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.