Christmas Time in Kenya

It will be my first Christmas away from home, and I have to admit I am getting a little homesick. I miss family and friends, not to mention that the 80 degree weather here does nothing to conjure up my usual images of the holiday season--that is, of deep snow banks outside the windows, cookies baking in the oven, and a freshly cut Christmas tree glistening in the corner of our dining room.

I suppose there are a few reminders that Christmas is approaching and that the holiday season is finally here. For one, the shopping malls in Nairobi are decorated with Christmas lights. Just the other day as I was shopping at a shoe store in town, I actually saw a Kenyan Santa Clause with a fake white beard ringing a bell for charity donations. And today I walked into my office's reception room to find that Jane, the receptionist, had put up a tiny fake Christmas tree by her desk. Even so, these elements of Kenyan Christmas cheer do not compare to Christmas time back home. I was speaking to OAIC's General Secretary Rev. Nicta Lubaale the other day, and he admitted that Kenyans do not 'do Christmas the way people in the West do it.' Nicta had just arrived back from a trip to the UK, where he had seen lights lining every street and mounds of Christmas chocolate piled high in the store windows. I tried to look for Christmas chocolate the other day as I was shopping at a supermarket, but could not find one piece. There was a whole wall of chocolate candy in the store, yet none of it was decorated with little snowmen, Santa Clauses, or holiday wreaths.

Of course I was anticipating Christmas to be different here than what I have known my entire life growing up. The consumer nature of the holiday season that has developed so intricately in the West is not necessarily indigenous to other parts of the world. Even the tradition of giving gifts is not practiced nearly as much here, whereas back home people go into an annual shopping frenzy to find the perfect Christmas presents for their family and friends. Perhaps it is good for me to spend a holiday season without all the distractions of the material world. It's important to focus upon the story of the Christ child himself and how his coming reminds us to love one another, even the less privileged in society... That is all well and good, of course, but I could still use a few more ho, ho, ho's!

Maybe I am speaking too soon. I do actually have exciting holiday plans in store. My office officially closes on December 18th and reopens again next year on January 5th. This gives me ample opportunity to celebrate the season and ring in the new year! I'll spend Christmas with the other American volunteers at our site coordinator Phyllis' house (there's rumor that she might even cook a turkey!) After Christmas on Dec. 27th I'll board a bus and head to Western Kenya to visit a friend of mine at his home village near the town of Mbale. Many of my Kenyan friends that I've met here in Nairobi are originally from Western Province, so I am excited to see the area, and to escape the city for a bit of relaxation in a new setting.

I hope everyone is having a nice holiday season wherever you might be. And to my family back home, you better still hang up my Christmas stocking! I'll be with you in spirit.

Eye-Opening Experiences

These past few weeks have been intensely eye-opening for me in a number of ways.

While I've already written about my exposure to situations of severe poverty in the AIC communities I've visited so far, I feel like I am really beginning to internalize the issues that are at hand. Mainly it is the injustice that I see played out clearly in the way some people live compared to others. When visiting another women's group in a slum area of Nairobi recently, I met a lady named Radempter Masitsa who took me to see her charcoal selling business. She explained that before she had joined the group, she was unemployed and was trying to support two young children as a single mother with no income. After joining the women's group she was able to take out a small loan of Ksh 5,000 ($66.00) in order to establish her business. Yet she is still struggling to make ends meet. As I was speaking with her, I realized that the meager mounds of charcoal I saw spread out in piles on a plastic tarp was this lady's entire livelihood. The very survival of her family depended on the charcoal and if the business failed, Radempter and her children would be left with absolutely nothing. I compare this situation with some of the people living in my apartment complex who have a huge house, two big fancy cars, and maidservants who do their laundry for them every day. While I do not condemn these people I wonder, where is the justice? Why do some live with so much and others live with next to nothing? How can we even begin to address this situation of drastic inequality in the way human beings live today?

