Mombasa is an interesting locale for the average tourist. It's considered the tourist mecca of Kenya and hosts a wide variety of people from Africa and the Middle East. In its downtown, white people are not unheard of, but they aren't exactly common either. Out where we live though, there is a peculiar sense of your own skin colour when you walk around the suburbs. Your daily walks become a strut down a gauntlet of greetings as people shout at you from all sides. A twenty minute walk becomes doubly tiring as you expend lots of effort shouting back greetings and responses.
For all of the political correctness shoved down our Canadian throats, the Kenyans hold none of it dear. It's not unfriendly either, however. The notion of a foreign visitor is of special importance to Kenyan culture. I was informed by my homestay father that, to Kenyans, hosting a visitor is a mark of honour and that same honour extends to their wider community. For every slack-jawed idiot catcalling our female fellow volunteers, we receive gregarious "Jambos" and "Karibu Kenya" ("Welcome to Kenya") from tenfold more locals. The children are especially friendly, as for many of them it would be the first white people they had seen in person. Trying to pass by a school elicits a cacaphony of little voices shouting, "how are you?" Celebrity does have its perks. Unfortunately, after so many days, the novelty of being different has worn off for us volunteers.
Despite the friendliness, the endless shouts of "mzungu" or "white European" have become a little tiresome. Some children could be forgiven, but the idea of walking around and having adults shouting, "Chinaman!" or "Black guy!" becomes a little bit grating. While the intention is mostly genuine, the idea of us as curios in their community compels them to single us out for being different. Instead of recognizing us for trying to contribute to their community's development, we exist purely as rich, white tourists in some of their minds. I suppose it is a small price to pay for what we are trying to accomplish.
Meanwhile, since my last post the computer classes have a fait accompli. In the picture below you can see my roommate, Evan Trippel, teaching a Microsoft Excel tutorial to a class. Running the classes was a study in perseverance in the face of obstacles. Whether it was cramming fifteen students into a six-person internet cafe, or running voltage adapters from outlet to outlet to plug in one extra computer, the preparations stretched the limits of our organizational creativity. Luckily, the students were very laid-back, understanding, and eager to learn. After a week full of classes, fully thirty Mombasan youths are now computer literate enough to work the Windows environment, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and internet e-mail/browsing. Working with my cohorts and the Kwacha Afrika volunteers has been an immense pleasure. When everybody is on the same page it makes the work that much more smooth.
Speaking of smooth, the Youth Challenge International volunteers joined ranks with the Kwacha Afrika members for a club night last Saturday. It was by far the most interesting night of my trip thus far. Tembo is tropical disco that deserves a place on a resort but is nestled snugly in our little suburb of Mombasa. I left our homestay wearing a white button-up shirt and returned looking like I had participated in the most unappealing wet t-shirt contest ever witnessed. Dancing is a sweaty enough affair as it is, but dancing in thirty degree heat exacerbates the whole situation. In my next post I'm going to touch upon some things that happened that night including dancing and fighting sex tourists.
Mothers, lock up your daughters - it's club night again tonight. At this point I'd like to issue a pre-emptive apology for anybody who has to see, touch or smell any party of my body tonight...
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