Monthly Archives: September 2010

Africa journalism Simon Cumbers travel

Slumming It

September 21, 2010 – 6:16 am

Before I am lambasted, a caveat. The phrase ‘slumming it’ is haughty and deplorable at the best of times. I use it here in knowing irony that it’s been chosen as a Facebook photo caption by more than one ignorant gap year student or blundering slum tourist who’s pointed and shot at the slums. And in my short time working with the guys in Kibera, there was a steady trickle of conspicuous white people up on the railway tracks, snapping away at ‘chocolate city’, the nickname given the view of rusty corrugated iron rooves of the slum.

The debate over slum tourism, poverty tourism – call it what you like – provides rich pickings. There’s a pretty comprehensive digest of it here. And it crept up on me while I was walking home after doing some food shopping in the local supermarket about ten days ago.

I’ve been staying a ten-minute walk from Kibera. At 7am, the road outside the house is a conveyor belt for Kibera residents heading to work in the city or the surrounding suburbs. They pour out in the early morning, on foot and in matatus, and commute back in the evening. We were walking with the evening tide of people: myself, a student doctor from the UK, an English artist, and two Irish lads out for a short voluntourism stint, combined with a climb of Mount Kenya.

I had been in Kibera for the last few days, meeting with the Map Kibera and Kibera News Network teams and doing some work with them on editing and shooting stuff in Kibera. The Irish lads were keen to go and ‘see’ Kibera. The doctor and the artist both had things they wanted to ‘do’ in Kibera. She was doing some work in a clinic in the Kiberan suburb of Ushirika, and the artist wanted to meet Maasai Mbili and establish a link with them for a future project.

In a knee-jerk, I found myself extending an invitation to the ‘doers’ to join me, and almost in the same breath, trying to dissuade the other two from going in at all.

‘There’s really nothing to see,” I told them, uttering at once the truth and a complete lie. Kibera is just a town, after all, made famous not for sights nor history but primarily for its poverty. Of course, I had found Kibera a fascinating, visually compelling place, and had been viewing it through a camera lens for days as I filmed with KNN. It is colourful, vibrant and different. So to say that there was nothing to see made me a complete hypocrite.

But it spoke to my gut motivations. I’m not in favour of having a quick, purposeless gawp at relative poverty. If that’s what you go to do, all you will see is poverty, you won’t get any context.  If a rich American tourist strutted through my back garden taking photos without permission or without bothering to stop and say hello, I’d heave a plant pot at his skull and feel justified in doing so. If he was invited in by a neighbour and was genuinely interested in something about me, I’d probably put on some coffee.

In working with the KNN guys, I was able to interact, learn and contribute, much as the doc and the artist would be doing. I gave back, in terms of advice on editing, camerawork and planning. I helped the KNN organisers establish links with a major international NGO. I also felt very uncomfortable using my camera unless the guys gave me the go-ahead, and really didn’t feel comfortable taking obvious, cliched shots that one might expect to come away with after days spent in Kibera. It felt wrong, so I didn’t do it.

If you read Brian Ekdale’s ‘Before you go (if you must)’ points on visiting Kibera, one of the more striking directions he gives is: ‘Leave your camera at home’. Dead right. Had I done that? No, but then again, my purpose for going in was to document. So I couldn’t leave it. But at the same time, I wasn’t going in just to grab a few snaps and head off to Dorman’s coffee shop for a latte and a contemplative sigh. I’d got to know a gang of great people who I hope to stay in touch with for a long time to come. I had respected their work before arriving, and it was great to be part of that.

TMS Ruge puts it most concisely: “You really want change? Put down the camera, walk up to anyone in that slum, get to know them.” It’s a good threshold, and one I can say I’ve met. And in doing so, I pushed beyond the veneer that the snapping tourist sees. Not far, mind, Kibera is a nuanced, complex place, and like any neighbourhood, you’d have to live in it for a long time to ‘get’ it.

