Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wednesday 27 January 2010 and Thursday 28 January 2010

Because I am beginning to settle into a routine in my schedule here in Kenya, I may begin to have fewer posts. However, this does not mean that things are going to get boring, hopefully! This post is particularly lengthy, so you will see section headings below . . . as always, I hope all of you are doing splendidly if I haven’t said that before!

More about my program

One of you reminded me that I have not yet discussed details of the program I am involved with here in Kenya. I think I’ve explained that the program is MSID, Minnesota Studies in International Development, but not much more. The structure of the program is as follows. After spending our week of orientation in Nakuru National Park which I mentioned previously, I am currently in the classroom phase, which lasts for a total of 7 weeks starting this week. During the classroom phase, I learn Swahili, Country Analysis of Kenya (history, culture), and Development Studies. The internship phase of 6 weeks follows this classroom phase. During the internship program, most of us will be required to use Swahili! Swahili is especially prevalent on the coast, which includes my place of internship, Mombasa, Kenya. Mombasa is a beautiful port city right on the Indian Ocean, so I am very excited about spending some time in the city and on the beach as well as at my internship, which you’ll hear more about later! After the 6 week internship, everyone will meet back in Nairobi and stay with their families there for one final week of wrap-up before the program officially ends at the beginning of May. I will be staying a week longer to explore anything I haven’t seen already and possibly surrounding countries. Here is my schedule of where I will be when including dates:

Program Schedule:
Jan 23 – Mar 12 Classes in Nairobi
Mar 12 – Apr 23 Internship component of the program in Mombassa, Kenya at FIDA Kenya
Apr 23 – 30 Final week of wrap-up in Nairobi
Apr 30 Final day of program
May 1 – 11 Further travel in East Africa for Gillian
May 12 Gillian arrives in the US!

Daily Routine and Classes

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I have settled into somewhat of a routine for school and activities with my family while in Nairobi. Currently, I wake up at 6:45 to shower and get ready for school. Before school, I have tea with Métrine (house help to the family). For those of you who haven’t been to Kenya or don’t know this, Kenyans drink chai tea a minimum of 3 times daily. I drink chai for breakfast; we have a break for chai at school at 10:30am, and then my family and I take chai intermittently as we get home, the earliest time for this being at 4pm. I love the chai here- Kenyans mix half milk, half water, boil it, add the tea leaves and then add sugar to the tea. Everyone drinks the milk/water/tea mixture from the thermos and each adds their own sugar. Along with tea, Kenyans have bread and Blue Band (vegetable butter) or jelly or cookies (this is what we do at school). Even at work my host mom will break in the morning for tea! Some of my classmates say that this is a way to curb hunger for some, but in my family and at school, it is more of a social time for everyone to slow down and talk for 15 minutes or so. One of the things that our orientation told us about Kenya is that everything here is about relationships, relationships, relationships! At the orientation, this point was stressed particularly in reference to our internships as offices and organizations “do not run the same way in Kenya as they do in the US,” according to MSID program leaders. According to them, much of this is a trickledown effect of government inefficiency, and results in the fact that many Kenyans either don’t have work or they sit at a job for which they get paid, but there is no real work for them to do at their job. Because systems (government, business, other organizations) are not even as efficient as the US (Kenyan’s words), relationships are the means by which things are accomplished and many times relationships are just more important than getting things accomplished in the first place. This orientation to daily activities is an adjustment for me as I usually try to stay very busy producing things in the US.

Anyway, after tea/breakfast, the walk to school is about 20 minutes. I live inside of a gated compound, so I walk out of the gate and then by other compounds on the way to school as well as a market with live chickens, clothing and lots of fruit! In Kenya, all markets are open markets, so you must barter with the seller to try to get the best price for what you are buying. I haven’t done this yet, but plan to this weekend, so stay tuned for news about how much more I end up paying that Kenyans . There is close traffic on the road, but there is usually a dirt sidewalk that has been created by other people walking to the main road where my school is- Ngong Road.

Pic: This is the market that is across the street from my compound. People sell everything from food to clothing to chickens. Apparently, after I took this picture, a person in the market asked Metrine, the Kenyan I was walking with, 'why did you let her take that picture?' in Swahili!

Pic: This is me and a few friends sitting across from our school waiting for our next class to start. This day was pretty cold, so we were trying to soak up some sun before going back to class!

Pic: This is our school. I took this picture from where I was sitting in the last picture. We use one of two classrooms on the first floor: the first wooden door on the left or the third wooden door coming from the left (it looks like it might be open in this picture). This is a building on the University of Nazarene campus, which has classes mostly at night, so MSID uses the facility during the day.

