Nema

I had just run on the treadmill. My clothes were soaked through. I was weighing my options between a swim in the pool or a cold shower.

I looked to my left and saw Constance and Nema walking down the beach. Constance wore a gold-chain necklace, tight jeans. Her hair was in exquisite and perfectly placed long braids. She had a soft smile on her face, high cheek bones. She carried her small mobile phone in her slender left hand.

Nema was wearing a worn t-shirt that showed the face of a woman who had run for Kenyan Parliament in 2013. The t-shirt was stretched, faded from the Mombasa sun, and Nema’s hair was much like mine, dancing wildly in the humidity. She looked like she had been walking for miles. Her feet were cracked, her legs scratched.

Nema motioned to me, holding an imaginary water bottle in her hand, tossing her head back quickly and pretending to drink. I realized she was motioning for the water bottle I held in my own hand. I had just filled it with delicious, cold, filtered water at the gym. Nema walked toward the rope that separated the luxury resort where I was staying from the public beach where she meandered.

I handed her the water bottle, and her hard facial expression broke into the most glamorous smile.

“Asante (thanks),” she said quietly.

We made acquaintance, and of course, as a foreign object of great interest to the girls, they asked if I wanted to hang out. And of course I did.

I gave Constance my contact and told them to return to the same spot tomorrow.

I had expected to receive a “What’s App” message from Constance if our date was still on, but never did. The next day, I walked outside to relax after conducting an interview in Mombasa. And there she was. Nema was sitting, alone, in the bright sun, near the rope divider, motioning again, fake water bottle in hand. Her hair was dancing even more wildly than yesterday, her face harder, and her legs covered in sand.

As I approached, there it was again, that glamorous smile – perfect white teeth and bright eyes – a different person than the moment before. I asked if she still wanted to hang out, and she said, yes, strongly, affirmatively. So, I took her hand and we ducked under the rope, both of us smiling brightly.

One lone security officer stands post between the public beach and the resort, and I soon saw he was following behind us, quickening his steps to catch up.

“You can’t bring her in here,” he said.

“But this is my Rafiki,” I said, my face hardening like Nema’s. I had been proud to use my favorite of the Swahili words I had learned in Kenya. Rafiki means friend.

The guard started to look stressed.

“She is just a girl,” I responded to his facial expression.

To settle the dispute, he called in his comrades. Three more security officers headed our way.

“I want to take her swimming,” I said.

They smiled, amused by my adventure with the teen, not taking me seriously. So, I then left the negotiations to Nema. After a few minutes of conversation in Swahili, they returned to English.

I was granted public places in the hotel only, and no more ducking ropes. Nema had to come and go from the front entrance where the majority of the security guards are posted. There would be no swimming.

The deal had been brokered.

Nema and I ate dinner together, next to the fake waterfalls falling into a pond covered with lily pads. She stared at her fellow African ladies with full make-up, polished nails, and nannies to watch over their plump and rambunctious children. She listened as a man with whom I shared a taxi from the airport complained insensitively, as he walked by, that the beach here was too dirty for his little girl to build a sandcastle.

“You need to visit South Coast,” he said. “Much cleaner there.”

I showed Nema my iPhone. Her eyes were wide with delight. We opened Spotify, which unleashes the world of music to anyone with access—a new world for Nema. I asked her about her favorite song—“Despacito” by Justin Bieber. She ate her plate of chicken and fries ravenously. We listened to Bieber sing. 

“Turn every situation into heaven…oh yeah…”

For the most part, Nema was quiet and hard, but sometimes she opened up and relaxed. When she did, I learned that she has been in and out school, sometimes with the school fees to go and sometimes not. She loves to play football (soccer). I learned that she never knew her father. Her mom died from cancer when Nema was 11. She lives with her auntie who sells some sort of Swahili food by the road. She has four brothers. Her family is Islamic. She is not interested in boys. One of her brothers builds beds for a living when he can afford the wood. She sleeps on a mat on the floor.

I asked her what happens when she doesn’t have her school fees. She said she “hustles."

The word “hustle” could mean many things, and English is Nema's second language. But somehow I knew: that was the hard look. Maybe "hustling" is how she got back to her spot on the beach the next day. I couldn't be certain. She told me she had taken a Tuk Tuk. In this area, it is quite well known that Tuk Tuk drivers are men, and they are men who accept sex for their services. Thirty percent of teenage girls, here, become pregnant before they become adults, and sex work for many young girls is a way of life.

