Nairobi Horror Stories

"Um, how should I say this without offending anyone?" John said to me in a hushed tone, glancing over his shoulder to the middle aisle next to us where a black, Kenyan man was reading a newspaper. And hushed tones or not, I felt that John had said this a little too loud, "Kenyans can be quite brutal people."

Thus begins the Nairobi horror stories.

A former business associate of John's had married a Kenyan woman and settled down in the plush (white) neighborhood of Karen.

The guy's wife had cheated on him and she contracted HIV. When she later died of AIDS, the house was thrown into some kind of a custody battle of sorts between he and the former Mrs's family members. I'm not really sure how the family would have any rights to the place at all. John didn't clearly explain this. Most likely, it's some kind of a racial law which gives privilege to black Kenyans. I'm not sure.

Anyhow, the woman's family came up with a solution.

The man's body was found hanging in the living room. In addition, evidence suggested he had been tortured to death in a multitude of ways.

Failing to get me screaming for an emergency landing, John decided to try again, this time with a personal account.

Some years ago, John was in Nairobi on business. Upon leaving the entry way of the Nairobi Hilton, a massive Kenyan man presented himself. The man stretched his hand out and guessed, "Dutch?"

"No, British", John told him as his hand rightfully shot out.

The man, however, had no plans of letting the John's hand go. He began dragging John toward a "particularly nasty" piece of downtown Nairobi called River Road.

John found the man's grip inescapable. He then told his giant captor, "Look, either let me go, or I'm going to yell, 'thief'". In Nairobi, calling someone a thief is akin to a death sentence. Apparently, crowds of other Kenyans will pounce on a thief and police will shoot to kill without hesitation or interrogation. Understandably, John's hand was immediately freed.

After these delightful tales, John relocated himself to a row of empty seats where he could lay down. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't sleep just yet.

Jetplane To Nairobi

Where was I?

Ah yes. Africa.

After the suffering the city of London for a day, and finishing my weird corn and chicken sandwich, I brushed myself off and boarded my flight to Nairobi, Kenya, Africa.

I was pleased with myself at having reserved a window seat so that I could look out onto great Africa when I awoke.

Also, I was surprised to see that the flight wasn't completely full and I had an entire row of seats to myself. That is, until an older gentleman sat next to me.

Tanned white skin, gray hair and gray mustache. He turned to me at some point before takeoff and introduced himself. He was John from England. He had business in Nairobi. He flew in 6 times a year to check in with the company's progress.

He asked me what I was doing, an American on my way to Kenya. "I just want to help people." One of my many vague answers I'd give out when people asked me. I was going to be a part of a volunteer group, teaching English to kids.

Was I certified to teach? No.

Did I have a passion for it? Not really. No.

In fact, I had problems with the upfront mission of teaching English. Why did I want to teach English? Why should everyone speak the same language? Wasn't that just making the world flatter and tame? Wasn't I contributing to some kind of new world order? To mass industrialization? Was there even anything wrong with that?

Really, I just wanted to go to Africa and experience it on the inside. To attempt to see it eye to eye.

I had vowed that I wasn't going to be the normal tourist and just go to see the giraffes and elephants. I was going to be different. I was going to help. Somehow. Armed with my white skin and some half-stoned mission statement, I was going to be part of the change.

So I gave John the "I just want to help people" line, and he had responded just how three others had the day before with the exact same word. Apparently, what I was doing was "admirable".

Soon after, John decided it was time to scare the shit out of me with Nairobi horror stories.

Logan Worldwide, Part 1: Along the way to Africa

I know I should've updated this blog like everyday since I first got to Africa. I'm lazy though. So now I'm gonna try and do a recap of everything I've been up to since I first got here exactly one month ago.

I left Juneau, Alaska at some point in early January. I don't remember off hand what day it was. Let's say it was the 8th.

Flew to somewhere else, most likely Seattle. Connections between flights are unimportant. Flew to Newark, New Jersey and then caught the NJ transit to New York. I had never been farther east (in the US) than Illinois. And now, here I was big bad New York. I was excited and a little scared. Your entire life, TV and movies fill your head with all of these expectations about New York. A lot of people translate this propaganda into fear, and I think some of it rubs off.

I love New York. I'm not gonna buy the tshirt, but I thought that as a place, it was no less than amazing. This, of course, is based on an experience of three days. So yeah, I ate a hot dog and a pizza, caught the subway everywhere, went to the Met and to Times Square. I didn't go to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State building or the WTC site, because I have very little interest in those areas.

The whole time I left all of my stuff and spent the night at an insanely cheap hostel in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn. East Williamsburg is the hipster, artsy part of a traditionally Jewish neighborhood. I didn't really do much there. Every morning I got on the subway and left to explore. Oh, the price. The hostel was around $10 a night and had everything you would want. It was clean and I didn't even lock my shit up while I was there, and I was only there late at night.

So, I went to all of these places in New York and left JFK on day 3 or 4. Don't remember exactly.

