*The name of the orphanage where I worked, in addition to the names of its directors, have been changed, as I occasionally speak of them in a negative way and it wouldn't be prudent of me to castigate them in front of the entire world of blog-readers :)
June 1Hi everyone!
Don't have much time to write but wanted to say hello to everyone from this hot and muggy internet cafe in downtown Nairobi!!
Quick update:
My Hostel: run by a Kenyan family and a Kenyan cook, Esta (might be Ester but they pronounce it Esta!). The food is amazing so far, I have eaten everything and have not been disappointed. Nothing too crazy yet though, dad! Though apparently my roommate (who is also vegetarian) tasted chicken FEET the day before I arrived. Yum? The family running the place couldn't be nicer; Ian and Edith live and work out of the hostel and are heavily involved in community-based projects around Nairobi. They have an adorable toddler, Glory, and seem really committed to working with the volunteers and making sure we are comfortable. The hostel itself is beautiful; enclosed in a tall fence, the two-story house is furnished upstairs with bedrooms for vols. and downstairs with huge kitchen and eating and sitting areas. It's much more elegant than I expected. However, there is currently no running water in the hostel and they are unsure when it will come back so we've been taking sponge baths with cold pumped water and flushing the toilet only after every 10th pee (there's a tally sheet!). But of course with my upbringing of no electricity or running water, even the electric light in the bathroom is more luxurious than I need!! I am currently sharing a room with one other girl but as more volunteers arrived today (for a total of 9 white women from America!) we will probably be getting another one or two in the bunk beds.
This morning we woke up around 7AM and after eating we walked the 45 minutes in the Kenyan sun (HOT) to Lord's Children's Home* (name changed), the orphanage where most of us will be working. We were introduced to the staff and about 30 kids (approximately). We basically just played with them all day as today is a holiday in Kenya and there were no classes. Another vol. and I arranged a soccer workshop as we'd both played in high school and then we held races and singing'/dancing. After lunch we had a toothbrushing workshop with some donated toothbrushes. My group of kids (six of them) really enjoyed the toothbrushing song I made up and ended up brushing their teeth three times, hahaha. It was hilarious and really fun!
A little about the kids: they range from 3 to about 15 years of age but the vast majority are between 5 and 11. Many are siblings. The orphanage is set up in four "apartments", each with a host father and mother so that family units can be maintained. That way, each child is raised with a father and mother figure and a few brothers and sisters. They have chores in the morning, then classes, lunch, more classes, and playtime/tea/reading time. I haven't seen the schedule carried out yet as, again, today was a holiday and we just played all day.
Alex, age 5
Nairobi in a few words: Busy with people, most trying to sell you things. The smells are a mixture of smoke, exhaust, dust, sweat, and occasional wafts of really yummy-smelling food, making for an interesting olfactory experience, haha. The sidewalks are jam-packed with people and vendors with their goods spead out on sheets. You really have to pick your way around, but it's incredibly dynamic and vibrant. I can't wait to see more and when I do I'll tell you all about it!
Okay my time is almost up at the internet cafe and we have to catch matatu back to the hostel in a few minutes to be back for dinner! Hope everyone is doing well for everyone and I miss you all and would love to hear from anyone and everyone!
Bye from Nairobi!!
Em
http://www.masai-mara.com/mmsw.htm (Simple Swahili for everyone!)
June 6
Hello once again, everyone! I typed a hugely long email last night on a friend's computer but can't get it to open up now that I'm at the internet cafe, so I will do my best to send the text tonight from the super slow internet at the hostel. Just so you all know, I have kind of started using the emails as my own journal, since I type must
faster than I can write by hand and have been finding it very difficult to make time to write out by hand my experiences daily. Therefore, the future emails you receive will be super long and I will of course not be offended if you don't read them - I just want to make sure I keep you all in the loop.Mom and dad, I got a phone here. It costs me a LOT to make calls to the states but nothing to receive calls. Matt has the number and figured out the country codes and everything as I was able to text them to him, but I don't have access to that stuff right now so if you ever want to give me a call, just email him or call him for the info. Also remember I am 7 hours ahead of you all! :) But I would love to talk to you at some point if you ever feel like giving me a call.
Things are great in Kenya! And I will send the huge email later on tonight to fill you all in. I miss you guys a ton and loved receiving all your emails in response to my last one. As much as I wish I could respond to everyone individually, I really don't have time or internet capacity. But please know that I am thinking of everyone and wish you could all be here to experience this amazing country with me.
Okay, expect a long email from me soon! And I tried to attach a few pictures but I think only one worked...hopefully I can figure that outin the future.
Love to everyone!
Best,
Emily
June 7
Jambo Baba na Mama (Dad and Mom), Babu na Nyanya (Granddad and Grandma), na mimi Rafiki (and my friends)!
So much has happened since my last email that I’m sure this one will be extensively long. Feel free to skim it or read it in increments, for I will now be using these emails as a journal for myself as well as an (hopefully) interesting recount of my summer in Nairobi for all of you.It just takes me too long to write down everything by hand in
my paper journal, and I don't like to leave out details - so from here on out, you'll be getting to read my own diary of Kenya online!
First of all, let me say that I am so in love with this place. I love the native Kenyans. They are the most kind and welcoming people I know. We will be walking to the orphanage in the morning, coming home in the evening, or bustling through downtown Nairobi and everyone we meet or pass will say “Sasa! Jambo! Karibu (welcome)! Hi Hi!” and either shake our hand or hug us or give us a high-five (their second favorite American tradition after Obama). I love the language – it’s
so fun ending every single word in a vowel, and repeating the same sounds in the middle of words so often, as in “sasa” (Hey, how are ya!” [casual greeting]). I love sweating more than I ever have in my entire life. The sweating begins as soon as I put on my boots in the morning and doesn’t end until I take an ice-cold sponge bath every other day or so. It’s strangely and surprisingly cleansing to be drenched in your own sweat and the dirt of Africa every day. It’s something I’ve dreamed about for SO LONG…and I love it. I love the hot sun and the red dirt and the monsoon-like rain shower that I was caught in today on my way to the orphanage (thanks for the poncho, Dad, you rock my world). I love the children at the orphanage because they are warm and affectionate and so happy to see you every day, and they are excited and bubbly and so, so smart. Basically, I am completely in love with my life right now. For the first few days I was here, it was so surreal – I couldn’t believe I was actually in
Kenya. But now it’s finally begun to sink in: I’m in Africa! I made it! I have my dream job for a summer! So thanks to all of you for helping me get here!!
Now, for a recap on the last few days. I have been going to the orphanage, Lord's Children's Home (LCH) every day this week. I wake up around 7:20, wash my face, get dressed, have breakfast (usually banana and pineapple with some kind of bread or an egg, and tea and coffee – real, fresh Kenyan coffee, be jealous), and depart for the 45 minute walk with 3 other volunteers who are also assigned there. The walk is hot and not shaded, and begins on red dirt roads (very muddy after a rain). We pass through cornfields, a massive squash garden, and a coffee tree orchard as large as a Christmas tree farm. We found this new way as a wonderful alternative to the previous route we’d been taking, which was on the “highway” with no sidewalk or shoulder and speeding matatu careening by every few minutes. Finally we arrive at the LCH gate, thoroughly sweaty and covered in mud and dirt, by 8:45 or 9:00.
Red dirt road through the coffee crop: our morning walk to LCH
with a pencil by scribbling through them. Then, we erase everything so the only mark that can be made out is the faint scribble we made earlier. We (the volunteers) typically race; my current best time is 25 minutes though most books take between 35 and 45. The kids call erasing “rubbing” which can be particularly amusing to a lot of young adults in a strictly Christian environment, as we enjoy whispering “Are you done using your rubber? Pass me your rubber, I need it. This rubber is so small, I have used it so much!” to each other to pass the time in a jolly fashion.
While the rubbing is going on, all of the kids are in their school. So the second activity in the morning is to read with the children. We set up chairs throughout the schoolyard and the kids are sent out to us, one by one, with their schoolbooks, flashcards, or vocabulary words that we quiz them on or help them with. This is my favorite part of the morning. You guys would not believe how smart these kids
are. While I’ll get to the downsides of the rigidly religious upbringing they are receiving at LCH, the benefit is that they are all incredibly attentive, respectful and diligent in their learning. They are all at a much higher level of education than American kids of their own age. It’s really remarkable. And to beat it all, they are
all fluent in English and Swahili, since Swahili is spoken in the home and lessons are taught in English. How amazing is that? These kids are bilingual. All of them. It’s incredible compared to the public schooling I received in America – then again, there are no public schools here, and you’re lucky if you can afford school at all.
After the morning, we split ourselves between the four apartments and have lunch with the kids and their “mothers”. The children aren’t supposed to talk while eating, so if you happen to end up in Apartment C or D, it is SILENT throughout the meal because these are where the older kids live who follow the rules better. But I much prefer going to A or B where I can have fun with the 3- to 8-year-olds who can’t
stop chattering, screaming, running around, or jumping up and down for more than five seconds at a time, whether or not they have a mouthful of beans, rice, or ugali. Personally, it’s much more enjoyable to have ten kids yelling “Amelie!” every few seconds during lunch than to sit there in complete silence. (The kids pronounce my name Amelie. And once they remember your name, they yell it constantly to get your
attention. It’s hilarious but kind of overwhelming. I really need six extra pairs of eyes so I can watch everyone do their tricks at the same time.)
To wrap up the day, the older kids go back to school and we spend the afternoon playing with the younger kids. They are luckier than most children in Kenyan orphanages because they have a big field and a playground, so we bring balls and frisbees and really have a great time. The older kids get out of school between 2 and 3, and so we stay until around 5 so we get to see everyone and spend time with all
39 of them.
Many of the vols. had a long talk with Jen, the director of LCH, the other day, and we learned some of the kids’ heartbreaking stories. One child, Moses, now 4, was found in the middle of a combat field in a rural village. His parents had been killed and were dead right next to him. He screamed and screamed for the first 6 months that he was at LCH. Though he warmed up to his house parents within a few months,
if anyone else came into his room he would scream constantly. But now, he’s beautiful, healthy, and fine socially. I never would have guessed he’d had such a terrible experience only 2 years ago. Another set of siblings, Maturi, now 5, and his older sister Nancy and brother (can’t remember his name), lost their mother to AIDS when Maturi was a baby. Then their father was sent to the hospital with AIDS and was hardly ever home, so the landlord of their shack kicked the children out. Their previous neighbors helped out as much as they could but could not afford to feed them consistently. Maturi had stick legs and a big, bloated belly when he came to LCH – his older sister used to feed him mud to fill his stomach so he wouldn’t cry as a baby. Now, he’s very sweet but really quiet, and has gained some weight.
Nine of the children at LCH are HIV+, though funding has allowed them to stay relatively healthy by providing the necessary pediatric AZT treatments. The kids that have HIV are obviously indistinguishable from the kids who don’t have HIV, but a lot of the volunteers are uncomfortable with that. This brings me to my next discussion.
Despite the nature of the previous paragraphs, there have been some real challenges in my first week here, particularly with the other volunteers and their attitude and ignorance regarding Africa and AIDS. Sometimes I wonder how they couldn’t have at least looked into the issue a little bit before coming, or if they just heard somewhere that volunteering in Africa was cool and jumped on the bandwagon. Regarding
HIV and AIDS, there have been several comments between volunteers regarding how they wish they knew which kids had HIV so they could be “extra careful” or so they could wear gloves while playing with these children. This statement absolutely astonished me. Having worked at the pediatric AIDS foundation last year, and having pediatric health care on the top of my list of interests for years, I guess the facts regarding the disease have become almost second-nature to me. Upon talking with my coworkers, however, I found that these young adults (from 18 to 32) really know absolutely nothing about the issue. I find this exceedingly frustrating. How could they not have done their research before coming to work in an AIDS ORPHANAGE!?!? Many of the volunteers do not even understand the difference between HIV and AIDS, or that there is a difference at all. These children do not have AIDS, but the volunteers say things like “I think he is one of the ones with AIDS”. Also, many volunteers do not understand how the disease is contracted, and are freaked out by a drooling child or a crying baby whose tear might come into contact with them. All of this left me really shell-shocked, and struggling to figure out how this could be.
Due to my surprise and near-indignance regarding the volunteers’ ignorance on the subject, I spoke with my roommate, Taryn, about the possibility of me doing a short run-down on HIV and AIDS in Africa for the volunteers next week, with some print-outs from the internet café. She said she thought it would be a really great idea, so tomorrow I’m going to gather some general information and give a “fast facts”
presentation Monday night. I think it is entirely unacceptable that the volunteers are so ignorant to the cause they are working for, and that it is important for everyone to understand more about the disease so they do not ostracize the children who may or may not have HIV. For anyone’s information who may be interested, you can’t get HIV from tears or saliva! It’s only BLOOD to BLOOD contact or sexual contact, through pregnancy or breastfeeding. So my new mission: gently, tactfully and patiently educate my peers for their own damn good. Why be here playing with kids if you’re going to be freaking out the whole time that you’ll get AIDS if a kid drools on you when you hug him?
Other than the whole AIDS shenanigans, I have also been frustrated with my fellow volunteers (7 women, 3 men) regarding their attitude toward our host family and the living conditions in our hostel. The fact that we do not have running water has created a lot of anger within the hostel, and I find that unfortunate. Some of the vols. have even gone so far as to suggest Ian and Edith, our hosts, turn the water on when we are gone during the day and turn it back off when we return in the PM, to conserve money. Well, so what if they do? Water is expensive. It takes money. And they aren’t rich. Did all these people really think they’d get a 20-minute hot shower every day? In
AFRICA?! What did they really expect? And then today, for instance, three of us were on our way to a different orphanage that is just for babies, and it started to rain. The girls pulled out their raincoats, and we continued on still headed towards Happy Life (the name of the orphanage), but then they both decided they didn’t want to walk in the rain and that it was cold and they’d rather hang out in the hostel. So despite my arguing, I had to go back with them because it’s not safe for me to walk alone. So I ended up wasting my whole morning because two women didn’t want to get their shoes wet for the sake of getting to work on time. Luckily, I was able to head out to LCH a bit later with a few other people, but not without being thoroughly frustrated and disappointed in my housemates. Do they feel no obligation to their commitments? Do they feel that because they are volunteers, their responsibility is diminished? I, for one, came here to work my ass off and get amazing experience and do what I think is the most important thing that someone like me could ever do at this point in her life. And I would never decide to turn around because it’s raining. It’s Africa. You’re going to get dirty, you’re going to get wet, you’re going to sweat, and probably get bit by bugs (another thing they all freak out about), and see snakes and huge bats and freakish plants and animals, but what did you expect? While this all
seems very harsh on my behalf, please know, Mom, that I am doing my best to look at things as you would, with patience and respect, as these people have obviously lived very different lives than I have and have a different perspective on many things. Ultimately, this first week living with 10 people from all over the place has simply taught me to be incredibly thankful for my upbringing, so I’m not afraid of the bathroom cockroach or of being unshowered for a few days or of peeing outside. These kinds of things aren’t a huge deal to me, and I absolutely have my parents to thank for that. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you guys teaching me that there are scarier things than muddy shoes or greasy hair. Like, oh, I don’t know, millions of
orphans. Or children with HIV/AIDS who cannot afford the appropriate medication. Or street violence against kids in Nairobi’s slums. So thanks, mom and dad, for making me shit in an outhouse and wash in the pond when I was a kid. Nothing shaped me more, and there’s really nothing I’m more thankful for since none of that part of this Kenyan experience is really all that new to me.
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So I just returned from the internet café where I was unsuccessful in sending this email. Therefore, I’ll write a bit more and then attempt to send it from my host family’s slooooow internet.
I think there are just a few main things I want to mention before this email has reached its limit:
1. We celebrated four-year-old Chris’ birthday at LCH the other day, and I’d like to share the African birthday traditions with you. First, Chris is placed in a chair in the middle of everyone, and has four or five birthday songs sung to him. The first is the regular “Happy Birhtday” that we are all accustomed to, but the rest are beautiful and MUCH more fun and interesting African versions, some in English and some in Swahili. There are dances and movements to go along with these songs. The culture here is one of dance and movement and song and music; there is a song and a dance for almost everything, which I love. After the singing, Chris receives a few presents – he got a new matchbox car, a new pair of pants, and some beginner’s flash cards. The cutting of the cake follows, which entails my favorite African tradition: Chris feeds the first piece of cake to his MOTHER. (Remember, it is actually his house “mother” but it keeps with the tradition of thanking your parent before helping yourself). I think
this tradition is fantastic and plan to adopt it into my own home when I have kids! On another note, for Christmas, the directors of the orphanage have all the children pick out their best toy, and then they go and donate them to nearby orphanages. LCH is actually a mansion of an orphanage compared to most in Kenya or in Africa in general; most have hardly a small courtyard for children to play in and hardly ever
can afford three meals a day. The children at LCH are very lucky, and the directors use Christmas as a good time to remind them to be appreciative.
