But bag inspections at X-ray stations always give me a special kind of nerves. What did I pack and forget about that will embarrass us all when they paw through it? What item innocuous to me will arouse an interrogation?

Take tonight in Lagos. I thought I was home free since my friend and I were being personally whisked through almost all of the airport’s chaotic check-in and boarding procedure. (He’s one of the top 15 fliers in the world on this airline, and one of only 6 on an elite advisory board whom they treat like royalty.) But no. One of my carry-ons was a relatively ratty shopping bag from two countries ago, in which I had wrapped a piece of “art” in a hooded sweatshirt. It raised flags in the X-ray scanner.

“Open this up please.” I unwrap the piece. “What is this?” Art, I reply. Suddenly I know I am in trouble. The Nigerian security mama seems by no stretch to be an art lover, let alone an admirer of the outsider/street/folk art I have purchased in the Nairobi slums. “Art? What kind of art? What is this made of?” Oh shit. It’s a framed collage made of broken glass. Wire. Shards of slum crap. Among other things. All secured in place, but still. Between my passport photo, and the fact that an al Qaeda alert relating to American interests was issued earlier in the week (this is true), I’m getting nervous.

I make the plea that I’d already made it once through Kenyan airport security, that I am an artist (a stretch, but aren’t we all) and trying to help out destitute folks in the slums of Kenya by sharing their art with the world. I have no idea where our Lufthansa shepherd is, or my friend! A few major suspicious eyebrows and harumphs (and an obvious thumbs-down to my purchase), the agent says “wrap this up” and I get the hell out of there.

I’m not going to show the work here just now, but I will say, after I purchased it in a Kibera studio (shack), I asked the guys to tell me about the artist. I learned it was produced by “Ali Gator” (they all have handles), an erstwhile plumber who currently is in prison for a domestic battery disturbance involving his father and a rent collection. (Hmmm – prison art – bet I can sell this to Intuit.) Now, here is your geopolitical education for the day: Kenya currently is suffering a major prison crisis – overcrowding, understaffing, rioting, dreadful conditions, etc. The plumber part was evidenced by the creative use of a drain-stopper in the mixed-media collage – slightly puzzling since a drain-stopper of any sort would seem an audacious dream in the plumbing-deprived Kibera. But that’s the great thing about art – it makes you think.

* * *

You will be able to view this suspicious piece of art, along with a number of other mixed media works and paintings (I swear they are not all this odd) from the M2 collection of street artists in Kibera, at an upcoming show. I’m happy to announce here the opening of my new studio/gallery, within(Reason): a space for contemporary art and photo, in the Pilsen area of Chicago (south of downtown). The inaugural show will be called “Hope In a Hard Place” and will also feature:

a supersized slide show of my photographs of the kids of Kibera

prints of the beautiful graffiti of the M2 collective calling for justice, peace, and an end to the tribal tensions that flared, fatally, after December’s elections

some funky abstract oil paintings of Kenya’s Masai tribespeople

Fun huh? And my show’s not the only reason to venture out. The opening is held during Pilsen’s monthly “Second Friday” Gallery walk, on Friday June 13, from 6-9 pm, so you can check out the rest of this growing arts district as well. If you can’t make it this night, just call or email to make an appointment to see the show in the week preceding, or for a few weeks after, and/or visit my new website, ArtWithinReason, to preview the art and find information including address and map.

Please note: all profits of any art sold at this event or via the website will be returned to the kids of Kibera for arts programs and/or an after-school club, when I return there later this year (and once I figure out how to reliably funnel proceeds to such a thing). Holler if you wanna help!

Sort of wound up in “work” mode and perhaps after one too many glasses of champagne, I offered this fabulous talk-show diva advice (initially unsolicited, then embraced, with gusto) on marketing, branding, and “taking it to the next level.” (I had spent the day helping the team here invent, name, brand a new newspaper.) If I’ve learned nothing else after two months in Africa, “moving up” is what everyone seems to be trying to do these days, on one level or another. Maybe it’s all anyone has ever aspired to, now that I think about it.

