of their orders, they cannot afford to be a minute late. So when a truck is flying down the highway and it flashes its lights - that means get out of the way or you'll be killed, cuz this thing ain't stopping. In an effort to combat that, it looks like local government officials have tried to make speedbumps. Only, in some of these places, money is a little lacking for the cement. So instead, they dig out a little strip of the road, like a small trench, and that forces people to slow down in the same way. They say the trucks are so heavy that when they are going downhill, they have to travel at a ridiculously low speed, because if they relied on the brakes to slow them down, the brakes would just burn into flames.



We drove across the equator, where an improvised tourist attraction had been set up. A bowl of water with an egg on each side of the equtor - to demonstrate that gravity pulls the water in different directions (which explains why toilets flush in different directions) on either side.

It was interesting seeing the different landscapes as we travelled north. At first it was extremely fertile, with red clay, trees, plants, and plenty of growth. Then the closer we got to Isiolo, the more arid the landscape became. First it was ranches - acres and acres of land, owned almost exclusively by foreigners. "If Jews had all this land, they would have commcercialized it," the villager elderly said. Ultimately, we found ourselves driving through dust so strong that we couldn't see through the windshield.

At times, we'd be driving in seemingly the middle of nowhere only to find people walking on the side of the road. This is normal in Africa. You find people herding their cattle in the middle of nowhere, because they sleep out in the bush with their animals. But this time, it was a man in a suit. What is a man in a suit doing walking kilometres and kilometres in the middle of nowhere? Had he just finished a business meeting in one village and was trekking back home to another? It always fascinates me. He just looked so out of place in the midst of the wind, sand, and cows.



We finally arrived in the afternoon, to a small village where homes were made of timber and iron sheets and camels casually walk through the sandy alleyways, grazing on the homes' fences! I was almost instantly renamed Hebo, a Somali name with the same meaning as Heba (gift from God). I was also taught how to say "How are you?" in Somali. The term is "Makag Sheig Tee", which litterally means "tell me something". I was told it comes from the time when Somalis were all warriors. When they met someone along the way, they would ask about the situation in the village the passerby had come from. "How is it there? Tell me something". So the best response to "How are you?" in Somali is "Nabat"... "peace".

We ate traditional Somali/Kenyan food - meat/potato stew with ugali, a maize-based (I think!) thick, dry dough that is piled in mountains on your plate! I soon discovered that everything in the house was covered in aunts - food, if you leave it out, the toilet, even, eventually, my purse (where I discovered I had left a piece of chocolate, which the aunts found instanteneously).



I spoke with a bunch of the deceased young man's friends, who were shocked at the whole story. He was born in Kenya and had no connection to the war back home in Somaila. His friends were clearly unimpressed, and gave different explanations for why he would do go: religious brainwashing, money, the feeling of doing something with your life - when you have nothing and your life has no meaning and you see no future, suddenly - the argument goes - committing suicide seems like something of an accomplishment. Many others from Kenya have left their homes to go fight in Somalia, along with people from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Afganistan, Pakistan, even the United States and the UK (usually, Americans or Brits of Somali origin, but caucasians have also been part of the fighting). People worry that on top of all its own problems (civil war, poverty, humanitarian crisis, piracy), Somalia is becoming a new safe-haven for al-Qaeda. And Somalis fear that this new trend is causing a disgenuine interest in their country by the international community. "The White man is not interested in Somalia," says the village elder with whom I was staying. "He just wants to fight al-Qaeda."



In the end, I was gone three days. As you can imagine, the departure time was just as casual and unimportant to my hosts as the arrival. So I spent some time with members of the family - the mom, who you can see in this picture making breakfast on a charcoal-heated pan. I also got a good crash-course on the Somali clan system. Somalia has been at war with itself since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator and then turned on each other. Clan has been the defining factor in Somalia's war for a long time, with different clans fighting against each other and members of the same clan sticking together. What is a clan? Basically the lineage of a family. For example, members of the Issak clan are descendants of Sheikh Issak, an Iraqi who came to Somalia 17 generations ago. He had 8 children. Each of them had children. Every Issak can trace his lineage back to Sheikh Issak, naming every father, grandfather, greatgrandfather, etc. along the way. When a Somali boy is born, he is taught his lineage immediately. No matter where in the world an Issak is, he knows where he's from. "We don't get lost. We're just like the Jews," the village elder told me. What's interesting is that the mother's heritage doesn't matter. As long as your father was an Issak, you are an Issak, even if your mother is an Ethiopian or a Caucasian or whatever. The woman is just a tool the man uses to spread his clan. "She's a box - put your things and move it. She's an industry." ha.

The other interesting thing about these guys was their relationship with their country. I was with two Issaks from Somaliland, an autonomous area that is technically part of Somalia, but has unilaterally declared its independence - which no one in the world recognizes. But while Somalia is tearing itself apart, Somaliland is actually relatively safe. And amazingly, instead of being concerned about what was happening in Somalia, this was the elder's opinion: "Somalia? Let them go to hell. Our country is Somaliland - and there, we are at peace." And then they complain that the international community doesn't care about Somalia. Amazing.

