2007年8月6日 星期一
A story about a Chinese woman in Kenya
Mama told me that there’s a Chinese woman named Mary in this community. All the rich old men know her very well, and vise versa. So, this afternoon I got the chance to meet her.
She owns a club house, which sells beer, Indian food (now I know a lot of them on the menu), Kenyan food, and Chinese food. The club house is decorated in Chinese style, with the red latterns hanged on the ceilings and the laughing Buddha on the corner. At 6:00pm, there are some customers at the club, none of them female. Telling from the way how she dealt with costumers, I think she is good at socializing.
So, who is Mary? She came from Shanghai and arrived in Kenya in her 20s and all of a sudden, she became the most popular prositute in this Indian community. To be honest, she is quite beautiful, comparing with other aging Indian womens. Now she is 40 but still looks charming. Chinese women are good at keeping themselves looking young!!! Her beauty makes her become the enemy of all the women in this community. She is quite rich. She got a lot of fortune given by men. Now she became the director of Mary’s house club.
After a short conversation in Chinese, I got her business card. Mary Huang, director of Mary’s club. Well, there’s nothing to blame her. You know, it’s easy to condemn one person. Where there’s demand, there’s supply. So, there’s nothing wrong with prostitute. Instead, she is successful today and she earns by herself. She is just a model of businesswoman. Different from the prostitues in the slum, she knows how to do business, make more income, and protect herself. She always sees her futre, but not the girls in the slums.
My first experience of riot in kenya
As usual, I worked at HIV/AIDS clinic in Matahre slum today. I found some armies and police stand together, watching the pipe. After a while, I heard the noize, which is from the protest for water. Because the water project administration cut off the pipe accidently, it’s been a week since no water was supplied in the slum
Many people in the slum are either unemployment or very free, so they always have fight. There’s no exception this time. They had a conflict with the police. In order to stop it, the police threw the teargas to the crowd. I was just to leave the clinic and thus was in the crowd. Therefore, when the police threw the teargas to the crowd, I have to run with people. I don’t want to experience teargas at all. Once I tried to stop running, but the nurse from the clinic asked me to keep running. Surprisinly, I didn’t see any terror but happiness on peoples’ face. @@ She said this always happens in the slum and many people have fun with it.
People in the slum are treated as the chewing gun under the shoes, so they have to do something furious so that the government will take them seriously. There is no right for people in the slum….But as a foreigner, what’s my point of view of this incident? I don’t belong to each side. People in the slum always use violence to solve the problem and the Kenyan government ignores the poverty in the slum. Most of the people in the slum are unaware of self- developing. They tend to rely on donation and other’s help.
The rate of reported rape is increasing by 50 pct in the slum. Most of the victims are young girls. The reason is poverty, again. Knowing that Young girls are eager to have chips, the crminals seduced them with chips. Girls are easily to fall into the trap because they don’t have the money to buy chips but their desire to have chips is so strong.
Mungigi is one of the biggest gang in Kenya, whose ambition is to take over Kenyan governemt. They are successfully doing extention in country. They go to the high schools to recruit more young members. Mungigi is notorious for their barbarious crimes. They ask money from people. If people refuse to give or report it to the police, they will be killed. This is the terrorism in Kenya.
To know more information about the riot, please click the following link:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707310817.html
Safari at Masai Mara National Reserve
I spent three days on safari at Masai Mara with trainees. There are totally 8 of us with another guy from Thailand, who is working at Thai embassy now. The hard sell is always the problem at hot spots (they charged us 100 NT for 1liter water), so I bought 3 liter (56 NT at supermarket) water before we set off. Rip-off souvenirs sellers are always there, who can charge customers 10 times expensive than the normal price.
It was almost 5 hours from Nairobi to Masai Mara. Masai Mara is in western Kenya. It’s not the biggest national reserve in Kenya but it’s one of the best. The wildlife there is amazing!! Masai Mara national reserve, 1510 square km of rolling grasslands, where Cactuses and sausage trees can be seen very easily, is watered by Mara River. Sausage trees are the material which the Masai (one Kenyan tribe with very rich culture) use to make wine. According to the Masai, 2 glasses of that wine can make you drunk (just like Taiwanese rice wine).If the elephants or other animals have the fruit of assuage trees, they will stay awake for two days.
Animals:
Gazelles, wildebeests, and zebras are the most prevalent. I saw big amounts of them. I even saw the wildebeests migrating. They are just on the rive bank, waiting for others to cross the river. What a shame we didn’t see them cross river. We also saw cheetahs hunting gazelles. It’s a cheetah family with three cheetah babies. Cheetah mother and father took the action and their childs sat there watching and learning. Elephants, baboons, ostriches and giraffes are also very common.