The school day is split up into three two hour sessions, with a tea break after the first session (10:30) and lunch after the second session (12:30). The school day begins at 8:30am and ends at 3:30pm, unless we get out early, which has been common this first week. My classes have been great so far. We have been spending a lot of time learning Kiswahili (Kiswahili is Swahili in Swahili) so far as this will be important for our internships. I know how to talk about where I live, what I study, where I’m from and about my family, so some of you have been in my classroom conversations! We’ve also learned many standard greetings. Like in the US, whenever anyone asks you about news you might have, you always say that things are fine. As my Swahili teacher said, even if your house has burned down the day before or you are in the hospital, you still respond with “Nzuri” or “Nzuri sana” (fine or very fine), although you can say “Fine, but my house burned down yesterday” and mention something really terrible that has happened as long as you don’t elaborate!

The country analysis course I am taking is so far a history of Kenya- we’ve discussed pre-colonial and the beginning of colonial history in Kenya. Our professor addressed the differences between French and British colonialism: the French attempted to culturally assimilate people while the British used brute force to control people (killing people, burying them alive), but mostly focused on government structure rather than cultural assimilation. Today, former French colonies are still culturally and politically tied to France (Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon), but former British colonies (Kenya) are more independent, if struggling, as a result of the violence that occurred in these countries under British rule.

Kenyans love the United States. Recently, part of this can be contributed to our election of Obama, whose father was from Kenya, but the relationship is deeper than this. According to one of my professors, Kenyans love the US as a result of the Peace Corps Program that began (1963) right as Kenya gained independence in 1963. As opposed to other nations that wanted to control , ‘develop’ or exploit Kenya knowing nothing about the country or its people, US Peace Corps volunteers came to Kenya to live with local people, learn about them, and work with local people to support already existing development infrastructure in Kenya. Also, the US has encouraged Kenyan development in other ways. Recently, the US pulled $7 million worth of funding from the Kenyan education system after it uncovered corruption in the Kenyan Ministry of Education. I thought that most Kenyans would be outraged by this, but actually, one of my professors and my host parents were very happy about this decision as it calls out the Kenyan government its corruption, which no one in the international system or in the country (complaining about the government won’t change anything) usually does or is able to do. US funding has the ability to have consequences for the Kenyan government and we are not complying with corruption in this case, which Kenyans appreciate. Also, parts of the new Kenyan Constitution are based off of the US Constitution.

This diatribe about Kenya and the US was meant to preface a conversation we had in the country analysis class that continues on this theme: my professor, like other Kenyans I’ve met, seem to think that the US has everything figured out! Before joining the MSID program, one of the advisors who works with MSID, Abdul, thought that there was no poverty in the US at all! Our professor asked us why we thought the US was able to become a strong nation after becoming independent from our colonial power and what could Kenya do to do the same? While this was a thought exercise for us as students and not really him asking what we thought as Americans, I was surprised at his ready comparison of the US settlers and African nations as ‘both having gained independence from Britain’ and the contrast of ‘wow, has the US succeeded!’ My first response to this question was that we were the colonizers. Comparing the indigenous populations of the US and Kenya, Kenyan people are certainly doing better than the Native Americans in the US who are marginalized nations within the US. If anyone has any other thoughts on comparison of the US system with other younger nations or other thoughts on my professor’s question, I’d be interested in comments!

My third class is Development. So far, we have had one class in Development (as the program focus has been on country analysis and Kiswahili) in which we did group presentations, so I don’t have a feel of what the class will really be like yet and how the professor will teach. However, that being said, I think that this class will be a forum for asking very hard academic and personal questions about our role in development as students, citizens of whichever countries, global citizens, etc. My professor commented that he has dealt with these questions (what is the nature of development today? Why is this? Is this form of development the best form? How to we amend our system if it isn’t the best? How do we measure development? What is our personal responsibility in development?) for 26 years. Because of the challenges of answering these questions and the inevitable and seemingly uncircumventable politics involved in the current development industry (corporations, government interest, natural resource exploitation), he said that himself and many others who study development are distressed at their inability to find even hints of answers to these questions. I am currently feeling distressed about many of these questions, but not ready to give up on the quest, which is both academic and deeply personal. I will be interested to see where this class leaves us all who are studying this semester.

Getting back to my daily schedule, I will sometimes visit people or the supermarket after school and then come home, drink more tea, hang out with my host brothers and watch the news. I have started watching the news in Swahili and looking up the headlines with my dictionary. Yesterday, Sean quizzed me on the new words I had learned! I eat dinner with the family and then watch English news at 9 with my family. We frequently have great conversations about the news if we don’t get too tired (mainly my parents explaining things to me) and I am continually impressed with their knowledge and openness about explaining and talking to me about every story of the day. I usually go to bed at 11ish or so after either corresponding with you all, writing a blog post, or reading. My host dad let me borrow a book by Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya’s first president and also an anthropologist, still renowned in Kenya as the father of the country of sorts), so this is what I am currently reading, slowly but surely. Emphasis on the slowly as there is always so much to do here!

Pic: This is Sean, my 8 year old host brother! He is very smart and had just finished singing/dancing to a Michael Jackson song for me, so I think that this is some sort of Michael Jackson pose. He's great and we have lots of fun together!