Kenyan superstitions

The woman who serves us coffee at work is called Esther. She's a tall, broad-shouldered woman who is always smiling and insisting I have just one more cup. She's been sniffling lately, with some kind of flu. Then the other day she told me her auntie - not aunt, but auntie - had died. Turns out, the two are linked.

One day, I found her reading her aunt's obituary in the paper, while sniffling. "You still have that cold?" I asked her. "It's because of my auntie," she said. "When you are sick, it means something bad is going to happen to your family." She says African/Muslim tradition says that when someone in your family feels pain, you too will feel pain. Everytime you get a headache, it means something bad is coming.

But get this. Anytime you accidentally shatter glass - you drop a glass for ex - you are diffusing some bad thing. So instead of being angry that you broke something, you should be grateful that this has happened instead of something worse.

Everytime I walk my this construction on my street, I wonder if the scafolding made of wood will just collapse... But I never get a headache, so I guess these workers are safe!

Jane

About 3/4 of the way along my jogging route, I always run into a group of Kenyan women sitting at the intersection, waiting. They wait, all day everyday. For a job. I don't know how they expect the job to fall from the sky. But they wait for someone to approach them with some kind of opportunity.

One of these women would always laugh and cheer me on when I ran by. One day, I decided to stop and introduce myself. As I did, I told her, "tomorrow, you're coming with me!"

So the next day, when I got to her spot, I stopped and said "let's go!" She got up off the rock she was sitting on and ran a block with me in her orange dress. We ran slow and she breathed hard, but she actually did it! I was impressed that she wasn't just talk. That day we exchanged names for the first time. Hers was Jane

The next time I ran by, I stopped to say hi. Jane told me her brother had died in Nairobi's biggest slum. She needed money. It was amazing how little I felt. Two years ago in Senegal, that would have tugged at my heart. I would have felt I had to give her something to feel ok with myself. This time, I felt something completely different - that I wanted to set a different tone. I wanted it to be clear, from the beginning, that a friendship with me is to be a true friendship - and not for any other purpose. I obviously still have questions about this. Sure, she shouldn't befriend a stranger just to ask for money, but what if she has no option? Sure, in Africa, asking someone for money isn't really using them because the needs are just incomparable, and if you can give, you give. But I guess I just wasn't happy with the expectation that I was now going to be her bank. So I said, "I'm so sorry to hear that" and kept running. Have I become cold?

Democracy on the bus

The traffic, as usual, was horrible on my way home from work the other day. The bus driver decided, as they often do, to take an alternate route to "beat" the traffic. Of course, that route only led to more traffic and half an hour was wasted. People on the bus got testy. Women started screaming at the fare collector to give them their money back since they were now going to miss their appointments because the bus was no longer taking them where it was suppose to. I watched as yelled and yelled. And he just stood there silently, not even acknowledging them. I could feel their pain. It was, for me, an avid reminder, of what life is like in many African countries without democracy. You can protest all you want, but nobody listens. And you certainly never get your money back.

Matatu in the rain

The other day, I thought I’d beat the Kenyan traffic, so I left work at 3:15pm. Figured I’d be home before 4pm and I’d have a relaxing afternoon. So I caught the bus and about half way home, I got a call on my cell phone – an interview I’d been waiting for all day. So I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down notes while riding along. We spoke for about 15 minutes. Then I hung up and waited for my stop. It never came. After 15 minutes or so, I looked around and realized I really wasn’t anywhere near what I was used to. By this time it was close to 5pm. “Excuse me, do you know if the Yaya Centre is coming up?” I asked the guy next to me. “Oh we left it behind long ago,” he answered. Ha. So much for getting home early. I got out then and there and found myself in one of the "people’s" neighbourhoods, let’s say, where tin shacks grew out of the muddy, garbage-filled streets. Paths, I should call them, because there was no tarmac. Then, as I waited for a bus going back the other way, it started pouring rain. It's the rainy season in Kenya, meaning every other day it spontaneously starts pouring buckets! A jolly old guy next to me let me stand with him under his umbrella. All the buses coming through, as well as their smaller, ghettoer versions, the minivan Matatus, were full. I climbed around in the soggy red clay dirt with my high heels, looking totally out of place. We reached a place further up the hill where we caught a matatu. When you climb into one of these things, you feel you can never get out again because they are crammed with people so tightly and I always manage to put myself in the corner furthest from the door. Given the traffic on the main road, the matutu made a U-turn and drove off onto a side street, where we got stuck behind some car stuck in the middle of the road. The back door of the van kept flying open. When it didn't, the passenger door couldn't seem to close. Everytime we went over a bump, we all went flying in the air, our heads banging against the rickety sides of the van. I think I got home around 6pm...