Mwisho (The End)

"Though she was young, she was no timid child. She was curious about things. She liked to ask questions... She had a quick mind and she paid attention, picking up phrases of the language, learning how to cook rice and eat with her hands... It intrigued her, the land and the mystery. She loved the thatched roofs and the naked children, the wonderful simplicity of village life. Her eyes seemed to glow; she couldn't get enough of it. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty, in fact sometimes she seemed fascinated by it. Not blood and gore so much, but the adrenaline buzz that went with her job, that quick hot rush in your veins when you had to do things fast and right. She didn't back away from ugliness; she was quiet and steady. There was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself.

Her stare encompasses everything around her, the mountains, the villages, the trails and the trees and rivers and deep misted-over valley, the hurt and the hunger, and the joy. She said, " I know what you think, but it's not... it's not bad."

"You just don't know," she said. You hide in this little fortress behind your stuff and your comfort and you don't know. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Just swallow the whole country, the dirt and the death, I just want to have it there inside me. That's how I feel. It's like... this appetite for life. I get scared sometimes - lots of times - but it's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I know exactly who I am. You can't feel like this anywhere else."

She said it just like that and they all just looked at her with those big round eyes, not believing a word. They don't understand zip, it's like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like. That's the thing. You gotta taste it. She was there. She was up to her eyeballs in it.

She came over clean but she got her hands dirty and afterwards she could never be the same. It was like an unnamed drug. The needle slips in and you know you're risking something and though it hurts, you can't stop. The endorphins start to flow, and the adrenaline, and you become intimate with the danger and the devastation. Not bad, she said. It made her glow in the dark. She wanted more. She wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and then that wanting became needing, and needing became craving and she had to go. She couldn't pretend she was the same.

She could look at you with this little smile in her eyes and she was lost inside herself. Lost inside the country and the people and the sadness and the joy. She was the poverty. She was the land. She was still that innocent bright eyed girl from a land far away. But now, she was on fire."

-Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Meow Much Longer to Zanzibar?

Such the TIA day. We drove from Ngorongoro Crater to Moshi, TZ and what our tour guide Moses told us was going to be a 5 hour drive still had us on the road 15 hours later. Africa time took on a whole new meaning. We became marginally delirious, and it led to some interesting antics. I reminded my parents of the scene in the movie SuperTroopers where they ‘meow’ at a lady during a traffic stop, daring each other to say meow 10 times. Long story short, we started meowing at Moses. All of us.

‘Meow much longer ‘til we get to Arusha?’... ‘We’ve been driving a long time meow!’... ‘Hey Meowses, will you turn up the music?’

His grasp of English isn’t the best, so he honestly had no idea what was going on. So stellar.

The next day we were off to Zanzibar. Unfortunately we had another day of being on Africa Time, and we missed the last ferry at 4 o’clock. This turned out to be kind of awesome though, because it meant we got to fly to the island. We took off on a chartered 3 passenger plane (needless to say I felt like Angelina Jolie). The flight was surprisingly smooth and we finally made it to the tiny little Zanzibar airport. Customs consisted of giving a friendly wave to a sweet old lady, and security was nonexistent.

We spent our first day on the island just relaxing at our resort and enjoying the beautiful beach, delicious Swahili food, and warm weather. The next day, we ventured to Stone Town, Zanzibar’s heart and soul. I felt lost in time as we wondered the streets of old buildings and narrow alleyways. Old men playing mancala, little girls skipping home from school, and painters depicting their surroundings filled the streets. We had to work hard to shake off a few touts (or “ticks”) who tried to sell us tours or get us to come to their shops—it was a fun opportunity to practice my sassy Swahili though… “Tafadhali niache!” (the Swahili equivalent of “You best be stepping off.”)

It was so hard to leave the little paradise of Zanzibar after just 2 days, but I’m so glad we had the opportunity to experience it.

Calling a Vacation Audible

Greetings from Tanzania! Nothing about travelling/life in Africa is ever simple, so in retrospect we should have expected something like this to happen. Kezza Besigye, the opposition leader of the FDC party in Uganda, is under house arrest. He has been leading protests in the country lately over cost of living, and with Museveni being sworn in for his 4^th term as president last week, things have been tense. There were several riots protests scheduled for the time we were supposed to be in Kampala, so we decided to call a vacation audible and head straight to Tanzania.

