How not to get a white girlfriend

 

One question I am often asked here in Kenya is ‘how can I get a white girlfriend’?

Coupled with the amount of times I have heard female volunteers complain about persistent and bizarre advances by young Kenyan men, I feel there is clearly a need to for somebody to fill cupid’s role.

I know that anyone who has seen pictures of me or been spellbound by my Clinton-esque charm will find it hard to believe, but I am no expert in the matter. I’ve had long and incomprehensible spells during which I’ve been unable to secure a girlfriend of any shape, age or race.  

So I decided to consult with a cross-section of the Kenyan man’s target audience in order to provide a selection of hints and tips to aid them in pursuit of their date. This is what they report:

1)      Even if it does not mean a lot to you, the fact you have a wife or girlfriend – or they have a husband or boyfriend – will most probably mean an awful lot to them.

2)      White women, like all human beings, want to feel special and that your attraction to them is something personal. Telling them that you really want 'a white girlfriend' is a mistake – this reduces them to one of about ¾billion women who share their skin colour, rather than making them feel like one in a million.

3)      There are undoubtedly many white women happy to be reduced to the role of fashion accessory, but you’ll have to travel to the nightclubs of Britain to find them and compete with professional footballers for their attention.

4)      If they tell you they have a boyfriend or husband, they mean leave them alone.

5)      If they tell you they have a boyfriend or husband and your response is ‘do you know any other white women I can go out with?’, I refer you to item 1).

6)      It is not a cultural norm in Europe to look for love on your commute to work. Very few romances emanate from this situation, and even fewer from the relationship between passenger and bus driver/conductor.

7)      Under no circumstances call the girl you want to impress ‘Sister Rooney’.

A compliment, honestly?

 8)      Finally - and I suspect that this might horrify many of those who seek a ‘white girlfriend’ rather than an individual -  if you are successful in securing a date there is still an age-old tradition in Europe where MEN PAY FOR THE DATE. At the very least, modern European women would expect to pay no more than half of any bill.

To redress the balance, I feel duty bound to point out that there are a lot of very old, very ugly white men here with impossibly beautiful young Kenyan women, and an increasing trend for more mature white ladies romancing young, athletic Kenyan men. Perhaps a young, good-looking Kenyan man or woman can provide a guide for the older white man or woman looking to join them?

The really hard work begins

As I have said on this blog many times before, the VSO approach is to facilitate learning and build the capacity of people and organisations so that our skills remain when we leave. Unlike many voluntary placements, this is not just doing a job and heading back to a land of cheese, salaries and cities you can walk around in after dark, feeling good about yourself and having something worthy to talk about in job interviews. There’s a bit of that, obviously, but if it works well there’s so much more.



Me looking exceptionally elegant - really need a haircut



I've worked with individuals to support some various communications elements of the programmes,  but not done any team-wide work until yesterday. We began with partnership-building, not the ideal place to start sharing the skills my placement is designed to impart but operational pressures dictated. We need to find the right partnerships to help us reach as many persons with disabilities as possible; organisations which can distribute our simplified introductions to human and constitutional rights  and providing fora for the outreach workers we are training.  

Yesterday's session was not designed to be formal training. I wanted to prompt discussion and generate some creative ideas around how we identify partners, communicate with them and build something together which helps to meet our ambitions and the aims of our programme.



Maxwell putting the finishing touches to out Olympic
 running track. Sponsorships still available.



The VSO training - and volunteers' previous work experience - should provide lots of ideas and techniques to do this, but the reality is always going to throw up some surprises. I have introduced a couple of visual elements to the programme – an Olympic running track that we’re ‘racing’ round, with team members moving further along as we produce active partnerships, and maps on the wall where we’ll be marking the growing network of partners. 

The opening exercise, drawing portraits of each other to adorn the running track, seemed to have the desired effect as it raised a few laughs.





Drawing Mzungos is obviously a challenge
for my colleague Mercy



But the group discussions which followed never seemed to continue the momentum. Asking individuals questions within the discussion showed that they clearly understand the subject matter and have intelligent observations to share.

But contributions seemed a little stifled, with no-one wanting to volunteer information. It was surprising and frustrating to see a group of individuals who are usually so talkative, forthcoming and sociable turn so quiet. Most volunteers will know their homeland's working culture inside out, which is a huge advantage when trying to work out whether the contributions of people in meetings or team sessions reflect their levels of boredom, confidence, knowledge, attitude towards the subject at hand or most importantly the value they place on being there.

