I do not ever want to leave this place! But unfortunately I am out of money and obligated to return to Nairobi tonight. Currently I am sitting in an internet cafe in Diani Beach, outside of Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya.
It is like I entered a different universe on this side of the country. There is no burning trash, the streets are clean, all of the restaurants and bars have toilets, with toilet paper, that flush. The people here are better dressed, and are obviously far wealthier than in Nairobi. It is a town built upon tourism, that is clear in every capacity. White people are everywhere, and the locals are polite and catering to tourists - no one gawks at you, but instead just asks you a thousand questions.
We stayed at the Diani Classic Guest House, a cheap but clean room that had a shower and a ceiling fan, so it was pretty great. Its about a 30 minute walk to Forty Theives, the beach bar and restaurant where we hung out but it was a cheap matatu ride to get there. It was breathtaking...the restaurant is open air, with a thatched roof, to make it look "island style." Palm trees swayed in the breeze, the beach was beautiful white sand, the sun was hot...it was like a less expensive version of Hawaii. The weather here is great - hot, sunny, a little humid. It is downpouring at the moment, but as I am leaving today I don't really mind. Compared to Makuyu, where it is gray and cold much of the time, it is really warm here. I am used to sleeping with wool blankets all bundled up at the orphanage so its been great here.
Though it might have been nice to see other parts of Mombasa, I really just enjoyed the vacation doing nothing. I feel rejuvenated and excited to go back to the orphanage. It was just so relaxing and so great to be here, and reminded me so much of family vacations to Hawaii...in fact I keep thinking how much I would love to have my family here because they would love it.
Poverty still exists here, to be sure, but it is more veiled. On the beach, "beach boys" prowl, targeting women who they perceive to be wealthy (generally middle-aged or older, but they try anyone). They flirt, compliment, and sweet talk the women in order to make them feel like a close friendship is growing, and its all quite romantic until they pull out some sob story about needing money. I imagine it works for some of them. Its a strange dynamic with the locals here...some of them are simply just being nice and talking to you, but some are trying to sell you something or get something from you. Its hard to tell which people are being nice though, and of course being young and female you have to be very careful, which can be frustrating because I just want to be nice and just trust everyone.
Tonight I take the overnight bus back to Nairobi and to Watoto Wa Baraka, and then Thursday I leave to take another bus into Uganda, to go white water rafting on the Nile River...check it out here. I am doing the full day rafting and then staying on through Monday to spend time with friends.
I will be able to write much more when I get back to Makuyu next week, but I'm off to enjoy my last day here!
Jun 29, 2010
Jun 24, 2010
The intensity of African life
“In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death.” – Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, a parting gift from my Aunt Marylee.
Life in Africa does seem far more intense. The act of living is more difficult, requires more strength and more work; it is not simply living, but surviving. Sometimes it seems as though people here have no purpose, that the minute actions of each day do not really achieve much. Women walk to the market each day to get maize or beans, they walk home, they nurse the babies, they cook and clean…and that is all. When we spent 3 hours cooking lunch as I wrote last Thursday, it felt as though it were a waste of time, a purposeless action. But I am starting to see that the purpose of all tasks here seem to be one goal: living. The task of living is all consuming, and there is little time for anything else. When the end goal of your every action is simply your life, then every action is more intense.
Monday I went to Nairobi and purchased sweaters for some of the kids, thanks to an extremely generous donation! In all, 23 sweaters were purchased. This is a great help to many of the children, and they are all very grateful. 11 of the kids live in the orphanage, so I should be able to get a photo of them with the new sweaters. The other 12 live in surrounding areas, so Eric and I will go around giving them out during the coming week. Tuesday we went to hand out some of the sweaters at the primary schools in the surrounding villages. The kids in these villages have seen mzungus before but it is rare, so when we arrive, we are like celebrities. They run after us, shaking our hands and laughing and squealing, their high pitched voices screaming in Kikuyu. They are both excited and scared to approach us, and if they touch us they pull their hands back as if burned and run away giggling. Being in Kenya has taught me so much about children and I absolutely am in love with them all. They are so innocent and uncorrupted by greed and malice and power. If I had to name the thing I will miss the most in Kenya, it will be the children, their voices calling out high-pitched imitations of English (“How are YOU?” “Hallo! Bye Bye!”) and their small hands in mine.
My experience in Nairobi was interesting. I went alone and met Eric there…on the way, my matatu got into an accident and I definitely feared for my life for a second. Morgan and I have joked that the most deadly thing in Africa is the matatu. If you are walking in the streets, they do not stop and you have to run to not hit them (traffic laws seem to be kind of nonexistent here and there are no speed limits or stop signs). If you are riding in one, they go too fast, they do not use seatbelts, and they cram 23+ people into a 15 person van so its not the easiest to get out of if it were, say, on fire. Anyway, we all got out of the matatu and got another one, but its difficult for me because I do not speak the language and am immediately surrounded by hawkers who see mzungus as a meal ticket. Eventually I find a new matatu and make it to Nairobi.
When I get to Nairobi, Eric and I walk to a massive open air market where thousands of people are selling second hand clothing and shoes. Let me interject here – when you donate clothes to charity, it does not look like they actually are donated to people here, for the most part. Instead, they are actually sold and provide a living for many people. While this might seem like a scam – someone is profiting off of your charity – you should instead see it as someone’s livelihood. Your charity is not providing someone with a shirt, but with a business and regular income. This is far better than a shirt.
As we walk through the market, I am met with the usual gaping stares and pointing. Eric used to have a stall here before he worked at WWB, and he had a lot of friends still working at the market who were excited to meet him. At the stall where we bought the sweaters, I got two marriage proposals. Many of Eric’s friends greeted him Kyalo (Pronounced Challo) which is his tribal name and they assumed that I was his mzungu wife (a claim he did not seem to dismiss! Eric has told me he wants to marry a mzungu). As soon as they saw me they just laughed and laughed and said “Where did you find this mzungu? Why did you bring the mzungu?” People were taking my picture and were trying to shake my hand all over the place.
The market was typical of African markets – open air, stalls made of wooden sticks and plastic bags, ravines of filthy water, trash and human excrement running through the path. Women and men sit among their wares, wrapped in beautiful African cloth and talking and laughing. Buyers come and browse and purchase large bolts of fabric, thread, clothing and shoes. As a mzungu, I am grabbed and lunged at; in fact it was the first time (other than the matatu accident) where I felt scared. I was certain to clutch my bag close to me. After we bought the sweaters, we walk to the edge of the market and through a slum to catch a matatu (but a far bigger one this time – some in the city are more like buses than anything, pumping Kenyan rap music excessively loud). This area was pretty disgusting but also enlightening to see how people here live and work. Shacks made of cardboard and steel, trash everywhere, children running naked through the area. I would never have felt safe walking here without Eric, and would never venture here after dark, even if I were with 10 strong Kenyan men. It is the opposite of much of what I have written in this blog; there is suffering there, and squalor, and it is very much a picture of the antithesis to rural life in Kenya. It is quite staggering to see.
Nairobi is dirty, strewn with litter and dust, the streets choked with cars, buses, matatus and endless lines of people all trying to get somewhere. It is vast and crowded, busy and poor. The city seems to be a combination between first and third world (if I may use such outdated terms) as there are some tall buildings and strong stores, but they are ever surrounded by the dirt of Kenya and the millions of tiny storefronts that sell phone credit, candy, newspaper and assorted random junk. They all sell the exact same things, so I have wondered how they make any money at all…I used to doubt that the economic model of perfect competition actually exists in the world but it appears to exist here; many sellers with exactly the same product, and no seller can make a profit in the long run.
Well anyway, after we get on the matatu outside the slum, we take it to a clinic for children with cerebral palsy. We had little time but enough for the supervisor to explain to me how broke the clinic is; they rely on donors primarily for their income, and medicine and physical therapy for the kids is insanely expensive. Things like exercise balls are prices far above what we pay in the US because they must be imported and there is virtually no demand. I used part of my parents donation to give them Ksh1000, a small sum but helpful nonetheless. One of the problems at the clinic is that those families that can afford care will go to expensive clinics, and thus are unwilling to donate to the free clinic (which provides care for free, asking parents to donate ksh500 if possible). The clinic requires half a million shillings per month. Another problem is that in Kenya, like much of Africa, despite a firm belief in the church and Christianity, people here believe that if something bad happens to you, it is likely a curse that someone has put on you, or it is God punishing you. It’s a culture that sometimes ignores science (and this is evident in the HIV/AIDS pandemic) that leads parents to abandon a child with cerebral palsy (a cursed child), and especially leads fathers to desert their wives who give birth to such a child. It’s a terribly sad story.
Eric and I had the chance to talk for a long time all day, and its great to talk to him because he is a really intelligent person. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in development, and we have the most wonderful conversations about development, politics, religion, economics, Africa and the United States…I am beginning to care deeply about him and hope that we are able to stay in touch when I leave. He shared with me a lot about his past and his family, and the circumstances that led him to work for WWB, in a job that does not really pay that well but allows him to provide for young children. Growing up in an extremely poor household, Eric essentially watched his father work himself to death to feed the family, passing away when Eric was only 10 years old. He has committed himself to working to help children so that they will not have to experience the same tragedy. Eric is a clear example of the resolve and passion of many Africans, who remain happy and joyful despite a troubling and difficult life.
This past weekend we had the monthly microsavings meeting. The microsavings program was begun by a volunteer who was here for around 6 months, nearly 2 years ago. He invited several women from the nearby village Mihang’o and explained to them the program. Basically, you save 10 shillings per day (70 per week) and give it to WWB, who safeguards it. At the end of 52 weeks, with 3640 saved, you earn 10% interest on your savings, bringing your total to 4000 shillings. At this point, you can either continue saving, or you can withdraw your savings and borrow up to 4000 shillings (so basically, the incentive is to first learn to save and show your ability to make weekly or monthly payments, before you get a loan – and, when you get the loan, you also get your savings back so you get 8000 total shillings). Then the women have one year to pay back the loan without interest. After one year, they are charged 10% interest on the remainder. It is a pretty great program, with around 25 women involved, and the women have been able to cooperate and work together to democratically decide how the program will run. Though a volunteer began the program, the women are in control of it, and it is a stunning example of development from within Africa, designed by Africans.
It could be better with more members and more organization, and I have taken some steps to better organize the binder, but I am finding it difficult to do much more. This is because to some extent the staff here simply humor the volunteers…Eric asked us to speak at the meeting but he wanted us to just say things like “Save more money” and “Buy a pig/cow/something to bring in money with your loan.” These are things the women already know! And of course, they will listen politely and profusely thank us for coming, and really we’ve made no difference. This is in part because we are only here for so long and it is unrealistic to expect us to know much more or make better suggestions. It is also just that the program works and the problems faced by the women (theft of their pigs or their bicycle, simply not enough money to save, or someone gets sick and they must use their savings to pay the medical bills) are not something that I know how to solve – at least not yet. And solutions I can offer are often from my western point of view and difficult to really implement here. There are so many cultural barriers to really working with the people here, things that I cannot quite explain in words but just something that I feel. I have trouble communicating with Eric sometimes and its frustrating, and I am not angry with him but with the situation.
