I came to Kenya because the wilderness called- and i wasn't disappointed. In addition to the great wilderness, i also encountered some Kenyans as courageous as their lions are and as inspiring as their great plains are.
I was picked up at the Nairobi airport by a family friend (actually he was gone so the friend's friend took care of me) who had started a clinic and school in a Masai village close to Tanzania border thirteen years ago, and it was great to hear about all the work he had done from scratch to build up the community. The fact that his official profession is a Christian missionary had made me slightly uneasy as i did not know how respectful of the local customs he had been, but he had done so much development work for the community including starting a primary school, a medical clinic and building a long water pipe that stretched over 10 km from one side of the mountain to the other. And I was told that to save money, he did not hire outside contractors and did everything himself- It seemed like one man was doing a NGO's work. He was also working on teaching the Masai people how to live as an agricultural community, and this was interesting as the Masai have traditionally been cattle nomads but he said it was no longer economically feasible for them to live as cattle breeders and they needed to learn agriculture to survive in today’s market economy.
I had time to wander around the Masai village and even the way their houses are built represents the significance of cattle for them. They build their houses with cow dung and their fences with sticks, and as the Masai practice polygamy, they have cattle pen in the middle surrounded by each wife's house. At the physical level, having more cattle allows men to have more wives (my eighteen year old Masai friend told me the richest guy in town owns 1000 cows and has 20 wives- my friend had 12 and once the number of his cows reached 15, he would get married! :) At the spiritual level, some Masai think that having more cattle will lead to better afterlife, so my guide told me he converts all the money he earns to cows, and i could often see a huge line of cows led by the Masai people.
Masai people, with their colorful decorative beads, are probably one of the most famous out of Kenya's 42 tribes, and they certainly do have some interesting customs. At the age of 14, boys are circumcised and embark on a three months stay in the forest to learn the skills to become a warrior man, and they can only come back to the community if they catch a lion- which they do in a group of 15 or so. My guide showed me the tooth of the lion that supposedly he caught, and also a little hammer-like weapon he caught the lion with. And the boys put on red for the first time when they go hunting to scare the lion, and wear the red for the rest of their lives in adulthood.
Girls also get circumcised, but as i found out from talking to NGO workers, this is not as easy as the male circumcision. Often girls get their entire genital parts removed and whereas for men it hurts once, for women it hurts for the rest of their lives. I've even heard that some people stitch close female's private parts to ensure that she does not have sex before marriage. Another sad thing i encountered was meeting several Masai boys and girls my age who could not afford to go to college- they realize the importance of education but unfortunately have to take time off school to make money.
After leaving my family friend's Elim Christian community i came into Nairobi planning to do a Safari- but it was too expensive and I ended up in a hostel not having anything to do for the next couple of days. I've been so fortunate with the people i meet on the road, and after my German boy Martin came into my room looking for toothpaste, i gave him some delicious toothpaste and we started chatting. It turns out he was visiting Sub-Saharan Africa's biggest slum area called Kibera and learning more about a microfinance organization there, and i asked if i could tag along and he gladly accepted.
We bought a soccer ball each (mine was just $4) and took a bus to go to Kibera and meet a tall guy named Andrew, and he showed Martin & i around Kibera. The living conditions were quite poor and there were trash and sewage everywhere- most people were living under $1 a day and we visited a widow's house who lived in a shack around 5m by 10m with her ten kids. Nevertheless, she was a strong woman who had took a loan from the microfinance organization called 'Jami Bora' and started her life anew selling coal in the community. Jami Bora, which roughly translates to 'Good Family,' started out several years ago as a small microfinance organization that lent money to 50 families, and now there were over 220,000 members who were using micro-credit to climb out of poverty and make a healthy contribution to the community. Unfortunately, the 2-week business training session led by a UNC MBA grad had ended a day before i got there, and i would have loved to have learned more about their entrepreneurship training.
And perhaps the most amazing experience there was meeting John, a former rebel-commander of 230 people who was leading a fight against the government and was now living a changed life building locker boxes for Kibera community. Last year when the former president of Kenya refused to step down despite losing in an official democratic election, members of the N*** tribe whose new president had been elected democratically started a genocide against the Kikuru tribe of the president and the whole country fell into chaos. (it was amazing to me how strong the tribal affiliations are for these Kenyans that they massacre innocent fellow citizens just because of a stupid greedy president). John was a member of the N*** tribe, and he confessed he had killed and maimed countless people in Kibera and also lost a lot of his own men.
