Part I – Roads, Church, and Neighbors

It’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve written a full narration of what we’ve been doing in Kenya, and a fair amount has occurred (worst of it is Courtney’s malaria) so I’m going to split this into a few pieces. After I catch you up on what life’s been like for us here, I’ll write more about CABDA, the work it does, and the groups it assists.
So, to start where we left off, Saturday May 19th, we visited Kakamega’s famed rainforest to the East of the town (and since my writing style is such that I am not always capable of returning to a topic, I’ll just say now that it was neat but fairly inauthentic. We drove into a western-style small resort which had been cleared out of the rainforest by an American couple who lived and died there. We took a short hike through the forest which only gave us a small taste and we will need to return to bigger trail another time. Driving out of the resort Courtney spotted monkeys high up in the trees which we stopped to watch and snatch a few photos). To get there we drive half an hour down dirt roads, passing through Murhanda sub-location where CABDA works with 4 grandmother caregiver groups. Roads are narrow by Canadian standards, extremely rocky, hole-y, ravine-y, and bumpy, full of people moving in either direction with water, produce (lots of women with platters of bananas on their heads), firewood, herds of cattle, donkeys, chickens roaming around, bicycle taxis, and people standing around watching, talking, or tending a fire. Because the roads are so rough, the only lane is the lane-of-least-resistance—your vehicle bobs and weaves around people, bikes while seeking the flattest piece of road. Whenever a vehicle comes in the opposite direction, there is almost always a few moments in which a head-on collision appears immanent. But people are used to this driving style and have no problems slowing down so other cars can duck out of the way – and honking is less an expression of anger and more an important way of communicating with the many kinds of road travelers. When we are riding boda-bodas (bicycle taxis with a padded seat behind the main bicycle seat) I’m always impressed with the cyclists’ similar ability to (safely, so far) follow the lane-of-least-resistance in crowded city streets while operating a human-powered (‘man-powered’ wouldn’t be politically incorrect in this case: only males pedal bicycles) from a lower position in the road hierarchy.
The drive to the Kakamega Forest I’m describing is typical… we’ve driven down other dirt roads for other purposes often, and the scene is always the same. We attract considerable attention passing through the roads (also everywhere we go), and if I were to estimate on it I’d say that about half the people that see us stop to look at us as we pass by. For the kids we can smile and wave at them (it’s not inconceivable that in some cases we’re the first white people they’ve ever seen), but among adults, and especially young adult males who look angry, it can be a bit disconcerting, although I haven’t let it bother me much.
In all the literature I read about this region of Western Kenya it is described as overpopulated. It is the ‘most overpopulated’ part of Kenya, and this is frequently cited as a contributing factor to the regions high levels of poverty. When I was reading all this before coming here I formed certain images in my head of what this meant on the ground. These descriptors of Kakamega’s problems of poverty and overpopulation were so clear-cut and backed up with statistics that I quite plainly expected to ‘see overpopulation’ and ‘see poverty’ once I was here. And indeed, simply driving down the road, you see people everywhere, and walking past the markets you’re among throngs of people milling about the street. And yet… there’s nothing unnatural about it. The market is simply a busy marketplace in a fair-sized city. The roads have lots of people on it, but if you took any road in Toronto and removed every person in a car and put them at the side of the street, there could be just as many people. I was expecting extensive slums everywhere, yet most people (outside the city… much of which could be considered akin to our suburbs) have more land than most Canadians on which they grow household staples and crops to bring to market. I’ve seen a lot that could be considered poverty – people who need them unable to buy shoes, unable to pay school fees, unable to find work, left to idleness and drink, children with distended stomachs (only a couple so far). Yet for the most part people work, eat, talk, drink tea… they get on. What I mean is, we haven’t seen abjection and destitution… people aren’t ‘so bummed out’ about their poverty… they live full lives in ways that their material circumstances permit.