“It’s always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitably disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites which they have initially disparaged.” – Peter Godwin describes what I am feeling. But I feel less disappointed and more hopeful because I feel that us first world aid workers may not really be necessary. Africa, I think, no longer needs our old colonialist guilt, it does not need to be viewed as a helpless charity case. It needs to be respected and it needs us to demand responsibility from its leaders. It needs the western world to leave it the heck alone and let it figure out what it needs on its own. Then, if they need our help, if they ask for our help (and I mean the people, not the tyrannical corrupt leaders that treat the treasury as a personal bank account), then we might get involved.
The longer I am here, the more I see how wrong we’ve got it – not just aid workers, not USAID, UNDP, World Bank and IMF, not just missionaries, not just NGOs…we’ve all got it wrong. Its not our job to “fix” Africa. Doing so implies that Africa is not capable on its own, and it implies that only when Africa reaches our definition of “developed” it will be fixed. Our definitions, our concepts, our entire way of looking at the world, perhaps they are all simply not the right definitions for Africa. In fact, Africa, as I have written before, knows better than anyone what they need. You can point me to a thousand civil wars and murderous conflicts that lead the developed world to conclude that Africa is incapable of self governance – and I can point you to the colonialist, imperialist meddling that led to those conflicts. In fact, the very foundations of African states is colonialist in nature – imagine if the colonists had not established nation-states in Africa, but instead kept the traditional political structures in place? We accept nation-states as the only legitimate form of governance, and they “work” for us. We have yet to really see a nation-state model work for Africa, save perhaps in Botswana and maybe South Africa. Personally I think it was simply the wrong type of government to be put in place in this region, but its too late to fix that now. I think maybe our best option is to just back off of telling African states what to do, however, because we are consistently wrong in what we tell them.
This week was the first Sunday I have been at the orphanage, so I was going to go to church with the kids – the service is in the hall where we eat at 10am on Sundays. However, the entire thing is in Kikuyu, so I cannot understand what is going on. They do, however, have the most wonderful songs. They sing often after dinner, and on Fridays before dinner, banging a drum and yelling in Kikuyu. I asked Priscilla what the words mean and she said, they are just saying hello to God and singing praises. They know a few English songs, no doubt taught by past volunteers, such as Lord I Lift Your Name On High (though they do not know the hand signs to go along with this and I am teaching them) and Our God is an Awesome God.
That is all I have for today. Friday I leave for Mombasa with Morgan and Rory (two other volunteers). I will be there until Tuesday night, when we take an overnight bus back to Nairobi.
Happy Fathers Day to my father and to both of my grandfathers! I love you :)
Life in Africa does seem far more intense. The act of living is more difficult, requires more strength and more work; it is not simply living, but surviving. Sometimes it seems as though people here have no purpose, that the minute actions of each day do not really achieve much. Women walk to the market each day to get maize or beans, they walk home, they nurse the babies, they cook and clean…and that is all. When we spent 3 hours cooking lunch as I wrote last Thursday, it felt as though it were a waste of time, a purposeless action. But I am starting to see that the purpose of all tasks here seem to be one goal: living. The task of living is all consuming, and there is little time for anything else. When the end goal of your every action is simply your life, then every action is more intense.
Monday I went to Nairobi and purchased sweaters for some of the kids, thanks to an extremely generous donation! In all, 23 sweaters were purchased. This is a great help to many of the children, and they are all very grateful. 11 of the kids live in the orphanage, so I should be able to get a photo of them with the new sweaters. The other 12 live in surrounding areas, so Eric and I will go around giving them out during the coming week. Tuesday we went to hand out some of the sweaters at the primary schools in the surrounding villages. The kids in these villages have seen mzungus before but it is rare, so when we arrive, we are like celebrities. They run after us, shaking our hands and laughing and squealing, their high pitched voices screaming in Kikuyu. They are both excited and scared to approach us, and if they touch us they pull their hands back as if burned and run away giggling. Being in Kenya has taught me so much about children and I absolutely am in love with them all. They are so innocent and uncorrupted by greed and malice and power. If I had to name the thing I will miss the most in Kenya, it will be the children, their voices calling out high-pitched imitations of English (“How are YOU?” “Hallo! Bye Bye!”) and their small hands in mine.
My experience in Nairobi was interesting. I went alone and met Eric there…on the way, my matatu got into an accident and I definitely feared for my life for a second. Morgan and I have joked that the most deadly thing in Africa is the matatu. If you are walking in the streets, they do not stop and you have to run to not hit them (traffic laws seem to be kind of nonexistent here and there are no speed limits or stop signs). If you are riding in one, they go too fast, they do not use seatbelts, and they cram 23+ people into a 15 person van so its not the easiest to get out of if it were, say, on fire. Anyway, we all got out of the matatu and got another one, but its difficult for me because I do not speak the language and am immediately surrounded by hawkers who see mzungus as a meal ticket. Eventually I find a new matatu and make it to Nairobi.
When I get to Nairobi, Eric and I walk to a massive open air market where thousands of people are selling second hand clothing and shoes. Let me interject here – when you donate clothes to charity, it does not look like they actually are donated to people here, for the most part. Instead, they are actually sold and provide a living for many people. While this might seem like a scam – someone is profiting off of your charity – you should instead see it as someone’s livelihood. Your charity is not providing someone with a shirt, but with a business and regular income. This is far better than a shirt.
As we walk through the market, I am met with the usual gaping stares and pointing. Eric used to have a stall here before he worked at WWB, and he had a lot of friends still working at the market who were excited to meet him. At the stall where we bought the sweaters, I got two marriage proposals. Many of Eric’s friends greeted him Kyalo (Pronounced Challo) which is his tribal name and they assumed that I was his mzungu wife (a claim he did not seem to dismiss! Eric has told me he wants to marry a mzungu). As soon as they saw me they just laughed and laughed and said “Where did you find this mzungu? Why did you bring the mzungu?” People were taking my picture and were trying to shake my hand all over the place.
The market was typical of African markets – open air, stalls made of wooden sticks and plastic bags, ravines of filthy water, trash and human excrement running through the path. Women and men sit among their wares, wrapped in beautiful African cloth and talking and laughing. Buyers come and browse and purchase large bolts of fabric, thread, clothing and shoes. As a mzungu, I am grabbed and lunged at; in fact it was the first time (other than the matatu accident) where I felt scared. I was certain to clutch my bag close to me. After we bought the sweaters, we walk to the edge of the market and through a slum to catch a matatu (but a far bigger one this time – some in the city are more like buses than anything, pumping Kenyan rap music excessively loud). This area was pretty disgusting but also enlightening to see how people here live and work. Shacks made of cardboard and steel, trash everywhere, children running naked through the area. I would never have felt safe walking here without Eric, and would never venture here after dark, even if I were with 10 strong Kenyan men. It is the opposite of much of what I have written in this blog; there is suffering there, and squalor, and it is very much a picture of the antithesis to rural life in Kenya. It is quite staggering to see.
Nairobi is dirty, strewn with litter and dust, the streets choked with cars, buses, matatus and endless lines of people all trying to get somewhere. It is vast and crowded, busy and poor. The city seems to be a combination between first and third world (if I may use such outdated terms) as there are some tall buildings and strong stores, but they are ever surrounded by the dirt of Kenya and the millions of tiny storefronts that sell phone credit, candy, newspaper and assorted random junk. They all sell the exact same things, so I have wondered how they make any money at all…I used to doubt that the economic model of perfect competition actually exists in the world but it appears to exist here; many sellers with exactly the same product, and no seller can make a profit in the long run.
Well anyway, after we get on the matatu outside the slum, we take it to a clinic for children with cerebral palsy. We had little time but enough for the supervisor to explain to me how broke the clinic is; they rely on donors primarily for their income, and medicine and physical therapy for the kids is insanely expensive. Things like exercise balls are prices far above what we pay in the US because they must be imported and there is virtually no demand. I used part of my parents donation to give them Ksh1000, a small sum but helpful nonetheless. One of the problems at the clinic is that those families that can afford care will go to expensive clinics, and thus are unwilling to donate to the free clinic (which provides care for free, asking parents to donate ksh500 if possible). The clinic requires half a million shillings per month. Another problem is that in Kenya, like much of Africa, despite a firm belief in the church and Christianity, people here believe that if something bad happens to you, it is likely a curse that someone has put on you, or it is God punishing you. It’s a culture that sometimes ignores science (and this is evident in the HIV/AIDS pandemic) that leads parents to abandon a child with cerebral palsy (a cursed child), and especially leads fathers to desert their wives who give birth to such a child. It’s a terribly sad story.
Eric and I had the chance to talk for a long time all day, and its great to talk to him because he is a really intelligent person. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in development, and we have the most wonderful conversations about development, politics, religion, economics, Africa and the United States…I am beginning to care deeply about him and hope that we are able to stay in touch when I leave. He shared with me a lot about his past and his family, and the circumstances that led him to work for WWB, in a job that does not really pay that well but allows him to provide for young children. Growing up in an extremely poor household, Eric essentially watched his father work himself to death to feed the family, passing away when Eric was only 10 years old. He has committed himself to working to help children so that they will not have to experience the same tragedy. Eric is a clear example of the resolve and passion of many Africans, who remain happy and joyful despite a troubling and difficult life.
This past weekend we had the monthly microsavings meeting. The microsavings program was begun by a volunteer who was here for around 6 months, nearly 2 years ago. He invited several women from the nearby village Mihang’o and explained to them the program. Basically, you save 10 shillings per day (70 per week) and give it to WWB, who safeguards it. At the end of 52 weeks, with 3640 saved, you earn 10% interest on your savings, bringing your total to 4000 shillings. At this point, you can either continue saving, or you can withdraw your savings and borrow up to 4000 shillings (so basically, the incentive is to first learn to save and show your ability to make weekly or monthly payments, before you get a loan – and, when you get the loan, you also get your savings back so you get 8000 total shillings). Then the women have one year to pay back the loan without interest. After one year, they are charged 10% interest on the remainder. It is a pretty great program, with around 25 women involved, and the women have been able to cooperate and work together to democratically decide how the program will run. Though a volunteer began the program, the women are in control of it, and it is a stunning example of development from within Africa, designed by Africans.