Host family, health care in Kenya

So, I want to shout out to my host parents and family for a minute. My dad, Ken, is a lecturer (teaches medical technicians) and student (medical student) who gets up at 4am daily to read and goes to bed after the news at 10. My mom, Joann, is a nurse manager who is in charge of her whole unit and other units at the hospital where she works. She leaves the house by 6:30am, stays up to watch the news until 10 and also knows everything about politics as well as being active in the church! Anyway, other than being super hardworking, they have both been so kind to me since my arrival! My mom asks how my day is everyday (expecting real news) and generally oversees that I am happy and that I have what I need here; my dad always offers about three different food options for me at dinner if he thinks something is not to my satisfaction (which is never the case as I enjoy the food here probably too much) and they both always engage me in conversation! Last night, the power went out for a few hours (this happens commonly in Nairobi, but usually during the rainy season, not now during the dry season) and he came out of his room with the flashlight (“Gillian? Oh, you are here! I thought you had gotten trapped downstairs with the lights off!”) to make sure I was okay, even though he had just gone to bed.

It is interesting to talk to them both about their jobs. My dad teaches and also works in a government funded clinic in Nairobi. Nairobi International Hospital is a very good hospital in the city. Other than this hospital, however, most hospitals face many challenges. He said that there are very few resources to treat people where he works. Specifically, he said that mothers will come in with their sick babies and just hold them day after day until they die because there are really no resources or enough doctors to do anything about many of the situations. More encouragingly, my mom works in a private hospital where the scene above does not occur. It is one of the few well-funded hospitals, so good care is possible there. The public private divide is an issue here.

My parents also talk to me about their youth. Last night, we all had a conversation about showering with a basin. This refers to the practice of washing in which a ‘shower’ means cleaning yourself with a basin of water and not even a pitcher or cup to pour the water over you, although today many people use cups or pitchers to assist in this process. My parents both grew up using this method to wash, but both said that they could no longer remember how to be very effective at this! Although my family has a hot shower, some of my classmates must use this method in their homestays. My dad told me an interesting story in which he was required to help someone wash as a kid. In his village, when he was about 8, a traveler from the Netherlands happened upon their village after getting his money stolen and getting lost, only to find the village. My dad’s grandfather helped him out for a few days before the Dutch Embassy helped him get back home. During his stay, he did not know how to shower with a basin, so he asked my dad to run up on the roof and pour water on him repeatedly. This meant that my dad had to repeatedly climb up on the roof with a small pitcher of water until the man was done showering! I couldn’t believe that this traveler made him do that as a small boy, but we were all laughing about it as he told the story, so it was funny more than anything.

As I mentioned previously, I have tea with Métrine, the house help, but someone who is basically part of the family, every morning before school. One of the things she told me about my host family is that my mom and dad are both from different ethnic groups in Kenya. In Kenya, everyone descends from an ethnic group (there are 42 different ethnic groups/tribes in Kenya), whether they live rurally or in the city. Métrine said that because of this, my host family is very welcoming and open to people from all places and ethnicities. I don’t know if this is the reason or if it is for some other reason, but I am so grateful to that everyone has been so kind to me here! I miss you all, but it is nice to live with good friends during my stay in Kenya!

Quick Update on the Constitution

I want to follow up on my previous comments about the Kenyan Constitution. Yesterday, a few decisions were made about this draft version of the Constitution. One, Kenya will have a Presidential system instead of a Presidential/Prime Minister system with two leading the country. This is more consistent with what Kenyans want, according to polls that have been done in the country recently, but it still leaves room for centralized power if too much power is given to this position. Two, members of the presidential cabinet can no longer be MPs (Members of Parliament). Currently, MPs who are appointed to the cabinet do not have to resign their posts as MPs. In the past, this has created a situation in which the President and Parliament are very closely linked, centralizing power. The separation in the current draft of the new constitution will hopefully allow the parliament to check Presidential/cabinet decision-making more effectively.

Also, the Constitution will re-decide devolution in the country or how many districts the country will be split up into. The new draft proposes more than twice the number of current constituencies. The idea behind new constituencies is a plan to redistribute resources in Kenya. Currently, many Kenyans migrate to either Nairobi or Mombasa as all of the country’s resources that don’t go to paying MPs goes back into these already developed areas. A commentator on the news opined that the draft constitution does not effectively accomplish the redistribution goal. The new Constitution suggests that taxes be collected from everyone, and then 20% of the taxes will stay in the constituency and 80% will go to the central government. So as my dad described it, nothing will be collected in some regions (people have no money) and of the nothing, 80% will go to the central government! I asked my dad if middle to upper class Kenyans, particularly in Nairobi and Mombasa where people have money, would mind if their tax dollars are given to others in need rather than staying in their own provinces, as is an issue in the US. He said some would, but many would not. From the news and our conversations, I gather that people want badly a system that lessens government centralization and corruption.

A constitution was drafted earlier in the 2000s, but did not pass the referendum. There will not be referendum while I am in Kenya to the best of my knowledge, but I will keep giving updates as they occur!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sunday, Jan 25- Church and more politics!