Now, I am making assumptions, like I am forced to do when I write about my experiences as I travel. But I was not about to ask Nema her full story. We had only just met. I didn’t want her to go there, to break her short-lived smile. I wanted her to love the moment.

I closed out our bill, and I could  hear a sort of desperation in her voice.

“When can I come tomorrow?,” she asked.

I know myself. I’m too soft, too trusting, but I needed her to smile again.

“Same time, 4 pm.”

I sent her home in a taxi with Minnie, a large Kenyan woman, with a nose ring like mine and an infectious laugh. I asked Minnie to pick her up again tomorrow and to bring her back to the same spot.

I slid the door closed to Minnie’s taxi. I slowly waved goodbye. Nema's smile disappeared, but I knew I would see it again tomorrow.

Nema wouldn’t be taking a Tuk Tuk tonight.

Listening to Daniel

Disclaimer: As all my blog posts do, this post reflects my limited perspective. I spent only a snapshot of time in Nairobi. While there, I visited a university, stayed at a lovely hotel, and toured around with my colleagues. I by no means profess to know a thing about Kenya or Kenyan politics.

The ride back to the Nairobi airport took about 45 minutes, but felt more like 20. Traffic was moving at a healthy clip, much smoother than the three-hour trek across Nairobi from Kenyatta University to my hotel yesterday. Daniel was driving and sparking some good conversation, and I was listening.

Daniel told me why my ride by the State House took hours yesterday. Kenneth Matiba had died, and Kenyans were out in droves to mourn him. Matiba was known for his struggle to create a multiparty democracy in Kenya. And the sitting president Uhuru Kenyatta is the result.

Daniel professed his love for Uhuru. Uhuru has a penchant for shaking his security detail, jogging through the streets of Nairobi, driving himself around against the wishes of the State, and drinking beer. He is known for being a real person, not a politician, and for his free spirit. Daniel didn’t mention any of his specific policies, but he did mention his respect for a president who had recently calmed political tensions in his country by offering his rival a seat as Deputy President in his administration. He offered a hand of peace in the name of unity.

As an American, it was hard to imagine.

I learned about the 42 tribes in Kenya from Daniel, himself a Kikuyu like Uhuru. But, he promised, he does not admire him for their tribal allegiances. He admires him for his candor, and willingness to listen, not to the rich and powerful, but to the everyday Kenyans. He smiled widely as he recalled stories of Uhuru, the son of the legendary President Jomo Kenyatta, who as a child used to sneak out from the home in his village in Central Kenya to play with the village children. Even then, he wasn’t the son of the great politician, he was Uhuru, a small boy just like all of the others.

Daniel’s stories confirmed what I learned the day before. As we moved by the Kenyan State House at a snail’s pace, where all sitting presidents are meant to reside, I was told a story about how Uhuru had opened part of the grounds to a girls’ school that didn’t have space to play sports outside. I was told another story about how a small child kicked a soccer ball over the wall of the State House and found his President standing there above him with the soccer ball in hand, smiling. I saw Uhuru’s “private residence,” where he sleeps, close to, but outside of the State House grounds.

In my 36 hours in Nairobi, I’ve done a lot of listening. And I’ve learned a small bit about Kenyans in Nairobi: They are open. They are intellectual. They love to talk politics. They are friendly and welcoming. They are patriotic.

I’ve learned a few things about the country too. Kenya has banned plastic bags. Its constitution has made addressing gender disparities paramount. One-third of jobs in every sector must go to women.

I imagine there are quite a few young men and women like Daniel: forward-thinking and smart, who are open to sharing and listening. I could see Barack Obama here, listening to Daniel. I also know, of course, that Kenya has a slew of problems, like all countries, especially in this region. But listening to Daniel, I felt hopeful.

“Tat-wa-masi.” I am you. You are me.

Eight years since I had walked these streets. Everything had changed. The smallness, the peace and tranquility of Ubud had been invaded by high-end stores, throngs of white people, and so. much. traffic. The temples and the offerings were still there. The smell of incense still wafted around. But there was more aggression: stumbling tourists who wouldn’t give up their spot on the sidewalks. Motorbikes, so many of them, speeding up instead of slowing down as you crossed from one side of the road to the other. Sidewalks crumbling under the weight of the crowds. A Starbucks.

