no hope

we went to a children's daycare center, aspiring to become an orphanage, in one of the slums in nairobi yesterday. a lady runs it, brings children in (whose parents have abandoned them, are alcoholics, vegabonds with no place to stay, have so many children they can't support them, etc) and tries to teach them simple things like the alphabet, how to pronounce letters, parts of the body, manners, how to greet people, what items in a house are called, etc. she has 25, but there were only 17 when we went because, she assumes, the other 8 are out collecting plastic or trying to get money for food. some of the children don't even get one meal a day, and so providing food there is an incentive for them to come, but not something that is affordable - one of the challenges she faces. she tries to get children to learn the importance of an education, while they could be out, not learning, and trying to make money for food.

other challenges, on the long shitshow list of them - all stemming from the lack of resources - are keeping an educator there who will work for no money, paying rent on the tiny shack that is often robbed in the night, trying to teach anything without pencils, paper, books, desks, and keeping the children safe, as there is a huge hole right behind the center where one child has fallen in and died. she has taken discarded, large potato sacks and painted on them to create instructional posters - with the alphabet, the body, the kenyan flag, animals, etc on them.

we asked how many children, in the same situation as these, she thought there were in the slum. hundreds was her response, stay right here and i can bring you hundreds.

it's way too overwhelming, as there are many slums in nairobi, this was just one. i was informed that this was actually a nicer one, which was hard to believe, i mean, the place made makuyu, even with its trash everywhere and tied up donkeys and stray dogs, look pristine.

but ahhhhhh! i feel, just, hopeless and helpless. i wasn't completely naive to these situations, but seeing them first-hand, ugh. and i know why i was brought there in the first place, because im white and it is assumed that i'll have oodles of money to shell out to them. but even providing what i could isn't sustainable. i dont know, i guess no one really knows, that's why this situation exists, in more places in the world than i can fathom. i think this is probably how a large portion of the world population lives.

so i feel completely hopeless, but will try to sponsor a child there when i get back and hope that that does any good whatsoever.

oh, ghana, no!

being here for the world cup has been sooo fun (i wish i could think of a way to say that sounding less trite)! i've watched more soccer (football) than i ever have in all my life. the kids get to stay up late to watch the games, and i was at a bar in nairobi for the ghana/uruguay game and have never seen people get so rowdy! just so happy and dancing, dancing, dancing, everyone dancing and fist bumping and yelling and blowing those loud annoying long horn things. the end result was quite depressing though. and the bar was very quiet. no more shakira waka waka.

i went to mombasa for a three day vacation that inevitably turned into a four day one. we stayed on diani beach and the place was so beautiful even thinking about it makes my heart ache. we had to take a 8 hour overnight bus from nairobi to get there (and back, soo frightening, i was sure i was going to die on a stupid bus, people drive sooo crazy). this was the first time i'd come to nairobi since coming in from the airport, and the degree of culture shock i experienced was out of hand and made me realize what a rural area ive been staying in. i felt like a country bumpkin. we werent stared at or pointed at because we are white, women wore high heels and tank tops (scandalous!), there are so many cars, and people, and pizza and fast food and traffic lights (that are certainly not obeyed, but they are there) and internet cafes with more than four computers and bathrooms with toilets that kind of flush. it was like this in diani beach as well. when i buy credit (minutes) for my phone in pundamilia/makuyu, i can't buy denominations bigger than 100 shillings, its usually just 20 or 50 because thats what people can afford. in diani beach i asked for 20 shillings of credit and was laughed at. i couldnt find anything UNDER 100 shillings. it's just a different world. tourism of course changes the scenery (and makes everything about five times more expensive).

we didnt do anything in diani beach except hang out at a beach bar and be barefoot in the sand and swim in the ocean and drink wine and sweat and discreetly eat and drink items we snuck in because we couldn't afford the prices - which was good enough for me. it was so much hotter on the coast than it is here. but it was also a chance to meet some interesting people from around the world - switzerland, denmark, mexico, france, sweden, ireland, you get the idea. it made me quite grateful that english is my first language (because that's what everyone spoke), and also made me feel like like a lazy american who doesn't have to learn how to speak anything else. i did get quite defensive though when these jackasses from holland started talking crap about america. who knew i was so patriotic? this language thing also reiterated to me what bad english i speak. i was talking and this guy legitimately asked "is that english you're speaking?"