2. Today, all of the volunteers got to experience tear gas for the first time! But don’t worry, we are all okay. We were walking back to the matatu station to catch the bus home after spending some time in downtown Nairobi, and as we entered the yard of matatus we found ourselves overcome by the most ferocious, burning, stinging heat in our eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. My lungs felt like I had inhaled glass shards and my tongue felt like someone had shaved all my tastebuds off. I have never experienced anything like it and I can’t really explain it. We couldn’t breathe and we could barely see. We hurried chaotically into a nearby open matatu and as he pulled out, we welcomed the familiar exhaust and smoke fumes of the downtown street
as the gas was left behind in the station yard. We wiped our eyes and gulped water, asking what had happened. The driver told us that the matatus had been honking their horns too much and so the police came and gassed the entire station about an hour ago. We were lucky to have only experienced the tail end of the gas attack; I can’t imagine being there when the gas was released. It was horrible. But hey, now
I can say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been tear gassed. No big deal.” That’s right, Emily, keep a positive attitude! (While still remaining fully aware that the danger is there, dearest Father).
3. The title of my project here is “HIV/AIDS Awareness Coordinator” or something of that nature, but so far I have only been playing with kids at an AIDS orphanage, and not really doing anything health-related. However, another volunteer living in the hostel works for an organization in the slums that delivers meals and medicine to
homebound AIDS patients every day. I am planning on speaking to my host parent, Ian, and see if I can work at LCH for the first month I am here and then work on this AIDS project for the second month I am here. I can’t imagine leaving the orphanage as I’m already so attached to the kids, but I would LOVE to get experience doing
something much more public-health related, where I would be working on a project focused on HIV/AIDS patients. Whether or not this works out for me, I know this summer will be amazing. I am loving every second of this experience.
Once again, thanks to all of you for helping me get here. I am constantly ecstatic and in disbelief that I am finally here, living my dream and learning SO MUCH. I can’t wait to share more with you. I will continue to write and share my experiences with you, probably on a weekly basis (or potentially twice weekly so the emails won’t be so
unbearably long! I’m sure things will get into more of a routine after this first week, anyway, so the emails should get shorter simply based on that fact). And please continue to write me! It’s nice to check my email and have messages from back home.
Love to everyone!! Stay healthy and I hope you are all enjoying your summer!
Emily
June 11
Jambo!
One quick note to Grandma before I begin - Your name is Nya-Nya in Kiswahili. Nya-Nya is also the word for tomato!
I haven’t written in a few days, so my first order of business will be to catch up on the events leading up to today. Things at LCH have remained ultimately the same as in my last entry, with us rubbing workbooks every morning, reading with the kids, eating lunch in the different apartments, and then playing with the kids in the afternoon.
Something I haven’t written about, however, is the extreme Christian doctrine upheld at LCH. Jim and Jen moved to Kenya probably fifteen years ago, where they began “planting” churches throughout the country. They are the first actual missionaries I have ever met, and they have the same purpose-driven, I’m-a-savior-of-Africans attitude as I could have expected. If any of your know me at all, you are correct in assuming that I am challenged every day to find myself in their company and in their home. Five years ago, LCH was founded when Jim’s father happened to turn to a page in the Bible that stated taking care of orphans trumps all other ventures. Jim’s father then decided to make this his new endeavor. Therefore, LCH was originally initiated by Jim’s parents (Jim’s father is also a pastor) but the Kenyan government would not let the elderly couple sign the legal documents because they were “too old”, so Jim and his wife Jen stepped in and co-founded the orphanage. The entire family is from somewhere in Nebraska, but Jim and Jen met, married, and had their first few kids in Danville, Illinois. Jim and Jen have eight children of their own in addition to two adopted Kenyan twins that are now 9 years old. They have homeschooled all of their children, though there are only two left at home – Kristen, 17, and Anna, 14 – in addition to the twins. The rest are back in the States going to school to be nurses or pastors, and having lots of kids! (Birth control is a no-no in this family, so every person over age 24 has at least four children. Most have more than that.)
Jim and Jen live in a nice house nearby the orphanage buildings. They serve as the directors, and the only white people working at LCH other than volunteers. While they are very sweet people who are certainly doing a wonderful thing, one can’t help but to think the word “brainwashed” when talking to Jim and Jen’s kids or to the
children in the orphanage. There is no exposure permitted to any religion or belief besides the evangelic Christianity taught at the orphanage and within the orphanage school. Prayer is a constant and continuous element of each day, chapel is held multiple times a week, the children’s schoolbooks are ENTIRELY faith-based (I have the pleasure of reading these every morning while doing my rubbing; each page contains a hundred offenses to the different religions and cultures of the world), and the children are taught the notion that if you aren’t a Christian like they are Christians, you will go to hell. For example, some of the children were discussing “Catholic Christians” the other day and one stated, “Catholics drink alcohol a lot. They sin. Also, they worship Jesus’ mother. Imagine praying to a woman instead of to God. That’s just ridiculous” etc., etc., etc…this child was eight years old. Clearly, someone taught her this.
The children also attack the volunteers with questions about our faith on a regular basis. On that note, it is rather interesting that none of the volunteers that I’ve been to LCH with are at all religious (what are the chances?). The children want to know what we believe, why we won’t talk about it, if we know the Bible by heart, if we are “saved”, what church we belong to, etc. We gently say, “We are here to help you out and play with you, not to discuss our faith,” or, “People believe different things all over the world,” which always receives a multitude of horrified looks.
I am having a difficult time writing about this and articulating myself because I don’t want to offend anyone on this email list, as I certainly have no problem with spirituality or religion whatsoever. I don’t care what other people believe. But when it comes to raising children in an environment so shut down to the alternate ways of the
world, I find issue. These children have never HEARD of religions other than Christianity, or of the fact that MOST of the world believes variations of or entirely different things than they do. It is beat into their heads that anything other than their accepted faith will send the believer straight to hell. These kids are terrified of God, which is why they are always so well behaved. They are honest and respectful, because they know that even if their teacher isn’t watching, God is and the kids think they will go to hell if they do something he disapproves of.
I understand the appeal of faith particularly in a country where children – and people in general – have so little to lean on, but there is a difference between introducing children to a religion and giving them no opportunity to question what you are teaching them. One child, Fatuma, 11 or 12, who is mentally disabled, came to LCH
having been raised a Muslim (Kenya, an extremely conservative and religious country, is divided mainly into Christians and Muslims). Some of the other children told a few of the vols. that Fatuma had to have her hands slapped with a stick multiple times every day when she prayed to her Islamic god, until she was too fearful to pray as she’d been accustomed and began to follow the Christian doctrine. Imagine hitting a developmentally handicapped child for doing what she had been taught her entire life, simply because you do not accept her faith and refuse to recognize it as legitimate or as an option at all.
I haven’t really figured out how to articulate my feelings regarding the religiously-based didactic methods used at LCH, but I know that I need to accept this lifestyle as the norm in this country, because I’m confident it’s not just LCH that upholds this curriculum. I will never accept it as acceptable, but I ill accept it as the norm and learn to live with it while remaining patient and true to my own beliefs. (That said, I will never accept corporal punishment of any child, particularly a disabled one!). I guess growing up in the bible belt of West Virginia helped me get about halfway to where I need to be – now I just have to be okay with working closely and for a long period of time with adults and children who are so strictly close-minded regarding any belief but their own. Above all feelings of frustration, however, I am glad to have this challenge ahead of me, as I’m sure my future career will lead me to many African, South-East Asian, and South American countries where a strongly religious lifestyle is typical.
So that’s enough of that! In other news…
Today, my roommate and fellow volunteer, Taryn, and I traveled with another volunteer, Brent, to his project so we could visit another orphanage besides LCH. Brent works in an orphanage called House of Mercy on the opposite side of Nairobi. Traveling there, I finally saw the slums of Kenya that I had expected before arriving in Africa. None of the nice houses like in my hostel’s neighborhood, none of the semi-clean streets, none of the fresh grass or grazing cattle that I have known for the first two weeks of my adventure here. We had to take a matatu and then a large city bus to the location, and then walk about a mile in. In this part of town, the trash is piled so thickly on the streets that you can often not see the dirt road on which you are walking. Mud puddles full of garbage, composting food waste and decomposing goat and cow poop add to the ripe, nostril-stinging stench. Sewage runs down the sides of each road, a dark, greenish water with clearly visible human and animal stools. On either side of the streets are shack-like homes and stores selling produce, meat, roasted corn, and other goods. There is a butchery on every corner, and the animal blood runs freely through the trash and dirt of the road, only increasing my urge to hold my breath. The people are much poorer than in Thome (the district where I have been living); they are skinny, their clothes tattered, many of their eyes yellowed or even deeply browned where they should be white. Chickens and goats rummage through the garbage and mud, men piss beside the road and the air is
thick with smoke from cookfires. This is the Africa assumed by Westerners, not the nice and comfortable neighborhood I have been isolated within thus far. It is impossible to describe the nature of the area we walked through, but if anyone has seen Slumdog Millionaire, the closest you can get to imagining it would be to remember the slums portrayed in that film. It was almost exactly like that, particularly with the heaps of trash and too-thin, filthy children running around without their parents. It was eye-opening and terrible.
We arrived at the orphanage after getting thoroughly sunburned and fly-bitten in the hot morning sun. The House of Mercy was an incredibly drastic comparison to LCH, where the children are relatively clean, there is a large green playing field, a playground, a pavilion, etc. The House of Mercy is comprised of a single rectangular, bright blue, cinder-block building with no yard or grass. A hole in the lower front of the building leaks sewage straight from the toilets into a moat running the entire length of the front of the orphanage, about three feet wide and stinking of feces in stale standing water. A cracked and slanted board creates a bridge from the road to the small ledge in front of the door, precariously separating your feet from deep, wet, flowing shit.
Bridge the kids have to cross to get into their home, House of Mercy
The door opens into a small cement courtyard, approximately 15’ by 60’ (I’m really bad at approximating lengths, just assume it is way too tiny for a play place). Lower parts of the uneven courtyard floor harbor more dirty standing water, creating a nice home for mosquitoes and flies. Flanking all sides of the courtyard are doors to rooms
packed with bunk beds or with desks. When we arrived, the children were in school – around 25 kids each in 3 rooms no larger than good-sized walk-in closets. Divided by age, the kids ranged from 2 or 3 to 8 or 9. The older children were at another school for the day, though they return to the orphanage in the evening.
Kids in school at House of Mercy
Tea break occurred soon after our arrival, and the children bustled out of their tiny classrooms into the courtyard. Loud, and apparently happy, kids screamed and laughed and played with a tattered jump rope and ran around. All too skinny, all filthy, all coughing productively. Clearly some kind of bug was going around, as nearly
all of them had runny noses and harsh coughs. I could feel stuff in their lungs when I held the littlest ones and felt them breathe. The kids were fun and beautiful and smiling, but they were all in poor health, all playing in incredibly unsanitary conditions, all using the bathroom and eating and drinking and touching each other with no running water and no clean water or soap to be seen. Many were chewing or sucking on trash! Eighty kids, three teachers during the day, four staff the rest of the time. Unbelievable. Talk about a honeymoon period in Africa – LCH was it. This was real and raw and shattered any kind of acceptance or contentment I had built regarding the conditions of things since I arrived. I knew LCH was an exception, but I had no way of visualizing exactly how extreme the contrast would be. And House of Mercy, I am told, is similar to the typical orphanage you will find throughout Africa. It’s what I had expected before I arrived, but after living it up at LCH, I had somehow buried the idea that children had to grow up in conditions like this. The biology major in me wonders how any of these children are still alive at all. It was utterly heartbreaking and left me speechless, but was a necessary jolt back to reality. My future and purpose in Africa are once again reaffirmed.
After playing with the children for the morning, we walked another ~2 miles deeper into the slums. We were now accompanied by our neighbor from back at the hostel, George, a Kenyan who speaks impeccable English and has been indispensible in helping all us vols. get around Nairobi. Our destination was a local school, to which Brent and George had been invited last week. The school was a dilapidated cinderblock building encircling a large dirt courtyard – no grass, but at least enough room to run and play. The classrooms were average-sized, but packed so full of children that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. We were escorted by an administrator through the Class 8 and Class 7 schoolrooms – six or seven rooms in all. We spent about 10 minutes in each room, talking to the 13- through 16-year-olds about America. We told them a little bit about where we were from, what we were doing in Kenya, and then allowed them to ask questions about our life in America, since we had come all the way to Kenya to learn about their lives here. The children started out shy, but by the third classroom they were lively and loud and we had to
yell to be heard over them. They had many questions about the weather and about snow, about slavery, about movies and famous rap artists that they like, and, of course, about Barack Obama. They could not believe that I can walk to the President’s house from my own apartment, and wanted to know all about the White House and how big it is and how many rooms it has and so on and so on. Many of the classrooms sang and danced for us, and several of them chanted Obama slogans. One boy was made by his teacher to stand up and give a speech for us, as he had taught himself to speak just like Obama. It was actually really remarkable. The kids seemed to really enjoy learning a little bit about our culture, and we loved visiting them and hearing what they actually thought of our country.
In addition to their infinite fanaticism regarding our new president, the children are just obsessed with white people – namely, us. They want to touch us and pull our hair and shake our hand and high-five us. I had been used to this with the younger kids at LCH who I assumed just wanted attention, but these were older kids and I was surprised at their excitement. “I touched her! I touched her!” was a common squeal in the courtyard of the school today. I found this pretty weird, and a little embarrassing – if anything, these children should feel disdain towards us and where we come from. But instead, it was like we were celebrities, and I hated that. I hated it like I hated going out to dinner to a nice restaurant last week for a fellow volunteer’s birthday, where the diners were all white and the servers were all black. It was all very strange and uncomfortable, and I could not understand it. So, I asked George, our Kenyan friend. He said that the kids are not used to white people being nice to them. The white citizens of Kenya, mostly Italians, British, and a few Americans, do not wish to be associated with the Africans. George said they are arrogant and consider themselves above the black populace. Therefore, when the children encounter nice white people, especially white people who love Barack Obama, they become overly excited. When you are put down your whole life by the white race, and taught that
they want nothing to do with you, it must be some kind of a relief – at least for a child – to find that not all white people are assholes. So this made me glad to be showing these kids that of the five white people they have ever met, at least one of them is nice and wants to associate with them in a friendly manner…though I still find the whole
situation absolutely disgusting.
Being a white person in Kenya has easily been the most uncomfortable experience of my life, but I think it’s good for me, and I think it’s been good for the rest of the volunteers, who grew up around the unfortunately accepted and tolerated racism in America, discrimination that runs deeper than black and white but through demographics and economics and social classes. While there is obviously still racism
towards blacks in Kenya, I definitely feel racism of a different manner towards me and the white volunteers I walk around with – everyone assumes I have money, everyone assumes I am naïve, everyone assumes I am rich and arrogant and think of myself as a better person from “Bossy America”, as my host father calls it. I can’t say I blame them for thinking this way, seeing as the majority of Kenya’s revenue comes from Western tourism, where whites wealthier than I ever will be go on month-long safaris and rent out entire resorts. But it still makes me uncomfortable and sad to think that we have created this image of ourselves as greedy, rich, racist bastards. Even though I knew this typical portrayal of the American before ever even leaving
the country, the feeling is different when you're on the other side. Then again, I typically think of Americans as greedy, rich, racist bastards, so maybe I belong out of the Western world after all!
-----Pause for Dinner – mashed potatoes mixed with something indistinguishable buy yummy, and lentils.
In another quick anecdote based on local attitudes towards white people: Anna, a recent college graduate from CO is working at Happy Life, a baby orphanage near the hostel. Today, she went with one of the Kenyan workers to take two babies to the clinic, who were incredibly ill. Both infants had been found abandoned, and neither
could hold down food. Neither had kept anything down for weeks, and both had lost significant amounts of weight, a detriment to their already frail baby bodies. Anna had to ride on a matatu to take the baby to the clinic, and they were stuck in traffic. She told us that because she was holding the African baby, many people in neighboring cars yelled obscenities at her when they noticed her cradling this child. They yelled things like “stop stealing our babies,” “leave our babies in our country,” the F word, racial slurs, and a plethora of Kiswahili offenses that Anna’s fellow worker stated were highly insulting. I just heard this story from Anna at dinner, and I still don’t know what to think about it. What is your response to this?
-----Pause to watch an episode of Arrested Development on Taryn’s computer, our nightly ritual.
So after those two heavy discussions based on religion and racism, I have gotten most of my Feelings Of The Week off my chest! Plans for the rest of the week include heading back to LCH tomorrow, readying the hostel for an additional TEN people arriving Sunday, and attending the Day of the African Child on Saturday (a huge event involving 2,000 people at the national football [soccer] stadium). In between playing with kids, eating, and sleeping, I have been studying for the GRE that I have to take the week I get back to DC and slathering aloe vera on my bright red sunburned arms (I would look ridiculous in a bathing suit; I am completely white since I have to dress conservatively – no shorts or tank tops – but have lobster red arms and face. Lovely.)
