Field Notes from the Global Women's Village

Naming Traditions in Western Kenya

2011-03-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

The tribe living in Western Kenya is called the Luyha people. The Luhya are the 3rd largest tribe out of 42 tribes in Kenya and each tribe has a distinct language, customs and traditions. Even though people from different tribes now live in various parts of Kenya, the majority of tribe members live in the area they call their homeland, where the land has been handed down for generations.

(While we might think that identifying people by tribe is ethnocentric and mildly pejorative, it's actually akin to saying that I am a Montanan or a Texan. In the U.S. we primarily identify ourselves by where we were born even if our whole family doesn't live there. Even though I've lived in California for 23 years, I always tell people that I come from Montana, where my family has deep roots going back to 1865.)

Today I learned about the Luyha tradition of naming their children. Emma Sisia Adolwa, our Just One Person Co-Founder and Director, is a member of the Luyha tribe. Emma's older brother and sister are twins, so her second name, "Sisia", means "one who is born after twins".

Her third name, "Adolwa", is her father-in-law's name and is very unique. In Western Kenya, there is a superstition attached to a family who've had many children die as infants or toddlers. To trick the evil spirit who is responsible for the death of the previous children, the mother gives birth in a neighboring village and leaves the baby along the road. Shortly after, someone from her village retrieves the newborn baby and brings it back to the mother's home. This makes the evil spirit believe that the baby is not the biological baby of the family, but an adopted child, thus protecting the health of the new baby. Emma's father-in-law was born under those circumstances.

Because of the naming tradition, when a Luyha learns a person's name, they are also learning import information about that person's birth. There are hundreds of names with specific meanings in Luyha such as "one who was born at harvest", one who was born in the early morning", and "one who is born under a full moon".

Even though I don't know, I wonder if the name's meaning goes even deeper than simply implying the circumstances of a person's birth. Perhaps each name also carries some sort of prediction about the child's future, like the belief that zodiac signs influence a person's personality or fortune. For Mr. Adolwa, "one who was adopted", it was the promise of a healthy and a long life.

Celebrating A Few Steps Forward for Girls in Kenya

2011-03-11T22:48:00.000-08:00

11 girls convened for tea at the Just One Person office this week. We are celebrating each girls success in passing the Kenyan Comprehensive Exam, which they took after graduation.

One of the highlights of the tea, for me at least, was having strawberry ice cream! We bought it at a nearby supermarket and raced to the office on a motorbike to eat it before it melted. It tasted so good, of course its made from really fresh cream and packed with calories...

Faith

The results of the Exam are used to determine

where they can pursue further education and

which field they have qualified to study. 4 girls

have qualified for the University. 2 of the highest

scoring will qualify for government assistance.

The other two can attend the University if they

can afford it.

Razoha

The remaining seven can attend either junior
college or take classes that will qualify them for
junior college in the future. Faith and Razoha
scored very high and it will be so gratifying to
follow their progress from this point forward.

One really revealing fact about how unique these
results are is that only 9 or the 11 girls in JOP
have moms who graduated from high school.

Self help groups are an integral part of Kenyan society and have formalized procedures for their formation. The guest speaker at the tea was a woman from the Social Services and Community Development Department who informed the girls about how they could come together and form their own group. Once they have registered a group, they will be eligible for continuing counseling from the Department as they develop their projects and learn about entrepreneurship. They'll also be able to take a small loan from the Government's Youth Fund that they can use to start their own project.

The girls were thrilled to learn about the opportunity and met shortly after the social worker left to decide about forming a group. They voted unanimously to form a group which they named "Just One Person Pioneer Group". These are the officers they elected to lead them. They named three activities which they will begin with; bead making, braiding hair and the mushroom project.

Self help groups are taken very seriously here and I feel confident that all the girls will be active participants. But more importantly they will be able to put into practice the skills they learned from the Just One Person life skills and entrepreneur classes they've attended the last three years. They'll be challenged to work together as a group; to communicate openly, to follow the leadership of someone other than a teacher or parent, to allocate duties and do their part in making the group successful, to learn about running a business and record keeping and finally, managing their own finances and start saving. This will be the ultimate test in how well JOP has prepared them to chart their own futures.

Sometimes it feels lonely

2011-03-09T23:29:00.000-08:00

I don't feel much like writing today. I just learned that my cat was hit by a car and died on Monday. So, today I feel very far away.

Charlie was my daughter's "brought home from college" cat. We always called him Grey Kitty. He was born under her building and was the runt of the litter. She was afraid he wouldn't find a home. She knew we were soft hearted and would adopt him.

Grey Kitty was 13 and the last few years, he was having thyroid problems. Twice each day, over his objections, we would rub a dose of thyroid medicine on his ear. Ironically, the past few months, he had gained weight again was feeling perky and energetic again.

He liked hanging out with the cat across the street and coming home one night he didn't look both ways before crossing. My husband buried him in our backyard. Our family tradition is to remember our pets and the love they brought into our lives by planting a tree in our yard.

I believe that all sentient beings come from star dust and return to star dust. Through the goodness of our being, we contribute our spirit to ignite life again somewhere in the universe.

So Grey Kitty, this is your new journey. You will always live in my heart.

Beside Every Successful Man, Stands a Successful Woman

2011-03-08T23:52:00.000-08:00

This was the motto of the International Women Day's Baraza (celebration) that I attended at the village of Ikolomani.

The celebration was scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m., but didn't get underway until 12:00 African time. Everyone here calls this "African time" because it refers to the loose interpretation of scheduled meeting times, which can be anywhere from the actual time up to three hours later. In the villages in particular, life is so unpredictable that it is practically impossible to be on time.

The event finally kicked off when the honored women's group arrived. They danced and sang as they made their way along the road, traveling from their village that is located several miles away. As they danced into the compound, the other women present, danced to meet them and a crazy melee of dancing ensued. I loved it, it was such a fun way to express my excitement and happiness for being with these women. (Yes, I danced and let me tell you, white women can't dance in the African way....)

The singing and dancing was accompanied by a young guys' ragtag band consisting of a metal ring being knocked by a nail, a couple of handmade drums and a horn like the ones you hear at world cup soccer games.

The members of this women's group, Mandeleyo ya Wanawake, is a group of widows, 75% of them are HIV positive. You can see that they are primarily older women, so most likely they were infected by their husbands. They sang about their experience of going to be tested for HIV so that they would know their status. Their courageous song encourages others to be brave and to be tested for HIV so that they'll also know their status. While it's decreasing, there is still a very strong stigma attached to people who are HIV positive. Most people in the villages don't want to be seen going to the clinic be tested and very few people ever reveal the test results publicly.

The guest of honor was the District Commissioner, who treated with respect and honor. Here's something I didn't quite get... to honor him, several of the older women, danced in front of him, shaking their booty his direction? That somehow reminded me of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

There were many(meaning 3 hours) of speeches and presentations conveying the hopes, dreams and achievements for women in Kenya. The District Commission introduced the chiefs in the area. I think that the word "chief" means elected village leader in the African context and doesn't have the same connotation as it does to us. All the male chiefs were dressed in full British style military apparel and carried a baton tucked under their left arm. When they were introduced, they goose stepped forward and gave a crisp salute. This young woman is the only female chief in the district, she is a measure of great success for Kenyan women.

The Kenyan government is keenly aware of the pressure on African countries to be able to report they have met the U.N. Millennium Development goals in 2015, so there is a spotlight shining on those programs that empower women. Women are coming together in solidarity and men are joining them. In fact, as you can see, several of the male village elders joined the event as well.

I'm really proud that Just One Person is already providing programs that are empowering girls in Kenya. As more and more opportunities become available, rural girls like those participating in Just One Person, will recognize their abilities and step in to the shoes of women leaders in their country. I hope I will be fortunate enough to join them again in celebrating many more successes.

Join Me for a Day In Kakamega, Kenya....

2011-03-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

Nothing but net

Saturday night bath in a bucket

The neighbors

The "Hood"

My ride

The Just One Person Headquarters

Mwanaidi sewing up a storm

Goin' home

In spite of the lack of rain, Just One Person is growing

2011-03-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Even global warming changes are being felt here in rural Kenya. It has been hot, dry and dusty and now people are praying for rain so they can plant their crops. There are a few wispy clouds today so maybe it's on its way. I'm thinking good thoughts.

In spite of the drought, Just One Person is starting to bloom. 11 girls graduated from high school in June and have just learned their scores for the Kenya Comprehensive Exam that all Kenyan graduates take at the end of their 4th year. 6 of the 11 JOP graduates scored high enough to qualify to attend university. Razoha, on the left, scored very well and is interested in studying biotechnology. Those girls who did not qualify have an opportunity to attend a type of "junior college" where if they perform well, they can move on to earning a Bachelor's Degree. I was looking at the course catalog for Masinde Muliro University, the school located here in Kakamega. They have an extensive list of bachelor's degrees that students can earn including Education, Physics, Nursing, Engineering, etc. But they also offer some interesting degrees really relevant to globalization. Like Renewable Energy and Biofuels, Agriculture and Biotechnology, Disaster Management and International Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution and Humanitarian Assistance. The course I'd really like to take is a 2 year degree in Ethics and Corruption studies. Even though we don't like to admit it, Africa isn't the only place where corruption exists...

Emma Sisia, our Kenyan executive director is currently arranging internships for all of the graduates during this "gap year" before they can go on to school. Mwanaidi is working with a university project that is developing mushroom farms in the community using a variety of mushroom species. While she is receiving her training, we are building a mushroom growing hut near our office. Emma has engaged a group of women who are experienced farmers to help run the project. After recovering project costs, the proceeds from the sale of mushrooms will be used to support our core girls' empowerment programs for the 12 girls still in school.

Sylvia is participating in a project that grows spirulina bacteria. The bacteria is used as a health supplement as well as in making soap and other products. Spirulina is a popular new technology in Kenya and there's a good market for the products. I am not 100% sure how one grows bacteria, but I'm anxious to find out...

Emma is also assisting the 11 grads to form an official youth CBO(community based organization). Once the group is registered with the provincial government, they will be eligible to take a small loan from the Women's Enterprise Fund and start their own project. Having the girls work in small projects beforehand gives them the ideas and experience they'll need to decide as a group on what project they will develop. This is such a great program for so many reasons..,, the girls have the valuable opportunity of working as a member of a team, they will learn about money management and practical entrepreneurial skills, and they will be earning small wages for their work, for the first time in their lives!

The formation of the JOP Youth group embraces two of JOP core values; girls that have benefited from JOP programs are now giving back to the program in some small way. In addition, profits from projects like this are a valuable starting point in reaching financial sustainability for future JOP programs.

P.S. Here's a photo of a happy tree nursery customer. She is standing by some of the 250 trees she purchased from JOP last year.

A Death in Kenya

2011-01-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

Juliet Karmari's mother died unexpectedly last week in Ivola, a small village near Kakamega. Her dad has been terminally ill, so it's really unfortunate that her mom passed away. Juliet has been a member of our Just One Person family for the last 3 years and graduated from Kamoisi High School in December 2010.

During the last 5 years, I've learned that death is a constant companion in most African countries. In Kenya, the "average life span" is about 60. But so many people die of common things before then....diabetes, childbirth, malaria, AIDS, malnutrition, and tuberculosis just to name a few.

Personally, at age 56, I've attended perhaps 5 funerals. But for people living in Kenya, it is common to attend 5 funerals a month. It's evident how frequent death is when you see coffins displayed for sale along the roads.

Most of the funeral activities take place at the family's house. Usually, the deceased person is displayed in a coffin in the family's main room. Relatives from all over, neighbors, friends and acquaintances come to visit and honor the deceased days before the funeral takes place.

A couple of years ago, I attended a visitation with a group of women who were the widow's friends. The women brought sympathy cards and, when their turn came, the group sang several songs to console the woman. For me, one of the most unexpected events during the visit was that each and every person who came gave a monetary donation to the deceased person's family.

Tradition in Kenya dictates that the family provide lodging and food to all visitors who travel to attend the funeral. As you can imagine, this is a difficult task for a family who is grieving, let alone an impossible financial responsibility. As a consequence, no matter how poor and short on cash, each visitor gives some amount of money. In essence, with so many funerals taking place, there is a kind of pot of funds that moves from one family to another as deaths occur.

While the event was sorrowful, I saw that funeral customs are another powerful example of the commitment to being part of a community that makes life feel rich in rural Kenya, even though people have few material possessions.

Thanks to our donors, we were able to be a small part of that community by contributing to the funeral fund for Juliet and her family.

Musings on Haiti and Non Profits

2011-01-12T12:33:00.000-08:00

Last night on PBS, I watched a documentary about rebuilding Haiti after the earthquake. The devastating earthquake was the catalyst for bringing poverty stricken developing countries and the issue of foreign aid into the limelight once again.

The Haiti documentary compelled me to consider my own participation in international development and to rethink the roles of NGOs(nongovernmental organizations) in developing countries. It's an issue that I wrestle with frequently and I never really arrive at an answer that leaves me feeling comfortable or resolved.

A Little Background

Robert Perito of the United States Institute of Peace has called Haiti "The Republic of NGOs". There are about 3,000 NGOs currently working in Haiti. However, Haiti isn't alone in its abundance of aid agencies. It was estimated that in the year 2000, there were 5,900 NGOs operating just in Africa....

For most people, foreign aid brings to mind either the UN or organizations operating as charities. However, there are a growing number of independent NGOs focusing on sustainable international development as an alternative to charity. What's the difference? In general, a charity's mission is to ensure people are fed, housed and receiving medical care at no cost to the beneficiary. Sustainable development, on the other hand, operates on the premise that developing countries need a strong economy that provides its citizens with jobs and the resources to buy those things for themselves.

What's the Issue?

My own internal conflict is fueled by the question of whether foreign based NGOs are helping or hurting the development of a country. Are charitable programs that provide free services helping in the "right" way? In the case of natural catastrophes like Haiti's earthquake or the Asian tsunami, emergency food and medical care are unquestionably essential for saving lives. But in the absence of a disaster, food and medical care are consumable goods that have to be replenished time and time again.

As a response to this self perpetuating cycle of foreign aid, during the past decade, more NGOs have shifted their focus to investing in a country's private business sector with the belief that more jobs and more money circulating in the economy will provide the means for people to make and buy those items for themselves.

Both models of are derived from heartfelt good intentions to help "less fortunate countries". But like a parent who does everything for a child, is the unspoken message that the child isn't capable of doing for him or herself?

As the the founder of an NGO working in Kenya, these are the questions I ask myself; Does the mission of our program reflect the needs of the community? Is it relevant and working in harmony with the Kenyan culture? Are we unconsciously implying that outsiders have better solutions to their problems?

In the end, I'm left wonder. Is it better to try in a mindful way to help those in need in developing countries? Or should we get out of the way and let developing nations find their own way forward?

Further Reading: White Man's Burden by William Easterly.

Development Creeps into Kakamega

2010-02-15T00:27:00.000-08:00

Things are changing very quickly in Kakamega. It was a pretty rural town when I first came here in 2006, but I don't think that will last for long. There is a big new supermarket coming named Nakumat. It is a Kenyan chain, and even though I grapple with buy locally, having a lot more choices of kinds of food to eat will be really nice. They actually have put in a kind of shopping center, with other shops and a new modern restaurant. The restaurant has only been open a couple of weeks and they are still working out the kinks. They have a lot of interesting things listed on the menu but actually are only serving one thing, Kakamegan's favorite of chicken and fries.

There are also two new hotels with restaurants. I don't know who is investing in these places, but Kakamega's economy must be booming.

Boda Boda bicycles are slowly being replaced by motorbikes. They are a big status symbol here, are mostly bought on credit and are wildly dangerous. It's isn't uncommon to see 2 adult passengers or a family of 4 riding on one motorbike with no helmets. There have been some reports of fatal accidents, so I opt for the slightly safer boda bodas.

More young women and girls are wearing pants and I see an occasional mama wearing them too. There also more white people here than ever, so now I don't attract as much attention as I used too, or get approached to put their kids through school. I actually saw a father wearing a front baby pack today too....

There are also a lot more Masai living in Kakamega...those are the people that are the classic icon of Africa that you see pictures of. They are used to toursits and charge an arm and a leg to take their picture. Several are living near me on the govt water project in a makeshift hut. They have been hired as security.

