My good friend Muratha is marrying his beautiful Irene in August. On Saturday, about 200 of their closest relatives and friends gathered at Muratha's grandmother's place in Kangemi, just southwest of Nairobi, for the "kuona itaara" - a Kikuyu celebration during which the bride's family visits the groom's to see that their daughter is going to a good place. It's all symbolic these days; the groom's female relatives show the bride their (traditional, mocked-up) family hearth and where she can find the firewood, tea and such, so that she'll never go hungry or thirsty in their home. We feasted on traditional Kikuyu and Kenyan foods and enjoyed singing, dancing and the purchase of the bride ... see photos here. Captions forthcoming. Find a sampling of the images, with some explanations, here.

[Note: today is Madaraka Day, commemorating the day Kenya attained internal self-rule before full independence from Great Britain in 1963.]

A friend asked me before I left Denver what I would miss most about home once I got settled in Nairobi.  My first answer?  My independence. 

I knew coming back here would mean having to negotiate with others to do things I am used to managing on my own:  getting to work and to the grocery store, going to a cafe, leaving the city for a walk or a change of scene.  It is not only that the places I need to go and the things I want to do are far apart here—it's that they are enveloped in a bizarre geography of racial and socioeconomic divisions so entrenched that they have generated different economies, with different norms and patterns for each resident group.  Sure, people cross over the lines all the time, but those who do so have the means to gain acceptance into multiple societies:  language skills, money, and a certain comfort with chaos.   

Now, I revel in the unfamiliar, for sure, and I am not averse to walking long distances or flagging down a matatu (minivan public transport) when that makes sense, but I am also someone who likes to get where she is going in a reasonable amount of time without undue trouble, and without worrying too much about what she is carrying in her shoulder bag.  So, in this divided city, I succumb to the “wazungu” (white foreigners) economy and call a taxi driver when I need to go just about anywhere.  Since arriving two weeks ago, I have spent nearly 10,000 Kenyan shillings (about $130) on taxi rides, and that’s only to get around within the wealthy western boroughs of the city.  Before I move into a house within walking distance of work  in two more weeks, I will have spent at least another 10,000 shillings to get where I need to go—likely more. 

It’s no wonder most people who live here for any extended length of time buy cars.  Although they’re involved in all kinds of conservation, earth-saving and recycling campaigns, most of those who work on the UN campus are not into carpooling with their SUVs, so they become part of the reason that getting around in this city can be such a scary and unpleasant experience.  The black clouds of diesel exhaust, crumbling roads, terrifyingly aggressive Kenyan driving style, incessantly clogged traffic, and labyrinthine street patterns collide in a chaotic mix of inadequate infrastructure and individual priorities.  It’s every person for herself here, street lights, stop signs, and pedestrians be damned.   

Embittered by the absurdity of the taxi trap and frustrated by my lack of independence, I set out on foot yesterday toward the shopping center nearest the area in which I am staying.  As I slogged through the red mud by the side of Thigiri Ridge, I felt distinctly unsafe and conspicuous; the shoulder was narrow and uneven, and I couldn’t avoid the attention of almost everyone I passed on my way to my destination.   

Muttering to myself about the stupidity of walking so far in such an environment, I thought about the ease and anonymity I am used to—the simple ability to get where I am going with a minimal output of cash and very little stress.  In Minneapolis for the APA conference last month, I walked for miles late at night with no fear; I could catch a bus or the light rail for $1.25 ($2.75 during peak hours) if I needed to, no questions asked, and the clean, safe transit ran on a reliable schedule.  Even in Izmir, Turkey, where I lived in 2002, getting from one side of the city to the other was easy on foot, or by ferry, dolmuş (Turkish version of the matatu), bus or light rail, all of which I could (and did) catch at almost any time of day or night.  With the help of friends, I was able to decipher the system there and use it to my advantage.  Here in Nairobi, matatus are the only real alternative to taxis for me, at least during the day, but I have yet to figure out any of their routes except for the straight shot downtown from Limuru Road by the UN.  That’s something I’ll have to learn again, along with the Kiswahili numbers and acceptable phrases for “stop here!”    

I see Nairobi through a planner’s eyes now—much more than I did three years ago when I wrote with a kind of romantic haze about the shape of the city and its indecipherability.  This time, it’s clear to me that there’s nothing romantic about being trapped inside a walled and guarded compound, like the Lady of Shallot, only to be rescued by a taxi driver charging exorbitant fees.  Nairobi’s planning problems are deep and complicated, predicated upon a dearth of regulation, road maintenance, public transit investment, and law enforcement.  A major problem is a lack of connectivity.  Many areas have sidewalks, but only along part of the road; matatus go downtown, but not around and through the various boroughs in predictable patterns.  The larger issue, however, is safety.  As long as wazungu and other residents fear for their safety when walking or riding public transit, the taxi drivers will continue to make a killing and people will continue to buy private cars to avoid those fees.   

I met a Kenyan planner at the APA conference.  I think it’s time I sat down with him to hear his perspective on the growing issues with Nairobi’s decaying roads and terrible traffic.  But what is a planner to do in a place with so few enforceable regulations and such divided populations?  Maybe the Chinese are offering some incentives for positive change … they recently built a new road from the airport through the main part of the city, which has significantly improved the efficiency of that trip.  In the meantime, however, I’ll continue to call my taxi driver to ferry me around this circuitous city, until I figure out how to regain my lost independence.

By the time I left Nairobi on May 16th, my relationship with the city had been transformed from platonic to intimate. I'd gotten used to squeezing into matatus and shouldering my way through crowds downtown during rush hour; I'd walked across the CBD on my own at dusk and bought used clothes at the outdoor market off Ngong Road. I had come to feel at home in the city, as I was with my friends, with my work and with my daily routines - which made coming home to Colorado feel somewhat strange and disorienting at first, as if I had gone on "home leave" and would be returning to my regular Nairobi life soon.

Now, here I sit in suburban Denver, hearing the hum of air conditioners outside my window in my mother's house and the drone of the television downstairs. I've gotten used once again to driving my little Subaru around - without it, I'd be stranded in the 'burbs - and having access to my familiar products and information sources and objects. The weather is hot and dry; my skin thirsts for moisturizer and I have to drink much more water here than I did in Nairobi. This past week at home has been a frenzy of activity and I'm now in the midst of the Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival, just stopping in at home to pick up a lightweight dress to wear to the outdoor "milonga" (Argentine social dance party) this evening. It's been fantastic catching up with my good friends and dancing again, but, of course, I've overdone it, and my back and feet are killing me! Have to ease back into a regular tango routine and take care of my overwrought muscles.

There's much to tell about this transition from south to north, coming back to American society with all its nationalistic obsessions and priviledges taken as givens: smooth roads, for instance - and municipal water supplies that don't get shut off without notice, reliable electricity, reasonably safe cities and omnipresent police armed not with semiautomatic rifles but speed guns. This is a particularly nationalistic weekend: Memorial Day commemorates fallen soldiers from all of the wars, and everyone hangs American flags outside of their homes.

A friend of mine is visiting from New York this week and we'll be taking a road trip around Colorado to see the prettiest parts of the Rockies. I'll post photos and more impressions of coming home soon - have to run!