things at the orphanage are not great. everyone is sick, two of the volunteers have typhoid, and the youngest orphan, mwagi, who is three they guess, has broken his leg very badly and has been hospitalized for six weeks. im waiting for my cold to set in, as it feels inevitable with 32 coughing children running around, not covering their mouths. we got more volunteers, mostly from canada, one from chicago, and another guy from holland. i've been doing all field work (walking walking walking) and helping in the kitchen if needed in the evenings. we do child assessments and the guardians have to sign the paper with the questions on it (how is the child? how many meals does he/she get daily? how is their health? etc). most people can't speak english and the paper is all in english and i'm all in my western ideas of how could you sign something that is in a language you don't understand?! when the guardians cant write, because they never learned, eric shades their finger with pen and gets a fingerprint on it.

lucy, who is my absolute favorite - i know i shouldnt pick favorites, but i just love this girl - was looking very sad after dinner, so i went to sit by her and try to give her a hug and she put her head down on my lap, kind of lying on me. and i remember being little and my mom just gently rubbing my back and never ever wanting her to stop and i almost just burst into tears. but i didnt, i just rubbed her back and tried to make her feel better. and these moments hit me, where its obvious morgan, you are at an orphanage, as implied these children have no parents, but its like a ton of bricks sometimes. all the things we (i) have that they don't and never will and they still are as happy as can be. they make toy cars out of boxes we throw away - juice boxes, cereal boxes - and make wheels with soda pop caps, and just love pulling them around and actually share and it's just... humbling (i dont know if thats the right word). im being inarticulate.

well i've been on here for too long, so even though i feel like i have an outpour of things to say, i should go. i have to bear the two and a half (maybe 3) hour matatu ride back to pundamilia, so i should get on that.

why does abstinence-only sex information have to be riddled with mis-information?

i knew this was going to be troublesome for me. i'm just going to vent my frustrations and not pretend like this is something isolated to kenya. this happens in america, too. undoubtedly world-over. this is an overall response to my complete misunderstanding of lying to young women when they need accurate information.

i get it. i'm in a country (and a rural, poor part of this country at that) where HIV/AIDS is a real problem and young girls getting pregnant creates amazing financial strains on themselves and their future children that i can't even begin to imagine. contraceptives aren't widely available, abortion completely illegal, and women's ability to advocate for condom use - or at least i've heard, i shouldn't/can't speak to this personally - relatively low. so, yeah, sure i'll let go of my "liberal" ideas that young women should get the whole story and just suffice it to say "don't do it, at all, it's not worth it". i get it.

i don't get telling these girls that if they are blessed god will protect them from being raped, with absolutely NO mention of the fact that if you are raped, there is a drug you can get at the government clinic, PEP - post-exposure prophylaxis - that significantly decreases your chance of contracting HIV if taken in a sufficient amount of time. i don't get telling them that the morning-after pill causes infertility, that condoms aren't even 70 per cent effective, that if you get pregnant and HIV your child has a 99 per cent chance of being born HIV positive, and that getting pregnant young leads to cervical cancer. these are all, to the extent of my knowledge completely untrue. if i'm wrong, let me know. the worst part was just the re-iteration that your life is completely over if you get pregnant (but under NO circumstances should you seek out abortion). how often does this lead to self-fullfilling prophecies? oh, im pregnant, my life is over. why should i try anymore? why should i aspire to do the things i dreamed of doing? again, i don't know and can't comprehend the challenges these girls would face getting pregnant, but why the extreme scare tactics? the fact is that young women are going to have sex. this was obvious in the types of questions asked in the question and answer session. one girl asked what should she do if she gets pregnant. the answer? don't get pregnant. hmm... helpful.

hakuna matatu

another post about the matatu. i could go on for days. i've had a huge bag of potatoes fall on me, sat with my legs propped over a bag of beans, had a ten year old boy on my lap, and a man's armpit literally on my head.

