Night watchman and the laziness of Kenyans

Well, there's a lot that happened in the week that past and not a whole lot at the same time, I know I need to be institutionalized but I will explain. For starters, I haven't gone to the Bush, just chilled at the base, ate, worked out a lot, did proposal reading and report writing so in that sense nothing really happened but I also heard from Georgia, found out that I got into their Public Policy program so i'll be starting my grad school in september, meaning that I have my life planned for the next 5-6 years till my Phd is completed.

And then there was Pakistan's unceremonious exit from the world cup! huh! That was one of the most sad days of my entire almost 26 year old life. I was truely devasted, and I mean devasted, this was way worse than the last time i got dumped even, there are no words to explain the sickening feeling and then the news of Coach Woolmer's murder. At first I was just angry at the whole situation but now I sympathize when everyone involved with cricket in Pakistan. I pray Bob Woolmer's soul rests in peace.

I'm usually up till 3 or 4 in the morning as the internet starts working after 9 pm and my best buddies at that time are my favorite 5 people, 4 of whom are in the picture, a.k.a the guardians of the ICROSS Base. From Left to Right, Pili Pili - Maasai for 'spicy', the youngest of them all, Old Lion, Mrs Mama the mother of Pili Pili and Mr. Eyes Eyes sitting in the front (pronounced yes yes - doesn't mean yes yes though; Eyes means fast and agile in Maasai)

Eyes Eyes is the man, he's the skinniest of the them all but by far the ballziest, that dog's not afraid of nobody. You come at him with a stick and he'll attack right back, but I think he really loves me and as long as I have his trust none of the dogs dare to do anything. Pili Pili is just a huge little kid, just wants to play all the time and the Old Lion well, he like 15 years old but refuses to die, I'm told he was the shit back in the day, a hell of a guard dog and a playaa as well, it is said that he would dig under the fence and go out to party whenever he could, if you know what i'm saying. One of my favorite guys at the base though is my 3 am smoke break buddy, Charles. Charles is the night watchman at the base. He's a nice man with a very kind heart, has a wife and 3 kids and one on the way and makes only 6000 Shillings a month.

Now to put that in perspective, I spend around 500 - 600 shillings every day here, a decent meal is 200 -300 shillings and thats not at a Mzungu (white man) restuarant, cause Karen the city which is 10 km from here has a lot of Wzungus living there and a Salmon at the restuarant there is about 800 - 1000. This means that if my dear Charles were to go to Karen he could only have 7 meals with his whole months salary, don't know how he'd feed his family of 5 with that much money. But Charles survives and is happy, at least most of the days. Every night he tells me how he has pressure from everyone in his family to somehow make more money but he can't, he's been stuck making the same for the past 6 years, during which I'm pretty sure Gas prices along with everything must have doubled.

This brings to the hot topic amongst some people who I work with, the outsiders, the white people. What I get from them is that Kenyans are very lazy by nature. They are where they are because they don't like to work. Coming from the West where everything needs to be done ASAP, I can understand where they come from but I feel that they have got it absolutely wrong. I'll give you guys an example. Danny from ICROSS got shot in the leg a month or so ago and I went with him to the hospital to get his bandage changed. I think the time the nurse took to do the bandage was more than the time a 6 year child would take to do the same and during it she kept on having a conversation with a collegue, about what, I don't know but I can bet anything it wasn't about the complexity of the bandage. Coming out of there I was starting to feel the same way as westeners who come to this part of the world feel that KENYANS are soo lazy and they deserve to be poor bla bla bla. When i got back i mentioned this whole thing to Mike and Mike as he always does had a wonderful take on the whole thing. He was off the opinion that we in the West are unsettled and are trying to get somewhere, trying to establish our identity where as the people here have already reached their destination, their identity, they have a culture that can be traced back to thousands of years and thats just the way things are done here, slow and steady. I on the other hand think that for the price that these guys are being paid here they should work half as fast as they do presently. Lets take Charles for example; he make lest than $100 a month. Now please think about this a little, if you were paid $100 a month for a nightwatchman job, enough for 7 meals at a good restuarant in Kenya, would you being doing your job diligently, I thought not.

The talk about integrity and hard work all seems like bullshit doesn't it, hell, if I were in his position I would probably be the first to rob ICROSS. So the problem is not that these people are lazy, its that we would be lazier if we were doing these jobs at the pay that they are getting.

Well, any who, I'm heading to the field this week so i'll have a lot of pics and a lot to write, till then good night and good luck.