Kenya
Our final night in Tanzania before heading to Kenya was a hectic one. Complications with our living situation and bus times left us getting 3 hours of sleep the night before. By the time we got to Mombasa, I felt like a train had run over me. I was desperate to lay down and connect to some WiFi. I was two countries behind on the vlog and needed to respond to some important emails. We hadn’t stayed with a host that had WiFi in 3 weeks, but for some reason I always assumed the next place would have it, and I could finally do everything I had been putting off, including calling my family. The host on Couchsurfing we had found in Mombasa was a 25 year old named Geoffrey, and I was almost sure he would have WiFi in his house. But when we arrived to his grandma’s house where we would stay, we saw that she not only didn’t have WiFi, there was also no running water…or a bed. The entire 10 hour bus there I was envisioning a private room where I could immediately crash on a bed and get some much needed rest, so this new situation initially came as a disappointment to me.
Of course, the point of this trip isn’t to sleep on a comfortable bed every night and connect to WiFi daily, but after being deprived for so long, it sounded so good. My privilege is being exposed at every turn of this trip. It took work to remain grateful, but I managed, and started to get to know Geoffrey and his grandmother, Doris. My weariness soon turned to amazement as I heard her story.
Born and raised in this neighborhood in Mombasa, Doris has never had the opportunity to travel as we are, but her impact extends far and wide. She is a political activist who ran in a small opposition party for president back in the early 2000s. Today she still works for a political opposition group. The small money she earns through politics supports her main passion: sponsoring orphaned children on the streets of Mombasa. Over 20 years ago she got involved with an organization based in the Czech Republic called “Humanist”. She began not only sponsoring street kids, but also welcoming them into her own home. Despite living very modestly by Kenyan standards and in poverty by American standards, she still opens the doors of her tiny home to children and currently is letting 4 kids live there permanently. She lives on part of the top floor of a two story building which has 4 communal pit latrine bathrooms and no running water. Dishes are washed and food is cooked in a communal hallway. Water is brought up from a communal tap in town in giant 5 gallon jugs. Filling one costs 5 cents each. The house is simple but sufficient. The walls of the room we slept in were bare except for a single picture which, in the upper right hand corner, was captioned, “Love is the magician, the enchanter…with it, Earth is heaven.” She said she is Christian, but I thought that sounded pretty Buddhist to me. She insists on hosting the friends her grandson Geoffrey meets on Couchsurfing and cooks them meals every night.
When it was finally time for bed, Doris laid out some cushions and a mat for us to sleep on the floor. Me being the restless sleeper I am, I figured it would be better to try and fit on a small 3.5ft couch and let Hugh get the floor to himself, but then I learned Geoffrey’s brother would be taking the couch.
So the lights go off and I’m lying on the floor of a tiny room with two other guys and the Kenyan heat is overwhelming. I haven’t showered in who knows how long, and I’m lying in a pool of my own sweat because the humidity is so high. The orphaned kids that stay here are squealing in the other room and pots are clanging from whoever is trying to do dishes outside in the dark. I’m so tired I start to drift to sleep anyways, but just as my eyelids are ready to seal themselves shut, I hear a buzzing in my ear from a mosquito, and I worry it’s going to give me malaria, but then I remember Hugh and I are the only ones in the house even taking malaria pills. I try to block out all of these inconveniences, but I’m still frustrated and tired.
But then, the smallest breeze drifts through the window and I realize how profoundly grateful I am for those microscopic atoms of nitrogen and oxygen that just cooled my face for that brief moment. But what’s more, I realize how grateful I am for Doris, that she would not only open up her tiny home to the 4 orphaned children and her grandchildren, but also to Hugh and I as we share a small part of our Cape Town to Kigali journey with her. And I realize I wouldn’t have it any other way, lying here on the ground in my sweat, surrounded by unfathomable amounts of love and generosity. From my extremely minor suffering, I suddenly gain perspective, I start to expand my comfort zone, and I learn a little bit more what love looks like. My headache clears up, the mosquito stops buzzing, and I drift off to sleep.