Masai are renowned as fierce warriors so they are highly valued as security. I heard one story about a Masai who was told to not open the gate for anyone after a certain hour at night. One night, the owner came home late and the Masai totally refused to open the gate for him. Yesterday, someone told me that the Masai had caught a their and beat the thief up and almost cut his leg off.

I love Kenyan politics. Just like in the US, there always seems to be a big corruption crisis. Right now, the prime minister(who was appointed after losing a rigged election) suspended a cabinet minister for alleged corruption and the president was reportedly absolutely furious, of course because the minister was one of his cronies. Kenya is such a small country, that everyone is personally involved with the news, just like it was one big city....lots of talk about how bad the government does.

The pet chicken who has been sneezing is here begging for food and getting into everything so I need to chase her out.

The Tree Nursery

2010-02-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

The road to the JOP Tree Nursery is beyond explanation....it's made from red clay and when it rains, it is molded liked putty by anything travelling over it. Due to the excess of rain during January, it was the worst I have ever seen. Holes and ruts at least 3 feet deep that expose volcanic boulders that litter this area. In Peter's 4 wheel drive, which is much worse for the wear, our driver bumped and careened and picked his way to the nursery. It is hard to tell how far the actual distance is, but the journey takes about 30 minutes of bone jarring travel.

Karen, Cathy and Billie were overwhelmed and delighted as the 27 members of the Ematende women's group greeted us as we drove up. There were Kenyan high fives and hugs and laughing that made us feel immediately welcome and like special guests. Then, in customary Kenyan fashion, they sang a welcome song and we all danced our way further down the road to the nursery site.

Our program coordinator has done a wonderful JOP in organizing and developing the nursery. It is located on a quarter of an acre and marked into 4 quadrants. The group has erected a barbed wire fence around the plot to try to keep the goats and chickens out and planted mulberry bushes around the perimeter to use for silk worm farming, a project they will start developing in the future.

The trees are all indigenous species that are in high demand in Kenya. The seeds are planted in raised seed beds and covered with makeshift thatch roofs to keep them out of the sun. Once the trees sprout, they are transplanted by hand into short, black tubes filled with soil and placed under an awning made from sticks and more banana and palm leaves. Currently, there are four thousand! trees under production and will be the right size to harvest and sell by March. Each quadrant will be developed the same way over the next few months so eventually there will be 16,000 trees growing in the nursery on this one small plot of land.

The Ematende women's group provides the labor paid for by JOP. There are 3 teams of 9 women and each group works one week on a rotating a basis. They plant seeds, transplant seedlings and water the trees morning and evening. We haven't bought a water catchment tank yet so the women must carry jerry cans from the river to do the watering. Its an enormous amount of work.

As a benefit, the Ematende women's group was trained by the forest department to identify trees and collect seeds that they can sell for personal income. JOP has also given them a small supply of seedlings so that they can start their own mini tree nurseries at their homes.

What is really unusual about this project is that the profit earned by the labor of these women is being used to support girls that are total strangers to them, not relatives. This is a very rare occurrence in Kenya where true philanthropy has yet to catch on....

Needless to say, other women in the village and surrounding villages have noticed and are now looking for ways to participate. Once we have the Ematende group established, we are hoping to be able to scale up with other groups using land donated or leased free of charge by a local family. Just the visibility of such a enterprising project inspires and motivates the other village women to start their own small businesses....a wonderful by product of our JOP activities. It is through these small projects that we hope to start to change cultural beliefs about the role of girls and women in Kenya...it expands our impact far beyond the boundaries of our non formal education activities for the 25 girls currently participating in the program.

Sustainable development and true change never takes place in a void. Creating the network and support systems such as these are an integral part of the work of JOP in Kenya

Watching JOP Grow

2010-02-09T01:01:00.000-08:00

We visited JOP girls and school staff members at Muslim Girls' School and Bishop Sulemeti Girls' School today. We arrived like a "flock of mzungus" and caused quite a stir among all the girls.

We had a great meeting with the JOP girls. They've become more comfortable visiting with strangers and were pretty chatty. Overall the girls are working hard at school. Our focus at JOP isn't for girls to get straight A's, but to improve their performance and work to their personal best. When we asked them about their favorite subject they mentioned a variety...math, chemistry, kiswahili, a course called Christian Religious Education(or Islamic Religious Education at Muslim Girls') and home science. 2 JOP girls have the honor of being number one in their class in math and science.

7 girls are seniors this year and are "candidates" for taking the Kenya Nation Exam in October of 2010. They are required to attend boarding school during their senior year and to forgo playing sports so they can focus all of their attention on studying for the exam.

How well they score on the exam will determine what choices they have after graduation. Those who score well are chosen to attend University with reduced tuition, the next tier can attend university at their own expense and lastly, those who don't qualify for university can choose to go to a variety of two year schools to get a certificate in business management, computer science, social work, etc.

The girls won't get their exam scores until 2011 so won't begin their post secondary activities until 2012. They will still be participating in JOP during this "gap year" in various activities. Some will intern at various businesses and learn how to dress for work, be on time, communicate with others and so on. A few girls will be volunteers with JOP and will work with the younger JOP girls as presenters and counselors. They will also be starting village JOP groups for younger girls from ages 10-14. This will give girls in the villages a motivation to stay in school and a headstart for when they enter high school.

Our JOP mission is to use JOP as an agent of change for improving the status of women and girls in the villages. We emphasize to the girls that one of their responsibilities is to give back to their communities, to be a good role model and to share the knowlege they are gaining through their participation in JOP. I'm really pleased to see that this is happening and that the girls take their responsibility seriously. With their help, we will be able to expand the impact of our program and to continue to build a Kenyan owned project.

On Safari

2010-02-05T00:37:00.000-08:00

What a treat! I've returned to Kenya with some friends from Chico, Karen Goodwin, Billie Kanter and Cathy Webster. Our trip is a combination of a safari and a visit to our Just One Person project in Kakamega. Believe it or not, this is my first tourist visit to anywhere outside of Western Province in Kenya. I am seeing some new country that I wasn't even aware of and I feel very privileged and overwhelmed. Although the landscape is unfamiliar, the friendliness of the Kenya people is the same everywhere we travel.

We are visiting the area around Mt Kenya, which is the granite peak you see here. It is about 17,000 feet high and a pretty popular climbing destination. We stayed in a lodge at the base of Mt. Kenya and aside from the elephants running across the road, the trees were pine. The Mountain Lodge is located on the edge of a watering hole and every room looks out at it, so it is simply a matter of relaxing in the room and waiting for the animals come to drink, which they do in some previously agreed upon schedule. First the waterbucks, then the water buffalo and finally the elephants. It is very surreal to see these animals appear magically out of the underbrush. According to our foodie, Karen, the food is absolutely wonderful. There is a great deal of variety including baked arrowroot, green grahams, fried chicken gizzards, and ugali of course.

After Mountain Lodge, we descended to what I guess is called the savannah. We drove for about 60 miles through very dry and scrubby fields and then came to Sweetwater Nature Conservancy which is an oasis in the midst of them. Apparently, the previous two years have been a drought but January was very rainy and so everything is lush and green and there are rivers running through the Conservancy with very shy hippos in them. This is a tented lodge, like you have seen in Out of Africa, and once again the luxurious tents sit right at the edge of a big water hole where all kinds of animals come to drink, wart hogs, giraffes, gazelles, elephants, crane birds, and more wart hogs. Actually Karen has dubbed them "hogworts".

We've taken 3 game drives in a pop up van and the wildife is more abundant than I can describe. We have seen what they call the big five....lion, cheetah, water buffalo, hippo and rhino plus many many other species like the mongoose, oryx and more wort hogs. The animals are somewhat accustomed to people in vans, kind of like the bears in Yellowstone, so we are privileged to see them at close range for the most part. My favorites were the lions, who were a male and female mating as you see in the photo here and the cheetah mother and young young who were hunting this morning. They stalked several zebras and gazelles for quite a long time and the young one took a training run at a gazelle but wasn't successful. All of the animals were very alert and aware of the cheetahs presence so it was tough going.

We also visited a chimp sanctuary founded by Jane Goodall here. Chimps aren't native to Kenya so they are all chimps who have been pets that were rescued or have been born in the sanctuary despite of the use of birth control. They have been so damaged as previous pets or captives so they won't ever be released into the wild and therefore the sanctuary is trying to keep the numbers limited. If anyone is interested, you can adopt a chimp for one year for $6000USD.

The next stop is Kakamega and a visit to the JOP program. I think the Chico women will see a different side of Kenya there, as it is much more rural and densely populated. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing our Kenya partners, the JOP girls and my Kenyan friends.

Chicken #1 has two new friends

2009-07-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

We visited several more JOP girls’ homes in the villages today. I felt like my Granny Yates must have in 1865 crossing the prairie in a covered wagon. Yesterday it rained heavily and there were mud holes and lakes in quite a few spots on the road. On our way to the villages we passed some mysterious shops…there was the Long Wait Shop, across the street from The Salvage Hotel and next to the Victorious Butcher.

As you can see, chicken #1 has two new friends. The generosity of people who have so little is simply overwhelming. Chickens that are kept by rural families represent money in the bank and are not for eating. In case of an emergency, the family will be able to sell the chicken for cash to pay unexpected expenses. That makes giving a chicken a pretty big sacrifice.

Today, we visited one of the poorest families I have met in Kenya. It was almost more than I could bear. Mwanaidi’s father, who is about 35 years old, recently had a stroke. He is almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak. He used to be a mnamba, one of the guys responsible for drumming up business for the matatu taxis. He has 2 wives and 10 children plus his mother to support and there is literally no money. The mom and 5 children live in a one room mud walled house by the side of the road. It’s furnished with a wooden couch and a single mattress in the corner covered by mosquito netting. The grown children sleep on burlap bags on the concrete floor. Every single piece of clothing they were wearing was torn and ripped.

6 moths ago, the mother gave birth to twins. Carolina was significantly smaller than average but she was able to sit up on her own. She was running a high fever but otherwise looked like she was thriving. The little boy, Hussein, was the size of a one month old baby and he was very very sick, he could barely cry he was so weak. They have no money for a doctor or medication. Most likely the baby will die soon. Incredibly, in spite of all these hardships, the mother seemed happy and never complained about her difficulties.

Every one of these families has experienced bad luck. It seems like they just get on their feet and another tragic incident arrives on their doorstep. Sepeta’s father drove a tractor for the sugar cane factory. While working one day, it turned over and broke his left arm to pieces. He was employed as a “casual worker” and therefore no one was responsible for his medical bills. He told us that he feels very lucky that he is alive and believes that the accident meant that God must have another plan for him. Our JOP girl is in actuality his niece, both of her parents died of AIDS. She is one among 6 or 7 other orphaned children he and his wife have raised in addition to their own children.

When we hear the statistic regarding how people in Kenya live on $1 a day, it can be very misleading. Most Kenyans have enough land to grow maize and vegetables to feed their families, even if it is very little. What they lack is a way to generate the $1 a day they need to buy other essentials like soap, lard, tea, sugar and to pay doctor bills. So were pleased to see that, when we visited their homes, many families have taken the information they learned at the JOP parents’ training camps very seriously and have implemented the new ideas. 2 families have planted passion fruit that can be sold as a cash crop. The 17 year old girl who acts as Bridgette’s “stepmother” learned to roast peanuts and sold them at the market.

So, happily, Just One Person is making a small difference somehow. It is a much bigger dream than we originally envisioned.

Our programs not only support the girls in school, but we are also working to change the beliefs and traditions within Kenyan families that are obstacles to their achieving self sufficiency. So while it is difficult to seemingly ignore the dire circumstances that people must live with, our Kenyan partners and I believe that our resources must go to projects that will ultimately help people feed, clothe and education their families. Knowledge and encouragement are valuable contributions to the JOP young women and their families. It brings the gift of self esteem and self reliance to people who have, by relying on foreign aid, come to believe they are not able to do for themselves. We hope that as time passes, our JOP girls and their families will start to believe that “yote yawazekana”….everything is possible.

They call a chicken kuku in Kiswahili

2009-06-30T22:35:00.001-07:00

Even though Kakamega is a small commercial center, you don’t have to go very far from the main road to find yourself in a Kenyan village with no electricity and no running water. Many people, even in the villages located within walking distance of Kakamega, have never been to town and will live their whole life within a small radius of their village.

Yesterday we visited the homes of some of the girls who are participating in Just One Person. Luckily, we had access to a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Not only are the “main roads” into the interior riddled with pot holes and big rocks, but the path leading to one family’s shamba was just a bike path bordered on both sides by heavy shrubbery. The driver wasn’t concerned and we just drove through whatever was there, sometimes with the car leaning precariously to one side.

Visiting the girls’ homes paints a complete picture of what challenges the girls face as they are growing up. You can see how big the family is by how many small children are running around in the yard, whether the family owns a cow, how far the girls must walk to get water, if the family has enough land to grow vegetables or maize or kale and how far she has to walk to get transportation to school, which sometimes can be 2 or 3 miles.

We’re always honored guests when we visit and each family has its own story to tell. While visiting one of the Monica’s grandfathers, a very short, old, wrinkled Mama literally danced and sang as she entered the house to express her happiness at having visitors. The grandfather was almost completely blind with cataracts in both eyes. There were many women in the house during the visit, because the family practices polygamy so both Monica’s Dad and Grandfather had multiple wives. Unfortunately, polygamy is one of the cultural issues that perpetuate poverty in western Kenya. It gives rise to too many mouths to feed and educate and, when resources are available, they are always allocated to the boys first, and the girls are taken care of with whatever is left.

Lydia’s parents were both dead leaving her oldest brother in charge of providing for the entire family which included his mother, his own wives and family, his little brothers and sisters and his grown sisters who are widows. He worked very hard at making bricks by hand from clay dirt he had dug from a big swimming pool size hole in his yard. Even with that, he still struggles every day to put food on the table and it is rarely enough.

In spite of the hardships, Kenyans can be the most generous people in the world. We didn’t leave a single house empty handed. We were given maize, beans, avocados and a live chicken, that you see me holding in the photo. I think it was some kind of test to see if I could manage a mean live chicken which I thankfully passed. Poor chicken, they tied his feet so we could put him in the back seat and all during the ride home, he kept flapping his wings and jumping up to escape. The chicken lives temporarily at Emma’s house, at least until he is invited for dinner.

We were also given ¼ of an acre of land on Monica’s family land…..this is land that has been in the family for generations and passed down from father to son for centuries. I was so moved by the gesture and the appreciation the family has shown to JOP for the opportunity given to their daughter. It made me think about what our values are around education in the US?

At all these villages, the small children had never seen a white person or a picture of a white person before, especially one wearing glasses. Most of them were afraid that I was a “jinn”, their name for a ghost. I tried to greet a group of about 5 kids and two of them started crying and the rest ran away. Geez, I hope I didn’t give them nightmares. They are still wondering if I had lost my blood, or was I sick or was I a monster? A couple of weeks ago, a small child asked me what color my blood was. I wish I could assure her that not only is everyone’s blood is red; we all share the same blood regardless of our skin color.

Istanbul, Turkey...Home of the Turkish Carpet

2009-06-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

Istanbul was never really on my list of places to see before I die and now I am wondering why. I am only here by happenstance....thanks to the generous donation of United miles from my friend Beverly, I am flying to Nairobi via Istnabul this time. It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, so I arranged to stay for a couple of days to sightsee. In short, it is an astounding place and I would really love to not only come back to Istanbul again, but to tour the entire country. The history is so important to the western world. And it is wonderful to put places to all the names....Marco Polo, Constantine, Justinian, Persia, Tarsus, Epheseus, Ottoman, the list goes on. The country has been conquered and reconquered so many times, it didn't become a country in its own right until 1923! The population is 99% Muslim now, where once it was the seat of Christianity.

The city of Istanbul is very modern and westernized, a stark contrast to the dominance of Byzantine architecture. The old city streets are very narrow, winding and cobblestoned. The city sits on a small hill that overlooks the Bosphorous and the view makes it exceedingly clear why this was one of the most sought after port cities in the world, it really is a crossroads to the world.

Yesterday, I saw the Blue Mosque, famous for its interior decoration using blue tiles called "izik" tiles. The word turquoise is the French word for turkish blue and he color is ubiquitous and symbolic color in Turkey. I also visited Hagia Sofia, a church built by Justinian about 1300 years ago. Constantine built the first christian church on that location in about 300 AD, but it and another church burned down so now in its place is the Hagia Sofia. Since, for all practical purposes, no Christians live in Istanbul, it is now used as a concert hall. The huge wooden doors are said to have been made from wood brought down from the Ark on Mt. Ararat. Another set of doors were made in Tarsus, the home of the apostle Paul. The stone floors in all the mosques and churches are worn to a smooth, soft finish from so many bare feet treading on them for hundreds of years.