We were heading to Ngorongoro, Tanzania, a beautiful national park that is home of the largest unflooded caldera in the world. Our new Tanzanian tour guide, Moses, told us it would be about a 5 hour drive from Nairobi to Ngorongoro. Fourteen hours later, after bribing negotiating with the gatekeepers of the national park because we were there after they closed the entrance, we arrived at the beautiful Ngorongoro Lodge. As we pull up to the front entrance, our trusty driver Charles laughs, “Oh, there is an elephant there! We can not go there!”. Assuming he’s kidding I don’t think twice until I feel the car quickly reversing. An elephant had climbed up the crater to the lodge and was standing in front of the huge glass entrance doors, just hanging out, so we couldn’t get into the hotel. I later found out that the elephant comes most days to get a drink of water, and the hotel gatekeeper politely opens and shuts the gate for it each time. What can I say? TIA.

It’s low season for tourism in East Africa (high season starts in about 2 weeks, so we’re just in the knick of time) so we basically had the amazing Ngorongoro Lodge to ourselves. We also visited the nearby Olduvai Gorge, the “cradle of humanity”. The lava rock layers there contain various human ancestors’ remains, and because the rock can be easily dated there it gives a nice little timeline and essentially proves human evolution. My dad and I were really into it and had a lot of fun learning about the history of the beautiful gorge.

Next up: Moshi, Tanzania at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, then off to Zanzibar!

Ngorongoro Crater

The front of the lodge where the elephant blocked our path

Olduvai Gorge

The Mara, Revisited

My parents and I headed to the Maasai Mara so they could experience a Kenyan safari. It was awesome—we saw the Big Five (elephants, leopards, rhinos, buffalo, and lions) along with all sorts of other cool animals and wildlife. I can tell I’ve been in Africa a while though; you know you’re getting jaded when you don’t even turn around in your seat to see a herd of zebras anymore.

The most interesting part of the Mara to me was visiting a traditional Maasai village. To put it delicately it was a tourist trap, but to go deeper it felt so disheartening. They tell the tourists what they want to hear (“We don’t get many visitors” “The money you give us goes to the school” “My grandfather made this bracelet [with a ‘MADE IN CHINA’ inscription on the inside]”). With so much revenue coming in from tourism, you’d think they would live in decent conditions, but unfortunately that’s not the case. The manyattas they stay in are cramped (understatement of the year), filled with smoke from their cooking fires, and dark. When you go outside to catch a breath of fresh air you’re thrown by the smell of cow dung, which litters the whole village due to their cattle sleeping in the center of all the houses every night. The dung also attracts flies, which cover the faces of all of the children. Female circumcision is a traditional rite that is still practiced despite its danger (women who are circumcised have much more difficult childbirths) and questionable regard of basic human rights. Some of the children go to school, some stay home and herd the animals. Almost no one goes to high school. Traveling to Nairobi is practically unheard of. There are no trash cans—garbage is simply thrown on the ground.

We visited the Maasai primary school, and the children were such lights. They were shy at first, but when my mom, a retired teacher, chatted with the first graders a little bit she was able to get them to open up. They showed off their workbooks and sang the ABC’s for us. It kills me that these kids won’t get to go to high school. That they return home every night to cramped houses and parents who are so bent on preserving their culture that they’ve morphed into caricatures. That they don’t have a choice.

All Together Now

My mom and dad are finally here! I was so excited to see them at the airport that as I peeked through the glass pane windows into customs and finally saw them among the pack of white people I shrieked, “It’s them, it’s them!” and jumped around in a circle. One of my finer moments.

I loved having the opportunity to show them around Nairobi for our first couple of days. We went to an elephant orphanage our first morning (my mom left wanting to adopt one...seriously) and then went to Masrawy and the National Museum in the afternoon. The next day we went to Nazarene Primary School in Kibera in the morning to drop off some books for the kids. I’m glad my parents got to see Kibera; it gives them a better sense of my experience than just doing the fun touristy things. After seeing the slum we went to the top of a conference center to get a view of the whole city—so beautiful! We ended our time in Nairobi with a trip to Carnivore, the famous exotic African restaurant. They used to serve zebra meat until bushmeat was outlawed in Kenya, but even with the new restrictions they don’t disappoint. We ate camel, ox balls, and crocodile. It was a beast of a feast!

Now off to Maasai Mara on safari :)

My Journey-- a movie

I have nothing to do here except write my papers while I wait for my parents, so that has led to new and beautiful forms of procrastination :)

Here's the story, in pictures, of my journey in Kenya.