Kenya has provided me with a lot of these little moments of growth. 3 days later, I was lying in my own sweat again, but this time I wasn’t trying to fall asleep. I was on a yoga mat in the Shine Center Yoga Studio in Nairobi and just had finished up one of the best workouts in my life. The mental discipline it took to get me through that two hour class matched the physical strain on my weary muscles. There were times a part of my mind wouldn’t stop chattering about how I needed to quit, how my breath was too unsteady to remain in downward dog for one more second, and how I might collapse and make a fool of myself in front of the 300 others from all around the world who were packed shoulder to shoulder with me in the yoga studio. But instead, most of the time, I leaned into that discomfort and welcomed it into my aching muscles, bringing my mind back to my breath and the present moment. For two hours I sweat and struggled with these 300 strangers who I strangely enough felt extremely connected to.
This was unlike any yoga class I had ever been to. While yoga has always preached inclusivity, American yoga studios are dominated by wealthy, hipster women in their 30s. However, this free community class was 100% donation based and included a free vegetarian meal and games afterward. It was attended by men and women, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, and every area in-between. The atmosphere was simply more welcoming and less judgmental than any space I had previously occupied. Dancing, shouting, and laughing were encouraged throughout the practice. At the end of a difficult posture, the entire room let out a desperate collective sigh of relief. That doesn’t happen in American yoga studios, where our individualistic mindsets are often too focused on bearing struggle ourselves. But here, I shared the burden with the entire room, and we learned to breathe through our collective struggles together, finding healing and perspective on the other side.
Those are just a few of the reasons why this Kenyan based non-profit, African Yoga Project (AYP), is different. Founded in 2007, AYP uses yoga as a tool for social change in the most vulnerable communities of Nairobi, and now has extended its outreach to over 18 African countries. Sounds ridiculous? Hear me out…
I first heard about AYP when I was procrastinating homework a couple years ago. I was browsing YouTube and saw a short 20 minute documentary in the “recommend for you” section on the sidebar. The documentary highlighted Millie, a young woman from the Mathare slum who grew up in extreme poverty. She was raped multiple times, beaten for speaking up about it, and attempted suicide. Then she found yoga, and her healing process began. As her physical strength increased, so did her confidence. The focus and mental discipline she obtained by persisting throughout difficult poses became the guiding force of her life. She began to not only learn to love herself, but also to empower others in her community. This is the model AYP believes will transform the lives of the most marginalized and vulnerable in our world. They provide free training for youth in the slums to become certified yoga instructors, giving them a source of income and, more importantly, a different, empowered mindset. These new teachers then teach daily classes back in their own communities to empower the next wave of young Africans. Luckily I remembered this documentary just before we arrived in Nairobi, and we decided to check out the African Yoga Project our first day there.
When the two hour class ended, I felt both relaxed and energized. We all enjoyed our free lunch, chatting with new friends. Just as we were about to go, a young man named Samuel approached me and invited me to the class he was teaching tomorrow. He was one of the AYP students who had been trained as a yoga teacher and now teaches weekly classes throughout Nairobi. I told him I’d see him tomorrow.
We got to the class early the next day and chatted with Samuel before it began. He told me how one day he saw a picture of someone doing yoga inside his neighbor’s house, and had asked her about it. She was already a part of AYP, and encouraged him to get involved as well. He was boxing at the time, but was spending more money on hospital bills after fights than he was making. He figured he might as well get paid for something that healed his body instead. Before yoga, Samuel sold boiled eggs and sausages on the street-corner of his slum to pay rent. Now he has a stable job and a new mindset on life. He wants to move out of his slum one day and own his own yoga studio. He told me that the same spirit and energy he uses to get through a difficult pose is what he uses to overcome challenges in his life.