Along with the exposure to poverty, I had another type of intense experience this past weekend as I attended a 'peace' concert (of all things) at Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi. I arrived at the park with a Kenyan friend of mine to meet up with some other friends who were already there. As we were searching for our group, I noticed a huge crowd of people gathered in one area of the park. My friend told me that the crowd had beaten up what what was probably a thief. All of a sudden the crowd began running in another direction, chasing after a second thief in a chaotic frenzy. A small group of mounted police on horseback appeared, but seemed to do nothing about controlling the angry hoards of people.

We moved to another area of the park where the 'peace' concert was going on, found our friends there, and enjoyed the Reggae music for a while. Yet the image of the angry crowd stuck in my head as I began to imagine what the 2007 post election violence must have felt like to many Kenyans for two months straight. The feeling of fear and anger in the air, witnessing atrocities occurring, and realizing that the police and other authorities have no control over the situation is a pretty awful combination. I learned later on that it was drunk university students who had smashed a vender's soda bottles and caused the raucous.

Vic and Deanna as we watched the 'peace' concert in Uhuru Park, Nairobi

While they are intense and at times disheartening, I believe that these experiences have in fact enriched my perspective of life in Kenya. I realize that I must take in the bad with the good, and hope that my work here this year will, in some small way, improve tough situations for the better.

A Ride Around Mombasa

Last week I rode on a ten-foot high camel! I've never ridden one before, and my first time could not have been in a more perfect setting: on a sun-lit beach looking out over the Indian Ocean. The only unpleasant part about the experience was when the camel knelt down to let me off at the end of the ride. I got jerked forward and back again, and I almost fell off! But I managed to hold onto the saddle, and so survived my first camel ride.

All this took place during a five-day trip to Mombasa on Kenya's east coast. I traveled there with three other co-workers from OAIC. The purpose of our journey was to visit several women and youth groups connected with our organization to see what they are doing on the ground.

Manusura Women's Group. "Manusura" translates to "survivors."

Going to Mombasa to do community development work rather than on a vacation really gave me a different perspective of the city, which is one of Kenya's major tourist destinations. The level of poverty I found in the slum areas was staggering next to the luxury of Mombasa's other areas. The rolling green hills around the city's perimeters, fancy hotels, and white sandy beaches did not fully cover up the destitution that many people who live there are facing. In the groups we visited, I heard stories about the 2007 post-election violence ravaging people's businesses and livelihoods. Young men and women in the youth groups described discovering they are HIV positive, and also being orphans having to raise their younger siblings alone.

Yet with these devastating stories there was also a feeling of hope in each group we visited. The members had come together to support one another and take action against the challenge's that poverty and destitution have placed before them. Many members of the women's groups had been able to reopen their businesses that had been so heavily impacted by the 2007-08 violence. Youth group members have also utilized their natural talents such as drama, acrobatics, dance, and singing to restrengthen their own confidence and engage with one another in a healthy, safe environment. This hope that I found in each member of the groups we visited is a testimony to the importance of community and the resilience of human beings in the face of utter desolation.

Meeting with one of the youth groups.

Some little girls in one of Mombasa's slum areas.

A private residence on Mombasa's coast

Although my trip to Mombasa might sound intense, this was not entirely the case. I had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the beautiful coastal city. Along with the camel ride, I took another ride in a sailboat out in the bay of a beautiful, palm-tree lined beach. I swam in the warm currents of the Indian ocean, and ate "nyama choma" (roasted meat) at restaurants around town. I admit that I did sweat quite a bit--Mombasa is about ten degrees hotter and more humid than Nairobi. The place actually reminded me a lot of West Africa, with an easy, laid-back feeling in the air that was a welcomed change from the hustle and bustle of Nairobi. Overall, the people I met, life-changing stories that I heard, and the unique experiences I had in Mombasa made the trip wonderful. I really look forward to traveling with OAIC to other parts of Kenya, and to other countries in Africa as well... and next up: Tanzania! Stay tuned.

Beatrice, one of my co-workers at OAIC, enjoying our sailboat ride.

Rough Hands, New Lifestyle

My hands are beginning to look ROUGH. It's because I've actually been using them...

... mainly in my household chores. They are numerous, despite the fact that my apartment is just a 12x12ft room with a small bathroom attached. To begin with, there's laundry to do, and hand-washing is the name of the game. Once a week I sit in my bathroom with a plastic bucket in front of me and I scrub clothes for a good hour-and-a-half. When I wash my jeans, bedsheets, and bath towel in particular, I feel as though I'm wrestling with some big guy. Every time I challenge him to a match he resists being beaten down, wrung out, and hung out to dry, and usually gets the upper hand over my weakened, aching muscles. And the detergent. It burns! My knuckles have bruises from that detergent; the white powder sizzles the already-raw skin on my fingers and it continues to burn hours after I've finished doing my laundry.

My apartment complex

Do I complain about hand-washing my wardrobe every week? No, not at all. Instead I've developed an appreciation for the effort that goes into a seemingly simple task. I've always taken doing laundry for granted back home where everyone lives by their machine washers and dryers without a second thought. In particular, I've come to admire the Kenyan women who I've seen sitting on the street corners of Nairobi, waiting for cars to pull over and hire them to do washing or other house-holds chores for just a few Kenyan shillings.

But of course there's also cooking, a much more enjoyable endeavor! Ugali, Chapatis, Egg Chapatis, Rice Pilau, Vegetable Stew, Fried Rice, Ndengu (aka lentil stew), sauces, relishes, mashed banana dishes... when it comes to Kenyan food, I've tried many things. Yet I admit I have not yet mastered the art of making chapatis. A "chapati" is basically just flat bread fried in oil and eaten with Ndengu or other kinds of stew. Yet during the mixing process, the chapati dough must be exactly the right consistency with enough oil added so that the bread doesn't become dry and brittle, but remains soft and flexible. Then the rolling requires artful skill and attention. The chapati is useless, according to a Kenyan friend of mine, if it is not rolled in a perfect circle with just the right thickness. I'm glad that friend wasn't around the last time I tried making Chapatis because it turned out to be a fiasco. My little kitchenette in the apartment looked like a war-torn disaster zone, and I even got a battle scar, burning my forearm on the hot frying pan as I tried desperately to role a perfect chapati circle! But I'm fine. Just learning, I suppose. Next time will be better, but I think I'll wait a few days and let my burn heal before I attempt making chapatis again.

Cooking and doing laundry are of course essential tasks for me here. Yet they have both become increasingly difficult to accomplish due to the water shortages I've been experiencing in my home. With the country currently facing a severe drought, water rationing has become a normal part of every day life. Some days, maybe even two or three days in a row, I wake up in the morning to find that there is no water in the pipes. In these cases I resort to my water storage tank, graciously supplied to me by my OAIC office even though it was expensive. When using it I carefully measure how much water I fetch in the bucket to wash my dishes, take a bath, or do my laundry. I've come to realize the amount of water I've been wasting back home in my comfortable, yet somewhat irresponsible, American lifestyle. Other mornings I wake to water gushing out of the faucet. Those are the days I rejoice and cherish a hot shower right away before the water vanishes again unexpectedly. I can only imagine what this water shortage situation looks like in Nairobi's slum communities such as Kiambio or Kibera, and elsewhere around Kenya, where entire families do not have the luxury of a nice water storage tank sitting right outside their door...

So even though my hands are becoming rougher every day, for me it means that I am adjusting to a new lifestyle here in Kenya. I shake hands with people whose palms are rougher than my own, acknowledging the strength and capability required for various aspects of Kenyan life, and I aspire to it!

Some interesting photos from these past few weeks:

Several cows riding in the back of a small pick-up truck, Downtown Nairobi.

The graduation ceremony for Daniel (center), a co-worker of mine from OAIC. Also pictured: Daniel's family&friends, and John Padwick, a British expatriate and one of my supervisors at OAIC.

At the Animal Orphanage, Nairobi National Park.


Uhuru Park, Downtown Nairobi.

Ethiopian Food. It may look unappetizing here, but the taste is fantastic.

Ngong Women's Cooperative

Members of Ngong Women's Cooperative

Yesterday I went with a colleague of mine to visit a women's cooperative connected with the OAIC in a town called Ngong right outside of Nairobi. The group had formed after the 2007 post-election violence, when more than 1500 Kenyans lost their lives in the ethnic clashes that ravaged the country. Nairobi's slum neighborhoods felt the impact of the violence more severely than other areas of the city. Houses were burned, stores looted, and people murdered because of their tribal or political affiliations.

After meeting with the Ngong Women's Cooperative, I realized I was witnessing the aftermath of this violence first hand. Many of the members had lost their homes and businesses to fire and vandalism during the conflict. With families to support and mouths to feed, the women had banded together as a group and appealed for a loan from the OAIC to start small-scale businesses. The large group is divided into subgroups of five women each, and these subgroups hold one another accountable for repaying their loans in small increments over a period of time. Now the members have been able to open vegetable kiosks at the market, beauty salons, and tailoring businesses as a result of their cooperative.

I visited a group member named Alice's beauty salon, which was just a small tin shack with a chair and a small shelf of chemical hair products on one wall. Alice told me that for a while business had been good and that she had a lot of regular customers. Yet in recent months her clients have dwindled. Many people, she explained, are beginning to prioritized other basic needs such as food over plaiting their hair. The current economic hardship that many Kenyans face and the increased prices on commodities have had a clear impact on people like Alice. Yet the beautician remained optimistic, saying that she had almost finished repaying her first loan, and that with her second loan she would buy a hairdryer for her salon.

I felt like yesterday's meeting was very successful and that the women accepted me into their midst. They asked me who I was and why I was visiting them, wanting to know how they could benefit directly from my work. When I told them that I wanted to hear their stories and experiences in order to share them with the public (ie. potential donors), the women were excited. They wish to make their group known in a wider context, to show what they are doing at the grassroots level and to attract future support for their cooperative.

I will revisit the group again tomorrow and spend the entire afternoon with them. They've offered to take me around to see their businesses and to meet more of their members. Hopefully I will be able to take pictures (with the women's consent, of course!) to display on our new OAIC website. I also want to capture the essence of their group by recording the members' individual as well as collective experiences, and sharing these stories with wider African as well as international communities.

Beginning Work at the OAIC

My YAV group with some friends from Meru.

It's about time for another post!
So a lot has happened since I was last in touch. My group of volunteers split up and moved out to our individual work sites around the country. It wasn't as dramatic for me because I only had to move right down the street, whereas a few of the other volunteers moved to towns several hours away from Nairobi.

This year I'll be working at the Organization of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), which is an ecumenical body with branches all around the African continent. African Instituted (or Independent) Churches began during the colonial period as a reaction against the Christian missionary efforts of European colonizers. These independent churches blend traditional values and practices with more mainstream forms of Christianity. The OAIC fosters a number of social programs in AIC communities such as HIV/Aids outreach, food security, and the empowerment of women and youth.

The organization's headquarters are located here in Nairobi, and I'm working for their international office in the communications department. My main job will be to collect stories from the field, and write articles about what is happening on the ground at the various sites connected with the OAIC. This means there is a lot of travel in store for me, around Kenya, East Africa, and the African continent. Actually, I just found out that in November I'll go to Nigeria and Botswana to visit the OAIC offices in those two countries. There is also a possibility that I'll go to Ghana later in the year, which would be excellent! I'm very excited about the opportunity to travel and see different parts of Africa, and maybe to visit Ghana again. The work really draws on my anthropology experience a lot, which is great and not something I fully anticipated. And I'm becoming more and more interested in communications as a field, so we'll see where that leads.

Cooking Kenyan food-- Ugali and stew

I've been learning to take matatu's (minibuses) around the city... they are crazy. They drive up on sidewalks and across round-about medians, and I've almost been run down by several now. Not to worry! I'm fine. I've also been learning to cook Kenyan food. Chapatis is probably my favorite. It's like Indian flatbread and you eat it with this lentil stew called "ndengu". So delicious. It's been nice meeting some Kenyans through work, and through the guest house where I was staying before I moved into my apartment. I've made good friends already, and they've been taking me around the city and showing me the ropes.

I hope you are enjoying reading my posts, even though I know they are few and far in between... I promise to work on that!

First 2 Weeks

A herd of cattle on the road to Meru.

Life has been crazy, yet thrilling since I arrived here in Kenya two weeks ago. I finally have some time to sit down, write, and connect with all of you again from across the African continent.

My group of six volunteers arrived in Nairobi on September 2nd, and immediately began our month long orientation to Kenya. We’ve been staying at a guest house and doing a number of activities and programs with our site coordinator, Rev. Phyllis Byrd. Phyllis is well connected in Kenya to many intellectuals. As a result, our days have been filled with lectures from her various colleagues and friends about Kenyan politics, economics, religion, and the role of ethnicity in Africa, to name just a few. On top of that we began our Kiswahili lessons at a language center last week. So far, it’s been really enjoyable. Our teacher, Vincent, is a character who’s always laughing and cracking jokes. He’s great, even though we do tend to get off topic a bit… but hey, we’re just learning creatively. I think I’ll pick up the language quickly.

The first weekend we were here, we stayed with our individual host families in the attempt to just relax, get over jetlag, and become immersed in Kenyan culture. My family is great. Both parents are lawyers in their late thirties with three young boys aged 15, 11, and 1 years old. The baby, Mangari, is beyond cute and the older boys are very friendly and engaging. My mom, Muthoni, was wonderful and took me around Nairobi, pointing out good places to shop for groceries, clothes etc. during my year here. Although I will be living on my own in an apartment, I definitely foresee my relationship with the family continuing and deepening even more.

Last weekend we traveled as a group to Meru, a district in Kenya about four hours north-east of Nairobi. Meru is near Mt. Kenya, so needless to say the rocky, rugged terrain around that area is stunning. Banana trees and other crops dot the rolling hills and mountains in terraced agriculture as far as the eye can see. I was surprised by how dry the earth seemed, but remembered the drought that the country is experiencing right now, something I could not visualize having been in the insular city setting since my arrival.

Yesterday we took a day trip to the Rift Valley, looking at some of the early human archaelogical excavation sites near the town of Nakuru. I have to say that the Rift Valley is one of the most amazing places I've ever been. The ground feels (and truly is) ancient. The very stones underfoot have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and it's hard to keep from wondering how many people and animals have occupied the mountainous landscape throughout history. The excavation sites we visited answered some of these questions for me, giving us an idea of the past residents of the Rift Valley. We saw stone tools used by early humans as well as ancient games carved into the rock surface, seen in the picture at the left.


At the end of the day, we traveled up to a huge (active!) volcano crater by Lake Nakuru. From our high perch at the top of a cliff overlooking the volcano, we could see little spots inside the crater's rim where smoke was spurting up from underneath. The scrubby earth there looked unsettled, like it could burst apart unexpectedly any day in a massive lava bath. I could even see the pathways where lava had been flowing during the last eruption. After seeing that, I really admire the residents of Nakuru for their courage to live almost side by side with a massive, active volcano!

The huge (active!) volcano crater we visited in the Rift Valley.

We got back to Nairobi last night exhausted after hours in the van, hitting rush hour as we reentered the city. Traffic in Nairobi is really something else… it took us 45 minutes the other morning just to travel 2 km. Hmmmm.

Off to Kenya.

Well, I'm off to Kenya.

It's finally August 31st, 2009, the day I've been waiting for since last March when I found out I would be spending this year abroad in Kenya through PCUSA Young Adult Volunteers (YAV). My flight leaves tonight around 8pm from JFK Airport in New York, and I'm already anticipating watching hours of movies on my personal, in-flight TV screen that often (though not always!) comes complementary with long international flights. I'll need that to get me through the six hour flight to London Heathrow, and then the eight hour flight to Nairobi! I've spent this past week at an orientation in Stony Point, New York with the rest of the volunteers going around the country, and around the world. A few are heading down to Peru, others to Guatemala and Northern Ireland, and some are going as far as Kerala, India. And for me, it's Kenya. I'll be there in just a little over a day! That picture up above is of me with my orientation roommate, Anna, the night before we head off to our international destinations, in her case it's Peru.

Alright, I'm leaving for the airport in about an hour's time, so I have to run now and put the finishing touches on my packing! Wish me luck, keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and of course keep on reading. There's more to come!