Over Six Months In...

                Well, I've officially been away from home for over 6 months now. The time feels particularly long with the Holiday season slowly rolling by and me missing everything familiar about home. The time has also gone by quickly though and that gives me hope for the next 20 months continuing to fly by.

                Those of you who are reading this and know me know I have a tattoo on the inside of my right wrist. Those of you who know me really well know that tattoo reads “serenity”. Those of you who know me better than I know myself some days know that the tattoo is a bit of an ironic homage to my father and, because we are so much the same, to myself as well.

                When people ask what my tattoo means and I tell them “serenity” they ask if I’m a recovering alcoholic or they do the weird thing from some Seinfeld episode I never saw. Some people even ask if it’s a reference to the short lived TV show by Joss Whedon. It is inspired, not by these things, but by my father’s repetitive mumblings of the serenity prayer when I was a kid. I always thought it was particularly odd since he is one of the least serene people I know. Nonetheless, growing up my Dad always told me to have the courage to change the things I could, the serenity to except the things I couldn’t and the wisdom to know the difference. When I was 20 years old I was itching for my second tattoo and I eventually decided on the simple black kanji that is now inked on my right wrist, where I see it every single day.

                I said that it was an ironic homage to myself and my father because we are two of the most high-strung, quick tempered, non-serene people I know. We don’t know how not to get our way and we deal with incompetence and imperfection even less gracefully. So, I got “serenity” tattooed on my wrist, not because I am a recovering alcoholic, an avid TV fan of one sort or the other or a particularly serene person; I got it as a reminder to try and take it down a notch. The older I get, the calmer I get (and thank God so does Dad) and the more I realize that growing up really is summed up in that one short mantra.

                Be brave: Have the guts to stand up for what you know is right. “Be the change you wish to see in the world” and chose a genuine path of honesty and integrity over the people pleasing complacence that plagues our world. Don’t be courageous for egos sake but also don’t be a coward in reverence of the same thing.

                Be serene: Know that not everything is in your power to change or to control. Sometimes the best leaders are those that know when to hand over the reins, when to fold and when to all out admit they were wrong. Sometimes you have to step back and just let things happen as they will. Serenity is not complacence but tranquility in the face of a storm. It is taking a deep breath instead of screaming in someone’s face. Many times it is being the bigger person because someone else cannot be.

                Grow wise: I don’t know that anyone ever ‘becomes’ wise or is inherently so, no matter how old they might be. The key is learning from your mistakes and letting each experience prepare you more fully for the next one. Wisdom is not perfection, rather the admitted absence of it.

                Being here has really tested my serenity at times. My family sent me a package for Christmas that some things were taken out of. It really sucks and it’s really, really hard to not be upset about it. And I am upset about it, just not as much as I would have been a few years ago. The fact is we knew it was a risk sending anything worth even a few dollars in a package to Africa. People here are really poor and a ten dollar item could mean they can feed their family for a week. Still, it sucks. I was really looking forward to my package and, though it was still awesome to get, it was kind of a buzz-kill to discover that not everything was there. As my mom said, “guess there are thieves everywhere.” Isn’t that the truth.

                Growing up is also about knowing when to tackle a problem head on and when to stop, breathe, strategize and come at it from a different angle. I walk through the villages and see kids who are literally starving to death. They are skin and bones without shoes or whole articles of clothing. There are 5 year old working in the fields and it is the hardest thing in the world to not want to scream at the parents, to pick the kid up and take it home with you. “Why don’t you feed the kid? Why don’t you have less children? Why is he not in school, why have you not taken him to the clinic for the free immunizations?” I want to ask (scream) at the mothers. But, I don’t. I bite my tongue and shake my head and fight back tears of sadness, frustration and incredulous humility. Screaming at the mother might feel good for a minute, might make me feel like I’m doing but growing up, having wisdom in this situation, is knowing that screaming at the mother now would only shoot me in the foot. If I want to change anything, to really change anything, I need to be someone the community trusts. I need to observe and learn and only then can I begin to understand what I can do to help.

                My father asked me what it is I exactly do here. It’s a very good question. It’s a question I ask myself a lot. What the hell am I really accomplishing here? What am I even trying to accomplish. I explained it to my dad and to myself, like this:

                Peace Corps is a very different volunteer organization than most others. For one thing, we spend over 2 years here. Most of what we do is learn and only a small part is actual implementation. Maybe you think that sounds like a waste of time and money. Maybe you think your tax dollars would be better spent on giving money or supplies to Kenyans rather than supporting an American to live in their village for 2 years. Let me tell you something I’ve already learned here… Throwing money or things at these people isn’t solving their problems. In fact, in some ways it’s making them worse. They see white people now as donors, people who come to drop things off, people who don’t know anything about them but have deep pockets. That’s a really big challenge for someone like myself who actually does know about their culture, someone who speaks the language and (mostly) eats the food and who doesn’t have any money at all to give them.

                Large donors come here and give away things without doing any research, without doing any education or training and that, my friends, is the true waste of money. One aid project I’ve had direct experience with gave away hundreds of thousands of household water filtering units. No one uses them. I go into the villagers houses and see them collecting dust in a corner. These filters are a fantastic idea; they are cheap to upkeep (you just have to rinse out the filter!), easy to use and effective at making water safe for people to drink. Why don’t people use them? They are slow and they are different. We’re talking about people with little to no education who don’t understand why or how it works. Beyond that they don’t understand why they should filter there water at all, they’ve never done it before, why start now? I’ve heard of people taking them apart and using part of the filter as a club to beat their kids with. I had someone tell me the filter put drugs into the water and would cause infertility.