I also learned that flowers have particular significance in Turkey. The flower of Allah is the tulip because in Arabic script, the name Allah resembles a tulip. The rose is the flower of the Prophet Mohamed. These flowers are growing all over the city and not only make the city scenically beautiful, but also integrate faith into the residents' daily lives.

I love hearing the call for prayer all throughout the day. Live muezzins have been replaced by recordings broadcast over loudspeakers, but the calls from every mosque are synchronized and penetrate the city noises. The final call for prayer is timed with sundown and as a result, changes each day. Kakamega, where I live in Kenya, is located on the equator which means sundown never changes and therefore, the call for prayers from the mosque there remains constant all year.

My guide said she frequently is asked the question about how Turkish people feel about Americans. Thankfully, the people here have separated the Bush political choices from the American people's integrity and don't hold the average American responsible for the chaos we've created in the middle east nor do they beleive we see Muslims as part of the axis of evil. In my short experience here, I've found the people extremely friendly and accomodating and the men are respectful of women. In the city, all the women wear pants and I've only seen a few women in burkha. Fundamentalist Islamic women who do wear pants, also wear beautifully patterned headscarves and the current fashion seems to be to wear a type of belted raincoat over their clothes.

Finally, this is a city of COMMERCE. From its inception, tourism and trade have been the industries of Istanbul and there are shops and shops and shops everywhere. They are selling carpets, jewelry, leather coats, blue beads, belly dancing costumes, pillows, spices, tea, antiques, books, lamps, pashmina shawls, silk scarves, handbags, spinning tops, wooden flutes, hookahs, and of course the list could go on for pages. How in the heck do these people sell all these things???? Wait, this is a port city and that means cruise ships! Can you imagine people getting off cruise ships in 495 AD and coming to Istanbul to shop? I am pretty sure it happened. Marco Pollo was probably the first guy ever to shop till he dropped...

Food

2008-04-27T04:11:00.000-07:00

4/25/08

I give up. I want green chile enchiladas, I want pizza, I want steak, I want ice cream……The list is endless. People always ask what I eat in Kenya. The answer is pretty much the same thing day after day. Because Kenya was a British colony, the food is distinctly British. Chicken and tilapia are the only meat I eat, and with rice or French fries. Everything is bland, without spices. Most meals include ugali, the Kenyan’s favorite food. It is made from corn flour and water boiled together until it forms a type of a dense dumpling. It doesn’t have any taste to me and its main purpose is to fill your stomach. It is always accompanied by the staple Kenyan vegetable which is called sukuma wiki, or kale as we know it. I never realized before living in Kenya how much I like being able to choose something different to eat every day and how much I look forward to eating. For people here, meals are just a function of life and don’t have any other significance. I want tortilla chips, I want strawberries, I want…….

My brother Greg asked me once why I want to go back to Kenya. I guess it is like participating in a marathon or an Outward Bound course. It is a personal challenge to adapt and learn about living in a culture so different from ours and I feel that I grow as a person every time I am here. Having backpacked and camped for all my life has been the best preparation for coping with the inconveniences of the living conditions. Nothing has prepared me for learning to relate and communicate in a culture that is so different form ours. It is a challenge I face every day. This week I have visited a couple of places where, literally, the children have never seen a white person or even the image of a white person. They get so excited, I can hear them shouting to the other children, “come and see, there is a white person”. They all crowd around to shake my hand and greet me in the Kenyan fashion. Some of the children are too frightened and just stand back and stare at me. They are all very very poor. They are wearing tattered, dirty clothes from playing in the dirt, and none of them wear shoes. There is garbage disposed of everywhere and the houses are long concrete blocks with rooms on either side of an indoor hallway. Each family of 6,8,10 people lives in one room. The children will live their entire life in an area of about 3 square blocks.

As always, I am plagued by doubt if there is any big enough and long lasting solution for fighting poverty. It is like digging a hole in the sand, the hole gets to a certain depth, and then the side of the hole collapses and the sand falls back in again. My friend and mentor, Peter Ingosi, has dedicated his whole life to working on solutions here. He inspires me to be focused on doing what I can and hanging on to the faith that it will make a difference. That is when I repeat to myself for the millionth time, if I can help just one person then I will have succeeded.

No electricity and no water

2008-04-18T06:42:00.000-07:00

No electricity and no water. People sigh and say, “Yes, the water is a problem”. The dogs are even howling in the daytime. I am hurrying to get this written before my computer battery dies. I might have to resort to writing by hand…..

There has actually been no water in the town of Kakamega since I arrived. The people I am renting from have been either bringing water from somewhere, I think probably from the river near town because it looks cloudy, or saving rain water. However, today, there is not even water in the storage containers. The down side is that we are using the outdoor pit latrine because there is no water to service the inside toilet…

Several people have complained that they are still getting bills from the water company and are expected to pay. The rumor circulating is that the water company owes the electric company 14 million shillings (60 shillings for $1, you do the math) for its services, so the electric company has shut off the power until the bill is paid. That means that even the management at the power company doesn’t have water in their own houses. When it rains cats and dogs, which is does frequently as Kakamega is located on the edge of a rain forest; everyone rushes outside with collection containers to save water. The unfortunate thing is that studies done here have shown that the rainwater is impure and not safe to drink, so people get sick from using it if they don’t purify it first. Yesterday’s paper reported 11 cases of cholera and there is serious concern about an outbreak. Don’t worry; mzungus drink Dasani, the only sure source of pure water here.

I’ve developed a great system for bathing in a skimpy 2 gallons of water in a plastic basin. I lather my hair, get myself wet, soap up, rinse off with a washrag, pour some refreshing water over my head and rinse my hair. Oh, and then I wash my underwear. The laundry ladies here do not do underwear. Anyway, when I take a bath, I realize how much water we waste in the US taking those long luxurious showers. But man I sure miss the shower and I don’t think I will be converting to the bath in a basin method anytime soon.

The reality is that everyday life in Kenya takes time and planning, it is sprinkled with inconvenience and uncertainties, and requires flexibility and a make do spirit. The simple fact that people here live without the expectation that things will go smoothly or be easy results in a pace of life that is so relaxed and people centered. The genuine stress that plagues poor Kenyans is generated by the struggle to earn enough small money each and every day to feed and educate their families.

I guess my rhetorical question is this; if we have enough money in the US to eat and educate our children, why are we so stressed?

Kenya observer

2008-04-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

Today I love living in Kenya (not all days are like that). I’m travelling to Kisumu by matatu this morning. The matatu Nissan van is equipped with 14 seats for passengers, but it’s not officially full until there are 20 or 21 people crammed in, the unlucky passengers have to crouch between the seats in the narrow aisle. Boarding schools started their school break today so there are herds of girls in groups trying to catch a matatu home to their villages. Each girl is wearing a school uniform that identifies her as a student of that school. The uniforms are an array of colors, bright blue, forest green, gray, brown and maroon. They are wearing a white blouse, sweater or sweater vest, skirt, white anklets and black shoes. Some are required to wear ties. All have a number 2 haircut as required by the schools.

Really, I can’t emphasize enough the terrible conditions of the road between Kakamega and Kisumu. The potholes are so numerous and deep that it looks like it has been bombed. The matatus customarily drive very fast, not only so they can get to their destination and pick up another load of paying passengers, but also because the widespread belief is that by driving fast, the vehicle just skims over the holes and causes less wear and tear on the car. The whole matatu rattles and sways. The window next to me doesn’t latch and regularly rattles open so I hold it shut. Thank God for the numerous speed bumps that have been installed. We speed up to them, put on the brakes, crawl over them and then accelerate until the next one we encounter. I think riding matatus in Kenya has taught me more about not being in control than any other experience in my life. A day you arrive safely in a matatu is a good day.

Today there are numerous police check stations. The first few we breeze past with just a small bribe to the police officer for our infraction of the rules. But we are halted at a check station that is manned by two women police officers who mean business. On of them surveys the crowded matatu and begins ordering the extra passengers off, insisting that they catch the next matatu coming along. She grills the driver, asks to see his license and they move off to the side to discuss business. Shortly, the police officer returns and orders everybody out of the vehicle, announcing that this vehicle is under arrest. Uttering a weak protest, the passengers climb out and we stand by the side of the road, wondering how we are going to get a ride with all the matatus stuffed to the gills. The driver is arguing his case vehemently with the police officer across the road and after a few minutes, heads back to the matatu, tells us to get back in and we continue on our way. Apparently this particular police officer was holding out for something much bigger than “something small”, which is the customary price of a bribe. It is inexplicable, the matatu conductor will be forced the next run to take excess passengers to make up for the cost of the bribe, perpetuating unsafe travel conditions on the Kenyan roads.

Travelling Kenyan highways in the morning means being a spectator of the entire gamut of Kenyan lives. People simply live, work, play and socialize their lives outdoors and in public. Here is what I see:

-unaccompanied young children in groups of 3 or 4 walking on the dirt path along side the road, the oldest, about 8 years old, is carrying an infant on his back

-mamas in the traditional village dress, the kanga, carrying bundles of just about everything on their heads

- men digging holes by hand

-women hoeing fields of maize, potatoes, sugar cane

-vendor’s wooden stalls mile after mile, selling every type of commodity; tomatoes, onion, potatoes, mitumba, household goods, tea, sugar, cheap watches, hats, single bic pens, coffins

-hundreds of idle boda boda drivers

-people repairing bikes, tires, cars, motor bikes, shoes

-people sitting, people leaning, people laying on the ground, people walking on paths that have been worn into the countryside for generation after generation

There are crops growing in every clearing. It’s a hard thing for me to get my head around. As Americans, we have lived in our country for less than 500 years. The Kenyans have been depending on this land for thousands of years to provide for them and yet, it still continues to sustain them, a verdant green ecosystem that supports people, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, chicken, dogs, cats and multiple types of trees, birds and plants. The uninterrupted connection to the land over eons is the undeniable birthright of every Kenyan, defining their place in the world. If I were a Kenyan with such deeply planted roots in this land, I would ferociously defend my claim to it.

two blogs for the price of one

2008-04-07T03:53:00.001-07:00

There is a chatty blog right below the one describing my girls program.

girl power clubs

2008-04-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

Girls in rural Kenya lack places to gather together, the time to meet with friends and role models to talk about and explore issues that are important to them. In rural Africa, social isolation is a burden that prevents girls from learning about and discovering ways they can improve their lives.

Beginning as early as age 8, girls in Kenya assume a major responsibility for domestic chores. If they are lucky enough to attend school, they are still working at a full time job at home. They get up early to perform chores and help get younger siblings get ready for the day. After school, they have more chores and their last priority at night is completing their school work. Many girls are so tired at school that they have difficulty concentrating. Only 54% of Kenyan girls entering secondary school actually complete their education.

In partnership with local secondary schools and community based organizations, Just One Person is creating “Girl Power clubhouses” throughout Western Kenya. Here, girls meet, receive the support they need to attend and complete high school and learn about new opportunities that will empower them to become active participants in redefining the role of women in Kenyan society. Community women who have achieved success in nontraditional ways visit our clubhouses, share their stories and inspire girls to complete high school and pursue post secondary prospects.

Just One Person equips Girl Power clubhouses with computers and internet access, providing members with access to Information and Computer Technology and formal computer training. In addition, through projects like our “Girl Power” on line magazine, girls can share their stories with Girl Power members at other clubhouses and with interested American high school girls. Along with providing incentives for improving academic performance in science and math, these girls will be better prepared to compete for high tech jobs in the developing Kenyan economy.

Girl Power members also take part in outreach activities in their communities. During school breaks, the girls might volunteer to help clean and paint a school or organize an arts and crafts day at an orphanage. In turn, the local communities contribute to the sustainability of each clubhouse by supporting the program through fundraising and through financial support from those members who have graduated from the program and return as alumni to continue to participate as role models and mentors.

Although there are no tuition fees for secondary education, with assistance from our donors, Just One Person and our local partners award annual scholarships to qualified members on merit. Scholarships help pay for additional expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, shoes, transportation to and from school, supplies and lunch.

Girls in Africa face other challenges as well. The lack of access to clean toilets and sanitary napkins causes girls to miss an average of 3 school days per month, often negatively affecting their academic achievement. Many families in rural areas literally must choose between food and sanitary napkins for their daughters. The simple act of supplying sanitary napkins to girls through the Just One Person project boosts girls’ self confidence and empowers them to excel at school.

There are many reasons educating girls in Africa is a good idea. Studies by the World Bank show that by increasing the share of women completing secondary education by 1 percentage point can boost the annual per capita income growth in a developing country by 0.3 percent on average. Girls’ secondary education reduces infant mortality, increases childhood immunization and nutrition, lowers fertility rates and unwanted pregnancies, and significantly reduces the rate of HIV infections.

However, at Just One Person, we believe that the most important reason for our program is the human connection we share with people in developing countries who are struggling to improve their lives. We know that we can’t save the world. Our mission is to create opportunities for caring members in our communities to reach out in a personal and meaningful way and help just one person.

2008-04-07T03:17:00.001-07:00

I jumped on my magic carpet and arrived back in Kenya. Every time I make the trip, I marvel at how easy it is to be in a different world in such a short period of time. However, having come so many times now, I am really starting to feel like everything is normal here. Fewer things are a mystery to me and some things are a comfort to me. It is probably made easier by the fact that I am renting a room from a family in a nice, by Kenyan standards, house.

The people I am living with both work for the provincial government so they are very well off. The woman is the only female veteranarian in Kakamega and her husband is an agricultural researcher. Various people live in the house and I am still trying to sort them out. Kenyan families are very fluid. There are 4 children, some of which are at boarding school and will be home during school break. The youngest child, John, who is about 2 1/2 is affected by cerebral palsy, which is a funny coincidence, being that our youngest granddaughter, Bailey is also affected by cerebral palsy. There are a couple of "housegirls" and a sister of the wife, who is deaf, providing me an opportunity to learn some sign. From time to time, there are some old Luhya mamas here who must be relatives from the village. Hospitality is very generous in Kenya and a fact of life.

I am working like crazy to develop my programs for the short time I am here. The first one, Just One Person, is a girls empowerment group, for which I have included a description of our project to give everyone a better sense of what we are doing. We have hired my colleague and good friend, Peter Ingosi, to be the program director. His experience at working in Kenya is absolutely invaluable. All of our good ideas would not be possible without his guidance. We will also be hiring a woman to be the program coordinator.

My other project is the group of entrepreneurs that was formed by micro finance clients I worked with before. We are working to set up some type of manufacturing enterprise that will result in a bigger business than is possible by each of them working independently and that will ultimately create employment here in Kakamega. They may have a chance to work with a Chico based company called Chico Bag, a manufacturer of reusable shopping bags. It seems like a perfect fit and I am hoping things work out.

I have spent the last couple of days renewing my friendships here and learning about "the post election chaos", Everyone comments that it was startling how quickly things descended into violence. There was a community of Kikuyu (the opposite side from the Luhya) in Kakamega so there was the burning of houses and physical violence for a short period. Apparently, people were confined to their houses, without the ability to buy airtime for their phones or food. The local Kikuyus are now camping as displaced persons on the grounds of the police station. There is still some anxiety here, but it seems like for the most part, things have returned to normal, aside from high inflation of prices resulting from a disorganized economy.

In any event, above is a description of what we hope to accomplish with our girls project. Once again, I feel so fortunate to have found at this time of my life, a work of passion.

Poverty has a face

2007-11-13T00:30:00.001-08:00

November 10, 2007

Never have I felt so far from my world as I am today. And I just now ran away to a place called Shewe Guest House, the most upscale hotel in Kakamega. I am sitting in a banda, overlooking a peaceful green valley. From the town, I can hear the politicians speaking and people cheering for them. But that is another story.

Since I first came to Kenya, I’ve lived in Kakamega for the equivalent of 8 months. Kakamega is a very poor town, even though is in the midst of an active agricultural area and is a commercial center. I’ve been working with micro finance clients who are generally not the lowest on what is called the pyramid of poverty. My meetings with clients are held at central meeting places which have limited my experience of what their lives are like. I’ve also been invited to people’s homes in Kakamega but surprisingly those houses didn’t match my preconceived notion of their living conditions. Those people live in permanent houses with cement walls and cement floors. They were sparsely furnished, but the family lived comfortably by Kenyan standards.

