Giraffes, Uganda and Rafting!

Giraffe Center!

In my last blog, I forgot to share my experience at the Giraffe Center! The Giraffe Center is about 40 minutes outside of Nairobi by bus and foot (after the bus, you have to walk for a good 20 minutes) and I traveled there two weekends ago. This Giraffe Center is famous because it is a giraffe petting zoo! The Center breeds a type of giraffe that is endangered and then brings the animals back into the wild after they have been protected at the Center for a period of time. At the Center, the giraffes are not kept in cages, but roam free in a large preserve. However, they are still very friendly: there is a tall-ish overlook that you can climb up on and the giraffes will come and eat food from your hand and you can pet them, etc. as long as they are eating! This seems to be a win-win situation for both tourists and giraffes. This was a special experience for me as I love giraffes!!

Pic: The giraffes come up to the overlook where tourists can feed them.

Pic: Here's me with a giraffe!!

Uganda

This past weekend, I went to Uganda to raft the Nile! We left on a Thursday evening as we didn’t have school on Friday and took a night bus to Uganda. Most of us slept for most of the 14 hour ride, so it didn’t seem that long, although I was nervous about this to begin with as the 14 hours was only two hours less than both of our flights combined to get here, which I thought were long on the way here! Anyway, parts of the ride were VERY bumpy as a result of poor roads, especially near the border. Many roads here have gaping holes so that it is actually a smoother ride to drive on the dirt next to the road than on the road itself. Also, because traffic accidents are such a problem in Kenya, there are speed bumps even on main roads to slow down traffic, which also makes for a bumpy ride. Depending on how well you know me, you may know that I can usually sleep anywhere, so the bumps weren’t too much of an issue for me! I actually noticed them more on the way back to Kenya, when we drove during the day.

There is one more story I have to tell about the commute to Uganda: the border crossing! In most countries in Africa (and maybe elsewhere), you actually have to walk (probably about ¾ of a mile) to get across borders; the bus meets you on the other side of the border. This normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal aside from the fact that it was four in the morning and pitch dark (no street lights) when we reached the border! We all lumbered off the bus and followed others to check out of Kenya and then into Uganda. Along the way, there are people who want to exchange currencies with you (“Uganda shillings?”), but we didn’t know the exchange rate, so we didn’t exchange as it was likely that we would pay too many Kenyan shillings for too few Ugandan shillings if we chose to exchange informally rather than through a bank. A few times, my group lost the rest of the group going across the border and we had to guess which dark path to walk down . . . somewhat nerve-wracking, but we found the bus in the end, so it worked out.

Saturday in Kampala

Saturday morning, we got off the bus in Kampala and took a taxi to our hostel for the night (Red Chili if anyone is traveling to Kampala anytime soon- I would recommend this place). Two other students and I wanted to explore Kampala, so we visited downtown for the afternoon.

Traveling around Kampala was the first time we had been on ‘bota bota’s, or basically small motorcycles that serve the same purpose as a taxi would. Most of the time, we rode two to a bota bota; the drivers are always friendly and they are inexpensive (about $1.50 a ride) if you know how much they cost. The first time we took one, we ended up paying $10 because we didn’t know the price . . . ooops! In Kenya and Uganda, higher prices are called “mzungu prices” or white people prices as locals can convince mzungus (white people) to pay more as we are usually not from the area. I think I already talked about the term ‘mzungu’ but it just means white person, it is not derogatory at all and most people are actually excited to see us, even if it is just because we are usually good customers.

Pic: Downtown Kampala.

My friends and I toured Kabaka’s palace in Kampala, which is also home to the place where Idi Amin and the leader after him killed many Ugandans while he was in power. From the beginning of the tour, my friends and I had to wear skirts while touring the palace as I guess it was improper for us as women to wear pants while on the sacred ground, but I didn’t mind, mainly because our tour guide, Tom, was very kind to us during the tour. I’ll talk a little bit about Kabaka’s palace because it has a lot to do with Uganda’s people and culture. Uganda is home to 52 social groups (even more than Kenya’s 42), but most of these groups are a part of the larger Buganda group (the namesake for Uganda). These groups are still strong today, which is why there are actually two governments in Uganda: the official Ugandan government and the Bugandan government, run by the Bugandan king. Kabaka’s palace is historically the home of the Bugandan king, although this is the same palace that Idi Amin used as a military base when he ruled the country. During Amin’s rule, the Bugandan king fled Uganda to Scotland as Uganda was not safe for him under Amin. This may be review for those of you who have seen The Last King of Scotland, although I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know how much history is involved in it. The killing fields, as they are called, is actually a dungeon with four rooms. There are still writings on the walls from prisoners. During the tour, I also learned about Jack fruit, a huge, rough, green fruit that is a little bigger than the biggest head you can think of with little fruits on the inside. You will hear more about Jack fruit later.