                The point of that story is that the filters, while in essence were a good idea, were a huge waste of money. The donor spent millions and accomplished next to nothing because they didn’t do the leg work first.  Peace Corps is about the leg work. We don’t have lots of money to throw at people or organizations. We are about making small, appreciable changes that can have a big effect in the long run. If I can find out why that mother is having so many children and why she can’t feed or clothe them and if I can do something to change that at the root level of the problem, that has the capacity to change everything.

                So what am I doing? I’m learning, I’m observing, I’m gathering information and finding out the “why”s behind the problems before I try to do anything about fixing them. Why does that mother have 9 kids? She’s been told that taking hormonal birth control causes infertility. How do I know that? Not because she told me (she in this case is a fictitious amalgamation of the average woman in the village) but because I listened to conversations women didn’t know I understood and because the teachers in my primary school, women who have gone to college told me the same thing; that using birth control will make you unable to have kids again.

                If I had come in guns blazing my first week at site and lectured women on how they should use birth control I would have been wasting my time. They know what it is; they are just misinformed about it. It’s not about telling them they should use it, it’s about telling them it’s safe to do so. Beyond that it’s about convincing their husbands of the same thing and showing them that it’s economically advisable to reduce family size. Husbands here still have all the power; it is not uncommon to hear about a man beating his wife bloody because he found out she is taking birth control. So, the point is, the story is much bigger than just supplying birth control, it’s about education and empowerment and that is what Peace Corps is all about.

                Peace Corps is teaching me about what my tattoo mean to me all over again. It reminds me to have the courage to try and change the way things are. To remember to have the serenity to know my limitations and to understand that some things are not within my power to change. It prompts me to think before I act, to be wise enough to tackle the projects I can be successful at, those that will make small but appreciable changes and will be sustainable rather than those that are big and flashy but will flounder and fail when I leave and will, in the long run, change nothing.

     

Pics, pics and more pics!

     If a picture is worth a thousand words, this blog entry, which is much overdue (my apologies) should be a long one. After many requests to see what my house looks like I'm finally posting some pictures. I kept putting it off, waiting for my house to be 'clean' and then I realized that may never happen. I'm messy by nature, put me in a small space and that only exacerbates the problem! Anyway, the first few pictures here are of my house and my 'compound'.

 

View of the sunset out my living room window

A view of my house from the front yard. The 2 windows in the picture are my room, the rest of the family house is behind and off to the right. The left window is my living room/kitchen/office and the right is my bedroom.

My nuclear war bunker. Ha, so after you walk through the door in the picture before, you take a left down this dark hallway and that's my  'front door' on the left. Aaand that's my sweet ride on the right side. It has a bell. And a shopping basket tied to the back of it for carting fruits and veggies home from town. Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'riding in style'

Welcome to my living/dining/sitting/ kitchen/office room. I do everything in here except sleep. Yes, Mom, it's messy... sorry, I'll clean before you come to visit, promise. On the left is my "kitchen" I have a little gas stove I cook on 2-3 times a day. My 'pantry' is the green shelf on the left. My coffee table has become a dumping ground, obviously, so I usually end up eating from my lap.

The other "half" of my multipurpose room. That furniture in the corner covered in stuff is my desk...

My bedroom.Yep, still half living out of suitcases... they're under all the clothes along the wall...

The other "half" of my bedroom. my "closet/dresser" and that on the left is my count-down chart. I 'x' off 1 day every night and it counts down all the way to the end of my service. Ha, it's taller than I am. I've got a lot of x's to go, but its a nice way to make the time left seem like a tangible entity rather than this colossal amount of time.

     Alright, so that's basically my house. Someday I'll have to take some pictures of my bathroom and "shower" situation so you can truly appreciate my daily life here. Now, I'm just posting some pictures I've had for awhile. First, these are from the school where I teach science to class seven students:

We have kids in classes (grades) 1 - 8. All the schools, public and private, have mandatory uniforms.

Some of my Class 7 kids in our classroom. I have about 75 kids total split into 2 classes.

Some of the younger kids. They LOVE having their picture taken.

Block of class rooms, each door leads to a classroom, a square concrete room with one blackboard and home-made desks that regularly fall apart. When it rains the water on the tin roof is so loud you can't teach. Their is no electricity at my school.

      So, I love my school and my kids most days. Some days they make me want to scream because, like all kids, they have the propensity to drive you nuts sometimes. One of the biggest problems we have in my community is kids dropping out of school after class 7 or 8 because they don't have the school fees for high school (public primary schools are 'free' but ALL secondary (grades 9-12) schools cost money to attend).   Most of these kids only chance to ever get out of the field and the tiny village they were born in is to attend secondary school.
      I have an idea to start a scholarship fund to send 1 kid per year to secondary school based on an essay or story writing contest. I've just started to think about it but I wanted to put some feelers out there and see if anyone would be willing to donate on a yearly or one time basis. An average school here costs between 200-300 US dollars per year. Eventually I'll be a grown up and have the money to sustain a fund on my own, but for now it would be through my friends and families donations that I would be able to carry out this plan. Even 10 or 20 dollars would be a huge help; its amazing how much so little can do here. As I said, its still in the very early stages, just an idea, but if you're interested, please shoot me an e-mail at "LindsayInKenya@gmail.com" and I will keep you updated.   Thank you in advance for your support.
       Okay, a few more pics...