Last night, that changed. The picture is Faith and Junior. When I lived in a part of town called Koromatangi, these children lived along the road where I walked to and from town everyday. Their house on the road was a one room mud walled hut with a dirt floor. I was never invited in, but from the door I could see that there were no furnishings in the house. Really, like most all little kids on the lane, Faith and Junior were always excited to greet the mzungus who lived in their neighborhood. But Junior was especially enthusiastic. He’d wait in the road in front of his house at the time he knew I would be walking home, and from way down the road I could hear him shout, Mzungu, Mzungu! Then, as I got closer, he would run and jump into my arms, sometimes stumbling along with his pants falling down around his knees. He was indomitable. When Bob visited, he and Junior became good buddies. I think he was drawn to Bob because of the curly white hair and Bob’s crazy laugh. Bob loved Junior’s spunk, often he had just gotten in trouble for doing something mischievous. Ultimately, Bob and I decided that we would like to provide financial support for these children to attend a private primary school. In Africa, investing in a child’s education is one of the only effective ways to help him to find a better life as an adult. School tuition, uniforms, transportation, lunch and books and paper cost $375 per year for each child. I really don’t know why we chose these particular children over the hundreds of other children like them. In Kenya people would say that we had been sent by God in response to their prayers.

Yesterday, I visited their house. In an informal way, our financial support has made me the “shosho” or grandmother of the house. Mama ya Faith met me at the road to escort me to the house. She looked so young; she must be about 21 or 22 years old. She has three children, Faith is the oldest and she is about 4.

At the house, I met poverty face to face. This family of five live in a one room house that is approximately 8 feet by 14 feet. The room is divided in half by a sheet hanging from the ceiling. The sitting room has two or three chairs and a coffee table. The second “room” contains a bed in which all five people sleep and where they store what few things they own. There is no electricity.

Every child in the neighborhood greeted me in the yard. I brought my camera and they loved it when I took their pictures and they could see them on the monitor. There were so many little hands grabbing at me and so many unattended snotty noses.

Mama ya Faith sent one of the kids to buy a coke for me. Conversation was difficult, she spoke broken English and I spoke bad Kiswahili, but the welcome was genuine. Shortly, baba ya junior came home. I had never met Joseph before and at that moment; the reality of everything hit me. The dad is very sick and if I am guessing right, he is severely affected with AIDS. His eyes were sunken and he was gaunt. When it got dark in the house, they sent one of the children to buy about 12 cents worth of kerosene for the lantern.

Even living here, until I experienced it, I was hanging on to my idealized view of poverty. It’s disheartening and discouraging. I want to save everyone. But, in reality, even Bill Gates can’t provide for them.

My good friend, Peter Ingosi, who has been my mentor and teacher in Kakamega has told me a thousand times that the “way forward” is not by giving people money. Until yesterday, I’ve always been halfway skeptical of this advise. He’d tell me that ultimately, they have food for today, but nothing else. I had to meet poverty at Faith and Junior’s house to finally understand his advice. Right now, there are no jobs and no hope for people in Kakamega. Foreign aid has a choice, we can feed the people for one day or we can use our resources to help them build industries that will provide jobs to feed them tomorrow and the next day.

You know what, it is an overwhelming job. Sometimes I want to give up and turn away just like I am doing today as I sit here on the Veranda of Shewe Guest House. I want to pretend that somehow people will manage because they have for hundreds of years. But, it is getting harder for me to ignore that in my time and place, I have been more than fortunate. All of my problems together don’t measure up to the struggle Africans face when they have the perseverance to get up every morning and find a way to make it through another day. Words sound so corny and inadequate in trying to tell this story. I just hope that sharing my experience will help people understand at some level that it is so important that we keep trying, because the people here are not giving up, they have no other choice.

FAMILY LIFE IN KAKAMEGA

2007-11-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

I woke up feeling gray today. Not on my head, but in spirit. The weather here has been very rainy, people say it is due to global warming. It is supposed to be summer here, but it has rained every day and night for the last couple of weeks. And I mean rain, it absolutely pours down cats and dogs. It makes traveling around town very challenging. Balancing an umbrella while riding on a boda boda is a practiced skill, and then the umbrella doesn't totally protect me so I end up soaking wet when I get where I am going. Believe it or not, it is a little bit cold as well, jacket weather. It is just not what you expect in equatorial Africa.

In any event, I was invited to the home of my friend Evelyn Buhenza last night for tea. She lives in a permanent two bedroom house with about 10 or 12 members of her family. The house doesn't have electricity. The kitchen is a small shack behind the house where the mama cooks over a fire and the tradition 3 stones. the goat pen also shares the kitchen. Goat milk is rumored to be very nutritious especially for people with HIV. Their are also some chickens who live in the house with their chicks so that they are out of weather and more likely to survive. Evelyn is my friend who is HIV positive and has herpes xoster which is a large brown growth on the left side of her face. It is painful, it semi paralyzes her face and she has lost all of her teeth on the left side as a result of it. She is taking ARV which is very successful in keeping the virus from progressing However there are side effects like the stomach ulcers she has.

Evelyn has been lucky that her family has welcomed her back after her husband died of AIDS and she tested positive. The stigma is so high here that most HIV positive people are left to manage on their on. However, Evelyn has joined another woman here who has publicly acknowleged that they are HIV positive and have become active advocates for overcoming stigma and inspiring other HIV positive people to seek ARV treatment and to find ways to live positively while looking toward the future. As many of you know, Evelyn has returned to school to get a degree in social services and i have raised a small amount of money from people in Chico to assist her with the tuition. I really respect and admire her and am happy to be able to support her work. She has told me that when she tested positive she felt like she has received a death sentence and that her family felt like they were living with a dead person. But now she has so many opportunities and is so enthusiastic about her work and her goals for the future.

My greyness disappeared after meeting with her at her school this morning. She has to be extremely brave because as we walked down the street, people openly stared at her and her face. I am uncomfortable being stared out because I am white, but people here believe that a person with HIV has somehow done something immoral so her reception is for the most part very distant. I've realized how far we've come in the US since the Ryan White case.

She is also one of the rare women feminists in Kakamega. Women have traditionally held an inferior position here. Sincerely their only option was to get married early so that they did not remain a burden to her parents. The Luyha tribe, where I live, still pay dowries. Funny enough, when people die here they are buried in the family plot inside the shamba or boma. But if a woman dies without getting married and her husband dies and she doesn't remarry, she is buried outside the boma, usually at a place far away. She was also telling me about women and children outside of marriage. It's required that the woman name a father on the a birth certificate. If she doesn't know the father, she is forced to name someone. Then , the man's parents are entitled to come and take the child to raise. However, if the family doesn't believe the man is actually the father, they will take the child but most likely the child won't survive.

Those sound like terrible stories, but ultimately, it is all about a scarcity of resources. People do what they have to do to survive and to keep their families going. These are such hard concepts for me to understand and I try my best to not make any judgements because, I have never been faced with those choices. I imagine it will take more than one or two generations to make the changes that Evelyn and those few other women are stuggling for.

POLITICS IN KENYA

2007-11-03T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is an election year in Kenya. The president serves for 5 years and can be elected to office twice. The current president, Kibaki, is running for reelection.

Kenya gained indepence from the British in 1963, so they haven't been participating in government for very long. It is unbelievably interesting to watch the process that we must have gone through a couple of hundred years ago. The first president was kenyatta, he was highly respected and got the country off to a good start. Then, in 1981, i think, Daniel Arape Moi took power and ruled until 5 years ago. Moi was totally corrupt and almost bankrupted the country while doing nothing for the people. He neglected all the infrastructure so badly that i think it will take 20 years for Kenya to catch up, even under the assumption that the government will honestly allocate money for the projects. The worst and biggest hurdles to economic development is the roads. The roads make it almost impossible to get raw materials to and from places and to get finished goods to market. The other day I took a matatu to a town called Kericho, which is the tea capital of the country. The road was so bad that the cars have simply driven off the side of the road and made a new dirt road. it was literally four wheel driving the whole way. and of course, the driver drove mostly 80 miles an hour except for the really bad potholes. as we say, any day you get somewhere safely in the matatu is a good day.

anyway, all the politicians(they are called aspirants) who are running for office are now campaigning around the country and the people are talking about nothing except the elections. It is Kibaki(a kikuyu) against Raila Odinga(a luo). Kibaki is for the status quo, which is to keep all power in Nairobi and manage in a top down approach. Raila is supporting a radical idea which is to transfer power to the provinces and let them decide how to use their taxes and natural resources best. Unfortunately, the majority of the people in the rural areas are not well educated about government and are easily swayed by who gives the best t-shirt at the rally. in addition, no matter who gets elected, managing resources in kenya is all about taking care of your own. first priority is your extended family, then your tribe, then your community. It has been that way for hundreds of generations and i sincerely don't know if it will ever change. i think there is a growing population of young people who would like to see change, but they are swimming against the current.

Yesterday at the Golf Hotel, one of the "American" hotels in town there was a big rally. i was eating lunch there and watching the dynamics of the goings on. There were quite a few well dressed men who exuded an air of importance who i took to be the candidates and their staff. Their was a canopy set up on the lawn and all the seats there were filled with men. There interstingly enough, a section of chairs outside the tent where the women sat. The rally started with a long prayer and then, the women did some sort of welcoming song for the cadidate. After that, it was a speech that could be heard by any candidate in any country.

However, in spite of the exclusion of the women by the general audience, there are several women who are running for office all over Kenya. The unfortunate thing is that, every day in the newspaper, there are stories about those women getting beaten up. It is condemned by the press, but of course, the people in the rural areas who are participating in this do not frequently read the papers. it is definitely a slow going and painful process of political reform.

I wish I was going to be here for the elections which are held in December. The energy of the town has really picked up with all the activity and i imagine things will really start to get interesting. My prediction is that Kibaki will triumph. In my experience, Kenyans are slow to accept change and prefer to hope that the current situation will improve, rather than risk the unknown.

My Humble Abode

2007-10-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

10/29/07

While in Nairobi last week, I took some time to see some of the sights around. Since I have been coming to Kenya, the only thing I have ever seen in Nairobi was the airport and downtown. So, I hired a taxi driver to show me around for a few hours. Solomon gives tours like this often and was an old hat. We first visited the animal orphanage at the Nairobi National Park which, believe it or not, is on the outskirts of the town. There is an animal orphanage that takes animals brought in from the bush by wildlife officers. The animals are not released back into the wild but live out there lives there. There were many lion cubs and several adult lions, a cheetah and a leopard. The most enjoyable part of the experience was that there were several nusery school field trips there and to watch those 3 and 4 year olds and their excitement at seeing these animals was so fun. They all were wearing the standard school uniform of shorts(boys)skirts(girls)white shirts and sweater. The schools are differentiated by color, red, green, maroom, blue, etc. After, we visited a giraffe sanctuary housing 14 giraffes. Did you know there are 3 different species of giraffes distinguishable by the patterns on their bodies, and if their pattern extends all the way down their legs. Visitors stood on a feeding platform and fed the beggars pellets. Giraffes have black rough tongues like a cat, but they are about a foot long so their tongue snakes out of their mouth and grabs the pellets out of the palm of your hand. They were pretty demanding to be fed and at one point, one of the more dominant giraffes swung her neck and head butted a woman standing there unaware. It was a really hard blow and the woman was shaken up. The attending volunteer remarked that "we have a sign warning about head butting". One is expected to use common sense and personal responsibility in Africa. And people here know that accidents happen.

After that, Solomon told me he would drop me for lunch and we proceeded to drive to the ultra rich ultra white part of Nairobi called Karen. The area is of course where Karen Blixen, the author of "Out of Africa" lived. We went to the Karen Country Club and I had a delicious vegetable crepes with creme sauce lunch. I felt transported by scotty to another planet after having lived all my time here in Kakamega. The homes in this area are absolutely monstrous, probably averaging between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet, all of them with separate servants quarters. These are the remants of the white colonial Kenyans. I just couldn't help wondering why the hell these rich white Kenyans weren't pitching in to assist in the development of the impoverished rural areas in Kenya. OH well, who said life was supposed to be fair. Oddly enough, on the return trip, about 1 mile from Karen, you see the immense shanty town slum famous in Nairobi called Kibera.

Silly me, a couple of days ago I found out that my hotel room does have hot water! Well actually it is warm water, but alot easier to start the day with than cold water. There is a small switch on the bathroom wall that turns off and on the water heater. Wonders never cease. Downstairs there is a restaurant and bar and last night was the big football match between the English premier league teams, Arsenal(1/2 of Kakamega mens chosen team) and Liverpool. The other 1/2 of Kakamega cheers for Mann U. I could follow the game from my room by the sounds of quiet or the sounds of cheering from below. When the game was tied near the end of the game, the fans went crazy with happiness, whistling, cheering, clapping for a period of about 5 minutes. The identify so completely with their english team. I guess the game ended in a draw but Arsenal remains as the league leader. That is all you can hear being discussed by all the guys in town today.

Finally, a word about Kenyan words. The Kenyans speak British English and have a much bigger vocabulary than we do as lazy Americans. So when I am here I almost have to learn to speak another language called English. You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to always try to be articulate when you are talking. They also have a british/kenyan accent and use many british/kenyan phrases that it can sometimes require thinking about. Rather than having a baby, they say "she got a baby", rather than me too, they say "same same to me" rather than saying I live in that direction, they say "I live the other side". I am always wondering the other side of what? The list of unique phrases is quite long and it is my intention to develop a phrase book to help other clueless mzungus to communicate with Kenyans.

So for now, god bless you, good night and it will be ok.

P.S. Here are some makeshift pictures of my hotel room. The one is of my underwear drying on the balcony. It is considered very rude to let someone wash your underwear or to even see it drying on the line, so i have to do the washing in a bucket in my room.

Settling In

2007-10-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

10/21/07

I am sitting watching the sun set over Lake Victoria in the city of Kisumu and listening the children play in the pool five floors down. They let people bring their children to swim on Sundays. I think the hotel management feel like if they have a pool, they might as well let someone use it. I am staying on the 5^th floor, which is actually called the 4^th floor, and the elevator is not working. In reality, until not too long ago, elevators were a real luxury here and so everyone is quite accustomed to running up and down the stairs. Me, on the other hand, I am not so anxious to run down to the lobby just to get something….

On the way from Kakamega we passed two stacks of plastic green lawn chairs just sitting by the road. When I see odd things like that, which is pretty often, I always wonder about the story behind it. I came in the taxi of my friend Maloba. He is a very safe driver although the roads are literally bombed with potholes; I don’t know how their cars stay in one piece. Actually, when we got to Kisumu, Maloba’s car began having problems with the idle and it totally died every time we slowed down. We solved the problem by recruiting a couple of guys every time it stopped to give us a push so he could jump start it. Flexibility is the strength of Kenyans.

In pursuit of implementing our girls’ empowerment project, I chatted with six high school girls to get their input and ideas. Initially they were very shy, but after devouring chicken and fries, they were surprisingly open. When I asked them about what kind of topics would be interested in discussing during the meetings that are a part of the program, they gave answers like abortion, coping with stress, learning how to care for an HIV patient who was ill, and how to overcome and live with the stigma that always accompanies having a parent who is HIV positive. The typical day for these girls are to get up at 5 am and prepare some sort of food, get ready for school and depart for school at 7 am, go to school until 5 pm, travel back home for one hour, do all the household chores and complete their homework. It is staggering to think of what is expected of 15 and 16 year old girls. They also wanted some advice on how to improve their concentration in class.

Not all students in Kenya are admitted to high school. They sit for exams in the 8^th grade. Based on their marks, they are then admitted to a school for which they are eligible. There are four classes of schools, based on highest marks to lowest acceptable marks. The national schools, the provincial schools, the district schools and the harambee or community schools. The most desirable schools are of course boarding schools where they can escape the responsibilities of home, but of course they cost considerably more and even if a student is chosen, they may not be able to afford the fees.

The students sit for exams again after they complete the 12^th grade, and currently because there are so many students and not enough facilities, the universities are only accepting students who score and A- or higher. Even if the student qualifies for university, it requires a bribe of about $2000 for the student to be considered for acceptance.

According to the papers, the college admission board one of the top three most corrupt institutions in Kenya. Do we really understand how lucky we are in the US?