* Clarifying the spelling and pronunciation of my name by introducing myself as, "DARcy, like DAR es Salaam." (If I didn't, I'd often be misheard as Daisy, Doacy or Dottie.)

* Reading the signs on matatus as I rode through town. Some favorites: "Soft killa"; "Chaos"; "Destiny"; "Immaculate"; and one with a surly-looking cartoon cutout of Osama bin Laden on the rear window.

* Hearing the squawks of the greenish-blue ibises in the mornings and the loud cacophony of birds on my way to work. At home outside of Denver, the birds are faint and lilting - fewer, smaller, less exotic to my tropically oriented mind.

* Listening to the chorus of frogs singing in the UN fountains in the evenings. Tiny yellow frogs with black spots, invisible to the searching eye, sang out after dark, filling the tiled halls of the UN galleries with a soothing chorus of chirps. I found one frog squatting motionless on a dryer in the ladies' room one morning ... never figured out where the others migrate during the day!

* Smelling sweet japonica and the rich scents of green, growing things in the thick air of western Nairobi. I'd forgotten how dry and thin the air in Colorado is; here, the air is distinctive for its lack of scent. It is a filtered atmosphere that leaves no impression on the senses (other than the irritation of dry skin!).

While browsing around in a small bookshop downtown, I discovered a chapbook of poems by Stephen Derwent Partington called SMS and Face to Face. The book has an image of a young Maasai man in his traditional red wraps running after a car with a cell phone. Partington's poems describe Kenya in the 21st century from the perspective of a British guy enthralled with the country and all its wonders and ironies, in love with the place and the people. I thought of his poem, "Get Together," at a tea at my friend Shipra's house last weekend. Though we drank tea rather than Tuskers, we six girls were happy to be there together, discussing our visions for UN reform and personal discovery and relating on many levels.

Get Together

We gathered, six of us, 
from different tribes and countries,
downed some Tuskers, spoke of home.
And I suppose it isn't odd how,
when the tongue is free to waggle,
folk, old folk, get sentimental - 
one a Kalenjin, one English,
two Akambas, a Burundian,
antoher who was far too drunk
to make his background clear.

We all had places, people,
loves that we remembered,
sometimes heatedly, at other times
in whispers as if we shared 
the best-kept secrets of our peoples.

What was clear, though, as we opened up,
was how each far-flung one of us
was hubbed inside that Kenyan room,
each carrying his background in his speech
and simply happy to be here, together,
here, together, here ...

I'll miss being here, together, with my amazing friends from the UN. We've been gathering for lunches and dinners and extra-office chats throughout this last week of mine in Nairobi. Last night, my friend Roman hosted a group of us at the swanky Muthaiga Club ... see photos, below. 

	Tea at Shipra's house This is what I'll miss: great conversations with amazing people from all around the world. I looked around the room and realized we were each from a different country. From left: Shipra (India); Helen (Sweden); Angelique (Belgium); Sugumi (Japan); Edlam (Ethiopia); me.
	Dinner at the Muthaiga Club Roman hosted us at the Club, the colonial-era refuge of the white upper class. (Times have changed a bit, but the Club still doesn't allow guests to wear jeans, sneakers or tank tops, or to use their cell phones on the premises.) From left: Maria-Jose (Colombia/Canada); Helen (Sweden); Jens (tall guy behind Helen, from Denmark); Krishnan (India); Francisco (Colombia/Italy); me; Eduardo (Mexico); Sugumi (Japan); Felipe (Francisco's son); Sandor (Swaziland/South Africa); Pipi (Norway); Roman (South Africa).
	Helen, Sugumi and me relaxing after dinner at the Club
	Helen, Sugumi, Roman and me

Last night, some friends and I went to see the documentary, "Hip-Hop Colony" - a film about the adoption and transmutation of hip-hop by young Kenyans over the last 10 years. Music has played an important role in political action here - the song "Unbwogable" by Gidi Gidi Maji Maji was instrumental in the overthrow of the old political regime in 2002 and the election of the current government - and even as club-oriented Kenyan dance music threatens to take over the scene today, message-rich hip-hop rapped in Swahili and Sheng (the language of young Nairobians, combining Swahili, English and the local tribal dialects) still commands a large audience and generates a modest income for young artists.

At one point in the film, rapper Big Mike freestyles a refrain: "Kenya's like the matrix." That got me thinking about everything I've learned and observed over the past several months, about the way Kenya works for some and not for others; about the almost surreal contrast between my green neighborhood and my young friends' oxidized and decaying world in Mathare; about the Jedi mind tricks the government seems to play on the people, the ministers and MPs somehow getting away with massive raises while young people languish without jobs and fester in the sprawling slums.

So often, I've wanted to post articles from the newspaper that give some insight into the tangled webs of corruption and political intrigue here - and the everyday stuff of life, too. But rather than reprint the entire Daily Nation, I'll refer those who are interested to the rich website of that newspaper's editorial cartoonist, Gado: www.gadonet.com. I need to find his book, "Democrazy," before I leave next week. Great stuff.

I'm fascinated by the transitions Kenya is going through right now, politically, linguistically, musically and otherwise. In "Hip-Hop Colony," I learned that it wasn't cool to speak Swahili just 5 or so years ago - the middle-class youth in the suburbs spoke English exclusively, and music in Swahili or tribal languages wasn't popular at all. Now, Swahili is taking over in music, and the youth are speaking and rapping in Sheng. In the slums and lower-income areas, Swahili and Sheng dominate; middle-class kids still speak and learn in English, but they socialize in Sheng. Every taxi driver I know speaks Kikuyu.

Yesterday, I bought Ngugi wa Thiongo's book, "Decolonizing the Mind," in which he describes the role of language in transmitting culture and "says goodbye to English" as a medium for his ideas. He wrote the book in 1981, and since then has only published in Kikuyu and Swahili, despite living and working in the UK and the US (he left Kenya after being tortured by the former government for his political activism). Can't wait to read the book, and his play, "The Black Hermit," about the personal impact of urbanization on a family torn between the city and the village. Ngugi is not representative of all of Kenya, of course, but his ideas reveal the tensions and transitions the country has endured since independence in 1963. Kenyan literature, hip-hop and film have given this muzungu a tiny glimpse into a fascinating society. I plan to keep learning, and to come back soon.

I have been visiting a children's group in Mathare Valley, one of Nairobi's poorest slum areas, on weekends. Last Sunday, I asked the two oldest children in the group, Steven (13) and Moses* (16) to take me on a tour of their community. I gave them each a disposable camera, and we set off, first to Steven's house, then to Moses', and all around the places they know and use every day. 

We visited the tiny "cinema" where they pay 5 shillings to watch a DVD, past young women with babies on their backs selling cupfuls of cooked beans ("githeri") and ladies frying doughy mandazis in wok-like pans, and out to the edges of where the boys feel safe and comfortable. We crossed the stinking Nairobi River and edged through narrow alleyways to the clothing market, where wooden racks connected like huge canopy beds are draped with clothes of every type and size. We traipsed across boardwalks in the hyacinth-choked marshy area to visit a "posho mill" where maize is milled into flour, and the market where old women sell dried anchovies in overflowing coffee cans. We saw the filthy latrines that cost 3 shillings to use and the showers close to where the local alcoholic brew, kangara, is cooked and warm water from the process recycled for bathing (at an extra cost). 