The day began by getting up for church this morning. My host parents, Sean and I went to church, which began at about 9am (singing beforehand). The church is close to home- about a 5 minute car ride.

The service took place in an older building in which the church set up probably between 500 and 700 chairs for people to sit- the sanctuary was full. The chairs used are plastic white lawn chairs. Sean included, everyone brings their own Bibles and notebooks in which to take notes during church or Sunday School, which is called Kids Kingdom at this church. I was very impressed by this initiative of everyone and liked the idea that people take notes in church. I have only seen this done in a Buddhist ceremony before, but never in a Christian church in the US. I would be interested to know if anyone reading has taken notes in a Christian church in the US?

We sang many songs and read some Bible verses from Mark, 2nd Corinthians, and Deuteronomy. Leaders within the church lead the songs and read/talk about the scriptures. There are very few instruments (possibly some small percussion instruments?), so a CD serves as background music. However, when everyone is singing, no CD is necessary because everyone’s voices are so loud! After singing and scriptures, one of them focused on tithing, much of the service was spent discussing monetary offerings to the church. My host mom explained to me after the service that not every service is like this, but that this one definitely had a lot of numbers! There was even a handout to explain how donations to the church should be given. People are instructed to give 10% of their income to the church as a regular offering. On top of that, 4% goes annually for mission work and 2% goes for a special project donation. According to the handout, then, individuals are expected to give 16% of their income to the church. My host mom said that the reason for this is because the church is in the process of becoming independent. Currently, much of the funding comes from US sister churches (from Nairobi Christian Church’s denomination- International Churches of Christ), but the church is trying to start supporting itself, especially as many of the members are middle and upper class. The church is also in the process of building a new church in Eastern Nairobi. From what I gleaned by listening, it sounds like the church does much mission work in the community- with addiction services, counseling sessions, HIV/AIDS work, and support groups for co-dependents in these situations. My host mom pointed out another white person to me in the church who runs the non-profit group Hope International, which works with HIV/AIDS. My host brother Sean, 8, knows what NGO stands for, by the way- I was super impressed by this as I didn’t learn this term until late high-school or even college, I think!

After church, I gave my host family gifts I had brought from the US and they were very kind recipients- they sang me a song to thank me! I gave my host brother an Andy Warhol camera and he said that he loved it, but it doesn’t have film yet, so he has yet to take any pictures, despite the fact that he was playing with it all afternoon. I have been spending a lot of time with him as he is talkative and a really smart kid! He is going to help me learn Swahili, which I have started to learn, but which I know is going to be a challenge, especially to speak the language, which is always more difficult for me, even if writing comes more easily. My family speaks Swahili all the time, even though much of their TV and all the store signs are in English. For my host mom, English is her first language and Swahili her second.

During the news this evening, I talked to my host parents a little more about Kenyan politics. Kenya is in the process of writing a revised constitution, which I think I mentioned in an earlier blog, their first Constitution since the British basically wrote one for them in 1963. The main issue is how to divide executive power and really all government power. Some people want the system to stay similarly to the way it is now in which the President is ‘above the law’ (quote from Dad) and has most of the government’s power. My host mom says that the President will continue to be above he law until he is no longer the Commander and Chief of the Kenyan military. He currently does not need the legislature’s approval to command the military as we do in the US and I think can use the military in-country on offensive missions, which can be political in nature. According to my dad, the main people who want to maintain this system are people benefitting from this concentration of power. I also read in the paper I bought on Tuesday (Daily Nation) a quote saying that ‘Kenyans need an individual to follow and that democracy is not Kenyan/Kenyans aren’t ready for it.’

To others, the obvious solution seems to be to split up power between the President and Prime Minister. However, a national referendum a few years ago that proposed this system to Kenyan citizens did not pass. Currently, the Constitution outlines the Presidential system I described above (power centralized in the President), but there is a President and a Prime Minister in office after a power sharing agreement resulting from the 2007 election violence. So, the current Constitution does not reflect the functioning government, which I think is the reason why a new Constitution is being written, although I am not absolutely sure that this is the reason or if there are other reasons as well. My host mom thinks that two heads of state would slow things down if these two individuals are from different parties, but thinks there is a problem with the centralized power as well. She commented that currently, both President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga say different things all of the time and the Kenyan people don’t know what to think! My dad likes the idea of a central leader, but also thinks that power needs to be divided between all government institutions. One of his critiques of the debate right now is that many people are judging the PM and P (my abbreviation for Prime Minister and Presidential system) system by the current system, which isn’t a true PM and P system but is more a temporary fix to a situation in which election results were contested and everyone wanted a piece of the pie (2007 elections). It is an exciting time politically in Kenya!

