Yeah so me posting regularly might be a little bit of a pipe dream. Sorry. I have some good stories to share that I'm sure I wont get to in this post so maybe a few will come rapid fire. No promises though.
Before getting down to business I have to quickly note that I have now been in Kenya for a whole 6 months. That's nearly 1/50th of my entire life. Spent in Africa. Not an insignificant fraction. Still kinda crazy to think I'm here doing this, much less have been doing it for 6 months.
Anyway, on to the updates.
So I've been at site for more than 4 months now. At this point I have a good feel for what I can be doing in a kind of formal way and what the smaller less formal things I can be doing to gently push along progress. It's funny, in a slightly embarrassing way, how long it has taken for me to put together what I've observed and what I've been told to see the root issues that I now hold to be blindingly obvious. I've had more than a few "why didn't I ask myself that question 3 months ago?" moments over the last few weeks. Well I guess at least I eventually got around to it.
So here's what I got going on:
The Kitile Village Development Committee, my official partner organization, is now one of around 75 sub-groups that make up a newly formed Community Based Organization (CBO). Because of their size and reach, CBOs are able to get big government grants and are positioned well to attract NGOs that only do bigger projects. I'm working with the management committee on figuring out how this thing should be structured (which is proving to be pretty difficult because A) the thing is an unwieldy beast - around 1,500 people populate the 75 groups, and B) some key members of the management committee seem to think their job is finished now that they've won their respective positions' election) while trying to take advantage of our CBO status and get some outside help. To be honest I think it's likely the CBO collapses. There are some forces working in its favor, but when it comes down to it if the leadership doesn't have interest in doing the required work then it's not going to pan out. But I think one of the reasons I was put in this role is because I'm a little bit of a relentless optimist (naive, foolish, slightly pathetic - they could probably all replace "relentless" accurately enough) so we'll just keep pushing with the members who obviously do care and get whatever we can out of it.
Dairy cows are tremendous weapons against poverty in places like Mbumbuni. They provide a steady stream of income as well as a great source of nourishment. Over the last few years a lot of farmers have invested in dairy cattle and it's proven to be mostly successful. I've just started talking with the local dairy cooperative on ways to increase dairy production in the area. This initiative breaks down into three categories 1) increase outputs of current farmers, 2) help farmers who are capable of supporting dairy cows acquire cows, and 3) get very-small scale farmers to start planting different types of cattle feeds because right now the cooperative ships in massive amounts of hay from far away places for a hefty sum. This area has the right climate for cattle feeds, and they're extremely low maintenance crops, so it's what you might call a low hanging opportunity. It really is remarkable how dairy can be a micro-industry capable of supporting an entire community. There's a town about 30 miles (I think in the metric system these days so coming up with 30 miles just took some effort) down the road that faces the exact same conditions as we do but it's a prosperous, bustling little place. All because about 20 years ago an old man with some foresight bought a few dairy cows and told everyone that would listen to do the same. Now they have all types of value adding facilities and produce so much milk that it's dirt cheap locally and they still have enough left over to sell to big buyers. Most of you who know me well may be surprised to learn this, but I actually have no knowledge whatsoever on dairy cattle, or the dairy business for that matter. Mostly I'm just facilitating meetings with groups who might benefit from meeting, mobilizing the community when appropriate and helping write proposals.
Lastly I'm helping a group of mango farmer find ways to get more money from their mangoes. This is actually the area that I think has the most potential to help the most people the fastest. There are a ton of people with a few mango trees, and there are a few people with a ton of mango trees, and that adds up to an absurd number of mangoes come mango season. The problem is there isn't the access to markets needed to get a decent amount of money for these mangoes. Historically farmers only sell locally or to the few middlemen (appropriately coined "exploiters") that come through the area en route to bigger cities, and that usually results in a selling price of 3-5 shillings (4-6 cents) per mango. And these mangoes are gigantic and incredible, it really is criminal that they get such a paltry sum of money for something so ridiculously delicious (on a related note, if anyone is considering visiting, come during mango season,December to March...every day we'll eat 8 mangoes, each one contending for the best mango you've ever had in your entire life). So this group is looking into ways to cut out the middle men, start doing value-adding processes (drying and packaging, juicing, etc.), tap into export markets, or really anything that will fetch them a fair price. There are of course some hurdles, but this group is run by smart people who are approaching this professionally, so I think their likelihood of succeeding is good. In fact, they've got their act together enough that I'm not even really sure how it is I can be of assistance, but this has potential so I'm going to stay engaged in case something does come up.
Those are the formal things I have on my plate. They're not yet specific enough to be termed "projects" but they are on their way. And actually earlier this week the not-for-profit arm of Land O' Lakes (the U.S. dairy company) started a project in Mbumbuni around building water harvesting capabilities with the goal of using the water to increase milk production. That pretty much encapsulates what I see as the solution to many of this area's problems - harvesting/conserving water with the consideration of then doing something with the water to create food or money. The Land O' Lakes development should stimulate more formal projects with this mission.
My other focus and key to quality of life improvement, education, is coming along as well. It turns out Wings of the Dawn will be sending around 20,000 books (Have you not donated yet? Is your credit card readily available? How convenient because here's the link to the fund raising page:
www.change.org/wingsofthedawn/projects/view/a_library_with_no_books) so that might end being enough for two libraries, one at Nduluku and one at a new high school that they are in the process of building up (or maybe at an all girls school down the road a little). The President of Wings of the Dawn, Mr. Ade Otenaike, has said this is fine as long as the libraries are fulfilling the mission of Lifelong Learning Centers where people of all ages have access to educational materials. I think the two library approach will serve this purpose best. On top of the library I'm still loving teaching two days a week. I just got all the XO One Laptop Per Child programs from a Volunteer on the coast. Some of the programs are really good, now it's just a matter of putting them to use. There are a few other things in the works but none are worth mentioning in any detail right now. Maybe if I wait another 3 months to post again they'll be full blown paragraphs by then. Well regardless of when I post again hopefully they'll be worth at least a paragraph in 3 months. I digress...
In general, life's still good. Peace Corps is definitely an emotional roller coaster. Some days I feel like I'm making a big impact (because it popped in my head, we've just about finished our first sand dam on a near by dried river bed. Getting that done will be nice...sorry, digressing again) some days it feels like everything is falling apart and I question if anything I'm doing is going to make a lasting difference. The latter moments usually don't last too long though. Anyway, I shouldn't complain. Because I live on a General's property people seem to think most of what I do has his support and that leads to an unusual amount of cooperation for the work of a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Moms and Eliot (middle brother) are coming for a visit in July. I'm really excited about that. We're gonna go on a safari and visit my host Mama and do a bunch of other fun stuff. I'll give them all my pictures on a flash drive so they can upload them with all their pics once they get back. That means lots of pics come some time in August (should be for real this time).
Over the last few weeks I've had a few epic battles with horrifying spiders (get excited Mom and Eliot!). I wont talk about them right now because these are worthy of full posts in themselves. Heck, maybe even novels with some type of cinematic adaptation. For now I'll leave it at spiders are awful awful creatures.