It could be better with more members and more organization, and I have taken some steps to better organize the binder, but I am finding it difficult to do much more. This is because to some extent the staff here simply humor the volunteers…Eric asked us to speak at the meeting but he wanted us to just say things like “Save more money” and “Buy a pig/cow/something to bring in money with your loan.” These are things the women already know! And of course, they will listen politely and profusely thank us for coming, and really we’ve made no difference. This is in part because we are only here for so long and it is unrealistic to expect us to know much more or make better suggestions. It is also just that the program works and the problems faced by the women (theft of their pigs or their bicycle, simply not enough money to save, or someone gets sick and they must use their savings to pay the medical bills) are not something that I know how to solve – at least not yet. And solutions I can offer are often from my western point of view and difficult to really implement here. There are so many cultural barriers to really working with the people here, things that I cannot quite explain in words but just something that I feel. I have trouble communicating with Eric sometimes and its frustrating, and I am not angry with him but with the situation.
“It’s always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitably disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites which they have initially disparaged.” – Peter Godwin describes what I am feeling. But I feel less disappointed and more hopeful because I feel that us first world aid workers may not really be necessary. Africa, I think, no longer needs our old colonialist guilt, it does not need to be viewed as a helpless charity case. It needs to be respected and it needs us to demand responsibility from its leaders. It needs the western world to leave it the heck alone and let it figure out what it needs on its own. Then, if they need our help, if they ask for our help (and I mean the people, not the tyrannical corrupt leaders that treat the treasury as a personal bank account), then we might get involved.
The longer I am here, the more I see how wrong we’ve got it – not just aid workers, not USAID, UNDP, World Bank and IMF, not just missionaries, not just NGOs…we’ve all got it wrong. Its not our job to “fix” Africa. Doing so implies that Africa is not capable on its own, and it implies that only when Africa reaches our definition of “developed” it will be fixed. Our definitions, our concepts, our entire way of looking at the world, perhaps they are all simply not the right definitions for Africa. In fact, Africa, as I have written before, knows better than anyone what they need. You can point me to a thousand civil wars and murderous conflicts that lead the developed world to conclude that Africa is incapable of self governance – and I can point you to the colonialist, imperialist meddling that led to those conflicts. In fact, the very foundations of African states is colonialist in nature – imagine if the colonists had not established nation-states in Africa, but instead kept the traditional political structures in place? We accept nation-states as the only legitimate form of governance, and they “work” for us. We have yet to really see a nation-state model work for Africa, save perhaps in Botswana and maybe South Africa. Personally I think it was simply the wrong type of government to be put in place in this region, but its too late to fix that now. I think maybe our best option is to just back off of telling African states what to do, however, because we are consistently wrong in what we tell them.
This week was the first Sunday I have been at the orphanage, so I was going to go to church with the kids – the service is in the hall where we eat at 10am on Sundays. However, the entire thing is in Kikuyu, so I cannot understand what is going on. They do, however, have the most wonderful songs. They sing often after dinner, and on Fridays before dinner, banging a drum and yelling in Kikuyu. I asked Priscilla what the words mean and she said, they are just saying hello to God and singing praises. They know a few English songs, no doubt taught by past volunteers, such as Lord I Lift Your Name On High (though they do not know the hand signs to go along with this and I am teaching them) and Our God is an Awesome God.
That is all I have for today. Friday I leave for Mombasa with Morgan and Rory (two other volunteers). I will be there until Tuesday night, when we take an overnight bus back to Nairobi.
Happy Fathers Day to my father and to both of my grandfathers! I love you :)
Jun 18, 2010
My week thus far...
First of all, some confusion about donations...you donate directly to my bank account...this is because I am the one who will be going to town to buy the sweaters and other supplies we need. Its not that I do not trust the orphanage but volunteers do not have a say in how donated funds are spent, so a lot of us simply purchase items we see are needed.
Second, thank you to my parents and grandparents for their generous donation. I have more than enough for the sweaters and will post what else I purchase for the orphanage soon.
So today is Friday and I have not updated since Monday, but there is not much going on really. I will try to recap my week. On Monday morning, I took Mwangi, the youngest of the kids, to the doctor. He was the only one of the kids who had not yet gone to the doctor so I offered to take him. Only when I returned did I realize it was my first time leaving the orphanage and going on a matatu alone (Mwangi does not count, because he is 2 years old and does not speak English). Of course, Makuyu and Pundamilia are safe areas to be alone in but still, most people here speak English only a little so its better to not be alone.
Mwangi was a champ on the matatu. He is in the stage where he repeats everything you say so I got him to say, “My name is Mwangi” which is so adorable. I also taught him how to say “blah blah blah” a few weeks ago and he always says it to me. He loved waving at people as we drove and he is just the cutest little boy in the world. At the doctor, he did not even flinch when they drew blood from his arm. Sometimes he can be very difficult and since he does not really understand us, he often does not follow directions, but he was really well behaved at the hospital. I was supposed to get a stool sample from him and enlisted the help of a nurse to explain what he needed to do (I do not know the word for poop in Kikuyu) and he tried valiantly to deliver, but alas, we will have to go back another day.
Tuesday I went back to Nairobi to buy souvenirs and gifts for people. After my awful experience bargaining on Sunday, I improved considerably and was able to get really good prices on most things I bought (but was still ripped off on others). It is exhausting bargaining. You pick what you want, and they are so so friendly, and promise a good price for any number of reasons (“You’re my first customer” “You’re a student” “You’re from the U.S.”) and then they give some insane amount. The rule of thumb is to divide their price by 10 and start there – they say ksh8500 ($105) and you say 850 ($10.50). They will laugh at you, get angry, act shocked, etc. It is like this long drawn out drama but ultimately it does not matter how angry they get, I choose in my mind the absolute limit and once I get there, I walk away. They’ll usually run after you eventually because they are desperate to sell their products, and they want you to think they’re doing you a favor. But they have a limit too, of course. Anyway I still have more gifts to buy but I get bargaining now and even though I do not really enjoy it, it can be fun when you get a great deal.
Wednesday, I went to Mathini, the village where WWB is building a new orphanage. Actually, I should say the village NEAR where the new orphanage will be, because the actual village is kind of far away. We leave a little after 8am, and we take a matatu there. It is a long drive, around 40 minutes, on a crazy bumpy road that feels like a wooden roller coaster in the matatu. Out here, it is even more rare to see mzungus (it is rare in Makuyu and Punda but they are used to seeing us volunteers from the orphanage, though that never stops them from staring…and laughing…and running up at us to touch our skin and then running away) and we are pointed at and gawked at as we drive by. It takes a while to catch the matatu (we have to get off one and take another one…matatus are like a bus system). When we arrive, its almost 11am, the guys begin carrying word and us females begin preparing lunch.
Now imagine you are going to build an orphanage or a house or something and you have to go a long way from home. You pack some water bottles, and some sandwiches, fruit, and maybe sodas, into a cooler, and you go to work. Not in Kenya. Here, we pack the following: several whole heads of cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, flour, sugar, salt, cooking fat, and seasoning. We bring pots, pans, knives, a ROLLING PIN, a griddle…we fry up the vegetables and make a sort of stew, then we mix the sugar and salt into hot water and pour it into the flour, mixing with our hands. We make small little balls with it and roll them out flat on a little stool, and then fry them on the little griddle, to make chapati. All of this is cooked on an open fire, in the middle of the bush. It took us three hours. It was an incredible lunch, much better than anything we normally eat at the orphanage. I had so much fun cooking with Martha and I loved learning to make chapati. I look forward to making it at home for my family, it is really really good. But really??? Three hours to make lunch? We could have packed something far more quickly!
But that is the way of life here. And to be honest, the day in Mathini was one of the most fun days I have had here. At the orphanage, many of the staff seem overworked and burned out. I think this is especially the case with Grace and Jane, who do most of the housework and chores there, and they really never get a day off. The men, who work far less, are much more prone to idling around, joking and laughing. They say Africa is slow, not busy, and it is sometimes called lazy. I’d venture to say that African MEN are lazy and its women are always busy! Regardless, we had a lot of fun joking and laughing at Mathini. Like my days on field work with Eric, it gave me a chance to ask questions and learn more about life here. Martha explained to me that it is not illegal for men to beat their wives or their children here. She asked what it was like in America, and I explained that women have legal rights against men to not be beaten, but sometimes do not take advantage of those rights, and that children can be removed from a parents care for excessive emotional abuse, let alone physical. I also explained that you can be put in jail for being excessively cruel to your pets, at which Martha just laughed. She thought I was joking.
Thursday morning I woke up feeling kind of sick. It is winter here, and it is cooler, like September or April weather. But it is too cold for the kids, and they all get sick around this time. Runny noses mean germy kids, and we are constantly holding hands and playing with these germy kids; all the Purell in the world does not kill all the germs. I took some vitamin C pills and stayed in bed and I am feeling much better.
Each day I feel I get closer and closer to the children. I have been trying to read some of their files to learn a bit more about them. Most do not have a listing for their parents death, which leads me to assume it is HIV/AIDS, but some have meningitis or typhoid listed as their reason for death. A lot of the kids here are siblings, which I did not realize. Some of their folders listed their preferences (favorite foods and such) and their likes and dislikes. A few of the kids broke my heart – one of them, their biggest fear was that no one at the orphanage likes him. And he is the sweetest boy in the world, so quiet and shy but so adorable and sweet. Another wrote how much he missed his sister and grandmother, who live nearby but cannot afford to support him. Most of them say they hate talking about their problems. One, Damaris, was forced to move to Makuyu area with her grandmother when their home burned down with all of their possessions in the post- election violence. Its really frustrating sometimes because I want to talk to them and make their lives better but I know they are not comfortable talking. Once, I asked Anastacia about her brother and she completely closed up, even though he is still alive and lives nearby. I think I have to just settle for being someone fun to hang out with and a role model for good behavior to the kids; I am not here long enough to become someone in which they can confide.
Other than all this, we’ve been watching a lot of soccer games here. Or as they call it, football. I never watch soccer at home but its fun to get into a sport with all the kids and of course fun to watch such a big event. This is the first time the World Cup has been hosted in Africa, and we are all rooting for African teams. The African teams have not been doing all that great but we cheer for them anyway. Every afternoon, we sit on wooden benches in the hall and watch the games, and many of the older kids are really into watching. The younger ones just cheer for whomever we support. Soccer is a remarkably simple game to watch and understand, unlike football and many times unlike basketball. It is certainly more exciting than baseball. It kind of reminds me of hockey on grass without sticks. And without fighting. (Speaking of sports, I have to say I am really glad I am not in America to listen to the speculation about Lebron James, virtually none of the other volunteers follow the NBA – but a lot of people in Nairobi do, and they like the Lakers…coverage of the finals has been in the papers).