The news also mentioned another debate concerning the Constitution- abortion and whether or not it should be legalized in the Constitution. Many people on the news and many people in Kenya, according to my host mom, think that life begins at conception. However, my host mom pointed out that laws and customs (Kenyans, like US people, don’t start counting age until birth) support the idea that life begins at birth. Both of them stressed the complexity of the issue in our conversation. Both of them are medical people- my mom is a nurse manager and my dad is a lecturer who teaches medical technicians and who is simultaneously in medical school- and my dad told me a story of an 18 year old girl who came into a clinic and had to get her uterus and small intestine removed after seeking a back alley abortion from a man who did not have a medical license. Because the woman does not have money to take care of herself properly now with no small intestine, she is waiting to die. While legalizing abortion may seem like a good solution to this issue, my dad thinks that Kenyan women may not seek proper medical care anyway in this situation as there is still such a stigma attached to abortion in Kenya. He said that medical records were confidential when I asked but that families would find out anyway as the family structure is tight in Kenya, according to him. I was surprised and interested t o hear that this was a main issue in Kenya and I will be interested to see how the Constitution comes out, although I don’t think that it will be completed while I am in Kenya. Thank goodness for the Daily Nation, whose website is great! If you’re interested in Kenyan news, I would recommend visiting this paper online.

. . . I will be impressed if anyone is actually reading all of these! Thanks in advance if you are and please feel free to write to me about how your life is going on the blog or to my e-mail and I will do my best to respond when I can. I currently don’t have internet access unless I go into town (once a week so far . . .), but I may be getting access at home soon or I will be able to check more often at school soon. Tomorrow is the first day of school, so stay tuned for more news about that tomorrow!

Saturday, January 24- meeting my host family!

I met my family today! The day started early again as we left for Nairobi at 7am. The bus ride is about three hours without traffic, and we encountered some so the drive was about three and a half hours total. There are many sights on the drive from Nakuru to Nairobi. Coming out of Nakuru and continuing, people sell things along the road and neighborhoods are not far from the street. There are many stands on the side of the road to sell things, although some looked as though they haven’t been used in a while. In Nakuru, the neighborhood houses have large murals spanning an entire wall of the house that faces the street. This makes for a very colorful scene! The pictures are African scenes and wildlife, flamingos and other animals. Out of Nakuru, communities are more makeshift and sometimes are built out of what looks to be former trucks (although I really have no idea what they are made of- many display Coca Cola or Tusker beer logos) and other pieces of sheet metal and wood. Strip malls are also made out of this material.

The sidewalks parallel to the highway and cliffs display the burnt red soil that is well known in Eastern Africa- it is beautiful. There are small children in school uniforms, people looking like they are going to business offices, and others who are more traditionally dressed, probably farmers, on the sidewalks. We also passed the Rift Valley again on this trip. I think I am going to miss all of the rolling hills and the nature while living in Nairobi for 2 months, although I’m sure it will hold other treasures!

Pic: Not sure how well you can see it here, but the ground in Kenya is burnt red.

We came into a different part of Nairobi today- a more elevated part of the city, I think (many hills). I think we are staying in the more affluent part of the city as there are houses nearby that resemble houses from the US. We drove straight to our school (we are using the Nazarine University building) on Ngong Road, off of which many of us are living.

I met my host mom and eight year old brother (Christabel and Sean) after coming off the bus! They were very kind to help me with my luggage, which is very heavy, although my yellow suitcase keeps out the monkeys and the rain, so I am happy to have it! The rest of the family includes Dad (Ken- my host dad), Jeff (university student who is Ken’s nephew), and Metrine (house help). They are all very kind and were quite welcoming to me today. I am living in a place called Sun View Estate. It is a gated community within which everyone locks their own gate at the end of their driveway, although many cars are parked outside the gate. Each family has their own house.

Pic: This is the view across the street from my house. You can see that every residence is gated in: you can see a black iron gate with the white pattern on it and then another black gate next to it. The house that you see is actually two houses. The house splits down the middle between the two central windows you see. You can see more gates looking down the street.

Pic: This is my family's gate. I can always recognize it by the red flowers that are next to it!

I have my own room in the house as the family’s 13 year old daughter is at boarding school until November, when she will come home for the holidays. Otherwise, she will be at school. I talked to my host family briefly about how school works in Kenya: everyone goes to a local primary school until the end of 8th grade, afterwhich all students take a test that places them in one of three types of schools. The best schools are private; then there are government funded schools that are also good. Both of these schools are boarding schools away from the child’s home. Lastly, one can also attend secondary school locally and live at home. The quality of these schools positively correlated with cost, so the best schools are more expensive.

Pic: This is a shot of my room. My bed is a full bed, and you can see my things on the dresser as well as my towel hanging on a handy towel holder in my room! I also have a closet across the room from the windows. The blue hanging thing is my mosquito net, under which I sleep every night.