Her show, “Moments with Mo,” has been on national cable for three years, and has just gone regional. The first two years, she says, were stage-fright city. I said fear not, I grew up watching “A.M. Chicago” and Oprah wasn’t always the smooth operator she appears today. She too had to start somewhere on the road to becoming a global megabrand!

Mo – stylish, articulate and energetic – was eager to hear my thoughts on where to go next. Continental expansion of her show! Clothing lines! I told her to go for the gold. My Chicago connection was not lost on her in any way, so she assumed I was the pipeline to Oprahtivity. Here’s some of my advice I shared with la Mo:

• OK, so you too are all about inspiration and empowerment. Forget “Moments with Mo,” I said. Sunset that title, reinvent yourself and the show, and go with “Mo!mentum” (or “Momentum!”) for your new platform.
• Spice up the brand, get a new logo, start that blog! (True, difficult in Nigeria, with the internet working about 5% of the time, but people, we are dreaming the big dreams here.)
• Africa still loves newspapers, so start an advice column. Be the Nigerian of Nigerians and get up in everyone’s face! (In a nice way, of course.)
• So you want to get Oprah’s attention. Don’t think small, woman! Open a girl’s school. In Lincoln Park. In Chicago.
• Further, take your lead from Oprah, and title your production studio your name spelled backward. Forget Harpo Studios – what could be more inspirational, more balanced and centered, than Om Inc.©
• But don’t stop there – demand must exist for “mO – The Magazine©.”
• If you really want to go for it, change your name. Hello, Moprah!

I can’t wait to see what comes next for Nigeria’s Oprah, and look forward to connecting with her on my return travels there later this year. (Warning to my friends Todd and Kristyn at CBS Channel 2 in Chicago – and my Poynter broadcast friends Jill and Al – and probably Kelly, too – you will be asked to review Mo’s programs if I can get them on DVD at some point. Stay tuned!)

Fun links: check out her website here!

Sofitel hotel … fluffy bed (maybe a little too much – bad back in the morning) … concrete wall shuts out the outside world … impossible wi-fi (how on earth do these people blog?) … amazingly weak orange juice … large in-room safe … power goes out (unbelievably inadequate power grid, thanks to corruption of previous regime – everyone’s on generators) … locals along the road balancing stuff on their head like nobody’s business … a client who wants to change the course of an abused nation … nighttime visit to funky boutique hotel/arts colony, wondering, should we stay here on the next visit? visiting Exxon consultants recommend it … sharing of gigantic Star beer (favored here but from Ghana) … chatting about local culture and challenges with the literati, including Kiszo, a Nollywood film producer (their version of Hollywood, or Bollywood, and apparently, huge) who has just returned from time in L.A. and Atlanta … we meet a local musician, who claims to be an inventor of a unique model of square bongos as well as the reincarnation of my colleague Mario … picked up daily and driven to work by client’s drivers, served lunch and picked-up-after by his man-servants – he calls them “stewards” – I’m thinking I need someone like this at home (Erich’s reading this, thinking, “been there, done that”) … dinner companion tells an exotic tale of juju (voodoo), a politician’s naked wife and a severed head on the kitchen floor … afternoon driving tour of the three islands, viewing structures that once were obviously proud and at least middle class, driven to ruin by political anarchy … nice long swim in the hotel pool which is quite nice, like bathwater … we visit the office of the prospective editor, and view a terrific collection of work by a local artist … a nice contrast to some of the scenery on the way there …  fantastic, elegant cocktail party held by our clients, with eclectic mix of piano players, singers, movers and shakers from Lagos and beyond …

(Watch this space for later observations on Lagos, as several visits are scheduled in the coming months …) 

[Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya] My second visit to Kibera, May 4 (posting this entry after mulling it over for a week). Being taken in a little deeper this time. I had been to a “drinking den” on my first visit, but my shepherd this time, Osir, takes me to another one (despite my stated focus on reconnecting with some artists I met earlier).