Some of the volunteers and I plan on going to Nairobi for the final game, whoever plays. Of course, I never stay awake until the end of the last game (which starts at 9:30pm here, 2:30pm Ohio time). I’ve fallen into a wonderful habit of getting 9 or more hours of sleep per night. I get in bed at 9pm, and I fall asleep by 9:30 or 10. I wake up at 7am or so. It’s awesome, but it means that I simply am unable to stay up past 10pm.
Well, that is all I have to say for today. Not much that is super exciting over here, but I feel pretty comfortable and I feel as though I have fallen into a good routine. Life is good. I leave a week from today for Mombasa; we will take an overnight bus from Nairobi to Mombasa, arriving Saturday morning, and I will be there for 4 days and three nights. After this, I will come back to the orphanage for one day, and then leave for Uganda to go white water rafting on the Jinja with two of my classmates from Pittsburgh. I am really looking forward to both of these trips.
Thanks everyone for reading!
Second, thank you to my parents and grandparents for their generous donation. I have more than enough for the sweaters and will post what else I purchase for the orphanage soon.
So today is Friday and I have not updated since Monday, but there is not much going on really. I will try to recap my week. On Monday morning, I took Mwangi, the youngest of the kids, to the doctor. He was the only one of the kids who had not yet gone to the doctor so I offered to take him. Only when I returned did I realize it was my first time leaving the orphanage and going on a matatu alone (Mwangi does not count, because he is 2 years old and does not speak English). Of course, Makuyu and Pundamilia are safe areas to be alone in but still, most people here speak English only a little so its better to not be alone.
Mwangi was a champ on the matatu. He is in the stage where he repeats everything you say so I got him to say, “My name is Mwangi” which is so adorable. I also taught him how to say “blah blah blah” a few weeks ago and he always says it to me. He loved waving at people as we drove and he is just the cutest little boy in the world. At the doctor, he did not even flinch when they drew blood from his arm. Sometimes he can be very difficult and since he does not really understand us, he often does not follow directions, but he was really well behaved at the hospital. I was supposed to get a stool sample from him and enlisted the help of a nurse to explain what he needed to do (I do not know the word for poop in Kikuyu) and he tried valiantly to deliver, but alas, we will have to go back another day.
Tuesday I went back to Nairobi to buy souvenirs and gifts for people. After my awful experience bargaining on Sunday, I improved considerably and was able to get really good prices on most things I bought (but was still ripped off on others). It is exhausting bargaining. You pick what you want, and they are so so friendly, and promise a good price for any number of reasons (“You’re my first customer” “You’re a student” “You’re from the U.S.”) and then they give some insane amount. The rule of thumb is to divide their price by 10 and start there – they say ksh8500 ($105) and you say 850 ($10.50). They will laugh at you, get angry, act shocked, etc. It is like this long drawn out drama but ultimately it does not matter how angry they get, I choose in my mind the absolute limit and once I get there, I walk away. They’ll usually run after you eventually because they are desperate to sell their products, and they want you to think they’re doing you a favor. But they have a limit too, of course. Anyway I still have more gifts to buy but I get bargaining now and even though I do not really enjoy it, it can be fun when you get a great deal.
Wednesday, I went to Mathini, the village where WWB is building a new orphanage. Actually, I should say the village NEAR where the new orphanage will be, because the actual village is kind of far away. We leave a little after 8am, and we take a matatu there. It is a long drive, around 40 minutes, on a crazy bumpy road that feels like a wooden roller coaster in the matatu. Out here, it is even more rare to see mzungus (it is rare in Makuyu and Punda but they are used to seeing us volunteers from the orphanage, though that never stops them from staring…and laughing…and running up at us to touch our skin and then running away) and we are pointed at and gawked at as we drive by. It takes a while to catch the matatu (we have to get off one and take another one…matatus are like a bus system). When we arrive, its almost 11am, the guys begin carrying word and us females begin preparing lunch.
Now imagine you are going to build an orphanage or a house or something and you have to go a long way from home. You pack some water bottles, and some sandwiches, fruit, and maybe sodas, into a cooler, and you go to work. Not in Kenya. Here, we pack the following: several whole heads of cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, flour, sugar, salt, cooking fat, and seasoning. We bring pots, pans, knives, a ROLLING PIN, a griddle…we fry up the vegetables and make a sort of stew, then we mix the sugar and salt into hot water and pour it into the flour, mixing with our hands. We make small little balls with it and roll them out flat on a little stool, and then fry them on the little griddle, to make chapati. All of this is cooked on an open fire, in the middle of the bush. It took us three hours. It was an incredible lunch, much better than anything we normally eat at the orphanage. I had so much fun cooking with Martha and I loved learning to make chapati. I look forward to making it at home for my family, it is really really good. But really??? Three hours to make lunch? We could have packed something far more quickly!
But that is the way of life here. And to be honest, the day in Mathini was one of the most fun days I have had here. At the orphanage, many of the staff seem overworked and burned out. I think this is especially the case with Grace and Jane, who do most of the housework and chores there, and they really never get a day off. The men, who work far less, are much more prone to idling around, joking and laughing. They say Africa is slow, not busy, and it is sometimes called lazy. I’d venture to say that African MEN are lazy and its women are always busy! Regardless, we had a lot of fun joking and laughing at Mathini. Like my days on field work with Eric, it gave me a chance to ask questions and learn more about life here. Martha explained to me that it is not illegal for men to beat their wives or their children here. She asked what it was like in America, and I explained that women have legal rights against men to not be beaten, but sometimes do not take advantage of those rights, and that children can be removed from a parents care for excessive emotional abuse, let alone physical. I also explained that you can be put in jail for being excessively cruel to your pets, at which Martha just laughed. She thought I was joking.
Thursday morning I woke up feeling kind of sick. It is winter here, and it is cooler, like September or April weather. But it is too cold for the kids, and they all get sick around this time. Runny noses mean germy kids, and we are constantly holding hands and playing with these germy kids; all the Purell in the world does not kill all the germs. I took some vitamin C pills and stayed in bed and I am feeling much better.
Each day I feel I get closer and closer to the children. I have been trying to read some of their files to learn a bit more about them. Most do not have a listing for their parents death, which leads me to assume it is HIV/AIDS, but some have meningitis or typhoid listed as their reason for death. A lot of the kids here are siblings, which I did not realize. Some of their folders listed their preferences (favorite foods and such) and their likes and dislikes. A few of the kids broke my heart – one of them, their biggest fear was that no one at the orphanage likes him. And he is the sweetest boy in the world, so quiet and shy but so adorable and sweet. Another wrote how much he missed his sister and grandmother, who live nearby but cannot afford to support him. Most of them say they hate talking about their problems. One, Damaris, was forced to move to Makuyu area with her grandmother when their home burned down with all of their possessions in the post- election violence. Its really frustrating sometimes because I want to talk to them and make their lives better but I know they are not comfortable talking. Once, I asked Anastacia about her brother and she completely closed up, even though he is still alive and lives nearby. I think I have to just settle for being someone fun to hang out with and a role model for good behavior to the kids; I am not here long enough to become someone in which they can confide.
Other than all this, we’ve been watching a lot of soccer games here. Or as they call it, football. I never watch soccer at home but its fun to get into a sport with all the kids and of course fun to watch such a big event. This is the first time the World Cup has been hosted in Africa, and we are all rooting for African teams. The African teams have not been doing all that great but we cheer for them anyway. Every afternoon, we sit on wooden benches in the hall and watch the games, and many of the older kids are really into watching. The younger ones just cheer for whomever we support. Soccer is a remarkably simple game to watch and understand, unlike football and many times unlike basketball. It is certainly more exciting than baseball. It kind of reminds me of hockey on grass without sticks. And without fighting. (Speaking of sports, I have to say I am really glad I am not in America to listen to the speculation about Lebron James, virtually none of the other volunteers follow the NBA – but a lot of people in Nairobi do, and they like the Lakers…coverage of the finals has been in the papers).
Some of the volunteers and I plan on going to Nairobi for the final game, whoever plays. Of course, I never stay awake until the end of the last game (which starts at 9:30pm here, 2:30pm Ohio time). I’ve fallen into a wonderful habit of getting 9 or more hours of sleep per night. I get in bed at 9pm, and I fall asleep by 9:30 or 10. I wake up at 7am or so. It’s awesome, but it means that I simply am unable to stay up past 10pm.
Well, that is all I have to say for today. Not much that is super exciting over here, but I feel pretty comfortable and I feel as though I have fallen into a good routine. Life is good. I leave a week from today for Mombasa; we will take an overnight bus from Nairobi to Mombasa, arriving Saturday morning, and I will be there for 4 days and three nights. After this, I will come back to the orphanage for one day, and then leave for Uganda to go white water rafting on the Jinja with two of my classmates from Pittsburgh. I am really looking forward to both of these trips.
Thanks everyone for reading!
Jun 14, 2010
This time for Africa!
Love for Kenya and for Africa is growing on me every day. I will not say I want to stay here for good and I do think that at 11 weeks, I will be ready to get home, but I am really learning to love, appreciate and respect life here more and more.
I am continually surprised by the lack of suffering. Despite poverty and hardships, there is continual joy and happiness. It is striking how content people are. I do not know their hearts, but I do not get the feeling that any of them want to be extremely rich (or rather, that they are trying to get rich). Instead, I feel that they just want to work hard, grow their crops, support their families, go to church...in other words, just live. Just be.
The desire to be better and to improve oneself is not necessarily a bad thing. Without it, the western world would not have many of the comforts we now enjoy. Each of these comforts are provided to us because someone saw a need, and, in striving to improve their own lot and their own life, has fulfilled it, thereby improving OUR lives. Indeed, our entire economic system is based around the principle of self improvement. There is not anything wrong with this.
But it is astounding how different life appears to be here in Africa. It is not that people do not want to improve themselves or their lives, but they seem to be aware of a limit, of "good enough", and can be content. To phrase it better, they wish to improve their lives, but they do not desire it so strongly that the quest to do so makes them miserable. This is not a generalization of Kenya or of Africa, but just what I have seen here. The people seem contented, they seem happy. They seem to say, "if my life improves, that is good. I will work hard, I will endeavor to be better, but I will never let that endeavor leave me discontented." It is remarkable how different this is from America, where the ceaseless quest for improvement, growth, betterment, literally takes over our lives and becomes an end in itself. It often leaves us empty and always wanting more.
I expected to found suffering and found more joy than I see in America. It shows so clearly that poverty is only a small part of life in Africa, instead of the defining factor. I believe that this joy and this contentedness may stem from the close social ties of society here. The people are never lonely. Families are close knit and live together or nearby. Women are always laughing and walking together as they take over the multitude of daily chores they must complete - cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, each of which is infinitely more difficult than it is at home. I wish I could describe how vibrant and ALIVE they seem, and how closely connected they seem, to each other and to their children and to their husbands and to the earth...I cannot accurately describe them and others here, other than to see I sense a deeper connection with humanity than I have seen before. I think that this is what brings people joy amidst their hard lives.