I also attended a meeting of the group of microfinance entrepreneurs that have come together to form a coalition with the intent of strengthening their businesses as a collective. The seriousness of the members is astounding. They have formed a registered community based organization, elected officer and adopted a constitution. The constitution outlines fines for lateness to meetings, excused absences and unexcused absences and expulsion of a member who does not regularly attend. The meetings are conducted by Roberts rules of order, except for the prayer part. Prayer is a major part of all gatherings, public or family and these people are expert prayers. There is a prayer to the opening of the meeting, before we eat our snack, and at the close of our meeting. I would guess that the praying took up about 20 minutes of the meeting. They have a strong faith in the goodness of God and rely on prayer to bond them together as a community. I am just praying they don’t ever call on me to lead the prayer….

The chairlady of the group had just experienced some bad luck. She had purchased a tree and paid someone to turn in into lumber for her, using a borrowed chain saw. Apparently, someone had been watching the goings on, and in the night, came to the house where the wood was waiting to be hauled away and stole the lumber, the chain saw and the truck being used to haul the wood. They also beat up the owner of the house so badly that he is in the hospital. She had borrowed money to buy the tree, which she could have easily paid back after the sale of the lumber, but now she has no means to repay the loan. This is a story I hear repeatedly in Kenya. Theft is so rampant here. The group members agreed by consensus that they would each be prepared by the next meeting to financially assist the woman. Helping and sharing among friends and family are an integral part of rural Kenya. There is no hesitation or doubt about the obligation of helping someone in trouble. It is the way things work, you can absolutely count on getting the same type of assistance if and when you are in need. The government doesn’t make Kenya run, the caring people of Kenya do.

I AM HAPPY TO BE BACK

2007-10-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Kisumu, a town on the edge of Lake Victoria on Sunday via Kenya Airways. I decided the 80 bucks was worth it over a 9 hour very very very bumpy ride from Nairobi to Kakamega. Kakamega is a one hour taxi or matatu ride north of Kisumu. You actually travel a whole world away, from the third largest city in Kenya to a very rural town of Kakamega. While I am here for 5 weeks, rather than staying in an apartment, I am residing at the Ambwere Alliance hotel. It is actually nicer than I anticipated for about $7 per day. It has a balcony, a nice bed, it's very clean and has a sit down toilet with 1/2 of a toilet seat, the back half. The room is painted like every room I've ever been seen in Kenya, the bottom half is painted turquoise blue and the top half is painted pale yellow. I am really curious about the meaning behind the color scheme. My first night here I ate in the dining room. The ubiquitous black and white tv was on, showing a Japanese movie with English subtitles, the sound was turned down because the radio was blaring over the loud speaker. The building is of course constructed of concrete and has large, high halls. In the morning I am woken by the usual African sounds, the roosters, the boda boda bells, the chatter of people working and a treat, the maid singing swhaili hymns as she works.

However, cold water is not part of the deal. There is a low pressure shower head, but taking a cold shower requires bracing myself. For shower shoes, they provide a pair of mismatched blue and red thongs(flip flops, not underwear)

I've seen so many people I know and they once again have been very welcoming. I have discovered if I walk at a slow leisurely pace people assume I am more of a mzungu resident than occasional visitor, plus by slowing down I recognize people I know and can be more friendly. Africans always have that stone face, but if you greet them with a smile, they bloom into really friendly people. They just look intimidating.

I am surprised how my swahili is coming back. It seems like it needs to simmer in my head during the times I am at home, and then it is there to use when I am here. The maid at the hotel doesn't speak English so I am truly forced to speak swahili, rather than be lazy and speak English. It helps that she is very patient. Children are also good to practice on.

It must be the rainy season. It has been pouring cats and dogs most days. That makes it a little more difficult to get around. Even an umbrella doesn't really help, the wind blows the rain sideways. Apparently it is not really mosquito season though and no malaria is going around, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that my malaria medicine is effective and I am going to skip that part this time.

Everyone is focused on politics right now. The presidential election is in December. The present president Kibaki is running again and another guy named Raila. The race is really against a Kikuya(Kibaki) and a Luo(Raila). Those are the two biggest tribes in Kenya. The other remaining 40 tribes are in the process of lining up with their preferred candidate. Most tribes traditionally like or dislike the one of the tribes represented, so rather than voting on an issue basis, they vote for the preferred tribe. I guess that is really not so different than the US. The Luhya, the tribe I live with, hate the Kikuyu, so they are Raila all the way. Also, there is alot of news in the paper right now of election corruption and buying votes, which is very effective for people who only eat one meal a day.

The First Normal Week

2007-05-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

The trip to Kisumu had a hectic ending. We picked up Alicia Robb, who is the founder of the Foundation for Sustainable Development, at the Kisumu aiport and arranged for a taxi to take us to Kakamega. There were several taxis vying for the trip, so after all the drivers haggled for a while, we ended up in a pretty nice honda mini suv. however, at the last moment for some unkown reason, we had to transfer all of our stuff to a different car in which we had to hold most of our stuff on our lap. About halfway home, the car started to smoke furiously and the driver had to pull off the road, which made us all a little uneasy. He opened the hood and looked at it suspiciously, but it was clear he didn't have a clue what was wrong. He made several calls and finally arranged for another driver to come. In the meantime, it started pouring down rain, it was very hot and humid in the car while we were waiting. Another guy arrived in about 45 minutes but he was unfortunately in a double cab truck and didn't have a tarp to cover all the luggage, so we were forced to put the luggage in the front seats and four of us crammed into the back seat. Actually, three of us sat on the seat while Alicia laid on our laps. Ah, don't you just love Africa. We made it home safe, but not really sane.

The purpose of Alicia's trip was to visit several of the organizations that interns of FSD have worked with in the past. One of them is a center for handicapped children. The headmaster is great, very well educated and knowledgeable about children with special needs. In Kenya, children with special needs are thought to be sent by God to punish someone's bad acts. As a result, most children are hidden in the house or actually tied behind the house like an animal. The Center does outreach to identify and bring these children to live at the school. They seem to thrive in this environment but still it tugs at my heart to see how tough their lives are.

On a separate day, we visited shikokho high school and delivered the soccer socks and shoes. Last year, thanks to the Chico State Women's team we were able to deliver uniforms and several pair of shoes. Even though the girls team is only 6 years old, they performed very well at the district tournament last year. Believe it or not, the village of Shikokho just got electricity and they already have a computer lab that is serviced by high speed internet. It is so great, it really connects the high school students to the world. Another neat thing that has happened here is that it is possible to get internet through your phone, so our program director Peter actually can work on the internet at his house which doesn't have electricity. Thank God for Alexander Graham Bell.

After that we went to a women's group in Malinya. They are a group of widows who are hiv postive but have come together to support each other and to do community work. They met us at the gate dressed in their lavendar sateen dresses and sang and trilled to welcome us.
They also presented us with strings of tinsel as a kind of a hawiian lei. We did all the formalities and then they fed us dinner, ugali, kale, cabbage and chicken. It rained heavy in the afternoon so it was very dark in the house while we were eating, but really i can't imagine a nicer experience. I worked with some of the women at k-rep and they were very welcoming. I have seen so many people i know here, I hadn't realized how many people i had gotten acquainted with. It is a wonderful second home.

I haven't had water in my house for several days so I have come to town to buy a jerry can and water. It is so funny that in Kakamega where it rains every single day that the water is so inconsistent. People here are so accustomed to adjusting to whatever circumstances happen.

I am not in Kansas any more

2007-05-14T00:07:00.001-07:00

After a 30 hour flight and 10 hour bus ride, I am back. Someone asked me how was Kakamega and I had to reply, it is the same as it was 10 years ago, I am sure. In some ways, the slow pace of change is very relaxing. There is comfort in knowing that I don't have to learn and adjust to very much, that I can slip back into my same routine.

People here have been more than wonderful in welcoming me back. Because I am an older white woman, which is a very rare species here, people tend to recognize me and are surprised to see that I have returned. In the next few weeks I will have a chance to visit some of the microfinance groups I worked with before and that will be great. However, I anticipate some tough times too, since many of the people had Aids and there is a distinct possibility that some may have died. I did get a chance to see one woman from the groups, who had shared her story with me last year. She is in the advance stages of AIDS and has herpesxoster on the left side of her face. This condition is like a big dark mole or wart that is progressive and actually debilitates the nerves on that side of her face. In any event, not only is having the medical problems difficult, having this disease is like wearing a scarlet A for aids. She shared with me that not only is her farming business going well, she has become certified for HIV testing and counseling as well. I am really impressed with that because so few people here with are willing to be an AIDS victim in public, instead they remain secluded until they die.

I saw our adopted children, Faith and Junior. I actually live on the same lane again, only a little further down the way. They were very cute, yelling mama Nette, mama Nette. When I picked junior up he told me in kiswahili that he is reading. They seem to love school and all the extended family is very buoyed up by the fact that they are going to school. They do have a new little brother named Peter. The guy who helps me by paying the school fees and buying the uniforms is named Peter and he is really thrilled to have a namesake. In any event, I can see that I may have to go back to work to support more than a couple of kids! There are so many children here that could use our support. While I am here I will be taking some picture and videos of children that would benefit from some support and I will share those with you when I get home.

The people I will be working with here are Peter Ingosi, the man I knew last year, and a young woman from Florida named Lillian. She is an old pro, she has been here since August. Our first group of new interns arrives on June 3rd so we are busy planning the orientation week for them. Currently, there are four interns here. This weekend we made a trip to the Kakamega Forest and spent the night. On Sunday morning, we started a hike at 4:45 am and ended up on a hill watching the sun rise over the rain forest. It was beautiful, the mist was hanging low, all the birds were making a raquet and you could hear the colobus monkeys call all around the forest. On the return trip, we actually spotted a gaboon viper crossing in the trees above us. Thank god it was little and didn't seem as dangerous as a big one would have. I still had the creeps.

We are cramming into a matatu this morning and heading to the big city of Kisumu to do some errands. Then I will know I am back, hot, crowded and dangerous. Africa in a nutshell.

2006-10-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

This is the countryside around Kakamega. It is much greener and more pastoral than I expected to find in Kenya

2006-10-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is all the partygoers stuffed into my living room. Andrew Lutomia helped corral everybody and the kids were unbelievably well behaved.

2006-10-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

These are the winners
of the boys dance
contest. They could
really go.

2006-10-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

This is one of the lender groups.
They live in a small village about
30 minutes outside of Kakamega.
50% if these people are HIV
positive, but they were the most
fun and happiest group I worked with

2006-10-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

This is my faithful boda boda
driver, Francis. It was so great
to see friends every day.

2006-10-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

this is my friend and client named melbarkley. she is hiv positive and a single mom.

final chapter in kakamega

2006-10-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

I left Kakamega on Friday, October 6th. The six weeks that I stayed in Kakamega this time went so darn quickly. I stayed really focused on work while I was here. For me, the work was incredibly rewarding and I felt like I was really doing valuable work and making a positive contribution. Working on a volunteer basis for no pay is a wonderful experience because I was no longer relying on how much money I was making to determine the worth of my efforts. Instead, my connection to the people I was working with and their feedback were all that I needed to feel happy about working. I managed to video about 8 clients and their businesses for my training DVD project and both Bob and I are really looking forward to the challenge of creating it now. I also was able to complete the framework for the training manuals and I arranged to set up a classroom as planned in the Kakamega office. Both the program director and the managing director in Nairobi were very happy to add these tools to their program and I think we all feel that implementing an effective training program for our clients will not only give them the direction the need to make their businesses successful, but also to add to the quality of their life with education as well. Anyway, time will tell if that is true or just a hopeful fantasy!

By interviewing clients for this video, one of the bonuses was getting to know them so much better. One of the women who started from absolutely zero and now owns several successful businesses was very inspiring. She has publicly acknowledged that she is HIV positive which is a rare and brave action. She told me that she choose to go public because in reality most people around her already knew and everyone spent quite a bit of time whispering about it, so by acknowledging it, she stole the gossip back from them. Now, she calls herself an ambassador for hope for people with HIV. Her story about HIV is so typical of many of the women I got to know in Kenya. She and her husband were living in Nairobi, he died and she found out that she was HIV positive. As a widow and HIV victim, she lost everything, even the support of her family, even though being positive was not her fault. So, with one child, she moved back to Kakamega and started participating in the FAHIDA micro credit program and really empowered herself. Another women with a similar story invited me to her home for tea one evening. She and her 9 year old daughter live in one room about 10 feet by 20 feet. There is a curtain hanging accross the middle of the room to separate the bed from the living area. She was so welcoming to me, we had chai, boiled yams and boiled sweet potatoes which we ate by latern light. I know that everyone in Kenya struggles in the same way, but I was always so touched at how people made the absolute best of their situation and seemed to be happy in spite of it. That is a story that I witnessed time after time in Kakamega and it has made me think so hard about our lives here in the US. But that is a whole nother blog entry!
One of the final highlights of stay before I left was that I gave a small party for 56 of the neighborhood children. The children who lived on my lane and in my neighborhood gave me so much happiness. When I came home after work and walked down the lane to my house, all the little kids waited by their houses to come out and greet me every night. One of them would see me coming and shout for all the other kids to come say hi to the muzungu. I was teaching them to say howdy and give me five. It literally took me 30 minutes to walk home since I stopped so many times to say hi. My favortie group of kids lived near me and I have already put their picture on the blog. Their names were junior, faith and cecilia. They all wanted to be picked up and hugged when I came by, and sometimes they were pretty dirty and without any pants, so i just hoped mommie had wiped their bottoms good when I picked them up. Anyway, one Friday night, Andrew Lutomia and I visited all the houses in the neighborhood and invited the kids to come, which they did precisely at 10:00 the next morning, all dressed in their best clothes. We had balloons and dance contests first. They also did some reciting while we took video. Then, we gave out little boxes of crayons and books so they could color. and finally little packs of cookies and juice. I think they all had a great time, Andrew assured me that they had and that undoubtedly not one of them had ever been to a party or gotten free gifts before and that they would probably remember this party for the rest of their lives. It seemed so little compared to what we shower our children with on holidays and birthdays. I really loved having all those kids around. For a few days on the lane, some of the older mamas would stop me and tell me how happy the kids had been at the party.
Here are some of the things I will miss about my Kakamega. I will miss my boda boda driver named Francis who has a degree in Philosophy and tutored me in Kiswahili while we rode to work. I will miss my Muslim friend reading the morning paper on the corner by my work who went out of his way to greet me every morning. I will miss my work partner at K REP, Benard who shared so many insights with me about Kenyan people and the culture. I will miss a little taking a bath in 3 inches of water in a plastic basin and the lizards that lived in my bathroom. I will miss paying 5 cents for a huge avacado. I will not miss ugali and kale. I will miss speaking Kiswahili and having the old mamas laugh when I spoke Kiluhya to them. I will miss the all the dogs in the neighborhood howling at the moon at night. I will not miss the unbelievably horrid bumpy, potholey roads. I mostly will miss the simplicity of life and the contentment that comes with knowing that your only choice is to find a way to cope with everything and the true realization that ultimately, none of us really control anything.

travel in kenya

2006-09-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

9/18/06

What a trip to the town of Kitale to see Mt. Elgon! Kitale is north of Kakamega about three hours and and sits at the foot of Mt. Elgon which is the 12^th highest mountain in Africa. The town itself has some industry which makes it more prosperous than Kakamega. The major industry is a seed producing company which is the only supplier of seeds in Kenya. The surrounding area is absolutely breathtaking. Besides the mountain, there are rolling hills which are planted primarily with maize and even though the maize was recently harvested so the stalks have turned brown, the whole area is overwhelmingly green. The area outside Kitale is fairly sparsely populated compared to the other areas I have visited in Kenya. The farms themselves are large and spread out and there are even places you don’t see anybody living. Once you get up on the mountain and look at over the plains below, the view is even better! And there are other mountain ranges that surround the area in the distance. Once again, it is just not the scenery I ever thought I would find in Kenya.