I had forgotten to charge my spare camera battery the night before, so stopped taking pictures early in the tour. I felt strange snapping photos, anyway - just another silly white woman there to catalog the poverty of Mathare. Even the children felt a bit shy about using their cameras, because everyone knows them and many wanted money for the priviledge of posing for a snapshot. The photos they did take (prints, not yet scanned) are brilliant, though, and show what they care about most: frying mandazis, women preparing chappatis, their smiling friends and family members, their homes. The tour confirmed my sense that the boys and their peers cope with the bad environment in healthy ways and rely heavily on each other for support in staying away from the drunks and drug dealers and those who fight in the muddy streets.

When asked what they like most about living in Mathare, both Steven and Moses said, "It's cheap." Nobody would choose to live in such a place, but growing up there costs far less than it does elsewhere in the city. They know - they've visited the city center and seen how those of us who can afford to pay 80 shillings or more for a cup of tea, 100 shillings for a sandwich. In the slum, they can have a hearty breakfast of milky tea and mandazi for 10 shillings. They can buy clothes for 40 shillings a piece and go to school for almost nothing. Almost. But their mothers - the primary breadwinners for most families in the area - make next to nothing, too. Moses' mom has been selling vegetables and mandazis outside of her home for 26 years. She has to pay the Nairobi City Council for the permanent lease on the land her self-built house occupies - 120 shillings per month. She hasn't ever been able to save enough to leave the place, but she has done quite well. All of her children have gone through secondary school, unlike many others. 

In Mathare Valley, getting ahead isn't a realistic concept for many families. Life is about getting by. But for the children, aspirations thrive. They want to be businessmen and doctors, rap stars and judges, just like any others. Here is a tiny glimpse into their world - the practical opposite of mine. Click on the photo below to see the gallery.


* I have given the boys pseudonyms, for my own comfort and in case anyone unknown to them with connections to Mathare ever tries to find them. Unlikely, but eases my conscience nonetheless.

Steven and his mom We started off with Steven escorting us to his house and the place where his mom prepares and sells "changaa", one of the local alcoholic brews (10 shillings a shot). We found her washing clothes with a few other ladies.

"Never give up what you have seen for what you have heard." - Swahili proverb

Before I leave Nairobi in two weeks, I plan to collect photo essays from a few friends about their lives and "worlds" here. I started the game on Friday by documenting a typical workday. My Gigiri-and-UN world is vastly different from those of others around the city, but it's a typical expat, development-worker lifestyle. 

Click on the photo below to go to the gallery of the day. I'll post the others soon. Let me know what you think!

7 a.m. - Getting ready for work My bedroom in Rano and Vijay Ghai's house has a parquet floor and a varnished wood ceiling, a built-in wardrobe and vanity, a desk, and a single bed.

I'll never forget the hot summer day in 1999 when I emerged from Prairie Avenue Books under the El in Chicago clutching my very own hardcover copy of Jane Jacobs' book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Like most urban enthusiasts, I found in Jacobs' work an inspiring honesty and clarity about the value of cities for bringing people together and giving life the vibrance we crave. I read the book bit by bit that sultry summer, savoring Jacobs' astute observations. The book served as a great incentive to keep working toward my dream of a career in urban planning and human development research.

Four years later, I was a PhD student in my chosen field and a co-instructor of an undergraduate class on human behavior in urban environments using a chapter from "Death and Life" - "The Uses of Sidewalks" - to teach young architects about the importance of cultivating an active street culture. My thanks go to Jane Jacobs, champion of cities, iconoclastic urbanist, thinker, teacher, mentor. May she rest in peace.

[Obituary from the Toronto Star.]

Jane Jacobs, 89: Urban legend
Apr. 25, 2006. 02:54 PM
WARREN GERARD
TORONTO STAR

Jane Jacobs was a writer, intellectual, analyst, ethicist and moral thinker, activist, self-made economist, and a fearless critic of inflexible authority.

Mrs. Jacobs died this morning in Toronto. She was 89.

An American who chose to be Canadian, Mrs. Jacobs was a leader in the fights to preserve neighbourhoods and kill expressways, first in New York City, and then in Toronto. Her efforts to stop the proposed expressway between Manhattan Bridge on east Manhattan and the Holland tunnel on the west end contributed toward saving SoHo, Chinatown, and the west side of Greenwich Village.

In Toronto, her leadership galvanized the movement that stopped the proposed Spadina Expressway. It would have cut a swath through the lively Annex neighbourhood and parts of the downtown.

Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, became a bible for neighbourhood organizers and what she termed the "foot people". It made the case against the utopian planning culture of the times -- residential high-rise development, expressways through city hearts, slum clearances, and desolate downtowns.

She believed that residential and commercial activity should be in the same place, that the safest neighbourhoods teem with life, short winding streets are better than long straight ones, low-rise housing is better than impersonal towers, that a neighbourhood is where people talk to one another. She liked the small-scale.

Not everyone agreed. Her arch-critic, Lewis Mumford, called her vision "higgledy-piggledy unplanned casualness."

Mrs. Jacobs was seen by many of her supporters -- mistakenly -- as left-wing. Not so. Her views embraced the marketplace, supported privatization of utilities, frowned on subsidies, and detested the intrusions of government, big or small.

Nor was she right-wing. In fact, she had no time for ideology.

"I think ideologies, no matter what kind, are one of the greatest afflictions because they blind us to seeing what's going on or what's being done,'' she was quoted.

"I'm kind of an atheist," she said. "As for being a rightist or a leftist, it doesn't make any sense to me. I think ideologies are blinders."

Mrs. Jacobs scorned nationalism and argued in her 1980 book, The Question of Separatism, that Quebec would be better off leaving Canada. Moreover, she argued that some cities would be better off as independent economic and political units.

Her view of cities startled long-held perceptions. In her 1969 book, The Economy of Cities, Mrs. Jacobs challenged the dogma of agricultural primacy and created a debate on both the economic growth and stagnation of cities.

"Current theory in many fields -- economics, history, anthropology -- assumed that cities are built upon a rural economic base,'' she wrote. "If my observations and reasonings are correct, the reverse is true: that is rural economies, including agricultural work, are directly built
upon city economies and city work."

"For me," John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto recalled, "the most significant influence was in terms of the notion that cities drive economies, not provincial or national governments."

"She's the one who propagated the thought, and I think she's dead right." Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago -- the 1995 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics -- liked Mrs. Jacob's theories.
"I like her style," he was quoted. "That kind of stepping back from facts and asking, what kind of economics produced this idea, is just a natural thing for an economist to do. I think everybody in economics finds her work very congenial for that reason.''

Mrs. Jacobs was no expert, bare of established credentials and limited formal education, but was a member of that wonderful school of amateurs -- American writers who were observers, critics and original thinkers, including such names as Paul Goodman, William H. Whyte, Rachel Carson,
Betty Friedan and Ralph Nader.

Mrs. Jacobs, born May 4, 1916, grew up in Scranton, the center of Pennsylvania coal country.
Scranton may well have sparked Mrs. Jacob's life-long interest in cities and how they work. It provided "a template of how a city stagnates and declines and may be part of the reason why that subject interested me so much, because I came from a city where that happened." she was quoted.

"I think I was rather fortunate in having wonderful school teachers in the first and second grade. They taught me almost everything I knew in school.

