out of Loitokitok and into Machakos!

machakos watering hole... literally this is a water source for these Kamba people

tree planting!

here we are planting trees!

"waterfall" (and when i say waterfall i mean a small stream)

i can officially say that I've milked a cow

surviving through day 15

June 8... day 15.

wake up. breakfast. walk to town. class. lunch. class again. eat mandazi and chai before heading home. walk home. play slap jack with brothers. peel potatoes. eat orange that has really big seeds. peel carrots. take bath. do homeworrk... itchy arm... rash... that's weird, it doesn't look like a bite... put books away and take a benadryl for the rash.... when i closed the door to my room and walked down the hall my world began to spin. literally. I was going to pass out. literally, lose conciousness. I sat down as everybody was ready to eat and the feeling didn't go away... so I followed protocol and put my head between my knees. Everybody just stopped and stared at me. As I went back to my room I tried to explain that i didn't feel well (which is a difficult task when your family doesn't speak english). I curled up into a ball on my bed with the light on and the door open and started praying for it to stop. My mama and Philip were standing in teh doorway. I don't really remember what happened but they kept telling me to call Mary... (Mary is one of the PCMO's - Peace Corps Medical Officer) So i called our emergency medical number and explained what I was experiencing (it happened to be Sylvia who answered, the other PCMO) and my family kept saying, "call Mary call Mary, you need call Mary"... and I tried to reply, "i called medical. it was Sylvia."... somehow they understood enough that i wasn't going to do anything for a while and they left my room. some time goes by. I mean, FOREVER. I, literally, made my peace with God... begging him to let me go quickly if it was the end. And that's when i started vomitting. I hadn't eaten for 3 hours so it was mostly dry-heaving with a small amount of brown translucent liquid. In response to the violent noises coming from my room my mama returned to stand at the doorway and say "oooohh" as she watched me convulse.

I think I bonded more with my host family after this. Even though she didn't know how to phrase anything to help me. I managed to say, "maji, tafadhali." and she scattered to grab my water bottle. I felt much better after throwing up. So, i cleaned out my bucket, drank some water and then started throwing up again. GOD WILL THIS EVER STOP? I was so exhausted that I passed out and woke up the next mornign starving and sore.

I'm actually glad that my first vulnerable condition experience is over now - I don't have to anticipate it anymore. and let me telly you, being sick in the US is nothign like being sick here. My host parents kept asking, "you don't feel well?" as my head was in a bucket and kept telling me to, "call mary!"... and i am loooooooong way from a decent hospital. I definitely would not haev made it if it had been life threatening... and the best part about all of this is that i kept thinking... "it would be really bad if I died here."

I survived through day 15!! (small victories, right?!) and just in time to celebrate hat day!

ijamii yanje mu kenya (oluluiya)... my host family in kenya

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… adoption day.

The day that we went home with our host families was a very somber day for me. It felt like summer camp was over and reality was set in. Most homestay mama’s greeted their new Peace Corps mtoto’s with open arms and enormous bear hugs. I had to hold back the tears because it was so heartwarming to be accepted and welcomed. But, of course, my mama and baba didn’t hug me. They barely shook my hand and my mama hardly did that. The rest of the afternoon was filled with attempts of conversation in swah-english. They don’t speak very much English and my Kiswahili can only go so far...

The nyumba (house) itself is not like the other ones that most Peace Corps Trainees are staying at. We have partial dirt floors, no plumbing, no kitchen... well, correction, the kitchen is the hen house... and sometimes the livingroom. There is a small room with a stone floor and a drain where we bathe. The door is a piece of fabric and for each bath, the water is warmed up on the charcoal leftover from dinner. Squatting down to wash myself out of a basin has been awkward, but I think I have gotten the hang of it. The choo on the other hand, is a completely different battle and deserves it’s own paragraph.

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A choo is an outhouse, but without a bench and a toilet seat. It is, literally, just a hole in the ground that you squat over. Most of them smell really bad and are home to the indigenous creatures… bats, spiders, sometimes geckos, and always flies. The idea of a creature taking advantage of me while being in such a vulnerable state made me constipated for the first four days without a flushing toilet. I conquered this obstacle one day, after lunch in town, when my stomach was so upset that I thought I was going to explode. When you have to go that badly, nothing is going to stop you.

