A Brief Intermission

At the risk of disrupting narrative flow, I'd like to call attention to a pair of powerhouse retrospectives featured in the Sunday NY Times.

• The first is a look back at Michaelangelo Antonioni's career, and L'Avventura in particular, through the eyes of Martin Scorsese.
• In the second, Woody Allen gives a personal account of his encounters with Ingmar Bergman in true, but sincere, Woody style. He reveals Bergman to be somewhat more down-to-earth, and funnier, than one might imagine.

If you've already sat through my sentimental reminiscing, you should do yourself a favor and take it from two guys who know what they're talking about.

Further recommendations on the subject: Scorsese made a documentary a few years back called My Voyage to Italy. It's about his own personal experience with Italian film, both classic and obscure. The scope of his knowledge is borderline obsessive, and his attention to detail is well beyond that border. To hear the man talk about film, though, is absolutely riveting, and his enthusiasm is contagious.

That Man Ombima (Pt. 1)

There’s really no convenient place to start, so I’ll just start in the middle.

I brought Ombima his first computer last week. Ombima is the manager of the FSA in Luanda, a little market village about 15 km north of the equator. We like to joke that he’s also the clerk, cashier, loans officer, and security guard. You see, the previous Luanda manager was involved in an auto accident while carrying the monthly excess cash from the FSA vault to the more secure link bank in town. This was in January. The bank’s cashier was also involved in the accident, leaving the loans officer the sole remaining employee.

That’s where Ombima comes in. The FSA’s board of directors – a group of various community members, most of them retired teachers and headmistresses, who make key decisions for the bank regarding staffing, loan disbursement, etc. – hired Ombima in February to assist the loans officer in her daily operations. He was originally hired as a cashier but, as luck would have it, the loans officer proceeded to take a maternity leave a few months ago, thrusting the yet-untested Ombima into the captain’s chair. If that wasn’t enough, his own wife is now currently 6 months pregnant with their first child.



I found him in these dire straits during my initial round of visits to the FSAs back in June. The Africa Now vehicle dropped me off at Luanda en route to its primary destination that day in a neighboring community. Prior to this, I’d been vaguely warned by Anthony, the programme manager, that Luanda was the most troubled of the FSAs, based on the monthly financial statistics received (or not received, as was the case with Luanda). This information was not elaborated upon and no other news was forthcoming. I'd have to see for myself.

Ombima greeted me warmly upon my arrival, his grinning face framed by a nappy goatee, his voice low, bouncing and gravelly. He was more than happy to tell me about his FSA; he seemed genuinely proud of what was happening there and gave no hint of any troubles at the bank.

Looking back on it, I suppose it struck me a bit odd that he was working all by himself. But this was my first month in Africa, after all. Surely, things were different here. Allowances had to be made, and I wasn’t about to let my preconceived notions of what a bank is “supposed to be like” interfere with what I encountered here on the ground.

And my initial suspicions were put to rest as Ombima proved himself to be more than competent in his role. An accountant by training, his tireless work ethic and unfailing optimism came off as almost naïve at first. Didn’t he realize that he was working at the weakest link in the FSA chain? Yet he kept talking about the steady progress he was making, going so far as to predict that Luanda would be turning a small profit this month.

His plans were modest, informed by his accounting background, but it was their sheer simplicity that won me over and convinced me that the bank was finally in the proper hands. Forget hello, Ombima had me at “initiate a monthly expense budgeting plan”.

He was currently in the process of updating records (by hand) that hadn’t been properly kept for over a year, and he had started to keep track of all the FSA’s expenses, a novel concept for Luanda. This was all standard operating procedure for an accountant like Ombima, almost second-nature - in short, nothing earth-shattering. The biggest obstacle on Luanda’s long road to resuming anything close to normality?

“I think we will really start to see a change once we get electricity.”

Come again?

“You see, it’s difficult when I have to stay late to update the books. I can’t work as late as I’d like, it gets too dark.”

