A Return to Old Thoughts

It has bothered me for a long long time that I never officially concluded my amazing, intense, horrific, desperate love affair with this time from August 2007-February 2008 I call my life in Kenya.  Looking back about 4 years later, I realize how much I've not only changed since then, but how that entire experience has shaped me as a person.

To summarize quickly, (which is very difficult to do) I spent 6 months living in Nairobi, Kenya on a study abroad program living with a fantastic Kenyan family I grew to love and develop such a great relationship with over time.  I came to feel very familiar in a country where I was so obviously a foreigner and make many friendships and have amazing educational experiences with the 9 other students from my college who were having their own experiences with 9 other Kenyan families.  About 4 1/2 months into the program, around the end of December 2007, there was a presidential election we'd witnessed the entire campaign trail and media coverage to and I found it so extremely fascinating to compare the process to American elections.  Kenya until that time was viewed as one of the most stable democracies in Africa and the world was watching this election to see how peacefully it could occur.  It didn't. At all.  The incumbent president blatantly rigged the election and claimed the presidential seat for himself.  Kenyans were pissed.  Or at least the ones who were not from the president's tribe, the Kikuyu.

 (I'm, of course, leaving out a lot of detail right now about the deeper cultural and historical background that led to some of the events that occurred.  There was probably a lot of stuff going on culturally that just went over my head, not being an expert at the language and being from a different culture. But I've just tried to relay my interpretation and experience on this journey as honestly and best I could.)

There were intense riots and fighting for about 3-6 weeks in areas of the country.  Roadblocks were everywhere, soldiers and blockades were everywhere.  There were shortages at the grocery store.  Everything was closed and boarded up.  Classes were cancelled for awhile.  We were out of water for 9 days at one point.  I couldn't enter my room because there was a toilet in it and it made the room smell vile and had flies flying around it.  For new years eve 2008 my Kenyan sisters and I did shots of tequila I think it was on the roof of our apartment and howled at the moon because it was unsafe to go out.

What was really happening was that maybe 2000 people were being killed in various parts of the city and country in the fighting that was taking place over the rigged election and the usurping of supposed uncorrupt democracy.  It was very clear to Kenyans how very blatantly corrupt their system was.  (I believe my own country is very corrupt in more sneaky ways.)  It was very a very educational and emotional time.  I'll never forget how close I felt and became to my host family when we were all locked in the house together for days on end. 

That was the first part.  Then one of my very old and close friends back home in Michigan was discovered brutally killed in some way in the middle of nowhere in Indiana and no one had any idea why.  It came completely out of the blue and hit me so hard.  All of my old group of friends.  I wasn't there to be with them and was halfway across the world dealing with the impact of being stuck in the house in a country that had a devastating and corrupt election and was mourning the loss of many of their own.  The election took place about December 27, with the "winner" being announced about December 30.  I think we waited 3 or 4 days
(like in the American 2000 and 2004 elections with Bush, also not without its own more hidden chicanery in my opinion)  I found out about Rylan on January 10th.  She'd died on the 7th.  

I shut down.  I came home from Kenya in mid-February, after traveling a bit and play-acting at feeling normal.  Then I began the process of adjusting to American life again, and really dealing with the loss of my friend at home as well as more fully comprehending and absorbing the experience I'd gone through in Kenya.  I went back to school, I almost didn't, but I did.  Tried to keep myself busy with a routine and the stuff I knew I needed to do.  Then I struggled to do my senior year of college. In hindsight, I had far less fun than I could've had that year if I'd just forced myself to get out more and socialize with people-and it probably would have sped up the process of healing, but I just couldn't.  I stressed myself out a lot at school, and made things a lot harder at times than they needed to be.   But I made it, and I graduated with an expensive degree in a subject I love, studio art, but that stereotypically doesn't yield many high- or even middle-income producing job prospects.  I knew I'd have to go about my path a little different than most people from my pretty high-achieving school, and I also felt great about not being entirely sure what I wanted to do.  I still don't.  But I do know I love to travel and really want it to be a part of my life and perhaps career for a long long time.  I am now in the process of figuring out how to do that.