Pic: Kabaka's Palace. Below: My friends and I (Kiersten, Danielle, Me) wearing skirts in front of Kabaka's Palace. Tom, our guide, took this picture.

Pic: This is the entrance to the dungeon where people were killed during Idi Amin's rule. There are fields on all sides of the dungeon. Kabaka's Palace is up the hill from here (left in the picture).

Pic: This is the dungeon. It is not very big- you can see the four cells on the left of the picture, although of course many more than four people were in the dungeon at a time.

Pic: These are prisoners' writings on the wall in the dungeon.

Pic: On a lighter note, this is a jack fruit!

After Kabaka’s palace, we took bota botas (they’re so fun!) downtown where we sat inside to wait out some rain. We also ended up going to a craft fair, which sits in the city center. There were many beautiful baskets, bags, tapestries and material for sale.

Pic: I was debating about actually putting this one on here due to the cRaZY look on my face! . . . This is me riding a bota bota.

As we got home, it was pouring rain and we went to bed as we were leaving in the morning to travel to Jinja, Uganda, where we would raft for the day.

Saturday

When we woke up in the morning, it was pouring rain again. I have found so far in Africa that when it rains, it absolutely pours. Part of the hostel was actually flooded as we walked from our rooms to the main office to check out! We were picked up at the hostel by members of Adrift, the rafting company we were going to raft with, and started the drive in the rain.

About 30 minutes into our commute, we encountered a road accident that changed the course of our day. A bus, filled with other people going to raft at Adrift, had crashed into a truck, which had slid on the road because of the rain. No medical help was at the scene yet, so most of us jumped out of the truck and started to help. We soon heard that there were two people stuck in the bus and one person still stuck in the truck. Then, we learned that some people with bad injuries would need to be taken to the hospital in the van we were taking to Jinja. We got our things out of the van and proceeded to wait in the rain while many people helped with the accident. We stayed at the scene for around four hours before taking a matatu to Jinja. The police came after one hour and some fire trucks came after two hours. Many people were injured, but luckily no one died. We were glad to be able to help, although this meant that we wouldn’t be able to go rafting this day.

Saturday afternoon, we arrived at Adrift. The camp overlooks the Nile from far up and you have to go down many stairs to actually reach the river. It is a beautiful place! It was exactly what we needed after a stressful morning, to say the least. We went out to lunch in downtown Jinja and in the evening, a few of us went to a local bar to play pool with some Ugandans. My team lost twice, but it was nice to talk to some Ugandans as most people at Adrift are from Western countries.

Pic: View from Adrift where we camped for two nights. The platform to the left is where people went bungee jumping (ahead).

Rafting!

Sunday, we finally went rafting! Well, rafting and bungee jumping for some people. Four people from our group (not me as I am afraid of heights) went bungee jumping and jumped 20 stories headfirst into the Nile! After this, we started down the river in a raft where we encountered Class 3,4 and 5 rapids. There was also a class 6 rapid, but people do not normally raft this rapid as it is too dangerous. All of the other rapids are very safe, however, and we were instructed about what to do if the raft flips or if we fall out. I didn’t fall out, but the raft flipped twice during the day! The water was welcome in the hot sun . . . it didn’t rain at all on Sunday. We also went swimming a lot, which was usually started by the guide pushing me out of the raft. Lastly, I should mention that we went rafting with a British person that our group had met at Red Chili. We had fun comparing language together and we missed him when he left that evening.

After rafting, we were all exhausted, so we just stayed at Adrift for the evening. One of the Ugandans I met over the weekend, Bosco, brought us a jack fruit as I had wanted to try one. We had someone at Adrift cut it up for us and we all ate the huge fruit together. It is actually quite a process to eat a jack fruit. You have to cut it, wipe off a lot of sticky goo from the cut and then separate the fruit that you eat from the seeds and the other fruit innards that you don’t eat. The whole process is very sticky; the taste is a muted sweetness, kind of like a mango that we would eat in the US (mangoes here are sweet), but it is very good! It was a good way to end a memorable weekend.

Pic: On the way back, we got to see more of the scenery. These thatch houses were very common along the drive, in Uganda as well as the Western part of Kenya.

Habari nymbani . . .

This Swahili phrase means “news at home.” For the past two weeks, my host parents and cousin have been gone due to a death in the family. It was a sad event and my parents took charge of the funeral arrangements, which made it a very busy time for them. However, they returned yesterday and it is good to have them back. Because of the event, I have gotten a chance to meet some of my family’s extended family. Right now we have a 3 month old baby staying with us! We also had a guest this week staying for a school class. She was from Mombasa and helped me with my Swahili homework. It is common in Kenyan culture for extended family and friends to just show up at your house (no warning necessary) to stay for extended periods, although this last guest only stayed for three days. Some of my classmates have had more experiences with this than I have; people have stayed weeks or sometimes haven’t left in the time we’ve been here!

