Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Mombasa!

So, I am still behind in some of the things I want to share with you from Nairobi, but I want to write about Mombasa while the information is fresh and while I am here, so that I can communicate real time about my life here!

Mombasa Home

I arrived in Mombasa on Sunday in the evening. I met my second host mom right away, Mama Selina, who picked me up from the bus station. We drove home, which is about a 30 minute ride from the bus station/city. I live in an area called Shanzu, north of Mombasa, if you want to use google maps to see where I am. My mom welcomed me into my home, which is built with drywall, stones and a corrugated tin roof. There are many trees around the house- coconut, lemon, avocado, and the list continues! It is a large place, almost long-house style, with three (I think) bedrooms, a den, living room and kitchen. The floors are all painted cement and there are no screens on the windows. I would describe this house as being more one with nature than my place in Nairobi! This is, however, a good thing, as an airy place is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in Mombasa. It is HOT here. You think you’ve been someplace hot? Well, I don’t want to hear about it because Mombasa is hotter! It is 95+ degrees during the day and 90+ degrees at night (thanks to Alice for my thermometer which I used to collect this data!). Also Mombasa is on the coast , which means it is also humid. But there is wonderful wind from the ocean that comes and makes the heat tolerable. Anyway, it takes some getting used to and I think I am on my way, but it is still HOT regardless of whether I am used to it or not!

Pic: Tree in the back yard- have thought about breaking off a branch to use as fan.

Pic: More trees in the back yard! Aren't they beautiful?!

Pic: Last tree picture, I promise! . . . at least for this blog. This tree has coconuts if you look really hard. I had a better close-up of the tree, but I picked this one because you can see the corrugated aluminum that I've been talking about- this is the roof to the porch, but the same material is used for the roof of the house.

However, the heat brings wonderful plant and animal life. On my first day, I saw a multi-colored lizard climbing on a brick wall! It was beautiful! Also, there are chickens running about outside on a normal day; Mama Selina owns one of the chickens unless we ate it for dinner last night . . .

Pic: The lizard/salamander thing. Isn't he great? His tail was unfortunately cut short by some sort of predator, but he's still pretty awesome!

Family

More about my family: again, my family is very kind. My mom, again, is amazing. She took me to my internship on the first day as well as took me to the matatu (hippie vans that are used for transportation here) stop today as I was going by myself for the first time. She always makes sure I and everyone else eats before she does and makes sure I have everything I need. On my first day here, we were able to talk a little bit, so here is some more about her life: Mama Selina is a business woman who rents out houses, owns a bar nearby and rents out a motorcycle for people to drive. She told me that she uses microloans for most of her business, but that she sometimes finds the loans hard to pay back because of the interest rates. She also told me that she likes to travel, but doesn’t travel that much these. She is originally from a town near Kisumu in Western Kenya and from the Luo community, like my last family. However, unlike my last family who has family still in their rural village, Mama Selina has no family in her village. She is 50 and both of her parents have passed away; she is an elder in this community.

In this same conversation, Mama Selina talked to me about her life, which made me how much change she has had to live through. I am amazed by her courage to adapt to so much change, her ability to continue to learn more, and to host international students who she knows how to take care of despite other foreign things about us! Here is a little bit about her life as an example of what I am talking about. Mama Selina grew up in a village near Kisumu and went to school there. At the end of primary school (grade 8), a Congolese man said he wanted to marry her. Her parents wanted her to finish school, but two years into high school, her dowry was ready, and she was married at the age of 16! She was an Anglican, but after 10 years of not going to church with her catholic husband, she decided that she wanted to again go to church for the community and converted to Catholicism. We talked about relationships and how 30 was too old for a woman to get married in Kenya, while I told her in the US it is completely fine! She observed how the older generation Kenya tends to stay married no matter what while the younger generation does not. Different than other people I’ve talked to here, even though changes are happening, Mama Selina seems completely fine with it and, from when I’ve talked to her, she seems like she knows that some people live their lives differently today from how she lived her life, but that this is not bad, it is just different from how she grew up and lived most of her life. Even though her life has been so different from mine, she seems to understand what I am going through well!

Pic: This is where Mama Selina and I talked about her life. This is a porch that sits adjacent to the house. It is good to use during the day where the breeze can reach you, as opposed to in the house, where it can get hotter than outside.