I was accompanied by my young neighbor Andrew. He is typical of almost all Kenyans, except for going to Uganda, he had never traveled outside Kakamega to see any of the scenic spots in his country and literally had never seen any of the wild animals that live in Africa. The first day in Kitale, we visited the tiny museum(which made me remember Grandma Violet’s museum in Three Forks). The museum had a small reconstructed village of the Luhya tribe. It was great to be with Andrew because he could explain the significance of the way the bomas were arranged and why the houses were built with the features they all have. The museum also had some wildlife on display. The highlights were the crocodiles and the snakes. There were two pretty big crocodile in very small ponds surrounded by a not very secure fence that you could probably reach over if you wanted to. The best part was a sign hanging over the ponds which said something like, even though these are friendly animals, they might be dangerous. The snake pit was not very deep and had virtually no upkeep with couple of small trees. In the trees were my worst nightmare, a green momba and a huge black momba. Apparently there are many mombas in the rainforest on the mountain but everyone assured us that they were very shy and hid from people. That still didn’t stop me from nervously watching all the trees when we were hiking in the forest. After the museum, everyone recommended we visit a wildlife sanctuary. So Andrew negotiated a price with the taxi driver. The wildlife sanctuary was still under construction so it wasn’t really open. However the assistant manager showed us around. A lot of money has been invested in the place. It has a lodge, a couple of bars, a conference room and some funky caves that are kind of like Disneyland or the Flintstones where inside they have built benches and tables out of rock and cement so people can sit and drink their sodas. The neat thing was that they were mostly using all natural materials from the area for construction and employing only men from that area as well. They also have a game park with some sitatunga antelope which are almost extinct and a couple of élans. They also have a small pond about 8 feet deep with a boat. Africans are deathly afraid of being in water so all the men were really terrified when we went for a short ride in the boat. Oh by the way, the taxi driver and what I thought was his co worker went with us on the tour. Later I found out that the second guy was not a co worker but just a customer who had decided to come along for the ride!

The next day, we took another taxi to Mt. Elgon. It is a National Park and a game reserve as well. Besides Andrew and I, the taxi driver and his legitimate co worker also came on the tour again. You are required to be accompanied by a ranger while touring the park. Our ranger was a very young girl in a military uniform who carried a loaded AK47. We only saw a few animals like baboons, water buck and lots of monkeys including the black and white colubus, which have really neat flowing coats that fly out behind them when they jump from tree to tree. The main attraction is several caves where several times during the year, a big group of elephants migrate to so that they can lick the walls of the caves which have a high salt content. Unfortunately, they aren’t there at this time of year because Andrew has never seen an elephant. To get to the caves, you have to hike through the rain forest which is exactly like I have envisioned it all my life. Also, one of the caves had a beautiful waterfall in front of the entrance and we were able to walk into the cave behind it and the view from inside through the waterfall was spectacular. On the way home we stopped at yet another game park, this one was developed by a woman from Maine who is married to a Kenyan man who is now a member of parliament. At this game park, Andrew got to see his first giraffes(and feed it pellets) and his first rhinos. So the trip ended up being really enjoyable and I loved being in the huge quiet forest where we didn’t see one other person, something that is pretty rare in Kenya.

2006-09-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

9/12/06

My time is speeding by in Kakamega. Once again, now that I have returned, people have begun to trust me and open up and I have learned a great deal about Kenyan culture. Today I learned that Kenyans work very hard to avoid confrontation. I believe this is because they are such a close knit society and conflict between people disrupts the entire group. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure for people to resolve conflicts in a different way. The most common way to deal with conflict is to use very diplomatic language to create a situation in which there is no chance for a conflict to arise. I have encountered this method while dealing with people here but have a difficult time understanding because they use a lot of underlying innuendo to convey the message and I know I am quite often missing the point.

Another thing I have discovered is that Kenyans rely on formally organized groups to form bonds outside of their family and neighborhood and they believe strongly in the power of groups to educate and to empower people as well. Being unoccupied in Kenyan is really looked down on, those people are called “idlers.” Therefore, by participating in a group and making an effort to better yourself and your situation is seen as a good alternative to being idle. It seems that the goal of many of the groups is to work on ways to improve their communities. One of the youth groups that my young neighbor belongs to is in the process of finding ways to recycle plastic bottles and bags. Oh, by the way, I mentioned before that I was tutoring Andrew in a few subjects while I am here and now I am also teaching him dog training as well. Of course I am the expert because A) I am crazy about dogs and B) I watch the Dog Whisperer regularly on TV. Anyway, Andrew is very entrepreneurial and sees dog training as maybe being a lucrative business in Kenya. Only time will tell.

The worst crime you can commit in Kenya is to steal something. Because people have worked so hard for what little they have, it is really egregious to take something that is not rightfully yours. All over Kenya, if a thief is caught in the act, they are pursued by the mob, sometimes tortured and almost always violently beaten to death. This happened in Kakamega last month to a man who went to a man’s house to repossess a VCR he had sold to the man but hadn’t ever been paid for. He was mistaken for a thief and beaten to death by the neighbors. It is such a bad crime that it is not left to the police to handle because of course, there is no confidence in the police to enforce the law.

Finally, everyday I see many things that just make me sad. On the boda boda ride on the way to work every morning, I pass a vacant lot near downtown Kakamega where several men in very ragged clothes are sitting around a fire. It is the official place for homeless men to congregate during the night. There is a lot of garbage dumped near there and I usually see a couple of guys picking through the garbage. When you pass by during the daytime, you see lots of old worn out coats that are hung all over the signs. These are the coats that these men use to keep warm at night. Yesterday I saw an old man hobbling down the street without any shoes, which is not that unusual here. But the awful thing is that his feet were swollen to about 3 times the normal size and looked unbelievably painful. And today at the hospital, there was a naked woman with just a blanket wrapped around her waist, walking on the hospital path shouting incoherently while people just passed by without taking much notice of her. So many times here I have heard the comment from people that unless a sick person has the money for medical treatment, they are just left to die like an animal. Can you imagine such a place existing in this day and age where resources are so scarce that no resources are “wasted” on the sick and the weak. The best word I can use to describe what I experience in Kenya every day is ‘mind boggling” and beyond our wildest American imaginations.

2006-09-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

9/9/2006

In pursuit of producing my DVD, I spend today talking to a couple of my clients who may be participants in the video. It was wonderful to learn about how entrepreneurial these two people had been and how they had been able to take a very small loan of about $125 and use it to create fairly profitable businesses. One man that I talked to had decided after working for a woman’s grocery business for a while, that he would never make enough money working there to be able to get married and have a family. And even thought he was making peanuts, he was able to save enough money to buy a boda boda and operate it to increase what he was making. After that, he started participating in the FAHIDA program and using the loan proceeds from that program, he started a small kiosk near a school where he sells items to the school kids. It has been highly profitable for him and he makes enough money now to send his son to private school. He has used some of his profit from the business to get a drivers license and now he is in the process of saving enough money to buy a used car and start a taxi business, which he says is really needed in the area. That way his wife can run the kiosk and he can do the taxi driving at night and they will make a very good living.
My woman client is a sort of personal shopper. She gets her clients from the university, professional people like magistrates and lawyers, and the government offices where people make the most money in Kakamega. What she does is to take notice of what kind of clothes and styles those people wear and when she goes to Uganda to buy the mitumba, she finds quality clothes that those people will buy. Once she gets the clients, they actually begin ordering specific things from her as well. She has done very well because she is able to charge a good price without people trying to bargain with her and in essence they pay her for shopping for them. It is a very unique concept in Kakamega and I am really impressed by her business savvy.
I also talked to one other women who my colleague Benard suggested I talk to because she has been really excellent at paying back several loans and is currently paying on a loan of about $800 which is a considerable sum in Kakamega. Come to find out, as she very matter of factly told me, she is not running a conventional business. In her words, “she has been a hooker throughout” and she has been paying back the loan from the proceeds of that business. I think Benard was a little surprised when I told him that. However, she assured me she is planning to open a boutique at some point! She was really down to earth and funny and I really had fun talking to her.
Once again, when I arrive at the groups we are servicing, the people are unbelievable friendly in welcoming me back, to the extent that since they knew I had been sick, they have been praying for me.

return to Kenya

2006-09-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

9/9/2006

I hopped my way across the world from Dallas to Chicago to London to Nairobi to stay for my second night in Kenya in the city of Kisumu. A stop in Kisumu is almost always mandatory because of the mega Nakumat supermarket there. The choices include many western products and make eating in Africa a more interesting adventure. Rather than the hospital, I stayed at the Sunset Hotel and had a beautiful room with a balcony right on Lake Victoria, in a quiet part of town called Milimani.
My little house was just as I left it, literally, including food we had left in the fridge for over a month! Like a mother hen, I was overcome with the urge to clean and put my own smells in the place. This time, I brought several photos and things to decorate the walls so I have been able to make it a very comfortable home. But because this is Africa, I currently don’t have running water and the fridge doesn’t work. Oh well.
Sunday night, the Lutomia’s, my landlord, invited me to a family supper. One of their sons is married to a girl from Boston. She and the son met only briefly when he was visiting the US. They carried on a long distance relationship and got married. She continues to live in Boston and he lives in Nairobi. It must make for an interesting marriage. Anyway, dinner was served in the living room and was chicken, cabbage soup and chapatis. The TV was on with the volume turned pretty loud as it often the case in Kenyan homes, but it made it hard for me to carry on a conversation with someone across the room. I am having to get accustomed again to understanding their accent. We watched a Mexican soap opera dubbed in English while we ate. The soap opera was really dramatic with many diabolical characters and everyone really enjoyed following the intrigue. It was so nice to be included in their family. It is certainly not a daily situation that exists at home.
It was very nice to come to work on Monday and I got a wonderful warm welcome back from everyone at my office. Many people on the lane where I lived recognized me from before and were friendly. I have gotten the go ahead from the KREP head office for the DVD project that I am so excited to complete while I am here, but was informed that there aren’t any USAID donor funds earmarked for asset purchases. So this is my official plea for donations to my project if anyone is interested. Donations will of course be tax deductible. You can mail or give the money to Bob and he’ll put it in my account and I assure you, in spite of all the corruption in Kenya, I promise to use the money for which it is intended! The project I am working on is producing a business training course using a DVD. I will be using Kenyan business people who have successfully started businesses using KREP loans and interviewing them to illustrate certain business concepts we are trying to teach. I think the DVD will be very interesting to the students because it will be in Kiswahili and will feature fellow borrowers who have actually used the business concepts we are teaching to solve problems in their business. The DVD will be used as an introduction to the concept, and then the trainer can pause the DVD and expand on the concepts and do practical exercises with the students. I am really excited about the concept and it is really challenging to make it all come together like I am envisioning. I feel like it is so serendipitous that I came to Kenya and ended up working in an area. where I can use my experience from the US to perhaps make a contribution. So the above mentioned donations will be used for a TV, DVD player, a TV stand and some other classroom equipment like a chart easel and whiteboard.
So as the day went by on Monday and I did my usual routine I saw many people I had become acquainted with and everyone was so nice about welcoming me back. The young girl from the bookstore where I shop invited me to lunch and told me all about her upcoming marriage. Notice I said marriage, not wedding. When people get married in Kenya, the man has to pay a dowry for the woman and pay for the wedding so it is very expensive. So as a result, most couple only have family present while the priest marries them and then if they can afford it, will have a celebration later.
On Monday evening, one of the sons from where I live came to visit. He is a guy in his early twenties and shared with me that he had spent the last several years living in Uganda, hanging with a bad crowd and partying all the time. He has now decided to get his life straight so he has returned to Kakamega to continue his education. However, because he wasn’t serious about school before, he does not have a good education and has asked me to tutor him in several subjects, including computer, French and English. So, I guess I will be spending a few hours a week with him teaching him what I can. He’s a good kid and I kind of hope maybe spending some time with him can encourage him to keep going this direction. You know, at the risk of sounding like a bleeding heart liberal(which I most likely am) I am glad of the chance to be here and to be able to find so many ways to give back to people. As many of you know, my personal philosophy is that our true obligation in life is to generate positive energy or whatever you want to call it to give to the world while we are here and I feel fortunate that I am able to accomplish a small part of that while living in Kakamega. By the way, did you know that Kenyan salt is not as salty and Kenyan sugar is not as sweet? It’s a mystery to me.

2006-08-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

here is a view of one of the bays in lake victoria. it is such a huge lake that you can only see a tiny portion of it standing on the bank. the dhows on the bank are still used by fishermen who fish for tilapia, which is abundant in the lake and one of the main foods in this area. lake victoria is only about 60 miles south of where i lived in kakamega.

2006-08-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

this is one of the tiny market stalls on our lane. there are many of them, they all sell only a few items each day. the little boy in the front right was adorable, he loved bob and ran to greet him everyday. he called bob muzungu of course and he was only about 15 months old and i think that was one of the only kiswahili words he knew

2006-08-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

these are some of the kids who live on the lane where i am currently living. the showed up every afternoon to greet us. in kenya, children as young as 18 months are taught to shake hands with adults and to respond "mzuri" when greeted. the also use the only english they know which is "how are you" the moms don't really take care of the younger kids. that responsibility is left to the little girls who are about 8 or 9 years and older.

2006-08-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

The first building on the right is where my office is located. it is on the main street in kakamega.

2006-08-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is the house where I lived with my host family. It was a really nice house and very upper class by Kenyan standards. The little building to the left is where the "cow" boys lived, they took care of the 3 cows and 2 calves that the family had.

2006-08-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

This is the compound where I am living on my own now. A retired school principle and a few of his grown children and their families live here. The cars and cows in the courtyard are a sign of prosperity.

2006-08-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is one of the market streets in town. the piles of clothes you see on the right are the mitumba(used clothes) that everyone wears. I kept expecting to see something I had donated to the Salvation Army.

2006-08-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my pictures from Kakamega. I didn't take as many this time because I came home so soon but I do plan on taking more in September and will continue adding to my blog when I return, so keep checking in.

After walking, the boda boda is the way to get around town. it costs 15 cents to go anywhere. there are about 2000 of these guys in Kakamega and competition for business is stiff

2006-08-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

8/10/2006

Bob and I returned to Chico about 2 weeks ago. After I got sick the second time, we made hasty arrangements to come back and have my health checked out by my doctors. It was an especially long trip because we had to fly standby. On Wednesday, it took the entire day to ride the bus from Kakamega to Nairobi, where we had to spend another day before we could get a flight to London. In London, we spent the night and then got a flight to San Francisco where we arrived at 9:00 pm. Being too tired to drive to Chico, we spent the night, and then drove home the next day. In total it the trip took 5 days!

It has been a reverse culture shock adjustment. Besides being in my own home, with my husband and being able to talk to all my family any time I want, one of the things I have enjoyed having again the most is the FOOD. African food is very filling and healthy, but it is bland bland bland and everything tastes the same. The food here tastes so great and I have been eating everything from pizza to enchiladas to steak.

However, aside from those things, there are actually many things I am missing about Kenya. The biggest one is the socializing with the community during my day. It feels like I am much less connected with people here and that the community is actually just a big collection of strangers. I think that is because as Americans we don’t really interact with strangers as we go about our daily business and as a result, in spite of the fact that there are people around us, we are still somewhat isolated from them. Whereas in Kenya, as in many other countries, it is expected that you interact with people you come in contact with and that generates constant socializing with people all day and really strengthens the sense of belonging to the community.

Also, in spite of the fact that that Kakamega, like many towns in third world countries, is very poor and has a lot of uncollected garbage, crumbling buildings, dirt streets and very basic, rural houses, I found that after living there, I was looking past all that and instead, I only saw the people. It always amazed me that the people were so happy living in what we would consider appalling living conditions as long as they had their families and food to eat. Now that I am home in California, everything seems sanitized, glossed over and homogenous, like it is a movie set or pictures of a town in a book, where real people don’t actually live.

Now that I have resolved my health issues, I have made arrangements to go back to Kakamega for about a month. I really want to finish the business training materials that I had been working on and feel very committed to accomplishing my goals. I know my work is just a tiny drop of water in the ocean, but having left something tangible there is very important to me.