Well a lot has happened in the last 6 or so weeks, and I'm sure I'm leaving out some important stuff, but this will do for now.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
a few pics
Alright there's a way to do a slide show but it would require me to download a blog gadget or widget or something like that and my internet connection is not nearly good enough and I am not feeling nearly patient enough to go through all that nonsense. So here are a few pics until one of those two things is resolved. Enjoy!
Wait before you enjoy take a sec to put a little money towards Nduluku's library - http://www.wingsofthedawn.org/NdulukuLibraryKenya.html. Alright, now enjoy.
didn't get a picture of me putting the male in a head-lock
the highlight of the trip to Loitoktok
view from a hill in Loitoktok
twin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro
my 10th grade computer studies class
me and my neighbor William
the property manager (Mutisia), me and the Gerneral's niece posing in front of the main house
Wait before you enjoy take a sec to put a little money towards Nduluku's library - http://www.wingsofthedawn.org/NdulukuLibraryKenya.html. Alright, now enjoy.
didn't get a picture of me putting the male in a head-lockthe highlight of the trip to Loitoktokview from a hill in Loitoktoktwin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaromy 10th grade computer studies classme and my neighbor WilliamI'll get a bunch more up within a few weeks!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Operation: Books for Mbumbuni
Great news! An organization called Wings of the Dawn has said they are willing to provide books for Nduluku's library, as well as handle the logistics of getting books from the US to Kenya, if I raise money to cover shipping costs. At first WOTD was hesitant to agree to help, mainly because of the resource strain the economy is causing them and their lack of experience in Kenya, but after exchanging emails with one of their Nigerian officers (a very enthusiastic man by the name of Pastor Andrew Duya) they said they would make it work.
Directly below is a link to the fund raising page that tells a little bit of the story and provides a secure and easy way for you to donate. Wings of the Dawn is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization so all donations are tax deductible. The students of Nduluku would be greatly appreciative if you contributed towards a brighter future for them and a better Mbumbuni overall! They would appreciate it even more if you could forward the fundraising page to anyone who might think this is a worthy cause!
http://www.change.org/wingsofthedawn/projects/view/a_library_with_no_books
Also I'm looking for ideas of ways to generate a little interest in reading because, naturally, in a place that has never had books nobody, child or adult, has any sort of reading habits. For the teachers out there, if you know of a program that worked well at your school or another school I'd like to hear about it. For everyone else, if you remember something that encouraged you to read when you were in school or if you just have an idea I'd like to hear about that too. The email I check regularly is schaef5053@yahoo.com.
Seriously, an enormous thanks to everyone who contributes money or ideas towards this!!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Poverty
Whenever I strike up conversation with town folk I am inevitably confronted with a comment that goes something like “help bring this area out of poverty” or “lift these people out of poverty.” I often wonder what exactly they mean, and if they even know what they think they mean, but the general point is clear enough – improve the quality of life of the people in the area. If the conversation continues a common question is “do you have poverty in America?” I tell them: yes, but it looks different. We have tons of people who struggle to make ends meet and parents who can't afford the basic necessities for their children. With their vision of America as this place of endless wealth, curiosity has been piqued. “These people, are they employed?” is the follow up. Many Americans in poverty do have a job. “Their homes, do they have electricity and running water?” Yes they do. “Don't all Americans have cars? Do they have cars?” I try to explain that the ones that do have cars, well they aren't nice. Like it makes a difference to this person who couldn't afford a car if they had 10 life times to save up. The topic of conversation usually closes with them glaring at me with a look of extreme skepticism. But I do consider many Americans to be impoverished. Even ones with a job, electricity, running water and a car. That led me to think: What is poverty? And since I'm on the subject, how am I supposed to lift anyone out of it?
Poverty is usually expressed in monetary terms, one's annual income or daily living allowance. While the amount of money someone has is an indicator of the quality of life they are able to lead, something about defining poverty as a financial matter didn't sit right with me. Because of currency conversion rates and purchasing power differences trying to capture life in a country like Kenya in dollars and cents paints an inaccurate picture. And, worse, it creates such a narrow focus that the most troubling parts of the true picture are missed entirely. Living on less than two American dollars a day is the standard that is commonly used to identify someone as suffering from abject poverty. Two dollars is a little more than150 Kenyan shillings. 150 Kenyan shillings a day is enough to have shelter over your head, food on your plate, water in your cup and education bills paid. Granted all these would be done at an extremely basic level, but it seemed that if certain conditions were in place the worst of poverty could be avoided.
In Loitoktok, where our training was held, there was a large population of Maasai. The Maasai tribe is Kenya's most primitive group of people. Nearly every other tribe has adopted Western dress and a Western way of life. For whatever reason, most Maasai have decided to continue to live in isolation with the same culture and traditions they've had since the tribe's inception (which was probably sometime shortly after man as we know it came into existence). If you're watching TV and you see a group of present day Africans wearing colorful beads, carrying spears and doing crazy jumping dances, you're likely seeing Maasai. They are also unique because they are roving herds people. A traditional Maasai man spends most of his life wandering around with a massive herd of cattle, sleeping in temporary huts and eating a thick cornmeal-like substance called ugali mixed with a little bit of sour milk. It is a common thing for a Maasai to have over 50 pieces of cattle in his herd, with each animal valued at 30,000-40,000 Kenyan shillings. By Kenyan standards their net worth is pretty outstanding. But no non-Maasai Kenyan would accept that wealth if it came with that life. By any Western measurement the Maasai are in the gravest need of immediate assistance. I dare you to go tell a spear wielding Maasai warrior, who hunted and killed a lion as part of his coming of age ceremony, that he is a member of the poorest and most pathetic classes of men.
It has been through the work with my community organization – learning about past failures, hearing the members discuss current goals and then seeing how they approach those goals – that I think I have begun to get a grasp on this issue of poverty. The challenges mother nature poses in this area are very real, and they are great, but it's not the lack of water that seems to weigh the most on the people. And it is not necessarily the lack of food and the lack of money that result from water shortages. I have come to understand the worst of poverty to be the exhaustion of the spirit that is caused by a lifetime of feeling held captive to your circumstances. It is the overwhelmingly pessimistic worldview that robs one of hope and stifles life itself.
My high school football team went 3-27 over my three years on the varsity squad. Now I can't claim that we were uber-talented underachievers, but we certainly had enough talent to compete and win games in the subpar conference we were a part of. Unfortunately we could never break free of the loser's mentality. We went into every game fully expecting to be defeated. If you haven't played seriously competitive sports, especially an effort intensive game like football, this might sound like it should be an insignificant thing. But it isn't. The second an opponent got up on us, we just gave in. Why try? We were going to get smoked anyway, just like the last game and the game before that. And that attitude brings out a look in the eye and an atmosphere on the sideline.
That look, that feeling in the air, is exactly what I'm confronted with when I discuss projects with my community counterparts. They tell me “We want to harvest the fish that are in one of the reservoirs...but we don't have a net...and we're not really sure if there is a market to sell them here anyway.” Why try? The operation would fall apart just like the honey harvesting project they tried six months ago and the commercial tree nursery before that. Instead they choose to sit and look to the sky hoping that this will be one of the off years that rain comes and they actually have a harvest. Besides, when things get bad enough relief-food will come.
