30 January 2011
(look, look, I write the date like a Kenyan now!)
I kissed a baby giraffe yesterday (on the mouth… TIA, baby!). Their saliva has antiseptic properties, so it was totally legit. I love that I’m forced to live with my eyes wide open here—it feels like if I blink for a second I’ll miss a great adventure. It’s so easy at home to become complacent and let the days slip past, so while I’m here I’m making a conscious effort to live Every Fabulous Inch, to fully experience all that lies before me.
The most satisfying thing happened yesterday—I had to give my cab driver directions! I’m such a Kenyan. “Take Ngong to Kenyatta Hospital, take a left and then go right at Mbigathi until you get to Kenyatta Market, then veer right at the Comm. Center.” This is starting to feel less and less like a vacation and more and more like my home!
To be fair, there were some… “learning experiences” before I got to this point. The other day I tried taking a Matatu for the first time by myself. I hopped on the first one that called out “Kenyatta” because I live right by Kenyatta market—too bad they were heading to Kenyatta Hospital, which is not at all in the same direction. Rookie mistake. Thankfully, a man wearing a Santa hat helped me change matatus at the hospital and I got home safe and sound and with a new sense of confidence.
1/28/11
“Daaaaang that woman’s got a mouth like Nikki Minaj!” –Wangari, after hearing one of the Kenyan soap opera stars cursing
Sometimes misfortune leads us to the most wonderful blessings. I got some disappointing news from home and came home crying yesterday. My host grandma, who I’d only heard speak in Kikuyu and Kiswahili, was the only person home, so I was struggling to explain my worries to her in Kiswahili. After a few minutes, she gently brushed my hair off of my face and said, “My child, why don’t we use English now?” Ha ha, oooops! She had a great talk with me about faith and trusting that things will work out the way they should in the end. My host mom also had the most wonderful chat with me when she got home from work; we really bonded deeply and I could feel her love radiating.
I got to go into Kibera today for the first time! It’s the largest slum in Africa, and it was so powerful to see. In addition to my classes I’m going to be doing an internship for the 6 weeks I have left in Nairobi with an organization called SHOFCO—Shining Hope For Communities. [The website is http://www.hopetoshine.org/projects/clinic/ --check it out!] After the Kenyan government instituted free public education in Kenya, the schools of Kibera became overcrowded, sometimes with over 100 students per teacher. SHOFCO started a school for girls at that time to reduce class sizes and give girls equal opportunities, and it has had great results. They’ve now expanded and a couple of months ago opened up a community clinic as well, which is where I’ll be working. They deal with pre- and antenatal care, childhood vaccinations, HIV care, women’s health, lots and lots of malaria and typhoid, and any other health problems that make it to their doors. I can’t wait to get started!
“The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it.”
-Phillip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
I think this is one of the reasons I want to volunteer in Kibera. It made me so upset in a way to see the separateness of poverty and normalcy in Nairobi. It seems all too easy to forget about the slums, to look past the pain.
Outside of all of the adventures I’ve been having lately, I actually do have classes that I go to. I just finished up the first week. We technically have class from 8:30-3:30 each day, but due to a combination of everything running on ‘Kenya Time’, taking leisurely chai breaks each morning, and teachers who understand that the most valuable learning we’ll be doing in Kenya will be taking place outside of the classroom, we usually are in class for far less time than that.
I’m taking four courses: Development, Country Analysis of Kenya, Swahili, and Public Health. The classes are with the other MSID students but are taught by Kenyan professors. We all take Development and Country Analysis together, and are broken up into small groups for the other two classes—there are only 3 other students in Intermediate Swahili with me and 6 others in Public Health, so we get lots of individual attention from the professors. Kiswahili has been very intense, with up to 4 hours per day of instruction, but it’s great because I can feel myself reconnecting with the Kiswahili that was lost as I learned Vietnamese. The instructors are all such inspiring people; Jama, our program director and Development prof, is a warden for the American Embassy and has the coolest life stories to tell us; Fred, our country analysis teacher, has worked for the World Bank, among other institutions, and has the most impressive CV I’ve ever seen; Karama, my public health prof, works for KEMRI (Kenya Medical Research Institute) and is an epidemiologist.
I had my first public health class today… ahhhh bliss. My population health classes at UW have prepared me so well, I felt so ready to soak up all of the information thrown at us. Our major assignment for each class is a 15 page paper, and I was able to choose my topic for the public health course—I’m going to be studying and writing about prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV in Kenya… the inner nerd in me is SO excited to get started!
Our school is about a half hour walk from where I live. The journey is wonderful, it’s shady and calm in the morning and bright and bustling on the way home. I get to walk with some of my best friends from the program who live near me once I hike the 10 or so minutes to their neighborhood. There are some interesting characters that I’ve been encountering on my walk home once I get to Kenyatta Market, the part that I travel by myself. My personal favorite is the man who asks me each day if I “want a black Jesus in my life”. I’ve since learned to cross the street before I come to him, needless to say.