I also talked a little bit with my host mom and dad. Christabel is a Nurse Manager who works with children in a hospital. Dad teaches at a medical technician school, but is also a student as he will complete the equivalent of his MD when he is done with school. Dad and I talked briefly about the fact that medical professionals are lacking in rural areas of Kenya; I mentioned to him that the same situation existed in Wisconsin. I jokingly asked Dad (who has a family and is settled in Nairobi) if he was going to be a rural doctor- he said no, but that he was working on opening up a clinic in his home village, which is in a rural location. He plans to work in the city and travel to the village twice a week or so to see patients- he said that many doctors who live in the city do this sort of work.

Other than talking to my family, I unpacked my things, showered (felt good to be able to wash in a real shower!), watched an African movie (Nigerian), and played cards and learned a bit of Swahili with my host brothers. Sean, the 8 year old, loves to play cards!

As a side note, I have been reading the paper a bit since coming to Kenya and I have been learning about the rewriting of Kenya’s Constitution, which will be the first Constitution since the British co-wrote the first Kenyan Constitution at Kenyan independence in 1963. It is a good time to be reading the newspapers here! The Daily Nation, the paper I’ve been reading, said that the Kenyan government wanted to create a government ‘like that in the US,’ although some Kenyans are worried about this as the US system ‘took 200 years to “perfect”’ and Kenyans are just beginning to write their Constitution in this way now. Kenya has been a one party system since 1963 and followed individual leaders within that party until 1992 (citation from a convo with host Dad) until the Kenyan government became a multi-party system.
My day ended as Sean tried to teach me some Swahili from a book he had.

Friday, 23 January 2010- lost in the market!

Today started early for me- I went outside to shower at 4:40am in order to be ready for the 5:30am bus trip to see the sunrise at the top of a mountain overlooking Lake Nakuru. It still felt good to rinse off, however. The ride lasted for a while and the sunrise was beautiful! I will post pictures if I can sometime. We also saw more baboons, as usual. In the morning, baboons are very sleepy and don’t mind if you get close, although they still don’t let them touch you. Some of them also like to watch the sunrise from on the cliff. The baboons on the cliff are different from the ones that invade our living area- they are sweet and do not attack us! Later in the day at our camp, a bold baboon stole a bowl of sugar from one of my classmates and ran away with it!


Picture: A Mark Rothko-esque photo of the sunrise at Nakuru.

Picture: a tired baboon(of the nice baboons) greets the early morning sun.


Pic: Baboon (of the troublesome baboons) climbing over the fence into our compound to steal our food :).

After breakfast, the group went into downtown Nakuru to experience the market. People approach you to sell things all the time and we were supposed to learn to barter with them. We began to do this and then one of my other classmates and I started to walk down the main street in Nakuru where many people were selling things. Many of the sellers bring crafts from somewhere else in Kenya and sell in Nakuru, where they live. Some of them will try to get you to wear hats that say ‘mzungu’, a non-derogatory name for ‘white person.’ They will also try to tell you that the Swahili word for ‘no’ actually means ‘how much.’ They are clever, entertaining to talk to, and not dangerous at all to engage in conversation, although they will try many things to sell their merchandise. My friend and I began to wonder where everyone was as we didn’t see any of our classmates in the street. We walked into an internet café and began to e-mail. I was shocked when Simon, one of the MSID staff, walked in and said, “You guys are HERE?!” Apparently, we were not supposed to have left the bus and everyone had been looking for us! There was still another woman missing and we eventually found her back at the bus. Anyway, we stayed in Nakuru a little longer and then went back to the park.

I took a nap in the afternoon before we went on our final ride around the park to see the nature. In all of our transportation, we have taken the same bus that I mentioned earlier- it has ‘Komba’ written on the front, which means “Bush baby.” The busdriver is super impressive and had to back about 500 feet today after a tree blocked our path. Anyway, today on the ride we saw a waterfall. We were also VERY lucky to see a leopard far off in the distance in the tree! I used my (read: my mom’s) binoculars to spot it.

In general, the park is beautiful. However, it looks worn and many of the trees are falling down due to climate change. Our guide explained to us how one species of tree burned down and why we saw so many of them (huge trees) keeled over on the side of a hill. During a drought, there was a fire and many of the trees burned. Further, black rhinos like to eat the bark and so the rhinos destroyed the trees further after the fire burned them. Before the fire, this park had the largest forest of this kind of tree in Eastern Africa. This was a reminder to me that climate change is already affecting many places in the world and is not only a fear of the future!

Parting shot of Lake Nakuru National Park:

I will miss this place!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Thursday, January 21st

Pics: A preview of coming events- (double) rainbow in the park!! Where's me lucky charms? Kidding. . .




Today was another day of orientation. The sun rises here at about 6:20 or so and finishes coming up at 6:45am. I got up early to try to watch it and ended up missing it to get ready. Everyday we sit in the sun in the morning and then move into the shade when it gets very hot in the afternoon.

We also found out our internships today! For people who aren’t familiar with MSID, it is the only program in Kenya that has a significant internship component and homestays. This first week here is orientation; then, there is 7 weeks of school, followed by 6 weeks of internship, and finally, one wrap-up week. I found out that my internship is going to be in Mombasa, Kenya, with FIDA Kenya- the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya. Many countries have a branch of FIDA, but this opportunity is particularly exciting to me as FIDA Kenya helped to ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa, which I wrote about for my senior thesis last year!