Continued House Arrest (sort of)

January 4, 2008

Time here passes slowly but it's not so bad. It's funny that I always wish to have this kind of leisure time with absolutely nothing to do but sit around and laze and read any other time but then when it's forced, it becomes a little unbearable at times. I've gotten to spend a lot of time contemplating the meaning of life and wondering why we do always have to have stuff to do to occupy ourselves. Sitting and watching people change a tire for 1 1/2 hours on the street below you is kind of interesting...but there is also a limit to the amount of interest you can get from sitting observing what's around you. Maybe I'm just not creative enough. It's not that I can't go out of the house, I can go walk around town, but it's not really that interesting because nearly everything's closed and there aren't many people around. Everyone's saying this will all die down soon and I hope they're right.

Yesterday morning saw a little bit of excitement. I was sitting up on the roof listening to the yells and stuff I could hear coming from Uhuru Park because there was supposed to be a big ODM rally there, but there was a police guard surrounding the park so I didn't really think the rally would happen-and it didn't. But anyhow, all these people came along running down the street below hollering and I heard some shots (gun?) so I started getting a little nervous and ducked down to watch and got out my camera. Soon the police came running after them with big shields and some on horses. Then after that came the journalists running behind them. The runners ran into the park and that was that. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times in the morning. We heard lots of shots of tear gas all the rest of the morning and all afternoon was quiet.

Watched some bad music videos on TV for awhile, watched Weeds, watched the news-Desmond Tutu came to mediate, but I don't think Kibaki and Raila have talked yet, played some cards with Moni. Then I realized Michelle was over at my mom's office on the internet so I went over there to find that I can surf the internet there to my heart's content

November 13, 2008

November 13, 2008

We had a great dinner last night at Haandi, what the tourbooks all call the best Indian restaurant in Africa, and I definitely agree. It’s mad expensive for Kenya, but the YWCA paid for it all because it was this meeting of all these people from all over the world meeting about the YWCA’s youth exchange program. I met people from Norway, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Kenya last night at this dinner. It was way fun, the people were pretty cool and so so so so yummy.

Our family room couch is gone L and it’s really not cozy anymore. Aunt Monica took it (Rachel’s hostmom) because she sent her couches to get recovered 2 months ago and the guy who was supposed to do it basically stole them. Long story. Anyway, so she took our couch to replace hers. Now we have to sit in the straight-backed dining room chairs to watch TV or read or anything.

Stacey and I made a really cool mini-documentary this weekend for a project on Women in the Media for Gender and Development class. (She brought a video camera) We interviewed all kinds of people on the streets of Nairobi and at the university about their perceptions of women’s portrayal in the media. It was so much fun and turned out so much better than we were expecting, the editing actually turned out really good. Plus we had some great conversations with a lot of people and might have made some new friends at the university. Making new Kenyan friends…always great in my book! And we did our presentation today and I think we blew Lilian away, she thought it was great and gave us contact info to show it to the head of the journalism department at the university because I guess she knows a lot of info about women’s role in media and media production-for our paper on the topic. It made me happy, and I expect we got a good grade..

Crossing streets in Kenya is an art. I find it quite similar to the game I used to play on my calculator in high school math class all the time called Frogger where you’re this little frog trying to cross an 8-lane highway with cars whizzing by. Yeah, that’s pretty much what Kenyan street crossing is like. You’ve gotta back up at times and dart at times and be decisive about what you’re doing and remember to look right-left-right instead of left-right-left (Kenyans drive on the left side) and wave at people, and put your hand out to block cars from hitting you and the entire road is never all clear at the same time so you just go at it lane by lane and hopefully there’s a median in the middle. No, its really not that scary, it just was the first few days.

Elevator doors in Kenya open and close so freaking fast! They always try and squish you! This has caused a few funny occurrences with me not jumping on fast enough and the doors trying to smash me and the people inside all sticking their arms and legs in the door and trying to pull me in, then us having a good laugh about it once I made it.

I think my blood is thinning like a Kenyan’s…even if its slightly cold in the mornings now, I always wear a jacket or sweater and a scarf because I get cold. It’s kind of a nice feeling though to wear warm clothes.

