From dusty and rainy Albion, these descendants are drawn to the fresh air of the African jungle, hoping to find there traces of ancient civilizations, nature life, wild tribes. From Nairobi, where vacationers who have escaped their stuffy offices gather before the start of the expedition, they set off by bus to Tanzania, to the mountains, then by yacht to Zanzibar. I, however, was to "hang around" in Nairobi for a whole week. And no mountains, only suffocating smog and the exhaust fumes of low-grade petrol. But there, in the capital of Kenya, one could see in full glory the fruits of the colonization of East Africa by the ancestors of those very Englishmen.
The second impression after I discovered that Kenya is a center of attraction for British tourists was a black woman walking barefoot down the airplane aisle. At the same time she was wearing a quite decent suit. That Kenyans are extremely close to nature, I was yet to see for myself. The road from the airport to the city center takes no more than half an hour even in the heaviest traffic. Absorbing the optimistic rhythms of Africa coming from the radio, I notice that around is a natural prairie. "And there are giraffes," the driver announced without a shadow of emotion, plunging me into reverent shock. The giraffes stood a little way off the road, and there was no fence at all around. Against their background, the skyscrapers of international corporations firmly established in Nairobi rose surrealistically. "There are lions too," the driver informed me. Five minutes later we drove into the city.
On the flat-topped African trees hanging over the road sat giant birds resembling pterodactyls. They turned out to be ordinary marabou storks, giant local "crows" that feed on garbage in dumps. Chimpanzees stroll down the streets in pairs, sometimes in whole families. A visit to Nairobi, as it seemed, did not promise me an encounter with compatriots. However, as it turned out later, my assumptions did not come true.
Our diplomats have one constant tendency: to frighten newcomers with stories about the cruel mores and habits of the natives, who rob, rape and kill any white person the moment he steps out of a car. It must be said that there are grounds for this: in any unfamiliar place, some kind of trouble can happen to a person. Therefore it is much better if he does not poke his nose where he shouldn't. Moreover, from my own experience I can say that the "scary stories" are not always groundless. For example, in Rio de Janeiro, the warning not to go to Copacabana late in the evening was made very timely. Had I listened to it, I would never have been subjected to an armed robbery Brazilian-style.
In Nairobi, if you believe the Internet and numerous publications on this topic, it is restless in terms of crime. "Nairobi is the crime capital of Africa" or "Protest ended with the rape of hundreds of women" – such headlines can be found by clicking on "Nairobi" in a search engine. During my stay there, a special police unit was just created to guard the diplomatic corps. Prior to that, a Zimbabwean diplomat fell victim to robbers, and the wife of the Peruvian ambassador was attacked.
Slums are not visible in Nairobi. Mirror skyscrapers reflect only concrete skyscrapers, and the luxurious villas of corporate management and diplomats, immersed in the rich Kenyan flora, create the impression of a paradise on the equator in the southeastern part of the African continent. To get an impression of real poverty, one must go to Kibera. It is the second largest slum on the entire African continent.
"The path for a white man is forbidden there – they will kill you with particular cruelty," explained the local Russians, adding for color that a rape occurs in Nairobi every half hour. It is easy to believe this – the slums look terrifying, and it does not seem that their inhabitants have any concept of moral values. At that time I did not yet know that a day later I would find myself in the middle of Kibera, in that very epicenter of disease, crime and poverty.
All of enlightened Europe knows that in Africa almost everyone is sick with AIDS. Hundreds of conferences "in favor of the poor" are held annually by thousands of international organizations. Many such events also take place at the UN residence in Nairobi, which is located just a few kilometers from Kibera. At the same time, the huge UN compound of Gigiri is lost on dozens of hectares of green lawns, while in Kibera, on a few square kilometers, by the most conservative estimates, about a million people are crowded, a third of the population of the Kenyan capital. They sleep sprawled out in doghouses that they proudly call homes, eat once a day – if they are lucky – and die of AIDS and infections every single day.
I got to Kibera thanks to kind people from "Kikochep" – a small clinic helping AIDS patients in the slums. In Gigiri they were selling rag elephants and giraffes made by children whose parents are sick. The elephants had very small ears, and the giraffes for some reason had no vegetation on their heads at all. This detail interested me, and Philet – the girl from the clinic who was selling the handicrafts – suggested I find out the reason myself directly from the authors of the toys, in Kibera.
The trip to Kibera with a slum native in itself turned out to be a rather risky affair. Over the few kilometers that we covered in a barely breathing and packed-to-the-gills "barbukhaika", there were several collisions. Moreover, none of the foreign cars that suffered from the clumsy driver expressed any complaints.
Kibera, like any illegal settlement, proved to be an area completely cut off from utilities. There is no electricity, no roads, no sewerage. These are tiny shacks knocked together from pieces of slate, iron, and plywood. Moreover, it is a parody of a civilized metropolis: on one shack is scrawled "Hotel", on another – "Boutique", on a third – "Baptist Church". One could go on describing the poverty, dirt, and tears of this God-forsaken place endlessly, at the risk of getting carried away with a selection of epithets – this place, too, has its own dark poetry. But I do not know how to describe the fates of the people living there. They are not customarily regarded as people. Children there are often thrown out onto the garbage heap. Sometimes they are found and taken in by equally poor slum dwellers.
I walked among them, overcoming fear and the shame at my fear – a shame that was even greater than the fear. Clouds were gathering overhead, and the residents of the gloomy shacks came out onto the muddy lanes with cane umbrellas – a local mark of chic. It is said that a few years ago the French offered the local government 30 million euros to demolish the slums and build decent houses in their place. The local authorities demanded 30 percent of the sum for themselves personally. The French refused. In Kibera, everything remains the same.
My guide Frederick has lived in Kibera all his life. As it turned out, 26 years, although he looks no more than 17 – children here are undernourished. He did not say a single bad word about Kibera. It is his home. "Life here is very social," he says. In short, it is all just as it is for everyone else. Once a day, rotten potatoes, old hand-me-down clothes. But he is not going to leave. He wants to stay at the Kikoshep center and help the sick from Kibera. In one of the tiny cubbyholes of the center of this settlement there is a sewing class. Here, kids on ancient Singers sew wild animals out of scraps, animals they have never seen alive. "So why do your giraffes have no ears?" I ask them. The answer turned out to be all too prosaic: "There isn't enough material."
Kibera turned out to be even more frightening than people say. And not because you can be killed there, but because death lives there. Yet people still say: "Hakuna matata" – "No problems."
Ksenia FOKINA.
Strana.Ru