I don't want to be an apologizer for my community, and others in similar situations, because that is the exact opposite of what is needed. But it is important to acknowledge that the human causes to their condition are just as real as the worldly causes, and the former is the far greater challenge to overcome. Moving earth might be an expensive, capital-intensive endeavor, but it takes a lot less time and diligence than moving a worldview rooted in 40+ years of experience and a belief system that credits divine entities for all life's events.
So what can my role be in lifting Mbumbuni out of poverty? First it's to inject a little confidence in what they are currently doing. As far as the struggle against mother nature goes, there is already a pretty smart long term plan, devised by the General and a Danish NGO working to develop the region. Because I'm white and from the most developed country in the world, the community gives me more credibility than I deserve. If I just show up to a dam site and work with a sense of purpose it seems to help convince people that they are on the right path. Next it is to get people to feel good about small victories. A day of gathering stones and digging holes might not end with a landmark event, but it puts the group a day closer to having much more water than they did before. And that's something to get excited about. Lastly I want to make sure people see the connection between the work they are doing and the results that follow, and in a bigger way; the results they are creating and the improvement in their quality of life. Now in no way, shape or form am I claiming to be some champion bringing all these changes on my own. Over the last few years solid progress has been made and I can see why. There are a few individuals who are fearless and attack their tasks relentlessly. I'm just trying to leverage some of my status as an interesting outsider to get more people to adopt those attitudes.
Of course these efforts to improve the psyche of Mbumbuni must be applied to projects that break mother nature's painful grasp and knock down other barriers to opportunity, freeing people to pursue more fulfilling lives. That's one of the reasons why I'm so big on improving the education facilities here. The more you know about the world the less scary it becomes. The more you know about opportunities the more you can work to seize them. The more you know about the problems you face the more solvable they become. I don't have any misconceptions about education being some cure-all. But I do believe it can be a source of empowerment that would give people the confidence to more aggressively take on the big external issues they're up against. And that's something that will continue to be felt long after I leave.
Poverty is usually expressed in monetary terms, one's annual income or daily living allowance. While the amount of money someone has is an indicator of the quality of life they are able to lead, something about defining poverty as a financial matter didn't sit right with me. Because of currency conversion rates and purchasing power differences trying to capture life in a country like Kenya in dollars and cents paints an inaccurate picture. And, worse, it creates such a narrow focus that the most troubling parts of the true picture are missed entirely. Living on less than two American dollars a day is the standard that is commonly used to identify someone as suffering from abject poverty. Two dollars is a little more than150 Kenyan shillings. 150 Kenyan shillings a day is enough to have shelter over your head, food on your plate, water in your cup and education bills paid. Granted all these would be done at an extremely basic level, but it seemed that if certain conditions were in place the worst of poverty could be avoided.
In Loitoktok, where our training was held, there was a large population of Maasai. The Maasai tribe is Kenya's most primitive group of people. Nearly every other tribe has adopted Western dress and a Western way of life. For whatever reason, most Maasai have decided to continue to live in isolation with the same culture and traditions they've had since the tribe's inception (which was probably sometime shortly after man as we know it came into existence). If you're watching TV and you see a group of present day Africans wearing colorful beads, carrying spears and doing crazy jumping dances, you're likely seeing Maasai. They are also unique because they are roving herds people. A traditional Maasai man spends most of his life wandering around with a massive herd of cattle, sleeping in temporary huts and eating a thick cornmeal-like substance called ugali mixed with a little bit of sour milk. It is a common thing for a Maasai to have over 50 pieces of cattle in his herd, with each animal valued at 30,000-40,000 Kenyan shillings. By Kenyan standards their net worth is pretty outstanding. But no non-Maasai Kenyan would accept that wealth if it came with that life. By any Western measurement the Maasai are in the gravest need of immediate assistance. I dare you to go tell a spear wielding Maasai warrior, who hunted and killed a lion as part of his coming of age ceremony, that he is a member of the poorest and most pathetic classes of men.
It has been through the work with my community organization – learning about past failures, hearing the members discuss current goals and then seeing how they approach those goals – that I think I have begun to get a grasp on this issue of poverty. The challenges mother nature poses in this area are very real, and they are great, but it's not the lack of water that seems to weigh the most on the people. And it is not necessarily the lack of food and the lack of money that result from water shortages. I have come to understand the worst of poverty to be the exhaustion of the spirit that is caused by a lifetime of feeling held captive to your circumstances. It is the overwhelmingly pessimistic worldview that robs one of hope and stifles life itself.
My high school football team went 3-27 over my three years on the varsity squad. Now I can't claim that we were uber-talented underachievers, but we certainly had enough talent to compete and win games in the subpar conference we were a part of. Unfortunately we could never break free of the loser's mentality. We went into every game fully expecting to be defeated. If you haven't played seriously competitive sports, especially an effort intensive game like football, this might sound like it should be an insignificant thing. But it isn't. The second an opponent got up on us, we just gave in. Why try? We were going to get smoked anyway, just like the last game and the game before that. And that attitude brings out a look in the eye and an atmosphere on the sideline.
That look, that feeling in the air, is exactly what I'm confronted with when I discuss projects with my community counterparts. They tell me “We want to harvest the fish that are in one of the reservoirs...but we don't have a net...and we're not really sure if there is a market to sell them here anyway.” Why try? The operation would fall apart just like the honey harvesting project they tried six months ago and the commercial tree nursery before that. Instead they choose to sit and look to the sky hoping that this will be one of the off years that rain comes and they actually have a harvest. Besides, when things get bad enough relief-food will come.
I don't want to be an apologizer for my community, and others in similar situations, because that is the exact opposite of what is needed. But it is important to acknowledge that the human causes to their condition are just as real as the worldly causes, and the former is the far greater challenge to overcome. Moving earth might be an expensive, capital-intensive endeavor, but it takes a lot less time and diligence than moving a worldview rooted in 40+ years of experience and a belief system that credits divine entities for all life's events.
So what can my role be in lifting Mbumbuni out of poverty? First it's to inject a little confidence in what they are currently doing. As far as the struggle against mother nature goes, there is already a pretty smart long term plan, devised by the General and a Danish NGO working to develop the region. Because I'm white and from the most developed country in the world, the community gives me more credibility than I deserve. If I just show up to a dam site and work with a sense of purpose it seems to help convince people that they are on the right path. Next it is to get people to feel good about small victories. A day of gathering stones and digging holes might not end with a landmark event, but it puts the group a day closer to having much more water than they did before. And that's something to get excited about. Lastly I want to make sure people see the connection between the work they are doing and the results that follow, and in a bigger way; the results they are creating and the improvement in their quality of life. Now in no way, shape or form am I claiming to be some champion bringing all these changes on my own. Over the last few years solid progress has been made and I can see why. There are a few individuals who are fearless and attack their tasks relentlessly. I'm just trying to leverage some of my status as an interesting outsider to get more people to adopt those attitudes.
Of course these efforts to improve the psyche of Mbumbuni must be applied to projects that break mother nature's painful grasp and knock down other barriers to opportunity, freeing people to pursue more fulfilling lives. That's one of the reasons why I'm so big on improving the education facilities here. The more you know about the world the less scary it becomes. The more you know about opportunities the more you can work to seize them. The more you know about the problems you face the more solvable they become. I don't have any misconceptions about education being some cure-all. But I do believe it can be a source of empowerment that would give people the confidence to more aggressively take on the big external issues they're up against. And that's something that will continue to be felt long after I leave.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
other blogs
Here are a few other volunteers' blogs. Nic's has some decent pics. Haven't looked through many of the others.
