As the sun begins to rise, we hop onto a motorbike, my host brother mumbles a destination—it starts with a “K,” but all the towns sound alike—and we slowly inch onto the highway, weaving past the buses, vans and women wielding baskets atop their heads. As we creep onto the bumpy dirt road and I realize I have nothing to grasp onto because there are two passengers piled into the backseat, I close my eyes and hope that my life won’t end on a Kenyan motorcycle.
Ten minutes and a few kilometers of dirt road later, I am lying on the ground struggling in the relentless African mud, attempting to escape as a bull drugged on opium charges dangerously close toward me. If the barefoot men carrying eight-foot staffs weren’t already staring at the only white person, they were now—their eyes fixed on the mud-covered “mzungu” with a camera the size of a small chicken dangling around his neck.
The bullfight begins. For them, the battle is an entertaining Saturday morning tradition, and the fact that they temporarily lost control of the bull—which they purposefully drugged for the occasion—is nothing new.
We like to believe we are “cultured.” We have traveled to far-away countries where English is not the dominant language, we have taken courses meant to increase our fluency in those foreign languages and we have studied globalization, poverty and the need for cultural competence. We go to a school that continuously touts its diversity, where we meet accomplished peers with intriguing backgrounds, where we are encouraged to spend our summers conducting service work abroad—without paying a dime.
And it takes that trip for us to realize just how little we know, to learn that our preconceived notions of That Part of the World are completely misplaced. Stripped of our identities as students attending a certain school from a certain state studying a certain subject, we are placed into a culture that merely knows us as White. We think we know the culture and the customs of That Part of the World we are about to put ourselves into only to discover that our notions of Them are just as vague as their perceived notions of Us.
It takes that trip for us to realize just how stuck we are. Stuck to our ways as Americans. Stuck to our preconceived notions that developing countries offer subpar services in comparison to our developed land. Stuck in our belief that, as quasi-intelligent students from America, we can make a difference. Stuck in our notion that what we learn in lecture halls and seminar rooms will be directly applicable to the work that we will do in That Part of the World. And while here, where mud is the equivalent of asphalt, we find ourselves literally stuck in the mud, hoping that the drugged bull charging behind us makes a turn and decides to chase after someone a little more experienced in navigating traditional rural African bullfights.
Of course, this metaphorical depiction of my immersion into the habits and customs of a foreign country falls short of my actual experience, as all metaphors do. Africans lead their lives in the open, and in that openness the striking contrasts of this dynamic society begin to show.
In a conservative culture that looks down upon women who reveal their knees, privacy strangely does not seem to exist. Your plate is the communal serving dish, your utensils are your hands. At the hospital which has graciously allowed me to “work” (a.k.a. Get in the Way as Real Health Professionals Attempt to Do Their Jobs) alongside its staff members for the summer, women breast-feed in the open and almost anyone can walk into the delivery room as a woman gives birth. Patients meet with doctors with doors open, other sick people coming in and out. HIV positive patients wait to receive their antiretrovirals in a waiting area whose blue paint might as well read, “These Patients Have AIDS.” And in a region where the stigma of HIV dissuades many from getting tested, a select group of volunteers—all of whom are HIV positive—walk for miles to reach patients who have defaulted on their treatment in an attempt to encourage them not to die.
Along the main highway (which is surprisingly not constructed from mud), men craft wooden caskets next to women roasting corn next to cows urinating next to barefoot children dumping a pile of litter on the ground next to men selling shoes next to mothers taking pictures of their children on their cellphones. The radio broadcasts traditional Kenyan music back-to-back with the familiar lyrics of Chris Brown, Rihanna and Bruno Mars. It’s a place where conductors of overcrowded public vans openly bribe police officers to avoid a ticket, and where many do not trust the news; my assurance that yes, Obama really did get Osama came as relief to my host family, part of which was affected by the 1998 al Qaeda bombings in Nairobi. In town, Muslim women adorning burqas pass through modernized shops shoulder-to-shoulder with women in traditional African dresses, girls bold enough to dye their hair and wear pants, guards armed with AK-47s and barefoot children, who track mud from the streets into the aisles.
And here I stand, my shoes covered in caked mud from the daily walk down the hill to the main road, with my pants tucked into my socks so that I don’t show up to work with six inches of mud splattered on the bottom of my pants. Standing in the inpatient wards, I attempt to explain that I cannot heal patients of their ailments, nor can I even administer basic remedies; I have enough trouble attempting to not clumsily knock over the medicine onto the counter—a feat that I have unfortunately failed at accomplishing (on multiple occasions) thus far.
Yet my lack of knowledge in medicine is in direct contrast to my skin color.
“Docteh, docteh, save that child,” a man muttered to me, taking my arm and leading me into the ward within the first two minutes of my first day at work. My multiple attempts at explaining my lack of medical background have proved fruitless.
This would be so much easier if I had any medical training, I think to myself when the work gets tough and the prospects of me implementing programs to improve access to health care in this rural community feel feeble.
But that wouldn’t change the fact that I am white. It wouldn’t change the fact that I argue with bus conductors to avoid paying the price reserved for wealthy white men. It wouldn’t change the fact that early morning treks to village bullfights serve as a constant reminder that I Don’t Belong Here and that This Place is So Different, I think to myself as we race into the unknown among tattered men chanting and chasing a bull as the early morning sun creeps through the corn crop.
It wouldn’t change the fact that I don’t know how to avoid slippery spots of mud during inopportune times, that I tend to attract the most attention when I intend to attract the least, that it is easy to get stuck—literally—in times of monumental change, in times when you realize that you have made it, to That Part of the World.
Fortunately, I have five more weeks to get a grip on this strange, inspiring place—pending the occasional near-death slip-up.
Matthew Chase is a Trinity junior currently interning at a rural hospital in Kakamega, Kenya, as part of a DukeEngage project.
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