Men of the past provided, but with those of today, there is no providing (Kiswahili, Wanaume wa zamani walikuwa wanaprovide, lakini wa siku hizi kuprovide hakuna). […] if they see expenses, they think that they have to escape to a place that has no expenses.
Joy, 23-year-old migrant from Transmara, pregnant and married
When I returned from the gym on a scorching hot afternoon in April 2021, I saw some men sitting in front of a plot being constructed not far from my apartment. From a distance, I mistook them for day labourers who were working at the construction site and taking a break. Approaching the group, however, I soon spotted the familiar faces of several jo-pap relaxing on cement bricks and enjoying rum mixed with energy drinks. After buying a bottle of Captain Morgan, I joined them, and we exchanged stories until the atmosphere suddenly changed. An alert had gone out that a ja-pap needed help somewhere in Kware. Gulping down their drinks, a few jo-pap started running toward the place where their help was needed. Still unsure what was happening, I followed the others and, after walking deeper into Kware for a few minutes, I recognized a handful of jo-pap patrolling the area carrying wooden and metal sticks. Concerned for my safety, some jo-pap urged me to stand by the side as they searched for a man who had stolen some goods and vandalized the pawn shop of Geoffrey Ochieng, an aspiring politician, businessman, and ja-pap. After a while, two jo-pap dragged a bleeding individual out of a plot and brought him to the pawn shop, where he tried to explain his actions and begged for mercy. Shortly thereafter, two police officers arrived and agreed that jo-pap should help them to escort the thief to the local police station. Once the suspect was handed over to the authorities, we headed to Patrick’s barber shop, which was located opposite the base and was a vantage point for jo-pap to watch two of the estate’s main roads (see figure 7). Feeling that Pipeline’s anonymity required a communal response, and being aware that their power lay in their number and solidarity, jo-pap had declared an area around the base a no-go zone for thieves and members of the Kikuyu-dominated cult and youth gang Mungiki, which extorted money from informal businesses in the estate (Frederiksen 2010).
Adeline Masquelier’s ethnography of young male Nigeriens’ experience of boredom and belonging describes how unemployed men in Niger prepare and drink tea while sitting around at so-called fada, makeshift meeting places where they discuss politics and other issues concerning their lives (Masquelier 2019). Comparable things took place at jo-pap’s regular meeting point. Migrant men could be found at the base every day, but most came at the weekends and in the evenings after returning from their jobs, and discussed politics, bought and drank tea, porridge, or alcohol, enjoyed the free Wi-Fi from a nearby shop, went out to get some food at a small restaurant owned by the wife of a ja-pap, and discussed news, gossip and important information about Pipeline or rural western Kenya. If a ja-pap was not in the house or at work, he was, most probably, at the base.
~
Figure 7 View into one of Pipeline’s main streets. Photograph by the author, 6 June 2022.
In contrast to a typical day at a Nigerien fada, sitting around at the base was not perceived as excessively boring. Rather, spending time at the base exposed jo-pap to a temporal rhythm characterized by unexpected and sudden shifts between relaxation and excitement. Discussions about politics were punctuated by catcalling passing women with beautiful tooth gaps (Dholuo, rambanya) or big buttocks, and the relaxed sipping of hot porridge could anytime be interrupted by a ja-pap calling for help, as in the case of the vandalism of Geoffrey’s store. Most importantly, the base was where jo-pap thought about and planned their evenings and weekends. They discussed where to drink alcohol, or which ohangla concert to attend, and how they would enjoy the fruits of what they called ‘back’ and ‘through passes’, the former being the informal exchange of previous sexual partners (also known as ‘recycling second-hand goods’) and the latter the setting up of a one-night-stand or a sexual affair with a female friend for another ja-pap. In pap, as Victor phrased it, thereby summarizing jo-pap’s wasteful conviviality, men had to realize that ‘an antelope is nobody’s goat, if you find an antelope, you can eat it, and then you carry it back to the bush so that another man will find it.’
Though jo-pap also acted as a local vigilante group, the primary social function of the base was to offer male migrants a public place outside their houses where they did not have to fear being confronted with the expectations of their wives and children. The base was, in other words, the structural antidote to the house. Though comparable, this binary spatial partition was not congruent with how social space was organized in rural western Kenya, where pap was not only opposed to the female-dominated house, but also the male-dominated homestead, which was owned and controlled by the husband. While the rural homestead was overseen by the homestead head (Dholuo, wuon dala), who decided what happened and who was welcome in the homestead (see Dietler and Herbich 2009, Schmidt 2020), the rural pap used to be a social arena where predominantly unmarried men and women from different local areas met to enjoy dances, traditional wrestling matches, music, sexual encounters, and other recreational activities.