No, no, I understand why not having electricity would make things difficult…. But you’re a bank. A bank without power. Without lighting. A bank in Africa, practically on the equator, without an electric fan.

“Yeah, but we’re only waiting for the transformer to come from Nairobi.”

Oh, well that’s a relief. How long has it been?

“Now, it’s been about 8 months.”

Oh. And so the plot thickens, the pages of the Development 101 textbook come to life, and the secret word of the day is: “Infrastructure”. Our hero realizes the limitations of his usefulness in the face of bureaucratic incompetence and learns the true meaning of “African time”. What will become of the stalwart accountant and his newfound sidekick, the Sunburned Skeptic?

Be with us next time for:

“You Can Account on Me”

OR

“Banks for Nothing!”

The Origins of Affluence

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at UC Davis, has a doozy of a theory about the roots of the Industrial Revolution and, by extension, the increasing disparity in the wealth of nations.

Prior to the 19th century, all advances in food production efficiency had been offset by the resultant growth in population, which absorbed the increased capacity. This is the basic idea behind the Malthusian poverty trap.

Dr. Clark's thesis, to be published next month in a book titled "A Farewell to Alms", posits that it was not a change in the institutional settings, as has been traditionally taught, but rather a change in attitudes which set the stage for the Industrial Revolution. Clark sees the spread of what are nowadays considered middle-class values - namely, a strong work ethic, a penchant for saving, literacy, and non-violence - from England's wealthy classes into the lower ranks of society as the principle reason for England's unprecedented wealth accumulation.

The book seems set to cause quite a stir, and I can already see the oncoming tidal wave of academic backlash in the near future. Very Jared Diamond-esque. It does appear to raise some intriguing points, though, as evidenced by the NY Times review:

"Many commentators point to a failure of political and social institutions as the reason that poor countries remain poor. But the proposed medicine of institutional reform “has failed repeatedly to cure the patient,” Dr. Clark writes. He likens the “cult centers” of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to prescientific physicians who prescribed bloodletting for ailments they did not understand."

Love and Death

As I sit here writing this, the rain pounding sonorously off the corrugated steel roof outside my office, a pensive mood overtakes me. The office is emptying out for the day and a serene quiet is replacing the droning din of workday bustle, a quiet which somehow endures, in bold defiance of the deafening raindrops. It's been a while since I've written about Kenya, either privately or for public blogging consumption, but that will have to wait just a little while more.

This post comes with a warning to the faint of heart and anyone with an aversion to artsy-fartsiness. It's only hope for redemption is that it's sincerity might be recognized.

This morning I woke to the news of Ingmar Bergman's death. I was informed by the CNN ticker chugging its way across the bottom of the screen, drifting over my bowl of banana-laced Wheat Flakes and breaking into my sleep-clouded consciousness. I've just now learned that Michaelangelo Antonioni has passed away as well. That's two giants of film in one day. I'm still holding my breath. These things have a way of coming in threes.

Upon hearing this new, I was filled with that dull sensation of loss you experience when somebody famous passes on at a ripe old age; I didn't know either of these men personally, after all, and they weren't the least bit aware of my existence. Nor are their deaths particularly tragic. They may have played their chess matches more skillfully than most, but in the end Death will have us all in check-mate.

Yet for me, and undoubtedly I'm not alone in this, the news resonates on a deeper chord. If you've lived life to a sufficient degree of fullness and depth, you have encountered a few artists who may have shared a piece of themselves with you, created something that has connected with you more intimately than anything you've experienced in your everyday waking life.

Now, I won't think any less of you if you've never seen a Swedish film in your life, and maybe you could care less about some old Italian guy you've never heard of. Come to think of it, I hope you don't disown me after reading this. But for me, movies (or film, or cinema, or what have you) have greatly influenced my life and shaped the way I see the world. It's difficult to make it through adolescence unscathed when your best friends in 8th grade are Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. And that might be why I find significance in these deaths.

For a while there, living through movies was better than reality. It was an escape from the world I walked through each day, which to me was a mundane, flat, and generally uninteresting existence. At the same time, a serious, oftentimes foreign film could open my eyes to the beauty of even the simplest, most commonplace aspects of life.

