The following is a DRAFT version of a very long e-mail or methinks entry or whatever that I’ve been meaning to finish for, well, almost three weeks now. And I will finish it, dang it! Just probably not today…

I loved Kenya, my first experience in a non-Western, non-filthy-rich country—though, honestly, I don’t know how to write about it without descending inexorably into cliché, hyperbole, and other worn-out literary devices and rhetorical meaninglessness. So I’ll just share some images.

Men—part of the 40% unemployed (that’s the official statistic, anyway)—sitting on tree-shaded stone benches after a day spent looking for jobs that don’t exist; more men, unable to afford the 20-cent matatu fare, walking across Nyali Bridge after earning their daily 200 shillings (about $2.75); men hawking heaps of sandals made of used tires from street-side stands or used Western-style clothes from stalls lining both sides of a stinking and fetid alleyway so narrow that the clothes from stalls on both sides simultaneously touch the arms of those picking their way through the mud and garbage; men with tattered shirts and eyes a sickly, malnourished yellow; men who hold bachelor’s degrees gathering scraps of metal and wood to build semi-permanent lean-tos, either to live in or to use as shops; the nice slums, with actual straight-ish mud walls and tin roofs; the not-as-nice slums, basically matchstick piles of wood and scrap metal and mud; educated women working to save what’s left of a $2.75-per-day salary, after taxes and fees have reduced it to less than $1.75, to pay the $50 application fee for a U.S. college; schoolgirls balancing apples atop braided heads, practicing for the baskets, sacks, or other burdens, half again as tall as they are, that will come later; infinitely—infinitely—dry bread; men, torsos bared to the direct searing heat of the equatorial sun, pulling or pushing carts inhumanly loaded; the unevenly undulating walk of a teenaged girl with a baby balanced on one hip; women, faces or sometimes just eyes visible, fingers gliding absently along a black chiffon abaya edged with breathtaking embroidery or delicate beadwork; ludicrous billboards for luxurious satin bridal gowns worth hundreds of times a family’s annual income; hand-pedaled wheelchairs that look like dyspeptic bicycles; beggars—old women, children—encamped along a street, some with no fingers on their outstretched hands; dozens of men scrambling, ant-like, over the precarious framework of a building under construction without hard hats, harnesses, or other safety measures; buildings in the Old Town crammed together astride unpaved streets little more than an arm’s span across; toddlers and their siblings, playing atop piles of scrap lumber or old tires or other refuse; high stone walls protectively crowned with jagged shards of broken glass; thousands attending a Saturday evening prayer meeting, heads bowed and hands raised; marketplaces crammed with used Western clothes hanging from haphazard kiosks and plastic tarps mostly invisible beneath tangles of shoes; expensive apartment complexes protected by relentless razor wire and security systems; chickens and roosters squawking and racing through yards…

And the matatus.

Oh, the matatus.

Matatus are ubiquitous Nissan vans in various states of (dis)repair, named “Thug Lovin’” or “Jesus Train” or “Praise the Lord” and crammed with passengers, the maroon-shirted conductors’ rapid-fire cries of “docksdocksdocksdocks” or “ferryferryferryferryferry” intermingling with deafening world-beat music and the staccato double-knock that signals a stop or go-ahead, streaking dizzily past other matatus and dilapidated cars piled three across on a road barely wide enough for two lanes, missing each other and pedestrians and bicycles and carts and animals by centimeters or less, conductors swinging wildly out of the open door, swinging back in and slamming the door shut in one fluid movement…

I feel that it’s pretty arrogant to think I’ve learned anything at all about what life here is like, though, since I’m the rich white girl who walks around in different clothes every day, living in an apartment that has walls and floors and running water and electricity (most of the time) and mosquito nets and a semi-functional toilet and real glass windows that open and close and furniture and a two-burner propane stove and electric fans that keep the heat and humidity mostly bearable as long as one is sitting directly in front of them and not actually moving. I remember, after one or two days here, thinking, hey, this isn’t so bad—until a few seconds later, when I realized that the things that have made life here tolerable (very rarely comfortable) are all the Western luxuries that I have access to. I have the luxury of a well-ventilated third-floor apartment to escape the heat and humidity; I have the luxury of insect repellent that keeps disease-bearing mosquitoes from swarming; most of all, I have the luxury of time to sit and reflect instead of scrabbling for a few shillings a day in the unbearable sun, weakened by two days without food.

...

Hopefully I haven’t descended too far into the sort of maudlin and pity-laden diatribes that are as off-putting as they are manipulative. The people of Africa aren’t unilaterally miserable, despite harrowing circumstances and the myopic descriptions foisted upon them by their rich white condescending visitors. The people I met there were, for the most part, realistic, intelligent, and, above all, strong. They don’t huddle desperately around fires atop piles of garbage, pitiable and wretched victims of a cruel, cruel (third) world, haunted eyes wide with mute and immobile suffering. Such descriptions paint these individuals just as facelessly, impersonally, and, ultimately, uselessly and really consist of mere emotional exploitation; they may cause temporary hand-wringing and lamentation among Westerners, but they still effectively portray these people—these real, living, breathing, human people—as witless simpletons who can do little but keep accepting handouts. Instead, these are capable people who help themselves once given the opportunity, creative and dynamic entrepreneurs-in-embryo who lack only resources.

So I returned from Kenya about 19 hours ago—what an incredible, amazing, life-changing experience! Will elaborate very soon; am momentarily suffering from cultural, occupational, climatic, and temporal (in both senses) schizophrenia. I'm sure I'll return to normal life soon enough. The question is, do I want to?