Okay everyone, it is getting late and I have to get up bright and early for another very full day. I will write more in the near future, potentially this weekend if I find the time. I have lots more things to write about but time is of the essence. Love to everyone, and as always I really appreciate hearing from all of you, though I can’t respond to everyone individually ☹
I miss you all and hope everyone is still enjoying their summer!!!!
OXOXOXOXO
Emily
PS. Tina – I am sorry I didn’t get a thank-you note out to you before I left; things were crazy those last two weeks I was home. I assure you that I am writing you one on a lovely hand-painted Kenyan card and will bring it to the reunion, so it doesn’t get lost in the mail – I’ve heard outgoing mail from Nairobi does not always reach its destination. Also, the peanut butter is a LIFESAVER. You're amazing.
PPS. Dad I just read your email. That’s fine to send my emails to Donna et al. Here are answers to your questions:
1. The age range at LCH is 4 to 19, but there is one 1-year old and only the one girl who is 19, the rest are 17 and under. The majority are between 4 and 12.
2. The kids are welcome to stay at LCH until they are 18 or when they finish school. The Kenyan government has some weird policies regarding how long kids can stay in “children’s homes” but I’m still a little unclear about them. Jen, the director, told us that they try to keep the kids until they finish HS and can go to college or try to find
work for them. Then again, LCH has only been around 5 years. They are in the process of figuring out how to create a halfway house for older teens, to help them make an easier transition from orphanage to the real world.
3. Not all children are in school in Kenya because it costs a lot of money to go to school in this country and many families cannot afford it, especially when they have a ton of kids. Many families in Kenya are comprised of grandparents and children, as parents have been killed or have died of AIDS or other diseases, making it even more
difficult to get by, much less afford education costs. School is not public, and it is not government-funded as far as I have heard. It is all privatized and most schools are boarding schools, especially for older children.
NAKUPENDA!
June 18
Hello Everyone!!!
Once again I find myself far behind on my journaling. The craziness here has only increased since my last entry. First of all, we went from having 5 people at the hostel on Saturday to a grand total of 32 as of last night. Please note that this hostel is meant to fit no more than 15. There are extra beds squeezed in everywhere; rooms that were meant for 2 bunk beds have 4 or 5 bunk beds in them, making it impossible to walk around and requiring one to climb into bed from the foot. The lack of running water and slacking individuals who refuse to haul up the water to flush their own crap make for a very frustrated group of young adults. The whole place stinks a little…all these people crammed together after having sweated and gotten covered in dust and dirt and children each day.
Things have been so busy that I’ve hardly had the chance to get to know any of the new volunteers. They are here from the US, Canada, Spain, England, Germany, Denmark, and Mexico. For a few nights we had the director of the Ugandan hostel stay with us, in addition to the director of my organization, IFRE, originally from Nepal. We are an incredibly diverse group of individuals and while I am often dismayed by their lack of motivation, their desire to get drunk in downtown
Nairobi, or their ignorance regarding their cause, it is somewhat refreshing to be living with 31 people who ultimately share my passions, interests, and concerns.
Last night, I finally rounded everyone up with the help of my roommates and gave a presentation on HIV and AIDS in the common room. It involved some basic statistics about the world epidemic/pandemic, a discussion on the disease’s process within the body, and how you can and, most importantly, cannot contract the virus. I borrowed a map of Africa from LCH, my orphanage, so that I had at least one visual aid, and used it to point out the countries I was talking about during the statistics portion to bring some clarity. I think the presentation was well-received by everyone, and though it lasted no more than 15 or 20 minutes, there were so many questions at the end that it went on 45 minutes or longer! I think the volunteers (and my host parents) actually appreciated the information – I tried to make it very basic and easy to understand, and though I touched on just simple objectives in my presentation, during the Q&A session we talked about the work towards a cure, USAID, UNAIDS, and PEPFAR, the four different antiretroviral drugs that are widely used, Kenyan initiatives, and the
orphan problem. I actually enjoyed speaking in front of everyone because I was presenting a topic with which I am very comfortable, and honestly feel that I was able to impart at least a little bit of valuable knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS. At most, I hope to have alleviated some volunteers’ anxiety regarding working and playing with
HIV+ individuals while here in Kenya.
That's me on the right, giving my HIV Fast Facts presentation. Taryn's holding the map.
Some fun facts for all of you: Sub-Saharan Africa includes the 19 countries with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world. Swaziland is highest with 26%, Botswana second with 24%, Lesotho third with 23%, and South Africa fourth with 19%. Then it goes Namibia, Zimbabwe…etc. Kenya comes in 10th place with 6.7%, though it is 5th for number of AIDS-related deaths per year. Note that these stats are
from a 2007 UNAIDS report, and that they only include persons from age 15-49. Therefore, the numbers are undoubtedly higher, as it is now two years since the report, as it does not account for all the HIV+ children under age 15, and as HIV/AIDS is underreported because many people are unaware of the virus, ignorant to the risk, afraid to get tested, or fear stigma from their families, friends, partners,
communities, governments... Worldwide, there are approximately 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS. Kenya’s president declared a state of emergency in 2007. Most children who are HIV+ became infected either within the womb, during delivery, or through breast milk. Many sub-Saharan African communities are missing the entire
middle generation due to AIDS – the parents are dead, leaving the grandparents to care for the children, who often may be HIV+ themselves. AIDS is the greatest factor responsible for the world orphan crisis.
-----Ok, enough of that for right now – my presentation flowed much better, but I wanted to throw a few things out there for all of you because I think it’s just so interesting!
Today, when I talked to Jen, the director of LCH, about the presentation I did last night, she got really excited and asked if I’d do the same one at chapel next Wednesday for the children, apartment parents, teachers, and staff. I discussed with her the purpose of my presentation, and told her that it was directed at young adults,
delved into the immune system, and involved the process of HIV/AIDS within the body, including chances of living/dying and medical topics. I told her I would try to come up with a simplified version for the kids, which she seemed really happy about. But before I could talk to her anymore she had to go to a meeting, so I did not get to voice my concerns. It’s one thing to talk to a bunch of Westerners about AIDS, about its process in the body, about how you contract it, etc., but it’s a whole different beast speaking to children aged 4-18, many of whom are HIV+, about the disease. How can I make this presentation sensitive, but also informative? How should I discuss how HIV is contracted without saying the words “sex” or “sharing needles” to a bunch of young kids? How can I talk about an orphan problem to 39 orphans? How can I talk about “extending your chances of living” with children who most likely will develop full-blown AIDS at some point in their lives? I am absolutely terrified to talk about this to all of them, and have no idea how to do it, at all. I am going to talk to Jen again tomorrow about my anxiety regarding this, and ask for her input and suggestions on how to make this presentation appropriate for such a HUGE range of ages. I don’t know what I should or should not say, and I don’t know how I can talk about this at all without getting dirty looks from the staff for not bringing God’s Glorious Will into the discussion. I know that this is something I will be doing
throughout my life as I have chosen public health as my career (and public health includes public health education), and I honestly would not be as concerned if I had to talk about it with adults, but I am worried about presenting AIDS to a group of small children who are directly affected by the HIV virus in one way or another. Aaaaah!
In other news, I went with a few volunteers to yet another orphanage yesterday. This home is called Happy Life, and is specifically for orphaned or abandoned babies. The children range from just a few days/weeks to about 4 years old. The orphanage is in better shape than House of Mercy, the home discussed in my last email (in the slum), but it is still run-down, it is in a filthy town (almost a slum, I’d say), it smells bad, it has tetanus written all over its rusty playpens and handrails, and it is heavily understaffed. We began the morning by feeding the littlest babies. My heart broke
every five seconds the entire time I was there. While a few of the babies seem healthy and chubby, some of them are so frail and sickly that I was almost afraid to hold them. I honestly thought any of them could have died at any moment. It was all I could do to keep from breaking down just sitting there in the ward. Some of them had sticks for arms and legs, sunken eyes, barely moved, sweated constantly, didn’t even cry or make any sound. Their eyes did not blink, they just stared and stared at nothing. They could not be drawn to attention by your voice, touching, or presence. A few had obviously swollen lymph nodes and candidiasis of the mouth, clear indicators of anything from Stage 3 to 4 AIDS (highly progressed), to another immunodeficiency
virus, to serious malnutrition or malnourishment, to any number of bacterial infections. Many of them were coughing and I could hear and feel the rasping and rattling right inside their bony ribs as I held them. It was so, so terrible.
After feeding them, some babies spit up normally while we burped them, but a few spit up 4 to 5 times and then progressed to projectile vomiting all they had eaten, plus more. They are fed prepared formula out of bottles that are simply rinsed in water before being refilled and switched to another baby – definitely spreading infections all around. Some of the bottle “nipples” have holes in them so big that the babies can’t breathe while you’re feeding them because the formula just pours out into their mouths, so you have to be extremely attentive while feeding to make sure you take breaks every few seconds for the baby to get a breath so he or she does not aspirate the formula. The babies’ hair was matted with sweat and blanket fuzz, and some had noticeably “flat” fontanelles from just lying in their crib in the same position all day.
One of the tiniest babies at Happy Life
Another unnerving thing regarding some of the babies and toddlers at Happy Life pertains to their navels. No one really knows why, except perhaps due to a mishap during the cutting of the umbilical cord, so maybe one of you (mom?) is more knowledgeable about this than I am. Upon lifting up these children’s shirts, there is a fist-sized protuberance where the bellybutton should be. With no noticeable scar
(unless it is underneath where I did not examine), this smooth, rounded or oblong growth appears taut, perhaps filled with fluid. When the children who have them laugh, cry, or strain in any other way, the growths seems to become larger. They don’t seem sensitive or painful, but they are awful deformities and to me, seem that they
could become infected easily if they are filled with fluid. I have never seen or heard of anything like it, but at least three of the kids at Happy Life have these growths. If anyone wants to Google something like this with your much better Internet power, I would really love any feedback you can give me.
As for some of the stories from Happy Life: two of the children who were recently adopted from the orphanage, now seven, were found as 2-day-old infants. Barely alive, the twins were discovered wrapped in a plastic bag on a city street of downtown Nairobi. Another child, Jonathan, now 3, disabled from infantile meningitis, was found naked in a sewage drain just a week or so after having been born. They did not expect him to live for more than a few hours after they found him, but he appears relatively healthy and average-sized now at Happy Life, though he cries all the time, cannot communicate, stand, or walk, and is clearly mentally disabled.
To wrap up the day at Happy Life, we folded a million pieces of baby clothes, fed the toddlers (a true experience, 2-year-old Gloria and I were both absolutely covered in mashed rice by the time we were finished), and played with the toddlers in their playpen (basically a large cage with a soft mat on the floor, no toys except those few
stuffed animals we brought).
My roommate, Taryn, is 32 and married and looking to adopt a child in the near future. She has been asking around at each orphanage for information on adopting from Kenya, and we have learned that it is an incredibly difficult process for a non-citizen to adopt. Apparently, it used to be relatively easy to adopt a Kenyan child, but trafficking became such a huge problem that the government went to the opposite
extreme and made it nearly impossible for anyone who isn’t ridiculously wealthy. In order to adopt, before you are even considered, you must move to Kenya for a minimum of five months, during which time you will volunteer, then spend time with your prospective child, then go through a 2- to 3- month “court and legal process”. IF you meet these qualifications, you get put on “a list.” I understand the need to protect your children from traffickers, but part of me keeps going back to the image of people yelling “Stop stealing our babies! Get out of our country!” at Anna when she took one of the babies to the clinic the other day (discussed in my last email).
Back at LCH, we read with the kids this morning. They are all memorizing Romans 5 of the Bible, a highly intricate, full typed page of difficult words and odd, confusing sentences. The kids, especially the younger ones (as young as age 6 are memorizing this), are truly struggling with the memorization...because the chapter is not discussed with them in a manner in which they can comprehend! They are simply given this page of words, which even I find difficult to decipher, and are told to memorize it by heart until they can recite it perfectly out loud. What purpose does this serve if they do not even understand the objective of the chapter, the meaning of the words, the lesson in the verses? Yet again, I am dumbfounded by the methods used by this institution.
In other heart wrenching stories from LCH, Jen informed us of the history of five children in “Mama Janet’s” apartment (Apt. C). These kids, ranging form 4 to 6, came to LCH a few years ago from another orphanage. The other orphanage was having some problems, and many people were fired. The directors also left, leaving Bandi, a 22 year old employee, in charge. Bandi took over the orphanage successfully, but to battle corruption within the organization she had to fire some more people. One man whom she fired returned the next night with four or five other men. They gang-raped her and beat her to within an inch of her life - in front of the children. Bandi was found 8 to 10 hours later, unconscious on the floor covered in her own blood, with the
five children surrounding her. The five children were taken to LCH by social services, and Bandi was taken to the hospital where she remained in a drug-induced coma for a month. The doctors induced the coma because they thought the shock from blood loss would kill her if she were conscious. While in the coma, she underwent major reconstructive surgery to fix her ear that had almost been torn off, and to mend her jaw that had been shattered and had to be wired shut. When Bandi finally recovered, she also came to LCH and now serves as an “Auntie”, an aid to the “Mama” in Apartment C.
I am telling you, when I hear all these stories I cannot believe how these children are happy and “with it” today, having experienced things like this not so long ago. I know they will deal with it later in their lives, but it still astounds me that they are so very
resilient and still appear to be, well, children. Take the story I shared in a previous email about Moses, who had been found in a combat field surrounded by dead people. What will he be like when he is an adolescent, an adult, an old man? Will the memories from when he was a small child resurface? They have to in some form, right? Why do these things happen to children?
In other conversation with Jen, we asked her about an apparent children’s home near our hostel, that is surrounded by high gates but that has a clear sign stating “Hi Jung-Oh Orphanage” out front.Jen stated that this orphanage has a terrible reputation, and that while the building looks large and beautiful, it is filthy and run-down when you get closer or go inside. She said that it is run similarly to a slave-labor camp, where the children work all day. She said that many of the girls have glassy eyes and appear to be on some kind of a drug; they are almost zombie like. There is no proof but trafficking for prostitution is suspected. Social services has apparently tried to investigate and/or shut the institution down multiple times, but the problem is that the owner of the orphanage has close ties to the former president of Kenya, and so any social services attempt has been unsuccessful as of yet. Jen said that about 90% of Kenyan orphanages are altruistic and while they may be ill-equipped, they mean well. But 10% of orphanages are involved in corruption,
trafficking, prostitution, etc. But while 10% seems like a small number, think about lining ten children up, and then picking one of them to go into the bad orphanage. This trip has changed my life forever. While I definitely was aware that many of these terrible things occur every day, it’s somehow different, horrifyingly different, to be here, to know these children who have experienced these things, to walk past the trafficking orphanage every day on my way to LCH, to eat lunch with Bandi and wonder how she can still smile at all.
I am sorry that this email has been so depressing. Please know that I am generally happy, am loving my time here, and am saddened by the fact that 3 weeks have almost passed already! It has all happened so quickly. I have made some close friends, and have met people from all over the world. It has been amazing.
In other news, I am 99% sure that I will be able to start working for the HIV/AIDS organization on July 1. The organization is called Kenya Network of Women with AIDS and serves as a support group and a food and medicine delivery center for women and children. My friend and fellow volunteer Ray has been working for KENWA for the past 2 weeks or so, and he said that he really enjoys it. He said most of the women are mothers, grandmothers, or legal guardians of children with HIV, or they are women with HIV themselves. KENWA holds gatherings for people all experiencing the same kind of situation to meet and lean on each other for support, advice, and guidance. KENWA drives people to the hospital, is heavily involved in the female and maternal community of many slums, both serves and delivers meals, and makes AZT treatment and health education available to its members. KENWA is not faith-based (a welcome change on my end) and readily hands out condoms and HIV
pamphlets. It will be tough to leave LCH after being there a full month, but I do think it is important for me to get exposure to this different world as well. I am excited about starting there, and am preparing by trying to brush up on my Swahili skills! (Most of the people who live in the slums do not speak English or speak it poorly, so the more I can speak and understand of their language, the more helpful I will be).
Well, once again I have written six pages and am not nearly finished. But enough for now – I am exhausted. Nya-nya, I got sunscreen – don’t worry! Also, it’s started to finally cool down – July is the coldest month of the year, and already it’s nearing ONLY the high seventies. Very exciting for me, who would much rather be cold than sweaty (not that I will actually be cold in the high seventies, but it’s better than the nineties, right?). I have been studying for the GRE each day for about an hour, and am already getting better at “analytical thinking and critical reasoning” or whatever it is supposed to test you on. It’s miserable, but being here has only served to reinforce
my drive to get my Master’s in Global Public Health/Public Policy, so I will be damned if I slack off, do poorly on the GRE, and don’t get into graduate school!
