Credit Crunch?

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Right, following the boring reality check blog of 2 weeks ago, this is my high horse blog. You’ll soon all be praying for some stories of beaches and dhow captains…

Even here in Kenya it is hard to escape the news from the West. Even if the internet and satellite news channels weren’t full of stories of economic turndowns, $700billion bailouts and general tales of record unemployment and repossessions then you guys have been keeping me up to date on the demise of the decadent West. You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little uninterested in it all - after all, I’m pretty far away and I keep being reminded of what a “smart decision” I made by “opting out” for 2 years and becoming a volunteer. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression I have from many people is that thanks to some canny foresight and a bit of luck, I am wintering out one of the worst periods in UK history on a beach in East Africa with a pina colada in hand and a sexy Masai waiter fanning me with a palm frond on the other side. There may even be some baby giraffes frolicking around in the background, I’m not sure how far the imagination runs during a recession.

It is true that it’s unlikely that the credit crunch will affect Africa in the same way it is affecting the West. After all no one here has any credit to speak of. No one’s home will be repossessed, credit cards cut up and no one will force them to sell one of their Jags this spring. On the other hand, a quarter of Kenyans are facing famine, mostly due to corruption of their government. Many others are narrowly avoiding it by engaging in risky behaviour to earn just enough money to feed their families. Rising food prices mean that basic necessities are beyond the reach of a huge percentage of the population and families are eating less and less and having to rely on handouts to survive.

For example, let’s look at your average teenage girl in the Coast province, where I live. She probably lives in a pretty rural community with her family, maybe the dad is there, maybe not. Whether he is there or not, it is her mother who organizes the family, who keeps the home, who works on the land, who collects the water, who disciplines, loves and instructs the children. The father, however, owns their small piece of land and makes every decision that affects the family. He spends a lot of his day out; not working but probably chewing miraa (a leaf that has mild stimulant properties when chewed) or drinking mnazi (coconut home brew) with his marafiki (friends) all day. The girl may have attended primary school for a few years but then her brothers got older and the family couldn’t afford uniforms and matatu fare for all of them so she stayed at home to help her mother with the chores. Elsewhere in their village, another family have just built a large house and installed electricity and running water. Her mother tells the girl that she needs to help her family in the same way that the daughter of this other family helped them. This other girl has a nice life - new clothes, new hair-do and can really provide for her family. When our average girls looks closer, she finds that the girl is spending all her time at the tourist hang-outs, making friends with the wazungu who give her money for her “time”. To make her mother happy, she starts to do the same. She hasn’t been to school and her parents never discussed sex with her, so when the tourists don’t mention condoms, she doesn’t know anything is wrong. When there are fewer tourists, she and the other girls have to compete fiercely to make ay money. Some girls charge as little as 100 bob (just less than a pound) a “shot”, although its well known that at the right time of the season, a smart girl can make as much as 10,000 bob a shot; admittedly they say that they’d do “anything” for that. With fewer tourists and less money floating about, even the girls who are educated about protecting themselves have to relax their rules: they turn to local customers more regularly and cannot afford to insist on condom use with either clientele. Within a few years, our average girl will most likely end up HIV+ with a few kids and a substance misuse problem that provides her with a few minutes of escape every day or so. Her family most likely won’t be any better off -in fact they will likely disown her and she will have a problem feeding her children. They may end up being exploited themselves.