Curiously, here in Kenya I've rediscovered an appreciation for movies as a means of escape - there's arguably a greater psychological need for escape here than there ever was in upstate New York. There are two cinemas in town that play second-run summer popcorn flicks for around $3 a pop, and I don't think I've ever gotten so much enjoyment out of these dumb, flashy movies as I have here. Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shooter, Ocean's 13 - I'll watch them all, and with an uncritical eye. Criticism is superfluous and finding fault is completely besides the point, something I've only come to understand during my time in Kisumu.

Late night TV is blissful - after 12:30, there's a channel that plays Turner Classic Movies straight through till dawn. A lot of atmospheric '70s horror and sci-fi (like Coma and Poltergeist). The other night Antonioni's Zabriskie Point was on, and I stayed up, riveted, until 3:30am, then caught a few hours of sleep before getting up for work at 6:30. The film is a super dated hippie movie advocating free love, bad acting, and The Revolution, with a soundtrack featuring Pink Floyd and the Dead. I found myself mesmerized, though, like I was watching it for the first time. The last time I can remember getting so sucked into a movie late at night on TV was watching Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D when I was around fifteen, and falling asleep on the couch as the sun was rising.

Both Bergman and Antonioni lived long, full lives (they were 89 and 94, respectively), and their deaths shouldn't be mourned so much as their lives and careers should be celebrated. I won't bore you with obscure film trivia, but you've probably been affected by their work more than you think, if only indirectly. There's no way a Woody Allen movie, especially his earlier ones, would be the same if it wasn't for Bergman's influence. Love and Death is virtually unimaginable without the dour Swede (or Dostoevsky, for that matter, but that's another obituary). And, together with James Bond, Antonioni's portrayal of a fashion photographer in 1966's Blow Up, set in Swinging London, is basically the prototype for Austin Powers.

Sure, these guys are almost too easy to spoof. In exploring the dimensions of tragedy, strangeness, and absurdity in life, both Bergman and Antonioni took the craft of film-making to unprecedented realms, and I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed to understand the intention or purpose of their every shot. But the beauty of film is its open-endedness: an objective, unalterable image permanently committed to celluloid, which can yet be interpreted and understood differently by everyone who watches it. It's no less appropriate to laugh than to cry, and often your reaction depends on your own individual mood and circumstances, adding a wholly unpredictable element to the movie-going experience.

So, in closing, that's just a hint of what film means to me. Reflecting on the lives of the these two greats allows me to gain perspective on my own life. I'm not devastated by their passing, so much as I am mindful of my own influences and the roots of my creative aspirations. I promise to get back to Kenya the next time I write, which with any luck (and motivation) will be sooner rather than later.

Hold on, World

Yeah I'm still alive and I'll be serving up some delicious posts in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, this should sate your appetite for wicked stuff from Kenya.

Telling stories

The other night I’m hanging around with some guys from the neighborhood outside my friend Bob’s barber shop, which is really just a wooden shack on the side of the road in front of Bob’s uncle’s house. His uncle’s name is Jibs. Jibs is sitting with us, too. We’re passing time before I head into town with Bob and Moses, another friend, to catch the Primera Liga title match between Real Madrid-Real Mallorca, the night’s main attraction. Unfortunately, I’m the only Madrid supporter present in a haven of Barca fans – Ronaldinho’s big ugly mug is watching over us from inside the shack – so it promises to be a long night, regardless of the outcome of the games.

Moses tells me this is what they normally do in the evenings, just sit around and shoot the bull. Only he says it in a way that is just so much cooler than I could ever hope to describe it.

“Yeah, after work I usually come over here to find my friends. Then we just relax, sit around and tell stories.”

Telling stories. The casual way he says it is almost poetic, which is fitting because Moses fancies himself a poet. And the storytelling itself has an illusive, poetic quality to my ears, since it’s mostly conducted in Luo, the local language around these parts. This fact also ensures that I don’t contribute much to the conversation, but nobody here seem to mind.

