Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Maybe you know him.

I hope you know him from such excellent shows as

"United Shades of America,"

host, writer, comedian, W. Kamau Bell.

I bumped into him in the CNN "C" room recently

fondling his Emmy, and I asked him,

"Kamau, if you could go anywhere on Earth

"for, like, a mash-up episode of my show and yours,

where would that be?"

He said Kenya.

So here we are,

"United Shades Unknown" or "Parts United."

Scratch that. That... that doesn't sound good.

"America's Shadiest Parts."

No, no, that doesn't work either.

"Unknown Shades of"...

First time on this continent.

Yes.

- I'm gonna be teasing you relentlessly about this,

- by the way. - That's fine.

Please, please, please, yeah.

As an African-American,

there's a lot of talk about going back to this thing

of the "motherland."

- And that... it... seriously radicalizing experience

for African-American comics who come here before.

- Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Life changing.

So we shall see.

- I mean, even walking through the streets,

like, I have this feeling of, like,

when I moved from Chicago to Oakland.

You know, you hear about Oakland being this black city...

- Uh-huh. - And you get there

and it's like, I got these black people here

- but it's not like... - Uh-huh.

- This is what I imagined Oakland was gonna be like.

- This is like... this feels like this is black, you know?

- Nairobi means "cool water" in Maasai.

It's the capital of Kenya with 6.5 million people

living in the metro area.

It grew up around a British railroad depot

during the colonial era,

halfway between other British interests in Uganda

and the coastal port of Mombasa.

- I will admit to a weird, frankly unlovely sense

of been here, done that.

It's not a good look for me, I know,

but there's a mischievous curiosity tucked away

in some poisonous part of my brain

that's dying to see how Kamau handles the heat,

the spice, the crowds,

the overwhelming rush of a whole new world,

because that's what it is first time.

This ain't Berkeley.

Wah!

- I'm already happy. - I'm pretty happy

because I've seen this scene so many times on your show.

I finally get to be in this scene of

this is gonna be good.

- I mean, you have a Kenyan name.

- Yes. My parents met in East Palo Alto, California.

You know, this is like the late '60s,

starting to be the early '70s,

so post the Civil Rights movement

but that point where black people were starting to, like,

really like want a connection to the motherland.

And in East Palo Alto, there was this push

towards naming it Nairobi,

Nairobi, California.

Back then, people were like, we need to be associated with,

like, an example of African culture that is winning.

At that point, Kenya was looked at as being winning

'cause they had just kicked out the Brits,

and there was all this sort of like, you know,

we need to start a whole new culture and a new government.

They started, like, a community college

that's in people's houses and in basements

and in storefronts.

And I was the first baby born to one of the heads of the council

apparently,

and apparently, there was, like, a whole ceremony,

lasted eight days and, you know, "Ahh."

Like, you know, I picture it like "The Lion King."

I don't know, there's no pictures.

Tilapia from Lake Naivasha

fried, then cooked with tomato and spices.

Served up right on the bone

with an ice-cold Tusker.

And yet, a proud Kenyan name.

Given your background, why so long? Why...

What took you so long, man?

- I was waiting for an invitation,

- the right invitation. - I mean, what... what...

Was there any concern you would be disappointed?

- I think as a black American, I'm still wrestling

with my African-American identity sometimes,

and I'm still wondering, am I doing right by this culture

and does this culture think I'm doing right by them?

That's why I don't want to walk around like,

"I'm home!"

I also think that, like, a lot of times blacks in America

heavily struggle with that aspect of identity.

What does it mean to be black in America?

I'm like, I fought hard to claim this identity.

It's exhausting, you know.

Am I ready to start with a new one? I don't know yet.

- Well, we'll see in a... - We'll see in a week

when you head back.

Exactly, yeah.

Shit runs deep here.

Meaning, best scientists can tell,

it all started for us in this neighborhood.

Tribes of hunter-gatherers,

the Bantu and Nilotic peoples,

Arab and Persian traders,

the Portuguese merchants, the Omani

all left their mark.

But the British Empire's hold from 1895 to 1964

is perhaps most deeply felt.

The British system of education,

governance, justice, along with,

to a certain extent, its values

were imposed on a native people

and laid, for better and worse,

much of the foundation for modern Kenya.

It did abolish slavery, for instance.

It did build a modern infrastructure.

It was also completely and fundamentally

exploitative, often violent,

and well, racist,

favoring white settlers, land owners,

and foreign entrepreneurs in every possible way.

Kenya existed to make white people from far away

rich.

But in 1963 Kenya won its independence

and elected its first president,

Jomo Kenyatta.

And since that time, has fought an uphill battle

to shake the last vestiges of colonial rule

while hanging onto what worked.

Things are, by most accounts, going well.

Today's Kenya is phenomenally beautiful.

There is a growing middle class,

a highly rated educational system,

and an enthusiastic

and multilingual professional sector,

which is to say this is decidedly not a shithole.

There are poor people here

just like there's poor people anywhere else.

Kenya is as distinct and different

from other nations in Africa

as Texas is from Mars,

with its own problems and its own kinds of awesomeness.

It's dynamic, it's changing, and it's incredible.

Kenya, by Kenyans, for Kenyans.

But hurdles exist;

bizarre, almost surreal ones, in this case.

Mitumba, for instance,

also known as the clothing of dead white people.

- 70% of Africans are wearing secondhand clothes.

We can just make our own clothes

and make them cheap enough

and make the money and keep the money.

There's also the issue of dignity.

We have underwear coming in. We have...

- Underwear? - Yeah.

- Like poor people like... like living in Kibera and stuff...

They wear secondhand underwear.

- It's not cool. - Well, there's a big market

for that in Japan.

- Oh, but like for other reasons.

- Njeri Gikera is the owner of ChilliMango,

and all-Kenyan street wear company.

Melissa Mbugua is a managing director

at a creative consulting firm.

As I understand it,

there used to be 500,000 manufacturing jobs in Kenya,

textile manufacturing,

and there's now 20,000.

- Before the '80s, we had a booming textile industry...

- Right. - That could employ

500,000 people, but now in the '80s,

when the introduced the free trade,

we got all this... all the secondhand clothes

coming into the country.

Before that, they were actually for charity.

They were meant for the poor people.

Here's how it works.

Your pants or your t-shirt get old or boring.

So being a good-hearted soul, rather than throw them out

you drop them in a charity box

assuming they'll go to someone who needs them.

But no.

In fact, that charity sells your pants and your t-shirt

along with a whole lot of other clothes in bulk