I spent a week in Nairobi, Kenya, covering the latest Prometheus Fellowship retreat. This blog being Learn Liberty and all, I thought I’d write about what I learned.
I learned that all the signs in Kenya, as well as official political documents, are in English, but that most people speak a mixture of English, Swahili, and the local dialect. And I learned that this is known as Sheng, something akin to ‘Spanglish.’
I learned that trash cans are almost impossible to find in Kenyan hotels, but that the pens they provide write like a dream.
I learned how João Menezes articulated Ayn Rand’s differentiation of man-made facts and rights.
I learned that Duarte Alvares “found peace in realizing that everything that is good eventually ends, but our memories keep it alive” and that his two years in the Prometheus Fellowship Program taught him philosophy, public speaking, project management, and persuasion, but that it was the friends he made that touched his heart.
I learned that Paulina Plinke recently asked Chat GPT about herself and thought it was reading her mind when it spat out a shockingly human and accurate response. Then I learned that she’s clever enough to ask its source and found the last What I Learned column I wrote.
I learned the hard way that if you walk into a Kenyan food court without making a beeline to a specific stand, you’ll be swarmed by menu-carrying shop owners … and I re-learned that this is capitalism at work; that instead of just picking my pocket or mugging me at knifepoint, they saw fit to actually try to earn my money.
I also re-learned, for I have long known, that putting a basketball through a hoop without a net is incredibly unsatisfying. But I learned that that’s how Beryl Ooko learned to shoot, and that her skill took her all the way to Cleveland for a high-school girls basketball camp.
I learned from Beryl’s cousin that you’re supposed to take a hulking hunk of ugali when offered, not just a small piece. And then I learned from Beryl’s father that Kenya once was a British colony, and that many Kenyans now consider themselves more British than the Britons.
I learned that Rashid Shahriar had a bad case of Hepatitis B in 2007, but that it was a major blessing in disguise.
I learned that Ayn Rand meets the rationalists and empiricists in the middle: that we use the former (reason) to categorize the later (empirical realities), and that this is how we form concepts.
I learned that the University of Nairobi is a “corruption free zone,” as if “corruption” is something other than human nature, as if it can be waved away like smoke. And I was reminded of the hardest I’ve ever laughed: at THIS video from the Babylon Bee, which shows a homeowner defending his house from an armed burglar by pointing to his “Gun Free Zone” sign.
I learned that Edgar Megenzi’s favorite sport is tennis, and that, over the past year, learning about Objectivism has made him a stronger man on and off the court.
I learned from Ogochukwu Peter’s epic poem that the fight for freedom is “A battle we fight not with guns and matchets; Not with bombs and bullets; But with words carefully crafted; With facts tactfully drafted.”
I learned that Pavit Kaur is an M&A lawyer in India, that she gets energy from putting her bare feet on grass, and that she lives in the same city (Mumbai) as Dyuti Pandya but is a little frustrated with Dyuti for studying so much that they hardly get a chance to hang out. I also learned how to eat sugarcane: by peeling it with your teeth.
I learned that elephants are the only one of the “Big 5” animals they don’t have in Kenya, but that if they did, Danyele Slobodticov could stop one in its tracks with her smile. And I learned that Marko Savić learned the art of ethical persuasion from Leopold Ajami … and I saw him use those skills in person, in the World Cup of Objectivism debate that he and his team kicked butt in.
I learned that Rafael Mendonça has learned over the past year how interesting philosophy can be, and that it’s brought him closer to his friends, most of whom have been interested in philosophy for years. And I learned that every year, he reads the entirety of the Brazilian SAT exam to blind folks, and that it broke his heart when they would cry because concepts like the structure of organic chemicals are always taught visually. Then I learned that he successfully lobbied to change the way the exam asks about those kinds of subjects.
I learned that Sumaira Waseem doesn’t shake hands for religious reasons, but that she did us all one better: She brought and handed out postcards from her native Pakistan.
I learned that Amjad Aun’s phone was stolen but that he shrugged it off, didn’t let it affect his trip, and partly credits the Prometheus Fellowship for his resilience. Right after that, I learned that Walter Sylesh feels like he’s constantly struggling to articulate good arguments for liberty (been there, brother!) but that he’s the best-dressed man in any room he enters.
I also learned that Ketchum, Idaho is the new Vail, and that we can’t judge what is given by nature, but that we CAN judge what is man-made, and that government is the latter. Unrelated: I learned that the market for macadamia nuts in Kenya is shrinking.
I learned what the sunset looks like in the rain across the Kenyan prairies, that Kenya has produced 3 of the last 4 men’s winners of both the Boston Marathon and the Olympic Gold Medal, how Robert Begley and Carrie-Ann Biondi met and fell for each other, and that Jon Hersey’s 14-month-old son is a passionate defender of the freedom to poop wherever and whenever he wants.
Oh, I learned about what happened in the 7 Years’ War.
And I learned who Peter Boghossian is, that political protests in Kenya take place on Tuesdays and to a lesser extent on Thursdays, I learned how Sanni Johnson’s voice sounds (baritone), that Aleksandra Jelesijevic hates pineapple on pizza and darn near won the debate competition by saying so, that John Devlin later said, “Maybe the real debate competition is the friends we made along with way,” and above all I learned that facts matter some, ideas matter a lot, but getting to laugh with and eat with and sit in a sauna with and argue with and learn with and, I guess, just getting to know the people behind those ideas matters the most.
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