GALO: What are some of the starkest changes you’ve witnessed during your time in Kenya?

EG: In the 20 years I’ve been there, the change has been exponential, unimaginable. And that comes with the huge advances in communication that have happened. I mean, if you can imagine that there was just landlines and normal telephones for 50 years, and most people didn’t even have those, and then within five years, the whole country has cellular telephone communication; it’s just radical how that kind of exposure and communication has transformed everything.

The same could be true of the Internet and access to information, although that’s still not accessible to everyone in the way that telephones are, but even that’s changing. There’s a much stronger middle class than there was when I first came to Kenya, which obviously we’re very happy to see. And there’s more education, exposure and development. And this is the thing that my friend James Mpusia was so delighted by, and would like for his people and his children. This whole thing is not lost on him. He would like his children to have education and be able to provide for themselves and be comfortable, and really not struggle the way he did growing up. I’ve known him since he was 13-years-old, and he had a very hard time of it when he was a child.

GALO: Elizabeth, you say these are “customs and cultures that I had no doubt would disappear in our lifetime.” Is the direct encroachment of modernity responsible for this? Or is it having more of a latent effect, causing an internal recognition of and willingness to conform to modernity? Perhaps, it’s a combination of both.

EG: I think, for most people, there isn’t that consciousness around letting go of the old traditions. You know, they’re just like you and I — if the opportunity is there, if you just heard about the latest iPhone, or the ability to hold something in your hand that would enable you to talk to someone around the world and send a message to someone. These things — once that’s out and that opportunity is there, everyone wants to reach for it. It’s really just about being comfortable at the end of the day, about being healthy, and living with fewer burdens and less labor. It’s a very hard life out in the bush. Once the idea is made possible that you could have more comfort and live in a house with rooms and a roof that doesn’t leak, and make your way to the market in the comfort of a vehicle as opposed to walking for 30 kilometers — any of that. I think the choice is just natural to any of us.

I would be careful to make a sweeping statement about what people want. I’ve encountered all kinds of people and they’re all different. And someone like Patrick [Loldepe], who’s on the cover of my book, is a very traditional guy and he’s very proud of his traditional life. There’s a lot of pride in it. It isn’t upbringing. And he enjoyed a time of warriorhood. Or someone like James [James Ole Mpusia, a former warrior, also featured in the film] in particular was very, very proud of where they come from and consciously seeks to maintain that. With other guys, the first question is, “Can you get me to Nairobi?” There’s a lot of curiosity. Even someone like Patrick, as you know from the film, has gone to Mombasa and tried his luck there. [He] lived a very Western-style life, shaved his head, worked as a security guard in a regular job, and left the bush — left his brothers to take care of his livestock. And then he goes back from time to time with the money. And that means something in the bush when he comes home with all those paychecks and whatever he’s able to save, which is pretty meager. The world has just changed, and it’s only that we get to look at it happening so vividly in Kenya or in other parts of Africa. But, of course, it’s all happened for us here, and nobody thought to analyze it or think too much about it and wait for the next invention. So, in that spirit, I think that’s just being human.

GALO: Why did you choose to focus on the crew? Their commentary was a striking contrast to the traditional cultures you were capturing. You said, “In many ways they were more American than Americans.”

EG: Number one, I didn’t want to be the voice of the film. My opinions and my experiences as a foreigner should just be that, and they should have a place. And I think some of my perspectives lend meaning in all of this, and that that’s definitely one angle we can look at, but it certainly wasn’t to me what I wanted the film to be about. In that respect, I think Matt did a fabulous job of putting perspectives and ideas into the hands of the audience and into other people in the film, and really just presenting a lot of information without bias. And the crew was there to present a perspective that I never could. And that, of course, is the perspective of a young African, coming up in Nairobi, living a very urban life (as all those kids are) — middle class guys with interesting jobs and a bright future in front of them. What do they make of all of this?

I thought they would close the circle. I thought if you had a foreigner’s perspective, someone who’s not invested — that being myself… And you had the perspective of people who are living urban, middle class lives in Nairobi and didn’t grow up like that versus the audiences and the people we returned to, I thought we’d be covering it in some way — if we could see all those perspectives.

I was saddened sometimes by some of their perspectives on things, but again, I just felt like it was our job to present what they were experiencing. We could’ve actually included a lot more. And that was a question, you know: How much of this do we give everyone and at what point are we repeating this idea, this theme? I think Matt hit the right note.

MG: Liz really wanted the crew in there, and I agreed with her, because she thought they represented this totally modernized element where the heritage is pretty much completely stripped from their culture. Their culture is, as Liz said, more into hamburgers and hip-hop. For them, looking into their backyard and learning about the Samburu and Maasai, it’s almost embarrassing. And they’re trying to get away from that. To Liz and me that’s a little sad. It’s always a little sad when you abandon your own heritage. Maybe there are good things about it; maybe the trappings of modernization have benefits.

But to shun it the way that these modern Nairobians do — they’re these Prima Donnas, you know? They’re just like, “It’s too hot, it’s too dry, these people are poor, and I don’t want to be around that.” I grew up in Arizona. I liken it to when I was a kid and the last thing I ever wanted to see was a howling coyote image. It was the most embarrassing thing. If someone says, “Oh, Arizona, great — cowboys, Indians, howling coyotes,” I would say, “No, that’s not me. I’m a big city guy.” So whatever the cliché is about where you’re from, you’re always shying away from it and embracing whatever is new to you. I think that’s what they were doing — they were compensating for this identity crisis they were having. You know, here we are, white people from America are fascinated with this cultural heritage that they really don’t want anything to do with. It was important to show the spectrum in a place like East Africa. These people are from the Rift Valley. Their grandparents are from the Rift Valley. They have tribal origins and they’ve thrown it all to the wayside. The contrast between the Nairobians and the warriors, in these remote villages where heritage is fading, was a very important element of the film.

(Interview continued on next page)