MAJOR! Adjustment – September 25, 2011

More than one time this past week I kicked myself for spending all this money to be uncomfortable and cooped up. My western softness butted up against real life in Kakamega.

I am sharing an apartment provided by ACCES with an old Kenyan hand who’s witnessed my uphill battle. I’m figuring out how to cook on a propane stovetop; Saturday night I concocted an amazing pork stew with gorgeous fresh local organic carrots, shallots, garlic and potatoes. My appetizer was a salad of local avocado, tomatoes and cucumber all perfectly ripe. Dessert was fresh pineapple from Uganda; the local crop is still in the fields. I’ve discovered that a 500 ml. Tusker beer at 100 KES ($1.04CAD) is sublime after the intense heat of the day.

I’ve also figured out how to bathe: turn on the hot water switch, line up my various soap and shampoo containers at arm’s length ,turn on the overhead sprinkler, stoop down to rinse my hair under the cold water tap and voila – showered. My quads are getting a great workout from sitting on my haunches to handwash laundry in the dedicated laundry area. Maybe next week the carpenter will come, install the rod I bought, and I can hang my clothes on it instead of from the light fixtures.

The cooped up part. We live off an unpaved side with no street lights; there is no going out after darkness falls which is 6:45 pm these days. I am used to a lot of freedom of mobility and it has been HARD to be confined every evening. I am learning to make a night of journalling, contacting my husband via Skype, working on my photos and reading. Even when Michael arrives in 10 days, we must use a taxi to return from any place after dark. Apparently, most of the locals rise very early and go to bed early, thereby sidestepping any mobility issues. The students at the new university in town will undoubtedly change this scenario in a few years.

I have not had internet access 4 days in one week. The power has failed three times but mercifully not when it’s dark outside.  It’s all part of the 2011 Kakamega infrastructure. Everyone has a cell phone.

Why prevail? Because of the warmth, geniality and kindness of the Kenyan people; a verdant landscape dotted with banana trees and sugar cane;




and amazing experiences. Such as:

• Travelling by piki piki (motorbike), boda boda (back of a bicycle) and matatu.  Well, maybe never again the exact same matatu from Friday that had  no shocks and entirely dilapidated seats.  A matatu  is local  mass transport,  a minvan fitted out with as many seats as possible that leaves when it’s full, dropping off and picking up as many passengers as possible along its route.

• Being caught in a tropical rainstorm. Lightning, thunder, intense pelting sheets of warm rain. Over in an hour.

• Making a home visit in one of the villages where our schools are located. A mud house with two adults, 6 children (5 in the photo), no furniture or bedding, and a small plot of land. Father is a casual farm labourer. I was utterly moved by mom who shone with love for her kids and her dream to see them educated. 
• Witnessing two children at another of our schools being “de-jiggered” – having small white blood-sucking parasites removed from their toes and fingers with a disinfected safety pin and razor blade. It’s truly one small step at a time to lift these kids out of a cycle of poor hygiene. They were stoical; I am told Kenyans master their emotions at an early age.

• Eating my first 100% Kenyan meal of githeri – boiled maize kernals and beans – with sukama wiki (chopped kale) and ugali (thick porridge) which proper etiquette requires (they didn’t tell me till after I asked for a spoon) be eaten by hand. It was good!

• Attending the Sunday service at a nearby church, admittedly to hear the music. I wasn’t disappointed. The congregation (me, too) sang, clapped and swayed to the marimba- like beat from a congo drum and drum set, and the music from a synthesizer. The song leaders sang like Aretha Franklin. Stirring music from the soul of Africa.

• Knowing that I was really and truly in Africa when the boys started to drum on plastic containers and the girls gathered to sing and dance a welcome song for me on a Friday afternoon in their school yard under the hot Kenyan sun. I can still hear and feel it. It will be one of my “unforgettables.”

