The Things She Carried

Many women here are very strong. They have to be. Gender roles are very distinct with men supposed to provide for the family, do fencing, look after animals and plow (with oxen). Meanwhile, women are expected to do all the household dishes (including washing dishes and clothes by hand, cooking over a fire, and cleaning), as well as child rearing, working in the shamba, milking the cows, fetching water, chopping and carrying firewood. Each person has a story and I am blessed to be learning some of them. Here are a few pictures I’ve gathered of the things women carry:








Not hats on their heads or backpacks on their backs, but sufuria's of vegetables, basins of grass, buckets of water, avocados, potatoes, and firewood... to name a few things. (Suitcases, milk, tea, and pineapples should also be added to the list; these things often with a child strapped to her back and maybe some things in her hands as well.

Visa…

As in Germany, I got to spend hours in an immigration office, queuing and filling out forms, being finger printed, photographed, interrogated, etc. To get most of the way through the process for a temporary visa, which will once again need renewed, plus get the joy of returning to the capital city to collect a registered alien card once it has been processed. Some differences between here and Germany: In Germany there is much more organization and people are better at estimating time. Here most of the employees were friendly or at least acted cheerful and all the people waiting love to talk, so the wait was more pleasant.

Nyakacho

A place starts to seem more like home when you become familiar with its layout and its people. Although it takes between 1.5 and 2 hours for me to reach Kericho town, using three different vehicles, I’ve been there a few times and was beginning to feel like I’ve been here longer than I have been. It’s a great feeling to arrive at the station and then be able to walk to wherever I’d like to go, without having to ask for help and directions. It’s also nice to be able to board a bodaboda or matatu knowing I’m heading in the right direction, be it to Brooks, Poiywek, Kisumu or Litein.

I’ve gotten to see several places in Kericho, including small shops, a large store “Tuskys” (the Kenyan version of Walmart, except that it isn’t cheaper than the smaller shops), banks, restaurants, a hostpital—which included me watching a teenage girl in the trauma unit being stitched up as blood gushed from her leg and foot (yes…for those of you who know me well…that was really tough to do) and an HIV research center and its lab.

At the same time, just as I feel familiar with certain things, I’m just discovering others. I knew there had to be a poorer district of Kericho than the areas I’d been, but hadn’t seen it. Last weekend, Benard took me to Nyakacho—the city’s slums where the majority of the people reside. It was the part of KEricho most affected by the 2007 post-election violence. It reminded me in some ways of Peru—especially Lima’s outer districts and also of pictures I’ve seen of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

It probably won’t happen during these next few months, but I’d like to learn more about Nyakacho and other such places like Nairobi’s Kibera. I was just an intruder peering in on the lives of others: hearing people wailing as they mourned a death, seeing mothers and children carrying babies on their backs, women carrying food on their heads, men puling carts and a newly-wed couple parading down the steep muddy trash covered street. I felt ashamed to be watching them from the comfort of a car.

Kultural Kwirks

Just as each person has their own quirks, so does every culture. We always see something from at least one perspective, and sometimes our cultural point of view leads us to find things in another culture to be amusing or strange or fascinating. A few of the things I find quirky here in the land of the Kipsigis from my American perspective are:

*Men can’t sit on beds.

*Although Christianity is the dominant religion among the people here, superstititions can be found throughout and often influence people’s behaviors.
-The Kalenjin have amazing distance runners, but they didn’t perform as well as was expected of them at the Olympic games. This was surely because the tribal elders had told them to boycott the Games for political reasons, so Kenya would not win any medals, but they disobeyed and competed.
-If you point at a pumpkin with your finger, it will stop growing and rot.
-If you tell an outsider about some of the rituals at a circumcision ceremony, you’ll be cursed for life.
-The reason there are so many crazy people on the streets is that they’ve been cursed with witchcraft.
-You can’t fight about a boundary. God will send lightning to mark where it must be.

*Men can’t carry small children.

*Names are given by the time of day a person is born, plus an “English” name—often biblical. It’s okay to have the same name as others. In face three cousins (all under age 5) in this family have the name Caleb Kiplangat!