But when you are acclimatising to working life on another continent, there are so many elements and variables to success that make judging your work and refining your techniques much more difficult. The most important thing to ask is whether what you are experiencing is 'normal' here; the response might simply be alien or unexpected because just the way things are done in another place. The same applies to identifying development needs; volunteers have to be exceptionally careful  that their capacity building work is not  actually trying to undo an integral part of Kenyan working culture. For example, although it has not necessarily been the case for me, we are prepared for the fact that hierarchy is much more respected, so we shouldn't expect to stimulate a free-for-all creative meeting if the boss is in the room.




The team as drawn by the team



If this is the case in an organisation, volunteers will not change it within a year so they should not try. We have to quickly understand and accept what elements are fixed and which are flexible, and then work within those parameters. The only way to find out which is which is to sound out lots of other volunteers to determine what is 'normal', be patient, properly reflect on the work and get as much feedback as possible. I have had a lot of feedback but its all too positive for my liking. Encouraging really honest feedback will be one of  my biggest challenges, but will be critical to the success of my placement.

Only time will tell how successful it was, which is lucky because at the moment I have no idea.I've had feedback about yesterday ranging from the reassuring (facilitated well, people listening, people were quiet because not everyone had done the preparatory work) to requests for better seats and a soda. But at least I have now been reminded what capacity building cannot look like;  with me at the centre asking questions or prompting discussion.

Back to the drawing board. Or maybe not, considering our artistic efforts yesterday.


 



Walking in the footsteps of Mau Mau

A long walk through hilly, forested tracks, a sudden downpour of freezing cold rain, followed by a nice cup of tea in front of a roaring fire to dry off and a fish and chip supper. Have we moved back to Yorkshire? No, just visiting the equator for an unlikely reminder of home.

The birthday girl, Liz

 A friend’s birthday prompted a recent trip up to the town of Nanyuki, near Mount Kenya and officially on the equator (yes we have the cheesy photo to prove it, nervous smiles showing we had just seconds to spare before we were ambushed by determined curio sellers).

We had a fantastic day hiking the bottom of the mountain on the trail of the caves where the Mau Mau rebels hid from British forces. Our guides told us some interesting facts about the rebels, how they got food, where they hid their ammunition and just how tough these people were living up in those mountains for eight years.  They crossed the dense terrain through the trees to avoid be tracked across the ground, and gathered in caves close to waterfalls to cover the sound of their planning meeting.  The Mau Mau rebellion came in response to decades of often brutal oppressive rule, discrimination, enforced labour on white settler land – land which the indigenous population had once farmed as their own.  

The Mau Mau was lead by one of Kenya’s largest and arguably most influential ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were prepared to be ruthless to secure discipline and avoid betrayal by their own, especially as many Kikuyu fought alongside the British against them. Whether they were quite as ruthless as the colonial ruling powers (hope the British government is noting the distinction I’m making here for legal reasons!) were prepared to be (castration, setting fire to people alive) is open to debate, given some of the practices which have been revealed through the recent claim for compensation from the British government from four men interned in British camps. Whatever else it did, the bloody rebellion paved the way for eventual independence and for the Kikuyu dominance of Kenya’s post-independence leadership, arguably in the process defining some of the inter-ethnic tensions which characterise (and, many commentators say, cripple) Kenya’s politics today.

Nanyuki town itself is an interesting place. It hosts quite a lot of NGO regional offices because it one of the safest places further north in Kenya, just before you get to the wild arid lands beyond where local disputes and cattle rustling are notually left to the police to settle.

The Mau-Mau conference cave

It is also home to a sizeable white Kenyan population who still live outside the town on family lands that the Mau Mau never managed to win back from them. To give you an idea of what stock these mzungo are from, the royals are regulars out here and Wills proposed just up the road.



Nanyuki is also home to a large British army base, from where we were told British soldiers venture into northern Kenya to do arid land training for Afghanistan. So this might explain why, when we went out for a meal, we were offered fish and chips and burgers on the menu and could watch the Six nations rugby finale. A bit like being in a Wetherspoons but with better beer. Nanyuki also caters for the mzungo with some great little coffee shops where you can sit over a coffee or very nice hot chocolate and leisurely read the morning papers. A 3-4 hour journey from Nairobi for weather a bit like home and stodgy food-well worth the effort.

More pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/61370474@N03/5597885580/in/set-72157626447536066
Joanne



Could be Otley Chevin