NAIROBI, KENYA—A Montreal professor arrived in Nairobi recently. He came here two weeks after the well-publicized chaos began, and it was interesting to hear him relate the impression outsiders have of Kenya as a country where burning buildings, mass riots, and dead bodies have become the norm. Once you’re on the ground, he said, the picture that emerges is a calmer one, “where a number of local disasters are embedded in a matrix of peace.”

We were sitting in cushioned chairs on the balcony of a middle class pub, surrounded by chatty locals and sipping malt beer as we waited for a meal of curried tilapia to reach our table. There was nothing in our situation to suggest that Kenya was, as I described it in the title to one of my previous blog posts, “on the brink.” Nor was our bar in any way the exception that night — the truth is, placid scenes of domestic routine far outnumber the more compelling images of looters kicking tear gas canisters out of the way, or grandmothers wailing outside the church their families were burned in.

The numbers don’t add up, either. Less than a thousand dead? That’s still about six hundred too many, but to speak of holocausts or ethnic cleansing is an insult to the memory of places where such terms actually apply. Nobody wants to measure one nation’s tragedy against another, but it’s hard not to notice that far greater body counts than Kenya’s pile up in other countries all the time, yet most receive a fraction of the air time.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Kenyans, either. Almost to a man and woman, they decry the sensational treatment the foreign press has given their moment of crisis. I probably would, too — watch the latest riot on CNN and you’ll see just about as many European journalists in the frame as Kenyan protesters. Nairobi has become a media circus, full of well-financed bloodhounds tearing through the city in search of the latest lynching, the brightest fire, the biggest mob. When we catch up to them, the looters pose for our cameras and redouble their efforts. Who are the real hooligans? It seemed almost appropriate when riot police finally lost their patience on Wednesday and fired tear gas into a bloated crowd of reporters, who had gathered ahead of an expected showdown. We coughed and spluttered, expressed our outrage, and took some more great pictures.

And yet, not only were there almost as many locals as foreigners in that indignant group, but they all had pretty much the same thing to say. The truth is there isn’t much to separate their respective coverage of the confusion now reigning over Kenya. I recently saw the same image — of a ragged young man jumping on the roof of a smoldering car against a backdrop of burning slum shacks — in two Kenyan newspapers as well as the BBC’s website. I’m not sure where else it may have wound up, but at the very least that picture had been captured from three different angles by three different photographers.

One enormous difference that does emerge between local and foreign coverage is the way we deal with tribalism. Kenyan journalists are under strict orders never to say things like Kikuyu, or Luo, or even the word “tribe.” The furthest they may go is to say “ethnicity” or “community.” This is both understandable and deplorable. Understandable because an accurate report of, say, a Kalenjin mob gang-raping a Kikuyu girl is likely to incite some form of retribution. Deplorable because until these tribal hatreds are closely examined, the class struggles and corrupt leadership underlying them will never be exposed.

Meanwhile, we foreigners stand accused of perpetuating the stereotype of Africa as ooga-boogaland. We’re reporting (again) that this is a backward kind of place; from Kenya to Cameroon, the whole continent is full of fire-worshipers. They may put on suits, drive around in cars and even learn to love coffee, but secretly they can’t wait to get naked and start drinking the blood of their enemies.

So is it all just hype?

A lot of it, sure. And no doubt there’s a condescending spin to much of the coverage. But if the murderous displacement of a quarter million people by their neighbors didn’t make headlines — even though the other 33 million are fine — what then? It’s true that you can explore Nairobi’s markets, hunt lions in the Masaai Mara, and snorkel over the reefs of Mombasa, all without seeing so much as a tire fire. The fact remains that this country is mired in an incredibly tense political standoff; no one yet knows what will happen if this drama’s protagonists keep unraveling the threads that have so far bound 42 tribes into a single social fabric. I hope it all fades into a boring resolution; I hope that the legions of young men now aching for revenge don’t listen to the elders urging them to battle, and that the foreign press has no choice but to pack their bags and head back to the Middle East.

But just yesterday, tear gas floated up from the streets of downtown Nairobi and into the third-floor news rooms of Nation Media Group, east Africa’s biggest media house. I wouldn’t change the channel just yet.

Tags: international, kenya

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Posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 5:29 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.