Tameisha - www.fromemaliwithlove.blogspot.com
Nic - http://nicdominguezpctrip.blogspot.com/
Paul - http://superkeen.com/peacecorpsweblog
Leah - http://iminkenya.blogspot.com/
Harmony - http://www.kenyarising.com/
Charlotte - http://zlotte.blogspot.com/
Ginnie - http://ginnieseger.blogspot.com/
Will - http://worandpeace.blogspot.com/
Matt - http://www.hearkenya.com/
Pat - http://patinkenya.blogspot.com/
Jon - http://jonmcleanpcv.wordpress.com/
Alyssa - http://avavrusa.wordpress.com/
Jeff - http://mzungujeff.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Tameisha - www.fromemaliwithlove.blogspot.com
Nic - http://nicdominguezpctrip.blogspot.com/
Paul - http://superkeen.com/peacecorpsweblog
Leah - http://iminkenya.blogspot.com/
Harmony - http://www.kenyarising.com/
Charlotte - http://zlotte.blogspot.com/
Ginnie - http://ginnieseger.blogspot.com/
Will - http://worandpeace.blogspot.com/
Matt - http://www.hearkenya.com/
Pat - http://patinkenya.blogspot.com/
Jon - http://jonmcleanpcv.wordpress.com/
Alyssa - http://avavrusa.wordpress.com/
Jeff - http://mzungujeff.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
What I'm doing and where I'm doing it
Well I am now a full four weeks into being an actual Peace Corps Volunteer, which feels incredibly, fantastically liberating considering the monotony and structure of training. More importantly, I came with these grand ambitions of finding work that is meaningful and fulfilling; now I get to discover if Peace Corps offers that.
My assignment is one that is exactly what I wanted in many ways and in others it is kind of what I feared I might get when I decided to apply for Peace Corps. I'll start with the positive. Many months ago, when this idea of me spending two years in a developing country was still in its infancy, one of the things that got me the most excited about Peace Corps was the freedom Volunteers have in determining the projects they pursue and how they go about pursuing them. Now all Peace Corps assignments certainly don't offer these wonderful liberties. Many in fact put you in an established, often well run, organization and come with a defined role you are expected to fulfill (and many volunteers prefer this type of scenario). When I was talking to Peace Corps administration about what I wanted in my site I was explicit-as-can-be in expressing my interest in getting one of the flexible ones that allows for me to define what I deem to be good work and then create the plan to complete that work. Well I got exactly that. I have been partnered with a Village Development Committee, which is something like a group of activists who want to improve this, that or the other about their community. But my partnership with them is pretty loose. My Peace Corps director has allowed, and even encouraged, me to go around and talk with a lot of people/groups to find out different ways I might be able to help. Essentially they put me down somewhere and said "make it a better place." Couldn't ask for anything more with the work itself.
Now the negative. When I was talking with administration about site placement the other thing I was explicit-as-can-be about was that I strongly preferred being in a more developed, urban area. They gave me the exact opposite of that. I am in a tiiiiiiiiiny town called Mbumbuni in the middle of nowhere. It is very appropriately pronounced "boom-boonie."
My thinking was that if I was placed in a decent sized city the diverse population would have a lot of different things going on and I would definitely be able to find a bunch of projects that were of interest to me and at the same time beneficial to some group of people. And being in a developed area there would be ample resources allowing me to be effective in doing whatever it was I was doing. On the other hand, if I was in a small town I would be confined to the small number of projects that are relevant to the needs of a small, homogenous group of people. And even then doing anything significant probably wouldn't even be possible because the rural parts of the developing world aren't too resource rich (or else they would probably be developed and not developing). The good news is that my thinking was very wrong. The volunteers who have been placed in bigger towns are struggling to be accepted by their community and get an understanding of the issues it is facing (making it nearly impossible to figure out what should be done) and my community has embraced me with open arms which has allowed me to quickly find some really obvious areas where I can help and have already begun working on them. Unfortunately my thinking wasn't entirely wrong. The limited access to resources thing has turned out to be real, and will make progress with certain kinds of work slow. Internet access is expensive and unreliable. I have to walk 20 minutes to any place that sells food or water, and closer to an hour if I want something more than bread, butter, sugar or fruit. So I am finding that over two hours of my day are spent walking. There are towns relatively close by with everything American (including Heinz Ketchup!) so I shouldn't complain too much.
Also unfortunate, the reason that I have found things to work on so quickly is that Mbumbuni is truly entrenched in poverty. Though the area is actually pretty scenic, being surrounded by rolling hills with interesting rock formations, it is semi-arid and prone to long dry spells. This makes two of the most basic aspects of life, ones which Americans take for granted, huge challenges that are a struggle to meet daily - getting food and water. Most people here walk a Kilometer or two with a donkey or a small cart to one of the dammed areas to fill barrels full of water for the day's drinking, cleaning and cooking (and sorry ladies, this is a woman's work in Kenya). The bigger issue with the water scarcity is the havoc it wreaks on crops. Mbumbuni is a farming community. Farmers who can't keep crops are like salespeople who can't sell - broke and miserable (who would've thought my work experience in New York City would help me relate to rural Africans). Practically speaking, not only is the locally-produced food supply very low, many people have their only source of income completely decimated on a regular basis. Right now the region is in the middle of a pretty severe drought. I have already witnessed two massive deliveries of relief maize (not to take away from the seriousness of the situation, but the atmosphere at relief food handouts is surprisingly cheerful. There's something about free stuff that is overwhelmingly uplifting).
But the solutions to those problems are not very simple, and I don't really have any relevant useful knowledge to offer. I'm helping as much as I possibly can to keep the group organized and focused on a few ongoing projects that should make a dent in the water situation (there are a few areas they have set aside for dams or water catchment). Though that sounds like it shouldn't be something I should have to contribute towards, it is and for good reason. Most of the group members are poor farmers so I would estimate about 80% of their waking life is spent doing something to secure that day's food and water. It is a big sacrifice to not only give up the remaining 20%, but take a small chunk away from the 80% to work on something that will pay off in a small way a few months down the road. It is unquestionably worth it though. Once there is a reliable and easily-accessible water supply, there are bunches of other income generating activities that become possible. And besides, if nobody works on these long term projects then in a hundred years the people of Mbumbuni will be facing the exact same problems, probably only more severe versions of them (which is one of the things I've said to surprising effect. Kenya's culture doesn't allow for parents to be particularly affectionate with their children, making me think the youth's future quality of life wouldn't be a concern, but wanting our offspring to have a better life than our own must be something inherently human).
