Surrounded By Beauty

Each morning, I walk down a rough dirt road, scattered with protruding stones, on my way to Kimori Academy. Along the way I am met with stares and shouts of children calling “muzungu” (Swahili) and “chumindet” in the local language meaning “European” or “white person.” I am also greeted by neighbors, some speaking to me with a few words of English, as my appearance demonstrates that I’m not from around here. With others, especially older people who speak only the local language, our exchanges go either “Iamune?”—“Achomege” or “Chamege?”—“Mising” and that is where they usually fall into laughter with both of us smiling and nodding while continuing to shake hands.

The friendliness and welcoming hospitality I’ve been shown by nearly everyone I’ve met is amazing. The line “Karibu. Welcome. Feel free,” has an amusing ring to it, as a native English speaker... well yes, I feel free...but it is a line that I have heard many times and truly appreciate and love about being here. I live at the school director’s home with his family. Two of his daughters, one niece and I share a bedroom. All members of the family (that means extended family) make me feel just like a part of their own. Those who live here include me in their daily activites—washing dishes outside together, doing laundry, cooking over the fire, working on the shamba (farm/garden) and going to church and town. Others, some of his children or cousins whom I’ve met for less than a few hours, call me on the phone to greet me.

This rural community in western Kenya has a quaint atmostphere about it. I feel a peace that I have not consistently felt in any of my other travels. As different as this is from home (having to wear skirts...at least when out in public, bucket baths, and chalk dust), I feel very much at home.

The school system is quite different from anything I’m familiar with and has been an adjustment. I’m still not sure I fully understand the concepts of exercise books and exam books and I discovered that an encyclopedia is not a reference book, but rather contains exams. This is a good learning experience for both me and the people here. Even as this third week is nearing a close, I still continue to have students and colleagues at school and neighbors along the road come up to me to feel my hair or my skin and sometimes even pinch to see if I can feel pain like they can. I was a bit surprised at first, but for children to react this way is completely understandable. I must admit though that I was taken aback, definitely startled, when adults behaved were curious enough to pinch me and stroke my skin. I recently even had a colleague say to me, “You people all look the same. How can you tell who your mother and father are?” I really didn’t know how to respond to that, but tried to explain, that regardless of which phantom race someone comes from, individuals are distinguishable from one another.

Students here are usually extremely polite and respectful. The first day I was greeted by them all with a song welcoming me as a visitor to their class and everyday since then, they stand as I enter the room, ask me how I am and welcome me in unison to their classroom in a sort of formal recitation before sitting. Being called “Madame” was a bit uncomfortable at first, but I’m getting used to it, although I would honestly prefer just “Aprill”. I dropped a piece of chalk once on the cement floor and all the students exclaimed “Pole” or “Sorry” then most leaped from their desks to pick up the broken fragments for me. In other situations, when they have seen me someplace without a chair, even though I didn’t feel like I needed one, they go and find one for me and any other teacher who is around. I’m teaching Standard 5 and 6 (5th and 6th grades) math, PE, and English. I’ll begin algebra next week. Somedays things go great, other days, they do not go as well and I feel as though their is a breakdown in communication, but it is difficult to figure out where. I’m still learning and will continue to for the rest of my stay.

The landscape here is gorgeous, the steep hills draped in a vibrant green. The tea plantations are dotted with the bright colors of African dresses as women wearing large baskets on their backs go along plucking tea and tossing it over their shoulders. Banana, mango, pineapple, avocado, and orange trees are scattered across the land in between many other taller varieties including blue gum trees, acacia, eucalyptus and cypress trees. Among the greenery are some houses made out of stone and other huts made of mud. The shambas appear chaotic to me, with things the fruits and vegetables planted in no particular order, with no rows or patches. Instead, beans grow among corn, which may also grow with spinach, pumpkins, peas and potatoes. Fortunately everyone knows what they’re looking for, so they have no problem going out and picking whatever they’re after for supper.

Ugali, a water and maize flour mixture, is the staple food here along with milk. We also have tea and porriage each day. I was told once by a child that he didn’t eat at all the day before and I was a little concerned, but was immediately reassured by another teacher that the child had not had ugali the previous day, so to him it was as if he had not eaten. My Kenyan cooking skills are definitely not up to par. Whenever we make chapati (similar to naan bread), they say I am making “maps”, because they never turn out in the perfect circles like everyone elses. Between every second or third one I roll, someone offers to “assist” me. My ugali making skills are even poorer. Perhaps by the end of these 6 months, I’ll get those two things down.