Then John met Andrew, who told John that John is going to be killed soon if he keeps living the way he does and urged him to join the Kibera community as a member of the Jami Bora. As Andrew was generous towards John's gang, who initially tried to kill Andrew, many of them joined the community and were now making healthy contributions to the community. And John, a former gang leader who caused so much destruction, was now channeling his energy into soccer as he started a soccer club with his club members that was to 'win Kenya premier league in two years.' As of now the team didn't have a uniform and had only four balls and were not too good, but John is optimistic about the future of his team and it was great to see his enthusiasm.
Although the living conditions were harsh, people certainly more than made up for the place. We also visited a community radio station that was playing some chill African reggae and hip-hop that was not gangsta but was putting positive energy into the community, John and Andrew invited us to a local bar/ club to dance with the Kenyans, and on Sunday we went to a church service with them. Oh, and i also should not forget to mention a great African dish (a huge steak with some vegetables and ugali (corn-based nan like thing) we had.
After visiting countless tour companies, i finally found an affordable low budget safari and embarked on a great African adventure. i had expected to be bored riding in a van all day, but it was wonderful seeing lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, gazelles, cheetahs, hippos and so on...Some of the things i wish i had not seen- such as maggots and flies swarming on a rotting buffalo that the lion and the hyenas were also eating- but it was so wonderful to see a family of elephants crossing the road (the baby elephants are so adorable) and zebras and gazelles hanging out together and hippos enjoying their bath. It's also wild to think that these steppes are probably where the humans originated and our ancestors probably roamed these vast African plains with these animals.
I also met a Canadian girl at the hostel who took me to a huge Masai market on Saturday and i bought some cool cheap African art to sell at festivals in Europe this summer. (i've obviously mastered the art of bargaining by now... :) Luckily, the Korean guy i was hanging out with (Suny) turned out to be an artist, and he was a big help in giving tips on buying & selling art. And I also met another Korean girl (nuna) randomly at the National museum, and we had great dinner with another Kenyan professor. Although my first impression of Nairobi really was its nickname Nairobery full of crime and danger, once I unveiled the surface and met the locals, I realized there’s so much light and hope here.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Kibbutz- Neot Samader
My introduction to kibbutz came through my guidebook and a pastor family friend who told me that if i want to understand Israel, i should spend some time in the kibbutz. In addition to my interest in sustainable organic agriculture, i was fascinated by their communal living in which they share their work, meals and leisure with everybody else. Although i wasnt sure about the Zionist aspect of kibbutzim after meeting a Palestine guy who told me about all the injustices done by the state of Israel, most of the people i met at my kibbutz Neot Samader were kind and sympathetic people and I had great two and half weeks in the middle of the Negev Desert in southern Israel.
After flying to Cairo from Berlin via London, I spent a day in Cairo and took a night bus to Taba crossing to get to Eilat, Israel’s southern resort town embracing the Red Sea. Then I had to take another bus to where my kibbutz is and i was a little surprised when the bus driver dropped me off in the middle of a desert. Like the Dutch who have created land out of the sea, Israelis tamed nature and created fertile green pastures from inhospitable desert and I was really impressed by this transformation. (Israelis have one of the best irrigation technologies in the world and China is trying to replicate Israel’s battle against desertification at home albeit without much success.) Although this kibbutz was only twenty years old, they had achieved so much most notably a gracefully towering arts and crafts center that just opened a few years ago (even the president of Israel had paid a visit to this arts center and praised it).
I was incredibly tired as i had spent the last two nights on the airplane and then on the bus, and I was free to roam by myself on my first day and just observe the various works going on in the kibbutz. My roommate turned out to be a Jewish guy from Uruguay who did not like claiming his Jewish identity (it doesn't mean he was uncomfortable with his Jewishness- he just didn't like labels- "I’m Jewish for politicians sake" he would say- and he also had healthy disrespect for the government-established holidays). Matillas was also an incredible musician and composer, and we had great time together.
