Letter #6 from Kenya (September 15, 2006): Rainforests, Religion, and Levelling

Good morning, America! (and expats)

This update will probably be a bit short, relatively speaking, since I am falling asleep at my desk. It's nice and sunny and warm outside, and I am inside entering in survey data and designing questionnaires. For those of you who thought this job was sexy, now you know what really happens on Saturday mornings. This week's update features:

1. The only living rainforest in new york (if by "new york" you mean "kenya")
2. Religion
3. Code-Switching
4. Levelling


1. Kakamega Forest
I'll be honest with you, I don't know a lot about the historical legacy and circumstances around Kakamega forest, but it's the only surviving rainforest in Kenya. I'm pretty sure the others have been completely deforested, but don't quote me. Last weekend I took a day trip to the forest to hike around. At first I thought this would be lonely, but I'd forgotten how nice it is to just chill out with nature.

I'm not sure how to start describing the forest, but it definitely wasn't like the mental images I have of the rainforest (which are usually of the Amazon). Yes, there were monkeys, no, I didn't see too many, and other than that it was a lush and green break from the hills and dust all around the rest of Western. Mostly it was a sanity break, and that in and of itself was restorative.

Interesting facts about Kakamega town:
Kakamega is the cultural heartland/city for the Kenyan Luhya, and it's a pretty big town (perhaps the 4th largest in Kenya?). It's interesting b/c in Uganda there are about 30 Luhya subtribes (e.g. you could be Luhya - Maragoli, Luhya - Saamia, etc.), and each has a distinct dialect, practices, customs, etc.

In Kenya, however, all these groups have been lumped together, mostly for political reasons. If you took each tribe individually they'd be a tiny fraction of the population, but together they're 12%. I don't know if this analogy works, but perhaps they're like the Iroquois Nation? Super diverse and distinct, but kind of lumped together for political strategy reasons.

2. Religion in Busia
While everyone claims that there's religious diversity in Busia, there are only two religions: Christianity and Islam. Within that, there are way way more Christians than Muslims in this town, and nearly all of the Christians are members of different Pentecostal denominations (there is a RC congregation and a Friends church, but other than that it's all evangelical). It was a bit of a culture shock to come somewhere where people open meetings with prayers about the blood of Christ, but I knew that religious diversity was not the norm here before I arrived.

What I didn't realize was that people would be hostile and rude. I was told that so long as a person had some kind of religion people generally didn't pressure you and also that the staff is kind of used to the research assistants being somewhat strange.

For me, however, I've found that people are not so tolerant of "Eastern" religions, or religions that are not "of the book." While there have been a number of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments that have circulated, there seems to be a lot more malice for Hindus (despite the fact that I'm not Hindu it has been impossible to help people understand the difference). It's also interesting because this kind of latent anger seems to be tied up with hostilities and anger towards Indians/South Asians in general. I find myself consistently exasperated with the comments I get about damnification, my soul, and about generosity.


3. Code-Switching
So I also visited Kisumu last weekend and stopped by the Sikh gurdwara there (for context: the place of worship for Sikhs is referred to as a "gurdwara" or "Gurdwara Sahib" -- literally a "house of God").

I had a true bizarro moment as I tried to explain to the caretakers that I was an American in Kenya, and that I had been curious to find the nearest congregation.

An aside: This was actually a really cool experience. The local congregation has a building for prayer services, etc (the Gurdwara Sahib proper), and across the street is their "Harambee dispensary center." The term harambee is the national motto of Kenya and doesn't have a direct translation to English, but is generally the idea of a community coming together to support one another together (perhaps a bit more proactive kind of "united we stand"?). So the harambee dispensary center is this big building where the congregation distributes all manner of social services -- malaria nets, drugs for the sick (usually over the counter things like anti-malarial pills and deworming pills), food for the hungry, clothing, etc.

The difficulty in my exchange was this: none of us spoke the same languages at a highly proficient level. For example, the director of the Sunday services only spoke Punjabi and was clearly a recent Indian immigrant. The caretakers spoke predominantly Punjabi and Swahili. I spoke much better English, passable Punjabi, and very basic Swahili.

The confusion arose in my inability to keep my languages straight. I haven't spoken any Punjabi to anyone in over 3 months, and I kept mixing my foreign languages up (Spanish, Punjabi, Swahili). I must have sounded like a walking Tower of Babel.

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and The Tipping Point) calls this code-switching. Basically, second languages are generally stored in a different part of your brain than your first language, but as you become more fluent your brain "switches" over to the other language. I guess for myself all of these languages are jumbling together in my head, which makes me sound pretty stupid when I try to speak since the entire meaning of words and phrases change in this process. It makes me a little dizzy.

4. Levelling
Friends have been super kind in commenting that it sounds like Kenya is a lot of fun and really exciting and amazing. These things are all true. However, I'll level with you: in these digests I filter the more exciting parts because I know that many of you worry or will be sad to hear about all the painful things that happen. Life is not easy or exciting or fun all the time, or even most of the time. It is often tiring and emotionally exhausting to reconcile all the things that happen and everything I see. So from time to time I might slip in some of the more serious stuff; I want to be more honest, and I don't want you to think that this is a 2 year backpacking adventure where I disengaged from the community around me.



So that's the skinny from East... Africa! I'm off to India next week for my cousin's wedding, so the next dispatch will either a) come from South Asia, or b) be delayed and be all about Delhi & Punjab as opposed to Kenya. If you have any special (and small/carryable) requests, you know who to email :)


Cheers,
Camille