Recapping the first week in Kenya

Back in the blogging business! It’s been about a week since Patrick and I have settled in here in Kenya. Here’s a recap of what’s been keeping us busy.

Coming Home

Our flight from Cairo arrived in Nairobi at 3:45AM on Saturday, May 29th. After passing through customs, we picked up our bags and said goodbye to Ryan, who was picked up by his clients/roommates. Patrick and I weren’t scheduled to fly from Nairobi to Kisumu until 5:00PM that evening, so we clearly had a lot of time on our hands. Our main job during that time was to make our way into the city and purchase a cell phone for the summer.

We had to wait until the stores in Nairobi opened up, so we hung out at a café at the airport for the first several hours, taking turns napping and looking after our bags. Eventually, around 8am, we paid some money to store our bags at a storage spot at the airport, and we found a taxi to take us into the city to buy cell phones. We were able to get some cheap phones and loaded them up with calling minutes. And just like that, by 9am, we were done with our only objective for the day, with a good eight hours left. So in hindsight, we probably should have just taken the earlier flight to Kisumu and purchased a cell phone there. It was also right around 9am that our adrenaline from being in Kenya started to wear off, and we realized how tired we were. Neither of us got much sleep on the red-eye flight from Cairo, and we were now stuck with eight hours to kill in Nairobi, when what we really needed was a bed to sleep on.

So we found a table and some chairs to sit in and sleep on at the Mall the taxi driver dropped us off at in Nairobi, and we ended up sleeping for a good 2-3 hours with our heads hunched over on the table. I think the table was supposed to be for customers of a nearby restaurant, because a waitress bugged us a couple of times asking if we were going to order. We told her we would, so once we woke up around noon, we finally ordered and ate lunch. The food was delicious, but we were still incredibly tired. After eating it, we got a taxi back to airport to wait for our flight to Kisumu.

But since we had arrived at the airport so early, we just sat around the check-in area to sleep. We figured we would get up around 3pm to check-in, since that would be the normal time to do so. But when we did finally get in line to check-in, the employee for Kenya Airways told us that the flight had been cancelled earlier in the day, and that we should have received a call informing us (of course, if they did call it was probably to our American phone numbers, so there was no way we could have known). Originally, they told us that we would have to wait until the next morning to fly out to Kisumu, and that they would put us up in a hotel room in Nairobi for the evening. But as we waited around for someone to give us more information, they told us that they would be able to purchase us a ticket to fly to Kisumu on another airline called Jetlink at 7pm. So we called our hosts in Kisumu and gave them our updated arrival time, and then checked in with Jetlink to await our flight. The Jetlink flight ended up being delayed though, so it ended up taking off at 7:30, which pushed our arrival time in Kisumu back to 8:30. We were dying of tiredness, and could barely handle anymore waiting around.

When we finally arrived in Kisumu, we found the ground wet from a recent rain, and we soon spotted Susan Jacktone Okola, Kijana’s program officer, waiting for us in her “Cookout for Kenya” t-shirt (Cookout for Kenya is Kijana’s annual fundraiser held every December in Florida). She and a taxi driver named Absalom had been waiting for two and a half hours for us (apparently she didn’t get the updated arrival time).  We got in the car and drove off into the darkness on the road to our host home in Es’saba Village. On the way there, we stopped in the Luanda market area and purchased 5-liter bottled drinking water.

From Luanda, we took a right turn off the poorly paved road on to a stretch of red-clay dirt road to get to our village. We descended down the bumpy path, the outside view pitch-black save our car’s headlights and some shadowy outlines of huts and trees against the night sky, a few mangy dogs scampering out of the way every so often. Although I had been down this road before and I knew where we were being taken, there was still the feeling of mystery and uncertainty as it became increasingly apparent that we were entering a place of utter rural-ness and underdevelopment, an environment so different than anything I have been exposed to in the United States. The realization that these would be my surroundings for the next ten weeks began to sink in.