The half-dozen gatherees are socializing, and drinking changaa, the traditional homemade liquor of the Luo people, in a shack with a dirt floor, cardboard wall. A child who might be 2 years old sleeps nearby. (She’s at the far right in the photo below- maybe that’s her pink backpack on the wall above her?) Another boy, about 8, refills the liquor jug when needed, if mom (the proprietress) is otherwise busy.

It’s a funny dance, having the rare mzungu (white guy) in their midst. Do they want to have their photo taken, or not? Do they want to chat, or not? Sometimes it’s both at once.

One guy (in the hat, on the right, in photo above) strikes up a chat. “I love a good book. Do you like to read?” Nonchalantly, he tosses at me his current read – or rather, the ripped-out middle third. The front portion of The Parcifal Mosaic has been passed on to its lucky next reader; the final third, well, he’ll have to get to that when he can find out who has it. It’s all about sharing when it comes to books in Kibera, if it comes to that at all.

“Ludlum does the best stories, but only if you can deal with extremely complex characters. Man, he does characters like nobody can.” The others chime in enthusiastically; maybe they are reading the first third, or the last. I tell them I read 3 or 4 Ludlum stories in high school, not so much since. (Can’t focus on all those characters.)

These guys are readers. Osir, too. When I later mention some books I was reading on my travels, he asks, “do you have any that I might like?” (I wasn’t sure if either of the titles on my nightstand at the Holiday Inn would quite make the best slum reading: Briefing for a Decent into Hell, and Things Fall Apart. People, you cannot make this stuff up.)

Osir tells me Kibera has no library. (No surprise, there’s barely running water, primarily to community pumps.) The adults, with plenty of time on their hands, are more than eager to read, it’s obvious; books for kids in school are hard enough to come by, let alone those for the pure joy of reading.

I think, how sad these kids might not get to read, for example, books like Miss Pickerell on the Moon, one title that oddly sticks in my head as having provided joy and distraction in 4th grade. Sure, it’s the ludicrous, implausible tale of a grandmother exploring interplanetary travel, but who more than these kids needs the message that improbable dreams can come true?

Let me cut to the chase here – it’s midnight and I wake at 4 for an early flight. If you live in Chicago, and you have spare paperbacks lying around the house, especially kids books, let me have ‘em. I’ll be coming back later this year for work, and can load up a big suitcase and share them with folks in the slum (perhaps via Osir’s church or something). I know the argument of some people that you should go through proper channels and let the Red Cross or Unicef deal with this stuff, but obviously, it’s not quite happening. At the end of the day (and it certainly is that here), you gotta believe that small individual acts have a place, too, and can sometimes make a difference.

Hmmm … speaking of Kenyan kids with a dream, here’s an idea – bulk purchase of Audacity of Hope, anyone?

[Decoration inside home in Kibera slum, Kenya]

Lara Weber, Chicago (Lara was a Community Health Volunteer, Peace Corps / Zambia, 2000. We were briefly neighbors in Lakeview and acquainted via Chicago journalism circles. She now works at the Tribune.) “I’d always just assumed that I’d spend some time living overseas, doing study abroad or taking a job outside of the U.S. So when I hit my 30s and realized I hadn’t done it yet, I knew it was time. The AIDS crisis was just starting to get more attention, and since I was joining the Peace Corps, I really wanted to be as close to that issue as possible. It just felt like the thing I was supposed to be doing right then and there in my life. (Plus, I’d spent a decade as a journalist and felt wrong working on world issues from the point of view of a tower on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.)

“So when a Peace Corps assignment in public health in Zambia was offered, I was thrilled. For two years, I lived in a mud hut in a very remote part of northeastern Zambia, in a place that was just beginning to confront its own HIV/AIDS situation. I met and worked with incredible local health officials and I did see change happen while I was there. And, naturally, I changed quite a bit as well. In the midst of extreme poverty and disease, I got to know people who love life and aren’t burdened by the pressures we put upon ourselves in the ‘developed’ world. I experienced the greatest happiness of my life because of the people in my village who took me in as family and taught me to let go and laugh.

