Campaigns in Kenya

Over three weeks have passed and I can say that I am acclimating to Meru, Kenya and life on the campaign trail for a Member of Parliament aspirant. I am struck by moments of awe- sitting under the toasting African sun as the winds comb through grasses in the open field where the large rally is being held as my eardrums sting with wavelengths emitting from the loud-speaker in Kehmeru after being spun around by colorful traditional dancers, old women with their toothless smiles cracking up to their ears as they twirl me through open arms.

I am also embarrassed to admit that I have moments of frustration and boredom as well- my legs numb from the board jabbing into them as I sit, ready to collapse from the heat of the African sun as it relentlessly bores down on my freshly burning skin lacking the pigment of protection like my neighbors, ready to faint from the heat and lack of water (I can’t drink water because going to the bathroom is just not an option!) as I sit trapped, dead front-center stage, exposed to a crowd of hundreds of eyes as someone yells in Kehmeru through the feedback quaffering (yes, I made up a word but doesn’t that just sound right?) through the microphone, often gesturing to me, but I am bound by my lack of language and am left to scan thoughts and memories as they are pulled up in my head out of sheer boredom.

It is my own ignorance of the language that I am finding so oppressive. I know that there are countless opportunities to find stories but I can’t find people to interview and I just don’t know what is going on, ever. I bumble about following Karumbu throughout her day and never know where we are or what we are doing. From the most simple phone call that would just be nice to know how our plans have changed, to the message in the platform itself, I never know what is happening. I am trying to learn, but it is difficult. Kiswahili is spoken far more widely than Kehmeru which is only spoken in this area. I have decided to lean Kiswahili which makes more sense, but most of the rallies are done in the latter. Everyone speaks Kiswahili though so it is somewhat helpful but it doesn’t allow me to pick up words in speeches or feel immersed in the language.

I have rabidly set myself on a mission to learn Kiswahili, buying children’s books and primary textbooks, studying 2 hours a day. I wander around the house like a 2-year-old, pointing at objects and saying the words in Kiswahili. The grandmother laughs so hard when I do this, I think it reminds her of her children, but the yard man seems baffled by this display, not really sure how to react to me and unsure what my level of intelligence really is.

The people here, for their part are extremely encouraging. I speak at every rally and Karumbu translates for me. I simply used to say hello in Kehmeru and the crowd erupts with applause and surprised laughter. I decided to see what would happen if I introduced myself and told a little about myself in Kiswahili and I thought the field would be trampled down with the crowd’s feet as they went crazy. It doesn’t take much to generate a huge response here!

The FOREPA (Forum for Republican Party) slogan and gesture is ingrained in my head and one of the canvassers laughs that I know so few words in Kehmeru but wimbe and niaugh are among them (razorblade and cut) because they are in the slogan. I don’t know whether to clap or not after the speeches I don’t understand and when I do, I flash back to learning about mob mentality in social psych, especially since I am clapping for something that I have no idea what it is about but I am just trying to be polite and follow the crowd. But for the most part I tend to feel a bit like a sheep joining in for the applause and repeating the slogan over and over because I feel I have to sitting in front of everyone!

I will catch up on some of the events we have attended:

We speak at all sorts of group meetings everywhere you could imagine from little wooden sheds to nice hotels. We went to Nairobi and met with university students there. We spoke in a structure made of boards with the gaps filled in with plastic bags for insulation as goats wandered in to see what we were up to. We went to a rural school for Karumbu’s school incentives program to give backpacks to the students that are the best in their class. The whole school was stopped and they held a school-wide rally. There was a sea of green sweaters (all the students are in uniform here) with the crashing of applause as we made our way through the students under the sprawling tree around which they had all gathered.

Wherever we go the students and children all seem to rush out of their classrooms and mob me. They all want to see and touch the “muzungu” (white person). I have been nervous that I would be bowled over and washed away by the enthusiastic kids, their eager and searching eyes and rubbing hands all over my arms. Even when we drive, I tend to always feel like I am in a parade, albeit a quickly moving one, as children spot me and wave with huge smiles or yell out, “muzungu!” prompting me to represent all muzingus and wave back with an equally large smile.

We have been to church services and prayed with the best of them and asked them to pray and vote for Karumbu as well. We went to the ghetto of Meru to a Muslim community to eat with them for the breaking of the fast, I, dressed in my Muslim best thought that maybe for once I could blend in until they looked at my eyes. It seemed to be working until I was talking to a boy about my age who said he could tell I was American from far away because I walk with a bounce in my step attributed only to us. After dinner we stood in the ankle-deep mud by the shacks with no electricity, the poverty impossible to ignore, and talked to all the people a politician has never cared enough to visit and listened to their concerns and hopes and shook every single person’s hand.

We have spent days on a “Meet the People Tour” and I have gotten to see all over the area. We saw irrigation ditches that communities have worked together to make, women dying of AIDS given to them by their cheating husbands, would-be school children who are eager to learn but cannot afford school fees, dilapidated family homes, coffee plantations, children recovering from surgery, forests and deserts, jungles and plains, cows and goats clogging the roads, rivers, and villages. We stop all along the way and talk to the people and get to hear their side of things. It kills me to not understand what they are saying because the area is ripe with stories that are begging to be told.

