When you dance, drink, and make stories, you don’t feel heavy, you feel light.
A ja-pap
On a weekend in October 2021, and in preparation of the general elections 2022, jo-pap had invited several politicians who planned to contest for the seat of the Member of the County Assembly of Nairobi representing Kware ward to the base. Unsatisfied with the incumbent whom they had helped to win and who had announced to run again as the candidate of the Orange Democratic Movement party, most jo-pap had not yet openly declared whom they would support. Among the aspiring politicians eager to tap into the power vacuum were Benson, HoMiSiKi’s chairman, and Geoffrey Ochieng, owner of the pawn shop. In the days before the meeting, aspirants adorned the base and surrounding plots with stickers and posters, thereby officially starting to vie for political support among Kware’s inhabitants.
Prior to the meeting, Patrick emphasized that the people of the base invite politicians in Kware ward and not the other way around. Without the support of jo-pap – this was the implicit message – no Luo politician could be successful in the upcoming elections. Though not based on what Kenyans called the ‘tyranny of numbers’ but rather on the ability to tap into and activate social networks structured around Luo male migrants, the historical success of jo-pap proved Patrick right. Although Kamba outnumbered jo-Luo in Kware, a Luo candidate had won the last election.
During their speeches in front of jo-pap and other interested inhabitants, all aspirants presented political programmes focused on ‘community development’, the ‘youth’, and ‘jobs’, echoing the language used during official meetings of HoMiSiKi. Though all politicians thereby denounced the culture of corruption and monetary handouts, an influential ja-pap disappeared with each one of them for a few minutes after their speeches to receive a financial contribution in a nearby plot or dark bypass. Comparable to the way in which HoMiSiKi’s rhetoric of economic success and investment covered up the wasteful masculinity of pap, politicians’ official anti-corruption agenda thus allowed them to secretly channel material support to jo-pap, who then redistributed it in their networks.
Though they had yet to openly declare their support for a specific politician in order to continue to financially benefit from all candidates, most jo-pap had already decided to support Geoffrey, who appeared to have the resources to help jo-pap and to acquire connections among Nairobi’s political-economic elite, which were necessary to secure more financial support for his campaign. When Geoffrey arrived at the base in a private vehicle, a sign of his economic potential, he heartfully greeted some well-known jo-pap and gave stacks of his business cards and whistles to others, who distributed them to the men standing around. After Patrick and Geoffrey had sorted out some things, Geoffrey gave a short speech and then jo-pap launched a political rally that had likely been prearranged.
While walking through Kware ward, we danced, sang, and praised Geoffrey while handing out his business cards. As we marched through the estate, we stopped at meeting points for Luo youth, such as a pool hall, where other young migrant men joined us. The crowd had soon swollen to several hundred men who ensured that the people standing on the balconies and walking around the streets were aware of Geoffrey’s candidacy. During the almost three-hour walk through Kware ward I realized that the almost exclusively male supporters of Geoffrey relished being part of a political mass. Resembling what Émile Durkheim called ‘collective effervescence’ (1995 [1912]: passim) and Wandia Njoya described as the ‘political energy’ of Kenyan men that was ‘harvested by politicians’ during elections (Njoya 2022), male migrants enjoyed the tumult, dancing, loud whistling and singing, and acting as Geoffrey’s bodyguards, clearing the roads and making sure nobody interfered with the campaign’s progress. Walking with them, I saw men who were proud of the fact that a politician would achieve nothing without their support. In pap, they decided who ruled.
After the campaign had ended, I met Joel Opiyo, who confided to me that Geoffrey had given jo-pap a mere 4,000 KSh, of which I would later receive one hundred from Patrick, and concluded that this amount was not enough for their ‘work’. Joel’s use of the term ‘work’ illustrates that jo-pap understood the campaign as a form of ‘relational labour’ (Baym 2015). Patrick, having grown up in Kware, had the deepest connections among Pipeline’s inhabitants, and had so assembled hundreds of supporters with ease, and the assistance of fellow jo-pap which had helped to make Geoffrey a known figure among a substantial share of Kware’s inhabitants. Furthermore, the term ‘work’ points to the fact that the relationship between politicians and supporters, some of whom would later put-up Geoffrey’s posters all over the estate (figure 8), was a contractual one. While jo-pap could withdraw their political support, politicians might stop giving out handouts as soon as they were elected, which jo-pap bitterly reminded each other about when they talked about the incumbent.
Local politics was not the only arena where jo-pap staged performances of masculinity. After we had drunk several rounds of beer and spirits in a bar not far from the base, an argument broke out between two jo-pap. While one suggested it was time to go home, the other one kept telling us to continue drinking. The discussion got more heated and the two started to push each other around until another man noticed and tried to intervene. In a few seconds, around ten jo-pap were on their feet and had started a bar brawl, everyone now united in their fight against the man who had tried to appease the two jo-pap as well as against a few of his friends. Slaps and blows were exchanged until one ja-pap managed to calm down the others, and we left the bar. Outside we found a ja-pap shouting that he was kwach, wuod Awiti (Dholuo, ‘leopard, son of Awiti’) while threatening to attack bypassing men. After we had quieted him down, we walked home together, laughing about what had happened, shouting pap onge kun (Dholuo, ‘no hard feelings on the playing field’), which was the informal motto of jo-pap, and reassuring each other that in Pipeline nobody could disturb a ja-pap. When returning from the gym the next day, Joel and I were approached by a group of youth, some of whom had been threatened by the ja-pap outside the bar. Feeling tense about a potential rekindling of the aggression, I was relieved when Joel and the guys laughed about what had happened. The incident, it seemed, was already forgotten. Bar fights, mostly ignited by minor issues, are thus best understood as forms of public violent behaviour by which jo-pap performatively reassured one another and others of their masculinity and control over pap.
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Figure 8 Campaign posters at a makeshift dumpsite, Kware. Photograph by the author, 24 July 2022.
Being a ja-pap entailed observing the city with a male gaze and making sure that the residents of Pipeline viewed jo-pap as masculine. It meant forcing one another and others to look at and deal with violent, sexualized, and wasteful forms of masculinity. Jo-pap created an audience for their displayed masculinity by catcalling bypassing women, discussing politics and organizing political campaigns, surveilling the area, and drinking and fighting in bars. These and related practices relocated the source of their masculinity from the house to pap and helped migrant men forget about their economic pressure and domestic frustrations. Though their wives and girlfriends might bicker about their inability to provide, in pap where the group was the ‘bearer of masculinity’ (Connell 2005 [1995]: 107), male migrants reassured one another that they were more masculine than those men who just sat in their houses and had forgotten that men excelled at being men around other men.