"From the third grade on, I'm sorry to say, they were nice people, but they were dopes.'"

"I came from a family where women had worked, mostly as schoolteachers, for quite a few generations. I had a great-aunt who went to Alaska and taught Indians. My mother had worked as a schoolteacher, then a nurse; she became the night supervising nurse at an important hospital in
Philadelphia," she was quoted.

"Those were traditional women's occupations, to be sure. But I did grow up with the idea that women could do things, and in my own family I was treated much the same as my brothers."

Finishing high school, she trained as a stenographer but got an unpaid job as a reporter at the local newspaper. Mrs. Jacobs moved to New York City in the Depression years and wrote a few articles for Vogue. Then, at age 22, she went to Columbia University, but that didn't last
and after two years she returned to writing. She never embraced an institutional affiliation.

David Crombie, a former may or of Toronto, described Mrs. Jacobs as a "Harvard refusenik." In fact, according to Crombie, she had been offered more than 30 honourary degrees and turned them all down.

"It just wasn't her style," Crombie said. "She didn't see that as what she was about."

She married Robert Jacobs in 1944. He was an architect and it was his work that got her interest in Architectural Forum, a monthly magazine, where after a short time she went to work, becoming a senior editor.

Theirs was a close relationship and a happy marriage. It was to last for 52 years before he died of lung cancer at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, a hospital he had designed.

In 1958, after writing about downtowns for Fortune magazine, Mrs. Jacobs received a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation to write about cities. At the same time, she was creating havoc with developers, planners and politicians who wanted to put a highway through New York City.

Jason Epstein, her long-time editor at Random House and co-founder of the New York Review of Books, recalled that the proposed expressway had nothing to do with moving traffic. "It would be devastating to the city," he said.

"The reason to build it was that it was eligible for federal highway funds because it connected New Jersey to New York. "It meant jobs for the construction industry, lots of money for
politicians and architects who benefit from those things, and probably for real estate developers who would pick up on the fringes.

"It took 12 years for Jane to finally stop this thing," Epstein recalled. "She was arrested at one point and charged with a couple of felonies and was in serious trouble. At one point she was thrown in jail."

In 1968, Mrs. Jacobs and her family moved to Toronto. They didn't want their two draft-age sons, Jim and Ned, to serve in the Vietnam war. "It never occurred to me that I would ever be anything else but American," she was quoted. But that changed when she took part in a march on the Pentagon in 1967 and found herself facing a row of soldiers in gas masks.

"They looked like some big horrible insect, the whole bunch of them together, not human beings at all. ... After a certain amount of time passed, I decided, well, that's it. ... I fell out of love with my country. It sounds ridiculous, but I didn't feel a part of America anymore."

Toronto was ripe for Mrs. Jacobs. She wasn't here long before plans were revealed to build the Spadina Expressway, which promised to cut a strip through the city, making it easier for suburbanites to commute in and out of the downtown. She wrote a newspaper article highly critical of city planners for their vision to 'Los Angelize' what she described as "the most hopeful and healthy city in North America, still unmangled, still with options."

In an unrequited sentiment, odd as it might seem, planners adored Jacobs. She described them this way, however. "First of all, our official planning departments seem to be brain-dead in the sense that we cannot depend on them in any way, shape or form for providing intellectual leadership in addressing urgent problems involving the physical future of the city."

Mrs. Jacobs galvanized local citizens against the planners and politicians in what became known as the Stop Spadina movement. "She really enjoyed the activist part," Crombie recalled, "the strategy,
the being on the streets, being at the meetings. She enjoyed meeting people, she enjoyed the vigour of activism."

That was one facet of Mrs. Jacob's character. Another, as Crombie put it, was Jane the ethicist.
"She had a terrific sense of the moral order,'' he said. "She had the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet and the easy authority of a mother superior."

For the most part, Mrs. Jacob's books were an intellectual progression, each taking her thoughts on cities and economies a step further.

"She moved beyond planning to look at the city as economic generator," commented Christopher Hume, urban affairs writer for The Star.

"Eschewing jargon and received wisdom, she possessed an extraordinary clarity of mind that enabled her to reveal truths so obvious they were in visible to the rest of the world."

Epstein, the New York book editor who discovered Mrs. Jacobs as a writer of books, described her as a "shrewd" woman. "She had that wonderful double view, trusting no one side, and suspicious of the other, which she had every reason to be. It made her mind very complex, extremely clear, strong and vigourous."

As well as The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, and The Question of Separatism, Mrs. Jacobs wrote other books, including: Cities and the Wealth of Nations; The Girl on the Hat, Systems of Survival: A Dialogue; A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska; The Hannah Breece Story; The Nature of Economies; and Dark Age Ahead.

Mrs. Jacobs was taken aback that her book The Question of Separatism was not well received by some Canadians. She wrote that Quebec would be better off and more vital economy outside of Canada.
"I don't turn up my nose at people feeling emotional about things," she was quoted. "Emotion is valid. But I'm surprised at how emotional people get about Quebec."

Her story of A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska is a book about her great aunt in turn-of-the century Alaska. The Girl on the Hat, written for her grand child, Caitlin, is the story of a resourceful girl named Tina who is two inches tall.

The central premise of her book, The Nature of Economies, is that economics is a web of connected forces subject to the same laws as all other living things in nature. At the time in March, 2000, she told The Star's Judy Stoffman: "This will be a radical idea to those who think of human beings as being outside nature. Human beings are neither adversaries of or the inevitable masters of nature. They live by the same processes as all nature."

Following the death of her husband, Mrs. Jacobs continued to live in her three-storey brick house on Albany Ave., a tree-lined street in the Annex neighbourhood she helped preserve. She wrote in an upstairs office on a typewriter, refusing to use a computer. A son, Jim, an inventor, lived close by and another son, Ned, worked for the Vancouver Parks Board and is a musician, and a daughter Burgin, is an artist and lives in New Denver, B.C. The shelves of her study were not filled with books about economics or cities, but with writings on chaos theory and the sciences, subjects which stimulated her own thinking.

Shortly after writing The Nature of Economies, she was quoted as saying: "I think I'm living in a marvellous age when great change is occurring. We now see that there is no straight-line cause and effect; things are connected by webs.

"This understanding comes from advances in the life-sciences, and it opens up the possibility of understanding all kinds of things we haven't understood before. I think it's very exciting."

As for her own life, she said the following: "Really, I've had a very easy life. By easy I don't mean just lying around, but I haven't been put upon, really. And it's been luck mostly. Being brought up in a time when women weren't put down, that's luck. Being in a family where I wasn't put down, that's luck. Finding the right man to marry, that's the best luck! Having nice children, healthy children, that's luck. All these lucky things."

I spent April 22 with a group of German students from Trier University that I'd met the previous night at a party. One of the students, Alex, told me about the research he and his peers were doing in Mathare and other Nairobi slums, writing up case studies of youth groups that participate in waste management projects for income generation and community service. When he invited me to come along for a big youth-led community cleanup for Earth Day, I couldn't resist! I got up early and met the students downtown, then spent the whole day with them. A great day.

That evening, I met up with Muratha to see Waiting for Godot at Alliance Francaise. The production was excellent, featuring one of the local actors who was in The Constant Gardener. All were magnificent - by far the best play I've seen here yet. Afterward, Muratha said, "It's a good play for Africa. ... We're all 'waiting for Godot.'" 