We also went on another ‘game’ ride today and saw more of Lake Nakuru, zebras and giraffes! The giraffes were kind of distant and it was raining, so we couldn’t see them that well. However, something special happened during the rain- the sun was also out and there was a double rainbow! It sprawled across the lake and into the forest. It was very beautiful. On the ride back, we encountered a hug tree on the road and had to wait to pass until the people in front of us cleared it away.

Picture: Giraffes in the rain

We usually go to bed early here (9pm), as we get up early. However, it doesn’t feel stressful at all, probably because of the weather and lifestyle here. More later as it is my bedtime!

Wednesday, Jan 20

Today I got up at 6 to take a shower. The shower at Nakuru is a spicket inside the main bathroom. The floor is cement and the water is ice cold! We shower into a bucket and then dump the water into the back of the toilet so that we waste as little as possible. It is actually quite cold at night- it regularly gets down to 55 at night- and then sun doesn’t rise until around 6:45 or so.

Most of the day today was spent in orientation- we talked more with the MSID (Minnesota Studies in International Development- program I am on) staff- Simon, Jane, Abdull, Khalif, and Dr. Jama, the main professor who works with MSID. He is a professor at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. All of the MSID staff are very kind, knowledgeable and fun to be around. I am looking forward to getting to know them better as the semester continues.

I love the MSID program mission and vision. It is an experiential learning program, which encourages interaction with host cultures, personal development and career development in combination with academic work. Today, we talked about the expectations that many Kenyans will have of white students in the US- the ability to get them a visa, pay for their children’s school, or just give money. The people in the program are also interested in development issues.

Around our campsite, there is a fence that will keep the buffalo (dangerous), zebra, and gazelle-type creatures (gazelle, impala). However, one creature that the fence does not keep out is the baboon! In the evening at dinner, about 20 baboons jumped the fence outlining our camping area and tried to come in to steal our dinner! Luckily, we locked the doors before they could come in, but they were roaming around for about an hour until dinner was over. Apparently, baboons respect men, but not women, which means that we can get our food stolen more easily. In the evening, we went on a ‘game’ drive (other people safari here) where we saw impalas, zebras, buffalo, hyenas, more baboons and black rhinoceroses. There is a lake in the middle of the park as well as other scenery that is very beautiful.

Picture: This was a common view for us to wake up to every morning outside of our compound.



Pic: View from hill in Nakuru National Park. The hill you see across the lake is apparently stretched out like a lion. You can only see the front paws, head and backbone in this picture.

First long day of travel/being in Kenya!

I have a lot to catch up on here. The flight was long- 7 hours one way to Amsterdam and 8 to Nairobi. However, for the most part the flights were nice. I learned that the Dutch people are the tallest people in the world, according to one of my co-travelers. This came up as we flew KLM (Royal Dutch Airways) and the flight attendants were indeed very tall! And they were also happy and seemed to enjoy their jobs- female flight attendants wore less make-up than I have seen on other flights in the US and seem less happy, although I haven’t seen enough of them to consider this a trend- maybe having health insurance makes a difference? I’ll have to report on the flight back . . .

After flying, we drove to a hostel in Nairobi to stay the night. We had tea/coffee immediately on arrival- Kenyans have tea three times a day, which is how it will be during this week of orientation! Tea is made with milky water, a tea bag and sugar- I think the tea is normally chai tea, but I’m not sure; the entire mixture ends up tasting somewhat like chai. A woman named Winnie owned the hostel and was very kind to us- I talked to her about soccer as she was watching part of the African Cup. We all slept on bunkbeds and this was our first night with cold showers. In the middle of the night (3am) I woke up to the sound of what I thought was horse hooves outside; however, when I looked out the window, I saw a warthog enjoying the local foliage! I was happy to have seen my first wild animal in Kenya.

The next day we left the hostel and went back to the city (downtown Nairobi). Mainly, we went to pay a visit to immigration, where we got resident Kenyan cards and resident visas to other countries (Tanzania, Rwanda, other surrounding countries). I am staying after one week and don’t yet know what I am going to do. . . suggestions accepted!

We also exchanged money in downtown Nairobi. The currency in Kenya is the Kenyan shilling. I think the exchange rate is 1 shilling equals about .013 dollars or 1 dollar equals 75 shillings. The resident visa to travel to other countries was only 200 shillings- less than 3 dollars. I paid 390 shillings for lunch.

After spending some time in the city, we headed off to Lake Nakuru National Park. On the drive there, we had an interesting experience. We were traveling in a bus with our luggage on top and we encountered a telephone pole that was halfway fallen down. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that the telephone wires were stretched across the highway. This meant that we had to off road it (drive into the near ditch) to get through. This feels somewhat like a child’s fair ride in a large bus on unfinished roads/the grass. As we were driving under the wire, a rogue bus (taller than ours) whizzed by on the regular road and hit the wires, causing the wires to also hit our bus! It was quite an experience, but luckily no one got electrocuted!

