7.

So I have just spent the last two hours trying to get the other laptop started. Aye! Then it turned off and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start, it was plugged in but nothing. Then I remembered that the electricity is out. In the US it is just expected that when you plug something in to the electrical socket there is power, but here the power fluctuates a lot and I think they might even shut it off in the middle of the day when they aren’t using it for anything really. Who knows? So, I will have to delay my other computer work until later.

I was reading in my book and a quote from the text really struck me last night. “Education is even better than cows.” The section was talking about how before education was made more affordable again by the Kibaki regime, some mothers would go with out food just to send their children to school.

There seems to have been a lot of controversy over the importance of education and I have found that this often depends a lot on region (or more specifically ethnic group, but Kenyans don’t like to talk about ethnic groups because tribalism is viewed as a part of their culture that causes nothing but conflict. As an outsider, it is hard to understand some of this but I am getting bits and pieces. I do however think that a lot of Kenya’s rich cultural heritage is being lost by large groups of people ignoring much of what makes their ethnic group unique.) For instance, the Somali (tribe not citizens of the neighboring country) feared education because missionaries set up most of the schools and they didn’t want their children to be converted. There also seems to have been a belief among many in the very rural areas that girls who went to school would end up being prostitutes. In Kenyan English, this term can also be used to describe a girl who has rejected the teachings of her elders and lives immorally, not necessarily as the Western conception of prostitute as one who accepts money for sex. To many this is equivalent. Another belief (it has disappeared now) was that a family would not benefit from educating their daughters because they would get married off and support the husband’s family. Now that polygamy is dying out (there also seems to be a belief that there are more women than men in Kenya so polygamy was important because it gave more women the chance to have children and a husband) many parents see that a girl who is educated will be less of a burden because she is more likely to find steady employment and can help support the family if she doesn’t get married, and maybe even if she does.

It is so interesting that the sudden increase in education levels of women in Kenya seems to have gone hand in hand with the increase in divorce rates. After some thought, I understand. Much is expected of the traditional Kenyan woman. Food must always be ready for the husband when he wants it. She was responsible for educating the children, the shamba (garden where most of the family’s food comes from), keeping the house clean, and raising the children. Educating the children seems to have been a huge burden because if the woman had no income she would have to ask her husband (who could refuse to pay school fees) or her relatives. It was also common practice to beat your wife and treat her like a child. Now that they are educated, the women know their rights, earn just as much or more than their husbands, and if they are mistreated simply ask for a divorce. Another explanation for better treatment of women which I feel goes hand in hand with education is that you will hear many say, “because we have gone to church.” With colonialism came missionaries and with the missionaries came the schools and thus western ideas. This is all tightly linked together.

I was invited to supper at my friend David Mbae’s house and the evening was highly educational for me both in conversation and observation. I wouldn’t call David a typical Kenyan by any means. He is computer literate, emails people around the world daily, and has traveled outside the continent many times. I see in him a very intriguing mixture of traditional Kenyan (especially Kimeru) customs and modern western ideas. For supper, his wife served us (David, Gregory the local computer guru, and myself), but she ate in the kitchen. David obliquely mentioned this again today. Traditional Kimeru men after circumcision (still done after completion of grade 8) will not even enter a kitchen and sometimes not even the mother’s house. This is a right of passage and to enter would be childish now that he is considered a man. Last year, we had a few men from Chogoria come to the US to visit and a few stayed in my parents’ home. In the US it is common in many houses that the dining of the entire family is done on the kitchen table, in the kitchen. They thought it was so funny that my brother even did the dishes after the supper they had eaten in the kitchen with the women.

At dinner with David and Gregory, I mentioned divorce. David said that it was not common, but Gregory disagreed. He told me that among David’s generation (he is in his 50’s) divorce is not common, and that that generation just preferred to separate and cut off contact without formalizing a divorce. Gregory is probably in his mid twenties and he said that among his generation it is becoming increasingly common but usually there is a separation first. David told me today as we were taking afternoon tea in his office, that he goes to school very early, so he prepares his own breakfast so that his wife doesn’t have to get up so soon. I thought that was great. I doubt his wife usually serves him his supper and then eats in the kitchen on a regular basis. It might have just been because Gregory was there as a male guest so she was being more formal. In fact after Gregory had finished eating she joined us in the room and David poured my drinking chocolate not his wife.

I will be having supper in the homes of several more families before I go home. I am interested to see just how traditionally those dinners will go.

Side note on chapattis (flat bread much like a thick flour tortilla but a bit oily): I have discovered that there are actually many different kinds of chapattis; one even has pumpkin in it. I was trying to explain lefse and that is what they tried to compare it to. Pumpkin chapattis sounds pretty good to me. The ladies told me the ingredients depend on how much time you have. Sometimes they use milk instead of water, or add eggs, pumpkin, a bit of mashed banana, etc.