Everyone, I can’t wait to see you all again. I am excited to couch-hop around all my biffles’ apartments in August, and excited to see the family at the reunion as well. And I’m excited to see Matt and go on a hot date as soon as I get back. Yay! Oh, and some weird things: a volunteer here goes to Cornell, so we have had a good time reminiscing about our favorite places in Ithaca. I will probably meet up with her when I am in her neck of the woods during the reunion. And speaking of weird connections, a girl who arrived yesterday happens to have just graduated from High Point University in NC. I asked her if she knew Camara McLaughlin, my best friend from
high school who attends that college now. She said that of COURSE she knows Camara, they are good friends, and had many classes together. HOW WEIRD IS THAT?!?!? I came to Kenya to embed myself in a place where I would have no connections, no recognition, no comfort, and meet a girl from Cornell and a girl who is friends with my old best friend. It’s all been very strange, and I can’t decide if I like it or not!
Alright, enough is enough. Love to all of you. Thank you to those of you who made it all the way here, to the last paragraph. And as always, thanks for writing back to me. Even a one-liner makes my day when I finally get online! Nakupenda na nakutamani! Kwa heri! (I love you and miss you! Goodbye!)
Penda,
Amelie
PS. In an update on the tear gas situation: two of the girls who were with us the day we got tear gassed left to go back to Utah and Canada the next day. Turns out they both developed terrible coughs, runny noses, and sore throats, and lost their voices. They both went to the doctor and were found to have chemical burns in their oral/pharyngeal and laryngeal/tracheal passageways. We assume that they were adversely affected in this manner because of the long plane flight, with the dry air maybe exacerbating the irritation caused by the tear gas? So basically, both these girls are on medicated inhalers until they get their voices back. Scary stuff.
Response: Hey Emily - sounds like you are describing an umbilical hernia. Can be congenital - not life-threatening and common where you are. Google umbilical hernia and you will get lots of info. Will send good thoughts your way!! Love - Tina.
June 23
Hello everyone!This email will most likely be abbreviated as I am exhausted, sunburned despite sunscreen, and have recently developed a runny nose after playing with sick kids for days on end! High spirits, nonetheless: the sunburn will turn into a lovely tan thanks to my Italian genes, my potential illness will only strengthen my immune system, and it’s only 8:00 PM in Nairobi so even if I go to bed in two hours, it will still be relatively early and I’ll get at least 8 hours of sleep!
I hope everyone is doing well and for those of you who are fathers, Happy Belated Father’s Day!! Dad, it was so wonderful to talk to you and Mom after over three weeks of not hearing your voices. I miss you guys a lot and am excited to see you in August!
Things here have not gotten any less crazy. The hostel has lost a few people only to gain a few back from their safaris. My good friend and roommate Anna left yesterday; we arrived in Nairobi on the same flight out of Amsterdam and had grown very close over the past three weeks. She is headed back to Colorado and my roomies and I miss her a lot…but we are already planning our reunion in NYC for Halloween!
As for work, this morning I left for the orphanage an hour early so I could help the community health director, Martha, with the HIV meds. She had asked me if I was interested in doing this on Friday, and obviously I responded with a resounding “Ndio!” (yes!). Of course, even though I arrived right on time this morning, Martha was going by Africa Time and told me to meet in her office in an hour…I was slightly put out, as I had gotten sweaty and gross a whole hour earlier than usual, just for her! But alas…it’s Kenya. So anyway, I went to Apartment B where the younger kids were playing (all the older kids were in school already) and spent a good hour and a half playing, running around, singing, dancing, and yelling with five four-year-olds. These are my favorite kids – I love all of King’s Kids, but the under-five boys are by far my favorite. I am definitely going to take some little black toddlers home with me one day when I’m older and richer and when it’s easier to adopt from Kenya!!
Finally, Martha came down to get me, and we went up to her office. She showed me where all of the kids’ meds are kept and then we went through the whole “who gets what” process. The younger kids – Kate (1), Maturi (4), and Sifa (3), take a variety of syrups instead of swallowable pills as they are too young to swallow a cocktail of drugs every day. The older kids take a mixture of pills each morning and each evening. Each child with HIV has two of those “weekly pill packs” – you know, the ones with the separate compartment for each day? One of them is filled with their morning pills and one with their evening pills. Martha and I spent the next two hours filling these – some of the children are taking different meds or different amounts of meds depending on the progression of their disease, so we had to carefully cut tons of pills in half to create the correct dosage for everyone. The pills and syrups are mixtures of different anti-retrovirals, along with immune system boosters and multivitamins.
Each child who could swallow pills has to take an average of 7 to 9 pills in the morning and 8 to 10 pills at night. I can’t imagine some of these kids – like the 8 and 9 year olds – swallowing close to 20 pills a day. I don’t even think I knew how to swallow a pill at that age, and even now, taking a multivitamin every day is somehow
challenging to remember and be motivated to do. Imagine being a little kid and having grown up swallowing a huge cocktail twice a day?! It’s unreal.
As I stated in a previous email, 9 of the 39 kids at LCH are HIV+. All of these except one are on ARVs; Irene (12) is still fighting off the virus fine and her immune system is at a healthy enough state that she does not need to be on intensive medication. The only child that received meds for something other than HIV is Evans (6 or 7), who has
sickle-cell anemia. Evans has been in the hospital multiple times a year since he arrived at LCH a few years ago. He takes iron supplements, a few other meds that I’m unfamiliar with, and malaria pills. Evans is the only kid on antimalarial pills because if he gets malaria with sickle-cell, it can become very complicated and life-threatening immediately.
After filling all the pill packs we simply went around and restocked each apartment with its appropriate medications. The mothers and aunties are the ones who actually give out the meds to her specific kids so that all of this does not fall on the community health worker, day in and day out. After restocking apartments, I went out and “rubbed” some workbooks until 1:00, when I hopped in the van with Martha and two HIV+ kids, Tito (8) and Naomi (9) to head to the HIV clinic for their routine check-up.
The HIV clinic turned out to be a huge children’s hospital – the only one in Nairobi and the nicest one in Kenya. It was clearly funded privately, as it was located in the very wealthy “embassy row” area of town, near diplomats’ mansions and important buildings. (Nothing at all like the clinic where Anna took the babies [previous email], which according to her was no more than a moldy shack where the doctor’s nametag read, “Licensed to practice medicine OR dentistry”). The only downside was that the HIV clinic portion of the hospital was first-come, first-serve, and as it was Monday afternoon it was exceedingly busy. We waited in the waiting room for a good two hours before Naomi and Tito were even weighed, and then another hour and a half before they got to see the actual doctor. One good thing was that the clinic was relatively small, and Martha and the kids appeared to know everyone who was in the waiting room with us. HIV+ kids, according to Martha, have routine check-ups every two to three months, in addition to check-ups anytime the child becomes ill or infected with anything. So they had seen all of these kids and mothers there before, and socialized while they waited.
When the check-up finally occurred, it was very brief for both children. Naomi and Tito are vibrant, active kids – as I’ve said before, you’d never know any of the kids at LCH are sick at all. The doctor talked to each of them briefly, asked if they had any issues, spoke to Martha casually, and then talked privately (without Tito, but with Martha and me) to Naomi for a minute. According to the doc (I asked her later), they usually start talking to the HIV+ kids about their disease when the kids are between 10 and 12 years old – in her words, when the child is old enough to begin to understand, but young enough so that you can still control much of their behavior towards their condition. It’s important to catch the kids before the hormones kick in, so that they have already gone through the important counseling and support period and don’t have even more to deal with as an early teenager. The process is extremely slow; today, the doc basically said to Naomi, “Naomi, it’s almost time that we started
talking about why you have to take so much dawa (medicine) every day. Do you want to know why?” (“No,” said Naomi). “There comes a time when we are growing up that we have to start taking responsibility for our own health. There is not always going to be someone around to remind you to take your dawa every day!” And that was basically it. Naomi will go back in a few weeks and begin the long counseling process, she’ll join a support group, and learn about her condition.
As much as Jen, the director of LCH, talks about how they are always open with the kids if they have any questions about HIV or AIDS or anything like that, I am shocked that she asked me to do a presentation on AIDS to group of kids that don’t even know they have HIV (a fact that I was unaware of!). The presentation has since been shelved as I voiced my concerns about it and we decided we couldn’t make it age appropriate for every child, but I still am surprised she was going to have me prepare a presentation without notifying me that half the HIV+ kids at LCH don’t even know they have HIV. It seems a little sketchy that she’d allow the first public talk about HIV with these kids to come from me, an inexperienced volunteer who once briefly discussed AIDS with a room full of adults, now that I’ve learned that these kids have actually never had a talk about HIV at all. Aaah! Again.
After the kids had their physicals and Naomi her brief talk, we went down to the laboratory and each of the kids had their blood drawn to check out their serum and CD4 count, simply to monitor the disease’s process within their bodies. Then, finally, we went home. Jim was nice enough to give me a ride back from the orphanage so I didn’t have to walk alone in the dusk (Danger! Danger!) so I arrived at the hostel with time to take a much-needed bucket bath and nibble at…rice and beans.
I am excited to have finally entered the small HIV world at LCH, but am still planning on working out a volunteership at KENWA (Kenya Network of Women with AIDS) in the coming weeks. I am accompanying Ray and Robin, two guys who are currently working there, on Thursday (if all plans work out) to check it out and get a feel for what my second month in Africa could be like. Even if I do leave LCH for KENWA, I plan on visiting LCH frequently so as to maintain my connection with the kids there, many of whom I think have grown close to me (and I to them).
I had a long conversation with Ray (19, from Mexico) and Robin (20, from England) tonight about our experiences in Africa thus far. Ray and Robin, as mentioned above, are both working for KNWA. They were having a hard time tonight dealing with the fact that we can’t really fix anything here. They talked about how they have to go and offer moral support to women and children in the slum with HIV and AIDS every day, but can’t help these people if they can’t afford the medications, can’t offer to drive their kids to school if they are too sick, can’t possibly feed all of the street children who come to the center for lunch every day. There just aren’t enough resources
anywhere, and no matter how many people they do feed or are able to sell cheap medications to, there are always those who have to go without a meal or without life-saving drugs. This kind of situation is faced everyday by all volunteers here, I believe. It’s something that I haven’t struggled with so much at LCH, as LCH is somewhat of an oasis within a country of impoverished, ill orphans, but each time I
walk through town or visit another, more typical orphanage, or hear a story or go through a slum, and surely when I start working at KENWA, this will become more of a reality to me as well. We all come here thinking, at least somewhat, that we’ll be able to change things with our smart minds and our optimism and our peaceful natures, but when we get here everything is torn and broken and fucked up way too much to
ever be fixed by a couple volunteers here on summer vacation. It hurts, but it’s a reality that I think is necessary to accept if one plans on making a career out of humanitarian work. We will probably never feel like we’re doing a damn thing, but it will be important to recognize that even if we just feed one person, that’s one less kid
who will starve today. If we tell a few people about our experiences, that’s a little bit more awareness of what is happening outside the comfort of our own homes. Small accomplishments, absolutely. But it’s also absolutely necessary to look at it like that in order to not completely lose hope for this country, for this continent, for over half of the world living in abject poverty, disease, violence, and abandonment.
--- Note that the following paragraph is more of a “journal” for myself than an email to any of you. I don’t want to bring anybody down, alienate anyone, or anything…just expressing some serious feelings and trying to figure out how to handle the injustice that I am seeing here.
All I have to say is that things here are absolutely unbelievable. The government isn’t doing a goddamn thing. Everything is so corrupt. People are violent; the police aren’t protectors, they are to be feared by even the innocent. The orphanages are understaffed and filthy. Education and health care are privatized so only the few and
the fortunate can take advantage of these services. There is sewage where kids are supposed to play. There are children and mothers and fathers dying because mass-produced medicine is too expensive, because food is not enough for everyone, because clean water is rare. There are people trying to help but currently, there aren’t enough of them to reverse the world we have all created through our own selfishness
and lack of awareness and denial. It should be a requirement for all college students to come to Africa for even a month. Awareness isn’t everything, but it’s the first step. There is never, ever going to be an instant fix as we all hope there will be, but there needs to be more people, more knowledge, more generosity from the West, where the
money is. More carrots and fewer sticks. More missionaries with fewer strings attached. Less money spent on weaponry, entertainment, electronics and cars, and more spent on medicine and clean water technology. Less media focused on the same Michelle Obama fashion story over and over again and more focused on what is actually happening in the world around us, not just on what people want to hear. Better leaders and more resources directed where they are truly needed, not just where it is convenient or market competitive.
Sigh. Sorry, everyone. This is my journal, after all. Take it as you will. I am just feeling helpless, I guess, and trying to express that. I keep telling myself it’s natural, but the helplessness is interspersed with a huge amount of guilt simply for being who I am and for living the life I do. Guilt that I am a celebrity to little black children, simply because I am a white person who gives a damn in a country that was burdened and controlled by the British throughout its very recent history. Guilt that I groan to myself when we have rice and beans for the umpteenth night in a row, when over half of the kids I’ve met in Kenya didn’t eat a sufficient dinner tonight, or will be sharing a bed with three other kids, or who aren’t getting the medication for a disease they could otherwise live with until old age. Guilt that I despise the volunteers who don’t flush the toilet after they leave a nice surprise in there, when most people here shit in a hole or a ditch and wipe their ass with their bare hand. (Did that lighten this up for any of you? No? ….Sorry….)
I don’t know how to end this email except to apologize to all of you who actually read it! I am usually much happier about things but the weight of what is happening around me here in Kenya got to me tonight as I was writing this. I hope that I have not totally ruined any of your days with my….feelings :) . I love all of you a ridiculous
amount and as much as I know that I have to return to Africa ASAP, I am excited to come home and see all of you and as I am sure I will, though hate the thought of it, get back into my normal routine of school and work and friends and nice-area-of-DC living. The job ahead of us, and ahead of future generations, is huge and daunting, but it is not impossible, nor infinite. Things can happen, it's just going to take a lot more effort than is currently being made by any governing body, media corporation, or organization, faith-based or not, national or international. That is really the only message anyone should take away from this email. Not to be preach-y, or anything – I
don’t mean to come across like that. It’s tough writing like this when other people are going to read it. Note that most of the things I expressed here are directed at myself. I am writing to figure out my own thoughts. :)
----------------------------------Next Afternoon at Internet Café-----------------------
Just read through this and decided to go ahead and send it to everyone even though it’s even heavier than my last email. And unfortunately I have to end on another piece of sad news – do you remember my email about the sickly babies at Happy Life, the orphanage for abandoned babies? Well, this morning we were notified that one of the frail, sickly ones – one that sweated constantly and couldn’t keep anything down – died on Sunday. I guess I wasn’t wrong when I said I felt like that one could have died right there in my arms when I held him last time I was there. There was no information given on what caused the death but even if it wasn’t AIDS or malaria or some other common disease, it could simply have been dehydration as the baby was
underweight and threw up everything he managed to swallow. It was definitely a solemn day, especially for the volunteers who work at Happy Life as their daily project. I am trying to be more and more compassionate towards the volunteers because everyone handles things like this differently, and as much as I feel like I belong here in a career sense, I can fully understand why many people just want to go
home.
Okay, again, sorry to end on this note – but I don’t have any more stories right now!! I will work on a happier email for next time, promise!
Love to all.
XO
Emily
Response: Emily- we don't need happy news. We need truth. Do not be afraid to offend people with truth.
I love you and my heart breaks for you and the painful lessons you are learning. It will make you stronger and more capable of effecting change. Do not lose hope. Do not succumb to despair. Be brave and honest and compassionate. That is all anyone can do when faced with insurmountable problems.
Love Mom
Response: Amelie, I love you.
Between reading your emails (beginning to end) and What is the What and listening to Kate and Lauren talk about their experiences abroad, I just sit and wonder sometimes what hope is there in the world? Please don't ever apologize for what your feeling or sharing it, because I think about the same things and I've never even been to Kenya, or Ghana, or Uganda or anywhere!
I think about these things happening in DC and NYC though. The people who's lives could be changed with education and awareness and just somebody caring. Maybe it's harder for people to care about this happening in a country where if they choose to, these kids can become literate, and not be another teenage pregnancy statistic, or become enveloped in the gang or drug culture. But how can they choose it when all they see around them are their friends and family being dragged down by the same?
Maybe there are too many problems in the world, and that you can fight them all at once and nothing will ever be solved. But how can you ignore one in favor of another? I wish everybody found the time to volunteer the way you are. Completely, wholeheartedly, with every fiber of your being. Whether its in Africa or Bed-Stuy or Anacostia.
I don't think you should feel guilty for being a celebrity to these kids. I think you should be glad that you are showing them that people, black or white, Western or not, DO care about them and that there CAN be a difference in their world. Maybe you're inspiring one of these orphans to grow up and work in another orphanage, to make it better, to educate others, because of the example that he or she is seeing in you and the other volunteers.
It must be hard sometimes to see a bigger picture, the possibility of greater good, when all you are seeing is daily struggle and no to little progress. I don't even know what I'm really saying writing you this, but I hope that if it doesn't help any, that at least it doesn't hurt.
Maybe what I'm trying to say, is that even when you come back to your nicer life in DC, you don't have to stop making a difference, even if you aren't boots on the ground in Kenya.
I love you. You inspire me. You inspire others.
Keep it going, girlie!
