Starting work in Homa Bay

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7/21/09
Jambo! Or Amosi as we say here near Homa Bay. Many people in this area speak three languages- their mother tongue (in this region Luo), Kswahili and English. I’ve learned conversational Luo which the locals get a kick out of. The only problem is when they respond in sentences with words I don’t know so I just laugh and shrug my shoulders indicating that, ‘Yes I am trying to be Luo but no I only know a few words and am still just a mzungu (white person).’ It’s been very warm normally in the 80s but very bearable as we’re inside or in shade most of the time.

The trip has felt like it’s been weeks but also so short. We first flew into Nairobi and stayed one day there before we flew to Kisumu and drove down to where the Ombogo Girls Academy is outside Homa Bay. In Nairobi we met with Engineer/Comissioner/Honorable Phillip Okundi, an ex-parliament member whose late wife started Ombogo and who is now head of the Communications Commission of Kenya (the equivalent of our FCC). We ate the most amazing Kenyan lunch- goat, beef, chicken, fish with the eyes still on, chicken gizzard, Ugali (a local grainy type food), rice and coca-cola. We met his son as well and had interesting, humorous and enlightening conversation. We then returned to the hotel where we slept until 9:30 pm Kenyan time(US time from 4am to 7:30 am) and then went back to sleep for most of the night. Jet lag finally crept up I suppose. I also got sick that night from a granola bar no less because we slept through dinner. I felt like Charlotte in Sex in the City when she only eats pudding packs in Mexico and gets sick from them but not the local cuisine. I only threw up once thankfully but I think it might have just been from dehydration. It was quick, semi-painless and hopefully that will be the only sick for the trip.

We woke up early to fly to Kisumu, where we were greeted by about 20 girls from Ombogo. They gave us a warm welcome and we took their school bus back to where we’re staying. The bus is not yellow as in the US (I was actually surprised when it was not) but big and white and not remotely like any school district bus in the US. Before leaving Kisumu we went to a market that had everything in it, from tricycles to deodorant to washing machines to random stuff. It was very nice and as we mostly needed water and coffee it was a better option than local smaller markets which I would’ve rather gone to because we could interact with the local people more. The road to Homa Bay apparently has been worked on for awhile and it was a very smooth ride for ¾ of the trip. One note is in Kenya they drive on the left side of the road, right side of the car with a backwards stick shift and everything (stick on the left, clutch on the right) so that is a little weird at first. We received dust masks for the bumpy part of the ride when it turns from pavement to rock, dust and holes- not even potholes, just huge divots in the road and red brown earth pours into the bus from the movement of the bus.

Approximately 2 ½ hours later we arrived at Maureen’s house, the director of the Ombogo Girls Academy. She is a super inspiring person based on her charismatic personality I’ve experienced thus far. Very well spoken and thoughtful with an amazing laugh, Maureen is a very strong woman figure in a country where women’s roles are thought of as significantly less than a man’s role in life. Not too long ago (I don’t know specific figures), women were considered property and still many arranged marriages occur between young women (15 years or so) and older men (approx. 30). She lives in a beautiful house by any country’s standard, with running water and has cooks that make the most amazing food! We truly are spoiled rotten and it’s hard to get used to people serving you food and cleaning up after you as there is a butler and the cooks double for cleaning women. I didn’t think this is the treatment I would be receiving and I feel very…uncomfortable sometimes. We are paying for our board so I know I should look at it as if I were staying at a hotel where there was waitstaff but it is such a personal setting it is hard to see it as such. The only annoying part about our stay is the constant stream of evangelism shouted on through horrible speakers crackling from 8 am to 5pm. It’s a huge blight on the pristine quiet we would otherwise be experiencing.
Maureen has two children- Itanal who is an 8 year old boy and Elan who is a 3 year old girl. There is also Zilpah, one of the cooks 13 year old daughter, Maureen, another cooks daughter, who is 10 I believe, Ray, an orphaned child by HIV/AIDS who lives with his aunt and uncle here that looks 4 but is actually 7, Paul who is Zilpah’s one-year old brother and a couple other children that roam about but are younger than two and really afraid of white people. Some conclusions that can be made from that sentence- I like run on sentences and there are MANY children, some of whom come from messy homes affected by AIDS. This problem causes more mouths to be fed by fewer adults, which is a large burden when the average family size seems to be about 6 children. There are children ALL over town, everywhere truly! Wherever we go, normally we’re just walking down to Ombogo or when we go watch the sun set at Lake Victoria, we get an entourage of children. All these children are in second hand clothing, often ripped, often with no shoes. The clothes are random too. One girl of about 4 today in an entourage following us was wearing a fleece nightgown that was red with penguins on it. Whatever pieces of clothing.