“What takes me back to Africa? Well, it doesn’t take much. The smell of a summer rain shower takes me right back to the rainy season, when roads are cut off by swollen rivers and the mud makes a bike ride an expedition but the world is lush and green. A taxi ride in Chicago with an African transplant driver is one of my secret pleasures of city life. Few are from Zambia, but it doesn’t matter.

“Sharing stories of Africa – and slipping into my ‘Zambian English’ accent – with an immigrant from Ghana or Kenya or Nigeria … what a way to take the stress away after a long day. Eating a mango. The grocery store varieties in Chicago will never compare to the thousands of mangos that literally dripped from the trees surrounding my house. But all I need is one bite of a sweet, ripe slice of mango and there I go again – back to the village, sitting in front of my mud house with a group of kids, completely overindulging on mounds of mangos. Heaven. There’s so much more. But it’s always the little things that take me back fastest.”

* * *

Anita Verna Crofts, Seattle (Anita works at the University of Washington as part of a privately funded initiative called the Population Leadership Program, funded by the Gates Foundation and the Packard Foundation. We corresponded last week while we were both in Africa – so close and yet so far! We have just recently become friends via the fabulous Samantha Bailey whom we both adore.)

“I’m wrapping up a three-week stint in Sudan and Ethiopia, having been part of a training team from the UW that traveled to Sudan at the invitation of the Ministry of Health, and to Ethiopia at the invitation of three peer institutions: Jimma University, Gondar University, and Haramaya University. Our training included leadership development work, digital storytelling (my piece), translating research to policy, and program management.

“I find what compels me most about working in Africa and what motivates me to return are my African colleagues and friends. Their optimism and commitment to their work, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and in the case of Sudan, a fragile peace, is extraordinary. Furthermore, they are some of the warmest and most hospitable individuals I have ever met.

“My food research was so interesting: my charge had been to see how Sudanese were preserving food traditions in the face of adversity, resettlement, and war. What unfolded was the silver lining of this resettlement and displacement: regional food traditions were converging in Khartoum (home to one-third of all Sudanese: that’s like 90 million people living in Chicago) as people from war-torn areas east, west, north, and south, fled to the capital. Now, as their dishes are becoming popular in Khartoum, food is forming a Sudanese identity – slowly – beyond a regional/tribal/religious one. Great stuff.

“The day we left Sudan, a Sudanese journalist recently released from six years in Guantanamo landed at the Khartoum airport and was greeted by a bank of media just hours before we flew out to Addis Ababa. Given the devastating seeds my government has sown through their perverse policies, I feel the need has never been greater for me to travel and connect with people as a counterpart ambassador of peace and friendship.”

* * *

Molly Phee, New York City (Molly is an employee with the State Department’s Foreign Service who has lived and worked in exotic places including … Iraq. Needless to say, she’s looking forward to her next assignment, in July: Rome! Following she shares thoughts of her time and service in Kenya and Egypt. Molly and I went to IU together and have not stayed in touch as well as I might have liked!)

“I have ventured abroad for two reasons. The first is to experience and learn and live as much as I can, because we have only one life and an incredible world to discover. The second, and with a gimlet understanding of what I can really offer, is to contribute in whatever way I can either to U.S. interests or to helping those abroad as appropriate. Of course we also travel because we can, because we were fortunate to be born into America in the 20th century and have access to these wonderful opportunities. And because I saw the movie Stepford Wives as an impressionable young high school teenager and decided I would die in suburbia!

“I first went to Kenya in the summer of 1988 when I was a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. I had an internship at the UN Environment Program (UNEP), which is located on a beautiful campus in the suburbs of Nairobi. It was an extraordinary experience, and my exposure had a big impact on my thinking. I learned from what I saw in Kenya that political systems do matter, and bad governance can deny or thwart the capabilities of a nation and its people. I think the events of this spring only underscore that view.

“I was in Cairo from 1996-2000. My first year there I studied Arabic and then I worked as a political officer in the U.S. embassy for the next three years.