My host mom got her hair done today in little braids- she left the house at 2pm and got home at around 8:30pm, wanting pain medication. I love the way that braided hair looks, but it is painful and takes up most of your day. Most women alternate every 4-6 weeks with braids, no braids, braids, no braids. I believe you can also leave your braids in for up to two months and sometimes a little longer, depending on your preference. This is a huge time commitment (it is relatively inexpensive to have done), but it looks beautiful afterwards!

Habari wakenya

Kenyan news: nothing much has really happened with the Constitution, although voter registration for the Constitutional referendum will begin in March. It is being introduced to Parliament soon if other issues do not get in the way, but no official actions have been taken. The main thing I wanted to talk about here was the recent fight between President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga in Kenya. Because of the election violence in 2007/8, Kenya has a coalition government with both a President and a Prime Minister, which I think I might have mentioned before. This past week, the Prime Minister suspended two ministers so that corruption investigations could take place: the Minister of Education who misplaced funds from the free primary education fund (this is why the US pulled out our education funding from Kenya recently) and the Minister of Agriculture over a maize scandal that has been in the news lately, but happened last year. However, President Kibaki said that Odinga did not have the power to suspend ministers, which resulted in Odinga calling on Kofi Annan, who brokered the coalition government in 2008, to come back to Kenya to figure out the situation. There was a large protest downtown last week against President Kibaki over this issue. I don’t think Kofi Annan ever came, although I am not sure about this, but the news yesterday said that the Parliament voted to in fact suspend the two Ministers. Although there has been a lot of corruption in businesses and government in the US lately, in Kenya there is normally impunity for stealing large sums of government money whereas in the US there is at least public recognition and sometimes leave of government officials in these cases.

What’s going on in my program?

This coming week is the second to last week of my time in Nairobi and the classroom portion of the program, afterwhich begins the internship phase. In two weeks, then, I will probably have a new family and be in a new city! I can’t believe that this is coming up so fast! I will be at my internship site for 6 weeks and then return to Nairobi for one week at the end, where I will stay with my family here for another few days.

I think of you all a lot and I hope that your lives are going well! Talk to you soon . . .

Valentine's Day and Internally Displaced Persons Camp

Note: Pictures finally added . . . thanks for your patience!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hello and happy Valentine’s Day! I hope that you all had a wonderful day with loved ones today and if you didn’t, I was thinking of you all from Kenya! Kenyans celebrate Valentine’s Day, but it is not as prevalent as it is in the US. I celebrated Valentine’s Day today by going out to breakfast with my friends. I ate a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream! It was nice to celebrate.

Valentine’s related (kind of) trade issues . . .

My mom (birth) asked me if there was chocolate in Kenya and there definitely is! The chocolate here is mostly Cadbury, Kenya’s former colonial power. Similar to many African nations, developed nations manufacture many goods sold to people in the developing nation because developing nations don’t often have the infrastructure to manufacture goods, even though most of the raw materials that developed countries use to manufacture actually come from developing countries. Many political scientists have theorized that this type of trade – trade in which raw materials from developing nations are sold cheaply to developed nations and who then manufacture the products and sell these products back to developing countries at high prices - is one of the reasons why developing nations like Kenya have problems developing at all. With this cycle, developing nations are paid little for their raw materials, but then are forced to buy manufactured goods from developed nations because they themselves don’t manufacture. If developed countries were to manufacture, their imported goods could not compete in price with domestically manufactured goods in developed countries because of the high tariffs placed on these goods, so no one would buy them.

Internally displaced persons camp

A close second being the strawberry waffle with whipped cream that I ate this morning (KIDDING, this is totally better), the most noteworthy event in my week was visiting an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp yesterday (Saturday). Internally displaced people are refugees who are displaced within their own country; IDPs don’t travel across international borders to seek asylum, but rather, they are part of a massive group of people who have had to leave their homes for some reason. The IDP camp I went to is right outside of Nivasha, Kenya, and people in the camp are displaced as a result of the 2007/2008 post-election violence when riots ensued after alleged election fraud by President Kibaki (this election forced the current coalition government that I have described in previous blogs). The houses of these particular people were burned and so the government placed them into this camp with promises of finding them a place to live. The government has taken no action to find them land other than the camp since 2008.

