Evacuation

This may be our last day in Kenya. The cars are supposed to arrive around ten to take us to the plantation air strip. A private plane has been chartered to Kisumu and then to Dar Es Salaam. Thus far, I am the only one up. Pushing aside the dirty plates and vegetable peelings, I brew the first of the three pots of coffee we will drink before departing. The kitchen is a mess. The night before last we made a large and luxurious meal to celebrate our arrival: chicken stew, coconut rice, sikumiwiki and cabbage. Discovering that our second night was also our last inspired another bout of Dionysian excess. We split and carried in several days worth of firewood that had to be burned. All the veggies and liquor and cheese we bought will go to waste if they are still here when we leave. We are trying to finish everything.
The day before yesterday the Stagematt in Kericho was open for the first time since the problems began. Hannah and Rachel went into town for us and bought supplies for a week or two. We had assumed that we were going to be here for a bit longer than two days. The line stretched out the door and around the block: scores of people who have spent the last week or so locked in their homes, rationing slowly dwindling supplies. The unctuous deference that so often accompanies white skin here was absent in the long line of anxious Kenyans awaiting entry in small groups. Guards carrying fully automatic weapons stood at intervals on the sidewalk, doubled up at the door.
When Anne called yesterday to see who had their passports with them we tempered our sudden excitement by arguing that it was preparatory more than anything else. Since preparation – by definition - always precedes action, I guess we were right, albeit with a shorter time frame than we expected. The others awake. We check news with the house’s satellite internet, take turns emailing family and friends to explain that this evening will find us in Dar Es Salaam. The drip brewing coffee machine in the house is the first that I have encountered in the past seven months. I add fresh milk to each of my three cups. I had kind of hoped to make milking the cow at dusk a routine, like splitting wood for the fire or making my bed each morning. Routine has a strangely vivid appeal in the face of this continual uncertainty.
Doug arrives with the vehicles; again the sterling white doors and fresh new tires of foreign funded transport. Driving to the airstrip he explains the passing convoys of tractors, their trailers packed to overflowing with dark faces. Members of the Kisii tribe have volunteered to leave the plantations in the hopes of avoiding violence. The explanation of how their presence might inspire such a problem is murky. Tribal rivalries, assumed political affiliations, language barriers: the common denominators of all conflict here.
The airstrip is on the crest of a hill; a single long strip of tarmac and a tin metal warehouse plastered with “No Smoking” signs. Climbing out of the SUVs into the sun, my stomach has a sickening boiling sensation: I haven’t had this much caffeine in months. From here we can see the tea fields stretching off to the horizon. The James Finlay Plantation employs 70,000 people; with their families, the total worker population is over 100,000. Marcus said that a few weeks ago he taught a class in a town an hour from the guest house. The entire drive there - and the visible horizon from the school – was tea. The plantation is large, and – from this vantage point – peaceful. Life here has continued much like normal, even as Kericho has filled with soldiers lobbing tear gas and shooting looters.
The plane is a twin prop. Fifteen seats. The pilot is Ugandan; he flies for an International NGO that brings doctors and medical supplies into impoverished areas. Whether the US Government is trading favors or paying cash, I don’t know. Given that Kenya Airways has halted flights out of Kisumu because of fuel shortages, it can’t be cheap to fly us in and out again.
The rich and vibrant green of Kericho’s fields and shambas gradually fades to a dry and dirty brown as the grasslands descend towards Lake Victoria. As the ground grows less fertile there are more and more abandoned dusty plots. Rough and rusted roofs in the center of compounds surrounded by rings and squares of trees appear like massive pupils staring up at us as we pass over. As we approach Kisumu we look for the greasy black smoke that marks the improvised road blocks we are flying to avoid. From this height the only real evidence is the black scorch marks of burned tires that stain the tarmac.
Touching down, we see what appears to be a stream of volunteers coming out to greet the plane. My friend Faith, having experienced riots and violence in Homa Bay during Parliamentary nominations a month ago, came to Kisumu for elections because she thought it would be safer. This did not turn out to be the case. She looks grim. Apparently she is one of the volunteers who is lacking their actual passport. The photocopies faxed by Peace Corps are causing problems with the customs officer. He has been threatening to prevent them from boarding the flight to Tanzania. I don’t blame him, but I don’t particularly like him either. I greet him in Kiswah. He feigns deep immersion in his work. During our interview he continually refers to my “tour group” and stops to send text messages on his phone. No doubt he lives in Kisumu and has much more pressing concerns than the stampede of rich whites attempting to flee the country. All the same, his disregard for the feelings or emotions of those under his jurisdiction is frustratingly typical of bureaucrats here.