This brings me to another point as I wish I had a picture readily available to show you of this child. It is very hard for me to take picture of the children. Many of them ask for their pictures to be taken, like the girl in the penguin nightgown, but besides that I feel like I’m making a spectacle of life here. Not even pictures of children, but all the women who walk along with buckets or long stalks of millet (a local grain) on their head- it’s such a beautiful sight of poise and grace but I don’t want to be an intruding outsider snapping pictures of a culture as if it is abnormal. I think this can be overcome with asking for permission of the person but until now I’ve been letting other people in the group (as we normally have 3 cameras ready and flashing) take the pictures. So please work with me as I deal with this as I do want to deliver some pictures so you can see my life here.

Yesterday, Monday the 20th, was filled with meetings at Maureen’s house. This was very frustrating as I wanted to go out and play with the girls and see where we were. The meetings were necessary- we really needed to define our roles here and also converse with Maureen and the principle of the school, George, on what needs to be done by us and for future students participating in this program. I haven’t mentioned this before but we’re kind of the test run for a new Service Learning Program starting at Western with Tim Costello, the current director of Slum Doctor Programme. The program is going to expand to about 15 students from many other disciplines coming here to help for 6 weeks, hopefully starting next summer.

My role, as I found out, is to assist others in their interviews with the girls and also talk to the girls myself. One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed for the girls, besides not having enough money to go to school (not all the girls are funded by the Slum Doctor Programme), is that once they finish Form 4 (the equivalent to 12th grade) the girls don’t have enough money to go to University where they’ve pinned all their hopes on being one of three careers- an engineer, doctor or lawyer. For some reason the girls, no matter what their desire or passion in life, think these three careers are the way to success. I mean yes, obviously they pay well but not everyone can have those careers. So I hope to help them think about second and third plans, plans ranging from different universities to different careers like in business or NGO work. In fact, the other girls on the trip (Heather and Kathryn) and I are going to teach a class to the girls focused on leadership development, including defining ones passions and women empowerment exercises which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. I really don’t know how to teach but I know that I need to do this lesson and it may be one of the reasons that I’m here.

I decided to teach this lesson after noticing this problem with the girls but also when some of them asked me to teach a business lesson and I knew that’s not the best way I could use the knowledge that I have. Today when we went to the school the girls were a lot more standoffish than when we were at the airport but I reigned in the self-conscious feelings, decided they might not want me to be there at first but I still needed to try, and went into a large group of girls hanging out and struck up a conversation and failed pretty miserably. I was however saved because the girl I sat on the bus with the day before was in the crowd although I didn’t see her at first, and was very nice and talked to me. Haha apparently I’m being brought back to those days of insecurities where you just want a friend on the playground. Sometimes I guess we just need to be humbled.

The trip has been very good, with more downtime than expected but also so much learning and sorting things out in that time. I’ve learned already that decisions here are not easy and most of them are between something hard and something harder. This is not an exaggeration and I hope the people I encounter can choose the less hard of the two options with positive results and a positive conclusion- not just take the easy way out. Life here is a one room shack made out of mud/dung clay and straw roofs or tin. Life here is mostly farming and trying to get by. Life here is discovering that knowledge has the power to create change and YOU are SO lucky to receive an education. Life here is child wives and HIV/AIDS and numerous other hard topics to discuss. Life here is hope and laughter and knowing God hasn’t given up on you even if it feels like it. Life here is hoping things might change but knowing they might not. Life here is the life people in Kenya know.

More to come I’m sure.

I love you all, thank you for your prayers and warm thoughts.

Life is good. Be thankful.

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