After the class, we got lunch with Samuel and his younger brother Alphonce, who is also a yoga instructor through AYP. They ended up inviting us to come home with them to their slum and hang out for the day. We got on an overcrowded minibus (called “matatus” in Kenya) and trekked across the congested streets of Nairobi. We soon realized we were heading to Mathare, the same slum Millie from the AYP documentary was from. But the coincidences didn’t stop there. I asked further and found out that the neighbor that had first told Samuel about yoga was Millie. The world suddenly seemed really small. The YouTube video I had watched years ago came to life before my eyes.
We got to Samuel and Alphonce’s neighborhood, and they began showing us around. I’ve been to quite a few informal settlements in Cape Town, but Mathare somehow seemed even more crowded. Rivers of raw sewage flowed inches from people’s houses. Informal shacks and crumbling buildings with people stacked on top of each other extended for miles. I found out later that while Mathare is only a square kilometer in size, it holds well over 500,000 people. And though it is one of the most notorious, Mathare isn’t even the biggest slum in Nairobi. Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa behind Johannesburg’s Soweto, is home to over 1 million people just southwest of Mathare. Over half of the people in Nairobi live in slums.
Samuel and Alphonce brought us to their 1 room house and we enjoyed some cold drinks and snacks we bought on the street. Despite the situation outside the little room we occupied, our conversation flowed completely naturally, no different than if I was talking to a friend from home. Somehow Samuel and Alfonce had avoided the gang and drug life here just long enough to find yoga. Now they had had a job that pays rent and a new vision for their lives. Most young men and women in Mathare aren’t so lucky.
Greater Nairobi, to some extent, resembles its own Mathare slum. Once a small train stop town on the Kenya-Uganda railway, Nairobi was never meant to be a city. At the turn of the century it was a vast, flat marshland that was muddy during the wet season and windy during the dry season. Despite being in an inhospitable location for a city, it became a hotel stopover for travelers during British colonial times. As more industries and individuals moved for job opportunities, an accidental city was formed despite an inevitable public health crisis due to the drainage system and marshy conditions. Soon, the sleepy railway station swelled to a metropolis of over 4.5 million. All of this growth happened far too quickly and was not planned at all. Rapid, unregulated construction around the turn of the 21st century concreted over parks, fields, river reserves, and sometimes even rivers to provide quick cash to the politically connected. Real estate prices skyrocketed as high as the skyscrapers being built every day. But this was all at a cost — with less greenery in the city, the drainage system became even worse leading to flooding and an impending sanitation crisis. The sheer amount of new buildings left no space for roads to grow alongside the congested city. In response, the Nairobi regeneration task force was developed in 2017 to tear down parts of the city in an attempt to save it. Since the wealthier residents have the money and political connections to spare their houses, it is often the poor that suffer. Riots broke out in the Kibera slum when 10,000 people lost their homes to the demolition project.
Walk around the city center and your lungs will soon be full of exhaust, your ears ringing with honking horns, and your eyes sore from just how un-aesthetically appealing Nairobi is. A 2017 analysis of city congestion ranked it the worst traffic in the world behind Kolkata, India. I spoke with a taxi driver who said a four hour commute home from work is “not bad”, and that he once watched the sun set and rise from his car while still in the same traffic jam. This traffic gets even worse when it rains. Flooding can completely shut down roads or cause traffic accidents that shut them down. Plans to build more efficient public transportation and drainage systems are always in the works, but suffer at the implementation step. Administrative mismanagement is as rampant as the solid waste that blocks Nairobi’s sewers.
Without any sort of good governance, Nairobi is one giant tragedy of the commons. When enough people with power continuously act in their own self-interest, everyone suffers. As Kenyan after Kenyan told us, “corruption is the biggest problem Kenya faces.” But corruption doesn’t stop at the desk of President Uruhu Kenyatta. It extends beyond institutions and permeates into the social fabric of society. Corruption leads to the breakdown of the institutions that are supposed to protect the people. The best example is the police system. The Kenyan police force is consistently ranked in the top five most corrupt in the world. They prey on the most vulnerable who have no way to defend themselves in a court of law. Because young boys from the slum are perceived as troublemakers by society, they make an easy target. Samuel and Alphonce have had to bribe officers countless times so they don’t get arrested for made-up crimes. When they go home at night, the police are patrolling their slum, waiting for them. So now, when they get off their bus, they immediately find a motorcycle taxi to take them directly to their home instead of walking. It’s worth the extra cost, they say. The motorcycle taxi costs them 100 shilling ($1 usd) while the police bribe would cost them 1,000 shilling ($10 usd). In the past, they have refused to bribe the officer. That has landed them in a dangerous prison prior to an appearance in court, where they are destined to lose at the hands of the corrupt judicial system. If you don’t have money in Kenya, there is no one to advocate for you in the face of injustice.
