Hiho@Kenya
•
13 Oct 2007, 09:18
•
Journals
I'm in Nairobi! South of equator! For all scandinavians; it's hot here.. SUCKERS! :D
This place is crazy.. To mention one thing, the matatus, aka the pubtransport-thing :o
Basically some Nissan vans with 14 seats they stuff 17 guys in(there's a saying that "a matatu never get full"), and their driving is crazy :x I mean, when there's traffic jams(which there are quite often), you can often find them driving outside of the road to gain a few cars, through gasstations, every little chance to gain a few meter is taken, no matter the risk..
Yesterday when we were going back from town, a drunk guy got thrown out of the matatu infront of us. He pulled out a hammer, smashed a window and started hitting the conductor. He experienced mob justice, and that's fo sho one thing i don't want to experience :X Everyone around started beating him up, it was f*cking crazy...
And the slums? Every whiny eurpoean kiddy should go there and see for themselves. I still can't really grasp that people live like that. Yet still i have never seen that many happy faces in one place. Kids waving and smiling (mostly because we're white i guess, but still).. We visited a school, a dark, ugly place. I've never seen that happy pupils. Norwegian pupils keep whining that their desk is too low, or their chair is uncomfortable, but these guys were seriously überhappy to even have a teacher..
And i'm going to work there for 3 months! I'm gonna get changed for life...
So what is happiness? It's definately not materialistic goods.
This place is crazy.. To mention one thing, the matatus, aka the pubtransport-thing :o
Basically some Nissan vans with 14 seats they stuff 17 guys in(there's a saying that "a matatu never get full"), and their driving is crazy :x I mean, when there's traffic jams(which there are quite often), you can often find them driving outside of the road to gain a few cars, through gasstations, every little chance to gain a few meter is taken, no matter the risk..
Yesterday when we were going back from town, a drunk guy got thrown out of the matatu infront of us. He pulled out a hammer, smashed a window and started hitting the conductor. He experienced mob justice, and that's fo sho one thing i don't want to experience :X Everyone around started beating him up, it was f*cking crazy...
And the slums? Every whiny eurpoean kiddy should go there and see for themselves. I still can't really grasp that people live like that. Yet still i have never seen that many happy faces in one place. Kids waving and smiling (mostly because we're white i guess, but still).. We visited a school, a dark, ugly place. I've never seen that happy pupils. Norwegian pupils keep whining that their desk is too low, or their chair is uncomfortable, but these guys were seriously überhappy to even have a teacher..
And i'm going to work there for 3 months! I'm gonna get changed for life...
So what is happiness? It's definately not materialistic goods.
http://tordikenya.blogspot.com
But now i have to go and do my laundry, by hand!
Get a grip seriously. You can whine about how materialistic the West is, but there is something deeply wrong when 25/38m (2005) of aids suffers come from Africa (24.5m in Sub-Saharan alone).
Where countries and 'governments' (regimes) would rather spend money on arms than feeding they own population. Absolute diabolical levels of corruption, even when they're given money and handouts. All this from one of the richest (resource wise) continents on the globe and which all humans and civilization descended from.
And FYI, a lot of the things I've seen here are consequences of the british colonization.. So even though you might not be contributing to it(at least not consciously), i daresay you might be harvesting some of the fruits of it.
This however, doesn't stop them begging to the World Bank and IMF for money every year though :]
But yes, you have a point. The britons didn't leave it all as a mess here, there are both positive and negative sides of it.
Kenya is growing, both in infrastructure and economy, the numbers point upwards these days. But you can't deny that the people living in the slums are quite direct consequences of western consumerism and imperialization. If it's all so good with the ex-briton colonies, why are Africas second largest slum located here in Nairobi? And that's only one of them, they say that the third and fourth are located here aswell. Then something is obviously wrong, ain't it?
Claiming that you are not contributing it, and thus don't care is something i would interpret as ignorance. But seeing your post above shows that it could be a bad interpretation.
Speaking about democracy, there's an election here this december! I'll try to follow it as closely as possible..^^
computer, chairs, tables, wardrobe, own room, own sweatshirts jeans etc....
and the people there never lived with that comfort, dont know how it feels to have some different pairs of jeans and/or sweatshirts
they dont spend much time thinking about how other people live i think and they are happy with what they have :-)