The other thing that I've jumped right into, and that I absolutely love doing, is helping out at the local primary and secondary schools. On one of my first days in town I visited to introduce myself, meet the staff and tell them I would be around for a while. The Principal ended up being this very nice and cool lady who has a progressive attitude towards education (a lot of Kenyan educators are big believers in wrote memorization and toeing the line, neither of which I subscribe to) and said if I wanted to do anything I was more than welcome. Well they have a new computer lab and only one teacher so I said I could teach some computer basics. And since I was going to come two days a week anyway I might as well teach something else. She said fine and that I had another 40 minute block to do whatever I want with the 10th graders. "Just enrich the children" were her exact words. So I start off with a15-20 minute life lesson. With this part I’m trying to balance the inspirational and the practical (dreaming big followed by goal setting and working hard, and such). The last half I try to use business as a platform to get the students thinking and solving problems. The major problems Kenya faces (and they are major by all scales) are solvable if there were only more people with initiative, courage and an active mind (the HUGE exception here is HIV/AIDS, but luckily for Mbumbuni and myself that epidemic hasn't hit this area too hard, but it certainly could). Either way, it's tons of fun. The kids like having a white teacher (not many American/European tourists make it to Mbumbuni) and they're all pretty likable students.
Also there is a library with no books in it. Read that again - a library with no books! I don't know why they call it "the library" and not just "that empty room." So I've been reaching out to different NGOs/charities that send books to Africa with a little progress. That's something I'm dead set on doing. I will not leave this place until there are books in the library. Ideally it ends up not only having books, but is a comfortable place for students to come and develop their own intellectual interests. I have been a huge beneficiary of free and easy access to a wide range of books. If the only learning I got was the learning that I was subjected to during formal schooling hours who knows what I'd be doing now. This lack of books thing is everywhere in Kenya. No rural towns have a library or anything like a book store (other than the Kenyan government issued text book suppliers). Even Nairobi's book stores are pretty shameful. Very very limited selection. I'm hoping that Barnes & Nobles makes it to Nairobi sometime in the very near future (I suspect that I will still be hoping when I step on that plane taking me back to the U.S.).
A cool little twist worth mentioning is that I am living in a nice, big house (with electricity, running water and a gas stove to boot) on the property of the head of Kenya's armed forces, Chief of General Staff J. M. Kianga. He grew up in Mbumbuni and went to the elementary school that I teach at. His story is a sort of Kenyan rags to riches one - a normal son of a farmer who joined the army at a young age, worked his way up the ranks, was sent to the US to be educated and is now one of the more powerful men in Kenya. He knows exactly what the people of Mbumbuni are facing and cares very much about helping their situation (and Kenya as a whole). All the major land development projects that require heavy equipment and expertise are made possible by him. A few years ago a Peace Corps volunteer did a bunch of good work in a nearby town and he saw that Mbumbuni could use a lot the same stuff that volunteer did. So he built a house on his property and lobbied Peace Corps until they finally consented. Now I'm here.
In summary, it does indeed look like I will find the work meaningful. And I am happy. Every day I wake up, do things I enjoy doing, read things I enjoy reading, write things I enjoy writing and think about things I enjoy thinking about. Now only if I could follow football a little easier my life would be complete...for the time being.
Well I've written entirely too much again. I'll try to plan a little better and break these posts up a bit and update more regularly. Pictures to come eventually!
My assignment is one that is exactly what I wanted in many ways and in others it is kind of what I feared I might get when I decided to apply for Peace Corps. I'll start with the positive. Many months ago, when this idea of me spending two years in a developing country was still in its infancy, one of the things that got me the most excited about Peace Corps was the freedom Volunteers have in determining the projects they pursue and how they go about pursuing them. Now all Peace Corps assignments certainly don't offer these wonderful liberties. Many in fact put you in an established, often well run, organization and come with a defined role you are expected to fulfill (and many volunteers prefer this type of scenario). When I was talking to Peace Corps administration about what I wanted in my site I was explicit-as-can-be in expressing my interest in getting one of the flexible ones that allows for me to define what I deem to be good work and then create the plan to complete that work. Well I got exactly that. I have been partnered with a Village Development Committee, which is something like a group of activists who want to improve this, that or the other about their community. But my partnership with them is pretty loose. My Peace Corps director has allowed, and even encouraged, me to go around and talk with a lot of people/groups to find out different ways I might be able to help. Essentially they put me down somewhere and said "make it a better place." Couldn't ask for anything more with the work itself.
Now the negative. When I was talking with administration about site placement the other thing I was explicit-as-can-be about was that I strongly preferred being in a more developed, urban area. They gave me the exact opposite of that. I am in a tiiiiiiiiiny town called Mbumbuni in the middle of nowhere. It is very appropriately pronounced "boom-boonie."
My thinking was that if I was placed in a decent sized city the diverse population would have a lot of different things going on and I would definitely be able to find a bunch of projects that were of interest to me and at the same time beneficial to some group of people. And being in a developed area there would be ample resources allowing me to be effective in doing whatever it was I was doing. On the other hand, if I was in a small town I would be confined to the small number of projects that are relevant to the needs of a small, homogenous group of people. And even then doing anything significant probably wouldn't even be possible because the rural parts of the developing world aren't too resource rich (or else they would probably be developed and not developing). The good news is that my thinking was very wrong. The volunteers who have been placed in bigger towns are struggling to be accepted by their community and get an understanding of the issues it is facing (making it nearly impossible to figure out what should be done) and my community has embraced me with open arms which has allowed me to quickly find some really obvious areas where I can help and have already begun working on them. Unfortunately my thinking wasn't entirely wrong. The limited access to resources thing has turned out to be real, and will make progress with certain kinds of work slow. Internet access is expensive and unreliable. I have to walk 20 minutes to any place that sells food or water, and closer to an hour if I want something more than bread, butter, sugar or fruit. So I am finding that over two hours of my day are spent walking. There are towns relatively close by with everything American (including Heinz Ketchup!) so I shouldn't complain too much.
Also unfortunate, the reason that I have found things to work on so quickly is that Mbumbuni is truly entrenched in poverty. Though the area is actually pretty scenic, being surrounded by rolling hills with interesting rock formations, it is semi-arid and prone to long dry spells. This makes two of the most basic aspects of life, ones which Americans take for granted, huge challenges that are a struggle to meet daily - getting food and water. Most people here walk a Kilometer or two with a donkey or a small cart to one of the dammed areas to fill barrels full of water for the day's drinking, cleaning and cooking (and sorry ladies, this is a woman's work in Kenya). The bigger issue with the water scarcity is the havoc it wreaks on crops. Mbumbuni is a farming community. Farmers who can't keep crops are like salespeople who can't sell - broke and miserable (who would've thought my work experience in New York City would help me relate to rural Africans). Practically speaking, not only is the locally-produced food supply very low, many people have their only source of income completely decimated on a regular basis. Right now the region is in the middle of a pretty severe drought. I have already witnessed two massive deliveries of relief maize (not to take away from the seriousness of the situation, but the atmosphere at relief food handouts is surprisingly cheerful. There's something about free stuff that is overwhelmingly uplifting).
But the solutions to those problems are not very simple, and I don't really have any relevant useful knowledge to offer. I'm helping as much as I possibly can to keep the group organized and focused on a few ongoing projects that should make a dent in the water situation (there are a few areas they have set aside for dams or water catchment). Though that sounds like it shouldn't be something I should have to contribute towards, it is and for good reason. Most of the group members are poor farmers so I would estimate about 80% of their waking life is spent doing something to secure that day's food and water. It is a big sacrifice to not only give up the remaining 20%, but take a small chunk away from the 80% to work on something that will pay off in a small way a few months down the road. It is unquestionably worth it though. Once there is a reliable and easily-accessible water supply, there are bunches of other income generating activities that become possible. And besides, if nobody works on these long term projects then in a hundred years the people of Mbumbuni will be facing the exact same problems, probably only more severe versions of them (which is one of the things I've said to surprising effect. Kenya's culture doesn't allow for parents to be particularly affectionate with their children, making me think the youth's future quality of life wouldn't be a concern, but wanting our offspring to have a better life than our own must be something inherently human).