The monkeys made their sanctuary in monkey forest and didn’t leave. You no longer saw them hanging roadside, indulging in offerings to the gods. Instead, they were trying, their very hardest, to maintain their own peace and tranquility among herds of voyeuristic humans. I walked through monkey forest and watched as one little boy taunted a small monkey with an injured tail. The end of the monkey’s tail looked raw and painful. He dragged it behind him listlessly as he crawled around. When the monkey realized the little boy was laughing at his misfortune, he temporarily lost his mind. He ran at full speed after the boy, jumping up and tackling the boy from behind. The boy screamed in terror. The parents watched in horror. I was rooting for the monkey.

Just as I was rooting for old Ubud, when the monkeys chilled roadside. When magic instead of motorbikes emanated from the streets. When the temples were quiet and the few stores there were those of local artisans: the woman with the silk scarves, the painter, the wood maker, the sculptor. I remember hiking right out of Ubud to the rice terraces, through villages where I watched art in action. But those rice terraces, at least the ones nearest to downtown, have been razed. They’ve built new hotels to mimic the old. But you can’t fool the feeling they give you. The new hotels – the wood is too shiny, the carvings too sharp.

But, of course, with the bad, comes good: a boom to the local economy, an economic boom to local families.

Despite all the change, I found solace in Hotel Okawati. Nestled down a brick alley, away from the crowds, Okawati was still the quiet, peaceful space it was eight years ago. The same ornate fixtures and statues welcomed you home. There was solitude around the pool, slightly green from the algae at one end. The same cool tile floors welcomed your feet in from the humidity. The sheets were still paper thin. There was no shower curtain and a single bar of the same type of generic soap sat by the tub. The same light green tea cup was turned upside down on the table outside my door. I ate the same breakfast: a fried egg, pineapple and watermelon sprinkled with coconut, and  small bowl of yogurt and honey. The staff came by and set offerings near the statues on my porch each morning, incense blowing into my room and out toward the alleyway. Okawati was still simple. And in its simplicity and aversion to change, I found peace.

On the drive back from Ubud, I learned the Indonesian (Hindu) term for the feeling Okawati gifted me. “Tat-wa-masi.” “I am you. You are me.”

I felt like Okawati understood. In the midst of so much change, some things need to stay the same. This is the grand paradox for the nomad: finding so much peace in

inertia.

Running: A Love Story (stolen from a book by the same name)

I hadn't run in about a week; with work and travel and then the rules that tell us we won't be safe outside the walls of the hotel. With the heat and pollution and ruts in the road, I wouldn't get far anyways. The high is supposed to be 108 today and at 9 am temperatures were climbing far into the 90s.

But I made it downstairs to the single treadmill. I hate running on treadmills. Most runners do. We enjoy the space of the outdoors, the silence of the sky above, opening up for a sprint and feeling like our minds open with our speed. I've always enjoyed learning about new places through my runs, seeing roads and trails I never would have seen - little glimpses inside people's homes as they awake for coffee, sometimes, what they've planted in their gardens, the different shades of greens in the trees. These are things you don't see from inside a vehicle.

But today in Ouagadougou the single treadmill in the basement called out to me. I hopped on and started running. All the pressure inside my head defused. The sweat washed out the stress inside me. The a/c barely churned, so the sweat was profuse - just what I needed to make it through the day.

I've struggled with depression since I was a teenager, and big changes in my life over the past two or so years - my mother's death, divorce, new relationships, relocating - have made the depression -flanked with whole hours and sometimes days and nights filled with anxiety  - so much worse.

In all my writing, I've rarely ever admitted to this thing called "depression." It seems so silly and superficial when you are traveling in an effort to fix some of the world's problems, and these problems are huge: poverty, gender-based violence, hunger, thirst.

I talked to a woman in Yemen who  had 11 children, one dying after the other from conditions of poverty. Despite these circumstances, she kept getting pregnant again and again, nevertheless, because she didn't have any money to purchase contraception and even if she did, pharmacies with condoms and pills don't exist where she lives, and who knows if her husband would have even allowed them to use either. The woman said she was around my age at the time - barely more than 30 -- although she didn't know her exact age, She looked more like 55.

