Report #6

Dear All,

This report has no particular theme; I am picking up the odds and ends.
Depending home many ends I talk about, this may be the last report.

Some of the hand signals I learned in Cameroon served me well in Kenya.  The
most interesting of these are two signals for asking someone to "come here."
Just as in Cameroon, the American signal for asking someone to come here
(holding the hand up, with the palm facing the signaler, with the index finger
and thumb pointing up, and the rest of the fingers folded, and with the index
finger motioning toward the signaler) is a quite rude way of demanding "Come
here now!"  To ask someone politely one makes what we would characterize as a
female way to say hello (hand held up, with the back of the palm facing the
signaler, and motioning with the hand by folding and undfolding the fingers).
It is remarkable that much, or perhaps all, of the African continent shares
this signal but not our continent.

Because there are so many dirt roads, the African environment is very muddy
or very dusty, depending on the season.  I have read in history books how
muddy and dusty the frontier in our country was, but words have no way of
conveying how muddy or dusty it can get.  When I confronted this kind of
environment in Cameroon, I was overwhelmed, in part because doing anything
about it seemed so fruitless.  Why clean and polish my shoes today if later
today they will be hopelessly muddy or dusty?  Africans react very
differently.  They are meticulously clean much or all of the time.  When
Muchai chauffeured me around to various schools "in the bush" his car was
encrusted with red dirt.  (The night the carburetor was repaired, the
mechanic dumped an astounding amount of dust out of the air filter.)  Each
night, a handyman would scrub the car clean, knowing full well we would be
back on the dusty roads the next day.  When I first entered Muchai's home I
knew enough to remove my shoes.  The next morning I found that Muchai had
polished them at the same time he applied the daily polish to his.  He ended
up saving my shoes from turning a permanent red, as he continued this
generosity daily.

The division of labor between the sexes in Kenya is less clearcut than in
Cameroon, although it is there.  Just as in Cameroon, I saw (only) women
lugging big bundles of wood from "the bush."  In the food market, however,
I saw some (but not many) male vendors of fruits and vegetables.  I saw as
many headmistresses as headmasters, although the headmistresses typically
led all-girls schools.  The headmistress of Kaaga School for the Deaf, one
of two such schools in the country was a female who succeeded a male head-
master.

At one point, I and Muchai (headmaster of Kaaga Boys') visited the
headmistress of Kaaga Girls' High School.  The grounds of the school campus
were meticulously kept, almost overdone in the way Lehigh's present campus
grounds are.  Her office, was extremely well finished, with paneling and
fine cabinets of native wood.  Their computer room was spotless and especially
free of dust.  I ask how they kept it so clean, and she responded that they
wash the room daily and go out of their way to keep the room free of dust.
I knew that the condition of campus depended not only on her industriousness
but also on a lot more resources than were apparent at other schools.  Without
asking Muchai the preliminary question of whether Kaaga Girls' had more
resources, I asked why they had more resources.  I knew, of course, that all
Kenya's public schools depend on both government funds and "school fees"
(tuition).  He responded that most families paid their daughters' school fees
before paying their sons' school fees.  Thus girls' schools are easily able
to collect the school fees, while the boys' schools were forever chasing after
school fees.  Indeed, despite there being about six weeks to go in the school
year, I witnessed Muchai negotiating with two different parents over late
school fees.

This is a minor detail, but in Cameroon it was extremely common to see men and
women carrying things on their head.  At a typical taxi park I would see some
girl carrying a tray of packages of peanuts for sale on her head, I would see
a man carrying a tray of watches and calculators for sale on his head, etc.
In Kenya, it was rare to see anybody carrying anything on the head.

It should be no surprise that one bargains for things in the market, although
this seemed to be less common in stores in town, where things seemed to have a
fixed price.  Just as a meal in this country is an excuse for social
interaction, bargaining in Africa is an excuse for social interaction.  Thus,
it is rude for me to accept the first price offered.  We must haggle.  The
seller must tell me that the article is extremely valuable, hand-made, and
difficult to part with (for less than thrice what it might be worth).  I must
tell the seller why I don't want it, can't afford it, and how defective the
article is.  (Some of my bargaining offended some of the Lehigh students,
because they felt I was insulting the seller, as well as exploiting the
seller.)  On the night we left Nairobi I had an especially pleasant (and
drawn out) bargaining session with a vendor of various items designed for the
tourist trade.  I and the woman both understood that the social interaction
was almost more important than the sale.  In the process I learned that both
Kenyans and Cameroonians affectionately call a woman in the name of her eldest
child, so that Janice is known as Mammy Gwen and my friend in Nairobi is known
as Mama Eric.  I did all right in terms of price as well.

I had a hot water shower at Muchai's (in contrast to my two years of cold
showers in Buea), thanks to an ingenious device we would be well to copy.  It
would save us hundreds of dollars (and many gallons of oil) per year per
household.  In the largish shower head (about the size a pint jar) was an
electric heater that produced instant hot water.  Before stepping into the
shower I would throw an electrict switch to turn it on.  I would turn it off
upon leaving the shower.

Most compounds (walled cluster of one or more houses) have night guards.  One
of the guards for the compoundt of the headmistress of Kaaga School for the
Deaf was armed with bow and arrows.  It turns out that this is fairly common.
The guard is able to attack in the dark without his victim knowing where the
attack is coming from, given the lack of noise.

The banking system functions better in Kenya than in Cameroon.  I had no
trouble changing dollars into shillings at the bank.  It took me about 30
minutes, including a wait in line.  In Cameroon I never tried to change
dollars into CFA Francs at the bank, but I do not think I would have been
successful in Buea.  Indeed, everyone I knew would change money at a local
store at a hefty discount or with my friend Hans Njohjam, who was treasurer
of the Presbyterian Synod.  The second time I changed dollars into shillings
I used an ATM machine in Meru.  The transcaction was as quick and simple as
at the machine I use at 9th and Broad.  Today I saw the bank statement for
that transaction.  There was no fee of any sort, and I got the exchange rate
for that day.

I may change my mind, but I intend to write one more report, describing in
detail what the project actually did in Meru.