On the other hand, the sheer newness of it all and the untethering from routine has provided a tremendous catalyst for fresh perspective – which was after all the motivating reason for our move (one which has been somewhat subsumed (for now) by the logistical scale of the move).
On the home front, our things have arrived, and we are busily making house while we have the (pre-newborn) bandwidth for it. In baby news, Anno is due any day (formal due date January 20), and is bearing the discomfort of late stage pregnancy amazingly well – walking, swimming, working, and generally being very active.
The thing which has struck Anno and me most is the sheer volume of belongings we have accumulated. As a couple, we’ve undertaken a couple of international moves together and each time we have conducted garage sales, give-aways, and charitable donations all in an effort to purge ourselves of our excesses. In the move to Nairobi, my personal low point was pulling up to the Church of St. Mohamed (ok I made that name up) on Atlantic Ave at 1am, double-parking in front of the ‘Please Do Not Leave Donations Here’ sign, and relieving the trunk of a rented SUV of clothes, sporting equipment, and to my eternal shame, even a slightly broken toaster oven.
Despite these efforts, our cup of material crapola runneth over. The sense of vulgarity is heightened by the implacable socio-economic inequality which stalks this country. We have peered over the dizzying edge of the cliff of economic advantage on which we are blissfully perched a couple of times now. One was when our nanny was held up at gunpoint in December on her way home (Nairobians call xmas the ‘harvest season’ for robbers because of all the people carrying around cash and gifts). She was relieved of all her belongings but luckily not harmed (far from a given). The robbery had a range of medium term consequences which would not have occurred to me: possible loss of employability (due to loss of phone, key employer-employee communication device and for which I pay for the air time), loss of ability to give gifts to children, loss of ability to pay January school fees, loss of id cards (necessitating possible bribe payments and missed work days to re-apply) etc. We did what we could to make her whole but the whole incident struck home because the lady who looks after our child was held up at gunpoint. Even from a second-hand perspective, this is difficult to stomach.
Of course, much of the dramatic re-interpretation is my own. Our nanny F. met the incident with a self-summoned sense of equanimity. She was upset about the threat of violence and the loss which her children would suffer, but beyond that saw the robbery almost as a cost of doing business. She is, in other words, an African ninja (AN).
What is an AN, you ask – fair question. It is a nomenclature I have devised to capture, at the broad stroke level, some of the key attributes of the working every(wo)man you will encounter here. By reading further, you hereby waive the right to level, now or at any time in the future, charges of racism, ignorance, or empty-headed generalism against me.
Field guide to the AN:
- Stoicism: The AN routinely displays a level of emotional resilience which would make any Stoic look like what they truly were: paunchy, fat-ankled sissies wearing picnic blankets. Take, for instance, this sentence, plucked at quasi-random from Seneca’s letters (mentioned in this blog previously):
“If the soul succeeds in avoiding either heading or being carried away in the directions of the temptations that lead people into extravagant living, no surer proof of its strength of purposes can be vouchsafed it.” (Letter XVII)
With all due respect Seneca, what ARE you on about? The whole bloated sentence, even if I strain to inhere it with coherence, is at best circular (Just so I’m clear on what you’re saying: if the soul succeeds in avoiding temptation, its resolve is strong – hmmm, maybe that was insightful in the steam bath with your homies Romulus and Lucilius, but something was perhaps lost when you wrote it down). More importantly, a true AN would prefer death to uttering a sentence like that because (a) making such a statement is an indulgence far beyond reach, and (b) the statement represents the diametric opposite to stoicism.
Seneca, if you want to be stoic, learn first to curb your enthusiasm, and don't for heaven's sake think "oh, I'll just edit myself".
- Self-reliance: This is the quality which makes a local mechanic, armed only with a pair of overalls, a Phillips screwdriver, and beautiful dentistry, announce to you that he will have your gear-box transmission issue resolved in about two hours. This may or may not transpire, but you can be sure that an unfavourable outcome will not be due to his lack of creative thinking (in our case, TRUE STORY, the outright and unsolicited removal of the 4WD prop shaft to address a ticklish rear differential). The AN will likely not understand your frustration at the disproportionate nature of the solution; after all, is the problem resolved or not? If the former, why are you being a flipping baby about now having a 2WD Landrover while on safari?
Above: Root canal performed by a gaggle (formal term for a group) of AN
- Three shoe sizes: This quality is not unrelated to the preceding ones, in that it is a physical manifestation of an AN's state of mind, and goes something like this: Disgusted by box after unopened box of clothing and personal effects, I began to make piles of give-away items. I asked my Karate teacher whether he would, personally or on behalf of his other students (he teaches at an orphanage in a slum), accept donations of shoes. I said my size was 11 US/45. He happily accepted, saying that his shoe size was 9 to 11 – meaning that he is happy to wear anything which remotely fits him.
Bottom line, there remains a lot to be learned about and from ANs, and I hope to use our stay here to do just that!
