Polepole Mzee Kobe

Today I woke up in a bubble gum pink room (it screams of pepto) in the suburb of Runda, just a short bus ride from Nairobi’s city center. I arrived here yesterday after a three day trip from New York (with 12 hours of exploration in London, thanks Ridhi!).

Runda appears to be an exclusive “estate” with large guarded houses—one enclave next to another. It is also the home to the new offices of The Kenya Oral History Center, the organization run by John and Chris Nottingham along with Caroline Elkins, a Harvard professor and my thesis adviser. This summer I will be working for them and living in the house attached to the offices. I’m living with and working with two other Harvard students (one from the class of 2010 and another PhD student) and a tortoise that we named Polepole (it means slow in Swahili) but who already had the name Mzee Kobe (Mr. Kobe).

We are working on a project to curate the history wing of the National Museum. In the last few years the EU invested millions of dollars in the renovation of the museum, which has exhibits on pre-colonial, “traditional” Kenya and on current Kenyan culture. But there is an obvious and controversial gap. No part of the museum reflects the colonial period—or so I am told… I’ve actually never been. It is high on my to do list now that I am here.

The history wing of the museum has sat empty for the last few years because there has been controversy surrounding who would have the right to curate it. The closest anyone ever got to designing the wing happened just a year or two ago when the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (an internal government human rights watchdog organization) designed a narrative and plan for the wing that would use it as a form of nation and capacity building. A scandal or so later and now the project has come into the hands of the Kenya Oral History Center. We are working with the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) which is a non-governmental human rights watchdog. They do incredible work on Mau Mau and on Operation Rudi Nyumbani, the subject of my thesis.

Erin, Julia and I have come to work with John, Chris and Carrie on the first stage of the project. This involves focus-groups with Kenyan historians to finalize a narrative that balances accurate history with human rights, nation-building and capacity-building objectives. It also involves visits to the national archives, private collections and regional museums. We will be cataloguing what is available, digitizing photo collections and conducting interviews. The project brings together a lot of things that I find to be fascinating and exciting. Kenyan history, human rights and art… Really I could not be more excited.

In my first day here we settled in and went grocery shopping. We went to a grocery store (Nakumatt) which carries primarily imported goods and brands recognizable from the US. The Nakumatt was located in an outdoor mall where the children of Kenya’s elite sat and watched the first world cup game, accompanied and outnumbered by an astounding number of white folks. All in all, living in Runda and shopping at Nakumatt, my day in Nairobi was surreal. Although I’m certain we will emerge from this mzungu world soon enough, I’ve found how easy it can be to isolate yourself in privilege here. But this kind of life is quiet, it depends on a nighttime guard named Michael, and thus far on hired transport. So one goal for today is to find ourselves some independence. Can we walk to a bus-stop and actually arrive, for real, in Nairobi?