I went to the camp with one of my friends here who started a non-profit organization to bring food and medicine to people in three of the camps near Nivasha. We went together along with about 15 other volunteers from various countries (England, Canada, US, Denmark) in a van that one of my friends owned. On the way there and the way back, we swerved through Kenya’s roads like a race car, as is pretty normal for drivers in Kenya!

Once we got to the camp, our task was to set up a clinic for the day for the IDPs including a pharmacy, HIV testing center, family planning clinic and injection room. We used and newly built school (pictured below), which was basically aluminum siding with dirt floors. We had a few benches and chairs, but otherwise no furniture with which to set up the clinic. We ended up taking a bunch of seats out of the van to serve as seating inside our injection and HIV rooms.

Pic: This was the school where we set up the clinic. This is only one of the rooms; there are a few more that aren't pictured here. This is basically to give an idea of what the school was like.

Pic: The pharmacy . . . I'll never forget the name of Paracetamol- I counted out MANY of these pills!

I was in the family planning clinic for the first part of the day. This doubled as the injection room, so I worked with the nurse for a while as she tried to figure out which medicines were what and read the doctor’s handwriting on the prescriptions he made. I guess reading doctors’ handwriting is a universal challenge? Anyway, after injecting a few people, the nurse had to teach someone (with no medical training) how to take blood pressue as we began to take the temperature and blood pressure of every patient who came into the clinic. I was the test dummy for this and it was rather hard for the student to learn at first . . . if you ever want your arm to fall asleep, try taking your blood pressure multiple times on the same arm! After a while, she learned and began taking blood pressures for everyone as the two nurses were busy doing injections.

Here is a brief summary of what the process was for clinic patients. Patients would stand in line to receive a card with their name, age and gender, which volunteers would write for them on large notecards. Then, they would get in line to have their temperature and blood pressure taken. Because there was only one person doing blood pressure, this line was as long as 50 people sometimes. After their blood pressure and temperature was taken, they would wait for the doctor. The doctor would write out the prescription on the notecard and then the patient would go to the pharmacy to get their medication. If the patient needed an injected medication (we gave penicillin this way), they would go to the injection room and receive an injection from a nurse. Because of confidentiality issues for people getting tested for HIV and some women receiving birth control, we had to block windows in the school by stacking wooden blocks in the window. This wasn’t a sustainable solution, so we had to resort to using people’s clothing as a curtain.

The second half of the day, I was in the pharmacy. I mainly counted out pills for people and labeled their pill packets. The people up front would then give the patients their prescriptions and tell them how to take the pills.

Pic: Between the injection room and pharmacy, I also played with some kids for a little while. This is me trying to teach everyone to play crocidile morade (sp?), a game where you clap hands and try not to get hit on the last word of the song. It didn't work very well, but it was fun for a while!

For the day at the camp, we saw over 125 patients. After the clinic, we played with the kids a little bit (some of them liked to use my camera to take pictures). We then drove back to Nairobi having felt like we had really done something worthwhile! While there is always more that volunteers and developed countries can do for people, I talked to one woman for a while who said that she felt like she could hope again when we came. She meant my friend’s group, of course, since that was my first time going, but it was still good to talk to someone there to understand the importance of working in the camps. Most of the time, my friend’s group does food outreach instead of medical, so I will report back if I go again to give food.

Pic: These are the tents at the camp that most people live in.

Pic: Even though the UN left a long time ago, there are still some UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) tents in the camp.

Pic: These are some of the boys who were playing with my camera. The van is the one we took to the camp from Nairobi.

Pic: This picture is me, a few of the boys at the camp, and my friend Kiersten whose NGO we went with to the camp.

Another notable non-profit

Speaking of non-profit organizations, I met another young person this weekend who also started his own non-profit organization. His organization is called Eating Stones and it is named after children in the slums who eat rocks and stones to get the calcium and other mineral deposits within the rocks. I don’t really have any words to follow this up; it is just one story of how people cope in desperate situations I guess (eating stones).
I am headed to Uganda today to go whitewater rafting . . . on the Nile. I am so lucky to be able to do some of these things and excited to see the Nile and Uganda! I’ll report back on this as well hopefully sometime next week. Have a great week!

Pictures! Kenyan markets, and a few other things

9 February 2010

Hello everyone! Apologies for the short hiatus from my blog for those of you who check in regularly. This week has gone quickly; instead of writing this week, I’ve started loading pictures onto my previous blogs! If you look at my previous entries, most of them should have pictures! I am going to try to keep this up when I can. I have taken some pictures of my daily life/room/walk to school, but taking pictures is not always a smart thing to do wherever you are. Because 40% of Kenyans are unemployed (It ranks 187 in employment out of 200 countries- both facts from the CIA World Fact Book) (!!), crime, particularly theft, is a MAJOR problem for people who have no other source of income. If I take a picture in the nearby slum (Kibara- it is the first or second largest slum in all of Africa), there is a chance that my camera could be taken, or that I will get more attention from street children or other people if they see me take a picture. I will try to be intelligently daring, if at all possible, so that I can share with you all, but some pictures may come slower than others for the above reasons.