Where was I? Saturday the 19th we went to the forest, and on Sunday we were invited to Ephy and Morris’ (our hosts) church. Ephy is the woman I met in Toronto at the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers gathering last year. I actually met Morris there too but didn’t say more than hello to him. Ephy runs CABDA, for whom we’re interning, and Morris runs a larger and more established organization named KAMADEP. KAMADEP was called an exemplar of Kenya’s NGO’s (non-governmental organization) by the nation’s NGO Board, a government body that oversees NGO activities and directs them towards development goals (we met two representatives of the Board while they were visiting Kakamega). KAMADEP is located close to our guest house so we can walk there easily. Currently the property is in the midst of great activity as last year Morris conceived of the idea of building a 4-story training centre with group space on the bottom floor and guest rooms on the top 3 floors. Morris is very proud of the project, and indeed it’s a huge investment. Thus we’ve had an interesting opportunity to see Kenyan construction close-up, as Morris has taken us inside the building-in-process at a couple points in its completion. In our first visit, the walls and ceiling of the first floor was done, but the structure was still being ‘set’—so the first floor had columns upon columns of logs upright from floor to ceiling… seemingly keeping the whole building together. In our second visit the logs had been removed and we were able to wander around the bottom floor. The building has a steel-enforced (rebar) concrete skeleton and walls of large stone blocks and bricks. Logs and thick sticks are utilized extensively for various purposes, and there are large piles of them outside the construction area (as well as piles of bricks and sand). KAMADEP itself has about 35 employees, a fleet of motorbikes which workers use to get to the field, and couple vehicles and drivers. The work the organization does surrounds various projects in water and sanitation, community governance, agriculture (they have a couple beekeeping projects), microcredit, and gender equity. Morris left his job as a civil servant and started it 7 years ago, and Ephy worked in it with him for a while before leaving to start her own NGO. They are a power-couple. They have three kids, two boys and a daughter, the eldest, aged 7-12.
So every Sunday the 5 of them go to their Quaker church for 9:30 in the morning, and don’t get out until 1 or 2pm. The kids go to bible school behind the church and Ephy and Morris go to service by themselves, but a lot of other parents there have young children with them in the service. After today (June 3rd), all I can say is thank god for those children! There’s been one or two kids in front of us both times we went who, fascinated by our whiteness, stare at us or, today, grab and poke me. So I’m able to play little peek-a-boo and poking games with the kids to keep me entertained during the long service! Really though, the service is rather different than I’m used to (admittedly I’m not much of a church-goer, and while I’ve sampled a few denominations I haven’t seen all the varieties of services in Canada), I enjoy parts of it, and it deserves description. The church itself is like most buildings in the area… a concrete base of walls with corrugated metal roofing supported by wooden beams. There is hardly any decoration, and haven’t noticed a crucifix in any Quaker church so far. There is a good sound system with Peavey amplifiers and an extensive mixing station, to which 5 or 6 microphones, a keyboard and a bass guitar are connected. People sit in plastic lawn chairs facing forward (there were maybe 80 people there the first time, and 40 the second time) and two people stand at the pulpit. The service is conducted in Swahili and English, with the pastor leading in English and the other translating into Swahili (though there are multiple pastors that take turns ministering and sometimes guest pastors, so sometimes its Swahili being translated into English). The pastors speak passionately and rousingly, and the overlay of pastor and translator is often quite lyrical. Sometimes the pastor paces back and forth shouting rapidly, banishing the devil out of the church, and everyone responds, waving their arms to cast out satan, first out the front windows, then out the back door, then out the windows, and when he says something that people agree with them shout ‘amen’, or ‘yes’, usually in unison. The sermon itself is often literally lyrical, when the keyboardist and bassist begins to play, and everyone gets up and interacts with the service, dancing to the rhythm, ducking down low and swinging their arms with the pastor, raising their arms to receive god’s blessings and gifts, and when a choir assembles behind the pastor people stand up and sing along. In one segment of the service, people are given time to pray, in their own private communion with their lord, and the organ plays on powerfully, and the pastor paces and continues to speak, but this time his voice is added to by the voices of everyone else in the room, praying aloud but in no set script, a directed chaos of emotion that sends shivers down my spine each time its happened, and people are so moved that they cry, that they drop to their knees and raise their arms to the sky, that they pace back and forth and scrunch up their face and keep on praying aloud. It’s not something I can fully participate in but it’s a lot of energy and I sat and I listened to it and tried to watch without being obtrusive. Then the choir begins to sing and everyone returns to unison and sings along before returning to their seat. The bible part of the service isn’t something I can say much about, because it’s the part I amuse myself thinking about other things and making googley eyes with children, but Courtney is more familiar with the material and pays attention. After the service (at length) finishes, we mill around a bit shaking hands and saying hello to people until we get a ride home.
That particular Sunday we were invited over for tea by a Finnish couple that lives in the building next to ours, one of whom is working with KAMADEP for Save the Children Finland. The building is the home base for a Canadian NGO based on Vancouver – ACCES (African Canadian Continuing Education Society) and there were three Canadians living there when we visited… one student our age just finishing an 8 month CIDA internship with the organization, and an older couple working for 6 months. ACCES runs 7 schools in the region, which are private schools in a sense, but function like public schools. The organization has a philosophy of being entirely Kenyan run, and Canadian operations are just for fundraising, plus they send interns to help out, but not as overseers, as a Canadian involvement component. The Finns and Canadians are more established than we are so they’ve been able to give some advice for food, cooking, and health, as well as lend a couple books (‘The in-between world of Vikram Lall’ is a great book, read it!) to us.