How high is your tolerance for uncomfortable feelings?

Thursday June 11th:

I have been in Kenya for a week, and I am not going to beat around the bush. Racism is alive and well in Africa. But in a totally different way than I have witnessed it so far.

Don’t think me naïve. I know racism exists everywhere in certain forms. It exists in Canada. I know people who are subjected to it, and I know those who perpetuate it too. I try my best everyday not to enact racism.

We all know people who say “I’m not racist – I have black friends.” But it’s not that simple. It never is, is it?
The system is made up of classes. A class system that is racialized. So people act condescending to one person and friendly to another; but the fact of the matter is, who you think you’re better than, and who you’re friends with is based on class, and while the “upper classes” may include black Kenyans, but I have yet to see the “lower class” include any whites.

I put classes in quotation marks, because I think they’re such BS. I don’t know if talking about this is PC, but it’s what is on my mind.
I have really been struggling with it. And I think that struggling with things that make you uncomfortable is one of the most important learning experiences travel can bring.

I have been thinking about Malcolm X a lot lately. I really wish I had brought my copy of his autobiography.
Over the week I have been sitting with my new friends, and have talked with them about racism and neo-colonialism. One person mentioned people who let themselves be oppressed. It reminded me of Malcolm X’s metaphor about the house slave versus the field slaves. And the house slave’s fear of losing what little he had gained, which was relatively much more than the people working the fields.
I wish I had that book with me now. I need to re-read it (Mental Note #1).

On a lighter note, last night I ate dinner with the owners of the production company, and their guests from Spain. They set up this luxurious camp with lights, and couches and a huge fire. It was just beautiful. They tell me that actually that is their normal line of work. There was a bar, and a serving area, and a big table and chairs. It was amazing to be under the stars, like something you would see in the movies. I haven’t seen Out of Africa (terrible, I know), but I have been told that this camp industry started in the colonial times.

I really feel like I am getting an inside look at a whole different world, one that I have only read about, back home in Toronto. It got me thinking about Larry’s book, which I still haven’t finished reading. It’s just hard to read about Africa, when you’re here, and there’s so much to see and hear and think about. I could write my own bloody book, if I could type as fast as my thoughts fly around in my head!

Dinner was pleasant. One of the owners had his son with him. An 8 year old beauty, with brown skin and the curly gorgeous hair that only a mixed kid can have. A smart little thing, that took a liking to me, but spent a good amount of effort trying to launch peanuts into my big hair when I wasn’t looking – what can you do? He had been in the car all day, had energy to burn.

We all spoke in Spanish. The women visiting were artists in photography and film, here to document in their own way the production and the landscape, I think (okay, so maybe my Spanish is a little rusty – or rustico as my sister would say).

After dinner I excused myself and said goodnight. I was about to enter my tent when I decided to go to the other fire where I usually stay. I could see light, and hear soft voices. P, the carpenter, was there with J. S was of course still working hard in the kitchen even after the lights went out. The first one up and the last to go to bed, but he said he was used to it. Instead of calling it “going to bed” he called it “resting for a while” which is what I tell myself when I am pulling all-nighters during exams. I sat and talked with them for a long while. J told me that she is also an actor on a local comedy show in Nairobi. Which explains a Lot.

S finally joined us.
He told me about his family, and his shamba (small farm). He would go after this trip and rest and work there, growing coffee and tea mainly, until the next camp job. We talked about the cash crops, comparing Canada to Kenya, and he told me that even though they finally had what they needed, land, water, production, the market was failing them. The market was flooded, and the prices were low.

I felt sad, as I often do when I travel and make friends with people who will work hard hard hard, all their lives - maybe harder than you or I could imagine - without the good luck I have had to be able to travel (Mental Note #2: I must write to my friends in Cuba and tell them about this trip). I asked S if he’d ever been to India, because he spoke with such fondness of India and his curries were so delicious. He laughed though when I asked and said No, no. He had never left Kenya. He couldn’t afford it. He would love to travel though.

It had been dark dark, but the moon, which is rising later now, was coming up, and by the time I walked back to my tent it was casting a bright clear shadow on the ground around me. I didn’t even need my headlamp.