The Grass is Always Greener--Right Before the Revolution

One of my Kenyan colleagues read yesterday's posting and wondered when I was gonna get a clue. Or a grip. Or basically just get over myself, for chrissakes.

Upon review, I can see where he's coming from. I've been coming to Africa for 6 years now, and have actually lived in the continent for almost 2, yet I'm still commenting on how incredibly poor a lot of people are. I'm still struck by the depth of poverty and squalor you can encounter. In fact, most of the time, I'm pretty much horrified by it. So it's still pretty much a surprise when I encounter a lovely, sophisticated setting like the Kunduchi Beach Hotel nestled in the midst of it.

Basically, my colleague wanted to know when I was gonna just accept that there's more to Africa than pompous dictators and killer diseases. But here's the thing...obviously I get that. In fact, I get it more than about 90 percent of Americans. Just because Africa's poverty disturbs me doesn't mean I'm not acknowledging how limited the prevailing stereotypes are.

What I was really trying to communicate yesterday, albeit in a rather shallow, sarcastic way, is that I wonder what keeps the folks on the other side of the "Kunduchi Wet N' Wild Water Park" gate from storming through? What disturbs me more than the abject squalor is how frequently it's located right next to relative splendor.

Actually, that's something I think about while I'm back home sometimes, too. I'll never forget going to report on a brutal murder on the Detroit city limits, on a street full of mostly abandoned, dilapidated houses and sidewalks littered with broken bottles, hypo needles, and other garbage. But right across the street, in plain view of the crime scene, was the rolling, manicured playground of a large well-equipped school, behind a high, secure fence.

I wondered how a parent dropping his or her kid off at that well-equipped school explained the conditions in the surrounding neighborhood. And I wondered what the kids who pass by that newer, well equipped school, tiptoeing through those garbage-littered streets to their own struggling, decaying neighborhood schools, must be thinking.

It seemed to me then, and whenever I see a similar setting anywhere in the world, that I'm viewing the recipe for an imminent, massive revolution. For example, the girl who was cleaning my room this afternoon reeked of body odor so strong, I gagged. I had to ask her to just leave a few towels, it was so bad. But I realize it's not just because she has bad hygiene habits. It's because she doesn't have water in her home. Or if there is water, she or one of her younger sisters had to walk for miles each morning to fetch it from a filthy stream, and it has to be used for cooking, not for luxuries like bathing.

"What keeps that girl from hopping into my shower and cleansing herself? She deserves to be able to do that."

And what keeps the people who cook the buffet meals for hotels like this one, and then go home to a bowl full of ugali and beans if they're lucky, from just sitting down and eating their full? What keeps the guards who are lucky if they make a dollar a day from jacking everybody in sight?

I don't know, but I must confess that I hope I'm not on the African continent when those people finally realize the answer is, "Not much." Because one day, very soon, the "Keep Off Private Property" signs just won't do the trick.