Tensions in The West
- Sahil Desai
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Kisumu sits on Lake Victoria in Western Kenya, a couple hours from the border of Uganda. A proper city, where hippos somehow still cross roads on the outskirts. As the last stop of the Kenya-Uganda rail, many South Asians settled in the area after completing their work contracts.
It is my second full day in Kisumu, and I walk from Milimani, a quiet residential neighborhood, to the edges of town looking for lunch. A woman walks up.
“Hello, where are you going?”
“I’m looking for lunch.”
“There is a restaurant here, called Swahili Dishes. You can go there.”
I tell her I want to survey my options, and that perhaps I will return. As I continue walking, she walks with me, asking my name and where I am from. The conversation turns suddenly.
“I saw you from my shop and thought I had to come speak with you. You look very nice, I love you.”
“Thank you...”
“You don’t love me?”
“I don’t know you, so I can’t say that.”
“Is it because I’m black.”
I’m taken by surprise, immediately on the defensive. My protest feels futile; I refuse to give her what she wants. I escape into Swahili Dishes, and she returns to her shop. After eating I walk away, trying not to be noticed by anyone else on the street.
Later that evening, I visit Dunga Hill Camp, a few kilometers outside the city on the lakeside. Known for its sunsets, it comes alive in the evenings with sundowner music performances. I’ve been connected with a member of today’s band, and he suggests I play with them. The sound engineer is busy with a group visiting from Nairobi, and doesn’t have much time to make sure my acoustic flute can be heard alongside the other instruments.
After the show a man comes to me. He says he plays the saxophone, and as a fellow wind player, he respects what I do. As I thank him he moves on - “I couldn’t hear you though.” I explain my case, but it provides no solace. “You should have come earlier, and gotten a better mic.”
We continue to argue a bit. Eventually I thank him for the feedback and say I would like to move onto a different conversation.
“We should take a shot.”
“I don’t really want a shot.”
“I’m African, that’s how we say that we’ve moved on and are friends.”
“I have plenty of African friends who don’t think that way... I still don’t want a shot but you can take one.”
“Is it because I’m black?”
Reeling, I start to wonder whether I’m doing something wrong. I later tell a friend from Nairobi who is from the area, and is half Luo and half Indian, about my encounters.
“Oh lord” he responds.
“It seems like western Kenya has seen some things. This hasn’t happened to me anywhere else.”
“Indians treated Africans absolutely horrendously for 100 years in this area. So I tell my friends to carry their privilege with grace.”
At a Gurudwara in town over the weekend I eat lunch with someone who tells me his family has been here for four generations. I ask whether there is more Asian-African tension here than in Nairobi or on the coast, saying I’ve felt there is something different here.
“No, the relations are good. There are no issues.”
I wonder if everyone is just as confused as I am.
Riding With Sahil is an ongoing series within Archives in Motion, with earlier entries including Aterere, Indigenous Music, and Gravity
About the author: Sahil Desai is a writer, sound researcher, and musician tracing South Asian diasporic music across the African continent. Traveling by motorbike, he documents encounters with musicians, archives, and forms of cultural life that often sit outside official histories. His work attends to sound as a site of memory, circulation, and unfinished connection.
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Archives in Motion: An initiative of BlindianProject — a living archive documenting Black × South Asian histories, encounters, and cultural exchange.
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