This just in...

Breaking News: Mosquitoes do not, in fact, have to be inside your mosquito net to annoy the living crap out of you. The little mosquito generals in the Department of Making Kim Jong-Il Seem Warm And Cuddly And Not At All Parasitic have developed and implemented to perfection the remarkable strategy of hovering just outside the net and doing their best impression of a throng of vuvuzelas, if said vuvuzelas were being blown by members of the Lollipop Guild sporting scuba tanks filled with helium. I firmly believe that having the blood sucked out of me and scores of malarial parasites regurgitated into my bloodstream would be more conducive to sleep.

An open memo to the Kenya Power & Lighting Company

Dear KPLC:

I know you and I don't have what most people would call a "non-dysfunctional" relationship. I mean, at first all the little power outages were kind of cute: 30 seconds off! 30 seconds on! It was playful. It kept me on my toes. I found it kind of endearing.

Now I think you're just a tease. I'm starting to wonder if we're even compatible at all: after all, I like not having power outages; you like not having to build new infrastructure. I like electricity; you like routing my electricity from Uganda past Busia all the way to Kisumu and then back through every other town on the way to the border until, at the very end of the line, it finally reaches Busia again. I like getting what I pay for; you like not allocating enough power to my town and randomly depriving me of the service I pay you to provide.

However, I think we can agree that dwelling over such quibbles and quabbles never kept anyone's laptop battery charged, and in that spirit I would like to instead offer one tiny piece of constructive feedback based on my observation of the KPLC repairman currently perched outside my office window: when you send people to replace lines and work on complicated equipment, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE GIVE THEM SOMETHING OTHER THAN A BLUNT MACHETE TO DO IT WITH.

That is all.

Cordially yours,
Andrew Hoekzema

White Guy Gets 3rd Place in Camel Derby; credits success to bonding session with camel over shared whiteness

So I know I promised many of you that I would upload pictures this weekend, which obviously didn’t happen. There are two reasons behind this failure: 1. My Kenyan internet connection is about as reliable as the 2008 edition of the Cardinals bullpen, and 2. I was too busy winning fame and fortune in my world debut on the international camel racing circuit. That’s right: to the ever-expanding list of things I never thought I could (legitimately) call myself (but always dreamed of), you can add “2010 Samburu-Maralal International Camel Derby Bronze Medalist.” And before you ask, the answer is yes—I have already discarded my previous C.V. and medical school application essays, replacing them with a new streamlined version, which reads: “Andrew Hoekzema. Bronze Medal – International Camel Derby. Let’s just skip the interview, shall we—when do I start?”

So this is the story of my weekend in Maralal. Maralal is where you end up if you take the last matatu out of Nyahururu to the edge of civilization…and then drive into the desert for another 5 hours. In honor of the Friday the 13^th shenanigans that flavored my trip up there, I shall now present my vast accumulation of travelling wisdom to you in the form of this handy 13-step travel guide:

How to Get to Maralal in 13 Easy Steps:

*Reference Note: “matatu” refers to the ubiquitous, garishly decorated vans which act as a sort of informal bus system just about everywhere in Kenya. Legally, matatus are allowed to fit a maximum of 14 people. I have never seen a matatu with fewer than 18 people inside.

1. Wake up in Busia at 5:30 AM. You’re late! Panic. Throw some clothes, an iPod, and, for some reason, a bottle of ciprofloxacin into a duffel bag. Run outside. Realize that your bus doesn’t leave until 7:30 and that you are not late at all. Go back and pack more important things, like your toothbrush. And anti-malarial pills. And this time, hold the cipro.

2. Catch the early bus to Nakuru. Try to get some sleep (the secret here is to avoid looking out the front window, which will only make you aware of the repeated games of chicken your driver is playing with the oncoming traffic as he tries to cut around other buses, and can therefore act as a minor insomniac.)

3. Arrive in Nakuru. Find a quick bite to eat somewhere. I do not recommend the samosas at the Easy Coach bus stop.

4. Find a tuk-tuk (one of the cute little three-wheeled taxis puttering around everywhere) to drive you to the matatu stand to catch your next ride. Discover once you arrive that the friendly but clueless Easy Coach employee had no idea what she was talking about when she told you this was the right matatu stand. Turn around and drive to the matatu stand on the other side of town instead.

5. Take matatu to Nyahururu. Be happy about the chance to practice your flexibility as you maneuver your body into a space the size of Nicolas Sarkozy’s left pant leg. Enjoy the beautiful ride through the hills of tea plantations and try not to think about the lifetime of knee replacement surgeries awaiting you.