The other thing that I've jumped right into, and that I absolutely love doing, is helping out at the local primary and secondary schools. On one of my first days in town I visited to introduce myself, meet the staff and tell them I would be around for a while. The Principal ended up being this very nice and cool lady who has a progressive attitude towards education (a lot of Kenyan educators are big believers in wrote memorization and toeing the line, neither of which I subscribe to) and said if I wanted to do anything I was more than welcome. Well they have a new computer lab and only one teacher so I said I could teach some computer basics. And since I was going to come two days a week anyway I might as well teach something else. She said fine and that I had another 40 minute block to do whatever I want with the 10th graders. "Just enrich the children" were her exact words. So I start off with a15-20 minute life lesson. With this part I’m trying to balance the inspirational and the practical (dreaming big followed by goal setting and working hard, and such). The last half I try to use business as a platform to get the students thinking and solving problems. The major problems Kenya faces (and they are major by all scales) are solvable if there were only more people with initiative, courage and an active mind (the HUGE exception here is HIV/AIDS, but luckily for Mbumbuni and myself that epidemic hasn't hit this area too hard, but it certainly could). Either way, it's tons of fun. The kids like having a white teacher (not many American/European tourists make it to Mbumbuni) and they're all pretty likable students.
Also there is a library with no books in it. Read that again - a library with no books! I don't know why they call it "the library" and not just "that empty room." So I've been reaching out to different NGOs/charities that send books to Africa with a little progress. That's something I'm dead set on doing. I will not leave this place until there are books in the library. Ideally it ends up not only having books, but is a comfortable place for students to come and develop their own intellectual interests. I have been a huge beneficiary of free and easy access to a wide range of books. If the only learning I got was the learning that I was subjected to during formal schooling hours who knows what I'd be doing now. This lack of books thing is everywhere in Kenya. No rural towns have a library or anything like a book store (other than the Kenyan government issued text book suppliers). Even Nairobi's book stores are pretty shameful. Very very limited selection. I'm hoping that Barnes & Nobles makes it to Nairobi sometime in the very near future (I suspect that I will still be hoping when I step on that plane taking me back to the U.S.).
A cool little twist worth mentioning is that I am living in a nice, big house (with electricity, running water and a gas stove to boot) on the property of the head of Kenya's armed forces, Chief of General Staff J. M. Kianga. He grew up in Mbumbuni and went to the elementary school that I teach at. His story is a sort of Kenyan rags to riches one - a normal son of a farmer who joined the army at a young age, worked his way up the ranks, was sent to the US to be educated and is now one of the more powerful men in Kenya. He knows exactly what the people of Mbumbuni are facing and cares very much about helping their situation (and Kenya as a whole). All the major land development projects that require heavy equipment and expertise are made possible by him. A few years ago a Peace Corps volunteer did a bunch of good work in a nearby town and he saw that Mbumbuni could use a lot the same stuff that volunteer did. So he built a house on his property and lobbied Peace Corps until they finally consented. Now I'm here.
In summary, it does indeed look like I will find the work meaningful. And I am happy. Every day I wake up, do things I enjoy doing, read things I enjoy reading, write things I enjoy writing and think about things I enjoy thinking about. Now only if I could follow football a little easier my life would be complete...for the time being.
Well I've written entirely too much again. I'll try to plan a little better and break these posts up a bit and update more regularly. Pictures to come eventually!
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Catching up
Hello All! Sorry for the looong delay on this first post. Peace Corps kept us absurdly busy throughout training and what little time I had on the internet I used to keep myself somewhat connected to the larger world. And to get frustrated by staying on top my losing fantasy football efforts.
I'll give a quick rundown on what as happened so far:
Me and my fellow trainees arrived in Nairobi on a Thursday night, almost 10 weeks ago today. They broke us in to Kenya gently by putting us up in a swank little resort just outside of the capital city, Nairobi. The property was immaculate, the rooms were pleasant and the food tasted just like the food available at any decent place in America. Since all of us had been mentally preparing for a rugged, raw experience this threw us off a bit. It felt more like a Hawaiian vacation than a face first dive into the developing world.
Next morning we got a little more of what we were expecting. After hours of filling out paper work, we loaded up a few small buses and prepared for our long journey to the town of Loitoktok, where we would be spending our entire 9 weeks of training. Well one thing that you notice very quickly about an underdeveloped country is that the "underdeveloped" especially applies to the roads. Few are marked by signs, fewer yet are paved and most don't even really look like roads at all. That made our trip from Nairobi to Loitoktok interesting. First of all the entire 8 hours was like being on a massage chair in warp drive, which is only fun for about 15 minutes. And how the driver knew when to turn is a complete mystery to me. Somehow there is a system because people do manage to get from A to B.
Eventually we pulled up to Amboseli National Park - a Wildlife refuge. We were told not to get our hopes up, but that we might get to see some safari animals. We made it about two thirds of the way through without seeing a thing ...until we finally pulled up to two lions sitting about 50-75 feet away from the "road" we were on. Now I'm not going to lie, the lions didn't seem any different or more energetic than the lions I've seen in the zoo many times before. They were just minding their own business, laying around relaxing as passive as can be. We stopped for about 10 minutes and the big highlight was when the male lion got up, walked about 5 feet then laid down again. But the fact that these were honest-to-goodness wild lions made the whole experience pretty cool. Our good fortune continued because we didn't have to wait long for our next siting. After driving again for a short while we pulled up to an elephant family (mama, papa and baby) strolling around. This was actually much cooler than the lions. For a while they were walking right beside our bus at a distance that seemed barely more than an arm's length away. Then we had to come to a stop because the mama weaved between two vans (we were only rolling at that point, and I didn't get a good view being in the last van in the pack). Making the whole experience more exciting was the fact that our driver and another native Kenyan who was with us were getting noticeably uncomfortable because apparently elephants can very easily do some serious (usually unintentional) damage to vehicles and the passengers within. Those were are most interesting encounters with fun animals. In the distance we saw a herd of zebras and a few giraffes and some other interesting deer looking creatures. After the elephants everything else was anticlimactic.
Life as a trainee...where to begin. It was an interesting, often frustrating, experience, but completely necessary to get acclimated with Kenyans and their way of life.
Loitoktok is a small farming town of 40,000 people nestled in the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The "city" part of it consists of about two and half roads sprinkled with shops, restaurants, hotels and small businesses (carpenters, cooperative offices, mechanics and other essential types of services). It is a nice little town with incredibly nice people, gorgeous scenery and all the bare essentials a Westerner could ask for when living in rural Kenya. The gorgeous scenery part really can't be emphasized enough. Every morning I woke up to the twin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro on one side and on the other a landscape of rolling hills sprinkled with farms and open plains. The whole thing looked and felt like it was ripped right out of Lion King.
