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Into Africa

In Kenya, a Springfield native experiences everything from a wildebeest migration and a stay at a tropical mansion.

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A herd of zebra was just one of the amazing sights that greeted the author in Kenya.

We expect a lot of Africa. We expect it to be full of self-elected politicians who arm little kids in order to execute unparalleled acts of cruelty. We simultaneously expect it to be rife with tribes that live untouched by modern ills, having never known the cars, money or selfishness that come with industrial revolution.

We expect Africans at one time to be more corrupt and more innocent than any other culture in the world—because that’s what we saw in Blood Diamond and read in National Geographic.

As I arrived in Kenya, I tried to ignore all my mainstream media schooling: I, noble soul, would see Africa for what it truly was.

And then it was just like the movies. Well, almost like the movies.

I landed in Nairobi about seven months after Kenya had seen unprecedented post-election violence in January 2008. More than 1,000 people were killed—many burned alive or butchered—and 350,000 people (three times the population of Springfield) were displaced from their homes. The crisis ensued after a disputed presidential election caused neighbors and strangers to kill each other in the name of their tribes and the politicians their tribes supported.

Kenya had long been viewed as much more stable and sophisticated than other African nations (which often play host to the same kind of chaos) and the international community was still coming to terms with the fact that atrocities could occur there, too.