2006-08-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

7/24/06

Damn, damn, damn I got sick again last week. One day last week I went to a village outside of Kakamega called Labao to visit a polytechnic school and to take pictures for writing a possible grant program. While I was there I started to feel very sick again. So after getting back into Kakamega, Bob from the office took me directly to aga kahn hospital in Kisumu. When I got there I was feeling pretty seriously bad again. it turned out to be e coli in my kidney. The first night in the hospital I was in the maternity ward because there were no private rooms available. in the morning, I could hear a woman next door in labor and then shortly thereafter I could hear the baby cry. it was a wonderful sound. that night, after being transferred to the honeymoon suite in the private ward, someone died in the ward and then I could hear grief filled wailing, followed by the Muslim call for prayer from outside my window. Man, what a powerful reminder of the cycle of life.

annette russ in kenya

2006-08-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

annette russ in kenya

My gosh Annette, I'm sorry to hear how sick you got!
And your poor husband must have been frantic. I hope your road to recovery is swift and that it is complete.

annette russ in kenya

2006-07-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Annette,
Hope you are well and up and around again. Hopefully by the time you get this Robert will be there. We have all been thinking about you and praying for you. Don't get discouraged about your work. Every family that you help to put food on the table will always remember you and will be likely to help others in the future. Even if the original member you help goes to be with the Lord their children will have a way to eat from what they have learned and that is invaluable. Sometimes the smallest things we do to help others are the things that mean the most to them 50 years later when we are long gone and have forgotten their names. They never will forget you. God blesses what you are doing. Jamie

2006-07-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

7/6/06

Its been a tough couple of weeks in Kenya. I’m not even sure if the date I wrote is correct. Anyway, I guess no long term trip to equatorial Africa is totally complete without a case of malaria. Apparently it is peak season for malaria here and many people are sick. The Kenyans of course are quite accustomed to having malaria and treat it pretty much like we do flu season. Apparently, the anti malarial medicine we take when we come here is just designed to kill the malaria plasmodium that is delivered when you are bitten by a mosquito. The only real defense from getting malaria is to not get bit and to hope like hell that your anti malaria medicine is working effectively. When the Kenyans sense they are getting another spell they are prescribed other types of malaria medicine and antibiotics that fights the bronchitis that almost always accompanies it. Anyway, for the Kenyans the spells usually last only a few days, but of course for us muzungus, it is a different story.

I got sick with malaria really quickly. The worst symptoms are the aches in the joints and the headache that makes you want to shoot yourself. I went to our best rural hospital for treatment and have only hazy memories of the 2 days I was there. I remember being admitted to the hospital and laying in the waiting room burning up with fever and watching two young girls fill out every line of several forms that took about an hour. The initial treatment was an iv of quinine which is a really potent medication. The iv holder hung on a nail on the wall. I don’t think the toilet worked and at one point, something very big and hairy darted out from behind the toilet and ran up the wall. Once in a while I would have two very young serious looking doctors standing at my bedside. They looked like mutt and jeff and didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. I was really sick for those two days and was only getting the doses of quinine and no intervenous fluids so I could tell I was getting dangerously dehydrated. Thanks to my wonderful husband advocating for me from 12000 miles away, I finally arranged a taxi to take me to the much bigger Aga Kahn hospital in the nearby city of Kisumu. It is a totally modern and technologically equipped hospital and when I arrived there the nurse said “don’t worry, you are in safe hand now” anyway, I got wonderful care there during the four days I was there but it was so odd being in such a place. I felt so isolated from the world that I could have been on the space station. So, now I am back in kakamega and reminded of the old saying “that which does not kill you makes you stronger” Bob is arriving in Kakamega on Thursday. It was hard for him to be the one so many miles away and helpless to do anything. He is going to stay with me in Kakamega for about 6 weeks and then we are heading home together. I am disappointed like crazy that I have to cut my stay short here, but I totally understand Bob’s desire to have me safe and sound in Chico again and I know I would feel exactly the same if it had been me at home. While Bob is here we are going to live in a small apartment in a compound just outside of kakamega. It is pretty darn nice by Kenyan standards, even has mostly running water and a sit down pot. The only real drawback I can see is the three cows that live in the courtyard and contribute a lot of cow poopy to the yard. However, owning cows in Kenya is a sign of great wealth so as they say, cow poopy really smells like money.

However, I am still working hard for the next six weeks to find a way again to help the clients we are serving. I vacillate between feeling like there maybe a way for all these programs to help Kenya fight the AIDs and poverty that is the standard of life here and then I am overcome by the truly helpless feeling knowing that these are such big problems that our only option is to put bandages here and there as best we can. I can’t imagine that all of us that are here from the west don’t wonder each and everyday how in the hell were we so lucky to been born into such a prosperous and promising society when so much of the rest of the world are simply about survival. The other 10 college age interns have arrived in Kakamega, full of the desire to make a difference. It is really wonderful getting to know these kids, they are pretty much highly ambitious kids from top colleges in the US. Watching them take the risks at assimilating themselves into this totally different culture is very interesting. I’m certain that after a couple of months here in Kenya the way they look at their own world will be greatly changed. I hope that like a stone thrown into a lake, what they take home with them will ripple out to the people that they associate with so those of us who do live in such fortunate circumstances will continue to be aware of the state of the world and to care about it.

annette russ in kenya

2006-06-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

annette,
Here is a website for you. You are in a resistant area from what I can tell and it could be the serious one P. ful(something or another). This is the suggested therapy.
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/diagnosis_treatment/clinicians2htm

Hope this helps,
Jamie

annette russ in kenya

2006-06-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

Hi annette,
Heard you weren't feeling too well. Doxycyclene (is that what you were taking?) is what is usually recommended for malaria (area IV infection zones). Your there for such a long time though they may not have wanted you on it that long. There is a medication to take that helps with the symptoms, I had a friend from S. Africa who had it. Fever, chills, diarrhea, headache etc. every 6-8 weeks. I don't know if there is anything to get rid of it completely. You should be able to get medication in Nairobi so that you don't have to come home, or in Kinshasa Uganda. I don't know about where you are. Reagan can probably get the name of it( the drug) for you. Leah can prescribe it if neccessary and it canbe shipped to you. I'm not much help but the World health Org. or CDC should have more info on their web sites. Drink lots of water, and sleep. It is just your body getting rid of the toxins from the busted blood cells. Life cycle of a Protazoa if I remember correctly. Our prayers are with you. Look at the bright side it could be Polio which I'm sure you've seen. It is a managable problem especially with Western Medicine. I love you. Keep your chin up.
Jamie

2006-06-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

Annette,

I am sorry that it has taken so long for me to get on the blog and contact you. We are so darn busy that I just have not had time. I just got back from my third Smith trip last night and I leave again in the morning at 4:30am. Three more to go and I am done. I don't think I will be able to do this again next year. I just am not as physically strong as I used to be and the amount of work on these trips as well as the mental strain is just too much. Anyway, I'll get through this summer and then I am really going to have to find another way to make a living.

First, I want to wish you a happy birthday from Janet and I. We hope that you are able to celebrate with your friends there in Kenya. It will probably be a very lonely time for you this year but hopefully the entire experience is going well and you will look back on it with very fond memories in a year.

Janet is keeping very busy at work and in the yard. The landscaping is really going well and the house combined with the yard is really striking we think. Unfortunately we are now over budget too far and are going to have to get a mortgage and start making payments. Hopefully all our work will result in a house that is worth considerably more than we invested and soon!

Kela is still getting along. I keep worrying while on the Smith that when I get home she will be gone. So far she continues to eat well and is always happy to see me when I return. She still recognizes the sound of the Suburban coming down the road and she comes to meet me as fast as her old legs allow. Her hearing is now going so she follows me around all day when I am home and we think it is because she used to keep track of us by hearing our whereabouts in the house but now she can't hear us so she wants us in her sight. She is a very tough old girl and an unusual animal.

I have not seen much of Mike since you left. We just cannot get on schedule. I tried to get him and the family over to see the house but it has not worked out yet. With my guiding this summer I am afraid it will be fall before we get together.

Well, I have to go as I have a lot of work to do before I leave again in the morning. I am happy to hear that things are going well for you. We are looking forward to seeing Bob in July.

Once again, happy birthday!

Love Greg and Janet

2006-06-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

6/16/06

In the street below my office, I heard a big crash followed by a wave of human commotion. When I looked down on the street, I could see that a car had hit a boda boda driver. This is hardly surprising, given the facts that cars have the supreme right of way over everything that is in the road and they drive extremely fast as well. A large crowd of boda boda drivers and other concerned onlookers gathered very quickly around the errant driver’s car. Many of the men were outraged and were simultaneously shouting accusations at the driver. The driver looked very nervous, and at one point started to drive away, but several of the men stood in front of the car, blocking his escape path. He finally got up the nerve to get out of the car, and when he emerged, there was some halfhearted pushing, shoving, and a lot of finger pointing by the boda boda supporters. Shortly, a helmeted, uniformed policeman drove slowly up on his small motorcycle. The men all took a quick break to admire the policeman’s piki piki, which obviously endowed him with a lot of status. I could see the policeman was a very young man as he slowly got off his piki piki and walked somewhat reluctantly toward the rowdy crowd. His demeanor didn’t convey a sense that he was about to take charge of the situation. Once he got to the crowd he paused to listen while several people shouted explanations at him all at the same time. The driver of the car didn’t have any obvious supporters present, but the policeman did question him apparently in an attempt to get his side of the story. Once that was accomplished, the policeman joined the crowd, which aimlessly milled around, all the while shouting out their opinion of what had transpired. Finally the policeman broke away from the crowd and went to choose an appropriate stone which he used some how mark the position of the car on the pavement. From my vantage point, I could not see that any marks were made at all by the stone. Then the guy strolled over and looked at the position of the boda boda lying on the ground. People were still shouting feverishly and I could not really tell at this point who the boda boda victim was. Finally, the policeman waved the driver of the car away, mounted his motorcylcle and left what apparently was a situation successfully resolved. I thought what a perfect solution since no one was really hurt and no damage was sustained. Just let everybody shout for a while and then call it good.

the big trip to Eldoret-on the edge of the Rift Valley

2006-06-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share some stories about my trip to Eldoret with you..

This weekend I visited Eldoret with my colleague from work, Bernard Chegge.

On the way to Eldoret, as we approached the Ugandan border there were several police checkpoints I guess patrolling for drugs being smuggled in. in any event, one of the hotshot young police guys stopped our matatu and requested to see my passport which I didn’t have with me because we were only going 100 kilometres from Kakamega. Everyone in the van was very quiet while I was talking to the guy and after apologizing and swearing I wouldn’t leave it at home again, he let us go. I think it was all a farce and an attempt to get some money from me but for a second I was visualizing myself in some kenayn prison.

After we arrived, I spent pretty much all of Saturday meeting my colleagues huge family, including all of his brothers and sisters, cousins, in laws and what have you. They were all very welcoming but there was a family crisis. One of Bernard’s sisters and her husband were having serious marital problems and in Kenya the whole family is involved in the problem, listening to the couple and giving advice and most importantly, lobbying to keep the couple together. The presevation of marriage is a family affair here because in Kenya, when a couple gets married there is a symbolic payment of a dowry which is given to actually validate the bond that must be formed between each person’s clan. In fact, it appears that the formation of this bond is actually more important than the wedding preparations and especially more important that the happiness of the marriage. As a result of all this family pressure, you can imagine that the divorce rate in Kenya is pretty low but on the other hand, infidelity for both partners is common. Once again, another reason that AIDS is continuing to spread in Africa. It was quite a learning experience to watch all of this taking place as an outsider and it was hard to imagine all of it taking place in the US.

The town of Eldoret is considerably more modern than Kakamega and by visiting I was really able to understand how small and remoteI am here. First of all, there were lots of women of all ages wearing pants in Eldoret. Only women who are loose or doing commercial sex work wear pants in Kakamega. On Sunday there were lots of couples and parents with their kids doing things in the town. You never see a man and a woman walking togethe or doing any sort of activity together here. So, as a result of Kakamega being so rural, the norms are very conservative and there people are very concerned about what others may say about them.

The Rift Valley is very breathtaking. It is a lush green narrow valley with farms sprinkled throughout. And of course, there are bluffs on either side of it with lots of small rock faces and huge boulders. The Rift Valley separates Western and Eastern Kenya and of course is believed to be where human civilization began. Now, there is a great deal of civilization. There is a beautiful resort type place on one of the bluffs where the Kenyan running team stay and train. I am not sure what the elevation is but it is apparently high enough to be a good training spot. I actually got to eat a pizza when I visited Eldoret and it was good. It was bacon, mushroom and pineapple. After having been in Kenya for a month, it sure tasted good.

After we returned to Kakamega on Sunday evening, I don’t know if it was the full moon or what. But as I was walking past an area where all the boda boda guys wait for business, there was a big group of guys beating up a couple of other guys who must have infringed on their territory. Then, when I got into the matatu to go to my house, there were six older people sitting behind me screaming at the conductor about how they were overcharged. They continued to shout at him for about 5 minutes, it was not very relaxing in the least. It was a relief to get back to my house and when I did, the little girls came running to the door to see me saying they had missed me all weekend.

One other comment on the mitumba used clothes that everyone wears here;

Because a majority of the clothes come from the US, I have seen t-shirts and jackets with all kinds of sports teams names on them, including high school, college and pro sports from all over the US. I saw some college’s lacross jersey today. Seeing the t-shirts is a daily reminder of the fact that life is continuing as usual back in the US even though I am living here in such a different culture and environment.

2006-06-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

6/2/06

Hi everybody. here is the latest edition. i haven't been able to get photos on the blog. i think all of these computers have a 286 processor and have the tiniest dial up phone line in the entire world. i guess i will have to bore you with the photos when i get home.

I faced one of my fears today . After work, I walked around a little more of Kakamega’s off the beaten path streets without being accompanied by anyone. All Kenyans seem to feel like they are vulnerable to theft. I am constantly warned to be careful with my bag, in all the small stores the merchandise is kept behind a counter that is lined with steel bars, and everyone locks everthing they have with huge heavy duty locks. In a country this poor, people who don’t have anything will take big risks to find a way to eat.

The main streets of Kakamega which I call streets 1, 2, and 3 are fairly prosperous. Once in the back lanes however, you can really see the poverty that exists here. All of the buildings and little houses are in really bad condition and everywhere there are little children playing in the doors and lanes, wearing ragged clothes. They all stare at me intently and are very shy when I say hello to them.

On my stroll, I walked past 10 or 15 women selling a variety of things along the road. I greeted them all in Kiluhya and they just thought that was so funny and wonderful. the older women don’t speak much Kiswahili and are really pleased if you can speak the tiniest bit of Kiluhya.

I would say that there are two things that Kenyans are obsessed with and that is soccer and politics. As far as soccer goes, all the local teams are very popular and the match scores are reported on the nightly news. However, the English premier league is the real focus and it seems like everyone is in some way proclaiming their loyalty to Arsenal. In addition to Arsenal stickers, all the matatus are named and the majority of them also are covered with Christian slogans. I would say that these crazy drivers definitely need god watching over them while they careen down the road.

The missionaries have been very effective in Kakamega. There are an overwhelming number of churches and mosques here. The religions represented are primarily catholic and Quaker, but there are other sects like the Anglican Church, some evangelical churches, and other types of protestant churches. When traveling in the rural areas outside of Kakamega, there are churches and schools approximately every 5 miles. The other impact that Christianity has had on the Kenyans, which I am sure that the missionaries didn’t anticipate, was in people naming their businesses. There are many small shops in and around Kakamega and many have names like Christian guest house, faith clothing shop, hope supermarket, and trinity bike repair. Since the Kenyans have struggled so long for freedom and against extreme poverty, they have developed a deep faith and belief that it is God who will help to miraculously help to improve their condition. Over the last 40 years the majority of Kenyans have all come to rely almost solely on foreign aid and grants from western countries. They have no faith in their government and leaders to take a strong role in helping develop the infrastructure and economies in rural Kenya where the poverty exists. As a result, the widespread attitude shared by many poor Kenyans is there are no opportunities for them to help themselves to improve their lives. so they rely on God to help them survive and cope with their difficult circumstances.

I enjoy regularly reading the Nation, one of Kenya’s two national newspapers. The government controls the news here but there are still stories about the current political scandals balanced with stories reporting on the positive outcomes of newly implemented government legislation and programs. This weekend, the front-page story published a list of the top 25 corrupt bribe taking government agencies. The 5 top agencies were the police, state corporations, local authorities, the teacher’s service commission, and the Kenya prison system. The highest average bribes were paid to public colleges for admissions. The bribe paid was equivalent to about $2000 US .The police were the second highest with a likelihood of bribes being 82%.

annette russ in kenya: Bob's up date.....

2006-06-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

annette russ in kenya: Bob's up date.....

Hi Annette

2006-05-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hi, Annette, I hope all is OK with you. Things in N. M. are very dry. No rain for 4 months. Everything is a dull yellow color except my yard. I water all the time. The kids are having an anniversary party for us on June 24th. I hope Robert will be able to come. I wish you were here but your off to Africa and your great adventure. I must say you are stronger than I am. New Mexico is as wild as I can get. Take care of yourself. Love ya, Mariann

Bob's up date.....