Anyway, time is moving on here, slowly but steadily, blurring together. The World Cup has started and immense pride at the games being here in Africa (for the first time!) is evident among all the Kenyans with whom I speak. A new song by Shakira is played at every commercial break, proclaiming, This time for Africa. We watch the games on a tiny TV in the hall, the kids crowded around on benches, and one holds an old radio which broadcasts in Swahili or Kikuyu. The TVs picture is about 6 seconds off, so we heard the announcers shout GOAL in the US-England game before we saw it. The kids support African teams first, and then whatever we tell them to support.
Thats all for now. As of tomorrow, I have only 7 weeks left in Kenya, a surprisingly short period of time it seems now. Who knew?
I am continually surprised by the lack of suffering. Despite poverty and hardships, there is continual joy and happiness. It is striking how content people are. I do not know their hearts, but I do not get the feeling that any of them want to be extremely rich (or rather, that they are trying to get rich). Instead, I feel that they just want to work hard, grow their crops, support their families, go to church...in other words, just live. Just be.
The desire to be better and to improve oneself is not necessarily a bad thing. Without it, the western world would not have many of the comforts we now enjoy. Each of these comforts are provided to us because someone saw a need, and, in striving to improve their own lot and their own life, has fulfilled it, thereby improving OUR lives. Indeed, our entire economic system is based around the principle of self improvement. There is not anything wrong with this.
But it is astounding how different life appears to be here in Africa. It is not that people do not want to improve themselves or their lives, but they seem to be aware of a limit, of "good enough", and can be content. To phrase it better, they wish to improve their lives, but they do not desire it so strongly that the quest to do so makes them miserable. This is not a generalization of Kenya or of Africa, but just what I have seen here. The people seem contented, they seem happy. They seem to say, "if my life improves, that is good. I will work hard, I will endeavor to be better, but I will never let that endeavor leave me discontented." It is remarkable how different this is from America, where the ceaseless quest for improvement, growth, betterment, literally takes over our lives and becomes an end in itself. It often leaves us empty and always wanting more.
I expected to found suffering and found more joy than I see in America. It shows so clearly that poverty is only a small part of life in Africa, instead of the defining factor. I believe that this joy and this contentedness may stem from the close social ties of society here. The people are never lonely. Families are close knit and live together or nearby. Women are always laughing and walking together as they take over the multitude of daily chores they must complete - cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, each of which is infinitely more difficult than it is at home. I wish I could describe how vibrant and ALIVE they seem, and how closely connected they seem, to each other and to their children and to their husbands and to the earth...I cannot accurately describe them and others here, other than to see I sense a deeper connection with humanity than I have seen before. I think that this is what brings people joy amidst their hard lives.
Anyway, time is moving on here, slowly but steadily, blurring together. The World Cup has started and immense pride at the games being here in Africa (for the first time!) is evident among all the Kenyans with whom I speak. A new song by Shakira is played at every commercial break, proclaiming, This time for Africa. We watch the games on a tiny TV in the hall, the kids crowded around on benches, and one holds an old radio which broadcasts in Swahili or Kikuyu. The TVs picture is about 6 seconds off, so we heard the announcers shout GOAL in the US-England game before we saw it. The kids support African teams first, and then whatever we tell them to support.
Thats all for now. As of tomorrow, I have only 7 weeks left in Kenya, a surprisingly short period of time it seems now. Who knew?
Jun 12, 2010
A look at rural Kenyan lives
First things first: to the many people who want to help the orphanage and the children, please click here for information on what we need and how you can help.
So it is Saturday and today is the Sanitary Pad Programme here at the orphanage. Around 2pm, a number of women from the surrounding community as well as girls who are sponsored will arrive and they receive parcels of sanitary pads. Then Priscilla, the teacher at the orphanage, will present some sort of programming about women's health and other women's issues. I am looking forward to seeing how this works. To donate to help buy the sanitary pads, click the link above.
The past couple of days have been pretty relaxing. On Thursday, I went on field work with Eric, which was great. We visited some of the homes of the sponsored children and we basically ask questions about how the kids are doing, and their health. The best part of this is seeing how the families and kids live. We learned that several of the kids in the orphanage have families outside of the orphanage. For example, Anastacia is one of our girls, and her brother and her were found abandoned in a nearby village. This family adopted them and took them in but cannot support them fully, and so Anastacia lives at the orphanage, while her brother stays with the guardians and they are given food and supplies to help him.
Another family was a 14 year old boy and his baby sister. The father died of unknown disease (likely AIDS) and the mother was killed in a road accident. Their older sister took care of them for a while, but she was recently married, so the 14 year old had to drop out of school and is now taking care of the baby sister. This is how AIDS devastates the community - it leaves orphaned children who then must act as caregivers and cannot go to school. So not only are the adults wiped out, young generations are not educated and often are terribly poor.
Each of the families we visit is poor by American standards, but some are better than others. Anastacia's adoptive family was not destitute by any means. They were elderly but vibrant and healthy - they were TALL, which is rare as you get older here, and well fed. Most of the homes here, I will try to describe...its a small plot, maybe 250 feet or so long on each side. About half or a third is used for growing maize, beans and fruit trees. Then there are 3 or 4 buildings, made of rough exposed brick (wealthier families smooth over the brick with cement) and a corrugated steel roof. They construct gutters to feed into a giant water container for irrigation or drinking water.
The buildings house the family usually, and the family units are much larger, as uncles, cousins, grandparents, all often live together. We never see where they sleep but we have seen the living room areas. They are dark - no electricity, just a radio powered by batteries - but inviting. Low wooden couches with cushions surround a low wooden table. Sometimes decorations are on the wall - calendars and pictures of Jesus are pretty much the usual. They have a separate room or building for the kitchen, usually a wood fire to boil and cook over. In some homes a traditional kitchen is constructed, which is a round hut with a thatched roof (see my pictures to see this). They often offer us chai or fruit. There is a separate building for a toilet, and around the compound the paths and ground are red dirt, swept daily and very clean. Often there are rough wooden benches around for sitting, and various washing basins and laundry lines are everywhere.
The people are always so welcoming. Often they do not speak English, and they never know we are coming, but they always say to Eric to tell us thank you for coming and they are so happy we have come. Imagine if someone just stopped by your home or work while you were doing stuff (and they ALWAYS have stuff to do - chores and laundry and work and cooking) and wanted to sit down and talk, and they have brought foreigners who do not speak your language, without an appointment? You'd be probably irritated and you certainly would not be falling over yourself to welcome them and thank them. That is one of the biggest cultural differences in Africa that I have seen - how despite the many many terrible circumstances, I have never heard anyone complain, they are always smiling, laughing and ALWAYS welcoming us. When I walk down the street, I am always greeted warmly and waved to by EVERYONE. Now, I know this is because I am mzungu to some extent but they are that friendly to each other too. It is really quite remarkable.
Thank you again to everyone who is reading. Its really been a challenging 3 1/2 weeks but I am really starting to adjust and learn to love Kenya and Pundamilia very much.
Enjoy your Flag Day in America :)
So it is Saturday and today is the Sanitary Pad Programme here at the orphanage. Around 2pm, a number of women from the surrounding community as well as girls who are sponsored will arrive and they receive parcels of sanitary pads. Then Priscilla, the teacher at the orphanage, will present some sort of programming about women's health and other women's issues. I am looking forward to seeing how this works. To donate to help buy the sanitary pads, click the link above.
The past couple of days have been pretty relaxing. On Thursday, I went on field work with Eric, which was great. We visited some of the homes of the sponsored children and we basically ask questions about how the kids are doing, and their health. The best part of this is seeing how the families and kids live. We learned that several of the kids in the orphanage have families outside of the orphanage. For example, Anastacia is one of our girls, and her brother and her were found abandoned in a nearby village. This family adopted them and took them in but cannot support them fully, and so Anastacia lives at the orphanage, while her brother stays with the guardians and they are given food and supplies to help him.
Another family was a 14 year old boy and his baby sister. The father died of unknown disease (likely AIDS) and the mother was killed in a road accident. Their older sister took care of them for a while, but she was recently married, so the 14 year old had to drop out of school and is now taking care of the baby sister. This is how AIDS devastates the community - it leaves orphaned children who then must act as caregivers and cannot go to school. So not only are the adults wiped out, young generations are not educated and often are terribly poor.
Each of the families we visit is poor by American standards, but some are better than others. Anastacia's adoptive family was not destitute by any means. They were elderly but vibrant and healthy - they were TALL, which is rare as you get older here, and well fed. Most of the homes here, I will try to describe...its a small plot, maybe 250 feet or so long on each side. About half or a third is used for growing maize, beans and fruit trees. Then there are 3 or 4 buildings, made of rough exposed brick (wealthier families smooth over the brick with cement) and a corrugated steel roof. They construct gutters to feed into a giant water container for irrigation or drinking water.
The buildings house the family usually, and the family units are much larger, as uncles, cousins, grandparents, all often live together. We never see where they sleep but we have seen the living room areas. They are dark - no electricity, just a radio powered by batteries - but inviting. Low wooden couches with cushions surround a low wooden table. Sometimes decorations are on the wall - calendars and pictures of Jesus are pretty much the usual. They have a separate room or building for the kitchen, usually a wood fire to boil and cook over. In some homes a traditional kitchen is constructed, which is a round hut with a thatched roof (see my pictures to see this). They often offer us chai or fruit. There is a separate building for a toilet, and around the compound the paths and ground are red dirt, swept daily and very clean. Often there are rough wooden benches around for sitting, and various washing basins and laundry lines are everywhere.
The people are always so welcoming. Often they do not speak English, and they never know we are coming, but they always say to Eric to tell us thank you for coming and they are so happy we have come. Imagine if someone just stopped by your home or work while you were doing stuff (and they ALWAYS have stuff to do - chores and laundry and work and cooking) and wanted to sit down and talk, and they have brought foreigners who do not speak your language, without an appointment? You'd be probably irritated and you certainly would not be falling over yourself to welcome them and thank them. That is one of the biggest cultural differences in Africa that I have seen - how despite the many many terrible circumstances, I have never heard anyone complain, they are always smiling, laughing and ALWAYS welcoming us. When I walk down the street, I am always greeted warmly and waved to by EVERYONE. Now, I know this is because I am mzungu to some extent but they are that friendly to each other too. It is really quite remarkable.
Thank you again to everyone who is reading. Its really been a challenging 3 1/2 weeks but I am really starting to adjust and learn to love Kenya and Pundamilia very much.
Enjoy your Flag Day in America :)
HOW TO HELP THE ORPHANAGE
A number of people have asked how they can help me or help the children when I am here. Thanks to the number of generous donors who helped me get here, I have everything I could need here, but the orphanage and the children are always in need, so if you are at all interested in helping, read on. There are options for even the smallest budget.