The radio’s on and tuned to a Nairobi station, Classic 105, which plays these amazing blocks of early ‘90s hip-hop and pop songs in the afternoon, like “I Wish” by Skee-Lo and “Everybody, Everybody” by Black Box (a Jock Jams classic, you’ve definitely heard it). At night though, “Classic 105 Loooooves the ‘80s!”, or so the DJ insistently tells us between songs. Right now it’s MJ, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, and the crowd goes wild.

“MJ is the greatest, absolutely!” Bob exclaims fawningly, which puts me off a bit because Bob is this fairly jacked guy with a deep voice and typically reserved emotions. “Oh yeah, he’s sooo, so good,” Moses echoes. “Mike, do you like MJ?” I respond strongly in the affirmative. Come on, personal issues aside, who doesn’t love MJ?

In addition to being a poet, Moses is something of a rapper as well. He’s got a rap crew going with a few of his boys and they call themselves Watchtowers. I tell him I like that name. Moses also tells me he’s a fan of Nas, Common, and Erykah Badu (“I love the neo-soul,” he says). Moses is down with neo-soul. I’m down with Moses.

A guy on my left who I don’t know breaks out into a rhyme, spitting ill about blunts and ‘40s, which strikes me as strange considering I’ve seen neither during my time in Kenya. In fairness, though, I have seen a plethora of 50 Cent t-shirts around and there’s a matatu bus in town named “Biggie Smallz” (which is ironically plastered with Tupac decals). I’m considering writing a thesis entitled “Fear of a Black Planet: The Contributions of American Hip-Hop and the Thug Life Ethos towards the Perpetuation of the Neo-colonial Paradigm within an Urban African Context”. But I digress.

Bob goes inside to get a sweater before we leave for town (it’s dropped to 18°C - the winter temperatures here really bother the locals). I’m left sitting with Moses, Bob’s Uncle Jibs, and a few other guys. Jibs starts in on a rant about politics, not for the first time judging from the expressionless looks on the guys’ faces. They listen, nodding politely but not really showing any interest. The thing that hooks me, though, is that Jibs starts talking about the Millenium Development Goals as a matter of local politics. In case you don’t stay up on your “UN promises that have little-to-no chance of being achieved but allow world leaders to save face by smiling and slapping each other on the back after they sign the useless compact”, the MDGs can be found here.

There was originally some hope for the Goals, despite the UN’s poor track record, because they established a set somewhat realistic, almost measurable benchmarks that were to be met along the route to the ultimate eradication of extreme poverty (defined as living under $1.08 US per day – roughly the bare minimum for survival), along with specific measures to be used for their implementation.

Back to our story, Kisumu’s been tipped to be among the first batch of the UN’s “Millenium Cities”, a distinction that I hadn’t heard too much noise about locally – that is, until I started paying closer attention. (registration required, but it’s free)

The city still has a few hurdles yet to clear before the official title is confirmed, but Kisumu is extremely well-positioned to be a hub of East African trade and travel. It’s right on Lake Victoria, a location that is ridiculously central to all East Africa destinations, as well as a potential tourism boon that’s criminally under-utilised. The prime lakefront property in town is used as a carwash, with a bunch of fish “restaurants” (again, wooden shacks) where street boys wait next to your table while you eat, eager to shovel the rotting fish remains you’ve left on your plate into a plastic bag to be saved for later.

So Jibs is talking idly about these matters of local politics, which happen to coincide with international development objectives, but he’s spurred on because tonight someone’s actually responding to his allegations of government corruption and his oft-ignored prescriptions for change. His case is helped by the fact that he’s chosen this part of his evening to speak in English.

We talk about the much-touted success of Kenya’s free universal primary education, which has a few catches – class sizes are too large, teachers are poorly equipped. I say this is a step in the right direction, but Jibs thinks the politicians see it as a fait-accompli, since they’ve already included free secondary education in next year’s just-announced budget - before the kinks are worked out of the primary school deal. This is true, and there’s no obvious solution to the dilemma, yet there is another positive piece to this puzzle.

