Mombasa: Day Two

After two weeks of drinking chai tea, M demanded coffee first thing on Saturday morning. There’s no Kenyan equivalent of Starbucks that we’ve found so far and the concept of “to go cups” is also foreign so we took a seat at a little café for some coffee and pastries.

After the coffee pit stop, we continued to walk until we came to Kongowea, a giant, open-air, second-hand clothing market. There were hundreds of small shops crammed into the area, each selling clothes imported from Canada, the US, and sometimes though rarely, Europe. Second-hand clothes are big business in Kenya and you see evidence of this daily as shirts and hats of American sports teams float by on the street. Apparently post-Superbowl, we’ll see the losing team’s merchandise everywhere according to a local friend. Our favorite so far has been the “Cleveland recycles” shirt we saw last week. Do you think the previous owner knows how recycled that shirt would become?

The owners of the stalls in Kongowea buy clothes by the kilo and typically specialize in one item such as shirts or pants. The upside for us is that all the clothes are in American sizes and I’ve picked up a few skirts and shirts along the way. Other than tourist places, I haven’t seen a single store selling new clothing though I’m sure they exist in certain areas.

We didn’t linger at Kongowea since it’s notorious for pick-pocketing and so we hopped a matatu to Fort Jesus in Old Town Mombasa [that's the flag on top of the fort in the first photo]. Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese in the late 1500s and then proceeded to change hands a bunch of times.



It is on a gorgeous point of land at the mouth of the harbor. It’s built on coral bedrock so in addition to the fort built above there are rooms and staircases carved into the coral below.





After exploring the fort for a while, we strolled through Old Town which is full of small twisting streets with glimpses of the water if you look down the correct alleys. As previously mentioned, Mombasa is a port city with a very diverse history. At points on our walk, it seemed that we could have been walking through Mumbai, Riyadh, or Nairobi as the neighborhoods shifted ethnically, religiously, and culturally.

We are starting to get the hang of which greetings to use for which people. “Salaama” is said between Muslim Kenyans (who may be ethnically African, Indian, Middle-Eastern or “Arab” as they say here) and is a borrowed word from Arabic (as many Swahili words are). It is currently pretty easy to identify the Muslim Kenyans because the women are veiled and the men wear circular caps; this may change at least for the men after Ramadan. To a non-Muslim Kenyan, you use “Habari” which means “news” in Swahili; “Jambo” is really reserved for tourists. Everyone seems delighted when mzungus make the effort to speak Swahili so we try to use the correct words whenever possible.

We passed several mosques, a Jain temple, and the dhow registration office before making it to our final destination, the spice market. As you can imagine, the spice market is an olfactory delight with bin after bin of freshly ground spices, chilis, peppers, and vegetables used in the Indian-Arab-Swahili fusion that is Mombasa’s cuisine. After a few minutes of haggling, M bought some tea masala (which is currently sipping in his chai as I write this) with the fresh blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, and black pepper.

Since the sky was now threatening rain, we hoofed it back to the ferry and started the journey home. It was a successful first foray into Mombasa especially braving the Ferry by ourselves so we celebrated by going to bed early and going for a long run this morning. Yes, we know we’re in our 20s and not our 60s but believe us, it’s exhausting being foreign all the time! You should come visit if you’d like to find out.

August 27th: A New Day for Kenya

Today is a big day in Kenya. It’s been declared a national holiday and people are even comparing this to a second independence day. Dignitaries from all over East Africa are expected and Kofi Annan as well as other prominent international leaders will also join in the celebration. There are rumors floating about that President Obama might show up but that seems a little far-fetched given the current state of the US economy. No matter who shows up, Kenyans are very excited to celebrate the “promulgation” of the new constitution. Promulgation is not a word we really use all that often but here they mean that it’s the acceptance and start of the new constitution.

I’m going to try my best to explain what happened though of course I’m probably leaving a lot out and misinterpreting some things since it’s pretty hard to explain 60 years of history when you’ve been in a place for 2 weeks. Sorry this blog post is a little dry but we have been living with the news about the promulgation since we arrived so we wanted to share it. Most of this description is from conversations with mzee Mungai over the last few weeks.

The original constitution was designed by a very small group of political leaders in the 1960s. It wasn’t even drafted on Kenyan soil but was written in Lancaster, UK. It was the first attempt to govern Kenya after the British left and as the British flag lowered at midnight on December 12th, 1963, celebrations went off around the country and the Kenyan flag was raised. Jomo Kenyatta was elected president and held this title until his death in 1978. After Kenyatta passed, his VP Daniel arap Moi was elected (using the term elected loosely) and held the presidency until he was constitutionally barred from running again in 2002.

It soon became clear during Moi’s presidency that this particular constitution gave a lot of power to the executive branch and lacked checks and balances. Freedom of speech, for example, was not a constitutional right until 1992. When Moi was “re-elected” in 1988, he didn’t allow the casting of ballots but instead made people stand in lines to demonstrate their vote. Clearly this doesn’t lead to a lot of impartial vote casting and people started to consider the idea of constitutional reform.