1/26/11
The electricity is out, and as I sit with my host family and write this by candlelight, I feel home. I miss my people in the States, but it’s a ‘good’ miss. They’re keeping my heart warm.
All the MSID-ers loved seeing my battle scar and hearing about my so-called ‘oil-slap’ incident. God, I can’t wait to get into Kibera! It doesn’t make a ton of sense, I understand. I’m so drawn to the underdog, the places where my hands will get dirty. I like to think of my Grandma Monica diving into her impossible WWII nursing job; she gives me such strength. I feel like we would have such great chats if we could talk now—I have a feeling she could relate to the unquenchable thirst for adventures driving me today.
I faltered a bit today. A wave of homesickness came over me, and I felt so small. It was just for a few minutes, but I loved it. Why? I’d been feeling so invincible here in Kenya, it left me with a fear—what would happen when the other shoe dropped? I loved seeing that I’m perfectly capable of rising to the occasion and getting right back on my feet; I have a much more stable sense of confidence now. Stuff will go down—TIA, afterall—but I’m so ready to take each challenge and let it shape my very being, to influence my future path and teach me who I am and who I can be, what the world is and what it can be.
I helped Wanga with her 4th grade homework last night, just a little reading comprehension assignment. Pretty typical, except it was about Kenyan child rights and abuse. They casually discussed a street boy who sniffs a bottle every morning so he can face the day and a girl working on a farm who’s boss beats her but won’t give her food if she tells anyone. So goddamn real.
Hey everybody!
My internet availability is going to be somewhat sporadic, so I've been writing on my computer and then when I have internet I'll post everything that I have. To read this in order, start at the older posts on the sidebar and then you can catch up. Love and miss you all!!!!
1/24/11
“You have the internet now… can we watch Thriller!?” –Wangari, my 9 year old host sister, referring to the Michael Jackson video she’s been dying to watch on my computer.
I had a few T.I.A. (THIS IS AFRICA) moments today… namely getting hit by a car and having oil/tar slapped on my arm by a drunk man outside of the slums. But for reals, I’m totally fine and it’s been a great day! We had our first rainy day in Nairobi—the weather has been consistently beautiful and usually in the high 70’s. Unfortunately the clouds chose the day of our city tour to pour, but it just added some excitement and probably prevented Equator Sunburn Round 2. (Round 1 occurred at Lake Nakuru and I’m the tannest I’ve ever been in my life! Holla.)
We spent the day meeting our teachers and then heading out to run errands like seeing where the post office is (I can get big packages now! Hint hint, Mom…) and buying our cell phones and internet modems. We took the ‘Citi Hoppa’ bus back from town to our school and then the group of us who live across Ngong Road walked home together. MSID places students in clusters so that we can get to and from school more safely, and I’m in the same area as my old roommate Lauren as well as Mustaf (who is the best at keeping his eyes peeled for any dangers, a great guy to have around!), Siri, Dan, Chelise, and Hannah. We got to our neighborhood and then Hannah, Dan, and I decided to check out the area. I live the furthest away (figures, give the gimpy girl the longest walk!) so we headed to my house and then kept going. Things got pretty hectic about 5 minutes past my place, with a flood of matatus and so many people hustling past that we made sure to keep an extra hand on our purses. I really wish I knew what happened so I could explain this better, but we were just walking and next thing I know I was hit by a matatu going in reverse and stumbled over. I wasn’t hurt at all and everyone around rushed to make sure I was ok. When my dad heard this story he told me that I have to remember I don’t need to experience the public health systems of every country I visit first hand, it would be fine just to visit a hospital or something instead of being admitted this time! We have an expression (learned from the movie Blood Diamond and a K’naan song), “TIA”, which means “this is Africa” and is used perfectly in situations like being hit by a matatu.
The real TIA moment of the day, however, was yet to come. As we were still recovering from the shock of the matatu incident we were weaving through a crowd of marginally sketchy characters and a general feel of chaos. A man with a wild eyed look (not sure if he was drunk, on something else, or just unstable in general) who was walking towards me slapped my arm and then kept on walking. My first instinct was just to think ‘how rude!’ and keep walking, but then Dan and Hannah looked at me and started to freak out. I looked down to see some sort of oily tar mixture smeared on my arm! In retrospect I should have been more afraid that something more dangerous had happened, but it didn’t itch or sting so I just figure he had some gunk on his hand and my arm was the perfect piece of white canvas for him to wipe it off on. After getting home and showing my host dad he explained that the area we were walking in borders on the Kibera slum and also is a matatu stop so it has lots of idlers around and that we should stay clear of it in the future. Quite an ‘adventure’ if I do say so myself.