Love,
Laura
June 28
Hi Everyone!
Just a quick note.
I appreciate all the replies from my last email. As I'm using this emailing system as my own journal while I'm here in Kenya, it's sometimes difficult for me to express myself and so I appreciate your patience and understanding with all the intense news I've been sharing in each and every update!
Things here are good. Our hostel remains full because though we might lose a few people one day, we gain a few the next. I have been trying to get to know everyone in the hostel and like most of them. A few people have jokingly dubbed me the Shit Nazi as I seem to be the only one who says anything out loud when people leave their poo in the toilet repeatedly. Every day when I get up and every day when I get home from work it seems someone else has relieved himself and refused to carry the small bucket of water up the stairs...it's really unbelievable. So I have begun making nightly announcements pleading with people to flush for themselves, so that someone else doesn't have to flush it. It's just not right, and while I have appreciated most of their company, I am often awed by their lack of responsibility when it comes to simple bodily functions.
On a happier note, I started working for the Kenyan Network for Women with AIDS in the Kariobangi slum on Thursday. I meant to write a long email about it all weekend but didn't get around to it, so I'll try again tonight or early this week. My first day there was the most impacting experience I've had yet, as the slum was unlike anything I'd ever seen and I spent all day there. It is a pretty dangerous place, and we are not allowed to walk out of the "office" with less than three people. Luckily everyone I'm volunteering at KENWA with is male so I feel relatively safe. Don't freak out, dad. It's unsafe in the way that carrying a backpack would be stupid or calling attention to myself in any way would be asking for it. We stay pretty low profile. The good thing is that Ray and Robin, the guys I'm working with, have begun to be recognized in the slum as KENWA volunteers so just walking with them makes me much more secure than if we were just a small group of white people. But more on that later - I can't use up all my time on the internet writing about it; I'll use a friend's computer later and then copy and paste my email as usual when I have more time.
Hope everyone is doing well! My time in Kenya is almost halfway over - it's gone incredibly fast and while I'm excited to come home and see everyone both in DC and in Ithaca for the reunion, I have to say that I'm glad I still have a bit of time here. There is so much to do and so much to learn, and I'm still loving every second of it, even when it's hard or a sad thing to face.
Love to all!! Please keep the emails coming. They make my day!
XOXO
Em
July 1
Sasa, my friends! This entry has been long delayed – so much has happened since my last long email!
-------Monday------- (revised Tuesday)---------
As mentioned in my short message to you, I started working at the Kenyan Network of Women with AIDS (KENWA) towards the end of last week. I plan to stay with KENWA for the remaining 5 weeks of my stay here in Kenya. That way, I will have nearly divided my time equally between the orphanage work and a more public health-related project.
KENWA is a large organization with its headquarters in Nairobi and multiple project sites throughout Kenya, particularly in slums and low-income neighborhoods (which obviously comprise most of the country). I have yet to visit the main office but have now spent two days at the project site in Korogocho slum, which I believe is the second (later discovered it is the third) largest slum in Nairobi after Kibera, which some of you may have heard of. (Kibera is the largest slum in Africa and the second
largest slum in the world, after one in India, I believe. I have yet to visit Kibera and doubt I will on this trip, as it is exceedingly dangerous).
To get to work every morning, I walk about 2 miles with Ray and Robin (from Mexico and England, respectively) to a matatu station. There, we have to cross a busy highway (very scary) and catch a matatu to another station a few miles away. There, we catch a second matatu to Kariobangi, which is the “town” on the outskirts of Korogocho slum (though I think it is mostly indistinguishable from the slum itself).
The cost of each matatu is 10 KSH (Kenya Shillings), making my total daily expenditure 40 KSH, or a little over 50 cents. When we get off the matatu in Kariobangi, we cross another busy highway and walk another twenty minutes or so deep into the slum where the project site, a low cement building, is located.
I will do my best to describe the slum to all of you, but don’t even know how to begin. There is garbage everywhere – not just litter, but giant heaps of trash, mostly nonbiodegradable bags, containers, and tires, along with compost, lining each street, in the street, everywhere. It’s almost like the slum was built upon a landfill – or a landfill was dumped onto the slum. There are children and adults sitting on the heaps of trash, picking through it, playing in it. There are goats and dogs and chickens rummaging through it. It fills the streets and clogs the open sewage drains, making sewage water run through the streets in lower areas. There is a small river on the
side of each street, where the water is dark greenish brown to black and filled with trash and feces and small animals. The smell is unlike anything I could have ever imagined. I know I wrote about the slum I went to when I visited House of Mercy, and I thought that was the worst thing I had ever seen. Turns out, that was a pretty nice
neighborhood compared to Korogocho.
These pictures are actually from Google; we couldn't photograph
outside the KENWA center due to security concerns
The main street of the slum is jam-packed with shops and storefronts, with people selling everything from cow and sheep intestine to half-rolls of toilet paper to clothing and shoes. Many shops present broken tools, shattered tail lights, rusty bikes with no tires on the wheels – no doubt stuff picked out of the litter that surrounds each shack. The stores have no inside – they are simply open-walled shacks placed on top of the dirt and garbage with people trying to sell things, women cooking right there in the street, meat hanging in the heat of the day. I cannot even describe the smell, even though I can still smell it on myself right now – smoke, rotten garbage, dirt, piss (but the piss is actually from holding wet children, no big deal).
At certain high points in the slum, you can look down past the shops surrounding you and see the vastness of Korogocho. The winding alleys of the slum seem endless. Everything cardboard and corrugated tin, covered in dirt and rust and dust and trash. It’s unsafe for us to veer from the main “commercial” street of the slum – even that seems risky more often than not. I would never feel safe walking without at least two other people. I don’t want to worry anyone – typically people just ignore us, and in a sense it’s much better than the city because most of these Kenyans have not been raised around white people and therefore don’t approach us for money every five seconds as they do downtown – and usually they associate Ray with KENWA as he has worked there about a month, giving us even more security. We either all walk in a big group or even better, we walk with a few native Kenyan volunteers. My first day in the slum was no more scary than my first time into the city, from a security standpoint – I think it is simply the much more dire conditions around me that give it a more dangerous feeling.
Arriving at KENWA, we are greeted by Edith, the Kenyan woman who runs the Korogocho site. We cross the makeshift bridge (short, cracked board) over the sewage-filled gutter and enter the dark, three-room KENWA building. The first room is the main area, where there are benches set up for clients to wait and where lunch is served. The second room is the kitchen, where lunch is cooked over and open fire (no ventilation system in the building, mind you, so the smoke from the fire fills every room to the point where we often have to leave the building just to breathe in the dirty slum air – the Kenyans laugh at us for not being able to breathe in pure smoke! – but they often have to leave a few minutes after we all chicken out, anyway!). The
third room is the “office”, where the CHWs (Community Health Workers) hold hours once a week to meet with new clients or visit with KENWA members and do check-ups. There is no electricity in the building, no running water, and no bathroom. (Actually, I’m told there is a hole in the ground near the kitchen, but it’s been covered with firewood for weeks, so I am getting used to holding my pee all day – not good.
Luckily I sweat most of it out, right?) The floors are dirt and the walls are…cement, but basically dirt as well. The roof is the same corrugated tin that covers every other roof in the slum.
A little about KENWA: KENWA was founded by Kenyan women, and serves as a support group for women and children with HIV/AIDS. While KENWA does not supply anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs: HIV medications) to its clients, it does offer medication for secondary infections (“opportunistic” infections) associated with HIV/AIDS. There is a one-time 200 KSH fee to join KENWA, but then a woman can be a member for life and participate in KENWA services. KENWA does a lot of
networking out within the community, and asks its members to refer other women with HIV/AIDS to the organization so KENWA can reach out to them as well. KENWA offers rides to hospitals for its members, and the volunteers go out with Edith and other workers to make home visits. Home visits occur frequently, and are basically a way to check in on KENWA members, see how clients are doing, if anyone is ill, if medicine is needed, to offer condolences to a family when someone dies, etc. In addition to these services, KENWA serves free lunch every day to its members (women and children with HIV/AIDS) and to the street children of Korogocho.
John, Joel, & Brian - some of the KENWA kids. John is the son of a CHW, but Joel and Brian were alone all day, every day in the slum - no parents to speak of (if they had parents, they weren't feeding, cleaning, schooling, or caring for these children). They, and about 5 or 6 other kids, were at the center constantly, because it was a safe place where they could get food.few areas in Korogocho where tribal conflicts occur on a regular basis. Kenya is very tribal (not tribal as in people are living in huts and dancing around fires, but tribal in that there are hundreds of different ancestral tribes that modern-day Kenyans still recognize as legitimate, and some of them don’t get along, to put it simply). So a few streets in Korogocho belong to one tribe while neighboring streets are inhabited by another, and if a KENWA volunteer is seen more on one particular street than another, it may appear we are favoring one tribe. This can breed conflict or distaste toward the organization – something we obviously want to avoid in such a hostile
environment. To make a long story short, there are many risks associated with the slum, but to avoid conflict or violence we just stay under the radar, remain aware of our surroundings, and walk in a group along with other native Kenyans who offer added security.
Back to the home visits: Edith, Dana, Ray and I walked about a half hour to the first home, through back alleys full of trash and chickens and children, to a small shack. Let me take a minute to describe the living conditions of a typical slum dweller. The house, if one is lucky, has four walls. Two to three of the walls are shared with
adjoining shacks. The walls are made out of cardboard or tin, often multiple different pieces taped or tacked together or held together with twine. The roofs are simply sheet metal or corrugated tin (is there a difference?), rusty with sharp edges. The roofs are no higher than the top of my head – probably 5’9” at the tallest, so we all had to be really careful not to cut our heads open on the overhanging tin. You enter, and it is pitch black – no electricity, and a sharp contrast to the bright light outside the door opening, which is typically a rectangular hole in the wall, sometimes covered with a sheet or drape. You cannot stand up inside the house. Both homes I was in last week were no larger than a walk-in closet; I would estimate their dimensions were 8 feet by 5 feet. The space was practically filled with a makeshift bed, a small bench or couch, and a few belongings stacked on the floor. The four of us took up the remaining room, and when you add in the client and a few kids, we were practically sitting in the dark, on each others’ laps.
The first woman we visited lived with her daughter and three grandchildren. She spoke very little English and was in great pain. She was HIV+ and just lay in bed all day. Edith spoke to her in their tribal language (Kikuyu), so then Edith had to translate to Dana (in Swahili) and Dana had to translate to us in English. We didn’t learn much during this visit, to say the least – it was too much of a pain to decipher the entire conversation. The woman had us go into the next shack and meet her husband, who was suffering from TB. We (or really just Edith) helped him decipher his dawa (medicine) regimen, they talked some more, and then we went on to the next house. The next one was a bit better, because it had an actual door. There were
naked kids running around right outside in the dirt and it looked like they had all just been bathed. We entered the house (same size as the previous one, but a little cleaner) and sat down. We met a grandmother who had lost one of her daughters to AIDS recently, and was left with four children to care for. The grandmother’s other daughter had moved in to help care for the four children. The grandmother was HIV+ and the oldest of the four kids was HIV+ as well. We talked a little bit with the grandmother and the remaining daughter, found out how they were handling paying for ARVs (the city council was supplementing some of the cost), and then returned to the KENWA center.
**It is not uncommon for the older kid(s) in a group of siblings to have HIV while the younger ones do not, because the mother may have discovered that she is HIV+ and sought necessary treatment throughout the later pregnancies, though she was unaware of her disease with her first few kids. If the younger children are HIV+ but not the older children, it is likely that the mother became HIV+ from a later
partner and passed it to her later children.
Once back at the center, we sat down to sort rice. Sorting rice, corn and beans has already become a regular part of each day at KENWA. Apparently, there are three different grades of rice and beans you can buy, and KENWA buys the lowest grade, the cheapest, in bulk for its lunches. We all gather around a dusty table, the rice is poured out, and we sit there (in the near dark – no electricity, remember?) sorting out the husks, small pebbles, and insect eggs from the rice. The same goes for beans and corn, only the beans are easier because they are bigger and easier to decipher from small rocks and bugs and such things. After we sort about five gallons of either rice or beans or both, we bring the buckets into the kitchen where they put the food on to boil. Note that while we are sorting rice and beans is when the fire is started in the next room, so we start to get heavily smoked out during this activity and have to take a few breaks to go take a deep breathe outside and wipe our eyes and blow our noses.
Around the time we finish sorting rice or beans, women and children start flooding the center with containers – mostly plastic pitchers and buckets. The adults are required to bring their own container if they want food, and many of the kids bring theirs as well but KENWA supplies plates for them if they don’t have one (obviously the street kids usually don’t have their own containers). There is a sign-in book, so each person has to be recorded before she can receive food. We write down their name, the general area in which they live, the medicine they are receiving, and where they go to get their medicine. Then, lunch is served. The volunteers line up assembly-line style from the main area back to the kitchen and pass empty containers back and full containers forward. Adults are fed first, then school children, then street kids. If there is any food left, a few stragglers may get lucky. The organization does not feed just anyone who needs lunch, as it would be impossible to feed every single person in Korogocho every day. However, there are always a few homeless men
hanging around outside, or coming in and yelling at the women to feed them, so we often give them food just so they will go away. Of particular note are the “glue sniffers”, a group of four or five men who have marked their territory on the dirt directly across from the KENWA building. They sit around all day huffing bottles of brown glue. They are typically pretty mellow but occasionally get in your face and yell and then have to be restrained by one of the Kenyan women working for KENWA. We are really not supposed to feed them but sometimes they just really get in the way so at least a few of them usually end up getting some beans and rice in a plastic bag. The glue huffers are a particularly sad looking group of men, as they look like they could be about 60 years old but I’m fairly certain they are no older than 30, always have glue running down their faces, and are constantly high – even though that apparently doesn’t take away the hunger they feel every day.
The huge number of street children that come in for lunch every day is astounding. Usually there are around fifty women who come in, most with one or two kids, but these are true members of KENWA. After they have all been taken care of, the building is packed with small, dirty children, who flock to KENWA around the same time every day just to get a small serving of rice. All of them are incredibly dirty, their
clothes black with dirt and tattered (some don't even have pants or shorts and go around bottomless), hardly any have shoes, they are so, so skinny, and most suffer from protein deficiency (they have the big distended bellies I’m sure you’ve all seen in pictures). Many times I have seen the kids chewing on a dirty plastic bag or another piece of plastic trash they picked up on the street. I saw this at House of Mercy, too – the orphanage in the other slum I went to a while ago – so I think it might be a common thing for an impoverished, malnourished child to chew on anything he can find. Maybe there comes a point when the body tells you to chew on anything with a hope for some kind of sustenance. ---Today (Tuesday), I saw a nine-year-old child chewing on the rung of a chair.---
The street kids range from toddlers to adolescents, and while most of them are sweet and argue over who gets to sit in your lap or hold your hand, some are simply like wild animals. I have read a few studies in the past about how important human contact is for a young child, and some of these kids have lived on the streets their entire lives. They bite and scratch and don’t allow you to touch them. They don’t talk or communicate to you or the other kids, and they look angry and dangerous – even when they are no more than four or five years old. It’s nice holding the poor kids who are lucky enough to enjoy being held, but I want nothing more than to offer human contact to the wild ones. It shows how important it is for a tiny kid to be held or cared
for. It is part of a child’s normal development. Is this what normally happens when one is left on the street from the time it can crawl and is never cared for, but has to fight for food and water and is constantly sick and malnourished?
Something I noticed on the first day at KENWA was that the adults are given mostly beans and no rice and the kids are given almost entirely rice, with maybe a small spoonful of beans. Thinking of their already protein deficient little bodies, I wondered why this is. I guess since KENWA is a support group for HIV+ individuals, it makes a point to give the most nutrition and nourishment to the HIV+ women and children who come there for lunch, and doesn’t worry about conserving beans for the street kids. I am planning to work with Jen, director of LCH, and a woman from a nutrition agency, to try to get amaranth incorporated into the rice given out by KENWA.
I learned about amaranth on my last day at LCH, when the orphanage was harvesting its large garden. Amaranth is apparently the up-and-coming crop for Africa; it has more protein than soy, and can grow in extremely arid environments. It also offers three crops in one – it produces greens twice and grains once. The grain can be popped or ground like maize. I have not discovered how sustainable of a crop it
is (important for sustenance farmers) but have learned that it is relatively cheap and can be added to many dishes to increase the amount of protein in the food. I have only been at KENWA a few days so have not mentioned it yet, but met Beatrice, the nutrition agency lady, through Jen, and she has offered to give a small presentation
(her job is to push amaranth use in NGOs) to the KENWA HQ office in Nairobi. Amaranth is a relatively new thing here in Kenya, and many people don’t know about it. But just adding the tiniest amount to a bowl of rice can make a significant difference in the nutrition the child will get from eating it. I really hope to have Beatrice disseminate amaranth information to the KENWA decision makers, but if
anything, I would at least like to ask the question of how it would be possible to incorporate more nutritional value into the meals given out to street children.