We zeroed in on the house, taking a left turn off the dirt road onto an even less developed path that really is made more for pedestrians than for automobiles, but this is Kenya, so a lot of my American sense of what is practical and what is not is often irrelevant. As we headed down the muddy path with brush on either side of it, just wide enough to accommodate a car, the Swahili-language radio station we had been listening to finally began playing something I could understand – “Precious Lord, Take Me Home,” the classic gospel song being sung by Elvis Presley. With the driver slowly and carefully negotiating the muddy path, just a few hundred feet away from the house now, the lyrics floated out of the car stereo…

“Precious Lord, take my hand

Lead me on, let me stand

I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on to the light

Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, Ryan, Patrick, and I sat in the Cairo airport at a Burger King discussing what it means to be living in Kenya for the summer. I mentioned how I recently heard a story of a wealthy white American philanthropist (I want to say it was Bill Gates, but I don’t remember for sure) who upon visiting Kenya for the first time said, “I finally feel like I have come home.” Indeed, Kenya is home. For all of humanity.

The car soon pulled up and we unloaded our luggage and were greeted by our host, Welliminah at the front door, who welcomed us into her home with a great big hug and her ever-present smile. We found our rooms and placed our luggage down, and I went out to talk with Susan about paying the taxi driver, but she quickly said, “We’ll talk about that tomorrow, let us now pray.” So Welliminah, Patrick, and I bowed our heads and closed our eyes as Susan said a prayer thanking God for safely bringing us all together.

We then said goodbye to Susan as she left us with Welliminah and went back to her home. Welliminah had prepared a late supper for us, so we quickly ate and were soon in bed, finally getting our long-awaited sleep.

Settling in

We woke up that next morning (Sunday the 29^th) at 11am after a long sleep.  When we woke up, Welliminah said she was getting worried about us and was about to go check on us (everyone I’ve talked to around here wakes up at 6am or earlier, so they’re not used to seeing people sleep until 11).

Welliminah Kutai is an older woman and has a large personality and is very jovial. She is also a widow. Her husband Abel, who I met when I visited Kenya and stayed in their house in 2007, passed away May 8, 2008 (he is now buried in the front yard of their compound with a gravestone marking his name and a bible passage from 2nd Timothy). Abel was a secondary school teacher and became good friends with Kijana’s director (and my high school teacher) Jim Cummings when he was a World Teach volunteer between 1987-1989. Abel and Jim both taught at a high school in the area called Ebusiloli, which Kijana now assists. Welleminah is also a teacher – she teaches at Es’saba primary school, which is a five minute walk from her home.

One thing that is extraordinarily clear is that the Kutai household is very well-off in comparison to the average family in Es’saba village, or even throughout the Western Province. Patrick and I have been taken all around the area by Ben Asembo a neighbor and good friend of the Kutai family. Ben is incredibly nice and loves to show Patrick and I all around his home village and surrounding areas. He is an older man (roughly 50-60, I would guess), and he has lived in Es’saba his whole life. He also is intent on teaching us Kinyore, the local Luhya tribal language, which he says is dying off, as younger married couples don’t use it as much, and students are taught in just Swahili and English in schools, a fact he laments. On the course of any walk we take with Ben, Patrick and I are given offers to come visit the home of at least three different people that we happen upon on our trek. From time to time, the house has been so close that it would be rude for us to not enter and visit for a while, so we’ve entered a few other houses in the area.

Here’s a picture of Ben, Patrick, and I chewing on some sugar cane that we purchased for ten shillings on a walk around the neighborhood the other day:

