Ethnographic Writing: Person

He is beautiful; the most beautiful little boy I have ever seen. His eyes are long and wide, very exotic. The irises are a deep chocolate brown floating over an ivory backdrop, more yellow than white—the telltale sign of a Kenyan. His hair is short, almost non-existent, on his large, round head, slightly cone-shaped. His forehead is broad and shiny, reflecting the light of the bright African sun in the midday heat. His face narrows into a neatly pointed chin, which is taken over by his wide mouth, and large lips that, when he smiles, stretch far across his little face into deep dimples on each side. His petite ears splay away from his skull, turning out at the plane level with his eyes.

His nose is wide, the outer edge of the nostrils in line with the inner corners of his eyes; the bridge, flat and gradual. There is often dry snot crusted around his nostrils. He has a healthy glow to his skin, but he is not healthy. He is a very sick little boy, and although he still tries to play and run with the other eight-year-olds, he cannot keep up, doubling over in fits of coughing midway through their soccer games.

He doesn’t let his illness stop him from loving life, however. He dances with the other children and teaches them new moves he’s invented in his time on the sideline. He helps tie plastic bags with twine to make the homemade soccer balls he won’t often use. His little hands sometimes shake when he works, but he is persistent and insists on finishing the job. He stops every few minutes to wipe his dripping nose with the back of his hand, dark mahogany like the rest of his body, flashing the muted taupe of his palm as he rotates his wrist. He smiles up at me when he notices me watching him.

Sometimes, when I hug him I can feel his little heart beating furiously under his hot skin. It’s frantic, as am I for his health, pounding far too fast for a resting child. His entire body is perpetually overheated, his forehead feverish more often than not. At first I convinced myself it was a natural adaptation to the glaring African sun, though the more natives I met, the more I began to realize this was not true: there was something wrong with Jefferson.

Still, from every other angle, he is a typical Kenyan boy from the slum. He runs around barefoot in the dry dirt, or sometimes wears makeshift sandals fashioned from old tires. He wears the same stained pants and shirt for weeks at a time: black trousers turned gray from layers of dust and dirt, with cargo pockets and a jersey shirt boasting “Jazz 56” across the blaze-orange chest, bordered by white short sleeves with raised adidas-like strips masking the stitching. There is a rip along the front left seam of his shirt, creating a large gap in between the orange and white fabrics in which the brown of his skin peeks through. Snags abound along the mesh material, flocked by stains and wrinkles. At first glance, you hardly even notice his clothes, however, distracted by his vibrant face. 

I remember the first time I spoke to Jefferson. He was watching some of his friends practice a new dance move in the courtyard of the house I was sharing with fellow students in Kibera. I watched silently from the porch of the house until the rest of the children dispersed to play soccer. Jefferson looked lonely and bored watching on the sidelines, so he started to practice the dance with a rung from the wrought iron gate surrounding the house. I walked over to him and asked if he could teach me the dance step. 

“I don’t know it yet. I’m practicing,” he responded shyly. Like many people, his vibrant personality did not shine through until you reached a certain level of trust with him. 

“It’s okay. I don’t know any of the dances, but I’ll practice with you if you want,” I offered. He looked up at me curiously with his big and beautiful eyes, and then smiled slightly.

“Okay,” he agreed, and he began to teach me the dance step, eyeing me every so often with intrigue. After a few minutes, his body began to loosen up, and an energetic spring developed in his step as we practiced the dance. He laughed when we stepped on each other’s feet and chided me playfully when I ruined the rhythm. The first time he smiled at me, I couldn’t look away from his bright teeth framed in the carefree embrace of his lips. There was nothing more I wanted at that moment than to make Jefferson happy. 

The reality is that Jefferson lives in one of the largest slums in the world with little and primitive medical care, poor access to nutrition, and daily contact with more viruses and infectious diseases than many Westerners will ever encounter in their lives. But Jefferson is also a kid who understands that his circumstances don’t have to dictate how he lives his life, even at his young age. The way he looks, the way he acts, the way he smiles and laughs and lives are no different than your average middle-class American child. But he’s not an average child: he is a child in a horribly destitute situation who is embracing his life and enjoying every moment of it. 

Ethnographic Writing: Place

I was lounging in the red, earthy dirt of Ewuaso at the base of a tree alongside Jeremiah when a drop of sticky white substance oozed out of the rough bark and fell onto my forearm. 

“We call this oloilei. It’s like glue,” Jeremiah said in his smooth, deep voice, securing a stray leaf to my notebook with Kenya’s natural glue. “Can I show you something else?” he asked.

We ambled through the main town of Ewuaso, past the large main building housing a bar and poolroom, a health clinic and a butcher’s shop. Pungent smells wafted out of the meat market as we passed, stinging my nose with their curt and sour scent. Depending on where the sun hung in the vast blue sky blanketing the Great Rift Valley, the main area of town was a mixture of bustle and abandonment. At mid-day, the market was often overrun with feet—big feet, little feet, bare feet, shoed feet. Vendors set up their booths with colorful tarps and shaky wooden benches to display vegetables, jewelry, kangas (colorful wraps often worn by women), shoes made of tires, portable radios, carved wood figurines. 