I introduce you to 'baby Linds', 2 hours old in this picture. Yep, she's named after me :-)

A screaming 2 week old baby Linds with her mom Celestine. Linds is wearing the shirt I bought for 35 cents in the market!

                        Finally, I leave you with a few pretty pics of the flowers outside my clinic...

    Alright folks, that's all for now. Love you and miss you all a lot. Been thinking about home a lot lately with the holidays coming up! Here's wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving if I don't post again before then!

A little bit o- humor... I hope

Hi all! It’s been a long time since my last blog and just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive over here.  Didn’t really feel like writing a traditional blog entry or regaling you with any poignant and serious stories so I’ve made a top ten list of sorts which I hope you’ll find entertaining:

Ten ways to know you’re in Peace Corps Kenya:

1.         Upon finding a bug in your coffee/cereal/fruit you pick it out and keep eating.

2.       You have become really good at waiting for people and consider them on-time if they’re 30 or less minutes late.

3.         You will respond to any variation of your first or last name (Liz, Linds, Lynn etcetera) as well as ‘mazungu’ (white person) madam, sir (yes, even as a woman), wewe (you in Swahili), mama, sister, miss, white person, lady, msichana (‘girl’ in Swahili) bella (like chaobella) and American.

4.          You are really, really good at turning people down when theyask you to:

a.       give them money, candy, the loaf of bread you’re carrying or your bicycle

b.      buy them shoes, clothes, a soda or a plane ticket to America

c.       Procure for them a visa, green card, a spouse in the US or money for their school fees/organization/children/etcetera.

d.      Marry them and take them back to the US with you

5.            You’ve had a conversation while taking a poo with a 6 or 8-legged creature living in your choo (outdoor bathroom). You’ve also named this creature.

6.           Ignoring children while they sit on your couch and stare at you while you study, cook, clean or read is a bi-weekly activity.

7.          You strategically place heavy objects (shoes work well) and scraps of paper around the house as cockroach killing weapons.

8.        You regularly text your friends about your bowel movements.

9.           Multiplying by 85 is a daily activity as you try and explain to people how much things is the US cost (the exchange rate is about 85 shillings to the dollar) and how much that plane ticket to the US is gonna set them back (it’s a couple years salary for the average Kenyan)

10.      You’ve realized that even when you’re both speaking English, you’re still speaking 2 totally different languages:

·         ‘spinach’ isn’t actually spinach, it’s any green leafy vegetable matter

·          ‘chicken’ can be any part of the chicken

·          ‘help me with’ actually means ‘give me’

·         ‘friend’ means lover

·         ‘I think we’ll see each other again’ is a pick-up line

·         ‘doctor’ is anyone who works in a clinic, even the cleaning staff and the receptionist

·         A ‘child’ is anyone under the age of 25

·         ‘American’ means money

·         ‘25, unmarried, no children’ means ‘defective’

·         ‘road work’ is jogging

·         In response to men asking you out:

o    ‘no’ means yes, you’re just playing hard to get

o    ‘yes’ the first time means ‘I’m easy’ and they’ll leave you alone unless they’re into slutty girls

o   ‘yes’ the second time means ‘I really like you’

o    ‘I have a boyfriend/husband’ means okay but we’ll have to be really sneaky

o   ‘I am a US government employee and I am not allowed to date host country nationals or give them my phone number’ confuses the hell out of them (it’s also complete bullshit, I might add)

·         ‘You look smart’ means you look attractive

·         ‘you’re looking so fat!’ means you’re looking good

·         ‘guest of honor’ at an event means you’re supposed to donate the most to the cause

Well, that’s all for this week folks. The culture differences make for some funny moments and I’m really going to try and start writing them down for you all. I guess I can include one more quick story because I wrote it in an e-mail to my mom and forgot how entertaining it was until just then.

To preface this story I should tell you, if you don’t already know, that I live in 2 rooms of a family’s house. The father of the house pretty much leaves me alone unless he needs to ask or tell me something, but the mother of the house… well she’s kind ofspecial. Though I’ve told her a million times that she needs to slow down when she speaks Swahili to me and not incorporate luyha words because I don’t speak luyha (the local dialect which is in NO similar to Swahili) she insists on speaking at the same rate she does to native speakers and after a few weeks of this I gave up trying to talk to her in Swahili. As a consequence, though I’m actually pretty good, she thinks I don’t speak Swahili at all and continually tells people this which, as you can imagine, annoys me to no end. On top of that she has this unrelenting need to introduce everyone to me. It’s subsided a little since the first couple weeks when she was literally bringing people into my living room at all hours of the day and night to meet me. I think it stems partly from her belief that because I never come and hang out with the family in their part of the house, I must be really bored all the time. I’ve explained to her that I like spending time by myself, that I’m not just sitting there staring at a wall, I’m studying or reading or working on a project, but the concept of ‘alone time’ doesn’t really exist here. Anyway, this story is a product of all of those things…

8:30am couple weeks ago she (the house mama) walks into my living room with some guy and tells me she has a present for me. Literally says “I brought you a present,” and I’m annoyed because it’s 8:30 am and I’m getting ready for work and half-dressed and now there’s this 20 something Kenyan guy standing in my living room and I have no idea who he is or why he’s in my living room at 8:30am and the house mama has this huge grin on her face like she’s brought me a pony with glitter in its mane or something. So I look at her and say “I don’t understand.” Because, let’s face it, when someone walks in and says they brought you a present and that present is another human being, who you’ve never met… well that’s a little odd for everyone involved… unless it’s a bachelorette party and then the intent is fairly well implied… Anyway, the house mama tells me that this is so-and-so and he’s a student like me and I can teach him and he can teach me Swahili. She’s brought me a friggen friend or a mate and by the ridiculous grin on her face, I think she thinks she’s brought the later of the two. Super.

