Decaying Vacation

While Kisumu town has a cheery and organized vibe – much like the small towns I visited in South America – the beach resort we stayed at was hardly a romantic getaway.

I liked Kisumu the moment we got off the matatu. At least ten young guys – boys, really – circled around us with their bicycles ready to take us wherever we needed to go. The station had style, spunk and stamina: music blaring, tilapia grilling, vehicles churning, and hundreds staring. In my very first day in my undergraduate African Politics course Professor Reno showed us a picture of an African minibus station. The picture contained several minibuses bumper to bumper in no lines or order. “But everybody knows the system, and you will always end up where you need to go,” Professor Reno told us.” “This is Africa, and it works.” We called the resort, hired a tuk-tuk (or motor rickshaa), and headed to Lake Victoria.

We should have stayed in Kisumu.

We stayed at a decaying resort on the shores of Lake Victoria. The perfect place for a horror film. “Stop it, you’re freaking me out,” my girlfriend told me when I mentioned that.

The resort looks like it has not been worked on for at least ten years. Broken down vans and boats sat in front, with dozens of sleeping dogs nearby. A boy mowed the grass, but it remained overgrown. Dozens of African masks and sculptures littered the eating area and common rooms – some spilled over, some rotting, others creepily staring back at you. We were the only guests there, and a team of at least ten Kenyans were ordered to take care of us. Steven was in charge, and the guy with the white hat silently stood near the water. Quietly thinking to himself.

The Indian owner had a fu manchu mustache and smoked a cigarette, “Welcome,” he said to us kindly. Two younger men intently watched the World Cup, while a third man sat behind the cage guarding the money and the alcohol. The bottles looked like they had not been touched in years. Three fish tanks sat in the dining room full of filthy Kenya lake water. A scary looking fish barely fit the tank, struggling to get out.

We sat on the deck and watched the sun go down. “Rarrrrr” we heard a large, strange moan. A family of hippos – father, mother, and child – stood less than 50 meters away. “Wow. We could not have had a better welcome for you,” the owner replied. His sister added, “We don’t usually see them this early, this is great!”

We forgot our hunger, exhaustion and anger at being here for several minutes and enjoyed the spectacle. “At night, the Hippos used to come up near the rooms,” the owner explained to us, “That is why we got the dogs. To keep them away.”



Now I understand the sign that appeared at the entrance of the resort: “Warning: Please be aware of wild animals and reptiles, as disturbing them may lead to serious injuries. And the Management does not hold itself responsible. Management.”

Kenya’s version of an insurance policy.

My adviser hates that Africa is associated with animals. He despises the Lion King and cannot stand that people still use the term ‘jungle’.

But on this night, the hippos were our saving grace.

At night, we could not sleep. At one point we thought we heard a hippo outside our door. Then the dogs went crazy. Cars drove by at three in the morning, awfully close to our cabin. My girl woke up at 7 am thrilled to take a hot shower. She pulled back the shower curtain and a big pile of sand littered the corner of the shower. Termites.

We never should have left Kisumu town.

"Wow. You Have a lot of work to do."

“During the post-election violence the Luos did not go after the Kikuyus in Kisumu,” Salaam shouted loudly at us. “They went after the shops of the Indians.” In the third-largest city in Kenya, Indians own 70 percent of the shops in the town center. When public order broke down in 2008, the poor town dwellers went after the people to whom they felt the most anger: the Indian shop owners who were paying them “peanuts.”

“There were so many, looting and taking everything from the shops,” Salaam told us as he gave out a hearty laugh, as if it was all a big, funny joke. “Even the policemen joined in!”

Mob mentality, with some serious anger and perceptions of injustice mixed in.

The history of Indians in Africa is a fascinating one. Hundreds of thousands came to work on the railroads and other colonial projects around the turn of the 20th century. Mahatma Gandhi spent several important years of his life in South Africa where he crafted his strategy of nonviolent resistance. Idi Amin expelled the Indian community when he ruled Uganda with an iron fist. During the Banda Dictatorship in Malawi, the government expelled all Indians from their land, preventing them from owning farms. Instead, they bought all the businesses in the city center. Today, they dominate the town and city centers and black Malawians work for them. A similar story in Kisumu, which allowed us to have the best vegetarian thali I have had since Delhi.

Raj’s Hotel and Sweets lies next to the colorful Hindu Temple – the nicest and fanciest building in town.

I asked Salaam if the Indians fled during the violence. “Sure,” he responded, “But they all came back. They have land and businesses here, and they were not just going to take off and leave.”

For dinner, we went to an Indian-style choma: Kenyans barbecuing chicken tikka while the Indian family stood behind the cash register, collecting every shilling. We ordered our desert for take-away, paid the hefty price of 950 shillings and walked to the front counter for plastic forks.