Click on the photo below to see photos from the Mathare cleanup.

Trier students Alex and Andrea from Trier University gearing up to sort garbage.

Strange but true: only four weeks left in Kenya! I really don't feel ready to leave - have just gotten used to managing my life here, after all. I'll miss many things ...

* Being surrounded by Kenyans. The people I've gotten to know here have had all sorts of experiences, from traveling around the world for the African Youth Parliament to living in the slums. They are Kikuyu, Luo, Luhiya and other of the country's 42 tribes, I'm sure; they speak several languages and do fascinating work. I will miss hearing Muratha switch between Kikuyu, Sheng Swahili, English and French in his conversations with friends; hearing Jeff and Samson talk of their experiences in the low-rent neighborhoods of Kibera and South B; shopping with Emma and Faith; playing pool and dancing at the locals' favorite club, K2; eating nyama choma and ugali with big groups; and driving around with Crispino in his American-style Japanese car (purchased in Belgium), with the driver's side on the left.

* Communicating by text. Everyone here uses text messaging via mobile phone - it's the cheapest, quickest, quietest, most portable way to arrange lunches, movies and meet-ups, and is absolutely the best tool for notifying someone when you're running a little bit late because your matatu is stuck in traffic.

* Traveling by matatu. Despite their reputation for accidents and police run-ins, matatus are still the most economical way to get around - whether within Nairobi or on longer trips to neighboring towns. For "20 bob", I can get from Gigiri (the UN neighborhood) to downtown in about 45 minutes. A taxi takes less time, but costs 500-600 shillings (almost $10!). I'll miss the reggae-throbbing sound systems, the cool attitudes of the drivers and conductors, and the pleasure of riding the people's transport, surrounded by Nairobians.

* Going downtown and to the Mathare slum on weekends. I've gotten so used to heading downtown via matatu #106 on Sundays and meeting Kathi at the Java House cafe on Mama Ngina Street or in front of the Hilton hotel (a favorite meeting place, for its central location), then walking through the crowds to the street where we catch the #46 matatu to Mathare. It's a highlight of the week, hanging out with the young people at the Maji Mazuri Children's Club, playing games and talking with Nixon, Kevin, Joanna and the others - a great group of 6- to 16-year-olds hand-picked by Samson, the group leader, for their singing and acting talents. I love those kids. Last Saturday, we spent all afternoon playing soccer, volleyball and improvised games (including netball with water balloons - very popular) on the local primary school ground. So much fun!

* Going for coffee on Mama Ngina Street. Java House, Dorman's, LaVazza - the best cafes are all located on this pedestrian street. Cafe culture is the same around the world: social, aesthetic, caffeinated, cultivated. I love to sit by the window alternately reading and watching groups of women talking on the street, the car guards pacing on the pavement and students in backpacks and tight jeans shaking hands with friends as they pass by.

* Plays, art, movies and concerts at Alliance Francaise. There's another Java near the French cultural center, where we often go for entertainment. Muratha's friend Larry acted in a play last week that Muratha dubbed "hiLARRYous" and we all agreed was pretty funny - a Kenyan rewrite of "Rush Hour." There have been great art exhibitions and concerts at the center the whole time I've been here, and I'll miss going there with friends.

* Walking around in Gigiri. I know it's the 'burbs, but I love Gigiri for its leafy green-ness, lush gardens and still calm. The UN complex is a haven, as it would be anywhere - a richly landscaped, protected reserve, home to golden-crowned cranes, ibises, vervet monkeys, sunbirds, weaver birds, and the most amazing trees. The buildings are concrete - 70s-style bunkers linked by open galleries - but set so well into the landscape that they don't feel oppressive. The small birds fly through the galleries, making it feel as though I'm always in a tropical conservatory. Heaven.

* Weaver birds. These yellow birds are fascinating to watch. Their nests hang from the branches of palm trees like Christmas baubles, and they're almost nautilus-shaped - amazing constructions. You can look up and see little ones peeking out of the nest chamber, waiting for mom.

* Exotic fruits. Two types of passion fruit, several varieties of mangoes, custard apples, fresh dates ... yum!

* Exotic cultures. OK, so the Maasai are really pretty fascinating, if overly hyped as the face of Kenya. When Kristen and I went to Kisumu, we saw more Maasai morans (young journeymen) than I'd ever seen around Nairobi. They're distinctive for their dress - red blankets wrapped toga-style, long earlobes stretched over time by ornamentation, walking stick, and beaded neck ornaments - and for their habit of walking everywhere, often in sandals made of old tires. The Maasai Market features many of their beaded handicrafts, but lots of other crafty things, too. It's all fascinating and addictive ... I've bought way too much. There's also an exotic appeal to the Asian cultures here, which have their own communities, markets and styles of dress, too. Going to Diamond Plaza with the family I live with is like going to a mall in India.

There's so much more that I'll miss - tiny things, like bottled soda, roast goat, cheap fresh flowers, ras gulla (a rosewater-infused dessert my landlady makes), and cups of tea served with hot milk. I love the sound of Kenyan ladies ululating with appreciation at events, and the way everyone says "isn't it?" instead of, "don't you think?" I love the afternoon rainshowers and way the acacias hold steady in the breeze. Kenya is a beautiful place. I'll miss it all.

A dark eddy in the day ... work comes to a halt as the news sinks in: one of our dear colleagues, Tanzib Chowdhury, the author of Part 4 of our report and the officer for whom I am working on a booklet about local urban observatories, has been killed in a car accident near Mombasa. He and one of his young sons died today as his family embarked on their Easter holiday. He leaves a wife and two sons - one just a year old. Tanzib was only 35.

We stand around in the hallway, stunned, tearful, quietly murmuring about the uncertainties of life and the tragedy of one so young and so talented being whisked away. Rasna and I draft a memorial sentence to be inserted on the acknowledgments page of the report. We can do little else at this point.

I am reminded of the newspaper article I read last night while waiting for dinner, about the "Easter jinx" Kenyans perceive. Just two days ago, a military plane crashed in Marsabit, killing 14 people, including all of the well-loved district commissioners from that area and several government ministers. The newspaper carried a story of a journalist whose close friend had a premonition about the crash, preventing him from getting on the ill-fated plane, and a chronology of other Easter tragedies over the years. Perhaps I should tell my friend Sugumi not to go to Zanzibar this weekend after all - a trip I have declined because of waning finances and a pressing workload.

We will settle at our keyboards again, rejoining the stream of life and work without Tanzib. His wife and children will carry on. But the sadness will linger, too, and color all of the lives he influenced.

For her spring break, my friend Kristen braved the long journey from Portland to Nairobi, and we spent a busy week going, seeing, doing and experiencing all around Nairobi and western Kenya. Here are links to the photo galleries that tell the story of our adventures. Click on the thumbnails to see the complete galleries from each trip.

Rays of light in the forest Art in the Forest at Ngong Sanctuary.

The next day, we visited the Maji Mazuri Children's Club in Mathare.

Boys playing inside the school

Entrance to Nakuru Our trip to Lake Nakuru National Park.

And finally, our tree-planting trip to Luoland.

