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More Drama for your Mama (Lishe)
As if we thought for a moment that the rest of the project would go seamlessly from here on out, more drama surfaced this week when we introduced housing for the msela. We (Urban Project) had always intended of setting the guys up with housing and getting them off the street at night but didn’t want to overwhelm them with a hip hop album and housing and school fees all at the same time, so we decided to stagger them. You can imagine if someone from a foreign country showed up and offered you a new apartment in downtown Vancouver, a studio space fully equipped with video and computer equipment, and the cash required to produced a feature film. Well, I can. It would be awesome. And I probably couldn’t handle it. I’d be completely thrown by it and would probably act irrationally as a result. That’s basically what (we think) this week has been like for the msela.
No more Malaria!
When we told them about the rooms, they were beside themselves. Shavu, who is the oldest of the crew and the most ready to wave bye-bye to street life, starting singing “good-bye mo-squweeeetos, good-bye Malaria!”. We were glowing. It made all the stress and hard work of raising the money and getting here feel more than worth it. We parted with the msela feeling energized and made plans to meet 2 days later, once they had found their rooms (it would not have worked for us to go with, as the landlords would have jacked up the price for the Wazungus(white people).
Red Card, Ninja
Jay went to meet them early Saturday morning for what he thought was a low-key “soka” practice. It turned out to be a full on match with about 40 local youth, some from the street, others students. Gossip started immediately and the msela told Jay that Ninja has lost it at the Maskani that morning and was accusing all the guys of hating him, of not wanting him to be their leader, and was threatening to hurt them, or himself with a broken bottle. Sadly, what had happened was that no one wanted to share a room with him and Ema, who Ninja had wanted to live with, had decided to live with Kisu instead, the antagonist in the life of Ninja. It must have really hurt, but it doesn’t excuse what happened next.
Ninja shows up at the soccer field, drunk and disorderly, crying, and ready to take on any or all of the 40 guys there. He challenged most of them, throwing accusations of disloyalty, and started pulling items of clothing off their bodies that belonged to him, as if anything does in msela life. It was an ugly scene. As Jay left, escorted by another msela, he turned back to see that someone had finally lost their cool and decided to give Ninja a run for his money. It turned out to be Shavu.
What Have We Done?
We felt terrible. The msela were fighting amongst themselves (imagine the Jets taking each other on) and we had caused it. We started to contemplate what we were doing, how we could have avoided this, and if the msela were going to blame us for these new problems introduced into their already hard and complex lives. Were we helping or hindering? It was unclear. Most of all, we worried about Ninja. Sure, he screwed up royally and was way out of line, but imagine getting dumped by 20 of your friends and finding out that no one wanted to live with you, then put that into the context of street life. We had to step aside and let them figure things out for themselves.