6. Arrive in Nyahururu. Take a deep breath and enjoy the view for the approximately 2 nanoseconds you have before you are swallowed in the mob of hawkers and matatu drivers trying to sell you things you never knew you didn’t want and/or shove you into vehicles you don’t want to be in, heading for places you don’t want to go.

7. Get hit by a bus. I’m told this step isn’t actually essential, but I found the bruised wrist and adrenaline rush to be an effective means of waking up from the travel-induced stupor which may have set in by this point.

8. Try to recruit a matatu to go to Maralal. Get creative: beg, cajole, sing, cry, do your best Tiananmen Square protester impression (well, maybe your 2^nd best—given the choice between staring down a line of tanks and trying to stop a stubborn matatu driver, give me the Panzers every time). Try not to get discouraged when even the dubiously named Nucleur Shuttle company turns you down with an incredulous and vaguely sinister chuckle.

9. Give up. Mill about in an aimless manner. If you meet any other white people, act like you are old friends. Let’s face it: you’re both white and in Kenya. There is a 1000% chance that you have a mutual acquaintance.

10. Stumble across a man who owns a car that he will allow you to hire. Take the offer. Celebrate! Wait for the car to arrive…for about two hours. Celebrate! Load your bags into the trunk. Discover that the driver has gone missing. Wait for him to return…for about two hours. Celebrate!

11. Set off for Maralal! Revel in the gorgeous sunset and the thrill of an open road winding through a starkly gorgeous landscape. Say things like “It’s an adventure!” or “This is the kind of story you tell your grandkids someday!” or “Hakuna matata!” (brief public service announcement: no one in Africa actually says “hakuna matata.” Unless they think you are the kind of tourist who will squeal with delight and buy something from them if they say it.)

12. Don’t panic when your rear tires begin to smell of burning rubber. Or when your driver decides he is too tired to continue and allows the college student from Nairobi who is hitching a ride with you to take the wheel for a few hours in the pitch dark on a road with ruts so big my dog could walk down the center of one and never be seen from the roadside. Or when the guards at the military base you stop at to use the facilities warn you that you will probably be confronted by lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, and possibly even some not-very-nice people if you continue. Or when you actually are confronted by a mama elephant in the middle of the road and she becomes convinced that you are after her children and not in fact on a perfectly innocent journey to go sit on some camels. Just keep driving. Except for the elephant part—for that one you should probably stay very still and wait until she moves.

13. Arrive in Maralal! Promptly collapse from exhaustion.

So at this point in the story, we have finally made it to Maralal. Despite sporting a locale only slightly less convenient than your average Al Gore documentary, it is actually a charming little town:

That’s it there on the left. No, not the tree. Behind the tree. You might have to squint a bit.

So it’s got size issues. Except, apparently, for one weekend a year, when it becomes the center of the international camel-racing universe and transforms its main (read: only) street into something like this:

That is the view from the starting line. And the entire population of Maralal.

So, having gotten to Maralal, how does one go about finding oneself perched on a camel, about to fling yourself headlong into 10 kilometers of pure one-humped fury?

Step 1: Make friends with an expert camel handler.

The guy in the red cap is Lawrence, and he is from Marsabit. Marsabit is where you find yourself if you start from Maralal and walk north through the desert for 5 days. Every year, Lawrence and his six brothers make the five-day trek through the wilderness to get to the camel derby. They are hardy people who live in a very harsh place, and they know their camels.

Step 2: Make friends with a camel. (You will likely find this significantly more difficult than Step 1. Unless you are also a camel.)

This smiling fellow is Dhakhan, my trusty one-humped steed. The racers from Marsabit have a tradition of naming their camels after defining characteristics—one of my friends had a camel whose name meant “earlobe”, a traditional symbol of wisdom and serenity, because it was so calm and aloof (and slow. I think he finished in 20^th or something.) The tallest camel is called by the word for “tall”, the fiercest camel is called “cobra” or “shark”, and mine was named Dhakhan, which (fittingly? Ironically? Coincidentally?) means “white.” The goofy grin is a brilliant cover-up—he’s a cold-blooded cutthroat on the course.

Step 3: Mount the camel. This is the real start of your beautiful relationship. Like the start of most beautiful relationships, it is also extremely awkward.

Step 4: Get used to this view.

Step 5: Race!

