The saying goes in Kenya that “when the Americans come to town, everything stops working”. Joe Biden and co. flew in to Kenya on Monday night. As a result, Nairobi traffic literally came to a complete standstill for several hours and yours truly was lucky enough to get caught right in the middle of it! I happened to be on my way to a film screening at Nairobi’s Alliance Francaise when Biden’s plane landed. The Alliance is one of the main cultural hubs in town and was showing an interesting documentary film called ‘Good Fortune’. It’s about two development projects in Kenya that ended up causing damage to the very communities that they were intending to help. The film itself was nothing special, but the discussion it generated afterwards amongst the crowd of Kenyans and ex-pats about development issues in East Africa was super interesting! It’s so important to critically reflect on this type of work; something that I think is definitely not done enough by development practitioners themselves.
Anyway, back to the Americans. Apparently when Clinton visited Tanzania a few years back, all phone and communication lines in Kenya stopped working when he flew over Kenyan airspace! Hence, the above-mentioned saying…. It’s been really interesting to hear people’s reactions to Biden’s visit though. Locals have mixed reactions to him so strongly endorsing the proposed new Kenyan constitution. He used an interesting tactic of persuasion by promising a visit by Obama himself if the constitution is passed in August. Many Kenyans are frustrated by the fact that no American president has ever visited Kenya during their term in office. So, the potential visit by Obama is seen as very exciting and may actually have some sway on the vote.
Obama tends to come up a lot in conversation with people here; the most popular topic of discussion being how the person I’m speaking with happens to be related to the guy. Just the other day, my taxi driver claimed that Obama was his half-brother. Last week, a different taxi driver claimed he was his first cousin. Perhaps these guys really are from the Luo tribe, in which case their genetic claim-to-fame might be a little more legit, but its more likely that they have taken it upon themselves to consider any Kenyan blood good enough reason to be called family!
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