A few days in an area does not make one an expert, nor any kind of authority.  But having spent a week in Kibera, I’m beginning to understand how to begin to understand it. And understanding that’s where I’m at is very good beginning.

-ends-

Tags , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (1)
Africa coffee freelance Simon Cumbers travel

Strange Brew

September 18, 2010 – 3:37 pm

When it comes to coffee, Kenyans don’t know what they’re selling. Their coffee is among the best in the world, but most locals here have no idea. Solomon Kamau took me on a walkabout of his coffee co-operative this week near Thika, about an hour north of Nairobi. It provides around 8,000 smalhold farmers with processing and support for their coffee crop, with enough trees in their extended network to produce 8million kilos of beans in a good year.

They’re aiming to sell their coffee directly to the coffee consumer overseas in the coming months, because by going direct, you cut out the middleman, and the farmer gets more money. So says Kamau.

But Kamau, general manager of the co-op, doesn’t drink coffee. His farmers don’t drink coffee. Kenya, on the whole, doesn’t drink coffee.

And that could be a real problem for the coffee industry here.

Kenya is a tea society, from the milky, sweet massala brew I had while waiting for Kamau in Thika, to black gingery stuff, and everything in between. Coffee, in comparison is costly and unpopular. The growth of the middle class in Kenya means that its consumption is on the up, but I’ve been told that a lot of the bagged coffee in stays on supermarket shelves so long that it goes bad before it ever has a chance to be brewed.

Where I’m staying, the staff who do drink coffee are instant coffee drinkers. When I bought a small percolator and started making real coffee in the kitchen, there was a lot of inquiring as to how this odd little machine worked. The results spoke for themselves. I felt like a missionary, seeking conversions in unspoilt territory.

But back to the farmers, and the co-op manager who don’t drink coffee. Kamau and I talked about growing the beans, and the grading of the beans, and what difference you might get in terms of taste from one end of the scale to the other.

Kamau, pointing from a lovely, obvious AA-grade bean to a manky, gangrenous-looking little peaberry, confidently told me ”There is no difference in taste”. Coffee coinnoisseurs would disagree, as would the global coffee market. AA coffee beans, on a typical day, can fetch five dollars a bag or more. AA beans are the coffee stereotype we know and love, a smooth, consistent brown oval with a delicate ‘S’ mark down the middle. TT-grade beans, in comparison, look like picked scabs or excised warts. If you opened a bag and it was full of TT beans, you’d send it back with a compensation claim for nervous shock.

The look of the bean, and the taste when roasted, are among those things that  coffee traders lfind incredibly important, and it’s what guides their bidding. And sure enough, when I went to a coffee auction last week, roughly a million tonnes of coffee was raffled off. The coffee that tasted like armpit (according to one trader) and looked like crushed beetles was all but given away.

But back to the tea-drinking coffee farmer. Imagine, for a second, an Irish potato farmer who didn’t eat potatoes, and instead ate only pasta. It seems ridiculous. Or a Chinese man, standing knee-deep in his paddy field, who had never tasted rice. Would you buy their product? Would you trust them to know how to grow what you wanted?

I asked Kamau what made a good coffee bean, how you could get a crop to produce consistent quality. The answer came in basic agricultural terms. Fertiliser. Good husbandry. And, to their credit, they are looking into the new Batian variety, a hardy plant that is disease- and drought-resistant. They also splice one strain of coffee plant with a good root system with another that produces a better bean. But how that relates to a cup of cappuccino isn’t even a mystery, it’s a totally alien concept.

Educating Kenyan farmers about the value of their crop, and what makes a good bean, thence a good cup, will be part of the process in bringing the industry along. At the top, the marketeers are already being upskilled, with American taste experts flying in to help the people selling the coffee understand what they’re selling and how to tell the a-grade espresso bean from the Maxwell House mank, and market accordingly. The marketeers are at the top of the coffee tree. The knowledge has yet to make its way down to the roots.