One such incident when Mama Selina’s ability to empathize with a foreigner happened after the first night I was in her home. The first night there, I had been sitting on a chair for about 20 minutes when I saw what I thought was a large-ish insect behind me. I lifted up the pillow I was sitting on and saw two mouse faces staring back at me! I was definitely freaked out, but did not say anything at the time. I was further freaked out when mice kept crawling under the door to my room only to run away when they saw that my light was on. What would happen when I went to bed??, I wondered!! I was sufficiently freaked out by the mice, if unnecessarily so. A power outage that turned out my light for me forced me to reckon with this situation. I actually don’t know what happened as I just remember waking up the next morning being less freaked out about the mice. Anyway, when I saw Mama Selina the next morning, she said, “you saw some mice last night in your chair, didn’t you?” She had noticed them after I got up to go to bed. I was surprised that she asked this because I didn’t think that she had seen them at all, and even if she had, they were just mice, so what did I have to be scared of? She assured me that they weren’t really harmful and that she was going to (vegans skim) put poison out for them tomorrow. I had thought that mice might be commonplace for this house that a mouse could crawl into no problem through most doorways, but she knew that I was naive enough to be somewhat freaked out anyway. I saw them the next night, but wasn’t scared, thanks to her words as well as some from Eliza, who I e-mailed in a panic as the mice were running under my door (thanks, Eliza)!

Water

Another new experience here is the lack of running water most places in the house. There is a tank where there is running water, but it doesn’t run to the rest of the house other than the kitchen and the water has to be sterilized (boiled) anyway, so I don’t use any water out of the tap for anything I do. This means showering from water out of a bucket after the water has been boiled, washing hands with a basin and bowl before dinner, brushing my teeth with water I pour onto the toothbrush, and of course, flushing the toilet manually- by pouring water into the toilet to flush instead of pressing a handle. With this in addition to the mice, the first day held many new experiences for me! However, everything worked out fine once I learned the new routine, and I feel clean, despite the absence of these privileges that I couldn’t imagine doing without before coming to Kenya! Admittedly, however, comfortability in this situation is only made possibly by the fact that there are house help (one full time and one part time) who work at Mama Selina’s house to boil water, do laundry and prepare and serve food, along with Mama Selina, who also cooks at the house. This means that people boil the water I use to shower and set the basin on the table to use to wash my hands before dinner. I don’t do any of these things myself, which I guess is similar to having clean tap water on demand at any time in the US.

Family other than Mama Selina

Finally, to talk a little more about my family other than Mama Selina (sorry, pictures will have to wait again; I’ll try to take some soon). You’ve already heard a lot about Mama Selina, but what I didn’t tell you is that most of her 6 children live near (1 lives in the house with us and one is over all day and only goes home to sleep at like 10pm.). Many people are constantly coming over; there are at least ten grandchildren who I’ve met so far, although I am still working on names. Alfred, Mama Selina’s son, is 16 and lives with us, but he goes to school during the day, so I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to him that much, unfortunately. Gisele (called Bambo) is 21 and is the one who stays at the house all day, but goes home to sleep. She has just finished school, although I am unsure which school. Other children and their spouses come over frequently; Mama Selina’s family have welcomed me very kindly and I feel very comfortable with them. I am looking forward to getting to know them better, but I also know that I want to keep blogging as well as work on three papers for class in my time in Mombasa- so much to do!

Thoughts about urbanization in Kenya

The rural urban dynamic is rapidly changing in Kenya. I think I talked about this a little bit before, but I will share more as this observation is somewhat different than observations from before. I think I already said that many people (young people especially) are coming to the cities to try to find work. Even if they have to live in extreme poverty in the cities (slums, no running water, other things I will tell you about when I get home), there is at least the illusion that they can find class-altering opportunity in the city, which is nonexistent in the rural areas. As the slums evidence, most people still struggle a lot economically in the cities, but in the rural areas, there is little if any opportunity at all for class/economic mobility not to mention further schooling. According to my professors this semester, the news, and myself, this rural/urban opportunity differential basically results from the centralization of government funds in cities and the corruption of any other funds that go to government officials or unequitable development projects in rural areas that look good in the news, but that rarely have any long-term, sustainable, development effects. So, in rural areas, there are basically traditional village labor jobs such as tending to cattle, gathering water, making crafts for city markets, with which while one might be able to put food on the table, but which will never give anyone opportunity beyond being able to afford more than basic needs. So . . . people come to the city.