As my work started the next day, I began to form an interesting relationship with work. I had not worked since I left the Mother Teresa House in India about three months ago, and my initial reaction to hard manual labor was close to repulsion. Our work would start at 6am, and we worked till 8am breakfast, and then again from 9am-1pm till lunch and in the afternoon from 2-5pm. (For the residents, the hours would be longer as there are a lot of meetings that the residents of the kibbutz have to attend as all kibbutz decisions are made unanimously- it's a very full time job living in a kibbutz) The hours felt long and for the first few days, it was the company of others that kept me going. Fortunately, there were five nineteen year old guys (two girls from Germany, three guy from the US, the UK, and Israel) whom I could hang out with. There were also other volunteers I could talk to and most residents were gregarious and spoke very good English. There were about 200 people in the kibbutz- around 100 residents, 60 kids and 40 volunteers- although sometimes the line between residents and volunteers was not very clear (if you had been there for over 3 months, should you count as a volunteer or a resident?)
When volunteers first arrive at a kibbutz, they rotate work for the first couple of days and i did everything from picking nectarines, sorting them sout (it felt interesting to be part of a chain of the huge capitalist economic system as the goods from Neot Samader were sold in organic markets all across Israel and Europe), cleaning the wine machines, putting stickers on the organic yogurt bottles and expiration dates on apricot sweets, cutting garlic and putting them in bundles, cutting pumpkin and other vegetables for 200 people, cleaning metal works (I polished a tiny bronze thing with sandpaper for two hours which was a little frustrating), and doing dishes at the restaurant (again sometimes for 2 hours straight- but I wouldn’t complain as I got free date ice cream and cake at the restaurant.)
One of the guys said all the work is meditative, but for me, it was more mind-numbing. I knew human mind is an amazing machine and we can train our attitudes (St. Paul taught to be content regardless of the condition one is in, and Buddha spent his lifetime refining his attitude to reach peace and equanimity) but is it really possible to be content doing the same manual work over and over again? I was only there for little over two weeks but what about the guys who had been there for twenty years since the beginning- these people were educated intelligent people too and some of them seemed to genuinely enjoy manual work. For me, i saw myself as a Greek guy who has to push something up a hill every day but fortunately there weren’t anybody undoing my work.
Nevertheless, around the third day, I began to grow more fond of the work. Perhaps doing more outdoorsy work helped- as I felt really cool climbing date trees that were about 10 meters high (they are palm trees and you can easily step on their bark) and work on date trees (trimming fruits & sawing off branches to use in building huts). It was certainly a lot more adrenaline and it made me feel pretty virile. I no longer wanted my i-pod during work (they didn’t let me have my best friend during my work anyways), and began to enjoy labor for its own sake. But soon this state turned into cycles of enjoying and not enjoying work, and i guess training one's mind is not easy…) I was also reminded of the Marxian critic of capitalism that in today's society with so much specialization, we no longer feel whole as a human being as our work is no longer whole- we are only cogs in a giant machine of production and we often work in isolation. But my work at kibbutz felt wholesome as I rotated every work, particpated in every step of production, and almost always worked socially with others in equal footing.
There are some jobs that were inaccessible to me because of the language barrier. I'd love to have spent some time at the kids center (school) but couldn’t because i don't speak Hebrew, and i think being a waiter would also have been fun too but i needed to be able to speak Hebrew in order to be a waiter. I also wanted to spend some time milking the goats but never got around to doing that. And as all the meetings were conducted in Hebrew, i definitely felt like an outsider as i had no idea what was going on in everyday lunch meetings.
Outside of work, most socializing was done outside in front of the dining hall.
Meals were eaten in silence- although I was never directly told why, I think they want you to figure out why for yourself. (Some said the idea was being one with the food you're consuming and be more in tune with your tastebuds etc- very hippie yes :)- or it’s just more relaxing to eat in silence as everyday work is so arduous. Initially it was awkward as i didn't know where to look while eating- and meals felt really depressing as meals are usually social times in most of the world- but i quickly grew accustomed to the tradition and as the vegetarian food was superb, fresh and healthy, (i espeically enjoyed the fresh goat cheese every morning)- i don’t complain.