If you are interested in donating for any of the following, please use the PayPal button at the left to donate to me with a credit card or checking account and send me an email designating how you would like the money spent. As receiving packages is very costly (the government will probably rifle through your package and then charge me a high free – aka a bribe – to collect the package), sending money for me to buy these items is the easiest way to help.
I think the most expensive, immediate and pressing need is the school sweaters. After that, we have a number of more general needs that I have listed. Other than that, we need sanitary pads, first aid supplies and office supplies.
Thank you so much for your generous support and consideration. All donations will be appreciated by the children and the orphanage staff!
General
A lot of stuff here is just old, worn out, and gross. The kids toothbrushes are disgusting and they all need new ones. They also need to regularly buy toothpaste. Washing basins are always in need, as is laundry detergent and soap. They buy water purifiers (bleach) to throw in the well, and that is always needed. In the kitchen, Grace desperately needs more bowls, plates, knives, cups, buckets, and she would like an apron. The kids would like a new soccer ball (theirs are all punctured). This is an unlimited category and we have MANY needs here! Any amount if appreciated.
School Uniforms
It is winter here in Kenya, and while for me that is quite warm (upper 60s), for Kenyans this is very cold weather. So they bundle up in hats and sweaters for school. However, a few of the kids at the orphanage, and many of the sponsored children outside of the orphanage, do not have sweaters and are very cold! Eric (the social worker) has said this is a pressing need. I have a list of the kids who don’t have sweaters and each will cost around Ksh500 (about $6.50 each). There are a total of 20 kids who do not have sweaters, so the total cost will be around $130. Any amount would be great.
Sanitary Pads
Once per month, sponsored girls and their female guardians come to WWB to pick up parcels of sanitary pads. They usually have some sort of speaker or some sort of lecture where they can hear about women’s health issues. A package of 10 sanitary pads costs Ksh50 (around 60 cents or so). Its incredibly cheap for us but most families cannot afford to continuously buy these (especially when they are faced with choosing between pads and soap, for example). As this is a continuous need, any donated amount is helpful.
Office Supplies
The WWB office is kind of shambles. The filing system is a mess, and there are never enough office supplies. We need things like pens, pencils, staples, tape, file folders, etc. Office supplies are boring, I know, but we do need new things. I would estimate no more than $20 is needed to buy the supplies.
First Aid
We have a relatively decent stock of first aid, but with 33 kids living here, it needs to be restocked regularly. Includes band aids, antibacterial creams, gauze pads, rubbing alcohol, latex gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. I would estimate around $20-$30 to fully restock the first aid cabinet.
Larger Donations
If you are interested in helping the orphanage further, the following are larger and more expensive items. Please e-mail me and we can discuss details:
• Livestock (cows, pigs, chickens)
• Food (maize, rice, beans)
• New toilet construction
• Bore hole (well for groundwater)
• Child Sponsorship
If you are interested in donating for any of the following, please use the PayPal button at the left to donate to me with a credit card or checking account and send me an email designating how you would like the money spent. As receiving packages is very costly (the government will probably rifle through your package and then charge me a high free – aka a bribe – to collect the package), sending money for me to buy these items is the easiest way to help.
I think the most expensive, immediate and pressing need is the school sweaters. After that, we have a number of more general needs that I have listed. Other than that, we need sanitary pads, first aid supplies and office supplies.
Thank you so much for your generous support and consideration. All donations will be appreciated by the children and the orphanage staff!
General
A lot of stuff here is just old, worn out, and gross. The kids toothbrushes are disgusting and they all need new ones. They also need to regularly buy toothpaste. Washing basins are always in need, as is laundry detergent and soap. They buy water purifiers (bleach) to throw in the well, and that is always needed. In the kitchen, Grace desperately needs more bowls, plates, knives, cups, buckets, and she would like an apron. The kids would like a new soccer ball (theirs are all punctured). This is an unlimited category and we have MANY needs here! Any amount if appreciated.
School Uniforms
It is winter here in Kenya, and while for me that is quite warm (upper 60s), for Kenyans this is very cold weather. So they bundle up in hats and sweaters for school. However, a few of the kids at the orphanage, and many of the sponsored children outside of the orphanage, do not have sweaters and are very cold! Eric (the social worker) has said this is a pressing need. I have a list of the kids who don’t have sweaters and each will cost around Ksh500 (about $6.50 each). There are a total of 20 kids who do not have sweaters, so the total cost will be around $130. Any amount would be great.
Sanitary Pads
Once per month, sponsored girls and their female guardians come to WWB to pick up parcels of sanitary pads. They usually have some sort of speaker or some sort of lecture where they can hear about women’s health issues. A package of 10 sanitary pads costs Ksh50 (around 60 cents or so). Its incredibly cheap for us but most families cannot afford to continuously buy these (especially when they are faced with choosing between pads and soap, for example). As this is a continuous need, any donated amount is helpful.
Office Supplies
The WWB office is kind of shambles. The filing system is a mess, and there are never enough office supplies. We need things like pens, pencils, staples, tape, file folders, etc. Office supplies are boring, I know, but we do need new things. I would estimate no more than $20 is needed to buy the supplies.
First Aid
We have a relatively decent stock of first aid, but with 33 kids living here, it needs to be restocked regularly. Includes band aids, antibacterial creams, gauze pads, rubbing alcohol, latex gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. I would estimate around $20-$30 to fully restock the first aid cabinet.
Larger Donations
If you are interested in helping the orphanage further, the following are larger and more expensive items. Please e-mail me and we can discuss details:
• Livestock (cows, pigs, chickens)
• Food (maize, rice, beans)
• New toilet construction
• Bore hole (well for groundwater)
• Child Sponsorship
Jun 10, 2010
New Pictures, and a long post :)
So everyone keeps asking in what ways they can help me out over here. Let me start by saying THANK YOU so much for the offers, I appreciate it. Unfortunately I cannot receive care packages but flat mail is great. If you can send a CD with children's church or gospel songs on it, that is flat and would be great!!! The kids like to sing and we do have a CD player.
I cannot think of much else people can do for me - but if you want to help the children, the best way to do this is sponsoring a child outside of the orphanage. I am working currently to try and organize the sponsorship program better so I will post information on this soon.
As for helping the kids out with medicine for de-worming, this is really difficult to do because we don't know exactly the cost of the medicine and what everyone needs. I will certainly post that information when I have it.
Now onto more important stuff....Its been nearly a week since I have updated! After my weekend in Thika, I did not feel it was necessary to get back online for a few days so I waited until today. Thika was alright – crowded and dirty and overwhelming – but fun and nice to get away from the orphanage for a couple of days and nights. I was able to get some office supplies to help me organizing the microfinance binder, which I have almost completed. Tuesday, we went to the doctor to get all of the test results for the children – each of them has worms or amoebas in their stomach. It is likely from the fruit that we eat, we pick it right off of the trees. Some of them must go in for further testing, as they may have malaria or typhoid. I’m not sure how WWB plans to pay for the medicine to get rid of the worms (they will need to administer de-worming tablets every 3 or 6 months to all kids and staff, or else stop them eating fruit entirely).
Yesterday we went to Nairobi to visit the Children’s Garden Home, another orphanage outside of a slum in Nairobi. My old roommate, Stella, worked there for a week towards the middle of her stay and had such a wonderful time when she stayed so she encouraged us to visit to get an idea of what other orphanages are like. The Children’s Garden is a far cry from Watoto Wa Baraka. I am going to try to explain it as best as I can – I was not allowed to take pictures there so I want to write it all down.
We take a matatu from Pundamilia into Nairobi, where we meet Stella, and she shows us to a bus that will take us to the slum. The bus drives us through one of the wealthier areas of Nairobi, which is probably like middle-class America. There are nice apartments surrounded by massive stone walls covered in barbed wire. This is definitely still the developing world but the region is nice and I would be comfortable living there. But suddenly the scenery changes abruptly – the nice homes are gone and replaced immediately with small store-fronts made of sticks and corrugated metal roofing (basically, these are standard all over the rural areas where I am but they were less in Nairobi, except on the outskirts). The road becomes dirt and there is standing water in pools all over the place. We get off the bus and walk through the slum.
I want to add here – this was the business part of the slum and thus I did not see the residential area. However, I have to note that this slum did not seem as bad as one of the “nicer” townships in South Africa, where homes were made of pieces of plywood, one family into a box the size of an SUV. So while I would not say that this slum was a nice place, it was certainly nicer than slums in one of the most developed, if not the most, countries in Africa.
Okay, so back to today. We walk from the bus to the orphanage, which is actually right outside of the slum. The orphanage has a tall, 4-story building that houses dormitories for the 200 children that live there. The building is adequate, with limited electricity and no running water but many beds and rooms for the kids. Out back is a large field for soccer and basketball, some latrines, and a large hall where the kids do dancing and singing and recreational activities. They also have a dining hall where the children eat, and one cow to give milk to the small babies. Next to the rec hall, they have the school – the orphanage hires teachers and thus has its own school. This helps cut costs because they decided together to not require uniforms and they can also reuse the books easily.
The children range in age from babies (several months) to 16 or 17 years old. They have kids in primary school (standard 1 through 8) and kids in high school (four years, form 1 and form 2). The kids are plucked from the streets, where many have fled from physical and sexual abuse, or simply poverty. Some of the girls were prostitutes and many of them are HIV positive. When we arrived, there was a stark difference in the way the staff welcomed us to the orphanage. They explained that the kids were in desperate need of a mother and father figure, that many of them have heartbreaking stories to tell and that with time they would open up to us and embrace us with their stories. They emphasized several times that the children need guidance from adults desperately.
At WWB, the focus was more on the various chores and work we would be doing (rather than spending time with the children) and there was no mention of acting as a role model for the kids, but instead more as a friend to play with sometimes. To me, it seemed that at Children’s Garden, the staff and volunteers focused on the children – they organized sports teams, they competed in African dance and drumming, they emphasized the role we could play as mother or father to these children…they do not have volunteers working outside of the orphanage in field work, either. At WWB the emphasis was on how we help the orphanage and the Makuyu community – with the money we gave, the chores we participate in, the field work or outside work, etc. I think this is partially because it is a more rural community and thus the kids did not come from the streets. Now, the children at Watoto Wa Baraka have had hard lives – their parents have died of HIV or other diseases like typhoid – but their lives are so much easier than the kids who grow up on the streets. Street kids have had to grow up fast; they have seen things that the average person only sees on TV or in movies. So I understand the stronger focus on working with the children directly. However, the stark difference from WWB further cements some of the feelings WWB volunteers have (namely that we are more like a walking bank than someone who is really going to make a difference in the children’s lives). I say this not to criticize WWB but merely to highlight one of the significant reasons that WWB and many NGOs may face funding problems: they treat their donors and their lifeblood like moneybags and are less focused on doing good work than they are on raising money. WWB does do good work – they have helped many many kids and families in this area – so again, this is not to criticize but instead to simply note a huge difference.