The typical compound (Kenyan speak for “property”) in the area consists of one or two mud-constructed houses (made with a wood frame and filled in with mud, topped with a tin roof), an outhouse, a cow, a few chickens, and an farming area for growing corn (called maize here) and cabbage. The interior of a typical house is usually very bare, with a scarce amount of chairs and other furniture and often bare walls, with the exception of a few calendars that I gather are available for free from shops who put their contact information (many of them now have Barack Obama’s picture above the dates), or if the family is lucky, a few framed photos of the family members. Welliminah’s compound, in contrast, is like the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. From the outside, the house looks sturdier and aesthetically pleasing, with vines (Wrigley Field style) covering much of the mud. The roof frame is painted, as are the interior walls of the house. I haven’t seen a single other house with paint covering its walls, but Welliminah’s house has bright lime green paint in the living room and bedrooms, with a lot of beautiful artwork hung throughout the house – many family photos and traditional Kenyan art hanging. The living room is almost overcrowded with furniture – sofas and coffee tables made by a local woodworker. Welliminah also has electricity in her house – both solar generated and AC power (when I was here in 2007, the electric grid had not yet been extended to Es’saba, so they had used DC power then). In the living room, there is a television and a stereo in which I have been able to plug my iPod into.

Welliminah has two cows, over ten chickens, two turkeys (one of which keeps chasing me around the compound in a menacing fashion), a few ducks and geese, two or three cats, and most surprising to me, two German Shepherds. The German Shepherds weren’t around when I was first here in 2007, and seeing that they’re purpose is to patrol the compound at night (along with a Masai man she has hired to watch over the house at night), their presence might be indicative of how life has changed for Welliminah as a widow now.

The compound feels very secure to me; in addition to the night time security provisions she has established, the property is fenced off neatly on all four sides and the house has plenty of locks. I suppose there is a risk in jealous neighbors trying to steal Welliminah’s livestock or breaking into the house.

Despite Welliminah being a widow, her compound is full of life. In addition to her, Patrick and I, there are a number of others living here:

-          Welliminah looks after her grandson, Divo (from her eldest daughter, Faith, whose story I have not yet obtained). Divo is no older than three years old, and speaks no English yet, but is a ball of energy. After initially being reserved around Patrick and I, he has opened up and plays with us every night around the living room. He loves to take all the cushions off the couch and bury himself in them, like a fort.

-           Outside the house is a smaller living area/kitchen where a younger woman named Juliette lives. She has a very young son (probably a year old) named Vincent, who also lives with her in the back hut. Although I have not yet gotten the full story on her, Juliette does a lot of work around the house – much of the cooking for us, and a litany of daily chores around the compound involving the livestock. I suspect that she may be an orphan that Welliminah has taken in. There was another orphan here in 2007 who seemed to occupy the same role as Juliette does now, and Jim told me that Welliminah often takes in orphans by giving them a place to live and paying for the school fees in exchange for their work around the house. Juliette, however seems to be in her twenties and would be out of school….so perhaps Welliminah has taken her in as a way to help a young single mother. I’ll see if I can find out the real story.

-         Juliette's son is often looked after by a 3^rd grade girl name Moraa, who also lives in the back hut. She goes to Es’saba primary (the same place where Welliminah teaches). Juliette told me that Moraa was her cousin, so I assume they all moved in together sometime within the past three years. In any case, Moraa has one of the best smiles I’ve ever seen on any human being. Such a naturally great, beautiful smile. She also plays with us pretty often.

-          In a neighboring house (which looks more like the average local villager’s hut), Welliminah’s son Samuel lives. Sam is in his mid twenties and didn’t live here in 2007. He is a mirror image of his late father, and has been helpful to Patrick and I in getting a younger person’s perspective on things, and helping us set up Internet access.

-          Welleminah’s  daughter Ann was also here the first couple of days we were here, but has since returned to Nairobi, where she is graduating from her university next month. She is 23 and has the same jovial personality as her mother.

-          There’s also a cast of other characters who are around the compound on a daily basis – mainly people who Welliminah has hired to carry out daily tasks. A teenager who comes and feeds the cows, and woman who cleans the dishes, etc.