On one of the “Meet the People” days we had a detour through Leywa Nature Reserve. As we minded our business and drove along the road I looked out the window and 20 feet away from us was an elephant, next to it a giraffe, and crossing the road so close we could touch them, zebras! The best part was that we weren’t even looking for the animals like on a safari, they were just there. Most of those couple hours are blank to me except the zebras, giraffes, elephant, gazelles, warthog and ostriches, but people in the car later said that I could not stop saying, “oh my god, oh my god!” The animals they have seen, but me seeing the animal for the first time, they have not. It was crazy to look out the windows and see the animals right there, especially the giraffes which look like a prehistoric cartoon from a distance. Then, as we were leaving the park on the way back, one of the men in the car said that if we are really lucky sometimes you can see rhinos, but there are only 16 of them in the whole park and they are rare to see. Five seconds later I am screaming for them to stop the car and a rhino is right there! Apparently luck was with us that day, but I digress.

We went into the offices and chatted with the people working at Leywa. It is a well manicured, well maintained place with classically manufactured fake mud buildings. The people were pleasant and enlightened us about all the programs they have to help the surrounding villages- they have a mobile clinic, cars people can rent to go to hospitals and help fund schools. We left excited to partner with such a well-organized institution. We continued on to the village that we were supposed to speak at.

We pulled through the thick jungle full of fiery red and blazing purple flowers. It was one of the most fertile, green and beautiful areas I have ever seen. As we neared the village children started running along with our car. This is not unusual but in a country of thin people, how strikingly emaciated the children were was. We saw farmers dousing their crops with insecticide just feet away from the river that feeds into the villages’ drinking water. When we got to the village, I could tell it was one of the poorest I have ever seen. People all lived in one-room huts made of sticks with dirt floors. The children were thin and dirty. Even the cows were thin. The chief spoke and Karumbu later translated their story to me. Apparently, Lewya is owned by one person, a member of the royal family in England. It is a big tourist destination and all the profits go out of the country. When he bought the land, the people in all these villages were forced out. They were forced into villages reminiscent of the villigization process during the Mao Mao revolution. The people squatted on the land because they had nowhere else to go, but eventually bought the land but only a very small area of it, chock full of many people. They are now literally fenced and caged in. The owners of Lewya, they claim, are trying to starve them out. They aren’t allowed to work at Lewya, foreigners and people from other parts of Kenya are brought in. Many women have died during childbirth because they cannot get to hospitals. Sick people die as well because Lewya charges more than anyone in the village ever could afford to take people to the hospitals in their mobile clinic, even in emergency situations. Though this situation is illustrative of but one of many repressive situations here, something about this village has haunted me. It is one of a multitude of world-wide examples reminiscent of colonialism and something that I want desperately to help with but don’t know how. How often the footprints and repercussions of colonialism are forgotten after it has initially ended. As we drove away through the gate, I thought of the children caged into their village like the animals on the reserve and felt the power of colonialism, long after its formal ties have ended.

One striking aspect of the campaign worthy of mention is the warmth of all the people I meet. Everyone seems to treat me like an honored guest. I always feel at home and welcome. Rallies are usually accompanied by an array of traditional dance and music. Anyone who has been out to the bars with me knows that I don’t really dance, I bounce, and when I do I get so excited that I can’t seem to stop bouncing. Well, I happen to have found a tribe in Kenya that does just what I do but with huge drums and furry things around their legs and headdresses. When I started bouncing with them I heard the crowd all yelling and thought they were just singing along, it was only after I sat down that the person next to me said that they were all just excited that I was dancing! The rallies also involve a lot of prayer. It is contrary to the U.S where we try to have a separation between church and state (though I view this separation as increasingly diminishing which is in my opinion staggeringly worrisome). We pray before the rally, after the rally and several times during the rally. For not being an extremely religious person I sure do find myself praying a lot in Africa!

As the campaign is picking up we are having more and more rallies. We have them in fields in the sun all day. We have them in fields in the rain all day. We have them with huge crowds yelling and cheering and singing. We have them with few people because others are out planting. Old women sing, people dance. After the rallies security closes in around me just ahead of the mobs of people. I literally feel like I am in water, being swept away. But someone always finds me and grabs my hand and scuttles me safely into the car which moves slowly as it is covered in people, draping themselves over it and trying to stick their fingers into the cracks in the windows to ask for money despite the development aspect of the campaign, it is as though nobody listened to Karumbu’s speech at all.

The most surprising aspect of all of this for me is my prevalence in the campaign. I came in expecting to be where I am much more comfortable, in the background. I pictured myself hiding in the back, helping things to run in any way I could, maybe running errands and doing grunt work. I never pictured myself right next to Karumbu, speaking to these crowds of people. It is strange because I am told that having me there adds a lot of credibility and merit to the campaign. I symbolize a lot of backing and prestige. I never thought that I would add prestige to anyone! It is a strange situation to be adding prestige only because I am white. I don’t know anything, but because of my skin color I am moved up to the front. When Karumbu’s campaigners speak they tell the people that no other candidate has brought them “a white person to see with their very own eyes.” I didn’t really consider that campaigning in this area as a white person is really quite revolutionary. In fact, one of Karumbu’s fellow aspirants, one who has been copying her every move (he literally shows up to places the day after we were there) tried to bring white people into his campaign but it didn’t work out as well. It is sort of creepy to think that people are talking about it. I don’t see my being here as a big deal and I don’t do anything, but just for being there, not for any merit on my own, it’s unprecedented and causes a big stir. There is a lot of excitement for the locals in it and it has become a focal point in the campaign. It is a strange place to be in. I want people to respect me because I have earned it and have something to say, not because I am white. I feel like an imposter sometimes sitting up there not even understanding what is being said.

That has been my experience so far. We are waiting for the president to dissolve parliament, then campaigns can officially begin, though we still won’t know the election date and it feels like my life and many other people’s is on hold until we do. After parliament has dissolved and campaigns officially start security beefs up and the madness begins. Bring it on. I’m ready for some adventure!