Ciao, Mizungo!

  Last night I finally installed my mobile broadband modem, so I now have internet anywhere I can get a phone signal. That means I should have good internet the rest of my time here. Cell phones are extremely widespread in Africa, and even tiny shops in remote villages have Safaricom products for sale. Some of the people we have interviewed are in extreme poverty but still possess cell phones. It seems that they have become a necessity. At any rate, I should be keeping the blog much more up to date in the future.
   On Thursday we interviewed our pilot village, Ngecha (I spelled it wrong in the first blog), which is about a half hour drive from Nairobi. This village is populated almost exclusively by members of the Kikuyu tribe, and is much more affluent than the rest of the areas we will be going. It is an agricultural community, and would still be considered primitive in the United States. There is some running water and some electricity, but the houses are small (one or two rooms) and the roads in the village are not paved. The village center is comprised of ramshackle shops made of an assortment of materials, and there is at least one church, a primary school and a secondary school. The homes are surrounded by small plots of maize and other crops, and there were chickens and goats in most of the backyards. The interview that I observed was with a lady who runs a hairstyling business on her front porch.
   The Kikuyu tribe is largely concentrated in Central Kenya, and its members are known for their productivity and business skill. The recent history of this tribe is fascinating and troubled. The Kenyan fight for independence from British rule was carried out almost exclusively by the Kikuyu. This fight was extraordinarily violent, and it sharply divided the Kikuyu people. The British relied heavily on Kikuyu loyalists to counter the rebellion, which continued all the way until the late 1950s. Thus Kenyan independence arose from a sort of civil war which came to be known for terrible atrocities on both sides. This history is chronicled by David Anderson in Histories of the Hanged, a book which I found very insightful and would highly recommend to anyone interested in learning about Kenya's fight for independence. I think it also reveals a lot about the end of the British Empire.
   The next day we flew to Malindi, which is a sleepy town on the Indian ocean. Malindi is not predominantly Muslim as I had mistakenly mentioned in the previous blog, but there is a signficant Muslim minority. Malindi is also a popular destination for Italian tourists and investors. Thus many locals have greeted us with "Ciao," which explains the title of this post. Mizungo is a pan-African word meaning "white person." Both these words have come up many times in the past few days, although as of yet not together (at least not in earshot).
  It is getting late here so I am going to wrap up this post, but first let me apologize for the delay in putting up pictures. The internet has been too poor for me to upload them, but I think I should be able to do it now that I have the mobile modem. So we'll see. We have an early morning tomorrow so I'm going to try uploading a few pictures now and then I'll try to do a post tomorrow about Malindi and tell you about the pictures then. Salama!