A Camera-less Photographic Art Gallery

About a dozen people have now asked me in Nairobi about the photography aspect of the business I am building here in the place of cold water and everytime I explain it I just have to laugh. Like the day I mailed 6 plastic cameras to the middle of nowhere in Africa thinking it was a fine start to a business, here I find myself struggling to build the most beautiful photographic gallery in the world and the one thing I don’t have is a camera. I tell the Kenyans that it doesn’t really matter at this point, that I am trying to build something with a much deeper more humanistic purpose but still it does sound somewhat unplanned. At least one camera would be good.

The American Express Corporation has swiftly replaced my stolen card and for some dangerous reason has issued me a temporary one – with no limit. How strange really to show up to a credit card bureau with one piece of ID in a poverty stricken third world African nation and be handed a piece of shiny plastic with absolutely no limit to the amount of spending I could hurl at it. Clearly they must not have access to the Canadian credit bureau files back home. I have yet to use it though – trying in the most Scottish of ways to stick to my budget and not replace my camera even though I desperately need it not only for the design studio but for my sanity. Luckily a friend has come to visit from Canada so I had him take 2 photos for me of the studio and our new shirt designed with the imagination of Barbara Okeyo, future human rights lawyer.

Barbra’s real name and secret African name is ‘Atieno’ which means ‘born at night’ which I absolutely love. My girlfriend from Kenya, Barbra’s aunt Grace has the same name as she is Luo from the West of Kenya. Otieno is for the male. There seem to be a lot of Luo’s here in Nairobi – next to Kikuyu they might be the second largest group and they are a really gorgeous group of people. Another young guy who has been sourcing dumped textiles for us is also Luo and he said that the Luo’s are the ones with the most style. The Kikuyu’s tell me they are the best looking and the Masaai seem to be the richest next to the MP’s who again, are mostly Kikuyu. Sortive like in Canada how most of the MP’s are Quebecois. Either way there is a very strong sense of vanity amongst everyone here – looking good is very important.

I went to Lake Naivasha on the weekend and got completely frustrated with the rather awful road system that trails around the North side of the lake. Coming from Canada it seemed tragic at first that this beautiful lake had such a pathetic transport system circumnavigating it but amidst all the dust and bumps I started thinking that if all the land around the lake is privately owned and the government doesn’t get any revenue off of that then why should they build a road? We stayed on a 200-acre plot of the most beautiful waterfront land which seems to be pretty much owned by one family. Again, absolutely bizarre to see nearly a million people huddled and crammed into a slum here in Nairobi and within 75 kilometers one person is the sole owner of such a massive empty beautiful thing. I wonder if in time Kenya will take back all this land from the colonial white landowners like what happened in Zimbabwe and now Bolivia. Lord Delamere’s grandson is sitting in a jail somewhere for killing two people with a shotgun and the machination of picking tea leaves has become illegal for it’s destruction of human labour jobs. It’s possible I suppose – land is one of the most secure ways to generate revenue and Kenya definitely needs that.

It’s nearly 2am and I am sitting on the balcony of an apartment I am renting right downtown on a street called Koinange – a few blocks from my favourite breakfast joint and rather inconveniently located beside what seems to be a 24-hour car repair shop. There is always noise here – always sounds of human activity and movement and always the sound of tinny dance music coming from some car driving very fast. I guess they fix the matatu’s at night here so as not to lose vital daytime revenue. I calculated that it is possible for a matatu driver to earn anywhere from 60-100,000 KShillings per month which is $1,000-1,600 Cdn per month. Each passenger pays around 15 KSh per trip with 12 people in the bus all day long. The owner of the matatu’s apparently take up to 5,000 KSh flat off the top each day which means the driver/conductor team must make at least 2,000 Ksh to make it worth their while each day. With anywhere from 3-4 million people living in greater Nairobi and despite the car traffic, most residents don’t own one – this fast-moving dangerous as hell Toyota mini-van transport system is good business.

Looking over the balcony I can see at least seven matatu’s in a queue to be repaired which means it will be a sleepless night if I don’t pull out the earplugs. I can’t sleep after some great days this week working with Barbra and helping her realize her dreams of becoming a human rights lawyer. For her the yearly budget she needs of $10,000 Cdn to go study at Langara must absolutely seem like the most impossible goal to accomplish but to me I know people who have spent this kind of money on a weekend with friends. Who knows I could probably squeeze the whole thing on the new limitless AMEX. But instead she is doing it the old fashioned way, the best way, the way that nobody can take away from you no matter how hard they try – she is working for it and saving some of her earnings from me to finance her education. I keep telling her it’s going to be okay – that we’ll find a way somehow to get her into school because I cannot think of anything more important for this country to have than a young creatively ambitious advocate for the rights of it’s citizens. That’s an investment worth making – low risk, high yield.

A new friend from Denmark was over for dinner and he told me about all the construction going on in Dubai where he is based. In one area something like 150 skyscrapers are being built simultaneously to form some unbelievable new city world for tourists and residents and all those seeking gold. But when I think of all the cranes sitting on Dubai soil, 16% of the world’s total cranes are in Dubai right now, and I think of Barbra lying awake at night dreaming of being in school it just doesn’t make sense. Don’t all those people who fly over Africa on their way to Dubai with pockets full of money stop for a few minutes to look out the window of the airplane? Do they see or feel or somehow connect through the psychic energy that binds us all on this planet – that if they alighted in Nairobi or Juba or Addis or Lusaka and spent just a tiny fraction of what they’ve saved for Dubai that slowly in some way we could all breathe a sigh of relief? I know there is a powerful connection between war and poverty and if we can somehow get our act together and get rid of all this poverty that soon after, like that soft light of daybreak you see when you just can’t sleep and it feels like a secret that only you are seeing, this is the kind of moment when we could begin to see the end of war. I know this to be true. When we're happy we don’t fight - we share.

Activists of the week – the Grannies on 5th Avenue in New York because, as they said, there is goodness in grandmothers and the first president of an African nation is one.