A week of shopping, starting with Adam’s market!

This past Wednesday we got out of school at 12:30pm, as opposed to our regular 3:30pm time. I went to have lunch at Java, a popular location for many students on the program as it has Western style coffee and free wireless internet (not very common in Kenya). Behind the mall of which Java is a part, there is a street market called Adam’s market where first and second hand goods along with pirated dvds are sold inexpensively. Some of the market is on the street and some of it is enclosed in an area where the shops are shoved together so that there is about a 3 foot walking space between sellers, with a ceiling of about 12 feet high. I can’t remember what the ceiling is, but I think it is something like hard plastic or a tarp, which lets some light in, but by no means is a permanent construction. At the market, I was able to get a pair of Birkenstock sandals there- they looked new - for 450 ksh (Kenya shillings), the equivalent of exactly $6! I was very excited about this as the sandals I brought from the US are beach flip flops and not sustainable for the amount of walking I am doing here. This was my first time buying something at a Kenyan market, so I was proud of my purchase, although I have to give partial credit to my two friends who helped me bargain, one of them who has lived in Kenya for an extended period of time before this trip. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon off!

Quick further word on ‘house help’ and doing laundry

In Kenyan homes, many people, unless you are very, very poor, (one of my friend’s families has no kitchen table- they eat on the floor- and still employ a domestic worker part time) employ house help (I will say domestic worker or Métrine, my family’s domestic worker) part time or full time to do household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, childcare and laundry. Laundry is particularly time consuming as most people don’t have washing machines here, even if you are middle class, like my family is. This may be because water here is in short supply or because there is no point in investing in a washing machine if you have a person to wash your clothing for you (domestic workers). In order to do laundry by hand, one must fill large plastic containers with water (usually three at a time), put soap in the first two, and rinse clothing in the last bucket. Unlike simply pressing a button on a washing machine as we do in the US, you must wash each piece of clothing (sheets/towels included) by rubbing the clothing against itself with both of your hands (scrubbing) until all dirt/stains are removed. Métrine usually washes all clothing, but every individual washes our own underwear. I washed only my underwear, bras, and socks today and this process took me an hour. It is also time consuming when the water gets dirty as you have to change the water. I sit while doing the laundry, but Métrine stands the entire time. She commonly does the equivalent of a load and a half of laundry three or four days per week. My underwear (which took me an hour) is about an eighth of a load (a week’s worth of underwear). She also irons all of the clothes (sheets included) after they have dried on the clothesline outside. Métrine lives with us and is part of the family, although she also has a family in a different part of Kenya who she sees a few times per year.

Kibera market

Friday afternoon, Métrine took me to the market where she shops, which is in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slumps if not the largest, as she has many cute clothes which I’ve commented on many times. The market has many nice things, similar to Adam’s Market, but since it had rained on Wednesday and Thursday, the market was filled with mud. There was also a lot of standing water in the mud along with some garbage, which is the perfect place for malaria infected mosquitoes to breed (standing water). Further into the slums, which I have not been but heard about, garbage disposal is a major problem and sanitation in general. Some of my friends who live near the slums have gone for a week or more without running water. Yes, this means no washing your hands, no showering, and no flushing the toilets. I am lucky to live in an area where water shortage is not a problem and to live in the US where I don’t know anyone with this problem. I will talk more about the slums in another blog sometime.

At the market, I got a shirt for 50 bob or 50 shillings, which is less than a dollar (1USD = 75 Kenyan shillings) and some material which I will have made into something probably while I am here. Many people buy material and then have it made into dresses, skirts, bags or other things at very reasonable prices (nothing like what it costs in the US to have clothes custom made).

Maasai Market

If you have heard of any social group in Kenya it is probably the Maasai. The Maasai are a very well-known tribe/group in Kenya for many reasons, a few of which include their initiation rituals, their relationship with the wild in Africa, and their crafts (mostly beading, but many other things). I learned today that the Maasai actually may have come from Egypt and defected on a military mission afterwhich they ended up in Kenya’s Rift Valley. People also know of the Maasai warriors. I learned in class the other day that one of the ways to prove bravery in the Maasai community is to kill a lion. (Vegans skip this part) According to one of my professors, if you chop the lion tales, it is painful for a lion to turn its head as its vertebrae are very interconnected and you’ve basically won the battle from there by making it impossible for the lion to turn. A similar strategy can be used with a rhino as they cannot turn easily in general. However, the Maasai are mainly known for living with and in harmony with the natural world, despite these rituals. (Vegans start reading again.)

On Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, Maasai people (mostly women) bring their crafts to Nairobi to sell mainly to foreigners. Some Kenyans also buy from this market, but the Maasai get the best prices for things from foreigners who don’t know what things normally cost Kenyans. My mom and I went to the market and she was kind enough to help me bargain. The beading is beautiful and much of the jewelry is large and brightly colored. There are also pieces of clothing, paintings, figurines and commemorative Africa/Kenya pieces of art. My mom was very kind and conversed with one woman ‘as a mother’ asking the woman, ‘what would you want your daughter to be charged if she were in a foreign country?’ and telling her that mom in the US was counting on her to take care of me, so she should give me a fair price. This was in Swahili at the time, so I didn’t understand it; my mom told me later. The wonderful thing is, my mom wasn’t just trying to get me a deal; she was actually being honest! She is very kind.

Kenyan Art/Literature

Today we learned some about African Art. We learned that some African art focuses on contradiction, which inherently creates grey area within any proposed objective truth, on which the art also focuses. Our lecturer for the hour also sang us a folktale song from his tribe (he is from the Acholi people in Northern Uganda) about a beautiful woman and her not as beautiful mother. The young woman ends up marrying a turtle because her husbands divorce her after seeing her mother. The moral of the story is that there are always two sides to life.

I recently finished a book by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (also James Ngugi), Kenya’s most classic literary author. He has written many books about the emergence of Kenya from colonialism and other issues. I read The River Between, which is about a young man trying to figure out what his identity is between tribal loyalty and Christianity among other things- I loved it! If anyone is looking for a good, quick read (very short book), pick this one up!

Update on the Constitution:

The Constitution is being reviewed by a special committee before it goes to debate in Parliament. The special committee review is not public, as far as I know, or is not in the news anyway, but the Constitution is still in the news as this is the time when many advocacy groups are coming forward to make known their opinions on the Constitution draft. The Islamic court issue that I mentioned previously is one of these issues. Another contentious issue with the new draft concerns the abortion debate. Church groups (mainly Catholic) believe that life should be defined as beginning at conception, but many women’s groups argue that this endangers the lives of women. Already, about 70,000 women die each year from botched abortions in Sub-Saharan Africa (www.change.org). Also, advocacy groups for disabled people are trying to get special seats in parliament reserved for disabled people, similar to the way that a few seats are set aside for women in Parliament, similar to many African countries, many of which have many more women in government than we do in the US. Lastly, members of the Party of National Unity, President Kibaki’s political party, are trying to claim that if there is a new Constitution, Kibaki can run again under the new rules as he will not have served two full terms (his last term will be interrupted by the new Constitution if it passes), which is the term limit in the old and I think new Constitution. If you think that party politics are bad in the US, try coming to Kenya where most political decisions are made based on party loyalty and at times, tribal/ethnic group loyalty. The President recently addressed Kenya in the Kikuyu language, which is not a national language of Kenya and which only Kikuyu people speak. I will talk more about corruption later, I am sure. My host parents are so ready to give to a united Kenya. They don’t even mind the high taxes that they pay- they just want their money to be spent for Kenya and not go into the pockets of members of parliament. It seems a far off hope when both of them normally laugh throughout the news report at the ridiculousness of many government officials.

Public Health (class), Ngong Hills, and African football! (1 Feb 2010 and a few days before)

Public Health Class

For those of you who are not aware, I have had an interest in public health since probably 2007 or so. For the record, I am interested in development, women’s human rights, human rights, international law, trade law (so far only focused on int’l pharmaceutical access), women’s health, HIV/AIDS, and public health generally. For this program, we each had to choose a topic in development to learn more about. The options were environment, social services, public health, or microbusiness. I picked public health. This course is kind of an extension of the development course, but is taught by a professor at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. At first, I wasn’t sure if I should be in this track or the social services track as my internship is more about social services, but my first class confirmed that I was in the right place!

Briefly, some of the issues we will be discussing are HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria (the big 3), the Millennium Development Goals (go to http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ if you don’t know what these are) and a few neglected diseases, meaning diseases that get negligible amounts of international funding based on the facts that 1) only people in developing countries have them so there is no (paying) market for pharmaceuticals , (few are researched and few drugs are made; drugs used for these diseases now were originally made for other diseases or more appallingly for household pets in the US) and that 2) they normally don’t kill people, but disable them, meaning that the international community does not pay much attention to these as they do to other diseases such as HIV/AIDS, which has killed millions. One tragedy with these situations is that these diseases are relatively inexpensive to treat if there are known treatments, whereas HIV is very expensive to treat, so a little funding goes a long way with these diseases! If you’re interested in donating or learning more, the Sabin institute does a lot of work with these diseases (http://www.sabin.org/global-network). One of these ‘neglected’ diseases is schistosomiasis, a disease which slowly damages internal organs and slows cognitive development in children among other effects. Treatment costs between 20 and 30 US cents. However, in some parts of Kenya, this disease is so common that young boys think that it is a right of passage/sign of puberty to have blood in their urine, one of the symptoms of the disease (from WHO website). We will also be talking about women’s health as there are two people in the section (one being me) who are interested in issues of women’s marginalization and health, female circumcision, and other issues affecting women’s health. I mainly wanted to talk about this in case I reference my public health section in the future, although I think that this class is emphasized less than the other courses I’ve mentioned in previous blogs.