Nursing School and Nairobi

I have exciting news to share—I got accepted to the UW School of Nursing for next fall!! I’m so excited, this allows me to follow my dreams and do the work I’ve been learning so much about during my stay in Kenya. It will allow me the opportunities to return to Africa (and Vietnam!) many times during my life, and I feel so blessed. Now my grades for this semester don’t matter as much, so I’ve obviously had just tons of motivation to finish writing my final 2 research papers… haha oh well, I’m just as happy as can be :-)

I can’t believe I’ve been back in Nairobi for a week already. The first few days were filled with joyous MSID reunions/shenanigans and our final exams for development, country analysis, and public health. Now I’m finishing up the final papers and tomorrow I’ll start working at Jukumu Letu for a week. Jukumu Letu means “our responsibility” in Kiswahili, and one of my infectious disease nurses from my leg saga in Wisconsin has been to Kenya and worked there before so she set me up. It’s a free daycare center for slum children so that their parents can have an opportunity to go earn income, and when I went and visited a couple of months ago it seemed so great; the children are adorable of course! My parents come in just under a week-- after leaving the comfort and love of my Mama and Baba in Msambweni last week I'm definitely ready for my Mom and Dad to be here. I'm so excited to show them the country that has been my home for the past few months.

I can’t believe the rhythm I have in Nairobi. It’s a city that feels so familiar to me, despite only living here for 6 weeks during classes. I have familiar journeys, comfortable places, friends from different walks of life than myself, and adventures on my list.

Msambweni Movie

The henna tattoos are beginning to fade, but I'm holding tight to the memories of Msambweni.

Just the Beginning

I have such mixed feelings. I’ve cried more tears over leaving Msambweni than I thought possible—even though I’ve promised to return and visit my family as soon as I can afford the plane ticket, it seems so much more final than the other goodbyes I’ve had to say in my life. Leaving the USA was hard, but I knew I’d be returning in 4 months. This is so much more indefinite. The only way we’ll have to communicate is by writing letters, and letters won’t capture the vibrancy that Msambweni brings and how alive it makes me feel. My Mama and Baba and siblings and cousins have become a real family to me, and being apart from family means that part of my heart will stay with them.

Arriving back in Nairobi was awesome though! As the bus started passing familiar places my heart swelled with a feeling that I was home; I didn’t realize the fondness I had developed for this city until I started to feel a familiar type of relief after getting back to the city, the type of relief you get returning home after a long journey. I stopped at Masrawy, my favorite Egyptian Restaurant/hangout to say hi to all of the staff that I’d missed so much and was greeted with open arms. It was great to see my first host family too; my Nairobi host brother was completely hyperactive when I returned, a sign that he was happy to see me as well. I walked to the supermarket this morning and felt completely overwhelmed (which will probably make my culture shock not as bad when I return to the US—I think I’m getting some of it now). I realized that I can’t hang out outside in the dark when I make my phone calls at night as it’s not safe here like it is in Msambweni. I went and got a chocolate milkshake and a grilled cheese from Java. It’s good to be back. Ups and downs. But definitely good.

Something Mama said to me our last day together has filled my heart with peace. As we said our tearful goodbyes at the bus depot, she said something that filled me with so much hope. “This isn’t the end of our time together, Molly! Now you have a Mama and Baba and a home in AFRICA that is yours, this is just the beginning!”

Computer Shopping in Nairobi

Before I update on my recent return to Nairobi and goodbyes in Msambweni, I want to share a little adventure I had a couple days ago. I arrived back in Nairobi ready to finish (cough basically start cough) my 3 15-page term papers that are due on Friday. As I settled into Masrawy, my favorite Egyptian restaurant/MSID hangout, ready to type my paper, disaster struck. The computer was plugged into a charger in the wall, and one of the waiters tripped over the cord and sent the computer crashing onto the stone patio floor. The screen was in 2 pieces. Thankfully my data was all okay so I didn’t lose the work I’d started or any of my pictures or anything, but I was stuck without a way to write these papers. Luckily my mom needs a new computer, and I’ll be able to get my old one fixed under warranty once I’m back in Nairobi, so we decided that I’d buy a new computer in Nairobi, get my data transferred, and write my papers. I’d bring the old broken one home to get fixed and it would be come my mama’s. This left me with the task of computer shopping in Nairobi… I’ll just say it was as much of an adventure as it sounds like, and matatu rides while carrying large sums of cash aren’t as much fun as normal ones.

