Jonathan Jacobson

First impressions of studying physics in Kenya

February 2007

Note by the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange: The report below is extremely negative and does not represent a balanced account of being a German physics student in Kenya. The author acknowledged this by informing the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange that his report is "much more negative than my sense or impressions here [i.e. in Kenya] represent". He wanted to show a side of Kenya not represented in tourist guides and therefore stated only "all the horrific aspects of Kenya" he managed to collect in order to "disgust and overwhelm the reader". The report below also does not comment at all on studying physics. Although the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange asks its participants to provide a balanced report on their first impressions of studying physics in Kenya, it cannot force them to do so. The Berlin-Nairobi Exchange therefore apologizes to the reader for this report.

It is now six months since I have come to Kenya. I don't want to boast but I have to say I was probably as well prepared for the stay as one could be. I had read practically everything about Kenya, Africa and developing issues, I had attended a class in Kiswahili, I had even accomplished a course in intercultural communications. I was lacking in real experience though, but I was very confident to make that up with open-mindedness. But somehow, most of my first month I was scared. Terrified. Petrified.

Nairobi was, to me, pandemonium. The city is stuffed full of people, and half of those are constantly engaged in yelling, shouting, honking, flashing their headlights or roaring their engines. The other half makes up an incredible dense crowd. During the day the strong equatorial sun makes your head dizzy and the thick mixture of diesel fumes and dust which poses as air here makes your lungs ache. There is always some idle scammer telling you of his miseries and that he would just need a small contribution. And night is not the least bit more relaxed. The Riverroad district sports about everything, except streetlights. The result is, as a cineaste would put it, a very dynamic lightning. You might have come across the phrase that nothing is darker than a moonless night in the African savanna, accentuated by myriads of twinkling bright stars. A warm, soothing darkness it is. And yet, Riverroad is darker, at least when you've just starred into the high beams of a bus bound to Mombasa. And somehow, just at that precious moment, you'll realize you're right next to a dark alley. You'll smell rotting garbage and urine and hear faint whispering, somewhere in the darkness. It is a bit intimidating, I think.

Only after I moved to Juja, somewhat forty-odd kilometers from Nairobi, I was reconciled with the city. The more time I spent bustling through the streets, gliding through moving walls of matatus which seemed impenetrable at first, merging into the crowds, hoping easily onto departing matatus, the more the well-defined structures and rules became apparent to me. Not structures and rules in a European sense. Certainly they're not written down anywhere and no government committee drooled all over them, discussed them and finally resolved them. But rules which are in themselves consensus. Structures which migrated to Riverroad district each morning anew, with each arriving matatu a little. Riverroad is, to me, self-organisation in it's highest degree. And everybody partakes in this organization. Thus it came that I now enjoy Riverroad district and laugh at all the scared tourist who carry their backpacks at the front - since there are so many petty-thiefs.

There are now other issues to scare me. When I came here I was prepared for developing issues, as one might put it, or simply said poverty. I knew about power-failures, slums, bad infrastructure and a low level health system. That was probably one of the reasons I came here in the first place. Away from the convenience of Europe to the thrilling life of Africa! But the longer I am here the more I realize that there is no romantic in poverty. That owning nothing doesn't set us free, it enslaves the people. Poor road conditions certainly make traveling more adventurous for myself, but they actually result in a young woman being knocked down and killed by a matatu. In fact, knocked down is the wrong expression. She was lifted right out of her coarse workman's boots - in life several sizes too big - and hurled five metres before she hit the tarmac. Her black plastic-bag, showing some bright green sokuma leaves, was still next to her boots. Then a hasty matatu drove over boots and plastic bag and dragged them to their former owner. She lay on her side, her red blood glittering in the evening sun. That is bad road maintenance when you're here, not the fact that corn prizes double from Eldoret to Nairobi.

Life-expectancy in Kenya is 45 years. A former attachment student at JKUAT commented on it by saying that it is not so bad if people in Kenya die younger than in Europe. Of course, what he meant to say was that life is a gift which is not diminished or augmented by its duration. But reality is people in Kenya just don't pass on peacefully in their slumbers after 45 years.

They are killed in road accidents or in tribal clashes or they succumb to horrible deceases like AIDS, Cholera or Malaria, or they drown in floods, or they get themselves shot by police or thugs, or they might just starve. And don't fool yourself; it is not a matter of some days or weeks of final fatal illness. Those people die their life long. They suffer their life long.

But that is not what scares me. I'm scared by what seems to be a Kenyan fatalism. I have the impression that most Kenyan have given in on pain and fear. They have come to terms with suffering and death. A fatal accident will hardly trigger more than the occasional `That's too bad'. People have seen it happen too often. There maybe an angry mob throwing stones at passing vehicles, but they'll disperse and forget till the next one dies. Tribal clashes and deadly cattle rustling will not move anybody to demand state intervention. In fact, nobody really expects the government to do something, on the contrary, most Kenyans will tell you that the government or some MP provoked the clashes to reassure their reelection. And the government doesn't seem to be interested in quenching these unrests or rendering security to those who are in dire need of it - namely the over one million slum-dwellers. In fact, the third day of violence and uproar in the Mathare slums in Nairobi, after eight people where hacked to death or stoned, was the first day that police entered the slum ever. Now, a month later, things are back to normal again. Rivaling gangs control parts of the slums, controlling electricity and water supply and killing anyone who might oppose them. Building houses, a sewage system or bringing peace and order to those desolate parts of Nairobi is on no agenda in the presidential election year 2007.

In retrospect my first month in Kenya seems to be a life time away. I hope that suffices to show how much happened in between. How much I learned. How often I had to rethink what I set in stone. How tired I was at some times and how exhilarated at others. And how much fun I had. May the reader excuse that I didn't endeavour to show all that, and that I didn't even mention my host university, JKUAT, although I owe much to it and the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange, which gave me these opportunities to look into Kenya and myself. The reader mustn't assume I didn't or don't enjoy the stay and experience.