Last Night

Leading up to last night, I spent most of the day at home on the laptop, synthesizing my notes from research I've been doing here. I've been surveying the largest flea markets in Nairobi to better understand small shops. There are huge flea markets here; there's one, in the middle of a slum, with 10,000 stalls! Anyway, yesterday was one of the most exciting days working on my laptop I've had in a while, because things seem to be coming together for this idea I have to increase the income of poor shop owners - more on that in a later post. This put me in an exceedingly good mood. So when I got a call from someone I met while doing the research in a local market, asking me to meet him at a club, I figured "what the heck".

I left my place at 7pm and caught a local minibus, or "matatu", to town and met my new friend, Ebo, at the Samba Bar & Grill. The matatus are an interesting phenomenon. They are extremely numerous on the streets, as numerous as cabs in NYC. Most of them are basically VW buses fitted with rows of bench seats that pack in 14 passengers. When you get on, you have to crouch down like you're entering into a foxhole, and scoot to an available seat. Each matatu has its own personality. The one I took last night played reggae and had NBA posters on the interior walls and ceiling - the driver is apparently a Dallas Mavericks fan. It's 25 cents for a ride to town - can't beat that. A coke is also 25 cents here - wasn't a coke a quarter in the US like in the 1960's?

To set the stage, keep in mind when reading this story that it feels like everyone is staring at you, all the time. A feeling which is constantly reinforced when you look up and catch them. You don't see any white people all night; not in the clubs and not even in the street, despite there being a lot of people walking around and loitering. After staring at you, many of them try to say something to you. When walking, strangers say something to you about once every 10 seconds. They say "hey mzungu (white man)", or "How are you?", or "John" (as if all mzungus are named John), or something in their local language. So you walk fast to avoid the cat calls from turning into prolonged interactions, because if you don't, you will never get to your destination. It feels like your life is on stage and there is an audience watching your every movement. You feel famous, but not necessarily in a good way.

Continuing. I meet up with Ebo and another friend of his, Dalvyne. Turns out it was a reggae bar, as many are here. Or at least, it sounds like reggae, until you learn to recognize the African influence on the genre. We then push off to another club and dance for a while. Dalvyne needed to head home around 10pm so we walked her to the nearest matatu station. I say my goodbye quickly, but Ebo takes his time. All the while, people started spotting me, staring, and pointing. Then 4 guys suddenly approach me and start saying hello in random languages that are obviously not mine. One says "ni hao" and bows, the other says "konichiwa", and so on. Another comes and shakes my hand, but doesn't let go and says "Where do you go?" To put this in context, when I'm walking past a group of local men and they say something to me, sometimes it's not with the intention of actually talking to me, but rather to use me as a prop for an inside joke. This becomes obvious when they speak to me in a local language, which they would never expect me to speak. They say a few words, then they and their friends laugh - in these scenarios I try to keep moving. So I think this interaction at the matatu station was one of those moments. They also could have been the matatu helpers, in charge of recruiting passengers. Either way, it made me nervous because it was late, so I called on Ebo and we got the hell out of dodge.

While walking back to the original club, we spot another and decide to try it out based on the music pouring out the doors and into the street. We get in and the music is spot-on. Everyone is dancing, so we follow suit. The contagious vibe calms my nerves. At one point, during the climax of a great song, I break out my "most into it" move, and I actually hear people cheer around me at the same time. I think, "Wow, I must be really killing it if they are actually applauding my moves." I look up a few moments later to realize that there is a TV over my head, and people are watching a cricket game. They were not applauding my "most into it" dance move as my inflated expat ego assumed, they were applauding a cricket play - ego check.

As the night continued, I made an interesting cultural observations. I love these observations of unexpected and very different social phenomenon. For me, it's the dessert of traveling. This one was on the dance floor. As it turns out, Kenyan men dance together. And I don't mean like in the US when male friends dance near each other, I mean facing each other, locking eyes, wearing a big smile, and synchronizing their dance move. This is the way it goes down: one of them will tap the other, then enthusiastically show a dance move that is to become the theme of the interaction, then the enthusiasm will spread to the other and both will synchronize and repeat the dance move, over and over, sometimes for multiple songs, without talking. It looks like they're having the time of their lives. It actually looks like a great bonding exercise for friends. This, in the US, would surely be perceived as gay and therefore avoided, but the association doesn't exist here, even though, ironically, Kenyans are less tolerant to gays. Then, suddenly, a random guy approached me, tapped me on the shoulder, and signaled for me to follow his dance move of swinging arms. At which point I realized that this was not just an activity between buddies, this was also something you do with strangers. This happened multiple times to me throughout the night. It felt weird, but I had no choice but to play along. If I didn't mimic them they would give me this look of "Hey, what's your problem, man; you don't accept my offer to bond?" So I'd give in, but try to work my way out of it before the end of the song. I just couldn't follow through with it as enthusiastically as they do - maybe some day. I could just imagine assimilating to this tradition, then coming back to the US and doing it in a club and getting clocked.

Then a few strange things started to happen that brought me back to reality. Guys started bumping into me, often. But I couldn't figure out if it was happening to me more often than others, or if people were getting drunker and dancing more off-balance and I was just sensitive to it. Then the bartender refused to give me a napkin - weird. At that point I got worried I was in a "local club" where mzungus were not welcome. There were no mzungus in the club, but sometimes there aren't even mzungus in the "mzungu clubs", so it's impossible to know if I'm somewhere I don't belong. Some girls were giving me welcoming smiles, some were aggressively refusing to look at me and even running away from me, like I'm a leper. However, none of the men were shy about looking. Some gave me smiles and thumbs up, but a few gave me disapproving looks. Keep in mind that, like everyone else, I'm dancing, but to make things worse, my dance style is as foreign as my face. I sit down and suddenly a girl stops in front of me and takes a picture of me, without asking, which just added to the twilight zone moment I was experiencing. I felt like I could, for the first time, somewhat empathize with the poor when rich tourists ask to take pictures of them because their poverty makes for an interesting shot. If you notice, they are never excited at the prospect. I could have taken her picture of me as a compliment, but that night it just made me feel like more of a freak.

I guess this is my new identity. An identity that is never going to wash off, so long as I'm here. No matter how well I master the local language or how many local friends I make, I'm still going to look like me. People here will always react this way to me. It's going to take some getting used to.