Into Kibera

The Kibera Slums are among the biggest in the world, sitting twenty minutes outside central Nairobi. They host their own informal economy, a myriad of well-intentioned NGOs, and as one pompous Brit told me, are almost "touristy."I had never been to a slum before, never witnessed the nauseating smells, the piles of trash, the battered children, and unstable shacks. When it comes to the third-world images on US television screens and the sponsor-a-child advertisements that show black children with flies on their face, all those images could be taken from any given corner or alleyway in Kibera and it is a powerful thing to have it there in front of you.

I went with 600 cookies because I wanted to, and because I believe if you wish to write about the world, you have to see it on its good days and its bad. A coworker and I walked down the main road and back up a hill to the abandoned railroad tracks. We were the only white people, apart from one man off playing soccer in a makeshift pitch. The kids clustered around, smiling and reaching out and only sometimes grabbing. There was an incredible amount of order, all things considered, and that is something you do not expect from slums.

On top of the hill I looked out and saw the aluminums roofs follow the base of the valley to another hill, and then continue on out of sight who knows how far. A stream of muddy water rushed through the central part lined by trash, and its hard to imagine an African rainy season down there. I have asked myself each day since how one fixes this, the absolute mess that happens when humanity at is primal center is left to its own chaotic devices. NGOs are good ideas, but are based on big important peoples' generosity, and are almost never sustainable. The corporate world supports itself, but is largely run by those interested in their shareholders bank accounts and buying fillers for their homes. It seems to me that to take impoverished children out of a slum, to find the money that will build pipes and toilets and electrical sockets, it requires a fundamental shift in how everyday human beings view success, and the ideal life. It requires everyone to reassess their priorities by seeing a big filthy picture. Frankly, I'm not sure that's possible with seven billion lives, and so the world will continue on for a long time, some of us profiting, some of us suffering, the icecaps still melting, all largely based off mere circumstance. This is sad to say, and pessimistic, but it is hard not to go to places like Kibera and start feeling painfully realistic. It is also hard to go to places like Kibera, and not want to hand each child a cookie and a few shillings, regardless of its sustainability, or far reaching impact.

The day before, I went to a work event: the launch of a new investment city 100km outside Nairobi. There the President of Kenya spoke, and said that God must indeed be on Kenya's side given that on this special day rain miraculously decided to fall for the first time in six months. He, and others, saw it as a blessing, and I wondered how any President of Kenya could think God is on anybody's side with places like Kibera sitting on the doorstep. I have said this before, and say it often, but any God that sits by apathetically as kids spoon dirty water into their mouths and wither away with hunger is not a God I ever want to believe in, much less fall to my knees and pray to. 

Westgate

I live ten minutes down the road from Westgate Mall, in a affluent Nairobi suburb 8 km from the city center. A year ago no one in the world would have known about Westgate Mall except those who live here. After the recent terrorist attack that left over 70 people dead, Kenya entered the world's radar as a place not so pleasant to be.

As these things go in the public eye, years of progress can be shattered by one bad thing. It is a shame a beautiful place with beautiful people can be meaningless next to one United States of America travel warning. I have walked around some dangerous cities, from the capital of Guatemala to the capital of Texas, and as you go around and around and around and turn on the local news you start to realize bad things, catastrophes, little tragedies, they happen everywhere in the world with no real rhyme or reason. Sometimes I really think it's dumb luck alone that gets us to 80.

Our perceptions of safety are always curious to me, especially in deciding where we will and will not go. I know that on the streets of Nairobi, I am one of very few white people, wearing a nice suit; there is certainly no blending in, and I am probably perceived to have money. Yet nothing has happened yet, beyond the many casual encounters with the kindest Kenyans up and down the dirt roads and paved highways and offices and bars. Maybe I will get unsuspectingly robbed one night and maybe not; maybe I will even get kidnapped, tortured, killed, and buried in an unmarked grave, but probably not. Back home in those quiet safe American cities, the murder rate is still uncomfortably high, psychological counseling severely underfunded, and firearms widely available without background checks. What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut is as bad as it gets. These days no place makes me nervous like the USA, and nowhere is actually all that utopian.

A friend working in Guatemala for five years once told me that, despite a number of stories of late night muggings and midday break-ins, she refuses to live in fear. I tend to agree; you make smart decisions and do the intuitive thing, but that doesn't mean you board up your house, live every day in a box, and retreat from the ups and downs of real life. Those who do are pretty much dead already; at least that's my view, and one probably different from others. The urgent urgings continue to pour in: be careful, be careful, be careful, ten cuidado, be careful. I am, very much so, and I hope everyone else is too, wherever in the world they are. 

The New View from Turkey

Each morning in Istanbul began with the solemn hymns of Muslim prayer drifting in from a nearby mosque. It was a peaceful, steady way to wake up in the darkness, moving from the bed to the shower to the suit, then down the elevator to breakfast and out the door into the chaos of metropolitan Turkey. It’s back to the professional world for me – the offices and coffee breaks, the ties and dry cleaners and hotel rooms, the meetings and the schedules and the rush, the rules and the routines – all to the backdrop of new faces and places.

As most suit-and-tie professions go, you donate your days and endlessly attempt to take back your nights. For a week my nights were christened by the streets to Taksim Square, history's glowing mosques lining the Bosporus, and Turkish music down the alleys that evoke the flying carpets and magic lamps of A Thousand and One Nights. After living in Qatar, it was delightful to be in a Muslim country that sits somewhere in the realm of modern thought, where couples kiss in the street and girls wear short skirts into bars.

I remember flying into Istanbul the first time for a connection, and thinking how good it would be to stop awhile. In another one of life's unpredictable progressions, at the narrow meeting place of two continents, standing on a quiet balcony with a Turkish girl at night, that little wish manifested into the tangible things around me.