Another sign of the Kutai family’s prosperity is the food Patrick and I are served. With every meal we are served meat – chicken, beef, or sometimes both – which is not common at all for most Kenyans. As Jim has explained to me before, most Kenyans are vegetarians, but not by choice. Lunch or dinner for the average Kenyan would consist of cabbage, prepared with seasoning in a dish called “suku ma wiki” and some bland boiled-down and hardened maize meal called “ugali,” which I can only compare to cornbread, although that still doesn’t capture it exactly. We’re served that and more – including American style stuff like French fries and hotdogs every once and a while, I guess because they figure we’re dying for food like that, which they’re actually pretty correct on. :) However, I guess I should note that Patrick and I have both fallen a little bit ill in the past 48 hours (although now I think we’re both back to nearly 100%). The food was feeling good for the first few days, but I think what happened as the days went on is our stomachs both started saying, “This is the new normal? I don’t think I like this…” So we had some stomach problems, and both of us vomited. I think we’re going to be a little more careful about what we eat moving forward and are going to also start asking Welliminah to cook using only bottled water. That should take care of it.

Lastly, Welliminah has a nice strip of outhouses in the backyard – two to do your business in and two to bathe in. The ones to do your business in consists simply of a hole in the ground that you can squat over, yet they are a lot nicer than most other outhouses I have seen around the area…it’s hard to explain what makes them better though….I guess Welliminah’s crew does a better job of keeping them clean and smelling nice with an air freshener in there. As for bathing, it’s actually kind of fun here. Every morning we can go down there, and they have a container of cold water and a container of hot, boiled water ready for us. Then there is a big bucket sitting atop a knee-high table in the bathing stall. We can take the hot and cold containers and pour them into the bucket at whatever mixture/temperature feels most comfortable to us. From there, you use a small hand-held cup with a handle on it to pour the water from the bucket over your body. So basically, you get your body wet, run soap all over it and shampoo your hair, and then rinse all the suds off. A three-step process. It’s much slower than a traditional shower, but it’s also more enjoyable in many ways. It’s a more sensual experience (I don’t mean that in a creepy way), as it causes you to take more notice of the water as it goes over your body, since there’s less water to make use of, and because you have to be sure that the water is getting everywhere to rinse away all the suds. I think I may try to adapt this bathing practice when I get back to the U.S., as it makes you realize how much water we waste while showering.

Here's a shot of the surrounding village area from a nice viewing spot we found on top of a huge rock  while we were walking with Ben:

Playing

Patrick and I have become quite popular with the little kids around Welliminah’s house. Almost every afternoon they show up in the front yard to play after school and we usually come out to join them. We’ve shown them how to play frisbee, and they’ve shown us how to play soccer/football. They’re actually pretty good at frisbee. I’ve never seen kids pick up frisbee so naturally, and they actually gravitate to the forehand throw more than the backhand, which is totally backwards to how I developed my frisbee game. I didn’t get a good handle on my forehand throw until college.

Playing with these kids has been so much fun, and has showed me how much fun you can have when you use your imagination instead of relying on a television or Xbox. In addition to frisbee and football, we’ve also played baseball with a stick we found on the ground and an avocado, and we even spent a while spinning the frisbee on the stick Chinese plate style.

The other day, we also played jump-rope. Here’s a good action shot of Patrick, the jump rope master:

 Lastly, here’s a shot of some of the kids we have been playing with, hamming it up for the camera. From left to right; Musa, Peter, Odanga, Nyanje, Moraa, and Vincent:

And lastly, Working

Patrick and I have used this first week to visit Kijana’s partner schools and to meet the faculty and principals and introduce ourselves and our projects. Jim has done a good job of informing each of the principals of our projects and we were pleased to see that many of them were expecting us when we arrived (if this perplexes you, please know that there is no such thing as “appointments” in rural Kenya). We have visited Ebusiloli, Mwituha, Ebukuya, and Essaba primary and secondary schools over the past three days and have introduced our projects and have set plans to come back next week and get started working with students and faculty in carrying out the projects. Not much more to say right now, other than that we’re both feeling good about the next nine weeks and delivering some quality work. This week has been mostly all about getting used to Kenya and our new lifestyles. More to come. 

Here's a shot from outside Kijana's office: