Anticipation

Anticipation, that’s part of what Christmas is all about right? I can remember in church when the nativity Joseph and Mary moved closer and closer to the manger each Sunday. I remember waiting anxiously for thanksgiving to pass so I could start playing my Christmas music. I remember looking forward to my visits home in the month of December to see what lovely baked goods my mom had prepared and the anticipation for the pie on Christmas eve along with the scraps of pie crust that I had to fight my sister for. We wait all year for this season of good-will and cheer and you can’t help but smile when “Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas” or “Jingle Bells” comes on the radio. Part of the anticipation is in the memories of Christmas. Remember what was so great about past years, makes the next year even more anxiously awaited.

I find myself taking a seven hour bus ride to Nairobi, followed by a 7 hour wait in the airport, followed by a 6 hour flight to Rome to celebrate Christmas this year with my sweetheart, Adam. Part of me mourns the fact that I won’t be part of my family traditions this year. I won’t be decorating Christmas cookies or making Lefse or joking about how horribly my dad wrapped my mom’s Christmas presents. However, I find myself more anxious for this Christmas than any other. Ok, granted it may be because it is taking me almost two days to get where I am going, and it may be because I haven’t seen Adam in almost 7 months. But I think it also has a little to do with the anticipation for the future. This Christmas won’t be like any I’ve had in the past, but that’s what makes it great. Being away from family and loved ones truly makes you love and appreciate them even more. I have been dreaming and thinking about Christmas more this year than any year before and the anticipation is nearly killing me! For those of you who are lucky enough to be around family on Christmas, give everyone a little extra hug this year and put a little anticipation into making next year even better.

Mabera Youth

A member of my community, Brother Richard, is doing his seminary training at a nearby catholic parish in the town of Mabera. He told me he was planning a youth seminar and asked me if I could help with it. So this weekend I made the trip out to Mabera, but I was not really sure what to expect.

My first day, I got the lay of the land.  The tour included the Catholic Church compound where we would host the seminar, the new church being built across the road, and the catholic girls school. There are 42 different tribes in Kenya, and along with the physical introduction, I got a cultural introduction to the people of the Kuria tribe who live in this area. It is holiday break, but the school is full of over 120 young girls who have run away from their families because they do not want to be circumcised. Every three years the Kuria tribe gathers all of their young girls between the ages of 7 and 13, takes them out to a field and performs female genital mutilation (FGM). Although it is technically illegal in Kenya, it happens anyways and you can hear the drums, singing and dancing that goes along with the ceremony. I won’t go into the details about what actually happens when a female is “circumcised.” It can be easily googled for those of you who are curious, but just know it is an awful and barbaric practice. Not only can it cause problems physically, but it is supposed to signify a girl becoming a woman and this leads to many of these very young girls dropping out of school and being married off. There are a few brave girls who escape circumcision but it often means disobeying their parents and a few are unable to return home. I felt a heaviness in my heart that lifted a little as the girls gathered around to sing me a welcome song.

The next morning I got the agenda for the seminar. This included me teaching lessons on self-esteem, assertiveness, communication, friendship, and romantic relationships for about 4 hours each morning. Then I arranged some group building activities and games before we had free time to kick the soccer ball and toss the volleyball around at the nearby field. We had almost 70 youth attending the seminar ranging in age from 14 to 22 years old.  In our free time, some of the girls taught me their traditional dances and in turn I taught them the electric slide and the Macarena. It was an amazing experience and I think I got just as much out of the seminar as the youth did.

The only difficulty of visiting a new community is that everyone wants to feed you. I would start my mornings with breakfast and only one cup of chai was never acceptable. Approximately two hours later it was time to take a chai break… yet another cup of chai. Then a few hours later it was time for lunch. If you do not fill your plate, you will be asked to please take more. Then for dessert you will be asked to take a mango, then a banana, and then an orange because you haven’t had one of those yet. Then another few hours later it is time for more chai. On one of these days we went to visit some members of the community at their homes and I ended up eating two lunches because it is impolite to refuse food when it is prepared for your visit. I came back to the parish with a bloated stomach to drink more chai and then force myself to eat dinner.  I don’t think I will eat for a week now…

I had such a wonderful weekend dancing, singing, and both teaching and learning from this group of young people. I know some of them will do great things in Kenya.

A little Christmas cheer

I had a wonderful two weeks at my peace corps training. It was nice to have a chance to be in Nairobi… which feels more and more like America. It was also nice to spend time with my fellow Americans. I got to drink a real vanilla latte and “real” beer on tap. I also ate some protein for the first time since I killed my last chicken (about a month ago) and took hot showers (sometimes twice a day… just because I could). It’s always hard coming back to taking bucket baths, dealing with lots of bugs (sometimes in my food), and struggling with cultural and language barriers being the only white person in my rural village.

I expected to feel a little depressed coming back to the village but I wasn’t prepared for what I would find. I spent my entire Peace Corps stipend and then some in Nairobi so coming back to the village I had just enough money to pick up my packages from the post office and for transportation to my house. Of course I came home on Sunday when the post office was closed so after I paid for my transport back to my house, I didn’t have enough left over to go back to town and pick them up the next day. That’s just how it goes I thought; I’ll get to my packages eventually. Little did I know there had been no rain while I was gone and my outside water tank was completely empty. Also, there had been a lot of male circumcisions while I was gone and the staff used my gas for the autoclave to sterilize the surgical equipment which also left my gas tank completely empty. So here I am, in the middle of a Kenyan village with no water, no way of cooking my food. I am left with one half-full indoor water tank which I need for washing two weeks’ worth of clothes, bathing (although it would be cold because I have no way to heat my water), and drinking. That also leaves my food choices to milk, peanuts, raw oatmeal and jelly. I figured people eat raw oatmeal in granola bars and such, so I poured milk over it like cereal and added a little jelly to flavor for breakfast. It wasn’t awful but I had to eat something because I was going to spend my whole day walking around the village for our last round of the polio vaccination campaign. Was I internally freaking out about what I was going to eat or how I was going to solve my problem of not being able to cook my food? Of course I was. Was there anything I could do about it? Not really. I didn’t have any money to buy gas, let alone pay for the transport to get to town and back with my 50lb. gas tank. Also, the way Kenya works, there was no guarantee that if I went to town, that there would even be gas at the station for me. It seems to be a rare commodity and difficult to get when you need it.

I had already searched my Peace Corps cook book for ways to make “no-bake” granola bars with my peanut butter and oatmeal when Sister Mien came up to me and said “I’m sorry the clinic had to use your gas. They have gas in Rongo and I’d like to go fill up your tank for you.” I asked to go along in order to pick up my packages. Now here I sit with a full tank of gas, warm water for my bucket bath, and I’m listening to my favorite Christmas music with a Christmas tree smelling candle burning and more food and snacks than I could eat in a month.

Buffalo Jerky, twislers, butter and cheddar flavored seasonings, boxed macaroni and cheese, and did I mention the candle that smells like a Christmas tree? I guess everything happens for a reason and I couldn’t feel happier or more loved. Thanks for keeping me going and Merry Christmas.

Traveling Kenya

I was doing the final touches of packing for my trip to In Service Training (IST) in Limuru for two weeks. I looked out my windows and happened to see groups of people (mostly men) walking around with spears, sticks (that look like clubs), and pangas (a machete type knife). I didn’t think much of it because there had been a group of men with dogs that had been wandering around my village hunting with their dogs earlier in the week. I assumed it was just a BIG hunting party. I was finally packed up and on my way out of the village when I came to the junction that is one kilometer from the dispensary to see a large mob. This mob consisted of men and women of all ages with their hands full of spears, sticks, and pangas forming a circle around a few individuals. There were so many people it was impossible for me to pass and I had to wait for the mob to die down to continue on my way. My co-worker explained to me that there had been a few robberies in my village that night and all of the villagers had come together to hunt down and capture the people responsible. Those guilty thieves were now in the center of this angry mob and tensions were high. There is a way of handling such situations in Kenya called mob justice. Mob justice is where a group of people severely beat or kill a guilty party for whatever reason and there are no repercussions for their actions. If a mob kills someone, the police simply pick up the body and the mob goes on with their day. Now I am standing at the junction with no way of passing and wondering if I am going to see some people beat to death in front of my very eyes. Luckily the police arrived, nobody died (that I know of) and I was able to pass and continue on my way.

The junction in my village

The next leg of my journey I am traveling on a matatu. A matatu is Kenya’s form of public transportation in which they pack 14 to 24 people into a 11 seater van. There are typically people hanging out the doors and it feels like a rollercoaster as the driver speeds down an unpaved dirt road littered with pot-holes. This drive normally takes 2 hours, but today it was took me almost 4 hours due to bad road conditions, and the frequent stops to pack more people in. I had almost reached my destination for the first leg of my trip when the matatu was stopped by a piece of rope stretched across the road. This is a common way to stop traffic for police to check vehicles for correct registration or to charge a fare to continue down the road. Our matatu was stopped because we had an illegal amount of people inside and I could hear the police officer yelling in Swahili for the driver to pay him a bribe in order to let us pass. “Leta Pesa!! Leta Pesa!” The man working the door and the driver both jumped out of the car and started yelling back in the police officers face. Some passengers jumped ship and disappeared into the woodworks. Then to top it all off, the entire side door to the matatu fell off. I eventually made it to my destination after the door was put back on the vehicle. It was just a reminder that you should never be in a hurry to get anywhere in Kenya. I am getting a lot of practice in patience and no day goes by without a little cultural experience.