Once a week, people would flock to the central market area like the sheep they herded, bodies weaving in and out of the crowd like an intricate tapestry amid the angrily rumbling supplies truck from the city. Now, however, late in the afternoon, it was as quiet and empty as a ghost town.

Jeremiah was taking me to his apartment in a square mud building right at the edge of town to show me a book we had been discussing.  When we reached his apartment, I took in the scene slowly.  He had, in my first startled glance, no home.

His entire life was confined to a square area no bigger than sixteen square feet.  Tucked in one far corner was a wobbly wooden bench with a bright red spotted kanga loosely hanging off one edge and trailing along the packed clay floor. In the adjacent corner was a tiny wooden dresser adorned with a sunny yellow plastic mixing bowl and a dented metal pitcher for washing. A dirty chunk of soap lay in the bowl, waiting. Three tin coffee mugs splashed in a dark blue robin’s egg print sat beyond the pitcher, two at attention, one sleeping soundly on its side. There was a small lamp on the ground near the entryway with a stubby white candle and box of matches to accompany it. A clothesline was strung across an open span from one wall to the other about four feet into the room. It sagged tiredly under the weight of a tattered floral bed sheet. I asked Jeremiah if his bedroom was beyond the curtain. He said it was not—that was his neighbor Rose’s apartment.

I looked more closely at his home. Everything he owned was here? A low pile of earth-stained books lounged against the wall behind the lamp. A bible sat open to the book of Jeremiah on the ground in front of the stool, the pages scrawled with neat notes in Kiswahili. A scrawny gray kitten was perched lazily on the edge of the stool, hopelessly trying to lick his matted fur into perfection with his pink tongue, which, in fact, was the only thing in the entire apartment that was not dusted with at least one layer of thick Kenyan soil. Above the stool, a Precious Moments porcelain ornament hung precariously from the rope dividing Jeremiah and Rose’s living spaces. The egg-headed child stared at me with teardrop eyes and butter-blonde curls, clutching a golden cross in her small hands.

“My sister in Nairobi gave me that for Christmas a few years back,” Jeremiah said.

There was not a bed, not a plate, not a utensil in sight. There was no bathroom, no food. A slight glint caught my eye, and I turned to find myself looking into a gritty and fractured mirror clinging to the wall above the dresser. I tried to find myself in the murky sky, but could only see one startled eye staring back at me from a clear silver patch.

“Here it is,” Jeremiah said, fishing out a book from a corner piled with objects I had not even noticed.

On Life, Learning and ... Work

Whew! It's been a crazy few months. Not that March is going to be any less hectic. But, I can't deny it, part of me lives for the rush of a packed schedule. It makes my bed that much more comfortable at the end of the day...

Lately, I feel as if I'm at a crossroads. As a senior in college, I am hot on the trail of a fabulous job...but it's eluding me yet! (No fear - I will stand victorious...eventually!) The problem I find myself running into is the "lack of experience." Entry-level marketing jobs are almost all sales, while EL PR jobs flat out don't exist. I'm convinced of it... It look like an internship it will be for me, which is absolutely fine. I just need a little bread and water to get by. Well, that's not entirely true. I also need new shoes on pretty much a monthly basis. That habit will be a hard one to kick! Funny story - I actually considered an unpaid internship in NYC in which the reimbursement was not cash (obviously) or college credit (not very useful to me now anyway...) but SHOES and HANDBAGS! Can you say heaven?! I have to say, I actually considered that one for a bit too long. I'm sure my parents would love to support me by paying a sky-high rent in the Big Apple while I prance down Fifth Avenue in my new Louboutins, right? Not so much.

Anyway, back to the point. I am so, so ready to get my career rolling. I only have two months (wow, really just two months?!) of school left, but it's still hard to focus on companion animal biology, the use of poshlost in Chekhov's short stories (although I do absolutely adore Anton), and whether or not Ephesians or Colossians is a pseudo-text or not. No, no, I want to be immersed in pitches and Twitter, blogging and scheduling. Email alerts and conferences and speakers and design and ideas. Maybe six months from now I'll be begging to sit in a UW classroom with a cranky professor (that's unfair, actually. Almost all of my professors were fabulous people. A few I actually really enjoyed.), but I don't think so. I'm approaching my search for a job as a search for a future lifestyle. A lifestyle I'm excited to start; a lifestyle I was made to live; a lifestyle that will challenge me, challenge the people around me, and bring a good night's sleep at the end of the day.

So, for the next three years, I'm preparing myself for the reality of living on a minimal budget in a superbly over-priced city for the love of PR! And whatever I end up not loving, I'll just Tweet about. I mean, who needs therapy when you can have the entire world listening to you?

Bring it on world. Bring it on PR agencies (please!!!).

Carpe diem, folks. And goodnight. For now, I'll continue writing analytic papers on Russian literature until I lay my head to rest on my sweet, soft pillow and dream of sugarplum fairies and press releases...

But if I don't find a job, I'll just go on The Bachelor and woo my way into a lifetime filled with ABC endorsements and insta-celebrity status (and love) at the ripe ole age of 23. I mean, it worked for Vienna, right?