The day to day...slightly different than what it was back in the states. First of all Peace Corps always places you with a local family during training to help you integrate with the community and understand the local culture in a personal way. I stayed in the home of a force of nature of a woman named Alice Wanjiku. As a whole, Kenya has a very patriarchal, male dominated society that has traditionally left women out of any and all positions of authority. My Kenyan mama never got that memo. She's smart, ambitious, outspoken and runs a handful of successful business interests. Almost all the families that volunteered to host a Peace Corps family for two months were full of kind and generous people that provided their guests with an extremely warm welcome to Kenya, but I feel especially lucky. My Mama made sure that I was always completely taken care of in every way but at the same time realized that I'm 25 and gave me my space (as much as is possible in a relatively small home) when it was clear that I was feeling a little cramped. Also, because she was such a respected commodity around town when I told a shop keeper that I was staying with Alice Wanjiku I often got preferential treatment. Nice additional perk. She had a son, Brian, who's in the fourth grade and a daughter, Paris, who's in her first year of university. Brian and his best friend Kevin (who stayed with the family the vast majority of the time) are great kids and were invaluable in my efforts to get a grasp on Swahili. Paris is like a calmer version of her mother. Very strong willed and straight forward (the latter is a rare commodity in Kenyan, and a valuable one from a Westerner's perspective). Altogether they provided a really amazing home stay experience and I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that they treated me like blood from the day I moved in. I'm sure I will go and visit them at least a few times while I'm in Kenya.
Every morning I woke up around 5:40 to bathe (not shower...I use a mug to dump heated water from a basin on my body. You get used to it quickly...). After getting ready I studied Swahili or I scrambled to do whatever assignment I should have done the night before until breakfast is ready. Like every meal with mama Alice, breakfast was almost always massive. Eggs, bread, peanut butter, jam, butter, arrow roots and a gigantic fruit plate consisting of mangoes, papayas, oranges, bananas was pretty standard fare. Sometimes there would even be avocados or passion fruits or some other random exotic little thing that I may or may not have seen before. I never ever started the day wanting another bite to eat.
Around 7 I would begin my journey to my first training session of the day. And when I say journey I do mean journey. I would have to walk anywhere from 3-6 KM (1.6 KM= 1 mile) uphill (this is not an exaggeration!) to get to the place where my class/meeting was taking place. Travel time varied anywhere from 40 minutes to over an hour and a half! Luckily for my fellow trainees I did live farther away from town than anyone else. Luckily for me there was a group of six that all lived in the same distant location, and all six ended up being pretty good folk. Our long walks to and from training sessions allowed for us to become good friends pretty quickly.
Most mornings started with 2-3 hours of Swahili. Swahili is a simple, well-structured language that assembles as logically as a language can. It also sounds nothing at all like English. That has made the vocabulary very slow to stick with me. Either way, after a little more than 2 months I am able to get by in areas that speak little to no English. I understand enough Swahili that I can usually understand what is being said to me, and I'm able to speak enough that I can usually express whatever meaning I'm trying to get across (this of course happens at the level of the most basic of human exchanges - purchasing goods, ordering at a restaurant, asking where something is located, etc.).
After the morning class me and a group of trainees would go for lunch at a local restaurant. 90% of the time lunch would consist of beans, a tasty pita bread type dish called chapati, and some type of steamed vegetable. Put enough salt and hot sauce on that meal and it never gets old. After lunch we would usually have a "technical" training session. These would attempt to teach us how to engage a Kenyan community, what pitfalls to look out for, how to identify and execute viable projects and other types of skills you would think a development worker should possess. Now to give Peace Corps credit, their training challenge is pretty absurdly insurmountable. My training group consisted of around 20 people, from the ages of 20-64, with backgrounds as diverse as recent college grads to ex-teachers to experienced executives. And we are all going to do different things. And the trainers don't know who is going to do what until at least three quarters of the way through training. With that being said, the following statement isn't too critical or damning, technical training was very close to worthless. Building from un an uneven base to an uncertain point is nearly impossible to plan for. The only times I got upset about it was when it just seemed to be unnecessarily adding stress to the trainees lives. Either way, I'll post links to other volunteers blogs. I know others have gone into more detail on their blogs about how they feel about the technical training. Feel free to peruse through those.
After technical ended, usually around 4-4:30, my training group would go grab tea or coffee. After relaxing for about an hour me and whoever was left from my group of six would begin our 5-6KM trek, uphill again! (ok, that's a lie), back to our homes. At home I would do whatever little chore I could to help mama prepare the house for dinner. Mama always gave me the most menial mindless tasks (cutting vegetables, stirring some pot, etc.) to reduce the chances of me ruining her hard work in the kitchen. After my day I was always more than OK with this. Dinner, again, was always more than ample and was followed by another massive plate of fruits. Kenyan food is actually really good, but slightly limited in variety. Dinners were a rotation of a steamed vegetable next to the main course of stew, beans/legumes, rice, maize, potatoes or some type of bread.
After dinner I would study Swahili or work on some assignment while mama cleaned up. After she cleaned the whole family would sit and take tea and talk. Between 9:30 and 10:30 everyone would be exhausted and call it a night. 5:40 next morning it would begin again.
That was my life during training (for the most part). I have now been placed to where I will live for my two years, but I'll talk about that on my next post (which I PROMISE won't be another two and a half months from now). Today I'm running out of internet time so check again in a week or two to read all about where I'm living, what I'll be doing and possibly other random thoughts I have about life in general.
Pictures...I'll do my best to post those as soon as I can but uploading pics takes a long time and is costly with most of the slow computers that I have access to. I know my fellow PC Kenya bloggers have pics up so until I post my own I'll try and link with a bunch of those.
I'll give a quick rundown on what as happened so far:
Me and my fellow trainees arrived in Nairobi on a Thursday night, almost 10 weeks ago today. They broke us in to Kenya gently by putting us up in a swank little resort just outside of the capital city, Nairobi. The property was immaculate, the rooms were pleasant and the food tasted just like the food available at any decent place in America. Since all of us had been mentally preparing for a rugged, raw experience this threw us off a bit. It felt more like a Hawaiian vacation than a face first dive into the developing world.
Next morning we got a little more of what we were expecting. After hours of filling out paper work, we loaded up a few small buses and prepared for our long journey to the town of Loitoktok, where we would be spending our entire 9 weeks of training. Well one thing that you notice very quickly about an underdeveloped country is that the "underdeveloped" especially applies to the roads. Few are marked by signs, fewer yet are paved and most don't even really look like roads at all. That made our trip from Nairobi to Loitoktok interesting. First of all the entire 8 hours was like being on a massage chair in warp drive, which is only fun for about 15 minutes. And how the driver knew when to turn is a complete mystery to me. Somehow there is a system because people do manage to get from A to B.