“A fascinating question about North Africa or the Arab states in Africa is the degree of their African identity. Egyptians think of themselves as the leader of the Arab world and do not generally identify themselves with sub-Saharan Africans. You can see this tension play out tragically in East Africa now particularly in the Sudan. There is also the academic debate in the United States, particularly among black Americans, about whether the Pharoahs were black. (Mainstream scholarship says no.) So, is your identity based on your geographic location on a continent or your language or your religion or your ethnicity or your skin color? Or, do we have to limit our identity to one characteristic, can our society or state or the international community tolerate a complex identity (also a particularly relevant question today in places such as Iraq and Lebanon, where the struggle for power and the absence of security tends to force folks to choose one primary identity to the detriment of national reconciliation).”

* * *

Re-reading their thoughts and publishing them here has given me an idea for a future post, about how my design of a newspaper here in Nairobi just could contribute to a more clear dialogue about Kenya’s fragile but hopeful democracy. You never know! I’ll close by saying just how great it is to know people like these women who are so passionate about their life experiences, and to have had just a little bit of my own here in Africa – with more to come, as today I finalized agreement with my client for a retainer for 12 months (returning at least twice, with talk of another year beyond that)!

My concerns (randomly): Has someone watered the plants back home? Will I owe any fines for late fees from bills stacking up? Am I getting fat from too much time at the breakfast buffet? How much of an ordeal will getting my Nigerian visa be? Do I have the time/energy to work up and submit that weeks-overdue invoice? Where’s the number for the florist in LaPorte? My laptop mouse is dying. My driver’s late – again. Can I possibly continue to wear the six same shirts and four pairs of pants for another 12 days? I just realized, I’ve hardly drank any milk (normally a staple for me) for six weeks.

Osir’s concerns (observed/overheard): How to pay the 800 shillings rent per month ($12 U.S.) How to send the oldest kids to their first year of private school (1000 shillings per month). Sunday dinner: a pot of boiled navy beans, leftover from a February donation by the Red Cross following the post-election violence. (The cost of meat was prohibitive even before the current runaway inflation on food prices.) Pre-paid credit on the cheap mobile Safaricom phone is getting low. Health care for six young kids, including the one who caught malaria a short time back. The “front door” lock is actually a latch, which is actually missing. Damn that glass of moonshine tasted nasty.

Just some food – and moonshine and technology and politics and room & board – for thought. Watch this space for more on Kibera after I wrap my brain around it a little more.

Links: Previous photo album of Kibera scenics. Previous album of Kibera’s kids.