Bribes to public officials lead to increased business costs for foreign investors, decreasing Kenya’s global competitiveness. Up to this point though, rampant corruption has not scared away China. To travel from Mombasa to Nairobi, we used a train funded by a $3.2 billion Chinese loan granted in 2017. The railway is one of the most significant projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in which they have funded over 3,000 strategic infrastructure projects in Africa through loans. A network of other rail lines are already being built or are planning to be built soon, connecting the major cities throughout Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and even South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Chinese see this as an investment in East Africa, a way to create jobs, and an opportunity to cultivate an export market for their rapidly growing steel industry. These loans are enticing to African leaders who are eager to report new developments and economic opportunity. However, inefficiency and mismanagement have led to underestimating the returns on many of these projects. Kenya’s debt to China has increased tenfold within the past five years, and some fear that if they default on these loans, the Chinese will have the legal power to seize valuable assets, like the Mombasa port. Skeptics accuse China of “debt-trap diplomacy” and point to the Sri Lanka port which was handed over in 2017 to validate their point. But this is only one of thousands of Chinese infrastructure projects where an asset was seized. Many still see these grandiose plans as a step in the right direction for struggling African economies.
It is up to the national governments of African nations to hold China accountable and advocate for fair bilateral deals which mutually benefit both parties. Unfortunately, the higher-ups of the Kenyan government and their comrades prosper from these developments regardless, so recklessly accepting another large loan takes priority over carefully negotiating deals. Whether everyday citizens can also benefit is contingent on whether the next generation of Kenyan leaders can disrupt the status quo, promote sound governance, and overcome the culture of corruption which has plagued their nation.
For all of its shortcomings, it is this next generation of leaders that give me hope for Kenya. For it was here, of all places, that we came across some of the most quality new friends that we’ve met on this trip so far. Of course, there was Sam and Alphonce, the yoga instructing brothers that I had an instant connection with unlike few people I’ve ever met. But there was also Paul, the president of 350.org Kenya, an environmental activist group which fights climate change. I connected with Paul online and we bonded over dinner and drinks downtown, plotting our next collective climate protest. There was also Olivia, a young mother who we connected with on Couchsurfing and invited us over to her house to make a traditional Kenyan meal. We had so much fun that we came over again, this time to celebrate my 21st birthday on our final night in Nairobi. She invited some of her friends, we invited everyone we had met in the past 4 days, and our taxi driver parked his car in her driveway and decided to stay, completely uninvited. There we were, a motley crew of once strangers, celebrating an Americans 21st birthday in Kenya. Because of these people, my birthday was more special than I could have ever imagined. When I arrived in Nairobi 4 days prior, I knew absolutely no one, and now I felt like I had friends whom I had known for years to celebrate with.
Nairobi is probably the worst-planned, dirtiest, and most congested city I’ve ever been to. I can completely see why people back home and other travelers we’ve met on the road told us not to go to Nairobi or Mombasa. And yet, it would have been a huge mistake to listen to everyone and avoid Kenya. It is in the places of the greatest poverty that I have found the greatest generosity and felt surrounded by the most love. And it is in these places where I have taken the greatest amounts of inspiration which has shaped how I live my life. Each place I have been told to avoid has molded and transformed me. I wouldn’t be the person I am without the time I have spent in these places. It is only fitting that I celebrated by 21st birthday in Nairobi, Kenya.