Every Friday night before the Shabbat dinner (it wasn’t religious but Shabbat was still a big deal and it was the only meal in which socializing and wine were allowed) - btw, I really wanted to be in Israel during Purim festival- apparently God commanded Jews to drink till they drop during this festival.. :). Before Shabbat, there was a huge dance ceremony in which everyone dressed in white and danced free style to new age trance music. Any adult could partake in the ceremony, and the dance consisted of lot of turning, whirling and dancing in circles. Despite my sprained ankle, I had fun limp-dancing on my last Friday (the first Friday I just watched).
I hurt my foot playing soccer and i was on crutches for the first time in my life. Not being able to run and play sports was a little frustrating (now I understand how the injured athletes feel so it was a good lesson in sympathy), but I found creative ways around it such as going for an awesome long bike ride over a desert mountain.
I should also mention going out with my room mate Matillas & some other friends as one of the most memorable- I don’t remember what we did but it was great time. There was a huge jam session and then we walked around at night looking at the stars and making animal noises in search of camp fire that we never found, and Matillas with his genius musical talents made amazing percussion music on discarded cans and various things.
Will this kibbutz still be around in the years to come? Many kibbutz are dying out or becoming privatized- and I heard this ones was also not doing terribly great economically- but there didn't seem to be much social tension that plagues some kibbutz, and there was a large group of a new generation of kibbutz kids who grew up there all their life and were about to go out into the real world- some to the army, some to the university etc- (and they were preparing a puppet play as sort of a 'farewell gift' to the community:) I’d love to visit again and be part of the evolution of this wonderful community.
After flying to Cairo from Berlin via London, I spent a day in Cairo and took a night bus to Taba crossing to get to Eilat, Israel’s southern resort town embracing the Red Sea. Then I had to take another bus to where my kibbutz is and i was a little surprised when the bus driver dropped me off in the middle of a desert. Like the Dutch who have created land out of the sea, Israelis tamed nature and created fertile green pastures from inhospitable desert and I was really impressed by this transformation. (Israelis have one of the best irrigation technologies in the world and China is trying to replicate Israel’s battle against desertification at home albeit without much success.) Although this kibbutz was only twenty years old, they had achieved so much most notably a gracefully towering arts and crafts center that just opened a few years ago (even the president of Israel had paid a visit to this arts center and praised it).
I was incredibly tired as i had spent the last two nights on the airplane and then on the bus, and I was free to roam by myself on my first day and just observe the various works going on in the kibbutz. My roommate turned out to be a Jewish guy from Uruguay who did not like claiming his Jewish identity (it doesn't mean he was uncomfortable with his Jewishness- he just didn't like labels- "I’m Jewish for politicians sake" he would say- and he also had healthy disrespect for the government-established holidays). Matillas was also an incredible musician and composer, and we had great time together.
As my work started the next day, I began to form an interesting relationship with work. I had not worked since I left the Mother Teresa House in India about three months ago, and my initial reaction to hard manual labor was close to repulsion. Our work would start at 6am, and we worked till 8am breakfast, and then again from 9am-1pm till lunch and in the afternoon from 2-5pm. (For the residents, the hours would be longer as there are a lot of meetings that the residents of the kibbutz have to attend as all kibbutz decisions are made unanimously- it's a very full time job living in a kibbutz) The hours felt long and for the first few days, it was the company of others that kept me going. Fortunately, there were five nineteen year old guys (two girls from Germany, three guy from the US, the UK, and Israel) whom I could hang out with. There were also other volunteers I could talk to and most residents were gregarious and spoke very good English. There were about 200 people in the kibbutz- around 100 residents, 60 kids and 40 volunteers- although sometimes the line between residents and volunteers was not very clear (if you had been there for over 3 months, should you count as a volunteer or a resident?)
When volunteers first arrive at a kibbutz, they rotate work for the first couple of days and i did everything from picking nectarines, sorting them sout (it felt interesting to be part of a chain of the huge capitalist economic system as the goods from Neot Samader were sold in organic markets all across Israel and Europe), cleaning the wine machines, putting stickers on the organic yogurt bottles and expiration dates on apricot sweets, cutting garlic and putting them in bundles, cutting pumpkin and other vegetables for 200 people, cleaning metal works (I polished a tiny bronze thing with sandpaper for two hours which was a little frustrating), and doing dishes at the restaurant (again sometimes for 2 hours straight- but I wouldn’t complain as I got free date ice cream and cake at the restaurant.)