I should interject here and say that it’s not that I hate people (well okay, for those of you that know me well, it’s a little bit about the fact that I hate people…) or don’t want to make friends with the Kenyans, it’s just that by the time I get home at the end of the day I’ve been dealing with culture issues all day and the last thing I want to do is have to do that in my own house. They don’t understand that I completely alter my personality in public, or that it’s exhausting to greet the 500 kids on the way to town that want to say hi to the white lady, or that at least a dozen people ask me to buy them things or give them money every time I’m in town, or that I have to haggle with shop owners and vendors every time I buy something because they see my white skin and automatically double the price of things. By the time I get home I’m tired of being culturally appropriate, all I want to do is sit on my couch in shorts and a tank-top (neither of which I can wear outside my house), put on some shitty American music, and read a book or study for the MCAT alone and in blissful peace.

                Anyway, back to the story. I’m standing there not appropriately dressed for male company, still perturbed and confused as to why 8:30am on a Tuesday morning seemed like the best time to have so-and-so over, but I figure I better try to make some sort of conversation so I ask what and where he’s studying. Turns out he’s in his first year of undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the local college. So he’s not even 20-something, he’s like 18 and in a completely unrelated field of study. The only thing that mechanical engineering has in common with biological sciences is an overlap in math, which was my least favorite subject. That and the fact that the average student in either field is usually pretty dorky. After 4 or 5 more awkward minutes in which I explain that there is actually very few things I can teach a mechanical engineering student but that he’s welcome to come hang out at some time that isn’t single digit morning hours, they finally leave and, much to the credit of so-and-so, he has yet to come back. Best present ever; the kind that knows it’s unwanted and returns itself to the store. J

                Alright, well that’s it for this week folks. As always hope you’re all doing well. Miss you and love you and counting down the days (literally, there’s a chart on my wall) until I will be home to see all your bright and smiling faces again.

School, market, orphanage

                So, first things first, I added some new photos last week, in no particular order, just a few of my favorites so far. If you’ve already looked at that entry, I updated it and added a few more today, so check it out again if you want!

                In an exciting turn of events I got a new friend living in my choo (bathroom). I’ve named her Bessy:

Bessie, the black widow spider (called button-spiders here) living in my bathroom.

                So I think I mentioned in previous blogs that I was trying to get a position teaching at a local primary school. I succeeded and I finished my first week of teaching this past week. I’m teaching science to about 45 grade 7 kids on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. So far I think it’s going well. I know it’s going to take some time for them to get used to my English (the teachers informed me last week I had a very strong accent and were shocked to hear that they had a strong accent to me too…) and the different style of instruction. One major criticism of the Kenyan educational model is that it doesn’t give kids enough freedom to think creatively, to synthesize information and make leaps in logic, all things which are particularly important in the sciences. One newspaper article I read in the Kenyan national news last week was that teachers at a university level were noting that kids coming from primary and secondary education had no idea how to think critically; they were so used to the rigid “A+B always equals C and we never ask why” framework that they had a very difficult time when asked to think outside the box.

                So, I’ve made it a particular goal of mine, even before reading that article and especially now after, to try to get the kids thinking about the world around them in terms of the question ‘why’. I told them the first day of class that I love good questions and that every Monday we were going to come up with a ‘question of the week’ as a class. It had to be something no one in class knew (except me & me not knowing either was an exceptionally good question) and it had to have something to do with science. Our question from this week was ‘why do some eggs turn into chickens and others don’t?’ believe it or not, none of the kids knew the answer on Monday. Every Thursday we’ll answer our question and if anyone comes to class with the correct answer, they get rewarded with candy. I also reward intelligent questions with candy. Trust me, after the kids figure out that questions equal candy, a lot more hands go up.

                The idea of trying to get the kids to ask questions is to a) have them participate in the learning process, they get to guide the class a little bit once we finish with the required material b) get them to look at the world around them with a critical eye, asking why things are the way they are.

                I’ve also introduced the vocabulary words ‘hypothesis’ and ‘prediction’ to them. Believe it or not these kids had no idea what it was to make a guess as to what will happen. Even after explaining the concept, there were kids that were very confused. Their student book (you can’t really call it a text book per say, for the entire year it’s got 135 pages) doesn’t have any prompting to consider what will happen in an experiment before you actually carry it out. So, I’ve started to try and get the kids thinking about what might happen and then explaining why they think that. I’m excited for class to keep evolving, for me to keep learning Swahili and about the education system here and to, hopefully, get some kids interested in science.

                I visited the local market with my supervisor (Nancy) and her supervisor (Caroline) last Wednesday and took some pictures. We were looking at the garbage disposal ‘system’ used in town. Basically, people throw their trash into designated areas and then once a day a city tractor comes by, loads up the garbage and takes it a few miles from town to dump it in a place designated as a landfill. There are no trash bins here (they would just get stolen), no dumpsters, no recycling centers or community clean-up days. Kenya is a beautiful, beautiful country… the garbage everywhere is a huge distraction from that. 