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Fast forward…

I have kaka watatu (three brothers): Kioko (who is 9), Mwongela (7), and Philip (4). Everyday when I get home from class Philip is playing in the yard (of dirt) with ten neighbor kids. Their toys are limited to what they can find, and usually consist of scraps that they can find… the latest one has been the dried cornstalks. (A couple days ago we raced each other down the street while pushing then in front of ourselves.) Though, I think Philip’s favorite is a contraption composed of two small pieces of old dried wood corn husks. When he runs it spins like a propeller... (here is one of his inovative toys)

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My mama’s name is Ann Nthenya and she married Kennedy Kivungi. They are both Kamba people and their “mother-tongue” language is kikamba. In Kenya, when people become parents, their names change to their first child’s name. So, my mama’s name is Mama Kioko and my baba’s name is Baba Kioko. The family dynamic isn’t much different from how I interpret the early and mid-1900’s to be. Mama Kioko spends most… (all)… of her time preparing the meals, washing the dishes, cleaning the home and shopping at the market. To pay the bills, both mama Kioko and baba Kioko have a couple small income providers… Baba Kioko builds houses when there are houses to build and farms their property, while mama Kioko braids hair. They also are the only home in this community with stema (electricity) so neighbors bring their mobile’s (cell phones) over to charge them for a minimal fee... (like 50 KES for a full charge)

What I have come to understand, and this is my own interpretation, is that people marry because it is time for them to marry and procreate... Because that is what they are supposed to do. Mamas cook and clean (and babas don’t) because that is what they are supposed to do. They don’t have nice things because the stores don’t sell them, and they only buy what they can afford. They have never heard of things like washing machines or dishwashers and they probably wouldn’t use them if they did have them. Comparatively, in America, we still pursue the “American Dream” which allows us to buy things that we cannot afford. Like homes, cars, THINGS, by going into debt. But, here people only buy things with money that they have, which is very little. (sidenote: if you try to use credit or debit cards here, they just stare at you.)

(this image made me realize: I'M LIVING IN AFRICA!)

as Dorothy once said, "I'm DEFINITELY not in Kansas anymore..."

I have never seen any place like this and it is hard to describe because it is so different that I don’t know how to interpret it. I think the pictures will help. Traveling through southern Kenya (more specifically masai land) was pretty much what I expected it to be: a scene from The Lion King. It was very very dry with those trees that are flat on the top and their leaves are high up. We saw a couple of giraffes, (BTW their necks aren’t as long as they are portrayed in cartoons....) It felt like a movie until we passed through the villages. The communities are composed of homes made with metal sheets for walls and roves that look like anyone could just push them over... like a house of playing cards. And this is almost every community. The Masai tend to think that metal walls and rooves are more civilized than mud-houses... even though they are closer to microwaves than houses.

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As we got closer to Loitokitok, on the “dirt” roads (and I am putting it in quotes because the roads are closer to 4 inch deep trails of dust that they call dirt), and I don't understand why they refer to this as the rainy season. It never rains. Coming into town it was very exciting to see Mt. Kilimonjaro, there are two peaks to it, but we could only see the smaller of the two because of cloud cover. So, the closer we get to town the worse the road gets. The communities look the same, but with flat wood scraps as their walls. The dukas (shops) are painted with bright colors, but covered in dust and there is trash all over the place. All the kids would come running toward our bus waving frantically while the adults would just stare as we passed through. Seriously, their glares made me feel so uncomfortable that I questioned them ever wanting us here.

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And the staring never really stops, but I have gotten used to it. Here is a picture of me walking down one of side streets in Loitokitok towards the supermarket.... which is a fantastic place. One time I only had 100 KES on me and I really wanted peanut butter and crackers, so I took my peanut butter and crackers up to the front to check out and i was short 15 KES... so the owner said, "it's ok, just bring it to me tomorrow." So I left and decided that I would rather have a Chapati... so I took the unopened crackers back hoping that they would erase my debt... AND THEY DID!! Karibu Kenya!!