Eventually we pulled up to Amboseli National Park - a Wildlife refuge. We were told not to get our hopes up, but that we might get to see some safari animals. We made it about two thirds of the way through without seeing a thing ...until we finally pulled up to two lions sitting about 50-75 feet away from the "road" we were on. Now I'm not going to lie, the lions didn't seem any different or more energetic than the lions I've seen in the zoo many times before. They were just minding their own business, laying around relaxing as passive as can be. We stopped for about 10 minutes and the big highlight was when the male lion got up, walked about 5 feet then laid down again. But the fact that these were honest-to-goodness wild lions made the whole experience pretty cool. Our good fortune continued because we didn't have to wait long for our next siting. After driving again for a short while we pulled up to an elephant family (mama, papa and baby) strolling around. This was actually much cooler than the lions. For a while they were walking right beside our bus at a distance that seemed barely more than an arm's length away. Then we had to come to a stop because the mama weaved between two vans (we were only rolling at that point, and I didn't get a good view being in the last van in the pack). Making the whole experience more exciting was the fact that our driver and another native Kenyan who was with us were getting noticeably uncomfortable because apparently elephants can very easily do some serious (usually unintentional) damage to vehicles and the passengers within. Those were are most interesting encounters with fun animals. In the distance we saw a herd of zebras and a few giraffes and some other interesting deer looking creatures. After the elephants everything else was anticlimactic.
Life as a trainee...where to begin. It was an interesting, often frustrating, experience, but completely necessary to get acclimated with Kenyans and their way of life.
Loitoktok is a small farming town of 40,000 people nestled in the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The "city" part of it consists of about two and half roads sprinkled with shops, restaurants, hotels and small businesses (carpenters, cooperative offices, mechanics and other essential types of services). It is a nice little town with incredibly nice people, gorgeous scenery and all the bare essentials a Westerner could ask for when living in rural Kenya. The gorgeous scenery part really can't be emphasized enough. Every morning I woke up to the twin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro on one side and on the other a landscape of rolling hills sprinkled with farms and open plains. The whole thing looked and felt like it was ripped right out of Lion King.
The day to day...slightly different than what it was back in the states. First of all Peace Corps always places you with a local family during training to help you integrate with the community and understand the local culture in a personal way. I stayed in the home of a force of nature of a woman named Alice Wanjiku. As a whole, Kenya has a very patriarchal, male dominated society that has traditionally left women out of any and all positions of authority. My Kenyan mama never got that memo. She's smart, ambitious, outspoken and runs a handful of successful business interests. Almost all the families that volunteered to host a Peace Corps family for two months were full of kind and generous people that provided their guests with an extremely warm welcome to Kenya, but I feel especially lucky. My Mama made sure that I was always completely taken care of in every way but at the same time realized that I'm 25 and gave me my space (as much as is possible in a relatively small home) when it was clear that I was feeling a little cramped. Also, because she was such a respected commodity around town when I told a shop keeper that I was staying with Alice Wanjiku I often got preferential treatment. Nice additional perk. She had a son, Brian, who's in the fourth grade and a daughter, Paris, who's in her first year of university. Brian and his best friend Kevin (who stayed with the family the vast majority of the time) are great kids and were invaluable in my efforts to get a grasp on Swahili. Paris is like a calmer version of her mother. Very strong willed and straight forward (the latter is a rare commodity in Kenyan, and a valuable one from a Westerner's perspective). Altogether they provided a really amazing home stay experience and I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that they treated me like blood from the day I moved in. I'm sure I will go and visit them at least a few times while I'm in Kenya.
Every morning I woke up around 5:40 to bathe (not shower...I use a mug to dump heated water from a basin on my body. You get used to it quickly...). After getting ready I studied Swahili or I scrambled to do whatever assignment I should have done the night before until breakfast is ready. Like every meal with mama Alice, breakfast was almost always massive. Eggs, bread, peanut butter, jam, butter, arrow roots and a gigantic fruit plate consisting of mangoes, papayas, oranges, bananas was pretty standard fare. Sometimes there would even be avocados or passion fruits or some other random exotic little thing that I may or may not have seen before. I never ever started the day wanting another bite to eat.
Around 7 I would begin my journey to my first training session of the day. And when I say journey I do mean journey. I would have to walk anywhere from 3-6 KM (1.6 KM= 1 mile) uphill (this is not an exaggeration!) to get to the place where my class/meeting was taking place. Travel time varied anywhere from 40 minutes to over an hour and a half! Luckily for my fellow trainees I did live farther away from town than anyone else. Luckily for me there was a group of six that all lived in the same distant location, and all six ended up being pretty good folk. Our long walks to and from training sessions allowed for us to become good friends pretty quickly.
Most mornings started with 2-3 hours of Swahili. Swahili is a simple, well-structured language that assembles as logically as a language can. It also sounds nothing at all like English. That has made the vocabulary very slow to stick with me. Either way, after a little more than 2 months I am able to get by in areas that speak little to no English. I understand enough Swahili that I can usually understand what is being said to me, and I'm able to speak enough that I can usually express whatever meaning I'm trying to get across (this of course happens at the level of the most basic of human exchanges - purchasing goods, ordering at a restaurant, asking where something is located, etc.).
After the morning class me and a group of trainees would go for lunch at a local restaurant. 90% of the time lunch would consist of beans, a tasty pita bread type dish called chapati, and some type of steamed vegetable. Put enough salt and hot sauce on that meal and it never gets old. After lunch we would usually have a "technical" training session. These would attempt to teach us how to engage a Kenyan community, what pitfalls to look out for, how to identify and execute viable projects and other types of skills you would think a development worker should possess. Now to give Peace Corps credit, their training challenge is pretty absurdly insurmountable. My training group consisted of around 20 people, from the ages of 20-64, with backgrounds as diverse as recent college grads to ex-teachers to experienced executives. And we are all going to do different things. And the trainers don't know who is going to do what until at least three quarters of the way through training. With that being said, the following statement isn't too critical or damning, technical training was very close to worthless. Building from un an uneven base to an uncertain point is nearly impossible to plan for. The only times I got upset about it was when it just seemed to be unnecessarily adding stress to the trainees lives. Either way, I'll post links to other volunteers blogs. I know others have gone into more detail on their blogs about how they feel about the technical training. Feel free to peruse through those.
After technical ended, usually around 4-4:30, my training group would go grab tea or coffee. After relaxing for about an hour me and whoever was left from my group of six would begin our 5-6KM trek, uphill again! (ok, that's a lie), back to our homes. At home I would do whatever little chore I could to help mama prepare the house for dinner. Mama always gave me the most menial mindless tasks (cutting vegetables, stirring some pot, etc.) to reduce the chances of me ruining her hard work in the kitchen. After my day I was always more than OK with this. Dinner, again, was always more than ample and was followed by another massive plate of fruits. Kenyan food is actually really good, but slightly limited in variety. Dinners were a rotation of a steamed vegetable next to the main course of stew, beans/legumes, rice, maize, potatoes or some type of bread.
After dinner I would study Swahili or work on some assignment while mama cleaned up. After she cleaned the whole family would sit and take tea and talk. Between 9:30 and 10:30 everyone would be exhausted and call it a night. 5:40 next morning it would begin again.
That was my life during training (for the most part). I have now been placed to where I will live for my two years, but I'll talk about that on my next post (which I PROMISE won't be another two and a half months from now). Today I'm running out of internet time so check again in a week or two to read all about where I'm living, what I'll be doing and possibly other random thoughts I have about life in general.
Pictures...I'll do my best to post those as soon as I can but uploading pics takes a long time and is costly with most of the slow computers that I have access to. I know my fellow PC Kenya bloggers have pics up so until I post my own I'll try and link with a bunch of those.
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