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because in some families there is a generational change occurring in where people call ‘home’ that could affect Kenyan politics in the future. My dad in Nairobi called his rural community his home, even though he was born in Nairobi and lives there, although he did spend a significant amount of time there when he was young, I think. His son (my brother Sean) was also born in Nairobi, but Sean can’t speak a lot of his ‘mothertongue’ (Luo, in his case, which my dad speaks fluently) and hasn’t had the experience of living for a long period of time in the rural area like my dad has. Similarly, in my new family, Mama Selina grew up in a village, but, as I said earlier, no one from her family is in her village anymore and her children live with and around here outside of Mombasa, not in the rural village near Kisumu. Her children probably will not go back to Kisumu, where other Luos call home. In Kenya, because political parties fall largely on ethnic lines, the geographical/tribal affiliation has a lot to do with politics! Currently, one party controls the Luo/Luya Western Kenya, while another party controls the central Kikuyu district. Other groups also factor in, but aren’t as large as these two constituencies. I am wondering if urbanization, specifically people not moving back to their tribal land, erodes these tribal/political ties at all or if ethnicity and politics will continue to be linked, even though politics/ethnicity will no longer be regionally divided in urban areas? It will probably be a while if this will happen at all, however, as many Kenyans still live in rural and ethnically divided villages and political constituencies. And my families, living in the city are currently the exceptions, although this is in the process of changing currently.

Internship

I want to talk a little bit (or a lot as is usual for me . . .) about my internship these first few days. I am working with a group called Coast Women In Development (CWID). I don’t know how I or my program got them confused with Women’s Network Center before (in a previous blog), but I am actually working for this group- this is the last time I will change my story, I promise! And this group has a website . . . here it is if you want to find more information: www.coastwomen.org. They do a lot of networking with other organizations as right now they only have a donor for their microfinance program. Other than their microfinance program, they work with disabled women, orphaned children, boys and girls, but especially girls, and raising awareness about gender-based violence and the children’s and women’s rights that are written in international (usually UN) agreements such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ - ratified by all states (although some with reservations) other than Tongo, Palau, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Nauru and of course the US- nice list of countries to be a part of, isn’t it? - or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.unicef.org/crc/ - ratified by all nations outside of the US and Somalia), but that most of these women have never heard of or have been unable to mobilize to advocate for these rights themselves.

(Wondering why the US has not ratified these agreements? One theory is the idea that if US institutions are going to ratify something, it will actually mean something, i.e. we will change our governance, which would mean that Congress would actually have to agree to ratify these things which they haven’t- this idea supports the notion that the US has a strong democracy as opposed to other states that can just sign the agreements and not change any of their actions (like dictatorial governments, where one or a few people can agree to ratify something, but change nothing as there are no institutions like the US has to ensure that anything will be carried out). Another idea is that the US just doesn’t like international agreements because we don’t like to have our sovereignty taken away by anyone, similar to why we didn’t sign Kyoto or why we like to bypass the UN and start wars. I personally tend to take the side of the second argument about sovereignty. The first theory begs the question about why we were/are able to torture people even though we ratified the Convention on Torture in 1994, way before anyone knew what an ‘enemy combatant’ was? To me, this means that US governance won’t change unless the US wants it to (so we really wouldn’t be bound to these agreements even if we ratified them). However, this, then, begs the question about why the conventions exist at all or are a worthy topic for discussion if states are not held responsible for following them. Personally, I still think they are important as enforceability will come over time as international institutions are gaining strength in the rest of the world, if not the US, and eventually, I hope this will happen in the US as well. I’d like to hear your ideas if anyone has any comments about this! Also, I should probably say that there are other theories about why conventions are ratified or not, so this is not an all-inclusive consideration of the arguments, although these are the main ones I remember from class, and I know two of the more popular ones.)

Still about internships . . .

I’ve also talked about a group called FIDA Kenya (Federation of Women Lawyers Kenya) before that I might be working with a few days a week after I talk to the director (it will mainly depend on whether they have work for me or not). One of the ways that CWID is different than FIDA is that CWID goes into rural areas and slums to talk to women whereas FIDA works within the court system, in downtown Mombasa. FIDA has more funding, one of the reasons being that they can collect more solid numbers with their impacts (ex. court results). Many times, organizations such as CWID will refer women to FIDA if they don’t have the resources to deal with the case.

Onto my actual internship: everyday, I take two matatus to work. I work in a slum North of Mombasa called Mshoroni. Even though it is a slum, I always feel safe there and I am always with people from CWID, so this is no problem. I am glad I get to see the slum area first-hand, as I spent most of my time downtown or in non-slum areas of Nairobi when I was there. Loraine from CWID said that, other than because of funding reasons, CWID is in the slum as it wants to be near the grassroots women instead of in the at times inaccessible and intimidating downtown area.

At CWID, I work with Betty, the founder of the group, and Loraine, who has been working with CWID for about two years. Yesterday, we went to visit Tunaweza, Disabled Women’s Group (Tunaweza translates as “we are able” as I learned it, but their brochure translates it into “Yes, we can”), a group of disabled women who work for the rights of disabled people, particularly women and women in leadership. In Kenya, disabled people have few rights outside of regular people, which translates into few rights that many of them can access. A case in point is education. According to the coordinator for Tunaweza, many people with disabilities in Kenya are in low economic classes because schools usually charge extra to teach disabled kids as there is no money in the schools for extra people in the classroom to help just one student. When families can’t pay these fees, disabled children do not go to school. Also, transportation is a huge issue as most transportation is run by the informal sector, which is unregulated. Although, come to think about it, there probably aren’t any regulations even on public transportation, although I have seen disabled people ride on public buses and not on matatus (informal). The day ended with a conversation between Loraine and I about the group, since I really didn’t know that much about it at that point!

Today at work, I went to a government testing office with Loraine to ask how grassroots women access the testing center. I think this would be like the equivalent of going to the State Lab of Hygiene or something in Wisconsin- it is the place where testing is actually completed in the lab. We learned that most of the tests are paternity tests, police cases (rape among other things), and health safety testing. Loraine was particularly interested in the paternity testing at the center. The center we were at is the only center of its kind in the entire Kenyan coast province, and people must get their blood drawn at the center, in person, for the paternity test, which means that women from all along the coast would have to travel to this center if they wanted a paternity test. According to the woman we spoke with at the lab, tests cost 5000 Kenya shillings (KS) per person ($1=75 KS, so about 67 USD!), which usually means 15,000 KS per family (mother, father, child), plus 5000 KS extra for additional children. Usually the people themselves must pay for the test and in very rare cases the government pays for these tests. The representative said that there are usually no more than 20 of these cases annually. This is surprising as it would seem that there would be more than 20 cases of people trying to get paternity tests in all of the Kenyan coast per year. I would assume that this would be a result of the inaccessibility of the tests because of their cost and travel for some (most?) families and the fact that rural people don’t normally use the state court systems, which the government lab worker said was the case. According to the office, the government test is a deal as other private hospitals charge much more. Also, another thing Loraine and I learned is that the testing center gives the results back to individuals, not a third party. According to the lab person we spoke with, everyone in the center is a scientist, so this means that no one there has expertise in counseling people before the results are returned and so counseling does not take place. Families are given the results and left to sort out the issues for themselves. We talked to the office less about rape cases, but she commented that in many cases rape is unable to be tested because women do not report immediately.

Anyway, so that is a lot about my life here so far, hopefully there will be more soon about my life here or in Nairobi- thanks for reading!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

My family in Nairobi

Greetings! Below is a new blog, but here is just a quick update about what I'll be doing next with my program here in Kenya. Class ended for me this week, although most of our assignments are not due until the end of April. I am headed to Mombasa tomorrow (Sunday, the 14th) where I will settle with a new family there and start an internship. I will be interning with a group called Women's Network Centre. This group works with women, but I am not sure exactly what I'll be doing yet as the group is very grassroots- they don't actually have a website yet - so it is hard to get information about them other than what my program tells me! I may also be working a few days a week with FIDA Kenya (Federation of Women Lawyers- Kenya), although I have to meet with someone in their office to finalize this- if you remember a previous post, this is the group I was going to work with at the start of the program, but because they have another international intern, I am going to work mainly with Women's Network Centre and work with FIDA if there is work for me. Okay, here is the blog!

For the next few blogs, I am going to talk about everyday life things instead of basically what I've been doing, although that will be included also. This blog features pictures of my family in Nairobi, the Omondi family.

Pic: This is a picture of my host mom and I! Her name is Joann, but I usually call her Mom. My brother Sean is taking this picture- it was the first one in which he managed to include our heads in the picture :).



Pics: Here are another few pictures of my host mom with her new weave! Most Kenyan women alternate their hair between a weave (hair extensions that are weaved into their hair) and hair relaxer on their regular hair, which makes it straight and manageable to style. In the previous picture, my mom had no weave, but the above pictures are from the day she came home with her new weave and I thought it was absolutely beautiful! It takes anywhere from 5 to 10 hours to get a weave (my mom left in the morning and didn't get back until 6 or 7 at night). There are many people working on your hair at once and my mom actually had to take some ibuprophen when she got home because her head hurt so much. Most weaves are braids or twists. My host mom got twists. I told my mom (US) that I would post pictures of this, so here it is, Mom!

I think I've said before that my mom is a nurse here in Kenya. She works in a children's ward which helps with child delivery as well as care for sick children. She is an administrator there, which takes her away from clinical care some of the time, but she likes her job currently as well. Recently, she told me that her ward was going to experiment with water delivery of babies. This is where the mother delivers a child in a tub of water- this is supposed to be easier for the mother, I believe. Nurses who are following- do we do this in the US?



Pic: This is myself and my dad here in Kenya, Ken(nedy). He is a medical student as well as a teacher- he trains medical technicians at Kenya Medical Training College. He is very kind and makes me feel at home in the Omondi's house- he commonly refers to me as his daughter. On a similar note, everyone in the family has accepted me as a part of the family. Now that I am leaving soon for Mombasa, they all say how much they will miss me when I'm gone: my question to them is 'don't you have students every semester that come and go?' They say yes, but that each one actually becomes a part of their family similar to other family members, not like a foreign student that will leave every semester. I think part of this might come from the fact that many African families treat extended family members as if they were a part of their immediate family. Family members can show up at any time, have dinner, stay a few days, or even live together and they are welcomed and asked to stay longer. It is remarkable to me that they include me in this group!

Pic: This is myself and my cousin Jeff. Sometimes I refer to him as a brother, since he lives with our family in the house. He is an engineering student who wants to join the Kenyan military after he graduates in June. He says that these jobs are hard to get, but that he is a good student, so he has hope. Jeff is 22, so we are close in age- he helps me with Kiswahili and we talk about our day together when we are both home.

Pic: This is a picture of Métrine, the domestic worker who works and lives at the Omondi's house. I sometimes refer to her as my sister as she also lives in the house; the family and I also call her Met. I have talked to Met a lot about Kenyan life, politics, and her life. Met (although she doesn't look it!) is 28 and has two children who live with her mother in Western Kenya. Met has a very strong faith, which she talks to me about frequently, and which never ceases to impress me! She is one of the strongest people I know. She is also very good at posing for pictures (as you can see from above) and we have taken many pictures for her facebook account while I have been here! Met and I have become good friends and I will probably stay in touch with her, as well as the family, after the program.

Pic: I think you have seen a picture of Sean in a previous blog, but here he is again! Sean recently got a Kenya Scout's uniform, which is featured here. He was very excited about this. Similar to the US, Kenya has a Boy Scouts Program and a Girl Guides program at many schools. As a scout, Sean will help with safety at his school and will help with school ceremonies when the flag is raised. Sean has to wear his uniform on Mondays and Fridays to school. The day I took this picture was a Saturday, the day he got the uniform. Sean has lots of energy and there is never a dull moment with him!

Pic: Here is Sean and me together- we need more pictures together, but he is just so photogenic on his own that I take too many pictures of him by himself! I have recently shared my computer with him- he likes to research Michael Jackson and the WWF (wrestling!).

Pic: This is a picture of myself and my cousin Oliver. Oliver does not live with us, but lives in Mombasa, so I might see him during my internship in the next 6 weeks. Oliver and I started him a facebook account, so we took pictures for that and here is one of them! Many Kenyans here have facebook, but don't use facebook on computer- they use it on their phones. This is the case with Jeff and Met.

This past week, my mom, dad and Sean all got malaria and were home from school and work for a few days. This is common when city people visit the rural areas where malaria is more prevalent (they came back from Kisumu in Western Kenya recently after the death of my dad's mother there). It was sad to see them sick, but one of the days they all got to stay home together- it was nice to see them spending a day all together as this rarely happens because of school and work!

Okay, that is it for news about my family, I think. To my US family (all of you), I think of you often and I will look forward to hearing all of your stories about the past four months when I get back in May!