My Thoughts From Nairobi Half Life

I watched Nairobi Half Life twice last month, and encouraged my boss to watch it with his wife (which he did last week), and on Monday we had a chat about it, and this post is from that discussion and is therefore a mix of my thoughts and his.

It could have been easy to take Nairobi Half Life as good entertainment, have a good laugh then go back to life as usual. After all, isn’t that why we watch movies? This one was different for me, and I’m sure for most Kenyans, because if you’re sufficiently exposed, you know a “Oti” or at least a “Mwas”, or you have been there. The most interesting thing is that no matter how ethical one is, by the end of the movie, you’re supporting the thugs (it’s almost offensive to call them thugs right?). Because you get to see the story behind who they are.

I had a couple of take outs from NHL:

1. I am more privileged than I would want to believe : As much as I hate the term, I am a middle class Kenyan. I have a great job, a home (rented), I drive to work, and on a regular day, my biggest irritants are a slow waiter at Java, sitting in traffic,and power outages. Compared to what NHL portrays, if you are reading this blog post, you are extremely privileged! Which leads me to the second point….

2. Did I really do anything to deserve that privilege? Amina leaves the village,  comes to Nairobi to pursue an education and ends up as a call girl. We sort of share a story. I was born in the village, my parents didn’t have much but they gave me an education. I came to Nairobi to study. One wrong turn, and I’d have been that girl. While I would like to claim to have better morals than she had, is it about what I did/did not do, or is it more about favour and grace?

3. What I’m I doing with my privilege? A friend once asked me why I don’t tweet much about middle class problems (traffic jams, punctured wheels and power outages), and I told him to me, sitting in traffic in a car is a privilege, seeing as I walked for most of my life (and fetched water on my back, fed cows, the works). A house with running water and power is a privilege: my parents could have afforded tapped water and electricity, but the infrastructure just wasn’t there growing up. Whenever I’m tempted to tweet about how hot it is inside my car (after switching off the air conditioning to save fuel), I look outside and see people walking in the heat. The hawker selling water; does he make ends meet with that water?

And yes, we deserve a government that works, we pay taxes for a reason, but shouldn’t we be starting from the ground up? Is it fair to complain of traffic jams when there’s someone 5km away from you who has NO chance at life? If it is fair to complain, then shouldn’t we complain while we do something for that person who has no chance?

One way to look at it is  bringing change through voting. For reasons that cannot be articulated in this post, I don’t believe voting can or will bring the radical change we need to prosper as a country. Democracy is costly, and is a system of the masses. You get the Least Common Leader, and it works when you’re in a predominantly middle class country. Bring it to the 3rd world, and the idiocies we see daily become the norm, because the masses know no better. There is nothing is new under the sun, if you look at the countries we aspire to be (Singapore, Rwanda etc), democracy hasn’t been their path to prosperity (at least not a pure democracy if you know what I mean). But that’s a debate for another day.

One way is to vote and sooth your conscience, the other is to sacrifice something for someone else. It can be money, time, or even skills, either way, we’ve got to learn to live for more than ourselves. In my opinion, the only way to be truly fulfilled in life.

That was my take out. Did you watch Nairobi Half Life? If you did, what did you think of the story behind the movie? Share in the comment section below, and please let’s debate the democracy, voting/not voting issue on another blog post 😀