Shifting Perspectives: Arrival in Equatorial Africa, September 16-18

The vastness of the Sahara stretching out below me - hillocks and stretches of caramel coloured sand – was my biggest kick on the flight to Nairobi.  Then as the plane neared the equator, day and night met in a turquoise horizon line that simply vanished just after 6 pm.  Magical.

 

It was quite cool and overcast most of my two days in Nairobi.   I was informed that this year the rainy season has lasted too many months.  There are two seasons here – the rainy season and the not-rainy-season.  I’m not used to thinking of  seasons this way, just as it is I’m unused to hearing birds chirping at daybreak and dusk, when the 12 hour day is followed by the 12 hour night.

Just as it takes adjusting to the climate, the altitude of 1680 m/5500 ft. above sea level,  and the hours of the day, I’m also adjusting to a slower pace of life.  Things take the time that they take.  My lost suitcase appeared 2 and a half hours later than I was told – and that’s just how it is.  

Trying hard to apply that lesson about slower pacing, I spent an amazing afternoon at the National Museum:  life size models of zebras, giraffes and elephants; display cases of tropical birds (storks and pelicans!); exhibits on mammals’ adaptive behaviour and the fossil discoveries of early man.   I found myself both  fascinated and incredibly pissed off as I watched a historical video on the Mau Mau and read about the British colonization of Kenya from basically 1895 to 1963. As well as establishing an economic monopoly over Kenya, the British practised “racial segregation,” “white man’s supremacy,” and “divide and rule.”  As I am learning, Kenya is still into recovery.

In between, I visited the three shops on the museum grounds to look at jewelry, masks and fabrics.  I was impressed by the striking designs and craftsmanship, and was warmly welcomed – see photo!

Notorious Nairobi?  Not my experience during my first stay.  It’s a young city experiencing growing pains as downtown buildings push up into the sky.  5 million people live in a place that was a swamp  until the 1890’s.  The Chinese have its potential figured out.  They are here and in Kenya building roads and a market.

 And I have a new friend to visit when I return to Nairobi – a teacher I met in the Museum while admiring Kioko Mwitiki’s “An African Woman.”

The Back Story

This journey to Kenya is over 40 years in the making. As a beginning teacher in the early 70’s, I applied to be a CUSO volunteer. Some of the reasons were surely my 1960’s idealism, my sense of adventure, my belief in the power of education to create change. But I think there was something else at play. I loved to read about far off places and you couldn’t keep me away from looking at the photos in National Geographic. Then in my first year anthropology course at university, I was fascinated by the concept of ethnocentrism, and in my travels over the years, I have been challenging my own ethnocentric views.

At that long ago time, my application was denied for medical reasons; I was suffering from a fragmented disc and in considerable pain for a few years. However, my dream to someday, somehow participate in international education on the front line remained steadfast.

I decided that when I retired I would do some volunteer work overseas. In the meantime, I was realizing another retirement dream, to work with student teachers. Through one of my former colleagues, I was introduced to ACCES. Wonderful people, great work – providing post secondary educations for Kenyans in Kenya. I could trust that the money I was donating was being spent on tuition. Just when I ‘retired’ from my second job, in the fall of 2010 I spotted an ad in the ACCES newsletter to apply for the 2011 ACCES volunteer representative position for a 6 week stint. I did, and In January 2011 I received a phone call to tell me I’d been selected. This time the timing was perfect.

ACCES operates in Kakamega which is in Western Province, near Uganda and Lake Victoria. Over the years, the ACCES program has evolved.  Post secondary scholarships are administered by Kenyan staff, and ACCES now provides other educational services through CIDA grants, including non-formal elementary schools. I am going not to teach the children but to assist staff in the development of a teacher evaluation process.

My husband Michael will join me after 2 and a half weeks. At the end of the 6 weeks, we will be visiting two game preserves, the eastern coast, and Nairobi.

As I write, it is 7 days before departure. I am taking the typhoid and cholera vaccines, and starting the malaria pills soon. I can hardly wait.