Ken and Kristen

And malls, and fast-food restaurants, and swanky bars, and coffee houses, and supermarkets, and music stores ... you name it, you can probably find it here. Nairobi's cosmopolitan character is largely unknown to Americans and Europeans, many of whom arrive in Kenya with suitcases full of high-tech clothes and batteries, expecting to have to rough it for the duration of their trip.

True, the things we tend to want are different from what Kenyans need and value, so they come with a high price: $30 for the same brand of oil-free, SPF 30 sunblock I buy at home for about $6, for instance. The parallel Kenyan and "wazungu" economies are separated by a wide gulf, owing to the prices vendors know they can get for the imported products and amenities foreigners demand. While my Kenyan friends will pay about Ksh 30-50 (less than $1) for a hearty meal of ugali, sukuma wiki and beef (cooked corn meal, spicy kale and stewed meat) in town, I'll pay about Ksh 400 for the same meal at a restaurant in the UN complex. If I want to go to the hip Java House cafe out here around the UN or in the city center, I'll pay the same rates I would at home: about $2 for a latte, $3.50 for a garden salad and $5 for a bagel sandwich. Same for hair cuts ($30), music ($10/CD), computer accessories ($100 for a 1 gig travel drive), and alcohol ($10 for a decent bottle of South African white wine).

Some things, like the sunblock, command ridiculous prices - new clothes, for example ($70 for a skirt at Woolworth's); and nicely made local jewelry ($130 for a silver and agate choker I coveted). Rent is also rather steep - I'm paying the same amount here for a room with a shared bath as I did in Denver for my own apartment, but here, I do get two home-cooked meals per day, my laundry done and my room cleaned. No complaints about that. The expense with the greatest impact on my life here is transport. Taxis are bankrupting me.

Whereas most people combine matatu transport with walking (hence, very few fat Kenyans), to get anywhere late at night, it's wisest to take a taxi or a private car. Kenyans will get a group together to hire a cab for an evening out, and some of us who live out here in the 'burbs do the same. But if I want to go out and meet a friend in the city center on my own, or meet a group in Westlands or somewhere equally far from where I live, I'll pay at least Ksh 600 - almost $10 - one way. I end up paying $15-$20 just in transport much too often. My friend Helen did the right thing by purchasing a car recently - saves a great deal in the long run.

Aside from the dearth of safe and affordable public transport that services the far reaches of the city, Nairobi is an easy place to live. It doesn't take courage to live here, but curiosity and kindness make the experience rich: desire to learn some Kiswahili, to go out for nyama choma, to dance in the nightclubs favored by the locals, and to have clothes made by a tailor in Kibera.

I've missed out on lots of opportunities by staying in the office too late and working on weekends - meanwhile, my intern friends have gotten to know lots of locals and learned all the best bars, restaurants and hangouts favored by the youth. I've got two more months to enrich my experience. Last week, I met several young people associated with the Safer Nairobi convention in which I took part - time to get out and let them show me what they love about their city!

[Rasna's "alternative review" of The Constant Gardener, published in last week's East African magazine. Posted here with her permission.]

OH, NO, NOT ANOTHER FILM ABOUT A WHITE WOMAN SAVING AFRICA

By Rasna Warah

I must admit that when I read John le Carre’s novel The Constant Gardener a year or so ago, I didn’t see it as anything more than a thriller using Kenya as a back drop. The story itself is riveting: a young British woman, Tessa, comes to Kenya with her rather colourless British diplomat husband Justin Quayle, gets involved in uncovering a racket involving rich pharmaceutical companies in the West that use Nairobi slum dwellers as guinea pigs, and when she gets too close to the truth, is murdered along with her African friend, a doctor called Arnold Bluhm. The uncovering of the various clues she left behind – by her husband Justin – forms the bulk of the novel, which takes the reader through a journey that begins in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, to the pharmaceutical capitals in Europe, and back to the scenic Lake Turkana, where Tessa’s mutilated body is found.

But seeing the novel’s film version somehow clarified for me why so many Kenyans were not too impressed with the book or the film. These are the perils of turning rich, complicated fictional characters into two-dimensional celluloid characters – there is a tendency to oversimplify, stereotype and lose the essence of what makes a character who she/he is. These are also the perils of having outsiders portray us in their films.

One of the most irritating aspects of the film version is the character Tessa, played by Rachel Weisz, who incidentally is nominated for an Oscar in this role. I don’t know about you, but I have just about had enough of movies showing young white women coming to Kenya to save it from itself. (Think Out of Africa, I Dreamt of Africa and the like.) For some reason, Hollywood producers believe that films about beautiful, do-gooder white women in “harsh, corrupt and hopeless” Africa will stir audiences. Weisz’s portrayal of Tessa as a naïve, deeply committed woman who feels more for Nairobi’s slum dwellers than they feel for themselves is irritating – and patronising. Her shrill, tactless outbursts to ministers, diplomats and anyone else that cares to listen depict her as a self-obsessed woman who needs to learn the basic lesson of espionage – discretion. Her apparent “empathy” for the urban poor makes her do stupid things, like having her first child in a run-down, crowded government facility, the equivalent of Pumwani hospital, instead of in a place where patients aren’t sharing beds, even though her diplomatic privileges allow her to get free medical treatment at a top hospital in the city. When her new- born baby dies, she is seen breast feeding the infant of the 15 year-old girl lying next to her hospital bed. Most Kenyans who can afford alternatives wouldn’t even dream of choosing to deliver a child in such a hospital so why was this the first choice of a diplomat’s wife? And why she decides to breast feed a baby that isn’t hers is even more baffling. It is stupid acts like these that fail to endear Tessa to Kenyan audiences and readers.

Then there is the portrayal of the slum dwellers themselves. Although director Fernando Meirelles has provided us with some stunning and moving shots of life in the squalid Kibera slum (my favourite is the line of newly shined shoes awaiting their owners), he fails to capture the slum dwellers themselves. None of them talk or have opinions. The few snippets of communication between Tessa and the slum dwellers involve children giving her presents or her urging someone to have an HIV test. I really expected more from Meirelles, whose gritty portrayal of real-life slum youth in Rio de Janeiro in City of God won him accolades a few years ago. In fact, Meirelles’s obsession with slum shots have the net impact of obliterating the rest of Nairobi. Apart from the British High Commission building and diplomats’ residences in Muthaiga, there isn’t much of Nairobi that one sees, apart from a dingy bar and traffic. Viewers are likely to get the impression that Nairobi is one big slum, with no restaurants, no cinemas, no malls, no smiling rich or middle class people. Just one miserable city where everyone lives in shacks. The difference between this image, and the one we see in other movies of this genre is that it is the one time we get to see urban Africa, not some remote war-ravaged or famine-ridden godforsaken hellish place. Although the story called for a slum emphasis, Meirelles just fed into Western notions of Africa, where nothing works, where everyone looks sad, and where only the intervention of a white person can prevent Africans from killing each other or dying from disease or hunger.

The only redeeming thing about this film is a predictably good performance by Ralph Fiennes, who plays Justin, and the fact that three minor roles are played by people I know personally – John Sibi Okumu, who plays the corrupt minister of health, Mumbi Kaigwa, who plays a health activist and Keith Pearson, who plays a member of the British foreign service. Not to mention the fact that some Nairobi slum dwellers at least got to earn a bit of extra cash by playing the hundreds of extras – mainly Kibera residents – shown in the film.