1. American stationed in Kenya on business is told that a new assignment in *** has come through. “You need a visa to get in. It may not be easy.” Options: send my passport back to Washington, DC, with tons of paperwork and hope for the best, in a very short amount of time … or … research options for taking care of things from Kenya.
2. An online search is not easy. It turns up what seems to be an official application form for a visa, but no information on where to process it. Form is filled out. Quest continues for information on the *** embassy or consulate.
3. Eventually a dogged web search finds a site for the *** High Commission on Lenana Road, Nairobi. No specific street address. I need to know things like cost, and hours of operation. Several phone numbers are listed on the site. None works.
4. Phone call to directory assistance yields yet another number. A recording there states: “Sorry, this number is temporarily disabled.”
5. I make a plan to just visit Lenana Road and hope for the best. But first, I need up to 4 passport photos, to attach to the visa applications. (Egypt required the same thing and never asked for it, but I figure, better safe than sorry.)
6. I visit a chemist (pharmacy) near my hotel where I noticed a flier for passport photos. A druggist fumbles about for a circa-1998 digital camera with failing battery, throws an old sheet on the wall, and I try to strike a non-terrorist pose. He fusses with the camera for 25 minutes to produce what I thought were tolerable passport photos.
7. My current client graciously excuses me from a busy morning – my own Powerpoint presentation to the chairman and executive committee – so I can make my visa application in person. They provide a car and driver to Lenana Road.
8. We are early. A man emerges from a 3-foot high door in a solid steel gate (think Emerald City but not as friendly) to say: “Come back in 10 minutes!” I sit in the car and chat with my Kenyan driver, Richard.
9. After 10 o’clock, I make my way in and register at a guardhouse. I enter the office where a secretary looks at my formal application, printed off the Internet, and says: “what is this? I’ve never seen this before. Have a seat.” I wonder if I am at the *** High Commission. A nun is in line ahead of me; it’s my second confrontation with a suspicious nun on this extended journey. An omen.
10. The nun summons me to the gated window where a visa clerk (who actually seems to be the entire *** High Commission) is ready for my application. She refuses to give her name but I will call her Nancy because she turns out to be a Negative Nancy, though I suppose there is little chance that’s her real name. “What is this form?” I say it’s downloaded from what appeared to be the official Kenyan visa application site and I was trying to play by the rules. “It’s not often used.” Harrumph. “Why are you going to ***? Why are you here in Kenya? What’s the deal with this passport photo? It looks so bad. You look terrible!” (Raised eyebrows.)
11. Alarmed, Nancy points out that my passport has dangerously few pages left for visas. Someone has been traveling too much. “I highly suggest you go to the American Embassy right now and have them add more pages. It’s easy, they’ll do it quickly.” Is it near here? “No, it’s at the United Nations. (Across town.) Go there and come back.”
12. My driver is sympathetic, even though he is trying to plan the funeral for his mother who died two days ago. We dive into the terrible, typically Kenyan traffic to United Nations Road. I try not to think about the report in The Nation on Sunday about American interests in Nairobi being on high alert for terrorism after the U.S. wiped out an al Qaeda operative in Somalia. This whole ordeal is just an annoying and earnest (though Oscar-worthy) George Clooney movie waiting to happen.
13. I arrive at the Embassy guard station and state my request. “You are too late.” It’s 11:15 a.m., and such requests are only reviewed until 10 a.m., and then again after 1. “But I must resolve this and return to the *** people before they shut their doors at 12:30. This is the last day I can do this or my trip is in jeopardy. I’m stuck.”
14. The Kenyans at this guard station, and a second, eventually show sympathy.  (They really are sweet people overall.) No guarantees, but we will call inside and state your case, and see if they can make an exception. After a 15 minute wait, it’s no dice. The official whose salary I am essentially paying has the time to listen to my appeal on the phone, but refuses to leave her desk for 2 minutes to come down and glue some pages into my passport, smoothing over my business with ***. Come back at 1. Sorry. (Your tax dollars NOT at work.)
15. Back in the hot car in a seat with the broken springs and into Nairobi traffic. Back to the *** High Consulate to insist that the final two pages be utilized for my visa. I tell Nancy, please deal with this, I can solve the problem of the additional pages back at home. (I assume this will be costly and a hassle there as well).
16. Nancy raises eyebrows again – they are in danger of spraining. Reluctantly she takes my passport again and says, “you can pay.” She takes my 18,000 Kenyan shillings ($300). I can come back later in the week to pick it up (presumably if this blog entry hasn’t been discovered, endangering my good graces with ***).
17. Check back here for update by end of week to see if I’ll be on my way to *** soon.

* * *

This isn’t the most annoying bureaucracy I’ve run into in my travels or life, but it was annoying nonetheless. I take deep breaths, recollect my armchair Buddhism training, and realize that things could always be worse. As I’ve done a lot lately in Kenya, it’s a good time to count my blessings. Despite the frustrations, at least I have cause to seek a visa to an exotic country, which suggests a decent if not steady living. I had a driver provided to cart me around instead of having to use taxi or the dreaded Kenyan matatus (gypsy minivan taxis). It could have been raining. The embassy could have been bombed. Unlike Richard, my driver, I didn’t have to juggle work and funeral planning for a family member. As with everything in life, aggravation is relative.

P.S. The reason I substituted *** for the actual name of the country above is because I am told it is often difficult to impossible for journalists to enter the country. Though I won’t be acting in any capacity there as such, best not to aggravate the situation. Stranger things have happened to me than a country like this finding my blog post and denying me entry!