We also stopped at the beautiful Rift Valley on the way to Nakuru. This was exciting as I have read about it in class and seen pictures. During colonialism, two colonists- Delamare and Edgerton- kicked off the Kenyans living there and took over a very large part of the valley. After colonialism, the Rift Valley was given back to Kenyans in plots, although apparently Delamere’s grandchildren still live there . . . Also at the valley is Mount Longonut (sp?). This is a large hill with a huge crater in the middle.

When we got to Nakuru, we met monkeys for the first time! Some monkeys crawled up onto our luggage and ate food from people’s bags! Monkeys run around like squirrels and are very entertaining unless you hiss at them; they will run away if you get too close. On the way to the park, we encountered a surprise on the road- two lions sunbathing! We all gathered around to take pictures. That evening, we moved into the place where we will be staying until Saturday, which is in the Park itself.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

First Blog- actually about Haiti

Hello everyone!

I am sitting in the airport on my way to Amsterdam and then Nairobi! I said goodbye to my mom yesterday so that the airport wouldn't be hard for us and my dad, stepmom and sister took me to the airport this morning and I have met three other students also traveling to Kenya so far. At check-in, myself and another student were told that Amsterdam is no longer accepting 2 carry-ons (purse and regular-sized bag), so I had to consolidate my bags! Luckily, Eliza (with financial support from my dad) remedied the situation at an airport store where we bought a duffel bag to fit both bags.

This message is going to be short as it is the beginning of the trip, but I want to thank everyone for their support previous to this trip. I am looking forward to sharing a few of my experiences with you as I can while in Kenya and to talking about them with you when I get back!

In addition to this post about my trip, I wanted to share with you all a message from my friend who has traveled to Haiti to do medical work and is going back again this spring as I have been thinking about his tragedy a lot this week. In a place the world has seemingly forgotten or turned a blind eye for a plethora of reasons, it seems cruel for this severe of a tragedy to befall Haiti. In some of the pre-departure readings for my trip, Haiti was one of the subjects: from 1825-1947, Haiti had to repay France (and then the US, who bought the Haitian debt from France) for 'property losses' as a result of Haitian independence, in which freed Haitian people from slavery under French slaveowners. It seems to me that the world owes Haiti a few things instead of the other way around.

Anyway, here is a message from my friend, Adam, who has worked in Haiti. While he was in Haiti, he took a picture of the capitol, which is below. The comparative picture after the earthquake follows this picture. The force of the message asks for money and feel free to take him up on it if you'd like! I mainly wanted to add this to my blog because I've been thinking about it a lot and it leads me to ask the same questions that led me to take this trip: what is our responsibility to developing nations, individually and collectively? How can we best aid development without causing more problems? Why is it that some countries are economically prosperous while other countries struggle to stay afloat? Should developed countries be implicated in world poverty? and other questions.

Here is Adam's message:

Hey everyone,

So I never do this, but I'm going to push a cause on you, and ask you to push the cause on others. A massive earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday evening, and it looks like it's bad. High loss of life and extensive damage to Haiti's already unstable buildings are more than likely. It has been the top news story on the New York Times and CNN for several hours now, and I encourage you to go there and read continuing coverage.

I've attached two photos to this email. One (named "before") is a picture I took in Haiti's capitol, Port-au-Prince, of the president's palace last March. The other (named "after") was taken of the same building a few hours ago. This is the White House of Haiti, probably one of their most structurally sound buildings, much more prepared to withstand a 7.0 earthquake than the homes of common Haitians. This catastrophe will cause a lot more people to be homeless, go hungry, and succumb to disease in the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

Here's the "ask." Go online and donate to the relief effort. Tell your friends to do the same. I've seen first hand how difficult life can be in Haiti on the best of days. Things like this earthquake, or the hurricanes eighteen months ago, cause untold amounts of suffering. The two weeks I spent there last March allowed me to interact with people who were one catastrophe away from starvation or death at all times. The limited medical assistance we provided is a tiny step forward; this kind of disaster is a huge step back. I haven't heard any news about the Haitian interpreters and drivers we worked with as of this moment; I'm just hoping that everyone is okay.

Please, please, please give what you can.

A great list of sites to donate to are listed on the following page:
http://northshorejournal.org/haiti-earthquake-aid

or you can donate directly to a group I know does great work, Partners in Health, at

If you want to give to the group I work with (I'm going back in April), you can do so at

Please tell others to give what they can and continue to follow this tragedy. Feel free to forward this email to anyone you wish.

-Adam

End Message

Here are the pictures he attached:


Thanks for that Adam, and for adding to my first blog post (or making it??). Hopefully for you, not all of these posts will be so long, although many of you who exchange e-mails with me know that I can tend to be verbose in writing- I will do my best to subvert this!

Happy spring, everyone, and I will talk to you soon!

Gillian