I named my new computer Suleiman because it's so cute

Fatuma

Fatuma is the beautiful 13 year old girl who lives with us in Msambweni. She’s the househelp. Until my last night in Msambweni, I was so confused as to why my family, progressive for their rural town, would let a 13 year old be caring for their child and cooking and cleaning instead of being at school. Then Mama told me Fatuma’s story. She lived in a village even more rural than Msambweni, her family struggling to put food on the table. Because of their circumstances, Fatuma was more of a burden than a blessing to her mother, who decided that the best option was to sell her daughter into marriage. Baba heard about this and, thankfully, instead of taking the preteen as his second wife, decided to help. Mama and Baba hired Fatuma and she now lives a life of relative calm in Msambweni, with food in her stomach and happily unmarried. Fatuma is the sweetest, most agreeable girl ever and Mama struggles to let her go home to visit her mother in fear that she’ll get talked into an arranged marriage. She usually tries to have Mariam, Kinanasi, or one of my other sisters accompany Fatuma for some protection. Mama has plans to send Fatuma to learn tailoring during the day once Suleiman is old enough to go to school and she has some time. Then, when Fatuma is 17 or 18 she will have a marketable skill where she can make a good life for herself and she won’t have to rely on an early marriage. I was so relieved after hearing this story—Mama and Baba are helping Fatuma instead of exploiting her, and Fatuma has a good chance to grow up to live a happy, normal life with Mama and Baba on her side fighting for her.

Baby Crazy

My last week at my internship has been the busiest, most exciting week at the hospital so far. I’ve assisted on over a dozen deliveries, and I’ve delivered 3 babies all by myself! I've never felt so accomplished. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to learn about maternal-child health in a developing country; it’s really solidifying my interests and furthering my passions. Seeing the lack of healthcare the people in the Coast receive has made something click within me. Women delivering babies don’t get epidurals. They don’t get pain medication at all—every birth is a ‘natural’ birth here. The only medication they receive, if they are one of the lucky ones to deliver in the hospital with a trained nurse (there are normally no doctors in the maternity ward), is a shot of oxytocin in their leg within a minute after delivery to help them deliver the placenta and to help prevent bleeding after the birth. I proudly became an expert at giving these shots, but I wished I could have done more. Msambweni is the hospital for people living over 100 km away—I wished I could have done more for those who couldn’t make it to the hospital for their deliveries. I was feeling defeated and lost; what could I do? Then I realized, I’m gaining the foundation I need to do more. I’m just 21, I have so much more time in Africa ahead of me. After I finish nursing and public health school, the limits are endless. I’ll be back, Msambweni.

One of the babies I delivered

Auntie Molly

My cousins have made my time in Msambweni complete. There are between 4 and 15 kids living in the mud house next door to us, some related by blood and some by the ties that bind. The number at the time depends on whether school is in session and who’s sick and whose parents are having a hard time and who misses grandma. When you add all these kiddos to my host brothers and sisters, you have one heck of a soccer game, hair-braiding session, swimming crew, or dance party! One of the cutest things about this group of kids is that they call me “Auntie Molly”… my heart melts each and every time. Even the little 3-year-olds Abdulley and Alex who speak no English will clamor on in Swahili and then insert “Auntie Molly!” in the middle of their sentences.

I can’t fully describe the love in my heart for these children in words, so just know that they mean the world to me and make my sun rise each day.

Anifa showing her Auntie Molly some love

The gang

Wasini Island

Baba, Mama, and one of my Aunties, Mama Anifa (called that because Anifa is her youngest), took me on another adventure this weekend. Mama Anifa and Baba were born on Wasini Island, a small picturesque island off the coast near Tanzania. There are expensive tours to go swim with dolphins in Wasini, but I had the best tour guides—locals who know everyone on the island! The island community is like one big family, and Baba and Mama Anifa still have most of their cousins and extended family living there.

We took a tiny motor boat from Shimoni, the nearest tiny town to the island. Soon, we were in an interesting mix of a tourist’s paradise and a typical African village. One end of the island is filled with hotels and diving companies, but we spent our time climbing over coral and trekking dirt paths to get to each of Baba’s relatives’ houses to pay our visits. At first I was a little bummed we wouldn’t be going to the famous marine park on the island to see the dolphins, but I realized that that was a different experience for another time—this was my chance to see the lesser-known side of Wasini. Everyone was so welcoming of the mgeni (visitor) and I drank at least 5 cups of chai… no small feat in the heat that was somehow even hotter than Msambweni! Mama and Baba wanted to include a little of the more-known cultural activities in our trip so we visited a mangrove and coral garden. The coral rocks reminded me of visiting Stonehenge, except this was completely natural. Mama proudly explained to me that it was a nature conservatory, however 5 minutes later she gleefully dared Baba and I to climb on the coral and see who could get higher! Always up for some fun :-)

The day was completed with a sunset piki-piki (motorbike) ride home through the South Coast. Unfortunately Kenya hasn’t adopted the motorbike helmet laws that I’m so passionate about in Vietnam—looks like I have my work cut out for me in the East African public health policy realm?

Lookin' cool in our sunnies

Lesser-known Wasini

Oh, you know, just holding a shark

Baba and I breaking all sorts of nature rules by climbing the coral

(at Mama's urging, of course)