I'm on my way...

I know, two posts in one day! I’m going crazy! I am departing for Mombassa and Bodo this afternoon. Therefore, I will not be on a computer for two weeks, so do not fret if you don’t hear from me. Also, I am in a rush, so I apologize for the quality of the writing.

The day after I moved in with my family, Mama Stella took me to the bus station in downtown Nairobi (Yes, she just left the kids at home alone for six hours). In order for us to get there, we had to take a matatu, which is basically a very small van that packs a ton of people in it. They have no regard for pedestrians or other cars and the mention of a seat belt is laughable. Each matatu has a different character and they are the Kenyan form of public transportation. I definitely rode in a "che" matatu and a "david bowie" matatu.

The bus station is in the Eastern area of the city and the area surrounding it was covered in trash and rotting food. We were going to meet Mama Stella's mother who was arriving from Kisii for a wedding. I actually could not tell where the station actually began, but we found Grandma sitting on the side of a road with two servants and bags full of clothes and food. A few minutes later, rain began to pour down in sheets and we took refuge under an overhang. A few minutes later, a man passed by the overhang and began to hassle me. I ignored him but he was persistent in trying to get my attention, escalating his voice first in English and then in Swahili. A second man approached the man and they spoke in Swahili. Both men became physical and began to push each other around. A group of men standing behind me poked my shoulder. When I turned around, they whispered "your presence here is making this man very angry." When we evacuated the overhang a few minutes later, the two men were still arguing.

For the first time since arriving in Kenya, I was acutely aware of my skin color. Often I hear the passing "mzungu," which means white person (and really translates to people who move around), however, never before was I in a vulnerable position for someone to talk at length to me. I stood under the overhang shoulder to shoulder with many people, following my mother's actions; perhaps I was just an easy target. My mother brushed off the man as a "madman," which very well may be true. However, it still shook me for a moment to have someone visibly dislike me based solely on my appearance.

After the experience at the bus station, Mama and I went to her cousin's house in a different area of the city. Five of her female cousins were there for their monthly get together. In my African mind, the house was nice, large, and well kept. In my American mind, it was a barely standing shanty that would make me fear for tetanus, dust mites, and food poisoning. Mama Stella's cousins were extremely welcoming and kept bringing me food--egg soup, potatoes, chapati, peas, brown and white ugali, and more. Kids ran around the house, playing video games and freezing the passion fruit juice into ice cubes in the freezer (did I mention that I love kids!). The cousins talked with me for a long time (in both English and Swahili) about why I was in Kenya. For the most part, people are extremely interested and welcoming. Right before we were about to leave, the women exchanged money and picked names out of a hat of people to pray for in the group. Then, we took a car to the Nairobi Club, which is a very fancy country club outside the main downtown. One of Mama Stella's male cousins is getting married there on Friday (I am missing it because I am going to Mombassa), so we went to check it out. I could definitely tell that the Nairobi Club was originally a club exclusively for Europeans. There were cricket fields and Everything was fancy and nice--a huge jump from the cousin's house. I met two of Mama's nieces who are 21 and 22 and attend nearby Universities. The entire time I was at the Club, I felt like I could have been anywhere but Africa. The women sat and talked about marriage, their weight, and different types of men while the men sat at another table drinking Tusker beer and smoking cigars. I definitely believe that living in Nairobi makes one more "modern", but I still get amazed (and sometimes giddy) when it dawns on me over and over again that all people are basically the same. When we were leaving, Mama Stella and her cousins de-shoed and raced across the lawn. I am proud to report that my mother won the race!

Other things:

-my class made up a song called "Hodi," which is the greeting one says before entering a place. It is a stellar/harsh song.

-I really love SIT and the classes. The lectures are extremely interesting and I have a grandparent crush on Odoch (my Director) and his wife Donna Pido (who is American). Everyone should look up Donna on the Internet because she is fantastic. Also, every exercise we participate in are well planned and have a specific purpose. There is a fair amount of work but I am interested and engaged in all of it.

-I went to an AIDS orphanage and volunteered with toddlers while they were in he pool. My clothes were soaked, but I had a good time. The facility was extremely nice, a commonality that continually surprises me. Virtually all buildings are surrounded by guarded gates, so on the street, most things look run down. Then, one you are in the gate, you forget that the street even exists.

-When I was making valentines (out of, you guessed it, construction paper), I showed my brothers and sister how to make snowflakes, cranes, and fortune tellers. They were fascinated by the snowflakes in particular and could not really figure out how there is really no way to mess them up.