I have no pictures from the race itself—believe it or not, when camels run, they do not glide gracefully along in a smooth canter. Instead, imagine one of those jerky, gangly robo-walker things from Star Wars waddling its long legs off like a freakishly tall four-legged penguin. It’s not exactly poetry in motion. And I know those roped up plastic sacks and leather hides I’m sitting on look pretty luxurious, but they are in fact supremely uncomfortable in places you really don’t want to be uncomfortable. After nearly an hour in the saddle, I could only remember one time in my life when I felt more cramped and sore, and that was after running a marathon. But if you want the glory, you’ve got to pay your dues, and it’s easy to forget the pain when you’re galloping clumsily towards the finish line, using one hand to urge the camel onward with a stick-turned-riding-crop and the other to alternately hold on for dear life and attempt to whip up the crowd lining the final stretch, your handler running alongside shouting words in some guttural desert language that makes it sound like he’s actually speaking in the secret tongue of camels…and then all of a sudden it’s over and there's 40-something riders behind you and only 2 in front and everybody's calling you "Numba Tree! Numba Tree!"

After that, well, then it’s all roses…

…and photoshoots (thanks for all the practice, Jef & Arif!)…

…and interviews (Mom, did you hear me?! I said hi to you in front of the entire viewing audience of north central Kenya! Which I think normally sits at around 3 people. At least 2 of whom were probably at the derby, and hence not tuned in to my epic victory speech.)…

…and trying to avoid toxic globs of spit frothing from the mouths of pooped camels.

Aside from my brief flirtation with Kenyan radio stardom, the chance to shake hands with some insignificant member of parliament (who, as far as I can tell, gets the privilege of representing a quarter-million square kilometers of utter nothingness in the Kenyan legislature), a lovely “Visit Kenya!” gift bag complete with handy tourist map, and of course eternal glory, my podium finish came with a cash prize equivalent to nearly US$125, which is an absurd amount of money in rural Kenya. I gave it to Lawrence. He tried to refuse, but he earned it far more than I did. Needless to say, we were both pretty stoked at the awards ceremony that night:

Afterwards, Lawrence told me I would have won…if I had been 20 kg lighter. So I’m going on an intensive diet in preparation for next year’s race. I call it the “I live in freaking Kenya” diet.

And Dhakhan the camel lived happily ever after. The End!

More pictures to come later this week! ("A likely story!" you say, to which I retort "...yeeeah..." and try not to calculate how many months it will take to get the rest of my photos online based on the three entire days of sucking up office bandwidth it's taken to upload the 10 pictures in this post. Stay tuned.)

UPDATE: Kenya has a new constitution! Obama approves! So does my dog!

So for all the hand-wringing that went into the preparations for the national referendum, it appears that all fears were completely unfounded: in a peaceful, efficient, transparent vote, Kenyans have approved the new constitution in a landslide (with 71% of eligible voters participating! US political parties pee their pants with joy at the thought of that kind of turnout.) In my district, the 'yes' bloc captured 84% of the vote; in Nyanza, just south of here, the approval rating was upwards of 92%. So people around here are understandably stoked--like Philip, the night guard at my house, who proudly showed off his black-dyed pinky finger (their anti-double-voting mechanism) to anything with a pulse, including our dog Mac. (Mac's response, going crazy and running several laps around the house, was praiseworthy but of ambiguous motivation, as he does the same thing whenever I come home from work. Or whenever a fly lands on his nose. Or whenever anything within a mile of the house makes any sound at all. But as a good Kenyan dog, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute the outburst to his civic pride and hope for accountable and responsive government). It's been a good few days for Kenya.

A riveting and thoroughly unbiased analysis of today’s Kenyan constitutional referendum

Well, I’d like to start with a hearty welcome to all two of you who are still checking this sorry excuse after my two week absence. I’m extremely sorry for my truancy, but the last weeks have been completely usurped by visits from my bosses—the professors and donors who run my project—and IPA training for new Evaluation Coordinators (my official title—don’t worry, you can wait until after I’ve actually told you what it means to pretend like you’re impressed). I’ve been traveling for about two weeks now, from Busia to Siaya to Kisumu to Nairobi to Limuru to Kibera, seeing beautiful places, hobnobbing with interesting and influential people, eating wild and unidentifiable things, and staying in fantastically terrible hotels—and now I’m finally back home! So to reward all you loyal readers and entice those who gave up on me for awhile back into the fold, today I will be telling you about absolutely none of that. There are far bigger games afoot in Kenya today.