Korean Restaurant Adventure

After school on Friday, we got out early, so two of my friends and I went to a Korean restaurant nearby our school. This restaurant was clearly a place for Korean travelers/tourists and not everyday Kenyans, but the food was great! They brought out a hot towel for us each to wash our hands with before the meal and cooked the food on a nearby outdoor grill. The interesting story came after the meal, however. One of my friends has a Korean girlfriend and so he said hello in Korean to the only other customer in the restaurant. The Korean man came up and talked to all three of us. Apparently, he is a chairman of six corporations in South Korea (he gave us his business card) and is also a former high-ranking South Korean military leader. He said that he had come to Kenya to look for investment opportunities! Lastly, he pulled out an 8 x 10 photo of his family and George W. Bush’s family! While this wasn’t a highlight of the trip by any means, our conversation with him was one of those travel experiences that are purely happenchance, could never be planned, and are therefore memorable!

Ngong Hills

On Saturday, six of us from my program went to Ngong Hills together as a group. Ngong Hills are famous in Kenya- they overlook the Rift Valley on one side and the nearby cities leading up to Nairobi on the other side. There are seven hills (number can vary depending on who you talk to) lined up in a row and most of the land is traditionally inhabited by either Maasai or Kikuyu (more recently) peoples. According to a Maasai legend, a giant tripped over Mt. Kilimanjaro and the earth rumbled when he fell, creating the hills (thank you, Rough Guide to Kenya). The Maasai and Kikuyu (some intermarried) still live in the hills and surrounding area today. On a clear day, one is supposed to be able to see Mt. Kilimanjaro, especially from the 7th hill, but also the 6th and 5th if one is very lucky.

This trip was the first time that a few of us had gone out as a group without one of the MSID (program) leaders. Using our travel guides and host moms, we figured out which bus to catch, but this was only the beginning of the journey! Ngong Hills is located West of Nairobi in the neighboring province, so the bus ride there took a long 30 minutes. Normally, a bus ride would not be that eventful, but on buses here, there is no way to know where to get off other than getting to know the routes and talking to the bus workers. On every bus and mutatu (informal buses, many are large vans), there is not only the driver, but also usually at least two people advertising the bus (holding up the number to people waiting at the bus stops) and asking people ‘where are you going?’ in hopes of packing the bus full. These individuals (I have only seen men doing this job) ride on the door of the bus and hit the bus windows twice to signal to the driver to stop. As the bus is leaving a stop, these workers just barely grab the door handle in time to hop back on the bus as it pulls away from the stop. On the ride to Ngong Hills, I thought that one of them actually tried to catch the bus after working on it for a while, but didn’t grab on in time and ended up falling out of the bus! The bus kept going, so I guess his shift was over! I do not understand how these workers organize their shifts as it seems to be up to chance whether or not the workers stay on the bus or jump off and stay off, although I’m sure this is just to the untrained eye. On the way back from the Hills, one of the workers got off to buy a single cigarette and got back on the bus. This was the sole reason for the bus to stop at this market/non-bus stop. Being on the bus is usually a lively adventure that requires concentration so that you can get to where you want to go, at least until you are familiar with the routes! There are also many buses and mutatus that play loud R&B music (sometimes with video), so many people are rocking out to the latest African pop music (sometimes American) on their rides around Kenya. Riding the bus is definitely an experience here!

After having about six conversations with a bus worker to figure out exactly where we were supposed to get off, we were told to get off at the last stop, take a few turns, and then ask directions to Ngong Hills from there. We finally found where we were supposed to be, but the Hills (which are featured in both of the Kenya travel guides I have) had no central office, map, or arrows about where to start climbing or what to do. We started to climb up a dirt road where we thought the Hills might be, but we were stopped by a member of the Kenyan military (part of the Wildlife Service which works to protect the environment and tourists in Kenya) who told us that we could not climb in the hills without a guide. So, we restarted our journey with Moha who showed us the way. My friends thought that the military may have scammed us and we didn’t actually need a guide, but since there were no signs and both my travel guides had mentioned robbery as a possible event at Ngong Hills, I was happy to talk to have him along and enjoyed talking to him on the route.