As previously mentioned, Kenya is made up of many tribes and with power so concentrated in the executive branch, lack of free speech, and a tribal history, it was quite easy for disparity to spread throughout the country. The President and his ministers were free to squash criticism and could easily allocate money to their own regions or tribes. So while one region might have excellent schools and services, another region may receive no funding for years.

After the 1988 elections and especially after 1992, people began fighting for a more equitable system with checks and balances and a more even distribution of funds and representation from regions and tribes. Still though there was significant opposition to a new constitution from various factions who benefitted from the system.

After Moi’s presidency, the current President Mwai Kibaki was elected and with the help of a ruling coalition promised reforms. These reforms have been slowed by the staggering population growth in Kenya (more than 7%) and the stagnant growth of the economy (0-2% depending on the year). Obviously the massive difference between population growth and economic growth creates a math problem that does not even allow for maintenance of services and makes expansion of services nearly impossible. The frustrations over the inability to achieve reform culminated in post-election violence in 2007 as protestors divided along tribal lines to agitate for changes that benefitted their groups and claim victory for their presidential candidate. Over 1,000 people were killed and 600,000 people were displaced.

This bloodshed marked a turning point though for Kenyans, the majority of whom were horrified that their neighbors were being targeted by tribe or political views. Kenyans are very proud of their peaceful history of self-rule and Kenya is seen as one of the most stable countries in East Africa so the violence was shocking to the average Kenyan. This paved the way for the new constitution.

Among other things, the constitution promises proportional representation from each county (like our electoral districts), guaranteed funds allocated to each district for services, gives significant power to local governments, and includes a bill of rights for Kenyans. It was widely praised internationally and despite fears, peaceably passed via referendum on August 4th, 2010. Mzee Mungai has the dyed fingernail to prove that he voted.

Since the constitution was a compromise, there are still some parts that are “less than ideal” (at least by Western standards) but overall most Kenyans are very happy that it passed. One such element is that the constitution still allows the Kadhi courts (courts for Muslim believers to deal with Marriage, Divorce, and Inheritance) and exempts a portion of the bill of rights for people professing the Muslim faith. Protestors argue that this basically allows one religion to live outside the constitution but supporters argued that the constitution benefitted most Kenyans and should be passed. Since that part only applies “to people professing the Muslim faith”, one could argue that it’s easy to work around but in practice it will clearly be very difficult in some communities. Despite this issue, all the Kenyans that we’ve spoken to are excited about the reforms and the new constitution and acknowledge that compromise with the Muslim community was required to pass the new constitution.

A huge celebration is planned in Nairobi and the army has been practicing for days to be reviewed by the President at the ceremony (sort of like our Inauguration). People here are proud that the constitution passed peacefully and are hopeful for new reforms.

Witnessing this part of Kenyan history has made us very grateful for all we enjoy and take for granted as Americans. It makes you feel ashamed that so many people in our country don’t even bother to vote, let alone pay attention to policy debates beyond snippets on the nightly news. After being here for 2 weeks, you can’t help but feel hopeful for our Kenyan friends and to hope that the promised reforms come through for them.

We have the place to ourselves this weekend since Lucy and Mungai are celebrating with their families. Lucy seemed concerned about leaving us but I assured her that I have a house back in the US and I somehow manage to keep M fed without help back in the US so I'd be fine for the weekend (I said it politely but her concern was fairly amusing). We are going to watch the promulgation ceremony on TV and then head into Mombasa for Saturday to see some of the historic sites.

M's Bday & Kenyan Flag

Well I don’t know how to sing happy birthday in Swahili yet but today is M’s birthday! He says that he keeps forgetting it’s his birthday whenever I remind him so maybe he’s getting forgetful in his old age. Today I will walk into town to get him some cake, the upside of being on the outskirts of a touristy area is that we can get things like cake if we are willing to walk a bit.

I imagine it’s a bit weird celebrating your birthday in a country where you know exactly 1 person for longer than 5 days. Someone asked us the other day how long we’d been here and we were both shocked that it had only been 5 days. Although we’re still very much figuring things out, we’ve also learned a lot in just 5 days.
Just before we came, M asked me if I was surprised that we're actually going to Kenya after planning for so long. And the answer was that I'm honestly not surprised at all. I knew when we got married that we'd always push each other. That we would almost never do things the easy way. And that at times it would be exhausting and the rest of the time it would be exhilarating. And that because I like to go to bed really, truly, tired every day, that he was the one for me, because he's the exact same way. So, to my running buddy, my Sherpa, my travel companion, and my mume wangu [husband], HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!



As for the Kenyan flag, pictured above, it was adopted on December 12th, 1963. December 12th is therefore Kenyan Independence day which we're looking forward to in a few months. It was the flag of the independence movement when the Kenyans fought against the British. The black represents the people of Kenya, the green represents the land, and the red represents the blood shed in the fight for independence. The Maasai shield and spears also represent the fighting for independence.

In other news, I found someone to give me Swahili lessons starting at 1 today and M observed in the operating theatre yesterday.