Mimi nyumbani...

I am sorry for the delay in updates! Last Friday afternoon, I moved in with my homestay family, the Nyaboke family. The house is located in the Jamhuri neighborhood and consists of Mama Stella, Isaac (12), Beldine (11) , and Brian (9). Papa Nyaboke lives in Monbassa (on the coast) working at a primary school they own. Although SIT reiterated on multiple occasions that the homestay experience is a cross-cultural experience for both parties and that the families will welcome us into their homes as their own children, the concept of welcoming in a total stranger with open arms as an appendage to the family seemed so foreign to me that I have to admit I still had my doubts. When I walked through the gate, everyone was waiting for me and had uji, a brown millet porridge, waiting for the celebration. A rusty blue gate with spear-shaped prongs protruding from the top separates the house compound from the street. The front "yard" is a cement slab with a large water tank in the front and clothes lines crossing in every direction. Inside, the first floor has a very small kitchen and a living room. A bathroom and three bedrooms make up the second floor. The best thing about the family is Jack, the pet turkey, who resides in the backyard/junkyard area (note: my family is Seventh Day Adventist and therefore vegetarian, so Jack is really a pet). The inside of the house is small, but pretty nice. We have a computer (no internet), tv, and dvd player. Electricity is sporadic and goes out at least three times a night, making my seven flashlights come in quite handy :) My backyard is home to not only Jack, but also a guava tree and an avocado tree. They thought it was weird that I had never seen a guava tree before.

I share a room with Beldine (I claimed the top bunk) and overall, the experience has been enjoyable so far. I get along really well with the family and the kids are fantastic. I love that kids are the same everywhere. When I first arrived, they wanted to play games with me, so they taught me their version of duck duck goose, which is played to the tune of Yankee Doodle. They also taught me "Nyama" which is the swahili word for meat. Basically one person says "Nyama, nyama, nyama" and the other people jump up and repeat "Nyama!". Then, the caller can say "Nyama, nyama, mbuzi (goat)" and everyone still jumps to "Nyama" because one can eat a goat. If the caller says "nyama, nyama, meza (table)", no one jumps because you cannot eat a table (if you do, you're out). It is a pretty fantastic game! I taught them the "Wah" game, "elves, wizards, giants", and how to play "war" with a deck of cards. The boys are obsessed with animals that eat people, such as sharks and piranhas, and they love to play with hot wheels. All three kids go to a private school and are fluent in English, Swahili, French, Spanish, and Kisii. They always ask me about technology in the USA, such as how we get rid of garbage and how our water gets cleaned. The difference in the value of education between American twelve year-olds and Kenyan twelve year olds is amazing. Here, they are so eager to go. Issac wakes up at 5am every day and reads for an hour before getting ready for school. By 6:30, he is at school and does not get home until 6:30pm. And he always wants to know more.

I'm a list person, so here are some things I want to mention but cannot fit into a cohesive paragraph:

-We drink tea with whole milk at least three to five times a day. Who drinks hot tea when it is 80 degrees out every day?

-My family has a live-in house-help who cooks, cleans, does laundry and dishes, and washes my hands for me before and after meals. This is a normal phenomenon for a Kenyan family, even if they are not well off. Maggie is our house help and she only knows how to cook one dish: ugali and sukumawiki (white carb stuff and kale). My mom yelled at her yesterday because she is sick of the same food.

-from our handbook: "Consider lying the official municipal pastime of Nairobi." I have become a proficient liar. Apparently, Kenyans lie about everything, including how to get somewhere if you ask directions. My name is Louise when we go out and I live "over there".

-African English is different than British and American English and I have begun to speak with an African accent so my family can understand me.

-From our handbook again: "The following actions will be interpreted as a promise of sex in Kenyan culture: sustaining eye contact, smiling, failing to ignore a person, asking him/her to dance." Enuff said.

-All we do is watch television. NTV is one of the main stations and it's slogan is "Turning on Kenya." Shows I have watched so far include the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Walker Texas Ranger, and Spanish soap operas dubbed in formal British English.

-Issac always says "That's harsh" insead of "That's cool."

-The Lion King (movie) uses a lot more Swahili words than expected: “Asante sana” (squash banana) means “Thank you very much,” “Hakuna matata” means “no catastrophes,” and “simba” means “lion.”

The drop off...

