The Help - Nairobi Version

“With money, you can do anything.”

These were the words of our housekeeper last week, as she stood before me with a small smile on her face.

I was tempted to reply, “Well, money can’t buy you EVERYTHING.”

But luckily, I didn’t. Instead, I said nothing, smiled back, and listened.

The fact of the matter is, when you are truly poor, having money or not DOES change everything. Being poor makes you incredibly vulnerable – to losing what little you have, to being taken advantage of, to missing out on basic services and opportunities, and the list goes on.

The edge between having enough or not is sharp and cruel. Even among those who have next to nothing, having a bit more creates opportunity – and envy.

Our housekeeper has been embroiled in a family dispute involving land and inheritance for several months. It revolves around her husband and some shady dealings on the part of his siblings to cheat him out of the small parcel of land that is his part of the family inheritance.

Land ownership is a very touchy issue here in Kenya. Many people have been robbed of their lands through colonialism, and post-colonial corruption, cronyism, and general dirty dealings.  Tenure and title are not always secure. Families are large, and plots broken up into smaller and smaller pieces across the generations. By tradition, only men have been allowed to inherit land. That is supposed to have changed with the passing of a new national constitution a few years back, but practices are slow to change.

In the case of our housekeeper, her in-laws have been stalling her attempts to obtain proper, formal title to their land, because they know that her husband’s health is failing from decades of chain smoking. She has become increasingly frantic knowing that the title is the only way to preserve their share of the family land, and the house on it, which they built largely due to her hard work.

After some ugly scenes and threats at home, she eventually came to me to ask for financial help to pay for the surveyor and title.

I was reminded of a scene in Kathryn Stockett’s book, The Help. An interesting read from any perspective, it is even more so when you employ household staff and live in a place that does have separate bathrooms for "domestics."  In the story, The Help, there is a character who works as a maid and asks her employers for an advance, so that she can send her son to university. They turn her down, pushing her ultimately to desperation, theft, and a prison sentence.

Though The Help is a work of fiction, it reflects many realities. And although it is set fifty or more years ago, the racial and economic –isms and inequities it highlights are still very present today. This is particularly blatant in our environment in Nairobi, where the disparity between our access to choice, resources, and options and that of the people who work around us day and night is so enormous.

Also similar to the book is the intimacy that develops from our interwoven lives. The NSA doesn’t need to tap our phones or read our emails to follow our comings and goings. They can just ask our house staff, who observes us daily and knows our every habit. Likewise, we are privy to many of the stories and problems that make up their lives.

Unlike the employer characters in The Help, we are much more willing to give our staff advances, or even financial gifts, to cover things like kids’ school tuition, driving lessons, or moving from a slum shack to something a bit better. I admit it’s a new experience for us. In Peru, household staff and guards never asked for loans. But here it is common and accepted practice for the haves to be expected to help out (or be hit up by) the have-nots.

Our housekeeper is better off than many. She and her husband have some land and a house with electricity and running water. This is largely because she is smart and thrifty. And she has worked for people like us, who pay her 2-3 times the usual salary for housekeeping. But she is still poor. And the fact that she does have a few resources makes her prey to jealous and greedy relatives, who are all too ready to exploit the notion of sharing the wealth.

So, I got her the money she needed. And I gave her the next day off, so that she could go to the various land and title offices to file her paperwork. It was the following day that she told me how having the money needed made all the difference.

Is the matter fully settled? Not at all.  But the proper wheels are in motion, and this week’s hope has replaced last week’s desperation.

I read a lot about giving and development. Which strategies work best? There’s lots of discussion and little agreement. What is the right balance between accountability and just giving people money? Is direct payment better than services, microcredit better than macro-changes, teaching to fish better than giving a fish?  The jury is out and debates continue.

One thing is sure. Sometimes, you have a chance to do something relatively small for one person that represents something really big to them. May we all understand and seize that chance.

More than a Mall, a Microcosm – What the Westgate Attacks Showed Us

“Though I can’t imagine you hanging out at a mall, please let me know if you are ok.”

Thus started a message among the many we received from friends and family concerning the horrific terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall here in Nairobi.

Luckily, we were not at Westgate on that ill-fated Saturday (September 21). We were spared  the terrible deaths and drama caused by a carefully planned terrorist attack that would last more than 72 hours.

We weren’t even in Nairobi.

We were out of town, in the Maasai Mara reserve. We were on a safari trip planned well in advance to celebrate the visit of our older son. Far from the gunshots and grenades, we were watching migrating wildebeests, lolling lions, and an elusive black rhino. We were in the savannah and off the grid.  It was not until evening that we heard the news.

But as was the case for many other people, the Westgate attacks did hit close to home.

Westgate is a 10-minute drive from our house. It’s where I used to go 3-5 times a week to buy groceries, get cash from the ATM, and have the occasional pedicure. If I look around our house, it’s full of stuff purchased in one Westgate store or another. It’s also the place we went for an easy meal out or to catch a movie. We were there for lunch just two days before the attack.

While my friend was right to note that I’m not normally a mall crawler, the whole context and meaning of shopping malls is very different here compared to Europe, the US, or even Latin America. In Nairobi, and all over Africa generally, malls are not just places to shop. They are where people of all different backgrounds and economic levels go to meet and browse. Malls offer an environment that is clean, accessible, attractive - and normally, very safe. 

The international media has repeatedly referred to Westgate as an “upscale” place filled with “rich” Kenyans and diplomats.

But that gives a false impression.  

Sure, you could find a pair of Nikes, eat sushi, or go into a casino that smelled of stale smoke at Westgate. But there was no Armani, Louis Vuitton, or even Benneton to be found. The more common brand names were Bata shoes, Mr. Price pillows, and Nakumatt groceries.

Going to Westgate was akin to going downtown or to a pedestrian shopping district.  It was open to anyone, including people with little money but a desire to have a chat or inexpensive cup of tea in a pleasant place.   

And as the pictures of victims and fleeing escapees depicted, Westgate presented a microcosm of the rich cultural, economic, racial, and religious diversity of Kenya.

Though politicians have played on tribal tensions in the past, mostly associated with land disputes, Kenya is in many ways a remarkably tolerant melting pot. The landscape of Nairobi is dotted with churches, mosques, and temples of different types. Styles of dress range from turbans to tank tops, saris to business suits, and t-shirts to chadors. Dozens of different languages are spoken, though you can get by many places with either of the two official languages, English and Kiswahili.

This is not to say that everyone gets along all the time.

But if the terrorist attacks have done one thing, it has been to unify the people of Kenya. “We are one” is the new slogan and resilience the new mantra.

There are countless examples of how that’s been put into practice. Thousands of people of all walks and types lined up to donate blood for the attack victims, not only in Nairobi, but all over the country.  Girls from one school I know of, many of them orphans and all of them quite poor, collected nearly $2,000 worth of coins to send to the Red Cross relief efforts. Individuals of every stripe helped others to escape the mall during the standoff. From the national to the most private levels, the color of mourning has been as varied as the rainbow of inhabitants who populate this city.

There are countless stories of heartbreak and heroism to have emerged from the Westgate attack. But one that I find especially emblematic was told to me by a friend. She described how her au-pair was trapped in the Nakumatt supermarket during the first hours of the attack. Recently arrived from England and in her early 20s, she took refuge along with many others in a back storage room. There she ended up next to a young Kenyan woman of a similar age, wearing a headscarf. They chatted to give each other courage. When volunteer rescuers came to help them escape hours later, they ran out of the building together -  hand in hand. 

Strangers helping strangers to escape to safety. Photo: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic