Late arrival notes

[Well this post is now 10 days out of date, but I thought I’d post it for consumption anyway. It was written 3-4 days after we arrived, while first impressions were still fresh, and before (as you can see below) Courtney caught malaria and everything got put on hold (she’s much better now). Today is our first day back at the office and we’ve resumed work on a quarterly report for an American NGO on a CABDA project with orphans and vulnerable children and their caregivers. We’re having fun working on it because its an actual application of some of our schooling, and all that stuff about qualitative and quantitative indicators is finally seeming useful. It may be a busy week as we start working again, we’re going to complete this report, head south to Vihiga to meet some beneficiaries of Stephen Lewis Foundation funding (to begin developing a couple of case studies from the project), and head to Kisumu to buy a cellphone and some amenities. Anyway, here’s what I wrote over a week ago!]

March 17/18
Well, there are many (many) hiccups and surprises, and there are health concerns, and I am worried about Courtney [worries which proved well-founded when she got Malaria!], but I really love it here. I’m sitting alone in an elevated restaurant in our complex sipping chai tea, the national drink. It’s served just the way I like it – milky and sweet . The milk is cooked with the water and the tea leaves, which is given to you in a small teapot that pours a good three cups. They must cook it fresh, as it took 15 minutes for the tea to arrive. They give you a bowl of unrefined sugar ( the same stuff that is becoming fashionable in the coffee shops at home) made only 34km up the road at the Mumias Sugar Factory. One spoonful makes a very delicious desert tea, and has been offered to us on several occasions. ‘Anytime is tea time’ is indeed a common expression here. If we were being served food someone would bring us a jug of water and a large bowl and pour water over our hands for us to wash before eating anything. There is only sometimes a bar of soap in the bowl and it takes a lot of water to rinse off soap, which I feel bad about using, but sanitation is very important considering everything we are coming into contact with. We receive excelling service in our hotel and in restaurants. Part of this may be a high expectation upon the workers here, but I feel that our skin colour puts us into a different consideration. I frequently feel I’m assuming a distinctly colonial position as I sit in British styled dining rooms being served by highly deferential African waiters. But we’re just silly Canadian kids and we’re trying to be friendly with everyone and show that we are equals. We befriended one of the restaurant workers, Sammy, who has been very friendly with us. But there is still a level of formality in all interactions, much of which we are culturally unfamiliar with. I think we get away with just being cute as we try to speak Swahili in appropriate ways. Today we learned a Luhya word (as I expected, most urban people in Kakamega speak their mother tongue – one of 17 dialects of Luhya – Swahili, and English) to say to people we met ‘in the field’ today – ‘milembe’ – meaning peace/greetings. The roomful of people we addressed (!) that didn’t speak English got a kick out of us using it – - more on that later. Courtney’s really good at noticing social behaviors and finding out what they mean. For instance, she noticed when certain people shook our hands, they would hold their biceps, which turns out to be a sign of respect. Now we can use it with people we should show respect to, and win social points! She might not realize it, but Courtney’s long experience schmoozing in social circles translates very well here and she is extremely observant. I know she is overwhelmed and still coping with changes, but I have to say she has acted absolutely perfectly in every situation we have been in and has been the best travel companion I could ask for.
We are certainly in an odd situation – everywhere we go, we are the only white people we see – and there are lots of people here (70,000 in the city and 400,000 in the division). Certainly we stand out, and we are objects of attention when we go down the streets. People generally treat us with respect, curiosity, or excitement, though. Smiling at children seems to please them and make them laugh. Other people just ignore us or speak about us amongst themselves – we often hear ‘mzungu’ (white person) in Swahili conversation around us. This morning we took ‘boda boda’ rides to work at 8 in the morning, which we first did with Ephy yesterday. Boda bodas are bicyclists with padded seats behind the riders seat. The streets are filled with boda bodas and you can get one as soon as you step out onto the road. The riders’ balance and strength are very impressive as they lug us around over bumpty dirt/mud roads, rocks, and (scarily) through traffic. Yesterday Ephy told us that 20 shillings was an appropriate price for a ride to work. This morning the two of us went out and grabbed two boda’s – were told them where we were going and told them we would pay 20 shillings. He said no – 110 shillings – I said no, 30 shillings – he said ‘ok’. They try to give us mzungu prices! Really though, it’s a ridiculously small amount of money to pay for what they are doing for us, and once we have more change/small bills I will be happy to pay more for their work – but not necessarily because it is mzungu price.
But we are received as honoured guests most everywhere we go. We shake everybody’s hands and learn their names, we are brought food and tea and asked how we can be helped or what we would like to know. We are received well because we are guests, but also because of our being with Ephy and CABDA, for whom the people they work with are grateful. Today we visited the offices of a government representative where an elected group of residents of the sublocation (the smallest division of space in Kenya) had gathered for training on caring for springs in the area (there are 8 springs in the sublocation). We didn’t even know where we were going or who we were going to see when we pulled up to the office (having just been told we are going ‘into the field’ – also I should clarify that by office I mean a piece of land with a rudimentary building on it, a small field of maize, some animals wandering around, and a pit latrine behind it). We got out of the car and all of a sudden people started streaming out of the building (about 25 in all), clapping their hands, singing in Luhya or Swahili, dancing, and wrapped us in colourful cloths. Ephy leaned over to us and whispered ‘oh yeah, you’ll have to dance’ – so we started shuffling our feet to the rhythm, and a couple people grabbed our hands and danced with us. Courtney pulled back and snapped a couple pictures of me dancing. After this went on for a few minutes we danced our way into the building and were sat down in front of everyone while the group sang for another few minutes. When this finished the people officiating the training, Ephy, and the government representative took turns gracing and thanking us and one another for the work being done, the training, the driver, the people, etc… Everyone stood up and introduced themselves, then we were asked to introduced ourselves and say a few works, with Ephy translating us to the group. It seemed to go well, and they were pleased with the local words we know. It was fun, I had a big grin on my face the wold time. Unfortunately when they came to serve us lunch (probably the least appetizing so far), Courtney got one whiff of the food and ran out to the latrine to throw up (she didn’t). She was sick the rest of the day. We’re still kind of fragile, and we had slept very badly the night before (also the milk we had at breakfast probably upset her stomach). Anyway, we skipped a visit to a spring and drove back to town to get some water (Dasani – Coca-Cola is everywhere). We then stopped by Ephy’s husband’s office, checked our emails, and found out we have received a grant from CIDA (HOORAY!) for the trip – which will greatly improve the work we can do here. We relaxed at home for the rest of the day and got to sleep around 11.
I’d still like to recount our visit to a primary school where we were swarmed by curious children, but we are getting picked up soon. Courtney took some gravol last night, slept well, and is feeling healthy this morning, just groggy. I am still blowing my nose lots but other than that, good.
From the Kakamega Sheywe guest house,
This is Neil,
Signing out.

Tales from the dark side.

Hello all!

Sorry for lack of communication. To catch you all up to date, I fell ill with malaria this past week. (I know, I know, always sick!) I am now well on my way to recovery, with only a cough, mild stomach ache and er, fewer toilet problems to deal with.

If the medication hadn't worked, I wouldn't have believed I actually had malaria, since I still deny ever being bitten by a mosquito. I was actually glad, however, when the young doctor decided it was malaria, because I figured at least you can cure that. And of the two diseases that they were tossing around, malaria sounds better than typhoid.

Sparing you most of the details, it was a week of hell. Absolutely. Why is there no vaccine against this I have to ask. I was in agony, and the hotel staff hated us, as Neil had to keep going down to get bunches of toilet paper. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I read, a lot, in the bathroom really. It became the most convenient spot for me to hang out.

Neil was fantastic, much better than even I could have been. He stayed with me through everything, got me medications and yogurt to take them with, and then sat with me to make sure I got down at least a cup full of it, even though I wanted to eat nothing. He did cooking and cleaning, wet towels to put on me to break my fevers, and even got up with me in the middle of the night when I was sick. I cannot express how grateful I am that he was with me.

Last night I ate my first large meal, vegetable curry and chapatis (which is basically a flour pancake used to scope the food up.). I was very glad that I was able to eat again. And, all the coughing is starting to give some definition to my stomach, which is almost a plus. (Just kidding!!!)

Well, I just really wanted to break a week's silence and let everyone know that I'm alright!

I hope everyone at home is doing well! I miss you all, especially this past week, and have never really felt as young as I did when we weren't sure what was wrong with me. It makes you very grateful for your loved ones!

All my love,
Courtney

Courtney's First Post!

Hi everybody!

Things are going better for me. I am calming down. Every good day usually has something not so good though. I got a stomach bug yesterday and insulted a bunch of rural women by running out of the room where they were serving the food and being ill in the latrine. I'll be avoiding milk from now on, as I think that is what made me sick. Neil kept trying to feed me, and I just wanted to sleep. I almost hit him. But I took 2 gravol, and I was better this morning. Although I slept for a very, very long time.

Today has been a good day, with no problems so far. (Cross your fingers for me!) We went to part of the Kakamega Forest today, and saw some really cool trees and birds and buterflies and some monkies. Ephy's three kids came with us, and they were upset they didn't see any in the forest, but when we were driving down the road to leave I spotted some, so we got out of the car and took photos. It was pretty neat. One of them kept posing for us.

We've found a supermarket that I like, so shopping and cooking for ourselves should happen more often now. Hopefully that will mean less illnesses.