Markham is on a prolonged journey through Kenya and Tanzania partly funded by a Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund grant. Editors/producers looking to contact Markham for material or contributions from Kenya should email markham [dot] nolan [at] gmail [dot] com, or text +254 732 580 147

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comments (2)
Africa podcast Simon Cumbers travel

God’s Cabbie

September 7, 2010 – 9:40 pm

It’s amazing what business prospects strangers will pitch to you in East Africa. While walking along the street, I’ve been given the option to sponsor the university education of total strangers, and help them fund major business investments, often within minutes of having met someone. And for that reason, I’m out.

I had another Dragon’s Den experience on the road from Mombasa to Kilifi last week. Komaza, the NGO I was visiting in Kilifi, had recommended a driver to pick me up at Mombasa airport, and Osito appeared when I walked off the plane, friendly and prompt.

We chatted for the journey, and when Osito heard I was a journalist, and better still, one shooting video, he got excited. He hoped that I’d be able to film a music video for his Gospel group, or, better yet, find them a sponsor. I didn’t have time or money to fulfil his wishes on the spot, but we recorded a bit of his singing in the hope I could put it to some use.

Have a listen to Osito.

Nota Bene: This podcast was edited at midnight after a long day tramping around Kibera, while waiting for videos to render in Final Cut. Apologies for levels, popping, etc.

Markham is on a prolonged journey through Kenya and Tanzania partly funded by a Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund grant. Editors/producers looking to contact Markham for material or contributions from Kenya should email markham [dot] nolan [at] gmail [dot] com, or text +254 732 580 147.

Tags , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Africa podcast Simon Cumbers

Long Train Running

September 5, 2010 – 8:15 am

I’ve done two bona fide ‘classic’ journeys in my time travelling. The first was a slow boat along the coast of Patagonia, which didn’t go exactly to plan and now this, the Mombasa-Nairobi train journey. The train is an old iron snake, split into first, second and third classes, with those up front having cabins and access to a dining car for meals. €36 buys you a first-class ticket, 13 hours of relative comfort, and a 500-kilometre passage from the sweltering coast up to Kenya’s capital on the Maasai steppe.  That’s good value.

‘Classic’ travel denotes a certain olde-world charm, a sense of nostalgia. It’s a warm reminiscence of a simpler time before digital displays on train platforms, laminated plastic timetables and the swiping of smartcards. It’s steam and smoke, and polished chrome.

Of course, any owner of a ‘classic’ car will tell you that classics break down on a regular basis, are slower and less efficient than modern cars, and unless kept immaculately, demand that you sacrifice some comfort for the sake of aesthetics.

All this was present in spades when I arrived at Mombasa. I had already received a phonecall warning me not to turn up on time for the 7pm train, which would not be there, so I arrived at 8pm as per revised instructions, and would find myself hanging out on the platform until well after 2am the next morning, in hopeful expectation of a train appearing out of the dark.

When I arrived, there was a singsong going on, with a teacher from Kaugi Primary School on the guitar leading 40 or so primary school children in some folksy hymns. I took out my sound recorder to capture some of it, and drew a crowd (pictured above).

The podcast below gives a better impression of it, so I’ll leave you to listen to it.

Thirteen hours on a train is not something I’m accustomed to. The train bumped happily along the tracks, and sleeping was akin to lying down on a bouncy castle full of sugar-mad kids at a birthday party. You were gently rocked, not in the typical back-and-forth, but vertically up and down. Similarly, I felt seasick for the first six hours at the far end, having grown accustomed to the movement underfoot.

In Nairobi now for the next while, and looking forward to meeting some interesting groups of people over the coming days.

Markham is on a prolonged journey through Kenya and Tanzania partly funded by a Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund grant. Editors/producers looking to contact Markham for material or contributions from Kenya should email markham [dot] nolan [at] gmail [dot] com, or text +254 732 580 147.

Tags , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (2)