Good Fortune

“There’s quite a lot of mess, but life is OK”, says a Kenyan women when asked about the conditions in Nairobi’s backstreet district Kibera. She is worried about the UN and the Kenyan government’s plans to clean up the quarter in order to make way for new buildings. Kibera’s inhabitants, who have seen similar projects fail due to corruption, are convinced that they will lose their dwellings. “A clever way to get us out.” In the country, too, people are persuaded that American investor Dominion Farms Ltd. will only get them into trouble. According to the company, it is time to take Kenya “to the same level of prosperity as the rest of the world”. ‘Good Fortune’ portrays the daily life of Kenya’s city and country dwellers, who are not keen on (white men) meddling in internal affairs. The spectator is confronted with the stereotypical ideas about rich and poor that exist in the western world. What is poverty? “I am not poor, I have a resource”, says a man about the big swamp next to where he lives. The militancy of the Kenyan population is revealed when riots break out everywhere in Nairobi after president Kibaki’s re-election, in what seems to be an unequal fight.