“20 shillings,” the young Indian man replied. I told him that we just spent a fortune there and simply wanted two forks for our desert. “You must pay. This is just how we do it.”

~~~

The minute we met Salaam, he asked us where we are from. America, we told him. “Ahh, Obama” he replied, excited. “He is from 40 km from here.”

We asked him when he would return to Kenya. “The last time Obama was here,” he replied, “he said he would not return until Kenya got rid of corruption.”

It might be a long time until Obama returns to Kenya.

For Salaam, the new constitution might offer solutions to Kenya’s long-standing problems. “We have so much here in Kenya,” he told us, distressed. “But we have such bad management. The ministers are so incompetent – many don’t even have an education. They just received their positions as a gift. Salaam hopes that the new constitution will end this political gift-giving, and provide a structure where ministers will be more accountable to the people. “If they don’t perform,” Salaam continued, “they will be out of a job.”

Since traveling to Cuba in high school, and every trip I have taken since, I have wondered how much government performance matters in politics. Does it matter for the stability of young democracies? Do poor people and other marginalized communities play an important role in national politics? If so, how? When does a government need to perform for its citizens and when does it not?

I have visited several places where government performance – or providing goods and maintaining order – is terrible, yet the government proceeds, unabated. And continues to get re-elected.

I cannot get my old professor’s comment out of my head, “Unfortunately, poor, marginalized and other ordinary people don’t matter a whole lot to the question of whether a government performs and is accountable to its people.” I remain unconvinced.

Salaam hopes that the new constitution will lead to more political accountability. He explained, “It’s all about good ministers who manage the country competently. In 2004 we had a minister named Michuki who was in charge of Roads and Transportation.” Kenya’s transportation system was a mess: the roads were terrible, the matatus were run by thieves, and the vehicles were terribly unsafe. According to Salaam, the minister fixed it. He made sure that all the vehicles were registered and regulated, official routes were labeled on the vans, and he invested heavily in new roads. He even made sure all matatus had seat belts in the front seat.

“Matatus didn’t operate for a whole week in Kisumu while this happened,” Salaam explained. “But people were so happy. They were sick of the way it was, and things are much better now.”

I asked what the one thing Kenyans want now from the government. “The police need to be better,” he responded. Everybody is afraid of the police, and all the corruption starts from them.”

Sure, electricity and toilets would be nice, but for Salaam, public order is essential. Perhaps the state does matter after all, but I still do not see any NGOs working on reforming the police force. That would be too political.

“The new constitution will bring better ministers,” Salaam mentioned again. “And then Kenya will be better and safer.”

The ‘Yes’ campaign should have taped him. He makes a good spokesman.

~~~

“The belief here is that women are users of land but not owners,” Sandra told us.

Sandra works for a small community-based organization in Kenya’s Western Province, where women are at the center of land issues in the region.

Women’s land ownership has become an especially potent issue with the rise of the AIDS epidemic. Several men have died of the disease, and the wives are often blamed of killing the man. The man’s family takes the land, and the woman is left with nothing.

“When we talk about corruption,” Sandra mentioned, “it’s not just up there, but it begins at the family level.” She explained that it was not an ethnic problem, or a titling problem, but a family problem. Land-grabbing happens within the family. “Parents are dying at such a tender age, and their children if they are under 18 do not have a Kenya id card, meaning that they cannot own land. Thus a cousin or somebody else takes the land.”

Corruption as the new family value. This phenomenon is similar to the story that Daniel Jordan Smith tells in his fantastic book Culture of Corruption which explains how corruption in Nigeria is experienced and created in people’s everyday life. He further describes the ways in which corruption is weaved into the fabric of a society.

But Sandra made sure to highlight that it was not their culture that was the problem, but rather the desperate circumstances in which people find themselves. “Land-grabbing in this area is a poverty problem,” she strongly pointed out.

But it is also a registering issue: It is too expensive. Most small farmers in the area cannot afford the necessary 6,000 shillings to officially register plots of land. And they are not educated in the process to do so. “The constitution has not considered the common man,” Sandra explained to us. “They do not know how much the man or woman on the ground has to pay. They must lower the price to process the land.”

This was a much different story than what the government land officer in a nearby town told us about the process: “It is easy. You come here. Pay the money. And you will have your title. Simple.”

Sandra disagreed. She told us how the woman who just came to see her has been trying to secure her land title deed for eight years.

“It gets to the point where women just do not know what to do anymore,” Sandra concluded. “They end up surrendering the entire process.”

~~~

On our final stop, my girlfriend explained to a district officer one of things she is trying to accomplish in her dissertation. “I am trying to understand the relationship between land and violence,” she said, “and I want to contribute a general theory that can capture many of the land and conflict issues across the country.”

The officer bluntly replied, “Wow. You have a lot of work to do.”