Several times the conversation of sports has come up and the general idea is that the main sports in the USA are table tennis and billiards...of which I must always inform them that I don’t really play either of those and then I usually ask them what sports they play or enjoy. Inevitably in nearly every one of these conversations, someone says, “I like ...., but I’m not that good,” then proudly exclaims, “But I can run! I can run,” with a smile on their face and a flicker in their eyes. And it is at these moments that I smile back and think to myself, “I believe you can. I believe you can.”

Most people here have very little when compared with people back home, but their joyfulness and resilience is impressive and inspiring. I’ve visited a few people in mud huts with no electricity and others in slightly nicer homes with newspapers plastered to the walls, yet no way to keep the flies away and nothing but the earth for a floor, yet they continually have smiles on their faces, are singing and laughing. They always make the effort of preparing tea for their guests, just one gesture of their overwhelming hospitality. It is in all these people that I find beauty and it is they who make this place alive, a place of beauty surrounding me.

Cairo, Egypt

I said I wouldn’t leave the airport in Cairo on my way to Kenya and I meant what I said. Having a layover for approximately ten hours, is far longer than I would have liked, but thinking back on my fiasco in Bogota, Columbia during a long layover almost two years ago, I thought better of venturing the streets of an unknown city, especially given the little I knew about the country, culture or language. Yet despite my good intentions, I did leave and got a peek at the city.

The situation was strange, and I’m still not sure how it all came about, but things fortunately did work out. After hearing remarks from a few other passengers, it seems as though this situation is normal in Cairo, but it was a bit disconcerting to me and a few other passengers, particularly to me and three other young Americans who I met, all going on separate volunteer service trips for the summer in Uganda.

Just after arriving in Cairo, we exited the plane and followed signs directing us towards international connecting flights. Because our flights were not for some time, we were refused admittance to that section of the airport and were directed to a booth near a waiting lounge of about 30 seats and one small kiosk with expensive snacks and drinks. Other than that, we had access to nothing in the airport. At the booth, we thought we were going to be given a boarding ticket or some such thing allowing us to head towards the gates from which our connecting flights would depart. They asked to see our passports, which would seem normal, but then they took them and kept them, not allowing us to have them back, began bombarding us with tourist package deals to see the pyramids, and told us that we must leave the airport, our passports would be withheld as they processed mandatory transit visas for us and we could collect them upon our return to the airport in the evening. This was upsetting. To make an understatement, a passport is a fairly important document to keep track of if you want to board an international flight.

Anyhow, after questions, complaints and demands had been made, be felt helpless and allowed ourselves to be transported away from the airport. Two of the other recent college grads from the USA and I decided to watch out for one another and decided there was nothing we could do about our situation, so complied. The three of us along with seven other passengers refused to pay to go see the pyramids or pay for any of the other deals with “special prices” that we were offered... especially since we were being told different things from people on all sides of us and the price was consistently dropping. We were taken to a very nice hotel, where we were fed a meal. It was good, but we were concerned about the catch. I sat with a Ghanaian woman during the meal. I chuckled aloud at one point at the absurdity of it all. We were served good food, but their was no salad dressing on the salad, and this lovely, sophisticated looking woman whom I faced, grumbled about how this same thing happened to her last time, then called the timid, young waiter over and chewed him out asking how he expected her to eat a salad without sauce. At the end of our meal, there was no dessert, so she once again scolded the waiter and asked how he could dare serve a meal without something sweet to finish it off. He hurried away and of all the guests in the dining room, only the two of us were brought fresh fruit for dessert.

We were then given rooms to stay in and it took three times of explaining to the receptionists that neither I nor the other girl from the US were married to the young man from the US and that we desired separate beds. We finally succeeded in our explanations, then went off to our rooms to rest for a bit. We woke one another and went for a walk around the area, returned to the hotel and waited in the lobby together for our transport back to the airport.

Back at the airport, we went to the customer care counter to retreive our passports. We simply told them the destination of our next flight and they handed us a stack of passports from which we could select ours. I’m sure glad no one else wanted to be me! From there, things went smoothly and relatively normally and I had a pleasant flight to Nairobi.

In the few hours that I was in Cairo, I can see how it may be a city to be loved, with its quaint shops, chaotic traffic and the music filling the streets, yet I know that deserts are not for me. I suppose I’ll never know what that was all about, but it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I’ll post more about my time here in Kenya as soon as I get a chance.