While I am content to stay at WWB, I love the children and I am enjoying my time more and more each day, it is evident that the children at the Nairobi orphanage stand to benefit far more from donors money and from volunteers. If I ever choose to return to Kenya for something like this, I will work there instead of at WWB. I am even considering spending a week there towards the end of my stay.
My time in Kenya seems to be moving faster than I realized. Each day feels like a lifetime, but even so, I am suddenly to the 3-week mark and realize I only have 8 weeks left. I already feel like a local sometimes – when we saw mzungus in Thika this weekend, we pointed and gawked, haha. But of course I am mzungu and that fact immediately makes me an “other” in the eyes of Kenyans.
There are so many things here I already know I will miss – the children, of course, their sweet laughter and smiling faces, and their ignorance of the world around them – there is something spectacular about children who do not know television or Barbie or McDonalds, who do not know what they are “missing out on” so to speak. I’ll miss the long and often hilarious conversations with Eric about politics and religion and development and how he sees all of these things in such a different light than me. Our very simple desires – for people to be free and prosperous – mean very different things for each of us. But we both agree that we want people to be happy. I’ll miss the calm of the countryside early in the morning…even with the cows, pigs, roosters, and the sound of the children in the morning, it still feels so calm here when we wake up. Mornings are my favorite time here, when it is still chilly enough to see your breath and you sip on hot chai and watch the haze melt away over the countryside. This area is relatively flat, green and brown grasses and bushes cover the ground, and the earth is red…it is not beautiful in a traditional sense but the beauty overwhelms you in some way. It’s the people of Kenya against this backdrop – the women in their traditional wraps of beautiful bright colors, often carrying a baby or a massive bundle of grass or sticks on their backs – the precious babies who laugh and giggle no matter what language you speak – the children in their school uniforms, whose high pitched voices yell “How are YOU?” every time they see mzungus walking through the village – drunk men in Makuyu on Sunday afternoons who react wildly to seeing white girls bargain at the market – the constant smiling and waving and greeting that you receive (mzungu or not) from every person you pass – these are the scenes that create beauty in Kenya, that hide the shack homes, the barefoot children, the flies, the dust, and the smell of burning trash that pervades everything.
I realize this is a long post but I feel like I’m finally “getting it” and understanding that my purpose here may not be to create real change, but instead simply to absorb, to learn and to experience a different world. Only when I gain this understanding is it worthwhile to try and make changes happen for people.
Thanks for reading!
I cannot think of much else people can do for me - but if you want to help the children, the best way to do this is sponsoring a child outside of the orphanage. I am working currently to try and organize the sponsorship program better so I will post information on this soon.
As for helping the kids out with medicine for de-worming, this is really difficult to do because we don't know exactly the cost of the medicine and what everyone needs. I will certainly post that information when I have it.
Now onto more important stuff....Its been nearly a week since I have updated! After my weekend in Thika, I did not feel it was necessary to get back online for a few days so I waited until today. Thika was alright – crowded and dirty and overwhelming – but fun and nice to get away from the orphanage for a couple of days and nights. I was able to get some office supplies to help me organizing the microfinance binder, which I have almost completed. Tuesday, we went to the doctor to get all of the test results for the children – each of them has worms or amoebas in their stomach. It is likely from the fruit that we eat, we pick it right off of the trees. Some of them must go in for further testing, as they may have malaria or typhoid. I’m not sure how WWB plans to pay for the medicine to get rid of the worms (they will need to administer de-worming tablets every 3 or 6 months to all kids and staff, or else stop them eating fruit entirely).
Yesterday we went to Nairobi to visit the Children’s Garden Home, another orphanage outside of a slum in Nairobi. My old roommate, Stella, worked there for a week towards the middle of her stay and had such a wonderful time when she stayed so she encouraged us to visit to get an idea of what other orphanages are like. The Children’s Garden is a far cry from Watoto Wa Baraka. I am going to try to explain it as best as I can – I was not allowed to take pictures there so I want to write it all down.
We take a matatu from Pundamilia into Nairobi, where we meet Stella, and she shows us to a bus that will take us to the slum. The bus drives us through one of the wealthier areas of Nairobi, which is probably like middle-class America. There are nice apartments surrounded by massive stone walls covered in barbed wire. This is definitely still the developing world but the region is nice and I would be comfortable living there. But suddenly the scenery changes abruptly – the nice homes are gone and replaced immediately with small store-fronts made of sticks and corrugated metal roofing (basically, these are standard all over the rural areas where I am but they were less in Nairobi, except on the outskirts). The road becomes dirt and there is standing water in pools all over the place. We get off the bus and walk through the slum.
I want to add here – this was the business part of the slum and thus I did not see the residential area. However, I have to note that this slum did not seem as bad as one of the “nicer” townships in South Africa, where homes were made of pieces of plywood, one family into a box the size of an SUV. So while I would not say that this slum was a nice place, it was certainly nicer than slums in one of the most developed, if not the most, countries in Africa.
Okay, so back to today. We walk from the bus to the orphanage, which is actually right outside of the slum. The orphanage has a tall, 4-story building that houses dormitories for the 200 children that live there. The building is adequate, with limited electricity and no running water but many beds and rooms for the kids. Out back is a large field for soccer and basketball, some latrines, and a large hall where the kids do dancing and singing and recreational activities. They also have a dining hall where the children eat, and one cow to give milk to the small babies. Next to the rec hall, they have the school – the orphanage hires teachers and thus has its own school. This helps cut costs because they decided together to not require uniforms and they can also reuse the books easily.
The children range in age from babies (several months) to 16 or 17 years old. They have kids in primary school (standard 1 through 8) and kids in high school (four years, form 1 and form 2). The kids are plucked from the streets, where many have fled from physical and sexual abuse, or simply poverty. Some of the girls were prostitutes and many of them are HIV positive. When we arrived, there was a stark difference in the way the staff welcomed us to the orphanage. They explained that the kids were in desperate need of a mother and father figure, that many of them have heartbreaking stories to tell and that with time they would open up to us and embrace us with their stories. They emphasized several times that the children need guidance from adults desperately.
At WWB, the focus was more on the various chores and work we would be doing (rather than spending time with the children) and there was no mention of acting as a role model for the kids, but instead more as a friend to play with sometimes. To me, it seemed that at Children’s Garden, the staff and volunteers focused on the children – they organized sports teams, they competed in African dance and drumming, they emphasized the role we could play as mother or father to these children…they do not have volunteers working outside of the orphanage in field work, either. At WWB the emphasis was on how we help the orphanage and the Makuyu community – with the money we gave, the chores we participate in, the field work or outside work, etc. I think this is partially because it is a more rural community and thus the kids did not come from the streets. Now, the children at Watoto Wa Baraka have had hard lives – their parents have died of HIV or other diseases like typhoid – but their lives are so much easier than the kids who grow up on the streets. Street kids have had to grow up fast; they have seen things that the average person only sees on TV or in movies. So I understand the stronger focus on working with the children directly. However, the stark difference from WWB further cements some of the feelings WWB volunteers have (namely that we are more like a walking bank than someone who is really going to make a difference in the children’s lives). I say this not to criticize WWB but merely to highlight one of the significant reasons that WWB and many NGOs may face funding problems: they treat their donors and their lifeblood like moneybags and are less focused on doing good work than they are on raising money. WWB does do good work – they have helped many many kids and families in this area – so again, this is not to criticize but instead to simply note a huge difference.
While I am content to stay at WWB, I love the children and I am enjoying my time more and more each day, it is evident that the children at the Nairobi orphanage stand to benefit far more from donors money and from volunteers. If I ever choose to return to Kenya for something like this, I will work there instead of at WWB. I am even considering spending a week there towards the end of my stay.
My time in Kenya seems to be moving faster than I realized. Each day feels like a lifetime, but even so, I am suddenly to the 3-week mark and realize I only have 8 weeks left. I already feel like a local sometimes – when we saw mzungus in Thika this weekend, we pointed and gawked, haha. But of course I am mzungu and that fact immediately makes me an “other” in the eyes of Kenyans.
There are so many things here I already know I will miss – the children, of course, their sweet laughter and smiling faces, and their ignorance of the world around them – there is something spectacular about children who do not know television or Barbie or McDonalds, who do not know what they are “missing out on” so to speak. I’ll miss the long and often hilarious conversations with Eric about politics and religion and development and how he sees all of these things in such a different light than me. Our very simple desires – for people to be free and prosperous – mean very different things for each of us. But we both agree that we want people to be happy. I’ll miss the calm of the countryside early in the morning…even with the cows, pigs, roosters, and the sound of the children in the morning, it still feels so calm here when we wake up. Mornings are my favorite time here, when it is still chilly enough to see your breath and you sip on hot chai and watch the haze melt away over the countryside. This area is relatively flat, green and brown grasses and bushes cover the ground, and the earth is red…it is not beautiful in a traditional sense but the beauty overwhelms you in some way. It’s the people of Kenya against this backdrop – the women in their traditional wraps of beautiful bright colors, often carrying a baby or a massive bundle of grass or sticks on their backs – the precious babies who laugh and giggle no matter what language you speak – the children in their school uniforms, whose high pitched voices yell “How are YOU?” every time they see mzungus walking through the village – drunk men in Makuyu on Sunday afternoons who react wildly to seeing white girls bargain at the market – the constant smiling and waving and greeting that you receive (mzungu or not) from every person you pass – these are the scenes that create beauty in Kenya, that hide the shack homes, the barefoot children, the flies, the dust, and the smell of burning trash that pervades everything.
I realize this is a long post but I feel like I’m finally “getting it” and understanding that my purpose here may not be to create real change, but instead simply to absorb, to learn and to experience a different world. Only when I gain this understanding is it worthwhile to try and make changes happen for people.
Thanks for reading!
Jun 2, 2010
Dear Lonley Planet Travel Guide (or, The Charm of this Continent)
Dear Lonley Planet Travel Guide,
In your Kenya Edition on your travel guides, you point unsuspecting travelers to climb Mt. Kilimambogo and promise them that, after the 9km hike, they will experience "amazing 360-degree panoramic views" that are surely not to be missed. You also note that the the flora and fauna (including numerous buffalo) are incredible and not to be missed.
I would like to propose you change this entry to read as follows:
"The 9km hike will lead you to an incredible, breathtaking 360-degree view of cell phone satellite towers surrounded by shrubbery, including numerous grasses and ferns. This amazing view is only accentuated by the humming of the electric generators and the trash heaps at the top of the mountain. The wildlife is stunning, as you will see many moths, butterflies, and ants."