the other day we got kicked off before getting to our destination because not enough people were going there. awesome. when we were taking the younger kids to the clinic, we were kicked off because they weren't running anymore; there were too many police officers on the streets "ensuring" they meet safety standards. these things never meet safety standards. i have no idea how old these machines are, and they are only supposed to hold 14 passengers - it says so on the side of this ramshackle bus, and there are only 14 seats - but very rarely do they run with only 14 people on them. i found this slightly confusing, only because i've been on many a matatu that got pulled to the side of the road by the police and then took off without much conversation or any kind of ticket or anything. i later learned and then noticed that the driver hands the officer money, basically bribes the police officer not to ticket them. this is very common and also not a big deal. eric explained this to me as if it was as common as anything, and then he asked if we had this in america.

is that man selling hankerchiefs?

I spent Saturday and Sunday in Thikatown, with two other volunteers - Emily and Rory - as a get away from the orphanage. It's no big city, and certainly not a tourist spot, but we got "western-style" bathrooms consisting of a spigot dripping water from above and a toilet (with a seat!) that almost flushed. Pure heaven. They also have a superstore called Tusky's where the items actually have prices on them and you can find just about anything (except Coke Lite, or beer).

In going to bars and restaurants I realized that when all the tables are in use, new people coming in just sit at open chairs at tables with people who they don't know. My first encounter with this was when we walked into a bar and couldn't find a table. A waiter helped us out, and told us to sit at a table where a man and a woman were already sitting. I felt awkward anyhow, being stared down as the only mzungus in the place, but even worse, as we were imposing on their seemingly intimate space. It was no big deal though, and when I paid closer attention at restaurants we ate at, I noticed that new people coming in would just plop down at tables with open seats, even though people were already there eating.

The matatu is always an experience. Every single time. It's interesting because they don't have schedules, but whenever you need one, you go wait at a stop and one will come. I've never waited longer than five minutes for one to come by. This lack of schedule simultaneously means that they don't depart at a specific time, just when the matatu is filled to the max. The bus leaves when enough people are on it. This can equate sitting in the matatu sweating my butt off and waiting while person after person climbs in. This is also a perfect time for street vendors to attempt to sell a variety of items to you: fruits, peanuts, sausages, crackers, cookies, jewelry, handkerchiefs, music... Anyhow, I have no idea how people possibly get to work on time. Though I should know better, "on time" doesn't really exist here.

I've done field work all week. WONDERFUL. It's starting to get "colder", which means I need to wear a hoodie when the sun goes down at 6:45 PM and in the morning. Apparently though, this is the coldest time of year (though I would argue that the weather is tolerable now). I don't have much else to report, except that I finally know almost all the children's names, and no longer hate the meal of beans, maize (not the corn I know from home), and pumpkin. I think I'm just mostly food-deprived. I'm also planning a mini-vay-cay to Mombasa in a couple weeks, and I'm very excited about that. THE COAST!

not tan, just dirty

so turns out all the blood work that the children had done, no one at the clinic can interpret the results. what? how does that even make sense? why administer a test that you can't understand the results of? has this never presented a problem before? so now they have to be sent to another doctor. this hitch was not mentioned when we set up these tests, only when we started to ask questions.

today i helped in the pharmacy at the government clinic (not the aforementioned clinic, which is a private, catholic institution). the patients just come to the pharmacist with their prescriptions and they are filled, at absolutely no charge. they don't have a lot of different types medication, aside from anti-malarials, dewormers, the medicine i was given - an antihistimine of sorts, an anti-psychotic, and vitamin A, so what isn't in stock or they havent received from the ministry of health has to be purchased at a private pharmacy. they also give out certain drugs for many different ailments. i learned that what i had been given for my allergic reaction is also given for fevers, headaches and colds. once again though, everything was recorded in these large register books. the lack of computers here is pretty astonishing, especially in the health care setting. the pharmacist asked how our government dealt with de-worming, as people need to take a de-wormer every three to six months. i had to explain to him that i had never, in all my life taken a de-wormer, and also that the government would have little involvement in that process.

