Letter from Kenya #4 (August 14, 2006)

Live from Busia (K) comes your most recent semimonthly digest of Letters from Kenya. This month's edition features:

1. Wedding Season in Busia
2. A Boy Named T/Su
3. Busia (U)

1. The Season
This month there are 4 office-related weddings, and 3 of these involve members of my team. Interestingly, of these 4 weddings, 3 involve couples who have been common law partners for years and who already have children (and for all state purposes are considered "married"). The couples are definitely on the older side (30 - 45), and apparently these weddings are so that they can be married in the church. Entertaining the number of people you want to invite is so expensive that couples often wait years until they can afford a big party-style wedding and honeymoon.

Now each couple getting married this month belongs to a different church, so ceremonies differ widely. (sidenote: if anyone would like to talk about the politics of evangelical Christianity in Western Province, definitely holla back). That said, here are a few things common to all that I've learned so far:
1. All weddings here start at 10AM (officially), but in reality they start around 12-1PM.
2. There will be lots of dancing and singing, both during the ceremony and after.

And each time it's been great; lots of community members come (from the same church and from family, friends, coworkers), but Busia is so small that I keep running into the same people at each wedding. There also seems to be a lot of audience engagement in the process. I'm not sure how to describe this, but my general experience in the U.S. is that guests hold their breath waiting for the ceremony to conclude before the party begins. From my very limited experience here, everyone has been super participatory in the ceremonies I've seen. Lots of cheering, "hurray"'ing, singing, hugging. This is not to say that it's a free for all, but it seems like there's a lot of love that's manifested for the couple.

2. A Boy (we think?) Named Su
One of the great things of living with a bunch of 20-somethings who like to pretend that they're on permanent safari (even though they live in a proper house) is the number of mice and rats that are attracted to the random foodstuff that rests on our sink counter, etc. In response, we have recently invested in the newest addition to our house, Su.

Su is our new kitten, and not only is he totally cute, but he is a superb chicken stalker. Su inherited his name from the Johnny Cash song because we wanted him to grow up tough so that he would properly fight the rats (who are currently bigger than he is). Su's name is sometimes spelled Tsu because we also wanted him to be inspired by Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War. Naming took place during a week of discussions in which the Swahili words for lion, cheetah, and leopard were all rejected. Why? First, because nearly everyone here calls their cat "paka" (cat in Swahili), and second because every mzungu expat gives their cat one of the aforementioned cliches as a name, and third, because all of the larger cats actually exist here, so I felt it was a lot of false advertising on our part.

3. Busia, Uganda
While I live on the border of Uganda, I had never actually walked over until yesterday. This was a totally bizarre experience on many levels. First, you check in with Kenyan immigration to tell them you're going to go visit for a few hours. Then you change your money (1 KSh = 24 Ugandan Sh) and walk past the Kenyan gate (red, green & black) into "No Man's Land" -- that's really the name of the area --, which is about 50m wide and easily 300m long. You pass Sofia (the slum in No Man's Land - an entire letter unto itself), then you arrive at the Ugandan gate (red, yellow & black), check in with immigration, and continue into town. If you're lucky you won't get harassed too much.

I think the best way to describe this experience was like walking through the looking glass, much like Alice. Everything is hauntingly similar and yet totally different. For example, our boda boda drivers (in Busia-K) wear blue shirts as uniforms, but the boda drivers in Busia(U) wear hot pink shirts. The road is twice as wide in Busia(U) but there are fewer markets on the side streets, and the speed bumps are totally different! [an aside: this is called the Busia-Kisumu Road in Kenya - I wonder if it's the Busia-Kampala Road in Uganda?]

It was really difficult to find Kiswahili speakers (most folks spoke Luganda - which we call Kiganda in Swahili - or one of the many Kiluhya dialects), and I was asked several times if I was Irish - another strange story. Further, there was a noticeably large Somali refugee population and way more people of South Asian origin in Busia (U) than in Busia (K)

Totally unrelated, in Uganda right now there's an electricity shortage, so the government rations it out. They have 24 hours of power, and then 24 hours without power. If you're thinking to yourself, "What a ridiculous conservation policy," then I would probably agree with you, and if you're an environmental economist and you're thinking "what a recipe for disaster," I would also probably agree. More on the energy policy and on the Ugandan Luhya in the next letter.


This is long enough as it is, but only skims the surface. Speaking of which, I hope you're all doing really well, and I also hope you'll drop a note and let me know how you're doing if you find a moment.

Until next time,
Camille