                Besides the garbage the market has a lot of interesting things to offer. Everything here is fresh and grown locally for the most part (some things like water melons are imported from Uganda… but even that’s only 75 or so miles away).  They eat a billion different kinds of greens here, basically anything that grows and isn’t poisonous gets used as food, pumpkin leaves, cow-pea leaves, weeds, all get mixed together and cooked into a spinach like mix.

                There’s also a bunch of different kinds of beans here, some I’ve seen at home, like black beans and others I’ve never even heard of like green-gramms and monkey-nuts…

                And, my personal favorites, dried termites… you fry them and eat them as a snack or in a meal. I would love to explain to you what they taste like but I haven’t gotten the guts to try them. Maybe some day… maybe…

Bag o' dried termites... apparently you fry and eat them. The Kenyans swear they're really good...

      There are also tiny little dried fish called 'omena' that stink like you can't imagine. God help you if the person next to you on the bus gets on with a plastic bag full of these guys, it'll be a long ride, especially if there's a chicken in the lap of the woman on the other side of you. This is not a random example, it actually happened to me on the way home from Port Victoria a couple weekends ago.The Kenyans keep asking if I eat fish (since I don't eat, chicken, beef, goat, any other kind of meat) and I tell them yes, but that I don't like the fish here. They always have a hard time understanding how I could not love the smelly little guys... I think I'll save my money and get sushi on the rare occasion I get into Mombasa or Nairobi!

Omena, tiny, smelly, dried fish.

                So besides the market and the school I also visited some orphanages last week. I was surprised by how good the kids looked and the conditions in which they were living. I guess I went in with the notion that an orphanage in Kenya was going to be this awful sight; kids in tattered clothes, hungry, depressed, playing with garbage on a swing set that’s just as likely to fall apart as entertain them. Our first stop on Tuesday morning was a Catholic orphanage in the center of Kakamega town. We walked past the prison, down a long dirt road to the compound which was surrounded by high concrete walls painted with a world map and a big smiling image of Jesus, back lit with an ethereal glow, a kindly look of pity on his face. We swung open the big metal gates to reveal an immaculately groomed common area, bright green grass, neatly trimmed bushes and flowers, a garden in the distance to our right, a building under construction to our left. My supervisor Nancy started pointing things out to me. There was a school ahead of us across the lawn, pictures of the alphabet and numbers painted on the walls of the buildings. Inside kids of varying ages, 5 to 11 or 12 sat in green and yellow school uniforms listening intently as a teacher pointed at things on a chalk board at the front of the room.  

                The new building was to be an expansion of the school, they wanted more space to have kids boarded so they could have a larger student population. As it was they had 350 kids in classes 1-8 attending school there. As we crossed the lawn, past the single story school building I noticed the playground and couldn’t help but smile. For one thing, the equipment was actually in good repair, one of the first safe looking playground structures I’ve seen here. Secondly, all the equipment was painted in Kenya’s colors; green, black and red.

                Passing the playground we came to the housing unit for the orphans living there. A nun greeted us at the door and introduced herself as sister Carol and proceeded to show us around the compound. They have a total of 79 orphans but about 25 are away at secondary schools where they board, so right now there are about 45 kids actually living in the compound. The bedrooms are smaller than my room back home (14x13) and have 7 single bunk beds in each. Carol tells us that it’s not too crowded right now; only some of the kids have to share beds, but that when the older kids come back from school it gets a little bit full. Nonetheless, the rooms are neat and clean, the clothes neatly stored in one big wooden dresser. We visit the rooms of the older kids first, and the dining hall, the bathroom, wash room and then we went to see the orphanages smallest occupants in the infant ward. Up until this point I was doing pretty good emotionally, like I said, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness and general appearance of the space. All that emotional stability went right out the window when I saw the babies.

                The first room was full of empty cribs all neatly aligned in a row, their metal bars painted white, light pink sheets tugged snuggly around tiny mattresses, mosquito nets hanging like little gossamer forts over each bed. We turned right, and I noticed a sign that said “please don’t enter without permission” and another that warned you to wash your hands before handling the babies. I have to admit, I giggled a little; the first thing that came to mind was the animal shelter back in the states that had signs all over to wash your hands before playing with the different puppies. Mind you, I hadn’t actually seen the kids yet, as soon as I did it wiped the smile right off my face.

                It was bath time in the infant room. Three women stood in what looked like a make-shift kitchen, a concrete slab for a work space and a giant concrete sink sunk into the far corner of the slab. At least a half dozen babies were lined up on the slab, assembly line style, waiting for their turn to be dunked into the sink. When I saw babies, I mean babies, these kids were all under 6 months old, some much younger than that. Some were bundled in blankets with just their little faces, feet and hands poking out, others lay naked atop their blankets, their little round bellies puffing out with each breath. Some slept, others looked around, put their fists in their mouth or reached their hands toward the ceiling for something to hold on to. I hadn’t washed my hands and I didn’t want to interrupt the worker’s washing duties, so I just stood in the room for a few minutes looking down at the babies. One in particular locked eyes with me early on and kept staring at me, his doe-like brown eyes seemed to be intently searching for something reflected in my eyes.  He reached his hand up towards me, tiny little fingers aching for human contact, for someone to hold onto. Not picking that baby up and coddling him was one of t he harder things I’ve done. Being a crier by nature, I was fighting pretty hard at this point to keep the tears from spilling over my eye lashes. Once they start it’s pretty tough to get them to stop.