I've seen men, grown men, scramble in the sand for Cheerios I had dropped because they were so hungry. I've seen people digging meters and meters in to the hard, dry earth just to find water. I've written about little girls who were married off at the age of 8. I've seen people drinking water that looks like mud.

So, depression: what do I really have to be depressed about besides this never-ending string of global strife? I'll never really know - maybe it is just a genetic chemical imbalance passed down through my mother or maybe I am just too fortunate - a fortunate one - where even the slightest graying of the sky can turn my mood down.

All that I know is that running is my greatest love, my only antidote, no matter where in the problematic world I've landed.

Youth: A Dream Spent

I flew in and it wasn’t the same. I was no longer young and wanderlusting. I was just there landing after 24 hours of travel to Africa to do my job—to help organize a conference, to write a few things, to survive the jet lag, and to remember to drink only bottled water. I looked out the window of the SUV transporting us to our hotel and I saw the dust and dirt, the poverty, the dark streets; felt the ruts and deep holes in the roads. I could smell the pollution seeping through the closed windows. And unlike in 2009, when I landed in Burkina Faso’s neighbor, Niger, and I sensed an adventure, making a possible small, meager contribution to "saving the world," learning something about myself, at least, growing, here, I felt nothing, no possibility at all. Yes, the poverty is sad, but it hasn’t overwhelmed, and it never goes away.

The world continues to tick on. Poverty remains. The same black plastic bags littering the streets of Niamey in 2009 stayed there, never disintegrating, littering, just the same, the streets of Ouagadougou. We try to help, to make things better, but so little actually does any good at all. And that mentality of 'helping' is fraught with so many connotations; are we helping or just happy to be of the intention of doing no harm?

I still feel elated by the kindness, warmth, and generosity of the Burkinabe women who work for Pathfinder here. Sarat is so tall and in her height and stealth, she commands energy. Her laugh is infectious. I could never tire of Sarat. So, I guess, women like Sarat are the flowers in the piles of dirt and plastic bags.

It still seems absurd to host these events at hotels that cost more each night than a Burkinabe might earn in six months. But we do. We need to be secure. Last year, a terrorist attack maimed and killed NGO workers just like us, at a hotel just like this, in this very city. So, we come to these countries, stay in these places, spend thousands of dollars to host these events that we hope will ignite change, but it is never easy to determine if they actually do anything at all. So, there you go, with my youth has gone my idealism and the allure for “adventure” travel with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been impressed and inspired by so many of our programs—in DRC, Ethiopia, in Yemen, before the country devolved into war and we had to vacate. They have offered so many women and girls a chance they never would have had without our investments. But the allure of my travel here, its point, the investment in it, newly mystifies me.

Maybe I’ll walk the block tomorrow, sweat out the 106 degree midafternoon funk, try to be inspired, even affected by where I am—try to get back that gratitude I once had for being able to make these trips at all; for perspective and growth and being able to see how the world lives.

Or maybe I'll realize I'm not really the nomad I thought I always was. Maybe I'm ready to settle and feel like I'm home. 

Disagreeable Woman in DRC

You look around Kinshasa and you see lots of men. You see women too, but the men are everywhere. They hang out, they sell random things. One man was dangling a tiny puppy and a tiny kitty from each hand in an effort to get someone in traffic to stop for him. They saturate the lounge at our hotel: the powerful men in their fancy suits, who most likely are in some sort of favor with the country’s current president.

On one evening, I did attempt to go a block up the road to a nearby restaurant that someone—a woman—from USAID had recommended to me. The restaurant made pizza, and man was I craving it. Well, within a half a block I knew it would be impossible. There they were: the men. I didn’t smile back and I kept on walking, but the attention didn’t stop. It was only when one overly eager fellow, probably in his 50s, started yelling, I decided it was time to turn around head back to the hotel. I killed my dream of that pizza slice.

“Tu es jolie!,” he said once, then louder twice. He then began yelling. He was reaching to grab one of my hands. If I had been in the DR Congo longer, I might have yelled back at him, or at least had a skin thick enough to keep on walking toward my destination. But I’m a newcomer, and as a newcomer, I always take precaution. It was still light out when I left the hotel, but the sun would be falling soon and there was no reason to have an incident to remember for the rest of my life. It was another dinner at the hotel for me. The life of a woman abroad.