Yours sincerely,
Emily Tanner
....No but really. We paid Ksh2,100 (which, though not a lot in American money, is quite expensive...more than it cost to purchase my cell phone) to enter and hike this park (in total, 18km round trip!) and convinced ourselves that the view would make the overwhelming hike bearable.... it was all we could do to not burst out laughing at the top! As Anna, one of the volunteers, said "That is the charm of this continent." I could not have said it better....nothing is as you expect, and thus everything is expected and you cannot be surprised by disappointments or frustrations or anything that happens. An email from my mother - and the many comments on the last post - made me aware that I may have sounded negative in the last post...it was not my intention, as I tried to say that I am trying to stay positive and learning a lot in this trip thus far - I expect the bad things and the frustrating things and have learned to laugh at them and expect them. Its not "bad" - it is simply very very different. The views from the middle of the hike (about 4km up) are incredible and the guide told us - on the way DOWN of course - that this is the best view in the park...we just laughed and laughed.
Monday, resting from the journey, I did kitchen work and hung out around WWB. Tuesday morning I started doing some work with the WWB microsavings project. They have a pretty cool project here - women in surrounding villages each contribute ksh70 per week, which totals to 3640 per year, after which they are awarded 10% interest to make their savings total ksh4000. Once they reach this total they can get a loan for ksh4000 and use it to begin a business - buy a cow or goats or basketweaving supplies, etc. They have a year to pay the loan without interest, after which their balance incurs 10% interest. They have no set due date, however, and if they become inactive with their saving, they can come back at any time to reclaim it. I have yet to find a really helpful way to jump into improving this project so for the time being I am working on organizing the filing. All records are handwritten on notebook paper, and it is difficult to tell which accounts are closed and which are open. Imagine a bank keeping its records of savings and loans on sheets of notebook paper, written by hand, in one binder, and accessible to anyone who works at the bank. So I am making forms to print that have a space for the name, village, date, saver number, and just a lot of other such information, so they can fill them out but in a more organized fashion. I will have to buy tabs and file folders and all the office supplies but I think I can make the filing system better. Working in offices has finally paid off I guess.
Tuesday - yesterday - was Kenyan Independence Day or something like that (I expected them to have some sort of lesson or remembrance of the holiday but they did not....so I will have to look it up what its all about). The kids stayed home from school so we had planned a sort of "game day" for them, but Zach, the orphanage manager, instead had them doing some work and chores to help out. The kids here work SO HARD and they are never complaining about it....their average day is to get up and go to school (all that are older than primary school are leaving by around 6 I think) and they stay until 4 or later. They return and do housework or chores, or have about an hour or so, until 6:30, of free time. At 6:30 they have night classes or do homework until 8pm, and then dinner, prayers and bedtime. The elder children help the younger ones the whole time. It is quite sad to see how little playtime they have.
So yesterday after they did chores in the morning, we brought out beads and string and made bracelets and necklaces, then played hide and seek. Then they did more chores and had dinner. It was a far cry from a "day off" but they certainly enjoyed the bracelets and the game.
The kids rarely have the means to go to the doctor and get a checkup, so each of the volunteers pitched in Ksh1,000 to send all of them to get a general checkup, HIV test and stool sample. Today we took the 9 oldest children, which was a DISASTER! Scheduled to leave by 7:15, we finally had the children and their school bags together by around 7:50AM. Geoffrey had come by the night before to bring new volunteers and his large van was there so we were thinking he could drive us to save time. So getting permission took another 10 minutes, all the while we keep losing the kids as they don't want to go to the doctor. Finally we get into the car and realize it has a flat tire. So we all pile out, change the tire, and begin piling back in. Then we realize the car won't start. Remember now we have 9 children that are arguing, pulling away, running away and otherwise not listening....by the time we left (now walking) it was after 8:40. The charms of this continent..."on time" and "appointment" mean very little here.
The walk to the hospital was nice, as the older kids are less open and less likely to play with volunteers (they don't want to look like babies) so we got to get to know them a little more (and tease them about school crushes and such, they were so funny about it). When we got to the hospital, one of the oldest girls absolutely refused to get any tests and began to cry. Something about hospitals and her mother (remember, many of these kids are orphaned by HIV/AIDS) and we felt it better not to force her. The other kids lined up and one by one got blood drawn. The nurses do not wear gloves, there are sick people everywhere, and the whole hospital is sort of open air...there is nothing sterile about it. But that is what they have.
I am happy to report all the children are thus far HIV negative, which is a really wonderful thing, considering their parents. I have heard conflicting things about the HIV status of the children here, so we all make it a point to wear gloves even when just putting a band-aid on a kid...its a risk we do not even consider in the US but it makes one very nervous. So it is great to learn that at least these children are healthy. Tomorrow we take the younger ones - 24 of them - and it is going to be chaos. If this morning was difficult, I cannot imagine trying to get 24 children (aged 2-8) to get blood drawn...wish me luck please.
This weekend, myself, Morgan and Rory (another volunteer) plan to travel to Thika to take a weekend away from the orphanage. We are hoping to stay at the Blue Post Hotel which is a nice place and fun for travelers. I will be able to post again then - and perhaps maybe some pictures!
Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of June :)
In your Kenya Edition on your travel guides, you point unsuspecting travelers to climb Mt. Kilimambogo and promise them that, after the 9km hike, they will experience "amazing 360-degree panoramic views" that are surely not to be missed. You also note that the the flora and fauna (including numerous buffalo) are incredible and not to be missed.
I would like to propose you change this entry to read as follows:
"The 9km hike will lead you to an incredible, breathtaking 360-degree view of cell phone satellite towers surrounded by shrubbery, including numerous grasses and ferns. This amazing view is only accentuated by the humming of the electric generators and the trash heaps at the top of the mountain. The wildlife is stunning, as you will see many moths, butterflies, and ants."
Yours sincerely,
Emily Tanner
....No but really. We paid Ksh2,100 (which, though not a lot in American money, is quite expensive...more than it cost to purchase my cell phone) to enter and hike this park (in total, 18km round trip!) and convinced ourselves that the view would make the overwhelming hike bearable.... it was all we could do to not burst out laughing at the top! As Anna, one of the volunteers, said "That is the charm of this continent." I could not have said it better....nothing is as you expect, and thus everything is expected and you cannot be surprised by disappointments or frustrations or anything that happens. An email from my mother - and the many comments on the last post - made me aware that I may have sounded negative in the last post...it was not my intention, as I tried to say that I am trying to stay positive and learning a lot in this trip thus far - I expect the bad things and the frustrating things and have learned to laugh at them and expect them. Its not "bad" - it is simply very very different. The views from the middle of the hike (about 4km up) are incredible and the guide told us - on the way DOWN of course - that this is the best view in the park...we just laughed and laughed.
Monday, resting from the journey, I did kitchen work and hung out around WWB. Tuesday morning I started doing some work with the WWB microsavings project. They have a pretty cool project here - women in surrounding villages each contribute ksh70 per week, which totals to 3640 per year, after which they are awarded 10% interest to make their savings total ksh4000. Once they reach this total they can get a loan for ksh4000 and use it to begin a business - buy a cow or goats or basketweaving supplies, etc. They have a year to pay the loan without interest, after which their balance incurs 10% interest. They have no set due date, however, and if they become inactive with their saving, they can come back at any time to reclaim it. I have yet to find a really helpful way to jump into improving this project so for the time being I am working on organizing the filing. All records are handwritten on notebook paper, and it is difficult to tell which accounts are closed and which are open. Imagine a bank keeping its records of savings and loans on sheets of notebook paper, written by hand, in one binder, and accessible to anyone who works at the bank. So I am making forms to print that have a space for the name, village, date, saver number, and just a lot of other such information, so they can fill them out but in a more organized fashion. I will have to buy tabs and file folders and all the office supplies but I think I can make the filing system better. Working in offices has finally paid off I guess.
Tuesday - yesterday - was Kenyan Independence Day or something like that (I expected them to have some sort of lesson or remembrance of the holiday but they did not....so I will have to look it up what its all about). The kids stayed home from school so we had planned a sort of "game day" for them, but Zach, the orphanage manager, instead had them doing some work and chores to help out. The kids here work SO HARD and they are never complaining about it....their average day is to get up and go to school (all that are older than primary school are leaving by around 6 I think) and they stay until 4 or later. They return and do housework or chores, or have about an hour or so, until 6:30, of free time. At 6:30 they have night classes or do homework until 8pm, and then dinner, prayers and bedtime. The elder children help the younger ones the whole time. It is quite sad to see how little playtime they have.
So yesterday after they did chores in the morning, we brought out beads and string and made bracelets and necklaces, then played hide and seek. Then they did more chores and had dinner. It was a far cry from a "day off" but they certainly enjoyed the bracelets and the game.
The kids rarely have the means to go to the doctor and get a checkup, so each of the volunteers pitched in Ksh1,000 to send all of them to get a general checkup, HIV test and stool sample. Today we took the 9 oldest children, which was a DISASTER! Scheduled to leave by 7:15, we finally had the children and their school bags together by around 7:50AM. Geoffrey had come by the night before to bring new volunteers and his large van was there so we were thinking he could drive us to save time. So getting permission took another 10 minutes, all the while we keep losing the kids as they don't want to go to the doctor. Finally we get into the car and realize it has a flat tire. So we all pile out, change the tire, and begin piling back in. Then we realize the car won't start. Remember now we have 9 children that are arguing, pulling away, running away and otherwise not listening....by the time we left (now walking) it was after 8:40. The charms of this continent..."on time" and "appointment" mean very little here.
The walk to the hospital was nice, as the older kids are less open and less likely to play with volunteers (they don't want to look like babies) so we got to get to know them a little more (and tease them about school crushes and such, they were so funny about it). When we got to the hospital, one of the oldest girls absolutely refused to get any tests and began to cry. Something about hospitals and her mother (remember, many of these kids are orphaned by HIV/AIDS) and we felt it better not to force her. The other kids lined up and one by one got blood drawn. The nurses do not wear gloves, there are sick people everywhere, and the whole hospital is sort of open air...there is nothing sterile about it. But that is what they have.
I am happy to report all the children are thus far HIV negative, which is a really wonderful thing, considering their parents. I have heard conflicting things about the HIV status of the children here, so we all make it a point to wear gloves even when just putting a band-aid on a kid...its a risk we do not even consider in the US but it makes one very nervous. So it is great to learn that at least these children are healthy. Tomorrow we take the younger ones - 24 of them - and it is going to be chaos. If this morning was difficult, I cannot imagine trying to get 24 children (aged 2-8) to get blood drawn...wish me luck please.
This weekend, myself, Morgan and Rory (another volunteer) plan to travel to Thika to take a weekend away from the orphanage. We are hoping to stay at the Blue Post Hotel which is a nice place and fun for travelers. I will be able to post again then - and perhaps maybe some pictures!
Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of June :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)