                I took one last look at the babies all lined up in a multicolored row of blankets and black skin and stepped out of the room. I stood there leaning against the wall as my supervisor had a conversation with sister Carol and the women cleaning the babies in Swahili. I probably could have understood some had I been listening but I was too busy wondering how someone could possibly give up one of those kids. The nuns told us that a lot of them are brought after being found in bushes, doorsteps or the side of the road. When I looked up from trying to get my emotions in check I was dumbfounded by the sight of a baby being unwrapped from her blanket to be washed. 

           This is, up until this point and I hope for ever, the sickest kids I've seen in Kenya. Her arms and legs were skin and bones, not a drop of fat to cushion her joints, her elbows and knees stuck out at harsh angles, knobby protrusions from emaciated flesh. She squirmed at the cool air, her legs curling to her chest where each one of her ribs could be counted. Her stomach was sunk in, the top of her hip bones visible, her eyes sunk into fatless cheek bones. The conversation that Nancy and Sister Carol had been having were about this baby. Apparently she’d been brought the day before after having been dumped in the bushes. She was deaf and mute and obviously hadn’t been fed in quite some time. Her body kicked and curled in an unnatural way as the worker’s bathed her, whatever the cause of her lack of hearing and speaking, it had clearly affected her physically as well. The nuns guessed she was a month or so old but I think it was fairly obvious that she was much older, maybe 2 or 3 months but was severely and chronically undernourished to the point of obvious growth retardation. I’m honestly surprised that she was still alive. The nuns said that she would be brought to the provincial hospital that day for advanced treatment and I really, truly hope that she was; without it I don’t think she has a chance at survival.

            I have more to say about the other orphanage I visited last week and the school kids at Divine Providence, but this blog is getting quite long so I’ll say goodbye for now. Tune in next time for more stories about abandoned kids… and hopefully something a little happier will happen in the next week that I can fill you in on too. Until next time, all my love from Kenya.

More pictures....

So if you've looked at these before, I added a few more at the bottom...

Storm clouds rolling in (though it never actually rained) near Loitokitok, Kenya. My home stay sister Njeri is in the foreground.

They imbed broken bottles and random glass pieces on top of the concrete walls to deter thiefs from climbing over...

Some kids that live in a village within my community.

Possibly the world's cutest baby. LOVE her facial expression here :-)

Around Taveta, Kenya. Burning crop land.

Me (and Njeri and Macharia) with the new puppies that were at my home stay house. They're about 3 days old here.

A typical dirt road

Fetching water is a job usually left up to women and children here. In a single day these kids might make 2 or 3 trips of 1 to 2 Km each with these water jugs.

Kakamega Forest, about 15 miles from my house.

In Kakamega rainforest again.

Cactus-like plant. Port Victoria, Kenya.

My 7-year-old home stay sister Njeri with one of the new puppies.

Because it's really about them afterall...

           Today I want to write about some of the people I’ve met here in Kenya. Some of them have names, people I’ve spent time talking with, people who have told me about their lives, their problems and their joys. Others are nameless, people I’ve seen as I’ve walked down the street or worked in the clinic but who have touched me in some way despite the brevity of our encounter. Just time to write about a few today but hopefully there will be more stories to follow…

              *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*  Alice   *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

            I have to start with my home stay Mama from Loitokitok. Her name is Alice and she is a wonderful person for what she did for the cultural exchange portion of my Peace Corps experience. If you’ve been reading my blog from the beginning, you know that all the volunteers live with Kenyan families for 2 ½ months while were in training. The families are supposed to be average families, though after seeing more of the country I’ve realized that the family I stayed with was probably what we would consider upper-middle class in America. The Peace Corps gives the families enough money to provide breakfast and dinner for us each day but that’s about it; the families get almost no monetary compensation for hosting a helpless American for 10 weeks. After realizing this, I asked Mama Alice why she chose to host volunteers (I was her 3^rd). She told me that it wasn’t about the money that she did it because she looked at it as having a new friend, as being able to learn from me and the opportunity to do something good by teaching me about life in Kenya.

And teach me she did.

            As a 25 year-old woman, I consider myself pretty independent, self-reliant and reasonably intelligent. I’m like a man in that I hate asking for directions, help or admitting that I can’t figure out how to do something on my own. I knew that coming here was going to be an adventure, an opportunity to learn a lot of new things… I never thought it would be like being a child all over again. I literally had to learn how to bathe, how to lock a door (they use padlocks and iron bars here, takes a little getting used to), how to navigate public transportation, how to look both ways before crossing the street (they drive on the left, you’d be surprised how engrained it is to look right first!), how to cook sans cutting board, machines and non-stick pans and even how to poop (squat and aim for the hole, actually not as hard as I’d imagined). It took me a few days but I eventually embraced the opportunity to open myself to learning things all over again. So when Mama would ask me ‘do you know how to: peel a potato, prepare a pumpkin, cut a tomato/watermelon/pineapple, wash you clothes, iron etc)?’ I would say, “I know how I did it in America but I want you to show me how you do it here.” Approaching the situation that way made me feel like I was giving myself the chance to learn, Mama the chance to teach and yet letting her know that it wasn’t that we didn’t know how to do anything in America, it was just that we did things differently.