It’s true. Men do rule DR Congo. But I guess that’s not so different from most of the world. Here, it just seems more pronounced. They are the politicians, the investors, the bankers, the leaders, and even the nurses in many of the communities where we work. They are the drivers, the housekeepers at the hotel, and a large portion of the servers. They are the majority of our country office staff, although our few strong women make up for the dearth in numbers. They are the reason for the 5 million deaths that took place in various DR Congo’s internal and regional conflicts from 1996 until 2003 and into present day. They are why more than 200,000 women were raped during those wars and why gender-based violence is still such a huge problem in the country.

I know there are good men in DR Congo. There are good and bad men everywhere, but in the book I’m reading, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, it is evident that men have the power and the sway in DR Congo. They are the root of the country’s many problems. In fact, I want to write a letter to Jason Stearns, the author of that book, to please write a second account, one that tells the history of DR Congo from the female perspective. In his book, it is just one man sabotaging the country after the other. I wonder what the women were saying during those wars, if they had the chance to say anything at all. I’d like to write that book, actually, but then I would need to live in the DR Congo, that man’s world, for long enough to gain the trust of Congolese women. And that would be near impossible.

Jason Stearns, in fact, was back in the DRC when I was, reporting on violence in the north east of the country. I just read that as I was packing my bags to return to the US, the government expelled him from its soil. I do not need to find out what the government might do to a disagreeable woman like me.

***

I never wrote about my “friend” from the flight I was on from Paris to DR Congo. He knew Jason Stearns and was anonymously interviewed for his book.

I spent about three hours practicing my French with this man on the plane. He lives in Switzerland with his Swiss wife and two kids, but is originally from DRC. He works in "security systems" for unsecure countries. We talked about his job, my job, Congolese politics, his impending divorce, and my divorce (although I didn’t dare tell his the sex of my ex). We argued about Donald Trump, his pick for the next American President. He was very interested in the fact that I was reading Jason's book. 

He not only knows Jason, but he is also a close comrade of President Joseph Kabila’s. He is the Congolese elite: the money and the power and perhaps, but I can’t prove it, la corruption.

The first night we landed in Kinshasa he had asked my colleague and I to get a drink with him. But I had declined. I was just too tired. I didn’t think any more of it.

After I returned back from Mutshatsa, there he was, hanging out in the chic lounge with the other Congolese elite. He was with two friends who looked a lot like him. Big, solid, tall, Congolese men dressed to the nines.

I had sat down in the chic bar to read my book for a while before heading back up to bed and he approached me. “Bonjour, Laurel!”

Oh boy.

He summoned me to the table with his friends. I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t feel like engaging. I approached the table to introduce myself, hoping the conversation would be short. It was, to some extent. I had a short argument in my broken French with one of his friends, a Pentecostal pastor, about family planning. He asked why “us family planning people” tell women how many children to have. I told him, nicely, that that is a misconception. Our work is based on fertility preferences, which means, a woman (with her partner) can decide how many children they want to have and when, when offered access to contraception. A woman can choose the method she wants, if she wants one at all. I told him we support contraceptive access, in turn to support the health of women and their families.

“But what about the men?” he asked. “What do you do for the men?”

Oh boy.

I told him that whenever possible we engage men in decisions about family planning: a) to win their support for allowing their wives to choose the contraceptive she wants (because women in this country and many others do not have the social power to make decisions on their own); and b) so that they too might use contraception, most importantly, condoms for further protection, particularly from sexually transmitted infections.

Soon after the little discussion, his friends disappeared and it was just me and the Swiss man. And soon after that, a glass of red wine was traveling toward our table. He wanted to continue our discussion, but without his friends. I decided in a public place it would be fine to have a glass of red wine, maybe even nice, and he hadn’t done anything to make me mistrust him, yet, so what was the harm?

About five minutes into our conversation, he began hitting on me. I learned the word for seductive in French and he pleaded with me to meet him for dinner the next night, dancing out at a club, or at least breakfast in the morning. I said I didn’t think I had time, and that I had to work, and that I just wasn’t interested, not even in the most remote sense of the word.