By introducing ‘an imaginary village space [….] into the neighbourhoods of the townships’ (Pype 2007: 266),
jo-pap reduced the tripartite structure of social space prevalent in rural western Kenya to a binary one. This reduction of complexity did, however, intensify the contrast between the two social spheres of the ‘house’ and the ‘playing field’. Migrant men who lacked the social prestige and recognition of a
wuon dala but felt increasingly pressured by their wives, girlfriends, and rural relatives to provide economically also began to seek solace in
pap simply because there was no other public space to which they could go. A migrant man who lost his job during the pandemic could decide to spend most of his days at the base because the house had turned into what Victor once described as a ‘battlefield’ (Dholuo,
ka lweny), where one had to behave like a cunning ‘leopard’ (Dholuo,
kwach)
1 Migrant men addressed each other using names for wild animals, such as kwach (Dholuo, ‘leopard’), rwath (Dholuo, ‘bull’), or ondiek (Dholuo, ‘hyena’), which carried positive connotations and created feelings of brotherly relatedness (comparable to omera, designating a friend or ‘brother’, and owadwa, ‘brother’). Correspondingly, women were called mwanda (Dholuo, ‘antelope’) or, in a more romantic register, atoti (from Kiswahili, mtoto, ‘child’, meaning ‘babe’ or ‘beautiful one’), aswito (from the English word ‘sweetheart’), and, more ambivalent, jaber (Dholuo, ‘beautiful one’). In an ironic twist on the perception of Luo women as materialistic, the female comedian Adhis Jojo demanded to be called ‘my bungalow’, ‘my car keys’, or ‘my cheque book’ instead of aswito in a sketch during which she responded to the comment that Luo women have high expectations with a rhetorical Ni kweli? (Kiswahili, ‘Really?’) Interestingly, local minibuses known for reckless driving, loud music and rough conductors were known as manyanga, a Sheng word for ‘girl’ that a Luo friend translated as nyar pap (Dholuo, ‘daughter of the playing field’). in order to avoid fights and arguments
. As most social contacts of a
ja-pap were in one way or another related to
pap, hanging out at the base even made sense economically. Instead of sending a résumé to an unknown human resource manager, it was more promising to sit at the base inquiring about job openings or waiting for the chance to be taken along by a friend to a factory in the industrial area for a day job, thereby at least earning a few hundred Kenyan Shillings
.The contrast between ot (Dholuo, ‘house’) and pap (Dholuo, ‘playing field’)comes into even sharper relief when taking a closer look at how social relations were conceptualized inside pap. While the house was perceived as a place of pressure and unrealistic expectations (see chapter 3), pap was understood as a place where no grudges should be held and where men should not expect much from each other. Pap was thus not only differentiated from the house but also from the HoMiSiKi investment group, whose members were contractually bound to one another and had to pay contributions and fees. These differences became manifest in what could be called the unofficial constitution of pap: eight ‘principles’ that circulated as a meme in jo-pap’s WhatsApp group, of which six are quoted here:
Principles mag pap (Dholuo, ‘principles of the playing field’) |
Pap onge kun. | No hard feelings on the playing field. |
Pap onge ritaya, once ja-pap, forever ja-pap. | There is no retirement on the playing field, once a ja-pap, forever a ja-pap. |
Pap iye tin, ji tuomre. | The playing field is small, people bump into each other easily. |
Ja-pap ok landre, your record will speak for you. | A ja-pap does not broadcast himself, your record will speak for you. |
Pap ji tee singul. | On the playing field, everyone is single. |
Ja-pap nyaka bed gi nying’ mar pap. | A ja-pap must acquire a pap name. 2 One ja-pap, for example, was known as Pump Mkubwa (Kiswahili, ‘big pump’), or Agwata Mzinga (from Dholuo, agwata, ‘calabash’, and Sheng, mzinga, ‘large bottle of spirits’). Other examples of a nying’ mar pap were Brigadier, Kauzi (Sheng, ‘thief’), or Martial (after the football player Anthony Martial). |
Jo-pap did not expect to smoothly progress along the linear trajectory toward economic success, which was the official aim of HoMiSiKi and what men felt their intimate others demanded of them. The temporal rhythm of
pap was rather a circular repetition of the same activities, such as talking about politics, drinking, catcalling women, having sexual affairs, fighting, and dancing to
ohangla music. Life in
pap was deliberately constructed as a celebration and performance of wasteful, sexually potent, and sometimes violent masculinity. Spending time in
pap thereby allowed men to temporarily evade the pressures produced by modernity’s promise of economic progress. In contrast to the house as a place focused on the reproduction of the family and the continuous accumulation of commodities that marked the economic achievements of a migrant man,
pap was a place of excessive and wasteful consumption and non-reproductive sexuality. Here, married men could once again behave like irresponsible teenagers living in the rural hinterland.
3 While jo-pap exhibited a form of what could be called ‘conspicuous rurality’, many migrant women avoided showcasing their rural background by, for example, preferring to speak Sheng or Kiswahili instead of Dholuo. This was probably caused by differences in how men and women planned their futures. While many women had migrated to Nairobi with the intention to stay, most men considered their migration to Nairobi a temporary adventure and wanted to return home later in life, which intensified their motivation to mingle with other Luo men who would remain part of their social networks in rural western Kenya. Many migrant men interpreted women’s rejection of rurality as a rejection of ‘hard work’ (Dholuo, tich matek) and neglect of their kinship obligations. Patrick, for instance, called women in the village ‘women of development’ (Dholuo, mon mag development) and women in the city ‘women of anti-development’ (Dholuo, mon mag anti-development). Considering that experiencing oneself as masculine is a socially produced and validated feeling, it is unsurprising that
jo-pap’s practices of violent and wasteful masculinity took the form of staged performances. Through engaging in the practices of
pap, men assured each other and the wider public of their masculinity, even if the traditional dances and wrestling matches of the past (Carotenuto 2013) had been replaced by carefully orchestrated political campaigns and staged barfights.