Culture Shock in February 2008 Not November 2007
Looking back to 3 months ago, it feels almost eerie how quickly we slipped back into our U.S. lives. It is amazing to think that we lived in Kenya for 10 months and Swaziland for over 5 months until November 17, 2007. Thrown right into Thanksgiving and Christmas, being with family, and traveling through several airports between coasts, we oddly felt at home right away.
My anticipated culture shock set in as we re-started our social network after the New Year. By early January, as the Kenyan elections burst open the gates of hatred, everyone we met—and we—were certainly glad we were in the U.S. Each of the many conversations we’ve had with friends and family continues to sensitize us to the situations of friends and colleagues we left behind to deal with terror on their streets. We have emailed back and forth with many Kenyans. We have tracked the Kenyan-on-Kenyan violence on the internet. We are happy that no one we know was personally threatened. The TechnoServe office in Kenya opened the 7th January week, shut down again throughout the month, and is officially back in business in February.
Friends with whom we were close in Nairobi but who had moved to Arusha, Tanzania before we left emailed about recently visiting Kenya’s Amboseli National Reserve. 240 km. southeast of Nairobi at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Amboseli is one of the most popular tourism sites in Africa. The good news is that they had great fun seeing lots of elephants, hyenas, and other wild animals. The bad news is symbolic for the Kenyan economy: less than 15 guests inhabited the lovely 80-room lodge at which they stayed.
For anyone following Kenya’s situation, you know how many international figures--now including Condaleeza Rice--have intervened to address the deep tribal rifts that have simmered under the surface for decades. With the tourism money evaporated, the country’s CEOs have voiced their concern, petitioning the Kenyan government to come up with a solution quickly because hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk with further violence.
In February 2008, I am beginning to have hope for the stability of beautiful Kenya where barely 3 months ago we lived for a year. I have hope that Kenya will not continue to reflect the depressing social and economic conditions of less educated African countries. For the World’s, Africa’s and our Kenyan friends’ sake, I must hope.
My Perspective on Africa in 2006 - 2007 vs. My Father’s from 1943 – 1945
I had wanted to live abroad since the 1980s, envisioning our view of a European, Asian or maybe Latin American capital from a high rise or picturesque flat. However, as Rick seriously started exploring his career change to international economic development it was clear that neither Hong Kong nor Paris truly needs our help to improve their economies nor do nonprofits underwrite 4-star dinners. I recognized that we would just continue to travel as tourists to those kinds of locales.
On the other hand, Africa clearly needs enormous economic, health, and social support. In addition, from the time I was a little girl, my father's pictures, stories, and having a pet monkey when he was stationed there from 1943 to 1945, had always inspired me to want to visit Africa. Rick’s and my 1997 safari in East Africa reinforced this connection so our living in Africa seemed a logical extension.
Now in retrospect after living in Swaziland and Kenya for nearly 1.5 years and traveling to several of the same countries as my father, my perspective and experience seem even more profoundly related to my father’s. Ashley Woodrow Rice, my father, was a 24 year old lieutenant, cargo pilot, and small base commander in the Air Force (formerly the Army Air Corps). www.walleigh.com now has a long page of black and white photos from his World Word II tour of duty across Africa where the Allies were fighting General Rommel a.k.a. "Desert Fox." It is truly amazing how many countries he visited during his 2 years: Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo or D.R.C.), Cameroons, Egypt, French Equatorial Africa (now Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville & Gabon), Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Palestine (Israel), Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Uganda.
The wild animals, the fabulous landscapes, and people’s warmth are the same. And nowadays many countries have instituted free universal primary school education relatively recently—some have secondary also. Cities have modern-looking buildings, relatively new cars, electricity, running water, retail stores, decent hospitals/clinics, and people nicely dressed in Western-style.
However, in 2007 we also saw life unchanged since 1945: people dressed in ragged clothes, living in small un-electrified villages, and eking out subsistence-level crops from tiny farms. They carry for miles on the tops of their heads the water, firewood, and food for their families. They have little access or finances for good healthcare so they still die mainly from malaria, water-born diarrhea, and respiratory diseases with the added “bonus” of HIV/AIDS.
Since my father died at age 54 when I was 26, I can only imagine his soldier’s perspective of helping the continent remain free of Nazis, periodically being faced with military danger, yet feeling lucky to travel and experience so many different places “on the other side of the world.” I wonder how he viewed colonialism’s role in continuing the cycle of poverty and poor health since independence was still many years in the future. I suspect that he saw the many different tribal cultures and conditions as quaint and fascinating. I know he enjoyed getting to know people in their own contexts.
Many of my father’s pictures were in my mind when we were on safari in 1997. I remember thinking that only Nairobi had changed since 1945 and that much of our travels in Kenya and Tanzania were just 4-color versions of his photos. Now in 2008 after our 1.5 years living in Africa, once again I reviewed my father’s pictures. Despite the scenery and economics being not much changed in Africa since 1945, both Rick and I idealistically feel that at least in small ways, we personally made a difference in some lives that we touched. I imagine my father would have had complex, even conflicted thoughts and feelings similar to mine. I would have loved the many energetic discussions exchanging our perspectives. Now I recognize fully how much of a life-changing experience my father’s 2 years in Africa--as a very young man--must have been. It certainly was for me even at my age.
