Field Trips

and other political issues

12.05.2010 26 °C

The REAP team were off on a field trip again yesterday, and unlike many so-called ‘field trips’, we do basically spend much of the time in peoples’ actual fields viewing their handiwork and how they have implemented REAP techniques, giving advice and even getting our hands dirty.
The first part of the journey usually involves public transport in a matatu, and I was sitting in one now listening to the Congolese beats, squashed by the window which wouldn’t open despite the building heat. I was the lucky one, as the skinny guy next to me didn’t even have a seat, he was sitting in the space in-between 2 seats, partly on my seat and partly on someone else’s seat. George (my REAP colleague) and I were at the ‘stage’ in Kisumu where all the buses and matatus from the region congregate, and it is a very noisy, busy, confusing place. Hawkers are busy weaving in and out of the vans, bikes, people and small street dukas (‘shops’). The hawkers proffered their wares into the matatu windows and doors hoping to tempt us travellers. It seems you can buy an entire wardrobe while sitting uncomfortably in your seat – hankies, vest-tops (wife-beaters), socks (nice looking ones), earings, hairbands (made in China from plastic). Pirated gospel albums, torches, padlocks and reading glasses are all available if you suddenly realise your need for such an item. Actually, my pen had stopped writing as I had used it to try to pry open the difficult window (unsuccessfully), and so I did realise my need for one. Like a miracle, at that very moment, a hawker passed carrying a cardboard box with plenty of red, black and blue pens. As the matatu pulled off, having filled itself up with passengers, I managed to hand over my 20 bob, receive my fake BIC ‘Beifa’, and get my 10 bob change.
We managed to squeeze 21 passengers into the van built for 14 including the two touts who resorted to hanging out the door holding their folded shilling notes threaded between their fingers.
One of the things causing matatu drivers a headache regularly is the presence of the policemen in their blue-shirted uniforms waving their batons at the on-coming vans. As this latest obstacle waved us down, we slow down, but never stopped. This made me figure that the obligatory 100 bob (80p) bribe had been paid which is done ever so very subtly by dropping it at the side of road. I have been told that the subtlety of the bribe is of the utmost importance and that white people are very obvious when they do it. I have also been told that the police will be out more often when term-time starts and everyone needs to find money for their childrens’ school fees.
Bribery is endemic in this country. REAP have been trying to go through the legal process of buying land for demonstrating natural medicines and other important plants and techniques. Yesterday, the REAP co-ordinator Rosalia was told that she could pay 5000 shillings (around £50) to get the process finished by the landboard straight away instead of waiting till June. However, this money ‘would not be receipted’, code for paying a bribe. At the moment, Kenya is hosting the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Ocampo, who is looking into the post-election violence in 2008, when the government were highly implicated with promoting tribal tensions for their own gains. Hopefully he will make some difference while he is here as it is high time that things in this country (where 80% of people claim to be Christians) are brought into the open to face truth and justice where only the poor people suffer because of so much malpractice.
Anyway, these issues frustrate and annoy me here, please pray for this country and many like it in Africa where the small fish constantly get exploited by the big fish.
So, I will share some photos from the field trip yesterday. On Sunday, we visited a lovely family who live in Manyatta, the slum area, and who generously gave us a very expensive juice costing a tenth of the cost of their rent! I have added their photo.
I will also share with you some expressions that we have found people saying which make us laugh. (I have no idea what type of things we say in Luo or Swahili that causes laughter, though I am sure plenty more. For example, it easy to get kunywa in Swahili mixed up with kunya. The first means to drink, the latter means to pee).
Luos are very diplomatic people, so we have often heard people say, “It is the same, but different”.
“Yes, welcome inside the chicken”, mixing up the big feathered bird with the word for kitchen.
“We need the Holy Siprit”
There was also a very poor spelling of burger on the menu the other day, though Emma has told me it’s too rude to write it here.
George Abura and his family whom we visited on Sunday