2006-05-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

One more add to blog.....peggy & bill at billyoskowitz@gmail.com.....see ya on the phone and keep the test mesges coming. bob

Bob's up date.....

2006-05-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Grandma aNet......please give the Bequette's another invite on the Blog....Dan seems to have lost the invite? i will talk with you soon.....remembering my pm your am....ha! Our coming and goings are sometimes confusing. Love you and miss you. bob,violet,ZT.charlie,felix......& squirrel

2006-05-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

5/25/06

The matatu adventure continues. On Wednesday, I rode with my co-worker several miles outside of town to visit two watatonos(groups of borrowers) Once you get out of town a ways, the matatus become pretty scarce. On our way back, we started out riding in one very dilapidated matatu and we hadn’t gone very far when the word on the road was that the police were patrolling the matatus. So, because this particular van wasn’t compliant, the driver drove off the road behind some buildings where we had to get out and go back to the road to find another matatu. By the time we got to the road there were at least 30 people waiting for the next matatu to come along. Finally an empty one arrived and everyone pushed forward fighting for the 8 available seats. Bernard and I muscled our way in, thankfully, because Bernard said in that area you could wait for up to an 2 hours for a matatu to come by. So once again we set off for town. We hadn’t gone very far when the matatu died. The driver spent several minutes trying to start it unsuccessfully while all the passengers made suggestions. Finally, the men in the matatu got out and pushed to he could jump start it. We went a few more miles when it quit again, and again the men pushed to get it started. That happened twice more until we finally reached town. It really pays to not be in a hurry here in Kenya.

Every morning I take a matatu to work which is about a 10 or 15 minute drive, depending on if which driver I get. Sometimes they go unbelievably fast and I’m just praying that I make it through one more matatu trip. I’m really relieved when we reach the speed bumps on the outskirts of Kakamega, but that relief is tempered by the fact that if I sit in the back seat, every time we charge over a speed bump I hit my head on the roof of the matatu.

I apologize if my English is getting a little weird. The Kenyans speak British English mixed with a unique translation from Kiswahili to English and in order to communicate in English I have had to adapt my English to their style. Everyone who has gone to school through at least the 8th grade speaks passable English, but just like me when I speak Kiswahili, they have such a heavy accent that it’s like trying to understand yet another foreign language. Then to top it off, the people in this district switch back and forth among English, Kiswahili and Kiluhya which is the local language of the tribe that lives in this part of Kenya. So sometimes I’m not sure if I’m not understanding the Kiswahili or if people are speaking Kiluhya The older people and people who haven’t gone to school don’t speak any English so I have learned just a few words of Kiluhya to be polite. I don’t think I am really up to learning two languages at once. Another interesting thing is that all three men at my office are from different tribes and can’t understand each other’s language, so they have to speak either Kiswahili or English. By the way, I didn’t know until I got here that the language is called Kiswahili and the people who live in the coastal region are the Swahili people. I am slowly getting a few more words and everyone claims that in another month I will be fluent. I think they are just being nice.

enjoy

2006-05-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

It is so good to read about your adventures. I miss Kenya so much and have to admit I am envious. As soon as I get my two little monsters raised I am going back. It somehow gets under your skin and in your heart. I haven't heard Matatu in a long time and it brings back not so good memories. We treated a man that was thrown from an over crowded Matatu in Nairobi at our clinic in 99. He lay in the ditch for three days before someone brought him in. Needless to say it was clean up, pain killer and transport to the hospital where they found internal injuries a concusion and several broken bones. I hope your on an antimalaria drug. The effects are lifelong if you get it and depending on the strain reoccur every 6 to 8 weeks. Not pleasant at all. We are all good here in Colorado, summer has finally arrived. The girls are growing and are beautiful. Troy is doing well and we are going to Peru on a mission trip this summer. I will be thinking of Granddaddy Russ while I'm there. We wanted to go to Sudan, Kenya or Zimbabwe but it was just too expensive and not enough time off for him. Not to mention that I don't think I could stand to be away from the babies for that long. 12 days will be hard enough. If you need a few days of rest some of the game ranches on the Masai Mara are beautiful and I hear that there are some nice ones on islands in lake Victoria. Fishing is supposed to be good too. Let me know, I never made it that far west although we did have a layover in Uganda once.
Best wishes and look forward to reading more about life there.

Jamie

2006-05-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

All right, nobody will be surprised but I am getting an F in Kenyan cooking. Tonight I was relegated to plucking leaves off a plant that Violet will cook for dinner. We are having two vegetables that I have never seen before and no one knows the English name for. However, I sat out back with a neighbor lady while I plucked leaves and we were able to exchange a few words of Kiswahili. The hard part about Kenya is that every tribe(there are 42 tribes in Kenya) speaks it’s own language and can’t understand each other. I think all of the people in Kakamega are members of the Luhya tribe and speak Kiluhya as well as British English and Kiswahili. And because they talk with their mouths closed likes the British and speak very softly, even understanding English is challenging. They laugh a lot when I speak Kiswahili, but it’s all good-natured. I can’t believe that even after a week I am starting to understand some and able to reply in basic sentences. The little girls are helping me learn a lot of vocabulary and don’t seem to mind helping me.

My colleague at K-Rep is Bernard Chege. He is a young man of about 30 who has a master’s degree in Economics. He is working for an NGO like K-Rep because there are few professional jobs available and many qualified people apply for every job. He is from a much more prosperous town and went to the university in Nairobi, so moving to Kakamega is a big change for him. He told me that Kakamega is not as modern as other large Kenyan towns.

Because I am working with AIDS victims, I am learning a great deal about the disease, which they refer to as a pandemic here. The national rate of infection is about 7% but the rate in Kakamega is considerable higher, about 10%. People in the groups I am working with die quite often and it is hard for the group members to maintain morale when they are starkly reminded of their own impending death. Death is so prevalent here, in fact, that you commonly see a display of coffins for sale alongside the road.

The focus in Kenya for battling aids is to raise awareness of the disease, minimize the stigma associated with it and through education, change people’s behavior. Apparently, the prevailing attitude is when someone learns that they are infected with HIV, their response is anger and they want to seek revenge by deliberately spreading the disease. That, coupled with the denial of people who are at risk to be tested or to accept the results of the test, make fighting AIDS an uphill battle.

The little girl Fiona is still sick and her parents have been very worried. They say she has malaria but she has been sick for a while so they took her back to the doctor. While there she was tested for typhoid, which tested negative thankfully, so the doctor gave her a different antibiotic. I imagine with a wide variety of diseases here that this is a prime place for bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics. In any event, they have seemed very worried about her, and I think because there is a greater chance of death here than we are used to and that thought must always loom in their mind.

2006-05-24T04:16:00.000-07:00

5/15/06

Hello everbody,

sorry it has taken me so long to get stuff on my blog. the computers here are very very very slow and i am working most of the day. but here is some stuff i have written in the past few days that i hope gives you an idea about life here in kenya. it really is a different world!

My Kakamega host family is Patrick and Violet Makanga and their two daughters, Sylvia and Fiona. Actually, all Kenyans have 3 names, including their African name which is used among family members. The Makangas are from what I have so far observed a typical middle class family in Kakamega. They live in a neighborhood a couple of miles from the town of Kakamega called Ilesi. They live in a nice house which Patrick built himself on a about an acre of land. The house has three bedrooms, 2 “kind of bathrooms”, a big living room and dining room and a very small kitchen. Currently the water line is broken so there is no running water so water is carried in from the spigot outside. When we bathe, we heat up water in the kitchen and then take a bath in the shower. Patrick has a friend in Switzerland so I think his house has some untypical Kenyan touches, like a decorative hardwood ceiling and a built in entertainment center at one end of the living room. There is an outside kitchen where a young boy helper sleeps and a barn where Violet has 4 cows and 2 calves. She milks the cows daily and we drink the fresh milk in chai tea, which is a mixture of half tea, half milk. She sells milk by the cup to young children from around the neighborhood who line up at the back door every night. She charges about 15 cents for a cup. She also has a garden where she grows the vegetables that we eat.

Patrick is an accountant at the provincial government offices and Violet works at Tele-Com. The girls are in school each day from 8:00 to 5:00. The Makangas belong to the Luhya tribe which is the third largest tribe in Kenya. Patrick and Violet speak Luhya and English, while the girls speak English and Swahili, which they are learning at school. Patrick, like many Africans, also runs various other enterprises such as very small farms and 2 guesthouses, which aren’t doing too well currently as the economy is Kenya is really suffering.

African food is very simple. Breakfast is bread and jam and chai. I eat out for lunch for about $1. When we come home for work, we have tea time, with chai and bread. Dinner is served around 9:00 and consists every night of ugali, meat and cooked kale. Ugali is a mixture of cornmeal and water that is boiled and is like a very doughy dumpling. You eat with you hands and pull a piece of ugali off the serving, roll it into a ball and use is to pick up kale and meat and then eat it. It doesn’t take much to fill me up. It seems that the whole purpose of food in Africa is to fill you up without costing very much. In spite of the high carbohydrate diet, everyone but me, is rail thin.

When I arrived, the littlest girl was having a bout of malaria. I didn’t realize that pretty much all Africans have malaria and just cope with the occurrences when they occur. Apparently there is some effective medication to treat the symptoms so they are usually only sick for one or two days. We do sleep with mosquito nets at night, but during the rainy season, which is right now, there are lots of mosquitos. I was just wondering why we don’t have malaria carrying mosquitos in the U.S.

5/18/06

Today I am recording a few random interesting observations and things that I have learned in the last week about Kenya. May though July is considered winter in Kakamega and considered the rainy season. Although this might be an unusual year, since I have been here the weather has not been unpleasant. It is almost always sunny with scattered clouds in the morning and fairly warm, probably about 70 degrees. Many days it clouds up in the afternoon or evening and thunders, lightening and rains very heavily but only for about 3 hours. The soil is claylike, what they call colleche in Texas so the rain stands around in puddles and doesn’t sink very quickly so things quickly get muddy. I’ve seen lots of cars and trucks stuck in the mud with lots of people working to get them unstuck. Everyone here seems prepared for the rain, most with umbrellas but those without use a variety of things to cover their heads. I have seen shower caps, plastic bags, washrags, scarves and such. But with this much rainfall, the country surrounding Kakamega is really lush. Numerous trees and a variety of things growing, all of which have been planted either to eat or feed the animals.

The women in town dress very stylishly and wear bright cheerful colors, but not wild or garish. Many women wear skirts with blouses and jackets but the most common thing is a skirt with a top that comes down over the hips and is about thigh length. I brought very plain clothes with me and feel somewhat dowdy so Violet is going to show me the clothing shops on the weekend and I’ll see if I can buy some African clothes that I feel comfortable in but don’t feel like I am trying to somehow “go native”. The men dress very formally for work, always with a coat and tie. The school children all wear brightly colored uniforms with sweaters over the top. All the different schools have distinctively different colors. In Kenya, parents must buy the uniforms and shoes to be able to send the kids to school and there are many people who simply can’t afford it. In spite of the challenging surroundings, everyone is very clean and well groomed and take a lot of pride in their appearance.

Today, Bernard and I rode to a group meeting on boda bodas and they were too tall for me to get on gracefully so I had to hop up and the boda boda drivers found that really funny. Bernard told me it was funny because I am an older woman and jumping is very unusual for women here in Kenya. When you use public transportation you literally are taking you own life into your hands. Thee boda boda drivers go very fast and weave in and out of traffic just barely missing cars and people. The other day my driver passed too close to a little girl and I hit her and spun her around. I haven’t seen a boda boda fall over yet and I imagine they are pretty careful because it would be bad for business if they injured or killed someone. All the streets and roads are in terrible shape. Potholes are everywhere and so are speed bumps, even on the boda boda paths. I like riding the boda boda because it is such a scenic way to travel, but I have to hang on to the handle provided because it is so rough. As far as the matatu vans and private vehicles, I don’t think there are any standard rules on the roads. In Kenya, everyone drives on the left side of the road and as long as no one is coming they actually drive in the middle of the road until someone else is coming the other way. Then both drivers scoot way over to their side of the road to get past. There is no shoulder on the road, only an abrupt drop off of about 4 or 5 inches. The public vans are called matatus and cost 30 shillings, which is about 40 cents. They are supposed to take only the allowed number of passengers and everyone is supposed to wear seat belts, but the matatu drivers always cram too many people in and the conductor hangs out the door of the van. If the police stop them, they pay them a bribe to keep from getting fined. I read about a matatu fatal crash today on the highway and that wasn’t reassuring at all, but since owning a car in Kenya is a real luxury and hardly anyone can afford it there is no other choice of transportation.

2006-05-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hi Annette, Hope all is well, I heard you had to eat termites the other night, me and the girls have been trying to find a good termite recipe for you to share with your family. Not that easy, I'm thinkin betty crocker might not know what she's missing. Anyways, we are all good, the school year is finally winding down thank god. I'm starting to believe that light at the end of the school year tunnel isn't a train comming at me anymore. Only another week. Melissa is getting excited about graduation, and we are trying to plan out some fun things to do while grandpa is here, we can't wait to see him. I'm not sure if he realizes this but I think we are gonna put him to work, we have so many home projects we are working on all half done, none completed. We have our basement hung with drywall, and half mudded and taped. And we got bored with that and had a nice sunny weekend. so we started to till up our yard, and just waiting on sean to put sprinklers in so we can hydroseed. And we are ready to start putting up our deck out back for my fire pit. Sooooooooo I think dad might be quite busy while he is here. He may not even come back till he knows its all finished. Little does he know this won't be a vacation. I did talk to him the other night he apparently was driving around aimlessly in oregon looking for somewhere that had his hockey game on, and he couldn't find anywhere so I had to give him the play by play of his team looooosing. That would really suck, not only a long distance phone bill, and then to find out ya lost anyway. It's all fun!!! Well thats it from Idaho for now. We love ya lots and really enjoy reading your updates. Hugs & kisses The girls!!!!!!!

2006-05-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

Annette, I just spoke with Robert in Oregon. He was ok and enjoying friends and fishing. I told him not to throw all of them back. He is to eat one of me. We are both fine and Angel is too. We went to a wedding last night and had a good time. We still know how to dance but much slower. It is really dry here in New Mexico. Pray for rain. Be careful.Love Mariann

i have arrived

2006-05-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

The drive from Nairobi to my town of Kakamega was wonderful. This western part of Kenya is very beautiful, green, lush, mountainous. There were all kinds of crops growing along the way, alot of corn, kale, wheat, and in the mountains, many many acres of tea, which i have never seen growing before. It is like small bushes and they pick off the top shoots for the tea leaves. We briefly passed by Lake Victoria which is about an hours drive from my town. Needless to say, once we got outside of Nairobi, the roads were very rough and not at all maintained. The bus ride took about 9 hours although I imagine it is about only about 300 miles.

The town of Kakamega is very rural and resembles the rural African towns that you see in documentaries and movies. There is a great deal of poverty here. In fact, the people who are considered well off are similar in economic resources to those who live in poverty in the US while those in true poverty here are like nothing you could compare to in the US.

I start work tomorrow at my organization which is called K-Rep. The primary focus of this organization is to target extremely poor people who are infected or associated with someome affected with AID/HIV for very small loans that can be used in some sort of very small business, such as a roadside stall, which will provide them with enough income to feed themselves and their families.

In working here, I will definitely be learning and using exclusively Swahili so I am spending alot of time studying and will probably be in the baby talk stage for a couple of months. The Kenyans are very friendly and love helping me to learn the language as well

Best Wishes from Manhattan!

2006-05-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

We are all very excited here at Baker Springs to follow your adventures! Dad and Esther are also excited to use this 'high tech thing' to keep in touch. We love you, and don't pee in the water!!! Alisa

2006-05-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hi Annette, Your Idaho girls miss you already!!!!!!!! We can't wait to here all your silly stories.
Much Love, and Lots and Lots of kisses
JC, Bailey, Miss, and Lori

Keep in touch

2006-05-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Hope your airplane trip went well! You will hear from all of us at SJA.

2006-05-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Kenya blog. I hope you enjoy my stories and photos from Kenya and I look forward to your comments. It will be wonderful to keep in touch with everyone while I'm gone. I'm gonna miss you all very much!!!!