One of the guys said all the work is meditative, but for me, it was more mind-numbing. I knew human mind is an amazing machine and we can train our attitudes (St. Paul taught to be content regardless of the condition one is in, and Buddha spent his lifetime refining his attitude to reach peace and equanimity) but is it really possible to be content doing the same manual work over and over again? I was only there for little over two weeks but what about the guys who had been there for twenty years since the beginning- these people were educated intelligent people too and some of them seemed to genuinely enjoy manual work. For me, i saw myself as a Greek guy who has to push something up a hill every day but fortunately there weren’t anybody undoing my work.
Nevertheless, around the third day, I began to grow more fond of the work. Perhaps doing more outdoorsy work helped- as I felt really cool climbing date trees that were about 10 meters high (they are palm trees and you can easily step on their bark) and work on date trees (trimming fruits & sawing off branches to use in building huts). It was certainly a lot more adrenaline and it made me feel pretty virile. I no longer wanted my i-pod during work (they didn’t let me have my best friend during my work anyways), and began to enjoy labor for its own sake. But soon this state turned into cycles of enjoying and not enjoying work, and i guess training one's mind is not easy…) I was also reminded of the Marxian critic of capitalism that in today's society with so much specialization, we no longer feel whole as a human being as our work is no longer whole- we are only cogs in a giant machine of production and we often work in isolation. But my work at kibbutz felt wholesome as I rotated every work, particpated in every step of production, and almost always worked socially with others in equal footing.
There are some jobs that were inaccessible to me because of the language barrier. I'd love to have spent some time at the kids center (school) but couldn’t because i don't speak Hebrew, and i think being a waiter would also have been fun too but i needed to be able to speak Hebrew in order to be a waiter. I also wanted to spend some time milking the goats but never got around to doing that. And as all the meetings were conducted in Hebrew, i definitely felt like an outsider as i had no idea what was going on in everyday lunch meetings.
Outside of work, most socializing was done outside in front of the dining hall.
Meals were eaten in silence- although I was never directly told why, I think they want you to figure out why for yourself. (Some said the idea was being one with the food you're consuming and be more in tune with your tastebuds etc- very hippie yes :)- or it’s just more relaxing to eat in silence as everyday work is so arduous. Initially it was awkward as i didn't know where to look while eating- and meals felt really depressing as meals are usually social times in most of the world- but i quickly grew accustomed to the tradition and as the vegetarian food was superb, fresh and healthy, (i espeically enjoyed the fresh goat cheese every morning)- i don’t complain.
Every Friday night before the Shabbat dinner (it wasn’t religious but Shabbat was still a big deal and it was the only meal in which socializing and wine were allowed) - btw, I really wanted to be in Israel during Purim festival- apparently God commanded Jews to drink till they drop during this festival.. :). Before Shabbat, there was a huge dance ceremony in which everyone dressed in white and danced free style to new age trance music. Any adult could partake in the ceremony, and the dance consisted of lot of turning, whirling and dancing in circles. Despite my sprained ankle, I had fun limp-dancing on my last Friday (the first Friday I just watched).
I hurt my foot playing soccer and i was on crutches for the first time in my life. Not being able to run and play sports was a little frustrating (now I understand how the injured athletes feel so it was a good lesson in sympathy), but I found creative ways around it such as going for an awesome long bike ride over a desert mountain.
I should also mention going out with my room mate Matillas & some other friends as one of the most memorable- I don’t remember what we did but it was great time. There was a huge jam session and then we walked around at night looking at the stars and making animal noises in search of camp fire that we never found, and Matillas with his genius musical talents made amazing percussion music on discarded cans and various things.
Will this kibbutz still be around in the years to come? Many kibbutz are dying out or becoming privatized- and I heard this ones was also not doing terribly great economically- but there didn't seem to be much social tension that plagues some kibbutz, and there was a large group of a new generation of kibbutz kids who grew up there all their life and were about to go out into the real world- some to the army, some to the university etc- (and they were preparing a puppet play as sort of a 'farewell gift' to the community:) I’d love to visit again and be part of the evolution of this wonderful community.
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