----------------------Tuesday-----------------------
Just wanted to add a few things today, as I just returned from another day in Korogocho and have to get some things off my chest. There was not enough food for all the children today at KENWA.
Typically, there are three or four women who stay in the kitchen and cook the huge pots of rice and beans every day. Then, as stated above, we work assembly-line style to pass out dishes to all the KENWA members and to all the street children. Today, lunch was prepared as usual, but we got to the bottom of the pot and there were still about fifteen street kids who looked at us pleadingly, waiting for some kind of sustenance. Here, I should state that the Kenyan women who prepare the meal both eat BEFORE lunch is served (HUGE helpings) and then stash a bunch of food away in extra pots and containers to take home for themselves later. Also, when any of their friends come into KENWA for the free lunch, they give them a much bigger helping than anyone else is getting. I should also state that these women are all a bit thicker than most women I’ve seen in Kenya, so I think that they definitely take full advantage of cooking KENWA’s food every day. So today, we ran out of food, even though Ray, Robin, this other volunteer Mike, and I had already given up our lunch to give out about eight extra helpings to the kids (they tend to give the workers way
bigger helpers than the kids, but we hardly ever actually take it since most of it goes wasted). Dana, the young Kenyan volunteer, went back into the kitchen to talk to the cooks in Swahili. She got really angry with them for hoarding food while there were still kids waiting for their single meal of the day. Turns out Dana used to be in the kids’ position, so she takes it very seriously when there is not enough food to go around, while the other Kenyan women see it as a normal occurrence. Dana managed to get two more plates of food out of them, that the kids had to share. So we had a ton of kids who got no food at all, only to watch all the Kenyan women walk out of the
kitchen and leave, carrying large bags heavy with beans and rice. We had to explain to the street kids – some as young as 3 or 4, none older than 10 or 11, that there was no food for them today.
I just got off the phone with Matt, because I really had to process this horrible thing that I witnessed for the first time today, but that is all too common here in Kenya, in Africa, and throughout the world. He asked what the kids did when they learned they would not eat today, and it turns out they all stood around aimlessly for a few more minutes and then trickled out the door and left without much fuss. Apparently, this kind of thing happens pretty frequently. You might ask how these grown women could live with themselves, eating extra helpings while kids are starving right in front of them. I wondered the same thing, and came to the conclusion that the mentality
here is completely different than anything we are familiar with. These women were raised in survival mode. The mentality here is all about survival, not about sharing, giving, or helping. This applies particularly in the slums, where you are raised being taught that if you are generous with your food you might not eat at all. So it doesn’t matter how angry or heartbroken I am at the injustice of what is happening here, because I can’t truly blame the women who take the extra food. They are in a different mode than I am, they know a different world than I do. There is no long-term here, and there is no certainty. If they can’t be sure they’ll get paid this week, or can’t be sure that there will be enough water in their well to cook with tomorrow, how could they not keep the extra food for themselves and their families? It’s wrong that they disallow starving, malnourished children from having a simple meal of rice, but it makes sense in a terribly twisted sort of way. It’s a different world here, and there is a different way of thinking and acting. It is really hard for me to even write about this. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t help. All these kids had to go back to the street with no food, all day. With stick legs and distended bellies, and no food, and there’s nothing I could do. I feel totally and completely helpless. I had to tell ragged, skinny little kids they couldn’t eat today.
---------------------Wednesday--Other Updates from Kenya----------------------------
So, a few things have been happening here in Kenya that some of you may have heard of if you’ve been following the news – if they’re even being talked about in the Western world. Firstly, tensions with Somalia are running high and the media is discussing the possibility of a Kenyan invasion of the country. Somalia recently threatened to attack Nairobi but no one seems to be taking them seriously, as far as
I’ve picked up from my host father and the Swahili news, and now Kenya is boosting up its military and is discussing a strike across the border. No one knows if any of this will come to fruition (have any of you heard about any of this?) but no one seems that concerned right now. Kenya spends the largest portion of its budget (over 15 times
more than anything else) on its military (if word of mouth is true, at least; I am sadly getting all this information from about three different people in the house) and so it seems Kenyans are taking Somalia’s threats as somewhat of a joke, but who knows? I’ll try to stay updated on what’s going on and will keep you posted if anything
else comes up. And please, please let me know if you have better access to what is happening than I do – I hate being right here in the country in question and having to scrounge around for information regarding the likelihood of war! Aaaah!
In other news, there is a cholera outbreak throughout certain parts of the country and particularly on the coast. Many of the volunteers are traveling to Mombasa (second largest city in Kenya, on the coast) next weekend, and some of us (including me, hopefully) are going the following weekend, so we are all taking extra precautions with food and water. 89 people had died as of Sunday night, which isn’t a huge number, but cholera is one of the scarier illnesses I’m aware of, and I definitely plan on avoiding it at all costs. I’ll keep you updated if it comes to Nairobi or surrounding areas.
Lastly, most of you know that I had an internship last year (and again this fall) with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Washington, DC. Well, they have an office here in Kenya (they have sites all over Africa and throughout much of the world) and I have been in brief contact with the director of the Kenyan office, Beatrice
Karanja, as sort of an “emergency contact” here in Nairobi. Well, yesterday, I happened to be in town checking my email and learned that a guy I worked with last year in DC, Communications Director Bob Yule, is here in Nairobi for two weeks doing a training! So I texted him and we met up and had lunch! How weird is that!?! Anyway, next week Ray, Robin and I are going to go straight into Nairobi from Korogocho and Bob is going to introduce us to the Kenyan employees of EGPAF,
show us around the office, talk about their projects here in Kenya, and then take us out to dinner. I am so excited to see how the Kenyan end of the non-profit compares to the DC end, keeping in mind that DC is more policy-based while the Kenyan office is supposed to be more of a functional project site. It should be interesting, and I look
forward to the prospect of starting the whole “networking” part of my future career. But I can’t describe how weird it was to sit across from a guy I worked with last year in a sandwich shop in downtown Nairobi…the world seriously just keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Okay, this email is way longer than any of my other ones. I apologize, but I just started my new job and had lots to discuss. Luckily, I am now all caught up and think this should suffice for the next few days, at least! I hope everyone is still doing well. I have been slightly nostalgic for home lately, but more in a running-and-hiding-from-really-bad-things sort of way than a true homesickness way. To say the least, I do look forward to coming back to the States, getting my GRE over with, and having the opportunity to process so many things that I don’t quite know how to deal with yet. I can’t wait to have long talks with Mom and Dad, because you guys always seem to be on the same plane as I am. It’s comforting to know that I have wonderful friends, a loving family, and a mostly perfect boyfriend to come home to (heehee). Yay! I love Africa, but am excited for August…if only to begin planning my next trip!! (On which many of you will hopefully accompany me, right?!?!?!)
Love to all.
XOXO
EM
July 13
Hello everyone!
Sorry it’s been a while since my last email. To be honest, not too much has happened since the last one I sent out. I have been “in the zone” at my new job at KENWA – sorting beans, playing with the street kids, serving lunch, picking up basic Swahili. Things seem to have calmed down a bit in the slum, gang-incident-wise, so we will probably be going on many more home visits in the next few weeks. I very much
look forward to these home visits, as it gives me the rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of the lives led by the most resilient, hardened, an impoverished people I have ever encountered.
Another reason I haven’t written more recently is because my last few emails have received a noticeably diminished number of responses from my loved ones. I take this as everyone is having a busy and wonderful summer, but I can’t help but wonder if my emails have left some of those I care about in a state of distress or upset, not knowing what to say. I would like to stress the point that I don’t expect people to ever respond to my emails with any kind of insight or thought process; the stuff I’m seeing and experiencing here is enough to send me into a state of solemn silence. It is only because I am using this as my journal that you are getting every little bit of what I am feeling, and trust me, I fully acknowledge that the nature of the information makes it difficult to articulate any kind of intelligible response – I know this is a huge issue for me, anyway, when it comes to getting my thoughts down on paper. If anything, please do not hesitate to simply write your typical email to me like you used to – saying hi,
catching me up on what you’ve been doing throughout this chilly African July (or, I guess, your disgusting muggy one back home!), telling me what books you’ve been reading or how work is going. I miss all of you, and loved when many of you were writing a few happy, simple sentences about how things are back in the USA. So please write back! You don’t have to respond to the shitty stuff…
Anyway…back to Kenyan happenings! Here is a short list of exciting things that have happened since my last entry. Not sure if I’ll go into all of them in this email, but I came up with these over the weekend and think it’s fun!:
1. I rode a HUGE camel.
2. I got tear gassed again.
3. I swam in the Indian Ocean.
4. I got sicker than I have ever been in my entire life.
5. The ceiling of a matatu I was riding in last week caught on fire...on the inside...
6. There are now 18 girls in our hostel and only 2 boys.
7. I burned my hands hand-washing my laundry with a caustic Kenyan-made detergent, apparently because “It take you too long! But you try, you try!” according to our laughing housekeeper, Esther.
8. I saw numerous fornicating baboons this weekend.
So anyway…now I’ll start writing about a few things from the selection above.
The first is that I have been DISGUSTINGLY sick for the past week. It started out as just a cold and a sore throat, and progressed into an awful sinus infection. I have never had a sinus infection before, but after Googling a few things about sinus infections I learned that if you have the common cold or flu or other common illness and your immune system is already working overtime, and then your sinuses are
exposed to some kind of irritant or allergen, it is easy for an infection to set in. I am confident that working in the smoky KENWA building every day and breathing in awful pollutants in the slum put me over the edge. Dad and Bello, how do you guys handle this!??! At its worst, I literally felt like my eyes were going to be pushed out of their sockets. My JAW hurt. I had a sinus headache for 6 days – though it has finally begun to diminish with the help of lots of meds. I missed a lot of work last week…but unfortunately, the sinus infection wasn’t all of it. I went to dinner last Wednesday with Bob Yule, the guy from Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation who was
here visiting Nairobi, and woke up in the middle of the night with an upset stomach. I know many of you probably don’t want to know this but because it was scary for me I want to write about it: I threw up seven times in ten hours. I didn’t even know that was humanly possible. I was just constantly nauseas…and constantly running to the
bathroom. Thank god it was only coming out of the one end. It was hard enough carrying 5 gallons of water upstairs to flush the toilet after each time I was sick. I honestly didn’t know what was happening to my body because I couldn’t breathe very well due to the sinus infection and then on top of that I clearly had some kind of nasty bug playing around inside my tummy…needless to say, it was a rough week.
Luckily, I was feeling much better by Friday, because Ray, Robin and I had booked train tickets to Mombasa for a long weekend getaway. Weekend Mombasa trips have become very common for the volunteers in our hostel. Almost all the other volunteers went the weekend before, but Ray, Robin and I (they are the guys I work at KENWA with) decided we’d rather not go with 22 other people and postponed our trip for the
following weekend. For a total of $24 each, we reserved a 2nd class sleeping car – complete with four bunks (the bottom two doubled as benches) – and breakfast on the train. The train departed from the sketchy Nairobi station at 7 PM and we arrived (on time, surprisingly) at Mombasa Station at 9:45 the next morning. We enjoyed our time on the train – we packed lots of snacks, some good books, and my ever-enlarging stack of GRE vocabulary flashcards to entertain the three of us.
The train ride was unlike any Amtrak experience. The train, first of all, was not electric or anything I’ve ever seen – it was incredibly old fashioned, and the first car bellowed a thick black smoke – with occasional fire – out of its rooftop exhaust pipe (I’m sure there’s a better word for it but I am drawing a blank). I guess it was powered
by coal, or some other type of fuel maybe? I have no idea…this is clearly not my area of expertise. All I know is that the train was rickety and ridiculously loud. It had once been painted green and red but had become pretty rusty. The front of the train was comprised of a few 1st class cars, all full of white tourists and ex-pats. Second class was more of a mixed bag, with some middle- to upper-class Kenyans and plenty more tourists (mostly young volunteer-looking people; the first-class riders were mostly rich middle-aged or older foreigners). Then, third class, at the back of the train, was really a sight to see. There were several typical train cars, with the rows of seats facing each other with a table in the middle – but all the windows were busted out of the train, so it was wide open to the cold wind all night and to the cacophony of the train careening down mountains throughout central Kenya towards the ocean. Also, seats
aren’t reservable on 3rd class – Kenyans were packed in everywhere, some standing in between seats or in the aisle, preparing themselves (how, I don’t know) to remain in that crushed, cramped position for around 15 hours. But that wasn’t the worst of it – at the very end of the train was a simple cargo car – no seats, no tables – jam-packed with Kenyans, sitting, standing, kneeling, with their kids and babies
strapped to them, strangely reminiscent of some pictures I’ve seen from WWII. I had never imagined people still travel like that. The thing is, a 3rd class ticket in the cargo car is around 300 shillings – something like $4 – to go all the way across the country. It’s cheap, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth it. That’s a long time to sit in a two-square-foot piece of cold, cracked, wooden floor of a sketchy, dark, cold train.
So anyway, it was an adventure for the last few hours of evening while we were on the train. We went in the aisle and opened the window, and were able to see the rough outskirts of Nairobi in the dark – an opportunity that could only be allowed us in this situation, as we’d hope to never find ourselves in these areas in the dark on foot or in
a car. We drove through a huge slum in the dark, and it was both tragic and eerie to see what extreme poverty looks like at night. The cardboard and tin shacks blended together, the corrugated roofs every so often reflecting the high beams on the top of our train. People were everywhere, crouched around smoky fires in the dirt, children
screaming and jumping up and down and waving to the train. Occasionally we would pass by someone standing only a few feet from the train, directly below us – always startling. Even driving through the slum in the protection of our high-up spot on the speeding train was frightening for me – a general uneasy experience. Soon, we went
into our car and closed up for the night. I slept surprisingly well, except for a few times when we “hit” something on the tracks and our train would come to a jarring, screeching stop and those of us on the wrong side of the car would be thrown halfway off our bunks. Apparently trains hit cows pretty frequently, as there aren’t fences
to separate the train from the surrounding savannah.
When we arrived in Mombasa, it was much hotter than Nairobi (Nairobi has been in the low 70s – it’s Kenya’s winter right now). On the coast, I would estimate it was in the mid-eighties to low-nineties, and exceedingly humid. We took a tuk-tuk from the train station to the ferry we had to cross to get to Diani Beach, the “better” area of
Mombasa’s coast. A tuk-tuk is basically a three-wheeled taxi; the driver has a single seat up front and there is a long bench in the back, just perfect for three people with our backpacks. The ferry crossed a bright blue harbor full of yellow and black striped fish, and to our left we could just see where it opened up to the Indian Ocean. We saw some big industrial ships and rough-looking sailboats and half-jokingly speculated about what kind of ships pirates might have these days – then realized it really wasn’t funny and decided not to talk about pirates anymore while we were on the very coast where pirate-related incidents had occurred not so very long ago!
After exiting the ferry, we caught two more matatus until finally we had reached our destination. We stayed in a very touristy area, at a hotel about a 10-minute walk from the beach. The name of the place was Stilts, and for $11, we secured a 3-person “tree house” for the night. The Banda, as they call them here, was a large thatched hut with a grass roof, on stilts, complete with a little porch area where monkeys literally came and chilled with us while we were eating there. We had to climb a ladder to get inside. It wasn’t that high off the ground – only about 10 or 12 feet – but very cool to be sleeping in the middle of the surrounding dense trees, full of crazy-looking birds and monkeys that came and cleaned up our crumbs on the porch after we had eaten chips there. The only thing I didn’t like about the place was that it was run by a pompous ex-pat. As soon as I met this guy I got the impression that he’d grown up in a country where he thought his was the superior race, and where he was used to running things and having his way. He had an air about him that really didn’t sit well with me…luckily we didn’t run into him that much since we spent the entire time on the beach. I guess I can’t really complain, since I stayed at his hotel, but to be fair, I didn’t know and would never have imagined Stilts would be run by an old racist British guy. Oh well.
As soon as we settled into our Banda, we changed into our bathing suits (well, improvised bathing suits: shorts and cut-up t-shirt) and made the short walk down to the ocean. I have only been to the Atlantic Ocean before, and to me, this beach looked like something from an exotic postcard. Sparkly white sand, clear turquoise water,
coconut trees. And what with all the white tourists in their skimpy bathing suits and their beachside margaritas, it was like reverse culture shock all over again. Ray, Robin and I walked a bit down the beach to get away from all the white people (haha) and ended up just lying in the sun all afternoon, swimming in the clear water (lots of sea urchins to beware of, though), and searching for pretty shells. It was weird having a weekend to be an actual tourist – I haven’t felt like a tourist since I’ve been here – and it took a little while to get acclimated. For some reason I am uncomfortable being equated to the wealthy Brits and Australians and Americans who frequent Diani
Beach, and I think that is unfair of me, as I’m clearly doing the same thing they are – even if just for a weekend. But still, I’m glad the boys and I decided to find our own spot of beach and not directly associate ourselves with the golfers and the safari-ers.
