Different Differences

            One of the upshots to living and working here for several months is that I find out a lot about the cultural differences between Kenyan and American culture that I wouldn’t if I was just passing through. You can experience foreign foods, languages, fashions, and living arrangements from the background familiarity of your home by going out to eat, taking a language class, or surfing pictures online. But the more time I spend here the more I’m coming to realize that there’s a whole other set of less obvious cultural differences that you only begin to recognize when they manifest unexpectedly as you go about your regular errands, or pop up over the course of otherwise unremarkable conversations. In no particularly logical sequence, here’s a few anecdotes from the past five weeks that might help you see what I mean.

#1) I was out in the field with Kathleen and the Kenyan research assistant from our lab, waiting for the clouds to go away so that we could measure the photosynthetic capacity of sunlight passing though acacia trees of different heights. (Predictably, they never did leave and I was blessed with the opportunity to spend a bonus make-up day among my favorite plants). The topic of conversation was dating. Now, I’m far from an expert on Kenyan dating and marriage customs, and my understanding is that customs vary widely between different Kenyan tribes and between different geographic locations. I do know, though, that polygamy is legal in Kenya, and that while arranged marriages are less common now than they used to be, they still exist, and dowries are not uncommon in some areas.

            Even knowing these things, though, it was still startling when our research assistant couldn’t seem to understand why Americans consider it “cheating” to date more than one person at a time. He thought that it was quite reasonable to have three girlfriends at once, and told us openly that he had personally had 35 girlfriends over the course of his 40-some years—though his wife, he admitted, only knew about 15 of them. He was neither boasting nor confessing. In his community, his behavior was quite normal…for men, that is. The double standard came into sharp relief when we asked him how, given his opinions on relationships, he would feel if he came home to find his wife with another man. Chuckling, he matter-of-factly responded, “I’d kill him.”

#2) In Nanyuki (the largest town within reasonable driving distance of Mpala) fellow Princetern Alex Kasdin, one of her supervisors, Nancy, and I found ourselves being tailed by a teenager asking for food or money. 

Part of my Princeton crew, being tailed by a beggar in Nanyuki

           The kid stuck with us even after we shouted at him to go away, so we ducked into a local produce store to try and lose him. As Nancy headed through the door, though, I yelled as I saw the kid grab her Nalgene out of the side of her backpack. The kid tried to take off, but didn’t get more than a few meters before at least five local passers-by grabbed and began to beat him. One of the locals retrieved the water bottle and gave it back to Nancy, while many others gathered around and told us how sorry they were for the whole incident.

            I heard from several people that these examples of “mob justice” are common in Kenya. In a country that counts tourism as its second-largest foreign export (after tea), locals want foreigners to feel safe in their towns and cities. One person told me that mobs have even been known to beat thieves to death. I’m not sure that that really makes me feel safer, but I won’t deny that it felt nice to have so many strangers on our side.

#3) A short one, relayed to me by Princeton senior thesis student Bianca Reo (who, you might recall, is capable of doing pull-ups with African children on her back). Bianca was driving around Mpala with her research assistant, who is in his early twenties, when, she told me, “he asked whether blacks and whites go to the same schools and live in the same states in America.”

#4) Neither of the research assistants I’ve mentioned in this post have gone to college, so while I wasn’t expecting them, I could at least understand how each of them came to develop their worldviews. Our lab tech, John, though, is a university-educated ecologist considering a long-term career in academia, so the conversation I had with him a few days ago was particularly unanticipated for me. While we were both puttering around the lab, John idly asked me whether I thought I would get married in a church or in a civil ceremony. “Well,” I replied, “since I’m Jewish, I figure I’ll probably get married in a synagogue.” At first, John didn’t understand what I was saying—he thought I was saying something about being Israeli, which he knows I’m not. After I explained the difference between being an Israeli citizen and practicing Judaism (a word which John was unfamiliar with), John, a Christian, asked me to explain the difference between Judaism and Christianity. He was surprised when I told him that Jews don’t consider Jesus to be part of their religion, and was totally unfamiliar with the terms Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. In fact, John told me, he thought that Judaism was basically extinct—having never before met a Jewish person, he figured that Jews had all converted to Christianity. After I assured him that this was not the case, he observed, “I learned something new today.” So, I suppose, did I.

            I don’t mean to portray Kenyans as ignorant or naïve, or to portray their culture in a negative light. Almost all of the Kenyans I’ve met so far are wonderfully friendly and caring people, and even those research assistants and staff members who never even graduated from high school are far more knowledgeable about the local history and environment than the majority of college graduates in the United States. Furthermore, there are plenty of Kenyans both here and in the rest of the country who are perfectly knowledgeable about world affairs, cultures, and customs. I simply intend to try to illustrate how much we assume that people from other cultures know about ours. After all, if we were as familiar with rural Kenyan culture as we would expect Kenyans to be with American, no part of this blog post would seem remarkable at all.