            Mama never got frustrated with my ineptitude at easy things (it really does take awhile to figure out how to dice an onion without a cutting board and a knife about as sharp as a spoon), she just kept on smiling and teaching somehow managing both without even the slightest hint of condescension. That is a skill you just can’t teach. I will forever be grateful to Mama Alice for showing me kindness at the same time as introducing me to what life is really like in Kenya. Its one thing to come here as a tourist, to stay in a hotel, eat in restaurants, take a tour in a jeep. It’s completely different to live in a Kenyan home, to eat what they really eat everyday, to walk everywhere; to experience life as they do. Mama told me she hosted volunteers because she looked at it as an opportunity to make a new friend, and that she did.

        *-*-*-*-*-*-*    Emily   *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

            I filled out ledgers on Friday afternoon at the clinic this week and watched as the staff injected babies and they screamed their little heads off, just like babies back home. I was filling out the ledger for this one impossibly cute little baby girl, Emily, when I noticed we had the same birthday. I don’t know why but I suddenly felt so attached to this tiny little infant with her lacy red dress and impossibly beautiful brown eyes. Here’s this little person, exactly 25 years younger, staring across the desk at me, probably wondering why I look so funny with my white skin and all I can think as irrational tears spring to my eyes is that the world is so much smaller than I imagine sometimes, that I hope this little girl grows up to be half as happy as I am in that moment. The threatening tears are because I know the odds are not in her favor.

Though we had the luck to be born on the same day (I love my birthday), that’s about where the similarities end. I was born in the US to a mother and father who had the financial means to make sure I always had food on the table, a roof over my head, shoes on my feet, the chance to play in a safe neighborhood and the opportunity to not only complete high-school but to attend college. Emily will be lucky if her family has the money to pay school fees for her to make it through primary school (8^th grade). She will be lucky if she gets to play with her friends rather than work in the field. She will be out of the ordinary if, at 25, she isn’t married and working on her 3^rd or 4^th baby. She will be extremely lucky if she has a house with concrete floors and walls instead of mud and sticks and a roof that doesn’t leak incessantly when it rains.

It is these extremely simple and unexpected moments that keep reminding me why I came here in the first place; to see how lucky I truly am and to maybe, just maybe to use the education and the time that I am blessed to have to improve someone else’s life just a little.

            *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*     Peter     *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

            Peter was born in Kenya in1961, one of nine brothers and sisters. He tested positive for HIV in 1987 and has been living with it ever since. There are no words and even if there were, no way I could possibly write them eloquently enough to express to you the degree to which my experience with Peter affected and inspired me. I will try anyway:

 I was introduced to Peter through his older brother one day a few weeks ago. Peter greeted us as we walked into his compound. We waited as he slowly made his way from the garden to us on his homemade crutches. He smiled ‘karibu’ (welcome) he said as he heartily shook my hand despite his small frame and welcomed us into his home. Like most Kenyan houses the doorway is small, my head clears by maybe an inch or two, and the walls and floor made of packed mud. The sitting room is at the front of every house, there are 3 or 4 of the most uncomfortable couches you will ever encounter surrounding a couple coffee tables oddly arranged in the center of the room. You would be hard pressed to find a sitting room here with fewer than two coffee tables, even my house has two. I sit down on one couch and watch awkwardly as Peter sits on the couch kitty-corner from me, wincing in pain as he lowers himself to the low seat. He places his crutches in the corner beside him and arranges himself into what I imagine is the most comfortable position possible on these couches. Peter’s brother sits on the couch beside me and the three of us sit there for an uncomfortably long moment in silence as I realize I am in completely unfamiliar territory here.

Peter (left) outside his house

Sure, I’ve been around HIV positive people before, I worked with a support group during training. I’ve shook hands and talked with dozens of people who’ve been living with AIDS for years. And yet, this is the first time that I’ve found myself invited into their homes to talk, very personally about their lives, their experience living with HIV. Peter has graciously opened this door for me and I’m sitting there on his couch like an idiot not knowing how to begin the conversation.

Perhaps sensing the strange tension Peter’s brother tells us he is going to leave us alone for awhile. He says he wants us to ‘feel free’ to discuss whatever we want, just the two of us. I am eternally grateful for his exit. I don’t know why but I feel more at ease now that its just me and Peter (really a couple kids are sitting there watching us talk but I know their English isn’t good enough to understand most of what we’re saying, plus I’ve grown accustomed to the constant watching eyes of the kids here, they love watching me no matter how boring I try to be). Over the next hour and a half Peter proceeds to tell me about his life.

 He tells me about his friend having him get tested in 1987 but never telling him the results. Peter tells me he thinks his test came back positive and his friend didn’t have the heart to tell him; in 1987 HIV was a sure thing death sentence. It wasn’t until the early 90’s when he started experiencing effects from opportunistic infections that Peter actually found out he had AIDS. Over the next 20 years Peter would continue to experience the effects of HIV/AIDS, from the physical dangers of opportunistic infections to the extreme social stigma attached to the disease, especially in the 90’s and early 2000’s. He is currently undergoing treatment for Kaposi’s sarcoma, a skin cancer that is common among AIDS patients. I’d noticed his swollen left foot even before he put his foot on the coffee table and lifted up his pant leg to show me the tumor. I stared, at once intrigued, disgusted and heart-wrenchingly sympathetic. His swollen foot and ankle, which look like what you would find on an 85 year old with heart failure, are the least of his worries. His leg, from ankle to knee is covered in thick scabs, white, black and brown; various bodily fluids that have seeped and dried in the process of healing. As I sit, unable to look away and happy that I have a strong stomach, Peter tells me that his leg looks better now than it did even a month ago when the scabs were painful open sores. I try to imagine how painful the sores must have been when they were open, any little thing that touched his leg must have been excruciating. It’s no wonder he hasn’t been able to work for the last few months.