Rasna Warah is a writer based in Nairobi.

[An article published in the current issue of EcoForum, by the Editor of our report, Rasna Warah. Posted here with her permission.]

KIBERA CHIC: SLUMMING IT IN NAIROBI

BY RASNA WARAH

“Whatever is the most awful place you have experienced, Kibera is worse.”
[Bill Bryson, in African Diary (Doubleday, 2002)]

In the last few years, Kibera, Nairobi’s largest and most notorious slum, has been the subject of countless research papers (including my own), a book and a film. Director Fernando Meirelles (of City of God fame) used the slum as a backdrop in the film The Constant Gardener, based on John le Carre’s novel. Bill Bryson, the satirical American travel writer, devoted a whole section to it in his CARE International-sponsored booklet, African Diary. Past and present UN-HABITAT reports have referred to it often. I myself have written articles on life in this sprawling settlement for various development journals and newspapers. Kibera, whether we like it or not, is the “in” slum at the moment. Like Johannesburg’s Soweto, very soon, some enterprising Kenyan tour operator will probably put it on its “must-see” site list.

Of course, there is something fascinating and unique about this densely packed settlement sitting on 239 acres in the south of the city. From a distance, on a sunny day, as you land at Wilson airport or drive through Langata Road towards the industrial area, Kibera is visually stunning. Apart from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, which dot the Brazilian city’s scenic hills, there is no slum I have seen that is so “photogenic” (if I may call it that), so “in-your-face”. From the air, its corrugated iron sheets twinkle like stars scattered on the ground. Emotionally, it elicits fear, awe and wonder.

Step a little closer though, and the picture is different. The first thing that will hit you is the stench of human waste. Paper bags, some used as “flying toilets”, litter the countless little lanes that separate each shack. Occasionally, you may stumble upon a man lying on the ground intoxicated with changaa, but for the most part, it is a bustling, entrepreneurial settlement, where life goes on despite the hardships. At 11 in the morning, when I went there for the third time, accompanying Bryson on his Africa tour, the restaurants had already started business: the smell of chips, mandazi and roast meat were mingling uncomfortably with the smell of raw sewage. A preacher had placed his loudspeaker strategically next to what could have been a brothel to announce to the world that “Jesus loves you”. A stray dog basked in the sun as a young newly-in-love young couple nearby shared a Fanta at a kiosk.

But look at the statistics and you will see that the life for the average Kibera resident is nowhere near normal. One of 199 slums in the city, Kibera is estimated to have a population density of over 3000 people per hectare, most of whom live in 9 square metre shacks with no electricity, no running water, no breathing space. An average of 200 people share a single toilet. Most are tenants paying between KSh 400 and KSh 3000 a month for what cannot by any stretch of imagination be called a house – the slumlords (who own the structure, not the land on which it is built) are mostly middle- and upper-class Nairobians, some of whom drive in with Pajeros to collect their ill-gotten gains every month. Although there are numerous accounts of life in what is touted as the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, accurate estimates on how many people actually live in there are notoriously hard to obtain. Depending on the source, population estimates for Kibera range from 400,000 to 1 million.

In spite of the hardships, people continue to pour into the slum. A 50+ year-old watchman I met there shares his dark shack with three teenage sons. Each tiny bed is separated by sheets. One of his sons sleeps on his bed when he is on night duty, a kind of slumberland musical chairs. (I am told many watchmen share beds in this way, the night watchman using it to sleep during the day and the day watchman using it at night.) The walls of his mud hut said it all: next to the newspaper cut-outs of the Pope and Jomo Kenyatta, was a photo of him and wife at their wedding – the vows of staying together till death do them part clearly forgotten as he hasn’t lived in the village in Western Kenya where she lives for over 20 years. Underneath, was another cut-out of Rekha, a famous Indian actress, probably a sexual fantasy of his teenage sons. The watchman has no intention of returning to his village any time soon. He told me his salary of KSh 5500 was needed to educate his children – a reflection of the sorry state of our rural areas, which forces him to seek work and live in degrading and dehumanising conditions he would not be subjected to in his humble rural homestead.

The reason there is so much known about Kibera’s residents is that they have been been probed about every intimate detail of their life – how many people they share a room with, where they defecate, what their HIV status is, questions that would never be posed to the average middle-class person. Journalists (including myself, I am ashamed to admit), researchers and tourists all want to know one thing: how it is possible to survive amid so much despair?

Of course, the answer is not hard to find. What alternative do they have? The next best thing is a flat in Dandora or Kariobangi, which costs four times an average Kibera residents’ monthly wage, or a subsistence existence in the village. The truth is, without slum dwellers, most cities would cease to function – who will work in our homes as maids, or cleaners for the City Council? Who will drive taxis, operate industrial machinery, make tea in the office? It is not unusual also to find professionals such as teachers and journalists living here, as the convoluted housing market in Nairobi and the low wages of professionals ensure that many are condemned to slum life. Slums provide a large share of the formal and informal labour force in Nairobi and, some would argue, provide a useful source of cheap housing to those who cannot, and will not, want to spend any more on housing.

However, despite all the studies conducted in Kibera, and other slums like it, slums are not on the radar screens of most governments and international development agencies. For instance, despite glaring evidence that clearly shows that HIV prevalence among the urban population in Kenya is twice that of the rural population, most AIDS campaigns are focused on rural areas. The face of AIDS in Kenya, and in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, is the rural grandmother taking care of her 16 orphaned grandchildren, not the commercial sex worker in Kibera, or the philandering office manager in downtown Nairobi. Bob Geldof waxes lyrical about rural poverty in Africa, not once have I heard him shed a tear for urban slums on the continent. Most national poverty reduction strategies, including Kenya’s, have no reference to urban poverty, even though the country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world: in just 10 years, for instance, Nairobi’s population will grow from 2.8 million to 4 million, almost half of which will live in slums like Kibera.

Why should this matter? Well, slum dwellers (for lack of a better term for this vastly heterogeneous group) are typically subjected to the worst housing conditions and are disproportionately exposed to pollution and environmental degradation. Because of this, they suffer the worst health conditions, which impact productivity and sustain a vicious cycle of poverty that diminish any gains in economic growth or poverty reduction. Besides, having huge numbers of people living in appalling conditions in a city that is the biggest market for Mercedes Benz cars is not just unethical, it is obscene.

The general thinking among policymakers is that once rural areas are made more “enticing” through development, the city will lose its allure and peasants will choose to stay in their villages. But history has shown that the allure of the city is stronger than the attachment to the soil. In 2007, half the world will be urban. To put it in even more alarming perspective, in 2030, the urban population of Africa (748 million) will be larger than the total population of Europe (685 million), currently the most urbanised region in the world. Given that so little attention is paid to urban poverty, maybe all this media attention on Kibera is not so bad, after all.

Rasna Warah is currently the editor of UN-HABITAT’s forthcoming State of the World’s Cities Report 2006.

One of the world's great musicians died today - Malian guitarist, singer, songwriter, and all-round-brilliant-bluesman, Ali Farka Toure. I'm at work, listening to his album, "Talking Timbuktu," in memorium. May the airwaves carry his perfect melodies forever ...