Now, when we wanted to go climbing in Ngong Hills originally, I at least was thinking that the hills would be forest covered (read: there would be shade). However, this was not at all the case. Instead, we were in direct sunlight for the whole trip, all of which was uphill until we got to our destination, which turned out to be the top of the 5th hill. We stopped here after we had climbed uphill for over two hours (note: some Kenyans were RUNNING up these hills next to us) and . . . one of the girls who came with us had mono and was unaware, as were we all, of the strenuous nature of the climb!

But it was all worth it at the top as we were able to sit and eat our lunch (along with nearby goats, cows and a dog, which people who live nearby herd on the top of the hills) of peanut butter and bread, which we had bought at a market in the town of Ngong after getting off of the bus. Our guide, Moha, told us that he was Somali and had been in the military for 10 years! He said that he loved soccer and wanted Ghana to win the Africa cup in the match between Ghana and Egypt, which I’ll talk more about later.

Pic: Eating lunch at the top of hill #5! Moha is taking the picture here.

Pic: This is a picture of all of us who went and Moha, our guide.

The downhill walk after lunch was great! We couldn’t see Kilimanjaro because of the haze, but the Rift Valley and other surrounding scenes were beautiful! In addition to seeing a chunk of Kenyan geography, we walked directly under about five huge wind turbines on the way up and down the hills- it was a Don Quixote moment for us all, although I mentioned this to the group to find that I was the only one who was thinking this at the time . . .

Pic: Yes, we climbed up this hill. Don Quixote moment!

Dinner at Carnivore restaurant

Saturday evening, a large group of my classmates and I (about 25 of us) went out in the evening to Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi. Carnivore is a world famous restaurant known for serving extraordinary meats such as ostrich and crocodile. I had fish and a life-changing brownie (brownie was worth the $1500 ticket to Nairobi in itself). We were celebrating one of the group’s birthdays and it was a moment to remember when the staff came out with a sparkler-clad brownie and sang happy birthday first in English and then a song in Swahili, accompanied by conga drums and spoons/glasses. Some people in the restaurant probably think that the Swahili song is happy birthday, but it is not. It is instead a song using basic conversation vocabulary in Swahili, which I had learned in my Swahili class!

The Africa Cup!

Sunday was a quiet day; I spent some time with a friend of mine who had spent the night (some host families ask students to stay somewhere else instead of coming home late- again, my host parents are amazing, so they not only encourage me to experience all parts of Kenya including night life, but consented to having one of my friends stay over as well who couldn’t go home if she wasn’t going to be home before 9.) and then spent some time alone and then with my family before watching the Ghana v. Egypt Africa Cup soccer game!

Egypt, who has won the Africa cup for the past 3 years won once again, 1 to 0, scoring the only goal in the last 5 minutes of the game! I had an interesting conversation with my dad about this during the game. Apparently, many of the African soccer players play on European club teams when they’re not playing games for their home country because they are not paid enough in their home countries. My dad said that the two leading forwards on the Ghanaian team were rivals in English club soccer and that the Ghanaian team actually only meets together for games in Africa rather than training and practicing with the team all year. During the game, the announcers said that one of the biggest problems in the Ghanaian team was that everyone wanted to score himself instead of playing as a team; their team cohesion was their biggest deficit in the game. The Ghanaian team differs from the Egyptians in this way as the Egyptians do not play on European club teams. They are paid enough in Egypt to stay there and thus play more as a team than any other African team. I wonder how much this contributes to Egypt’s winning streak?? Also, in the African cup games, there is one commercial break at half time; otherwise, there are no commercial breaks during the two 45 minute halves! I wonder if commercial breaks have anything to do with the style of US football (stops and starts constantly . . .)?

*Constitution update: the Parliamentary Select Committee (people agreeing on a draft Constitution) concluded last week and the next step for it is debate and agreement of the Constitution in Parliament. Again, this will probably be a trying step for the Constitution as it has been personal interests of Parliamentarians that have dictated the debate in the past, causing a draft Constitution to fail in 2005. Kenya’s MPs are among the highest paid government officials in the world and there is a huge gap between what Parliamentarians are paid in Kenya and what other workers are paid. Most Kenyans I have met support Kenyan unity and progress, but government corruption is constantly a challenge.

Also, just today, a debate in the religious communities of Kenya may also stall or fail the Constitution. Separate Islamic courts are a part of the Constitution, which has resulted in Christian leaders asking their constituency not to vote for the Constitution. If Christians as a group do not vote for the Constitution, it will not pass, as Christians are the majority religious group in Kenya.