Sitting in the lines of molded plastic seats that make up the terminal, a flat screen TV on the wall is tuned to CNN. The sound of jets cycling their engines periodically drowns out the American Presidential Election coverage. It’s -12 in Chicago. Blizzard conditions across the Western states. Obama has won in Iowa. I am delighted. For months I have been telling people in matatus and hotelis that I don’t think Obama will be able to pull out the win. International Newsweek is probably giving me Clinton-skewed information. Britney Spears had a four hour standoff with police. This tidbit and the grainy, poorly lit footage of someone being wheeled out of a comfortable looking Hollywood home is recycled every 15 minutes or so. In the midst of political unrest, as fuel and food supplies dwindle across the country and the word “genocide” is already being irresponsibly thrown around by politicians and journalists eager to start a fire, the event that I am most able to get information about concerns one woman’s inability to cope with her tremendous success, wealth and fame.
Walking to the hoteli at the edge of the parking lot, we pass seven EU Election Observer vehicles abandoned in the parking lot. The serious irregularities that they reported are the very source of the circumstances for their evacuation. I wonder who will come to fetch these cars; whether they will sit until a mob sets upon them. The waitress at the hoteli is as frazzled and impatient as all the other employees at the airport. No doubt the fact that their job becomes more pressing and stressful the more things fall apart around them is a potent cause for exhaustion. Marcus texts me and tells me that the plane has arrived. As we reenter the terminal I can see an old Russian military helicopter offloading another squad of soldiers.
The pilots, both Australian, have been flying a relay between Dar and Kisumu for most of the day. We are their fourth group with three more to go. In total there are almost 40 volunteers being shipped out to in groups of six and seven. I have never been on a private jet. The seats are hand stitched leather. We are offered snacks and use the power plug and fold out table to power Marcus’ laptop while we play a round of Tiger Wood’s PGA Golf. Flying out of Kisumu, over Lake Victoria, we can see the Laison that has choked the bay. A non-native water plant whose thick roots and leafy, floating top growth have crippled numerous sectors of the economy here, it lies in a field of brilliant green not unlike the tea in Kericho. It has choked the harbor preventing the movement of boats for fishing, transport and tourism. From here it appears as a field of solid green, like a tremendous flat soccer pitch planted at the edge of the water.
It’s a short flight in our twin engine private jet. I am boggled, yet again, at what it means to be a citizen of the richest country in the world. To find myself under its’ protection, to have its’ resources mobilized in my favor. In the space of two days, two sets of private planes were organized to evacuate me from a relatively luxurious and safe locale. Customs practices and proper documentation have been thrust aside; within the large list of people attempting to extricate themselves from troubles, our names have floated to the top by virtue of the place we were born. There is no deserving this. No earning it. Touching down, I am struck by the fact that I came here to try and see the other side of the order, to understand what lies at the bottom as I float at the top. I was hoping to find a way to make what I had meaningful, to give it purpose; to be able to congratulate myself on my insistence on earning what I’ve been given. On being a moral recipient of privilege.
Thinking of AIDS orphans, camped in the sun outside the Catholic Diocese in Kericho, waiting for food or water in the afternoon sun, it seems to me that the concept of earning anything – the idea that things happen for a reason – is yet another luxury I had easily assumed away as truth within the soft and easy choices of a Western life. In a certain sense, it easier to realize this than it is to maintain a sense of order. Increasingly I feel compelled to deny merit as a salient force.
We exit into a moist oven of tropical air. There’s another group of helpful Peace Corps staff to whisk us through customs, help us change money, offer phones for calls home. Our multiple entry visas to Tanzania are a hundred dollars each. Pat, the Tanzanian Country Director, peels out seven bills from a thick envelope of cash. With the stamp in our passports we are officially refugees. Like almost a quarter million true Kenyans, we have fled out homes in response to political unrest. It is a semantic coincidence that we can be labeled as such. For the seven of us, as things have gotten worse, our circumstances have only improved. From Marcus’ house in Kericho to the plantation cottage, a private jet and now, the Jangwani Sea Resort Hotel.
Sitting in the volunteer lounge at the Tanzanian Peace Corps Office, someone has looked up the resort on the internet. Two swimming pools, a 24 hour bar and restaurant, a private beach. Air conditioned rooms with mini-fridges and satellite TV. Free internet. We are given spending money, free rein in the volunteer library. A few of our group walk with Tanzanian volunteers to a neighborhood bar.
The excitement of a new country is a raw buzz against the dusty, aching tiredness of the day’s travel. We sit facing eachother on long benches in the back of yet another white Land Rover, crawling slowly through the Friday night traffic. Finally passing a minibus broken down on the side of the road, I realize that I was expecting a road block, a burning car, a crowd of people held at gunpoint by police. It strikes me for the first time that things here are precisely and mundanely normal. When things will return to such a state in Kenya is unknowable.