I had a 12 hour layover in London, so I decided to get out of the airport and go exploring the city central. I didn't have anything to do for such a long time so I just walked . . . and walked . . . and walked. In between all of this walking, I took a subway or three.

Now, about London, it sucks. I was only on the streets for about seven hours, but goddamn was that place the most miserable place I had ever been to. Cold, gray, and the people were just the same. The architecture was cool. I'll give you that, but the place itself was like some kind of purgatory leaning towards a cold hell.

The only interesting things, to me, were these cute, little packs of cigarettes with pictures of black lungs and dead babies on them. So I bought a little pack. I'm not normally a smoker, but London is depressing, and so, I felt like smoking.

Walking around London, I got hungry. There were places with "food" being advertised with pictures, "Beans & Toast!". Disgusting. So I got some Indian food from a little stand. There was no where to eat it, and so I went to the trash-filled outside dining area of a McDonald's.

Now, not that I'm a connoisseur of McDonald's, but the place was insane. I didn't want to just take up the eating area without purchasing something, so I bought a coffee. In America, in any city or town in any state, the inside of a McDonald's is somewhat clean and the customers operate in some sort of orderly fashion. Not here. There was no semblance of a line at all. People just pushed through each other in a crowd to yell at the Indian employees the things they wanted to appear at their mouths. Here is a list of things I could compare the situation to:

Looting during Hurricane Katrina.
Stephen King's The Stand.
Black Friday.
South Vietnamese evacuees.

Finally, after I got this post-apocalyptic McLatte, I sat down outside. I sipped it down and observed my surroundings. People smoking 2 feet from the entrance/exit. Trash everywhere. Birds eating it. Among this, I had been aware of how noticeably different I looked compared to the Londonites. I was wearing jeans. Nobody wore jeans. I had on a baseball cap. They don't have baseball, so no one wore one. Everyone was dressed very nicely. That's one compliment I'd give. They might live in a bitterly cold trash heap, but they dress very much like civilized human beings. Or robots. Robots with an inner core of hatred and anxiety, but fitted outwardly with a coating of perfectly creased slacks and a peacoat(sp?). And the entire outfit probably cost as much as a new computer.

I know it sounds like my view of people in London was nothing but bad. And it was. Besides the Indians and one guy that worked for the subway (in my head, "Oh my God, you're talking to me!"), no one was nice. Londonites were nothing but dirty hostile personifications of Satan.

I could have stayed longer, but why would I want to prolong a session of torture? After 5 to 7 hours of mostly wandering around aimlessly, I went back to the airport, and found my way over to a little shop away from the crowds of European and Arab "mmm, yeah I really need to buy cologne and a jewel-encrusted handbag in a motherfucking airport" douche bags. I nursed on a 5 lb. beer and ate some weird chicken salad & corn sandwich. I felt like, psychically somehow, these people had all been calling me names and kicking me in the stomach repeatedly while I lay in the fetal position. And now, I was at the far table, the unpopular kid, pushing my glasses up and trying to escape eye contact.

Things were going to get better.

Next post, Africa!

Logan is insane. Did you hear he's going to Africa?

Yes. I'm going to Africa in three months.

Why?

Most simply, because I want to. I could go on and on about wanting to do some humanitarian work, wanting to see gorillas, seeking to fulfill a need for conquest, or whatever. I won't. I just feel the need to learn something about this place that most people are too afraid to go. Through alot of reading, looking at pictures, and watching tv, I've fallen in love with the image of Africa that I have in my mind. And I know, that these images I have now will be completely torn to bits once I set foot on that continent.

I am a little scared, but I'm more excited than frightened.

I always look for humor in every situation I'm in. And what I find most funny right now are the responses I get from people, when they hear I'm going to Africa. The comments do vary, but most fluctuate between extremely negative and border on (and sometimes definitely cross over into) racism.

AIDS, malaria, thieves, kidnapping, guerrilla armies, machetes, potbelly children with flies on their faces.

People have no idea what they're talking about, and so they just say whatever they see on TV, just so that they have something to say. You know what people who have no idea what they're talking about should say?

"I don't know anything about that. Tell me about it when you come back."

That would be an alright response.

Instead, I have to overcome an audience of pessimists, on top of the pressures of saving money, getting visas, shots, maps, etc.

It would be stupid not to heed without precaution, and that's not what I'm doing. I'm reading, I'm researching, I'm loosening a blindfold.

Just to provide an example of my point, let's say you're moving to Kentucky. You don't really know why you're drawn to it, but you want to go. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. You know what people will tell you? Rednecks, moonshine, incest, "squeal like a pig, boy! (Georgia), "what do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing, she doesn't listen."

I don't know what it is that makes people bring up the worst when talking about travel. I guess its a need to protect, or a fear of the unexpected. Don't know. You could hypothesize all day. But I'm not. I'm going to take everyone's cynicism with a spoonful of sugar.

Baloji: Hip Hop from the Congo

I can't stop watching this video. Now I just have to learn French.