[Obituary from today's New York Times]

March 8, 2006

Ali Farka Touré, Grammy-Winning Musician of West Africa, Dies

By JON PARELES

Ali Farka Touré, the self-taught Malian guitarist and songwriter who merged West African traditions with the blues and carried his music to a worldwide audience, winning two Grammy Awards, died in his sleep on Monday at his farm in the village of Niafunke in northwestern Mali, the Ministry of Culture of Mali announced.

He was either 66 or 67; he was born in 1939 but he did not know his birth date. His record company, World Circuit Records, said he had suffered from bone cancer.

Mr. Touré's deep grounding in Malian traditions made him one of African music's most profound innovators. "Mali is first and foremost a library of the history of African music," he said in a 2005 interview with the world-music magazine Fly. "It is also the sharing of history, legend, biography of Africa."

In Mali he was considered a national hero. At the news of his death, government radio stations there suspended regular programming to play his music.

Mr. Touré collaborated widely, winning Grammys for albums he made with the American guitarist Ry Cooder ("Talking Timbuktu" in 1994) and with the Malian griot Toumani Diabaté ("In the Heart of the Moon," 2005). He also recorded with the American bluesman Taj Mahal.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Cooder said: "It's important for a traditional performer to be coming from a place and tradition, and most people who are like that tend to be part of their scene rather than transcendent of their scene. That's what their calling is all about. But Ali was a seeker. There was powerful psychology there. He was not governed by anything. He was free to move about in his mind."

Mr. Touré forged connections between the hypnotic modal riffs of Malian songs and the driving one-chord boogie of American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker; he mingled the plucked patterns of traditional songs with the aggressive lead-guitar lines of rock. He sang in various West African languages — his own Sonrai as well as Songhai, Bambara, Peul, Tamasheck and others — reflecting the traditional foundations of the songs he wrote. His lyrics, in West African style, represented the conscience of a community, urging listeners to work hard, honor the past and act virtuously.

Mr. Touré was his family's 10th child, and the first to survive infancy. "Farka," a nickname, means "donkey," an animal praised for its tenacity. No information was available on his immediate survivors.

Unlike many West African musicians, Mr. Touré was not born into a musical dynasty; rather, he was drawn to music despite the wishes of his family. Hearing the music of spirit ceremonies, he taught himself to play the njurkle, a one-stringed West African lute, in 1950, then the n'jarka, a one-stringed fiddle, and later the n'goni, a four-stringed lute.

When he was about 13, after an encounter with a snake, he suffered attacks he believed to have been caused by contact with the spirit world. Sent away for a year to be cured, he returned as someone who was recognized for the ability to communicate with spirits. "I have all the spirits," he wrote in liner notes to the collection "Radio Mali" (World Circuit/Nonesuch). "I work the spirits and I work with the spirits."

After seeing the Guinean guitarist Keita Fodeba, he took up the guitar in the mid-1950's and joined a local band. Mali became independent of France in 1960, and in 1962 Mr. Touré became the leader of the Niafunke village cultural troupe, dedicated to preserving local culture. At the same time, he was listening to American soul, blues and funk, which he heard as rooted in the music of West Africa.

In 1970 Mr. Touré moved to Bamako, the nation's capital, where he became an engineer at Radio Mali and a frequent performer on the air. Six albums of music recorded at Radio Mali were released in France in the 1970's. In 1980, he returned to his hometown, Niafunke, and established a farm that he tended between musical engagements. He toured Africa widely, establishing a reputation across West Africa.

In 1987 he performed in Britain and began recording for international release with "Ali Farka Touré" (World Circuit/Nonesuch). The stark propulsion of his music, and its hints of electric blues, made him a star on the world-music circuit, and he toured the United States, Europe and Japan.

Around 2000 he retired from touring to return to his farm. He often said that he considered himself a farmer above all, and in 2004 he was elected mayor of the 53 villages of the Niafunke region. He established the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, nurturing younger Malian musicians, and he continued to perform in Mali. But he still made occasional international forays; his final concert was last year at a festival in Nice, France.

It's been a great couple of weeks, now that work has died down a bit. I'm working on getting out of the office more and spending more time in the social scene again. My friend Muratha and I saw a compelling film at the French cultural center last week (translated as "Pale Eyes"), and this past Tuesday, UN interns Amanda and Andrew put on a wonderful event in Mathare, at which the Australian High Commissioner presented a check for $4,000 to help build toilets, showers and a computer center for the school the intern group supports. Here are a few images from other recent goings-on about the city.

	Emma C. and me at the Arboretum A big group gathered a couple of Saturdays ago in the Arboretum - beautiful park in the center of the city. A game of football and lots of yummy food made it a great, relaxing day.
	Jeff at the Arboretum My friend Jeff is a designer - more about his new t-shirts soon!
	Emma M. and me at Pampa, for architecture students' dinner My friends in the architecture school at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology invited me to a dinner put on by the Architecture Students' Association at Pampa, a Brazilian place in a fancy new hotel. The ASA launched its new website and gave out awards for students who will graduate in May. My friend Emma is one of the talented crew of soon-to-be graduates!
	Young architects at Pampa More friends from JKUAT - Nairobi's next big-name designers.

... why aren't the US and the powers that be fighting the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rather than smoking out Arabs in the Middle East?

Now here's a real terrorist organization: one that unleashes its deluded and homicidal devotees on the populations of Uganda and South Sudan to round up children from their homes at night and force them to march off to military training camps. Girls are raped and enslaved; boys become machine-gun-toting killers. Any who won't go along with the plan are killed by their peers - who are tortured into committing the acts against their will.

I was sitting in Danielle's Salon getting my hair cut and flipping through Vanity Fair (!) when I was shocked into reading Christopher Hitchens' story, "Childhood's End": http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/060109roco03. I'd heard about the LRA and its actions in South Sudan from my housemates who work there, but Hitchens' story explains how the force developed and is nurtured.

About the LRA, Hitchens writes, "This grotesque, zombie-like militia, which has abducted, enslaved, and brainwashed more than 20,000 children, is a kind of Christian Khmer Rouge and has for the past 19 years set a standard of cruelty and ruthlessness that — even in a region with a living memory of Idi Amin — has the power to strike the most vivid terror right into the heart and the other viscera." Horrifying isn't nearly the right word. Megalomaniac Joseph Kony has succeeded in gaining support for his wicked regime from the Sudanese government in Khartoum, which would like the LRA soldiers to convert to Islam, but otherwise doesn't seem to mind their tactics, as long as they keep South Sudan in a constant state of turmoil with no hope of gaining enough power to demand its share of the region's rich oil reserves.

That's a force to battle and subdue. Too bad we picked the wrong fight.

I'm on my way to the monthly reading put on by "Kwani?", the local literary magazine, and thinking about the romantic traps in which writers become ensnared when pitting themselves against "the Other." I love the satirical essay, below, by Binyavanga Wainaina; reminds me of what distinguishes great books about Africa from soppy, sentimental and out-of-touch ones. One white author who writes clearly and cleverly about a foreigner's experience of an African country (Botswana) is Norman Rush - his novel, "Mating," is brilliantly human, funny and real. He evades the trap. I highly recommend it.


'How to write about Africa'
by Binyavanga Wainaina
(in Granta 92: The View from Africa)

some tips: sunsets and starvation are good

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.