Tuition

Along with learning new ways of doing things in another culture with different values and societal norms, I’m also learning new meanings to attach to several English words. These include a “hotel” as a place for eating, “torch” as a flashlight, “encyclopedia” as a book full of quizzes/tests and their answers, and “smart” as nice or good. Another word that forced me to understand its meaning in a new way and also something new about the culture is “tuition.”

Here tuition does not mean fees for enrolling in a school, but rather denotes a period of 2-3 weeks over the long holiday (school break) that students are expected to attend classes and do homework. Tuition was outlawed by the new constitution (which was adopted in 2010) but has not yet been effectively removed. This month came the closest, when in many places schools shut down for fear because teachers were being arrested and schools were threatened to be closed down if they held tuition. We had tuition for some time, but then closed school abruptly one morning when the threat seemed too near.

I was glad that tuition was stopped, because I don’t think children should spend so much time in school. The article banning it in the constitution is focused on children’s rights. After some calculations, I discovered that most kids in the US spend only 40% of the time in school as many kids here each year. Now I have some time to accomplish a few other things and I hope that the children are able to relax some at their homes.

2nd Month in Photos

Street Vendors


Learning to Milk a Cow


Sporting some pajamas


Attempting to carry water on my head...and splashing it all over my face


Closing Ceremony at Kobel Mission School


Some members of the household


Playing with some children at the Baby Home


Visiting Mau Forest

Differing Worlds

Some say there are three worlds: that people living in Kenya are living in the third world, while people living in the USA are living in the first world, but I say differently. I've seen both suffering and luxery in industrialized nations and developing ones. Just the other day, I was reminded of the many ways that people live, the ways that children grow up and the situations in which they find themselves as I witnessed several situations in a single day.

My day began with a warm welcome and a high-five from a cheerful, energetic eight-year-old girl, whose father abandoned his wife and six children, leaving his wife to leave the children and work, although her earnings still were not enough to provide for them. This little girl saw her situation and decided herself to pack her few posessions and insist on leaving with her uncle and his family when they went on a visit to her home. She is now in a welcoming home with people constantly flowing in and out.

That morning I went to Kimori Academy to help clean the dormitories, since the children were on a one-week break. I had not been in the dormitories before, although I can see them from the classrooms and from the game field where PE is takes place as does a children's worship service on Fridays. I knew that they were timber buildings with cement floors, but I was unprepared for what I saw.

The timber walls have many holes in them where rodents, insects and spiders are free to come and go as they please. Additionally, although the weather is typically pleasant, it must be cold for the children at night with the drafts. The metal roof, makes the building especially noisy when it rains. The uneven floor was filthy, with ants crawling everywhere. As I was picking up trash and sweeping the filth with a leafy branch, I paused for a moment of rest, allowing my hand to fall on one of the nearby mattresses. In a matter of seconds I had ants crawling on my legs and was bit by the viscious critters on the hand. To think that many of my students must sleep in such conditions where they may be bit by those strong jaws at any moment, is awful.

Not only do they have those creatures to deal with, but there is little space and the beds are less than nice. The students keep their belongings in metal trunks that are either tied to the rafters or taking up space on the mattresses. The children who occupy space on wooden bunk beds have it much better than those on the metal bunk beds. Those beds are falling apart, some children have placed rough sticks under their mattresses to keep themselves from falling through the holds to the floor, while others have wires sticking up, in very dangerous fashions.

After cleaning, I returned home for lunch and expected the worst for my afternoon visit to the nearby Baby Home. It is a home for orphans, children whose mother's have died and whose fathers can't care for them and for children who have been abandoned and thrown away. The children are under the age of five. When then reach that age, they are transferred to a children's home in a nearby town. I asked by host sisters to accompany me, which they were glad to do, having not visited there themselves. We were pleasantly surprised by what we saw.

The place was very clean, the people friendly, the children healthy and well-fed. The receive sponsorship from people in the US and Europe as well as from local churches. I was pleased, that dispite the fact that life had been unkind to these children in some ways, they were being well taken care of and had found a place that was really like a nice home.

What kind of situation forces a small child to choose to leave her home and live elsewhere? How much education is valued, for children to put up with that kind of dormitory environment! And finally, I felt at peace knowing there is some good in the world, knowing that some children do find their situations improving.