I went back to my hotel room and thought about what I had been reading in my book, about his friends in high places, and maybe even about him. They buy their way to power. They finance killing and corruption that keeps them in high places while the majority of their fellow Congolese live in abject poverty. They take what they want. They control the destitution.

It is no wonder Mr. Swiss likes Mr. Trump. They have a lot in common. They are rich. They are aggressive. They are misogynistic. They are everything that makes me a proud, righteous feminist.

Chances and Choice

After a chaotic trip from Lumumbashi yesterday, we landed back in DR Congo’s capital city: Kinshasa. I didn’t see much of Kinshasa on my first trip from the airport. It was dark and I was subsumed with fatigue. But this time, despite an all-night rager among Congolese men in the hotel room next to mine the night before, I was awake.

When you travel out of the Kinshasa airport, you soon hit the bustle of a typically developed African city. There are massive traffic jams, suggested traffic lights, and people who decide to make their own turn lanes in the middle of the jam. Teenage boys run around in the traffic, selling Fanta, biscuits, bottles of water. There are people everywhere and there is this explosive energy. Minibuses, the same ones I rode in South Africa, in my 20s, are everywhere.

But now I’m not allowed to ride minibuses. By our project standards, they are not safe. Our project arranges our travel from the airport with a contracted travel service. We hop off the plane and we see a man with a chalkboard listing our names. We follow him to an air conditioned office behind the airport, he grabs our bag tags, and we rest there until he brings us our belongings and we are ready to hop into his van. Here, the service is called “Jeffrey Travels.”

Here, “Jeffrey Travels” serves the elite.

The chaos eventually dissipates into a section of the city with nicer buildings—real buildings, not roadside shacks and makeshift stores. These are government buildings: the national airlines conglomerate, the ministry of health, the ministry of finance. The government buildings usher us into an even nicer part of town: the place where the expatriates rest, and where we stay. There are well-pruned gardens filled with tropical flowers and an elderly Congolese man sweeps the dirt from the street corner with a small broom.

We re-enter the hotel we entered just a week ago after arriving from the US. But it looks different now, even more extravagant. I notice the pieces of art on the walls, and the beautiful sculptures of African women, who look more like Ethiopians than Congolese, behind the reception desk. I didn’t see anything like those sculptures when I went to the market with Dr. Jacquie in Lumumbashi. I imagine those sculptures were made in Europe. Electronic music pulses from the chic bar to the right of the reception desk where well-dressed Congolese business men drink cocktails along with a few, like me, who are dressed-down and probably represent the UN and NGO crowd.

I am shown to my room and everything is so clean, cleaner than I remember. I know I will sleep well. I open my window and look down and to my right and I see the pool. It is huge and blue and inviting. Fancy Arabs smoke Hookahs around it, white people who have turned slightly pink take in the African sun even though they don’t need any more of it, a group of men, probably around my age, who seem to spend a lot of time at the gym to build their hard physiques, play around in the pool. I am still in Congo, but I am in another world.

I start to think about the kids in Mutshatsa, with their little dirty hands, their big smiles, their huge joys, their huge sorrows. They will never see a pool like this. I start to cry, just a little bit; the insanity that is the difference between the have and have-nots. I think I must be too sensitive or maybe just hungry and tired after my days in the field and few calories. But it all just seemed too sad. I don’t think this clean, developed way of life necessarily buys happiness—but it does buy chances and choice.

My life has been filled with so many chances, so much choice, since I was a little baby born in California. My parents easily chose to stop having any more children and I ended up an only child. Their choice gave me the chances to take piano lessons, dance lessons, riding lessons. It gave me my education—my key to the future: Montessori school as a small child, a scholarship to a renowned private school, acceptance at an Ivy League university, and everything else thereafter. It gave me the chance to travel and be a mzungu in Africa.

At my renowned high school, I took an African history class and Middle Eastern history class, and without voyaging, I gained some global perspective on how the world works. At a young age, I gained a keen awareness of the great global discrepancy between the have and have-nots. That African history class was my favorite class. I learned about the sordid history of the continent and how colonialism contributed to where so many African countries are today. I was fascinated, disgusted, and I wanted to help. And I guess that is what I am trying to do today.

Sitting in this hotel, I am reminded how great the problems really are. We’ll never fix them. But I’ll continue to do my part.