Kaposi's sarcoma on Peter's leg

            He tells me the sarcoma started in 2005 with just a small sore on his lower leg. By 2009 it had gotten bad enough that he began chemotherapy treatment at the provincial hospital and by March of this year the cancer had spread all the way to his knee causing him extreme pain and loss of mobility resulting in his inability to work. He thanks God every day that his leg seems to be getting better.

I ask Peter about what other opportunistic infections he’s had as a result of HIV/AIDS and he laughs, tells me he’s pretty much had them all except TB… which his wife (who is also HIV+) is currently being treated for. This opens the door for Peter to talk about his family and he gushes for a few minutes, the very picture of a proud father, his eyes sparkling and his features animated as he tells me that all of his children are HIV negative. This is quite a feat; Peter has at least 8 children. I say ‘at least’ because at some point in the conversation, going between his first and second wives, I lost count. I did manage to gather that his oldest, a son, was born in 1982 and his youngest, also a son is 4-years-old. His name is Ambrose and he sits on the couch across the room staring at me in that way only a 4-year-old can; without shame and an acute attention that only wanders to glance at the tiny bird his sister is holding in a nest on the couch next to him. Peter tells me about his oldest daughter, whose children are also in the room (so Peter is also a grandfather a few times over), that she was a heck of a ‘footballer’ in school, she even competed in a national tournament. Peter truly lights up talking about his family and his joy is contagious. 

I ask him if he’s told all his children, even his youngest about his status. He says that he feels as though it is very important to have a free and open dialogue with his children when they are old enough to understand. I ask him how old he thinks that is, at what age should children be taught about HIV? He thinks for a minute, this is a debated topic in Kenyan schools because the main mode of transmission is through sexual contact; deciding when is the right time to tell kids about HIV/AIDS also means deciding when the right time to talk about safe sex is. After a long minute and some prompting by me Peter finally says that by class 3 or 4 (3^rd or 4^th grade) kids should be made aware of what HIV is and how they can protect themselves from getting it. I couldn’t agree more; I see girls in the clinic that are 15 or 16 and pregnant, clearly they are having sex at that age so they should be educated about HIV before then.

Peter’s openness with his kids is just one example of how unashamed he is about his status. He tells me that a few years ago a reporter from a national magazine sat right where I was and interviewed him about what it was like to be a PLWHA (People (person) Living With HIV/AIDS). Peter’s story and picture appeared in the magazine and he is now known as an outspoken and integral member of the PLWHA community in Kakamega speaking regularly at educational meetings to increase knowledge about HIV and reduce the stigma that is still so often associated with it. A few years ago he was one of the three founding members of a men’s group here in Kakamega that organizes community events for HIV education and also provides a support group for it’s members. That group now has 30 members.

I ask Peter how he thinks the spread of HIV/AIDS in Kenya (and Africa in general) can be stopped. He says education, that children need to be educated in schools, that people like him, who are HIV+ as well as those who are not, need to be active in educating their community members. He emphasizes that it is especially important for people who are positive to not be ashamed of their status and to use their experiences as teaching tools to help prevent others from suffering the same fate. In the middle of this all he starts talking about how important it is for PLWHA to manage their stress. “Name it, claim it, tame it,” he says somewhat out of the blue. I stop what I’m writing and smile. I ask him to say that again and I write it in big bold letters in my notebook, putting a box and stars around it. I don’t know whether Peter came up with that on his own or he got it from someone else, but either way, I love it.

As our conversation is starting to wrap up Peter takes out his pills and shows me the drug regiment he takes everyday. It’s a handful of pills a few times a day. I ask him how much they cost and he patiently goes through each bottle, telling me what they are, what they do for him, how often he takes them and how much they cost. I would need a calendar to keep it all straight; Peter just rattles these things off the top of his head. I suppose that’s what happens when you live with something for over 20 years.

Finally, Peter produces a stack of around a dozen certificates, each of them acknowledging his completion of a training seminar on an HIV/AIDS or public health topic. Peter is not only outspoken about his status and his life with AIDS, he makes an active and on-going effort to be knowledgeable about his disease.

After a quick tour of his garden (he gives me a small eggplant to take home with me) and a few family photos, Peter and his brother walk me out of their family’s compound of houses. They’ve sent me home with an armful of books about HIV/AIDS and a heart full of hope and inspiration.

Peter is a man who is suffering and has been suffering for some time, but instead of being bitter or angry, instead of locking himself in his home, wallowing in self-pity or shame, Peter continues to live his life the best way he knows how. He takes an active part in educating his community he raises his children in a safe, loving and accepting environment and he does all he can to make sure that they grow up free of the disease that has plagued him for nearly half his life. Like me, Peter imagines a future for his children in a world where there are no new HIV/AIDS cases. With people like Peter dedicating their time and energy I think that world just might be possible.