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 3rd). 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 (8th 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 3rd or 4th 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.
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| Peter (left) outside his house |
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.
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| 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 (3rd or 4th 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.
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