The third day we were here, we experienced the "drop off". Our group leaders Jamal and Odoch divided us into groups of three and dropped us off at random spots around the city. Nate, Melissa and I had two hours to collect as much information as we could about Kenyatta National Hospital. We began by trying to figure out which building was the actual hospital. No clear signs pointed the way so we walked down a road for three blocks or so until we found a cement building that had potential. We streamed through the gate with about fifty other people. There were no doors on the building and only one guard, so we just looked down and confidently walked in. We had found the hospital. The first thing we noticed was that it was extremely open--think old orchard mall if you know Chicago. We wandered around for a good ten minutes looking for some sort of information desk before a guard dressed entirely in camouflage carrying a gun asked us where we were going. We tried explaining in our very limited 2 days knowledge of swahili: "Sisi ni mwanafunzi. Wapi information?" (We are students. Where is some information?). He told us to go down a hall, outside, around somewhere, and to the Public relations office. We said ok without really knowing what he was talking about and found our way out. Once outside we realized that the hospital was a actually a gigantic compound consisting of at least 20 buildings. We asked another guard where the public relations office was and he took us down a street, around two buildings, up some stairs and through another hallway. A woman told us to wait in the waiting room next door, so we did. The walls of the waiting room were filled with posters alerting the public about anti-corruption campaigns. After forty minutes of waiting, we decided to explore on our own, and told the woman we needed to get a bus. A man came out of a separate office and asked us what we needed. We again reiterated that we were students and looking for information about the hospital which students could potentially conduct research at for their ISPs. Immediately, he told the woman that he was going to the CCC and took us down the stairs.

The CCC turned out to be the hospital's Comprehensive Care Center for people with HIV/AIDS and the man turned out to be the senior Public Relations Officer for the entire hospital. The CCC was an extremely impressive facility that contained all the different needs of an HIV positive patient under one roof, including free labs, nutrition, counseling, social work, a pharmacy, etc. The money for the facility came mostly from USAID and the Clinton Foundation. I was glad to hear that some of the aid given by foreign donations went to good use. At the same time, though, most of the patients treated at the CCC (and Kenyatta Hospital in general) are extremely sick with slim chances of recovery (the fate of many public hospitals here, it seems). Additionally, Nairobi is a large city, so I am wondering how much aid makes it to the rurarl areas and how willing they are to use it effectively. The nurse to patient ratio was 35:1 and people were everywhere in the compound. We went into a conference room with the PR officer and Ruth, the senior nurse for the center. We asked tons of questions and got a full tour of the facilities. After an hour, we were led to the family planning center (which used to be where they quarantined infectious diseases) and spent a good hour there as well.

The opportunity to be dropped somewhere without having any information about it is extremely intimidating and nerve wracking. In the U.S., one could never enter a hospital, walk around aimlessly, and be given full tours of the facilities without notice, not to mention take away the time of countless important and busy hospital staff to show around some interested students who could not communicate anything more than "we are students, where is information?". No, this would never happen. But, in Kenya, this is the way of life. People take time for one another. They are always late--perpetually late, in fact. But, they don't see it as late. They seem to really care about their community and actually have no word for "busy" in swahili. Although I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about the hospital through this experience, I also became fully immersed in the culture for the first time and began to understand a small part of the culture I am living in.

Hujambo!

I am in Nairobi, Kenya! I have been here for four days and absolutely love it! The plane ride was uneventful and we saw Dubai for about six minutes. It was really nice to be on a group flight because the the twenty sx of us beccame acquainted before we were thrown in a new environment. The plane had two cameras situated on the underside and front of the airplane, so I actually got my first glimpse of the country from the air. Outside of the city is a lot of farmland and looks a bit like Wisconsin, but with more reddish tints. Outside of the city, Kenya is extremely green. Vibrant flowers and trees line every street. There are also a lot of purple plants. Flowers are the third most important export, and really plants for sale are available en mass--more flowers than anyone could every buy. For the past three days we have been staying in a hostel outside of the city in Karen. Sister Colette from Ireland ran the hoostel and it was more of a dorm room than anything else. We each had our own rooms and it was extremely safe. (sidenote: the keys here are oldschool keys, with long stems and a keyhole.) We basically toured around different areas of Nairobi for a few hours one day, took our first intensive swahili course, and got to know each other. I will write the numerous stories i have (such as kissing a giraffe) soon, but I don't have a lot of time to now. I hope you are all doing well. Thanks or all the well wishes! I will have more regular email access now, so I will try to respond to everyone soon (though I don't want to spend a lot of time in cybercafes!). Kwaheri!