We saw two giraffes fighting in the early morning. They push each other with their butts and horns. It’s really funny!! We also saw two ostriches fighting, just as the same we saw on TV program. We saw the lions family having their breakfast—zebra. So sad that we didn’t see they take zebra down. But we were lucky enough to see cheetahs and lions so closely, without columns between us and animals. We saw the body of a wildebeest. The eaters did a good job!!! At national reserve, unlike the zoo, u will never know which animals u will see at the next moment. As a visitor, we have to keep our eyes widely open and the creator of the nature will arrange the best program for us. At the zoo, people control the animals and animals get sick very easily. Everything is so artificial. But at national park, we can feel the nature and sublime of it. We can see the real life of animals. That’s really lovely, isn’t it.
When we were having lunch, vervet monkeys showed up to be our lunch guests. Compared with the monkeys in Taiwan, vervet monkeys are gentler.
Lodge and our night life:
We stayed at a nice lodge, where provided us nice mattress, tents, pillows, and even electricity. We had simple but nice food and I was always satisfied after the meal. The first night we played “asshole” game together. And the second night, we went to the local pub. We had beer and danced with African music. I will never forget the ‘pee spot’ of the bar. 6 girls of us wanted to pee so the woman of the bar showed us the way. We walked outside the bar and she pointed to the ground ‘This is where the toilet is.’ 6 girls took of jeans, facing each other, and peed on the grassland. Ha-ha, this is cool, isn’t it.
Maasai:
The Maasai is an interesting tribe with rich cultures. They usually wear red blanket (shuka) and accessories like vast plate-like bead necklaces, and walked with sticks or gourd. They have big ear holes. They have their own language and dancing, so not too many Maasai people know English. They are really proud of themselves. The biggest tribe in Kenya is kikuyu, which made up 20% of Kenyan population. They have no culture at all. A Kenyan girl thought there’s no culture in Kenya at all. Kenya is just like a copy cat, trying to imitating the West. She feels sad about this.
It was almost 5 hours from Nairobi to Masai Mara. Masai Mara is in western Kenya. It’s not the biggest national reserve in Kenya but it’s one of the best. The wildlife there is amazing!! Masai Mara national reserve, 1510 square km of rolling grasslands, where Cactuses and sausage trees can be seen very easily, is watered by Mara River. Sausage trees are the material which the Masai (one Kenyan tribe with very rich culture) use to make wine. According to the Masai, 2 glasses of that wine can make you drunk (just like Taiwanese rice wine).If the elephants or other animals have the fruit of assuage trees, they will stay awake for two days.
Animals:
Gazelles, wildebeests, and zebras are the most prevalent. I saw big amounts of them. I even saw the wildebeests migrating. They are just on the rive bank, waiting for others to cross the river. What a shame we didn’t see them cross river. We also saw cheetahs hunting gazelles. It’s a cheetah family with three cheetah babies. Cheetah mother and father took the action and their childs sat there watching and learning. Elephants, baboons, ostriches and giraffes are also very common.
We saw two giraffes fighting in the early morning. They push each other with their butts and horns. It’s really funny!! We also saw two ostriches fighting, just as the same we saw on TV program. We saw the lions family having their breakfast—zebra. So sad that we didn’t see they take zebra down. But we were lucky enough to see cheetahs and lions so closely, without columns between us and animals. We saw the body of a wildebeest. The eaters did a good job!!! At national reserve, unlike the zoo, u will never know which animals u will see at the next moment. As a visitor, we have to keep our eyes widely open and the creator of the nature will arrange the best program for us. At the zoo, people control the animals and animals get sick very easily. Everything is so artificial. But at national park, we can feel the nature and sublime of it. We can see the real life of animals. That’s really lovely, isn’t it.
When we were having lunch, vervet monkeys showed up to be our lunch guests. Compared with the monkeys in Taiwan, vervet monkeys are gentler.
Lodge and our night life:
We stayed at a nice lodge, where provided us nice mattress, tents, pillows, and even electricity. We had simple but nice food and I was always satisfied after the meal. The first night we played “asshole” game together. And the second night, we went to the local pub. We had beer and danced with African music. I will never forget the ‘pee spot’ of the bar. 6 girls of us wanted to pee so the woman of the bar showed us the way. We walked outside the bar and she pointed to the ground ‘This is where the toilet is.’ 6 girls took of jeans, facing each other, and peed on the grassland. Ha-ha, this is cool, isn’t it.
Maasai:
The Maasai is an interesting tribe with rich cultures. They usually wear red blanket (shuka) and accessories like vast plate-like bead necklaces, and walked with sticks or gourd. They have big ear holes. They have their own language and dancing, so not too many Maasai people know English. They are really proud of themselves. The biggest tribe in Kenya is kikuyu, which made up 20% of Kenyan population. They have no culture at all. A Kenyan girl thought there’s no culture in Kenya at all. Kenya is just like a copy cat, trying to imitating the West. She feels sad about this.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)