Tomorrow we're going to a Quaker church, where service lasts from 10:30 to 2 in the afternoon. It should be an interesting experiance!

Gotta go, we're sitting in Ephy's husband's office, as we're wary to wander off to the cyber cafe on our own yet.

Lots of love,
Courtney

First, scattered update (we're alive!)

Hi all, we're.... alive in Kenya! Which I'm sure is a relief for you to hear. It's been an intense experience already, with much learning, some anxiety... and not much that we're used to (although the drug store here was strangely filled with Colgate Total and Listerine). We had an ill-planned adventure in Nairobi which happily ended in an animal orphanage, where we got to see a lot of Kenya's animals within hours of landing. Our waits in the airport were excruciatingly long, and the sleep deprivation was becoming quite bad. I'm not going to give many details now, but it's 5:50pm on thursday, we arrived in Kakamega last night and drove up a 'highway' (dirt road) to Ephy's family's place, which is surrounded by a corrugated metal fence (9 feet tall) and a security guard (everything has security guards here), had dinner and met a few people, then came back to our appartment. The appartment itself is fairly nice... living room, cooking facilities, two beds (one large), bathroom with toilet and shower. It's on the top floor of a building contained within a larger villa-like complex.... but screens were missing from the window, there were holes in our malaria mosquito nets, a car alarm was going off all night, we were woken up by the sounds of lots of animals in the morning. Also I took the first cold shower of my life this morning.... though we got the hot water working afterwards. I woke up around 10:30 this morning, and i had slept through soem heavy rains because i took some drowsy cough and cold medication last night... oh yeah, because i got sick on the plane going out of toronto, and i'm still blowing my nose. I think its beginning to clear up.

Everything is kind of indescribable, and we're right int he imddle of it, so i'm not sure how useful i'm going to be in giving you a picture of what we've been seeing. Courtney's kind of overwhelmed, deeply out of her comfort zone, but i hope that soon she will feel more comfortable, and we will just be careful about where we are going. There are lots and lots of people streaming through the streets and in the markets, when we were driving up the highway even at night in the pitch black, people were walking and biking up and down the street. The roads are fairly insane (and we got a taste of this in Nairobi on an ill-concieved and slightly accidental adventure which ended up in an animal orphanage)... there are no traffic lights, people drive on the left side of the road (which adds to the disconcertedness), everyone jaywalks, there are tons of bicycles, and the general rule of the road is 'don't hit anyone', other than that it's all fair game. Every oncoming vehicle on the highway seemed lik an impending head-on collission because the road is so bad that normally you just drive on the best part of it, then move to the side for any oncoming cars (the road was not very busy). After driving up the main road into Kakamega we turned off the road and started driving through what looked like a jungle tunnel, with trees on either side and above us... a corridor of the forest. Thenw e came out into 'residental areas' where ephy lives.

Today we went out with Ephy to the CABDA office, so we got to see kakamega in the daylight. In the morning i spred open a curtain and was somewhat stunned by what i could see... green hills dipping below us, some of it being cultivated, a group of people on the grass slaughtering a cow, 5 other cattle grazing (in our complex) and a bunch of young animals... a school sitting on one of the hills, then the market up the way on the road full of people. Ephy picked us up and warned us that we were be called 'Mzungu' (white person), but not to be offended. Indeed, we're almost the only white people here... Courtney is aware of people ("everyone") looking at us as we walk by (and there's lots of people), which I'm not as aware of... but we're definitely something to look at. We've seen 3 other white people today, but that's all since we left the Airport.
We met Ephy's family and her husband, Morris, who runs another, larger organization. I'm really pleased with them, them have put thought into what we can be doing, and today we sat down with Ephy and talked about a work plan. Her first idea was for us to finance and implement the building of of water tank/rain catchment for a school, but today we decided to fund a microcredit group and work with them in the various programs of training they get as a part of their loan. Ephy is going to rewrite our intern descriptions and further break down our tasks, as well as add ones which we've suggested... building a website, seeking funding, putting together packages to send out to potential and current donors, develop case studies... we're both really pleased with the range of things we have been invited to work in, and we may be able to contribute to. With our current fundraising $1600, we have enough to give a microcredit loan of 3500 shillings to 25 people. The normal program would be 5000 shillings for 25 people, so if we get the grant, or if we recieve more donations, we will be able to run a full program.
We have been able to withdraw money without difficulty, and i am about to check if these have included conversion fees or not (there's not, or if there are, they are very reasonable). It seems we will only be working with cash, withdrawing what we need when we need it. I just found out that our hosts are waiting outside for us so i'll cut this short now. We're alive, we're coping, we've a lot to learn and we've learned a lot already. We're learning some swahili, we're nzuri (fine), but will need a fair amount of time to adjust.
We've gotta go!
Much love
Neil