Tribes

One of the most interesting things about travelling in Africa is watching the interplay between the various tribes. Sometimes the tension is extraordinarily horrible as in the genocide in Rwanda ten years ago (although I've always found it interesting that the US and Europe draws a distinction between ethnic tensions, as in the former Yugoslavia (which they view as an unfortunate but almost necessary process of state building), and tribal tensions (which they view as proof of African inferiority and inability to function successfully in the modern world). At other times the tribal differences are much more subtle and generally harmless, but nevertheless always there. I remember going to a Nairobi museum one time with a Nigerian friend and it's amazing how often tribal recognition came up - that is, identifying the tribes of certain artists or predicting the tribes of people we talked to in the museum - not in a bad way, but it was obvious that this how he, and others, processed information and he assumed I would need that information. It came back to me yesterdqy when I was having lunch with my friend Wainaina and we were discussing our efforts over the last couple years to promote the Global Modules at his university. One of the points he made was that maybe too many of the professors, him included, who we had chosen to roll out the GMs were kikuyu (Kenya's largest and most influential tribe) and thus some professors from other tribes would view this as just another prize thrown to the kikuyu. Fascinating. And another wrinkle that makes my job so fascinating/challenging.