the overall lack of conveniences here is so interesting. trying to explain to Jane, the laundry woman, who individually hand washes each piece of clothing, like seriously scrubbing (times 32 children with school uniforms!), rinses and hangs them to dry (sometimes on the barbed wire fence, which really gets me), that at home i put my dirty clothes into a machine, push a button, go do something else, come back later, move those clothes into a different machine, push another button and go do something else and when i come back my clothes are clean and dry was almost absurd. i really reflected on how much easier life is at home. washing dishes in a sink with running water, or even a dishwasher, cutting grass with lawn mowers (i daily see people on the side of the road with machetes, cutting away), and compiling information on computers (i have yet to see one computer at any clinic or school i have visited) are all luxuries that i easily take for granted. the one peice of convenience that is not lost on this country is cell phones. everyone has a cell phone. even people who dont have electricity to charge them can go to many a store and pay to charge their phones. we visited a local community based organization that provides free home based care to individuals in the area with HIV and also counseling to children who have lost their parents to HIV, and a woman who worked there, before we left, wanted to do a prayer. mid-way through her prayer her cell phone started ringing. she did not silence it or answer it, just kept on with the prayer, while her phone was ringing the whole time. and no one flinched. afterward "amen" she answered it and it was no big deal. when i sat in the consultation room with the doctor at the makuyu clinic a patient's phone started ringing and he answered it! while visiting the doctor for his cough! people just talk on cell phones anywhere and everywhere. there don't seem to be many social taboos surrounding it.

oh yay. im hungry and should try to find some food that isn't rice and beans or ugali and beans or maize and beans.

mzungu can't dance

Well, I've been doing a lot of field work. We visited schools to pay the examination fees for sponsored children, and I learned that with the way the Ministry of Education distributes funds, teachers will work sometimes for six months without getting paid. Can you imagine?

Today we took the 9 older kids to the clinic nearby to get them health check-ups. This was coordinated and funded by the volunteers, so go us. Tomorrow we are taking the 24 smaller kids and I'm just preparing for disaster. Getting them there on the matatu, calming them down when they get blood taken, helping them poo-poo in cups, herding them together, oh my.

Yesterday was Kenya's independence day, and aside from the fact that the children didn't have school and we got chapati for lunch (YAY! YUM!) there wasn't much else going on to celebrate. We watched the President give his speech on the TV and heard it on the radio. THis was in Nairobi, but I guess locally, people don't do much to celebrate. Kenya gained it's independence in 1963. But anyhow, despite the holiday the orphanage ran as it usually does, meaning Jane was there doing all the laundry, and Joseph was taking care of the pigs and cows and the farm, And Jane was cleaning the dorms, and Grace was there preparing our three daily meals. It's quite crazy because we always have to eat, right? And Grace is always there cooking all the meals. I mean, she doesn't get a day off during the week, and she really does work ALL DAY. I don't know how it works when she wants time off, but I've been here for three weeks now and she has cooked every single meal that I've eaten. Working three straight weeks!

I'm getting pretty used to the Kenyan way of life though. Mostly just taking things slowly and being patient and not always having a lot to do. I know I'll miss it when I'm back at home and always so rushed to do everything all the time. I get really annoyed sometimes at being such a spectacle (you would think some of these people have NEVER seen a white person, and maybe they haven't), but when we got to schools I feel like a rockstar, all these children will surround us and try to touch me and my hair, and even when we are out in the small towns at the market or getting a soda pop, people just stare and the children are forever practicing their English saying "how are you?!" but not knowing how to respond when you ask them back. It's cute, and I know something I'll miss when I'm back home and just another white girl.

We climbed this mountain, Ol Donya Sabuk Sunday under the impression that at the summit would be a beautiful 360 view of Kenya. So we hiked the 9 kilometers to the top, halfway dying at some parts thinking "but we have to get to the top, it'll be amazing" and even further up just thinking "we are so close, ahhh, my legs want to die, but the view, it will be awesome." When we arrived at the top we were quite confused, as there was absolutely NO VIEW at all, just a bunch of radio towers (shout out to MECA). All we could do was laugh, hysterically, and try to be positive, even though we spent too much money for entrance and an armed guard (supposedly there are a bunch of buffalo there, but I didn't see any). We are also writing a letter to the writers of the Lonely Planet who lied and led us to believe we were in for a real treat at the top.

Well, thanks for reading if you are. I want to get a Coca-Cola Light (no Diet Coke here) and buy some mango so better be heading on.