That night, because it was Robin’s 20th birthday, we found a beachside bar and had dinner and some Tuskers and did some dancing (awkward white people! Yay!) before heading back to our Banda for the night. The next morning, it was an early walk on the beach, a late breakfast, and 2 matatus/ferry/tuk-tuk back into central Mombasa to prepare for the train ride back. We restocked our snack supply, and made it to the train by 6 PM. The ride back was uneventful, except for being stopped on the tracks for several hours in the middle of the night, leading to our four-and-a-half hour delay getting back to the city. The good thing was, because we were so delayed in the night, we were able to see much of Kenya’s countryside by the light of morning. We reached over 6,000 feet in altitude, saw Mt. Kilimanjaro in the distance, took fleeting pictures of mud huts with thatched roofs in the middle of nowhere, saw Masai leading their cows and goats, and drove through the huge slum in the middle of the day. I took a
billion pictures of everything (I haven’t been able to take pictures in a while because it’s unsafe to bring our cameras to the slum where we work) and so am excited to have new things to share with everyone on top of all the orphanage pics I’ve already accumulated over the past 6 weeks.
Yep…that was my semi-fun weekend! Now it’s back to the slums bright and early tomorrow morning. I think that will be the last of my tourist activities while here in Kenya. I liked relaxing on the beach and getting tanned for a little while, but most of the time we were all just talking about the slum and KENWA and the kids anyway, so it wasn’t really like we were getting away at all. And to be honest, I’m not ready to get away. I want to soak it up and steep in it as much as possible for my remaining 20 days in Korogocho.
Last thing to note – I don’t know how much of it has made the international news, but there is yet again political dissonance within Kenya right now as Kofi Annan and the ICC are determined to try several people responsible for the post-election violence of 2007. According to the papers, President Kibaki, PM Odinga, and much of the administration’s power players want to set up their own trial for these men, but there is much opposition from other parties within Kenya and within the international community because it is not thought that Kenya’s trial will adhere to the accepted principles and overall lack of impunity that should be associated with a trial such as this.
The ICC was created to try criminals in just a few cases: when the government of a country is unwilling or unable to do so, when the criminals are in the government itself and therefore will not try themselves, or when there is no government or oversight to hold the criminals accountable, as in failed states or when the accuser does not belong to a country or is of unknown citizenship. Adding to the upset is the fact that the only cases ever tried by the ICC have been of African criminals, and many people are outraged at what they consider apparent discrimination. But I read a great editorial by Kofi Annan in the Daily Standard the other day that went through each
case’s basics, outlined the cases at hand, and reassured Africans throughout the country and the continent that the ICC is there to help them, not to hinder African countries’ own jurisdictional processes. However, things are still apparently tense and heated, and I’m curious to see what happens now that the ICC is so heavily involved in these potential Kenyan prosecutions. I have become obsessed with reading the
paper here – we finally found some English versions – as the newspapers here are pretty much ONLY comprised of the news I’m interested in, instead of having to pick through American papers to find the one or two short articles that may concern some aspect of life in a developing nation other than Middle Eastern countries or now, I’m sure, Honduras. It’s sad that if our country has no real political or economic ties to a country, we don’t hear about it, and we don’t talk about it. Just because they don’t seem to affect us doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be constantly aware of what is happening to them – simply because WE affect THEM with our every political or economic move. Isn’t that a responsibility the powerful countries of the world should realize and be held accountable for?
Like I said, it’s nice to easily find here the news I strive for every day back at home. That said, if any of you are interested in African politics or the important things that are happening in African countries (things that are rarely touched on in American papers or CNN), I would suggest checking out http://www.allafrica.com/ or Al Jazeera. These are pretty awesome and were my main source of information for this continent
throughout the last year or so.
Okay, my dear friend and coworker Raymundo wants his computer back. So I guess that is all for right now. No new reports from the slum yet – but I assure you there will be eventually, particularly after we go on some more home visits. But in the typical nature of my emails, let me leave you with a fun fact!:
MSM (men having sex with men) account for only 5% of HIV/AIDS cases in Kenya. The remainder of HIV/AIDS cases are mostly contracted through MTCT (mother to child transmission) or heterosexual intercourse. It is interesting to me that what used to be considered a homosexual disease, when we were ignorant about it in the ‘80s, is really not that at all – particularly in Africa and developing nations. I won’t write a huge philosophical process here…simply food for thought.
Love to all of you. PLEASE email me to say hi, dearest family :) I miss all of you. Again, looking forward to August when we can all go through hundreds of pictures together and have long talks and catch up and be together again. And shower with real, hot, running water. Aaaaaaah.
XOXOXOXO
Emily
July 17
Hi folks!
I know I just wrote an email, but this week has been particularly interesting as far as KENWA goes.
First of all, just wanted to say thanks so much to all of you who responded to my last email. It was so, so wonderful to get online and see that so many people wrote me back!! I missed hearing from all of you and it lifted my spirits. While I am still behind on emailing back individually, know that I always appreciate even the shortest note
hello!
Now on to Kenyan news…
TRIBAL CONFLICT
As I have stated before, Kenya is still a very tribal country (lending to the fierce and devastating post-election violence that actually made the American news!). And as I’ve described, there are areas of the slum in which I work that have an intense amount of tribal conflict, making them particularly dangerous areas to find oneself in
the middle of. Well, on Tuesday morning, I accompanied Edith, the Korogocho KENWA center director and Njoke, a Kenyan KENWA volunteer, to Dandora, the area of the slum containing both the gang-controlled landfill and inhabited by the most hostile tribes.
One of the great things about KENWA is that it is not simply a “soup kitchen” and an AIDS support group. KENWA literally helps its members out with anything it possibly can – school fees and uniforms for the kids, hospital and counseling referrals, moral support, medication costs, family disputes, stigma mitigation, and, incidentally, tribal
conflicts. So we walked, the three of us, deeper into the slum than I’d ever been, to help a member family that was warring with its opposing tribe.
The issue was this: A Kikuyu KENWA member, a mother of two teenagers, had recently died from AIDS. The apartment complex in which she lived is run by Luo tribe members. The late woman had owned her apartment, but as soon as she passed away the apartment facilitators began trying to resell the apartment and keep the royalties for themselves, despite them not owning the specific apartment in question. The late woman’s Kikuyu family members had become enraged with the facilitators, and a heated conflict had ensued in the days after the death. Therefore, Edith was headed to the apartment to meet with the family and one of the apartment facilitators to attempt to arbitrate the clash.
First, we walked a few miles into Dandora to go the local police chief’s office, to ask the chief’s permission to handle the argument. Dandora, one of Nairobi’s highest crime areas, is fiercely patrolled by a troupe of scary-looking, military-uniformed, AK-47 or M-16 and nightstick-wielding cops. Though, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, the police force in Kenya is rampant with corruption and impunity, and the police are often viewed as no more than official thieves. The police are also often overtaken by the large Kikuyu gang in Nairobi, the name of which escapes me now. The police are probably feared at an equal level to this gang by the locals. Anyway – we were granted permission by the police chief, a seedy-looking but smiling Kenyan in a light brown uniform, sitting at a cracked desk below a wall-sized poster of Presidents Obama and Kibaki.
After gaining consent from the chief, we met four Kenyan women outside, who were sisters and friends of the deceased KENWA member. They walked with us at least three miles into Dandora to the run-down, cinderblock apartment building that was the basis of the current clash.
Entering the apartment, we were greeted by the late woman’s brother and some other tenets of the apartment building. Because the following 2.5-hour-long conversation was entirely in Swahili, and because I only received a 10-minute rundown afterwards from Njoke, I am unsure as to whether members of the opposing Luo tribe – the
apartment facilitators – were actually present at the meeting, but I do assume some of them were there as the conversation got tensely heated at times, with much yelling and finger pointing and tongue-clicking.
Njoke told me later, as I had only picked up a few words – “deposit, money, bank, children, school, medicine, pharmacy…” – that the majority of the debate centered on how to ensure the money in the apartment – meaning the worth of the home – went to pay for the children’s school fees, uniforms, and additional needs. The goal was
to sell the apartment and put the money directly into a bank, only to be withdrawn by the designated guardian (either the deceased woman’s husband [not the father to the children, though] or, more preferably, the deceased’s brother).
Another issue discussed was how to make sure the husband did not try to take the money for himself, and also how to ensure he did not marry the dead woman’s 16-year-old daughter, “a bad habit of Kenyan men,” according to Njoke. The family wanted to make sure the 16-year-old got into behavioral counseling, as she tended to misbehave and they were worried she would either consent to marrying the husband, or drop out of school without her mother there to make sure she remained enrolled.
I wish I could understand more of how they were able, or planned to, convince the opposing tribal members that the apartment’s earnings should go to the family’s bank account, but unfortunately, I was unable to gather this information. I just thought it was really interesting to see two things:
1. KENWA remains as a helper and a support group for the KENWA member’s family even after the death of the KENWA member.
2. The tribal conflicts in Kenya, or at least here in Nairobi, are more than just political. While Edith told me that the violence is usually much worse in Korogocho/Dandora during times of political decision making, such as voting for Nairobi’s mayor (occurring in early August; volunteers are encouraged to remain home for the day if not longer before and after), it is not only violent acts that occur
as a result of tribal feuds. The conflicts affect all things in everyday life here.
In fact – an interesting note – the other day, one of the glue huffers was questioning me about Obama: where his family was from, what his wife is called, how many children he has, where he lives, etc. However, he did not speak very good English and obviously I do not speak any Swahili, so we had a tough time getting through to each
other (not to mention the fact that he was a bit high). Therefore, Njoke was acting as a go-between. At one point, I heard Njoke say something to the glue sniffer about “Obama…Luo...” in a distasteful tone. Dana, the other Kenyan volunteer, laughed, and later told me that for Kikuyus (such as Njoke), “Luo” means both a member of the Luo tribe (Obama’s apparent ancestry?) and also “idiot” or the equivalent to another such mild obscenity. Apparently, Njoke had pulled on the ancient tribal rivalries and being Kikuyu, had told the huffer, “Obama is nothing but another stupid Luo.” I thought this interesting, as I have had yet to meet a Kenyan who was not ecstatic about Obama being the president of the USA. Even though Obama is from the same country as these people, and most of them are exceedingly proud of that fact, this apparent affection and pride are sometimes belied by tribal rivalries, as I witnessed in this conversation.
The other thing that occurred at KENWA that I feel I need to write about:
NONCHALANT ATTITUDE TOWARDS DEATH
Yesterday, as we – the four white volunteers – were sitting around in the front room of KENWA, in between duties and playing with a few of the street kids, a woman came in and sat down with us, sobbing. She was sickly skinny, had very bad teeth, a shaved head, and tattered clothes. She did not speak any English, and there didn’t happen to be another Kenyan in the room at that time to translate for us. She was
grasping at her chest, breathing fast, and crying hard. We tried to inquire if she was okay without really talking (hard to do…) but she just keep clawing at her shirt and hitting her chest. Njoke finally came out of the back room and said the woman was complaining of chest pain, but she’d done it before, and Njoke rolled her eyes like it was no big deal. The woman progressively got louder and more upset, and starting screaming, raising her arms up at the ceiling, and trying to tear off her shirt. She slid to the floor and rocked back and forth, hitting the floor with her arms and legs, hitting and scratching her chest, and looking terrified. She was clearly hyperventilating, and
clearly in pain. None of us knew what to do. She tore off her shirt and her bra and lay on the stone floor topless, thrashing and screaming and trying to breathe.
While this frightening and shocking display of suffering was occurring, we were trying to figure out what she was saying to the Kenyan workers that had come back into the front room. They were having a loud conversation with the woman, who was screaming and sobbing replies. Apparently, this woman was an alcoholic, “not even
HIV positive”, and not a member of KENWA. The workers refused to take her to the hospital for these reasons, and based on the fact that “it’s all an act, she’s done this before!”. Mike, one of the other volunteers and I, both involved in emergency medicine in some entry/undergraduate level, were kind of freaking out because the woman OBVIOUSLY had something terribly wrong with her. With her shirt off,
I noticed contractions of her intercostals and use of all accessory muscles to breathe; she was not getting an adequate tidal volume and her gasps and coughs and screams sounded full of mucous or fluid. Her lips were pursed and tinted blue, her eyes were bulging out, she was drooling and terrified. I took her pulse, which was difficult to find due to it being threateningly weak but otherwise of normal rhythm. We tried to reason with the KENWA workers and tell them that she really needed to go to the hospital based on these findings, and especially because they had just translated to us in broken English that she said the pain and discomfort started after she took a new medicine (for malaria, TB, or an anti-diarrheal – we never did find out) and then
drank alcohol. In addition, the woman had terrible asthma and was sitting in our smoke-filled building during this possible asthma attack – if it wasn’t something worse. But the woman had no money and the KENWA workers refused to consent to taking her to the clinic. They wouldn’t let us offer the 20-shilling cost of taking her to the clinic and just stood around like it was no big deal. We were powerless in this situation, and it was tremendously frustrating.
If I know anything, it is that I honestly think my semester-long EMT course taught me to differentiate between someone “faking it” and someone genuinely running the risk of respiratory arrest. Legitimate hyperventilation can easily lead to hypoxia, respiratory arrest, coma, and death without immediate care to reverse the condition. With no medical equipment around, no supplemental oxygen, not even gloves or a
pocket mask, I knew that if something happened to this woman I wouldn’t be able to do any kind of resuscitation effort other than partial CPR, if it came to that. Therefore, I was frightened and felt helpless and angry in this situation, in which all the volunteers would have called 911 immediately had we been at home, but where all
the KENWA workers – even Community Health Workers – seemed ultimately
unperturbed by this dramatic performance on our stone floor.
After our somewhat heated conversation – in broken English – with the workers, the sick woman finally seemed to be calming down. The entire episode lasted at least 25 minutes, and at times was absolutely terrifying – images of this woman thrashing on the floor, struggling to breathe, will stay with me forever. Eventually, the woman was able to put her shirt back on, and with our help, managed to move to a seated position on a bench near the open door, where there was fresher air than in the building itself. Relieved and thankful this woman didn’t die right there in front of us, we went back to sorting beans, surrendered (though not morally or intelligently) to the fact that the
woman was not going to be cared for in any capacity by KENWA.
It was a little while later that I noticed some of the KENWA workers mocking Mike’s and my pulse-taking actions. They were laughing and feeling each other’s wrists, literally guffawing at us for being worried about this woman. Slightly indignant, but mostly submissive to the cultural difference that was blatantly apparent here, Mike and I later discussed how we were legitimately concerned for the survival of this woman. Very obviously to us, she had a serious respiratory condition (on top of probable other problems) (asthma on top of TB? Alcoholism and any mixture of medications?), but because she has done this frequently in the KENWA building and always recovered, no one takes her seriously (in addition to being an alcoholic – that was the main reason cited by the workers for not taking action in her case). I have never seen such mockery, such detachment or such a nonchalant attitude towards something so severe, so close to death. It is vaguely reminiscent of last week when KENWA took a man to the hospital who was in the center that very morning, and when we later asked Edith how he was, she said, “Oh, he died.” Just like that. Not a second thought, totally unemotional, totally removed. I guess if you see it every day, it becomes a part of your life, just like anything else. I know death is looked at differently here; it is seen as an everyday occurrence unworthy of much attention or lost time, but thinking about how that woman probably will go into respiratory failure and die one day because no one takes any action for her wellbeing is …a word worse
than “worrisome” to me. Deeply, deeply troubling.
On this note, I find it a constant challenge to stand aside and be respectful and understanding of cultural differences while at the same time upholding my own ethical standards. I know that a huge issue I have with many aid organizations, particularly out of the Western world, is that they enter developing nations with good intentions, but then – perhaps unintentionally – impose our own moral code on
situations involving medical care, nutrition, child-rearing, death and dying, or social attention in general. What is right? And who am I to say what is right? In Kenya, I constantly require myself to step back from situations in which I find myself angry or thinking “this is wrong!” and ask myself, “Do I really know what is best for these
people? Do I understand how this culture responds to _______? Can I be empathetic, compassionate, and look at this from a truly objective standpoint simultaneously, instead of applying my own subjective opinions based on how I was raised in a nation where social services are, for the most part, readily available and part of our norm?” The incident with the manically hyperventilating woman was one such situation. I truly had to stand back and take a deep breath, reminding myself that things are different here. But my own personal moral code still does not allow me to be okay with the complete lack of concern shown in the center.
