Globalization Tent
Kenya
February 2019
I unfurled the tent for the first time at a lakeside camp. Colobus in their finest fringed tuxedos croaked and called as they bounded thorny acacia trees en route to their soiree. Stately storks strut in the leaves, our eyes locking for an instant. “Where’s home?” we asked each other silently. “Do you have anything for me to eat?”
No, I don’t. The stork envies my lazy saunter to the camp restaurant. The menu is typical of a tourist place, familiar flavors for wealthy Old World culture and wealthy New World replication. A few stews with chapatti satisfy the odd request for local cuisine at four times the local price. There are burgers and chips, salads, soups, English fry-ups, pasta and pizza, all devised and described with the eye and palate of a Swahili-thinking mind less experienced in the world of wheat flour.
I raise my eyebrows at the impurity of my touristic intentions, wondering which is more foolhardy: to think I could escape interpretations of bland global cuisine or that I would have the inspiration to overcome the planned ease of such plates. Tempting community crocks of stewed greens, beans, and rice circle my mind. Five minutes beyond the barrier atop plastic tables tucked in a slanted stoop, they summon Kenyan sojourner laborers at one-fifth the price. It’s early still. I’ll wait for the afternoon acacias to suppress the equatorial sunlight. Then I’ll go.
The tent’s wrinkles still remained as I returned to my plot, the fabric following the contours of the grass. I yanked the new poles from their storage sack to poke them in their obvious corner posts as a page of Instrucciones de Montaje flicked from the sack and floated to the ground. “Made in China: Manufactured in Ningbo Free Trade Zone Top Green Co, Ltd” it reads. I glanced back to the page, noting the Spanish grammatical errors, confused. I continue assembling the mechanical branches that will elevate the fabric dome over my sleeping space. And then I pause to think again.
Spanish isn’t spoken anywhere on this continent I recall. I muse at this sign from the acacia heavens in Kenya, an ocean away from my learning and yearning in the Americas mere months earlier, drowning with joy in near-compulsory Castellano. I press the fabric tent dome taut and notice the shoddy seams snaking the sides. Cheap. As confused as I am. The purchase receipt floats from my backpack as I shuffle the bag into my shelter. Pause again. Bought at a French conglomerate supermarket, I remember. A new colonialism, this. Not spellbound only by the physical resources of the centuries of conquest, but instead searching for new customers to suckle at the teet of wealthy world corporate convenience under the guise of advancement. Rather than simply shiny ore, it’s market share for which these barons battle in this childish playground. Only now the Chinese pee in the sandbox with them, also unable to control their excited urges for influence and material resources in exchange for a road or an airport.
This grey globalization tent of nouveau colonialism is my temporary shelter. For a few starry nights amongst the acacia and the birds, it’s home, this tent of global manufacture, delivery, and expense. And in it I’m nothing more than a tourist, choosing between something more traditional and monocuisine to fill my stomach. I, too, am responsible for peddling the globe to the lowest bidder. Because in the end, the origin of my coin doesn’t matter; maybe in the end it’s all monocurrency, too. I hope I’m more than just another white intruder, but maybe that’s not my determination to make.