As I’m sure none of you are aware, today could one day very well be looked back upon as one of the most significant in Kenyan history to date. Today Kenyans go to the polls to cast their votes for or against a proposed new constitution—one that has the potential to ensure fairer and more accountable government, more equitable distribution of resources to minorities and under-represented districts, and prevention of further election violence like that following the presidential election of 2007 (see below). It could be a great day for many poor and marginalized Kenyans, who see the change as necessary to restore a government they can believe in. Or it could be a day where the country falls apart and starts tearing itself to pieces. The suspense!

So I know the prospect of an entire post on the intricacies of Kenyan politics is more excitement than you can stand for one day, but let me tempt you just a bit further by starting out with a bleak and depressing history lesson! Flashback to 2007, when the presidential election in Kenya came under dispute—the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki (of the majority Kikuyu ethnicity), claimed victory despite the fact that exit polls indicated his opponent Raila Odinga (of the Luo ethnicity) had actually gotten a larger vote share—the dispute eventually led to roadblocks, violence, and the deaths of over 1000 Kenyans. Here in Busia, you can still see the huge potholes from where cars and tires were burned during the rioting. To finally end the violence, a radical new compromise was reached where Kibaki would keep the presidency but the position of Prime Minister would be created and given to Raila, allowing him a large-but-not-quite-as-large-as-Kibaki’s role in the government. The plan seems to have worked for the most part, but the violence remains fresh enough that Kenyans are extremely motivated to do something, anything, to ensure it never happens again.

Basically, the current proposal was born as a political move by both the President (Kibaki) and the Prime Minister (Raila Odinga) to shore up their respective supporters and legitimize the technically illegal compromise that was dreamed up to end the election violence in 2007. It's being billed as a way to prevent future such conflicts, a means of introducing more accountability in government, and a more federal system (similar to the American system in many ways, actually) that will be more responsive to minorities and won't screw over whichever regions don't happen to be the birthplace of the current head of state. Kibaki wants it to be his "enduring legacy" and Raila wants it to be his platform for the next presidential election. And Hillary Clinton likes it, so there's that.

The more contentious part of it, though, is that there's been a backlash of criticism from many Christians in Kenya--a campaign, I might add, which has been largely funded by one Pat Robertson. It's ugly. Robertson and cronies have been stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment by pointing out that the new constitution allows Muslim kadhi courts to remain in existence (they exist to try divorce and property cases according to Sharia law, and only cases between two Muslims may be heard in them). They're also trying to make the case that the new constitution paves the way for legalized abortion (it doesn't. It institutionalizes the current Kenyan law, which makes an exception allowing abortion when the mother's life is endangered.) Basically a lot of church leaders have been coming off looking like ignorant bigots, and it's sad. While I think many Kenyans are putting far too much faith in the new constitution to solve all their governmental problems, and while a sober reality check is probably a good thing, that's not what the Christians here are offering.

For those of you interested in learning more about the issues at stake, I’d recommend the following articles (the NY Times one overemphasizes the ethnic-tension-angle, in my opinion—gotta sell those papers somehow, but the ethnic issues are far less salient here than you would think):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/world/africa/04kenya.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Constitution_of_Kenya,_2009

It is perhaps fittingly ominous that I’m writing this as a huge thunderstorm rolls in, although the obligatory power outage, gusting winds, and dark clouds on the horizon are pretty much exactly the opposite of the metaphor I’m trying to evoke here. We don’t expect any nasty stuff to go down, but we’ve been instructed to stay home today as a precaution and there are evacuation plans in place if things get dicey. As an employee of an organization that takes great care not to take political sides in this sort of thing, I’m not allowed to express a position one way or the other here, but I can tell you that every Kenyan I’ve talked to has been extremely excited to go vote, and all the latest opinion polls have the “yes” crowd miles ahead (granted, these are Kenyan newspaper polls, so however many grains of salt you like to take with your typical American political poll, you should probably triple that dosage here). If anything, people around here are probably putting too much faith in the changes that the constitution will make. My prediction, for what it’s worth: the constitution will be ratified by a comfortable margin, but that it will be pretty much business as usual when it comes to actually implementing it—that is, the average Kenyan isn’t going to see a huge substantive change in the government or services provided, at least not immediately. But it’s exciting to see the enthusiasm, and I’ll certainly join in the celebrations tomorrow if it does in fact pass.

For those of you who don’t really care about any of this and just skipped to the end hoping for some cute animal photos…

Too bad. I can't find my memory card reader. Better luck next time--which I promise will not be two weeks from now.