SOCIAL DARWINISM
On the subject of cultural understanding, international aid, and overall acceptance of what is happening in this world, I want to just take a minute and write as if this truly were my journal. Many conversations with other volunteers, and via email with people back home, have centered around the need for all of us to gain some kind of
acceptance for the tragedies, the horrific events, the broken world that I have been introduced to here, and that is present throughout most of Africa and throughout much of the developing world. While I agree that a form of acceptance must be reached for us to remain sane and healthy individuals, I think there is a fine line between acceptance and continued care, and acceptance and forget. While we can apply any theory we want to extreme poverty, disease, drought, marginalization – Social Darwinism, for example – simply placing a label on a situation such as these does not make the circumstances forgivable or acceptable. Social Darwinism is a theory that I believe truly undermines what Darwin actually had to say about survival of the fittest – we can’t possibly apply his theory, which was meant for nature, to mankind. We, people, are our own sect. We have created the world around us, and we can’t make excuses like this for the way things have become. When we say that extreme poverty exists due to “survival of the fittest”, and that it is the natural working of the world, I think it’s important to remember that when Katrina struck New Orleans, it was a popular “conspiracy” theory that the levees over the 9th ward had been broken by the local government, to protect the wealthy, income-generating, historic areas of the city and instead wipe out the impoverished region, whether or not that meant killing or displacing hundreds to thousands of more people – after all, they were poor, black, and powerless, right? So what did it really matter? Another theory, which I remember being purported in my high school by evangelists, was that God or Nature or whatever made Katrina hit the poorest areas of NOLA to continue to wipe out the weaker portions of mankind - the powerless, moneyless, marginalized population. While by all reasoning fallacious, not to mention awful to think about, these images have stayed with me and I am reminded of them every time someone says “survival of the fittest” in regards to mankind. Hence, I am particularly reminded of Social Darwinist theory when I remember working in New Orleans two years ago, and seeing the destruction and pain that still exists, after several years, in our own wealthy and powerful nation. It is tragic to think that we cannot gain both acceptance and compassion for the terrible workings of the world without sticking labels such as Social Darwinism on unfortunate events and circumstances.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that things are out of our hands because "that’s just the way it is”. I think we have a real responsibility to those less fortunate, and I think we have a real responsibility to recognize our impact on the world around us, as a powerful country. Not only the countries we are economically or diplomatically invested in, but all countries. Our actions perhaps impinge on developing nations more than developed nations: take climate change, for example. The USA has yet to sign to Kyoto Protocol, and though there is hope that Obama will make strides to create green jobs and a sustainable energy system in our country, we
continue to contribute far more than our share to the greenhouse effect. While we don’t particularly notice the changes that are readily occurring in our atmosphere, it is widely hypothesized in the concerned scientific community that the world’s impoverished countries (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa) will bear the brunt of climate change’s negative effects. Kenya is already experiencing these effects: it is in a four-year drought, with depleted crop production, lack of water, and intensifying numbers of starving or undernourished people. In the slum where I work, there is no running water and no clean water. People have to buy their drinking and cooking water from streetside vendors and then carry it, often several miles, back to their homes. And that’s if they can afford it. Many people suffer from chronic diarrhea in the slum, and death from dehydration is all too common. But those of us causing the majority of these issues will never be aware of these outcomes!
Okay…I have been going off on many tangents and need to bring this full circle. I just think that while we need to gain a certain amount of acceptance in order to maintain our own emotional wellbeing, we also need to recognize that mankind created most of the problems it faces. I do not think we should ever apply Social Darwinism, which is
nothing more than a label and an excuse, to anything but nature – meaning, just erase the Social part and keep Darwinism as it is. There is nothing natural about losing your child to “natural causes”; there is nothing natural about one person starving to death while another feasts; there is nothing natural about dying from a completely preventable illness or malady. We (not just the US, but the entire capable world) need to take responsibility for our actions on a global scale. It’s the only way things are going to change. The more people just believe things like these are occurring naturally, the more people will lose their drive to change their habits or find
compassion. Maybe I need to have a long conversation with someone who believes in Social Darwinism to fully understand his beliefs about mankind, because right now I am really struggling to discover how this theory fits in with human rights at all.
Blah! Those are a lot of thoughts. Sorry! I hope I didn’t bore or anger anyone (well, if I did, you probably didn’t get this far). But I really must be going.
Don’t know when I’ll be able to email again since Ray, whose computer I am using, will be leaving for Mexico on Tuesday and I will be computerless until I return home on August 2 – unless I find another volunteer who lets me use her laptop. But I’ll do my best to at least shoot you one more quick email in the next two weeks. I’m sure I’ll
find a way – the Internet is everywhere!
Love to all. Can’t believe I’m coming home so soon…and can’t wait to see you all. Thanks so much, again, for your support, and for writing me back, and offering your advice, and being there for me. I appreciate it beyond words.
XOXO
Emily
July 29
Hi everyone,
This, I think, will be my last email to all of you from Kenya. On Saturday night at 11:45 PM, I will board a plane destined for London, then NYC, and then, finally, Washington, DC. I can’t believe my time here is over. While I feel like I have been here forever, I also feel that it has gone far too quickly. I am excited to get back into the swing of things, back to my busy life in the District, but I am also heartbroken to leave here. This summer has been eye-opening, life-altering, and incredible in so many ways. Part of me is definitely not ready to leave.
Before I go, though, I need to recount a few more anecdotes for my Kenya Journal. While things at KENWA have been running pretty smoothly, there are a few stories I feel are definitely worth sharing, particularly pertaining to home visits and to a KENWA outreach project in which I was involved.
-KENWA OUTREACH
Last week, a KENWA van from the main office parked out front of our Korogocho drop-in center, and a group of about 8 to 10 KENWA workers unloaded. With them, they carried drums, traditional clothing, and PA equipment. We went with them to an open dirt courtyard behind the center, where they set up their equipment, erected a large, enclosed outdoor tent (which I later discovered to be a Voluntary Counseling
and Testing (VCT) center), and started blaring loud Swahili rap music from their speakers. Turns out KENWA does outreach programs in all of its sites on a pretty regular basis, and it was our turn! A crowd began to gather based on the already large group of KENWA people standing around, in addition to the music, which drew a bit of attention in an area where entertainment is certainly not a part of everyday life.
After we had engaged a good-sized crowd, the KENWA workers leading the outreach project began to parade down one of the streets of Korogocho, banging drums, dancing, and chanting and singing in Swahili, Luo, Kikuyu, and Luya (tribal languages). The songs were translated to me by Dana, our fellow Kenyan volunteer. Each chant was about AIDS, fighting stigma, and getting tested. One of the songs went like this (but in Swahili): “AIDS is a big monster. To kill it we must get tested. Free VCT. Free VCT.” As we marched through the slum for the next hour or so, we picked up a few people here and there until our parade had grown to approximately 50 people. Every few hundred feet we would come to a halt, and the leader would shout to the surrounding people (all of whom had looked out of their doorways or up from their cookfires to see what all the noise was about) and explain to them, very briefly, who we were, what KENWA was, and that there would be free testing and counseling all day at the Korogocho KENWA site.
When we finally returned to the courtyard, a group of over 100 men, women and children had gathered in a pied horseshoe in front of the PA equipment, forming a makeshift amphitheater in the dirt. A few short speeches were made over the PA equipment, and then there were many skits, traditional dances, and drumming circles to entertain the crowd, teach about HIV/AIDS, and gather more people. When it was all over, most people disappeared or lingered aimlessly, but after a few minutes a couple men wandered over to the VCT center. After the first few people made the move, many others lined up at the door of the tent, waiting to have their mouth swabbed and to discover their status.
-HOME VISITS
We haven’t been doing many home visits lately, but I went on a particularly jarring one this morning, and Robin and Mike went on a few of their own.
-ROBIN AND MIKE’S HOME VISIT
This description will be short since I was unable to participate in the home visit (the KENWA community health workers can only take one or two volunteers on each home visit due to security issues). Robin and Mike accompanied Edith, the Korogocho center director, on a typical check-in out in Dandora. The woman they visited had recently given birth to twins, and she had two older children who were both HIV+, having contracted the virus in the womb or during childbirth. But when the woman became pregnant again, she sought PMTCT treatment and while she hadn’t yet heard back about one of her twins’ status, one had tested negative! So that was a bit of rare good news in the slum today!
The mother of the twins cited only one concern during this weekly check-up: because there is no running water in most of the slum, tenets have to purchase their water from street vendors or, if it is available and working, pump it from a communal well nearby. Unfortunately, there was a woman who was guarding the pump and
disallowing the HIV+ mother to collect water there, based on her status. Edith told the woman to be strong and keep on trying, but if she really could not get water then to contact the commissioner for assistance. This sad story is just another example of the stigma and ignorance regarding HIV that still exist today.
-MY HOME VISIT
Tuesday, Dana and I accompanied one of the CHWs to a nearby shack to do a routine check-in on one of KENWA’s members. This woman seemed to be doing okay health-wise, but her complaint was that she could not afford food. She stated that the medicine was okay because she was getting it free from a local clinic, but she was struggling to be able to afford food and couldn’t even make it to the KENWA center every day for lunch or porridge. Because most of the conversation was in Swahili, I’m not sure if the CHW was able to offer a solution, but we did get to hear this woman’s tragic story:
She had, at one time, a total of nine children. But during the post-election violence of 2007, eight of them were killed. Can you believe that? She lost eight of her nine children in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. Her one remaining daughter is grown and working, but she is not living nearby so she cannot help to care for her mother. So, the woman is left alone to care for her SIX orphaned grandchildren, who were left behind after their parents were slaughtered by men who will probably never be brought to justice. I can’t imagine how this woman gets out of bed every day, takes her handfuls of pills, and cares for six children, all the while suffering from HIV and living with the fact that eight of her children were murdered two years ago. To me, this reality is unfathomable.
-LIGHT AND FAITH FOR DISABLED CHILDREN CENTER
On the way back from this particular home visit, we walked past a new sign that read “Light and Faith for Disabled Children Center, donated by the State of Israel, April 2009”. We were intrigued, so the CHW, Dana and I entered the gate and knocked on the door of the large tin box that served as this center. Unlike the surrounding shacks, this building was taller and not rusty, painted a dark blue with a professional sign.
We were welcomed into the center by a Kenyan volunteer, and went into the office to meet the program director and a few other volunteers. We basically just wanted to ask questions about the center as we’d never heard of it or seen it before. While the center was established in 2006, they were originally located in a run-down, typical slum
building until they came in contact with the Israel Embassy and, “By the grace of God, were given this new building.” The center serves thirty children with physical or mental disabilities, including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, autism, Down’s syndrome, encephalitis, etc. The children are brought to the center in the mornings by their parents or guardians, and stay there from 8 AM until 4:30 PM, during which time they receive two meals of porridge and one full meal of lunch, and participate in games and activities. The kids are divided up into two classrooms, based on their abilities and capacity to participate in a group setting. In addition to these two
classrooms, there is a large “equipment” room full of wheelchairs, standing devices, and potties. The equipment room also serves at the physical therapy room, and there was an occupational therapist there when we arrived, working with a physically disabled child – stretching and flexing his arms and legs to stall atrophy of the muscles.
The center is run entirely by eight Kenyan volunteers. They do not have the capacity to hire paid staff, and as of right now are not involved in any international volunteering program, so all their vols are local. They cited their biggest challenges as finding staff to work full-time, year-round, for no money…and the water problem.
Having no easy access to water is clearly an issue for a center hosting 30 children and 8 volunteers, when you consider cooking, feeding, drinking, and cleaning. But the staff said that while there are only 8 full-time volunteers, the community and kids’ families have been helpful when it comes to collecting water for the center, and
oftentimes will even donate their own water supply (meaning a few 5-gallon jugs) so that the center can remain open and functioning each day.
We asked how the children came to be at the center, and the program director told us that at the organization’s inception, the volunteers had to really get out in the community and do outreach to fight ignorance, fear and stigma regarding mental and physical disability. The volunteers located families or guardians living with disabled
children, and invited them to the center. Now, the center is a growing success story. While they have yet to establish an overnight program for the kids, this is in their future plans.
I thought this center was a wonderful place. The kids seemed happy and well cared for, and the volunteer staff and teachers seemed genuinely concerned, pleasant, and passionate about their project. I had not encountered any other charity organization in the slum other than KENWA, and so this was nice to see. And, I’d like to point out, here was a case where international aid truly did serve as a boon to the slum community.
-THANK YOU!
Well, my time is almost up. I cannot possibly articulate all the emotions running through me when I think about leaving here in just a few days. Excitement to be back home and anxiety for the long plane rides, I would say, are the minor ones. Mostly, I am filled with a saturnine sadness at the thought of leaving this place that has changed me and taught me and empowered me. Sad at the idea that I will most likely never see these kids or women again, and devastated by the thought that many of them probably won’t be around in a just a few short years. But over all other feelings, I am profoundly thankful to all of you who made it possible for me to come here and experience Kenya.
Thank you for your financial support before I left, for your words of advice and your important questions. And thank you for your emotional support, that all of you have offered without fail, throughout my months here in Africa. I have learned so much, gained so much necessary insight, through this adventure. And it would have been a
lot more difficult had I not known I had so many wonderful, loving family members and friends back home, supporting me. This trip has ignited my drive to get out there and DO what I’ve wanted to do for the past ten years, and I have all of you to thank for that.
I love all of you and can’t wait to see you so, so soon!
Em
Last Day at KENWA (July 31, 2009):
Home visits:
Woman #1: Has had HIV for years, and has five children. None of them are HIV+, and she is currently breastfeeding the baby under direction of the Community Health Worker. Her only health complaint, other than HIV in general, is that her right eye became badly infected last year, to the point where she had to have it removed. Her eye socket looked pus-filled and crusty, but she said it was no longer bothering her.
Woman #2: Also has five children; two oldest ones are HIV+. Sought PMTCT treatment for the last three children, so none of them are HIV+. KENWA supplied her with a small loan to start up her own business, and she wants to start selling eggs and tomatoes on the street near her home, but she has been sick with TB lately so is waiting until she is over that to begin her business.
Woman #3: Very old, used to be bedridden, but thanks to KENWA helping her get ARVs is now up and about, caring for her grandchildren. Spoke no English; we didn’t learn much about her due to this.
EMAILS FROM ROBIN ABOUT KENWA:
Robin was nice enough to send me two quick updates after I returned to the States, as he still had two weeks in Kenya and I asked him to keep me informed about happenings in our Korogocho center.
August 4
hey em,
i just talked to you on facebook chat so i wont do the whole how are you thing :)
had a pretty busy day in the slum yesterday. we went in early to meet up with that boy that mike was going to sponsor to take his exams, but neither dana or the boy turned up. turns out in the end that on the Friday his mother had come in to the centre and told them that everything was resolved. mike is a bit suspicious because both her and her son had been talking about not having enough money for the exams just the day before so he’s going to try to talk to her again.
as well as that, we went to do fieldwork. we visited a young guy, i think he was in his twenties, was positive and bedridden. we talked to his dad who was caring for him and he said they really needed help with food so after lunch me and dana went back with ugali and green grams. we sat and talked to them for a while and it was really motivating actually. his dad talked about how a few weeks earlier he'd almost lost hope, until kenwa had started helping them. he said that his son had something to fight for now because he knew some people actually cared. so it was really inspiring.
we also visited two 'success stories' - both women had also been really sick when Edith found them. they were also both bedridden and incredibly sick but they had gotten much better and were working again and earning money. so was quite a good afternoon.
Dana dropped a bit of a bombshell later though. apparently a 5 year old girl was beheaded in Kariobangi on the saturday. they didnt know why but we assumed it was gang related. so that was pretty horrific news.
today was a really cool day though - went to the giraffe orphanage with some kids from House of Mercy. the kids are really great - i was in charge of two, one called richard and one called nixon, how great is that? :)
hope your your settling back in ok, stay in touch,
Robin
August 8
hey em, hope my updates are up to standard :)
so here goes last KENWA update:
Wednesday we went back to the disabled children center. Ian isn't really interested but i think mike is arranging something with his volunteering program to start sending volunteers there. so good news.
Thursday nothing really happened except green gram sorting. but Friday might possibly have been my best day at kenwa yet. Mike, Dana and i went out with one of the CHW's called Angeline for the first time. it was great - we actually walked through the slum for three and a half hours visiting her clients. we met loads of them so i figured i’d try and tell you what i learned and give you a few case studies.
most of the clients we visited where in relatively good health, but the overwhelming theme was a lack of funds, firstly to pay for school fees and even food and water and secondly to start businesses. mike remembered that kenwa had a program where it gives out start up loans to women so they can build their own businesses and we suggested two of the clients we met to Edith for this program.
we met one client called Lillian Omondi who was sick enough to be bed ridden. it was a really sad case because she couldn't pick up her ARVs so had not been taking them. i might be wrong, but when a patient takes the ARVs irregularly doesn't their resistance to the drug build up? also she was on her second line drugs already and the Kenyan government only provides three different courses of treatment. we thought about recommending her for a business loan because she too didn’t have a business because her neighbours had shut it down while she had been sick in hospital. it was difficult but we decided not to as she really was too sick to run her home let alone a business. so KENWA cant pick up the drugs for her because there are too many clients in the same position as she is, too many too pick up drugs for.
We also met a woman called Grace Akinyi who was positive but also had TB. however she has been sticking to both drug regimens and is almost over the tb. she had recently gone back to work and had managed to put 3 out of four of her kids back in school. so that was really encouraging.
im gonna finish there. how did the GRE go?!
feeling really strange that ive finished work and only have a week left here. excited though because after i’ve finished this email i’m going to go to Bata and buy a pair of those fake converse :)
miss you too, we should organise a skype call when i get home!
robin x
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