For the first time ever, Kenya has left out entirely all promised foreign aid from its budget-funding proposal. That means that the Kenyan government is setting itself up to pay for all of its ambitious development projects completely internally, through tax dollars and expected proceeds from privatization of parastatals. It means that the national deficit will grow as the state stretches its domestic borrowing to the limits, but it's also seen as a huge step towards self-sustained economic growth. The IMF and World Bank are no doubt enamored with the plan, and it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Bob comes back out after a while and we make our way into town to catch the kickoff at 10:00pm. Before leaving, Jibs takes me aside and earnestly tells me that he hopes we can talk again. He seems surprised that I'd taken such an interest in local issues, that I know the names of politicians, including Kenya's Finance Minister (Amos Kimunya, boo-ya!), and I assure him that the conversation wouldn't end there. I look forward to more evenings of relaxation and storytelling, I tell him. It's the truth.

It would seem that a bit of the old man has rubbed off on me and I’ve abused your poor blog-weary eyes for too long. You know it’s time to sign off when you’ve descended from MJ to the MDGs in a single post. Talk about going from Bad to worse. Ouch. I’ll be going now.

There's a shack in the back

About a week ago I moved into a glorified shack behind my office building, after a few weeks of doing the guest-house hop. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. Some perks of living at the office:

1) I don’t pay rent. This is important if you’re working as slave labour to begin with. (Yeah, I know. Africa. Slavery. Irony. Poetic justice. Too soon? Most definitely.)

2) I can roll out of bed at 7:58am and be dressed and in the office by 8:00am. If you’re at all familiar with my ongoing struggle against the evil forces of punctuality, you understand how crucial this one is.

3) I have access to free TV and internet, 24/7. It’s like staying at the Hilton (sadly, no pool or room service). More on the joys of Kenyan television later…

4) There’s a kitchen with a fridge, a tank of gas for cooking, and (sometimes) running water, so every day’s a campout! Which is great, as long as you ignore the giant roaches in your muffins and the ants (everywhere!) I’m in the process of making little ant-size chef’s hats to help make things feel more natural. And please, if you care about hungry people in Africa…I haven’t eaten anything but egg and cheese sandwiches all week…I’d do anything for a delicious steak. Nothing fancy, T-bone maybe, medium-rare. The address here is: Africa Now, P.O. Box 2514 Kisumu, Kenya.

5) My own personal around-the-clock security guard. The Queen herself doesn’t have it this good…

So life here is good, nothing really to complain about. My living situation is ideal, my work is engaging, and the greatest thing about being on another continent is that all the stresses of my daily life back home just seem to fade away. Life becomes simpler, it’s easier to focus on doing things that make me happy, relaxed, free. I feel like I’ve been on holiday for the past month, which is nice considering that I have been on holiday for the past month. It may be winter in the southern hemisphere, but this is still my summer, after all.

My weekends are spent hand-washing clothes, wandering around town, lounging in cafés and reading. I usually pick up a newspaper on the way to the Grill House, where I get a pot of coffee, eggs, sausage, toast, the works, all for the equivalent of around $3 US. Sometimes I bring a book along and read for a few hours. So far I’ve ripped through Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty (inspiring and well worth the read, if you can get past the cringe-inducing title), and Civilwarland in Bad Decline, a collection of wicked short stories by George Saunders.

On Sundays I wander over to the Kibuya market, where I get my fruit for the week (I’ve also haggled for some pretty boss football jerseys). On my way back home I might pick up a cold Tusker (the local brew) at the Nakumatt in town, East Africa’s answer to Walmart, and then settle in to watch some football, of which there is no shortage on Kenyan television.

I’m realizing as I write this that my life here is pretty brilliant. I’ll get on with describing my leisure-time activities at a later date. For now, though, my bed beckons and I’m in no mood to refuse that siren’s wail. Until the next, we bid you goodnight.