But not everything here is about prostitution, although it may seem like I’m obsessed with sex! In and around Mombasa (and the whole country in fact), there are thousands of little Nissan mini-buses, known locally as matatus. Every morning and evening we all cram in them and are driven between work and home by a driver (often chewing miraa) and his faithful assistant, the conductor or tout, depending on where you are (pretty definitely chewing miraa). The driver has a tricky job: navigating the pot holes, pedestrians, traffic jams and avoiding the police is not easy, but the tout has a much harder one. He solicits customers (“‘Twapa! ‘Twapa! We! Dada! ‘Twapa thelassini!”), collects money, does all the petrol filling, tyre pumping, runs ahead sometimes to check for police when we’re taking a dodgy route and frequently gets beaten up by customers who are unwilling to may 30 bob for what they consider to be a 25 bob fare. He does a lot of this work with the matatu door open, standing on the edge of the bus and hanging out the door, whilst the driver continues to navigate a 4 matatu thick jam. I was always amazed that there weren’t more accidents or injuries among these guys - they’re not paid much so they often work 12+ hour shifts (hence the miraa) to make ends meet. Then the other day I saw the reality. Sitting in a matatu on the way to work in a slow moving jam a tout ran up to our matatu and started talking frantically with our tout. They both ran off up the road and when we approached they were trying to lift another tout (they wear a red uniform so it’s easy to tell who they are) up off the ground. His leg was broken below his knee and was snapped forward at a 90 degree angle. He was kind of sitting up, supporting himself on his elbows and although he was quiet, his face was a kind of ashy colour. I can’t even begin to imagine how much pain he must have been in. I guess he must have slipped out of the matatu and under it as it was moving and he was touting for customers. The guys debated how to get him in to our matatu and they seemed to come to the decision that they couldn’t and so they both jumped in and left him there, alone. To avoid the rest of the jam the driver took a right and tried a diversion through a local rubbish dump. We got half way through before he decided that there were too many small fires to be navigated and so he reversed and turn back to the main road. Ten minutes on and the guy was still lying alone in the same position on the side of the road. Many vehicles were passing, but none even glanced down at him. Many of them were large white 4x4s with NGO or church logos on them. The main government hospital is only a 10 minute drive from where he was lying, even with the jam, but the cost of visiting may be more than he could afford and it seems that no one else wanted to take the responsibility of delivering him to somewhere he could be treated. When I returned home that evening he was no longer there, I hope he was taken to someone who could help him.

By the way, sad as these two stories may be, at least these 2 have jobs. They may not be safe or well paying but they generate some small income and they can afford to feed themselves. Every morning on the 20 minute walk from my matatu stop to my office I pass around 10 beggars, some of who are regular and some who change every day. The regular ones tend to be lying in the road, they have limbs missing and they greet me and ask for a little money for food. I feel awful about passing them, but I cannot afford to feed each of them every day and I don’t want to let them expect something of me. The others are street children who are fully mobile and who will follow you down the road for as long as it takes for you to give in, them to get chased away by some pitying soul or for them to see another mzungu who looks a bit more of a soft touch. I don’t have many maternal sentiments but I don’t think anyone likes to hear a kid tell them how hungry they are and how they haven’t eaten for many days. The problem is that these beggars work in gangs - the bigger kids running the smaller kids. So even if I give some money or food to one of the smaller ones, who is probably genuinely hungry, it will be taken off him by one of the older ones or their parents, who will then send them out again looking for another sucker.

So once again, you’ll have to forgive me if my sympathy for former bankers having to buy Tesco value orange juice rather than the freshly squeezed stuff is limited or if I seem to glaze-over when you start to tell me how depressing things are at home. I doubt many people have been forced to take their children out of school and pimp them to tourists, or that many young guys are taking cocaine to work as conductors on metropolitan bus routes and risking life and limb by hanging out of the door on 16 hour shifts (although, now I write that…hmm). The majority of people here have it much worse, for centuries have had it much worse and will continue to have it much worse than anything most of us in the West could even begin to dream of. And somehow the small losses that we are on average experiencing in the West make such big new stories compared to the every day levels of shocking poverty that is experienced on this continent.

I’m by no means implying that everyone should feel guilty about the situation over here. The way things are is a result of many complex factors interacting over many centuries and resulting in the state of the world as we see it today. In the same way, the solution to “fixing” the problems will not be simple, straightforward or speedy - it will take decades (at least) and many differing factors coming together at the same time for even small improvements to occur. It would be nice to be able to pinpoint the blame for all this somewhere (Vasco da Gama, George Bush or Bono, anyone?) but it wouldn’t be fair or true. No one can request where or the situation into which they are born and we all have to do our best with what we are given. All I ask is that we try and keep a little perspective on how bad (or “depressing”) our lives really are, because maybe they’re not so bad in the grand scheme of things.

Right. Rant over. Next time I will talk about the various amazing tropical parties I have been to, large white 4x4s belonging to NGOs that I have driven in and how many amazing pina coladas I have drunk. Promise!

For some more information on how the global economic downturn is affecting Africa check out the following new stories:

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/-/1070/543842/-/72lk91/-/index.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2009/03/20093108392738860.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7938081.stm

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Comments

[Mike]

Well said Emma, I fully agree some perspective is needed in the West. BTW, i think a few Bankers should be drinking their Tesco OJ on the inside of a prison sell. Oh ya, leave Bono alone!!!!!

[anonymous]

Reality check
Thank you Emma for the discussing the other side of tourism...the reality for people that live every day in what some tourists would consider "hell" even as they experience "heaven" in these exotic locations.