I am so much less aware of my race than I was even 2 weeks ago. I forget I’m white and everyone else is black a lot of times. It’s such a good feeling. Now I’ve just gotta focus on the Kiswahili learning, because that still is pretty shaky, but getting better and better all the time. My cousin Derek told me to let him know when I’m ready and he’ll teach me Sheng (Kiswa-English-slang, what the young people speak)

I like Kenyans so much!!! They’re so friendly and open and approachable in general, more than Americans are I think. And they’re never in the same kind of hurry Americans always are in, which makes them late a lot, but also willing to always help you out and nothing is ever more important than sitting and visiting. When they invite you for lunch, you know you might be there all day. I love it, we need to do that in America quite a bit more.

Home again, home again, eiii yie yie..

EIIII!!!, I haven't written in forEVER! And there is much much much to write about.
I'm back home at this point and going through the "culture shock" or whatever they like to call it. Mainly, it is cold and super snowy here which, although it's very beautiful to look at, I'm not enjoying the feeling of too much. I went to Kalamazoo with my sister the other day because she had a scholarship competition thing and I wanted to tag along just to see who I could see and ran into bunches of people in the library and walking around campus. It's so much fun to see people again and I've had so many exciting reunions with people, but at the same time I do miss Kenya lots and lots. Mom walked in to me sitting in the dark crying the other night in our living room and I wasn't even sure what the problem was. It's weird, but overall, being home is giving me an entirely different view of Kenya. While I was there I really did love it, and now that I'm home I'm loving it in an entirely different way. It's funny how actually being in a place changes your perspective of the place entirely. Much as I actually wish I could teleport places (I talk about the novelty of teleporting a lot as some know) the way airplanes fly is kind of like teleportation...in one day I can be on the complete other side of the world where there is a completely different frame of mind and it's kind of jarring to jump right back into. (And cold!) It rained freezing rain all day yesterday on top of all the snow we had so I'm sure it all froze over the roads overnight, but it's supposed to be warming up sometime this week. I saw Hannah, one of my housemates last year in Kzoo and she was like, you are so tan! you look so out of place in this arctic setting! Heh, that's kinda the way I feel

More later when I feel up to writing about the adventures of the last couple weeks--Egypt, Tanzania, Zanzibar, my 21st b-day, my mom visiting, Nairobi goodbye :( etc. etc. etc. Eiii yie yie is all I can say because my mind doesn't know where it is... The Pixies song-Where Is My Mind has been playing in my head the past few days-although that was the anthem song for Vanessa and I freshman year, it's appropriate in a much different way at the moment.
Latas..

January the 10th

Another day in old Nairobi and I am getting more and more mind-numbed as the days go by…I just need to get out of here and travel. More bad news today, another good good friend from home has died. I don’t really know what to make of it, I’m not sure anyone does. I don’t want to want to be home right now, and don’t want to come home, but a part of me is definitely counting the days. More than anything, I think this experience is teaching me how to cope with things..and also I fear making me into an emotional zombie. I can’t feel anything right now. My emotional cells are in a freaking coma from exhaustion.. My hostmom and I were sitting on her bed talking about all the people she knows or friends and family of people she knows that have been killed or injured in all this election chaos, and it sort of puts my own troubles into perspective, but still…I just feel sick and numb but not really happy or sad, just dulled and weighed down as some kind of coping mechanism.

I’m checking into what will happen if I just blow off my ICRP and just travel for the remainder of my time here, because that’s really all I want to do. I think I might just miss out on one credit I should have gotten here, but that’s not a huge deal. I’ve spent enough time in this city and need to get out of it, out of this country and all this tension. I can tell that everyone in my family is feeling the weight of it all right now. With all this death and unexpected, jarring happenings that seem to be popping up one after the other, I’m sick of waiting around when I don’t know if and when opportunities will ever arise again. I just want to do what I want to do and screw everyone else and the requirements for this program and what they say I should be doing. Life doesn’t last and I want it to be done on my own terms.

Getting Back to Normal

January 9,2008

I’ve gotten some great emails updating me the past few weeks from various people! Thank you for all those! They were really entertaining to me, especially in the intense boredom I’ve felt the past week or so. I had a great long blog written and was about to post it maybe a week ago and the power went out…so I lost it all. Grr. Anyway, things are nearly back to normal, at least in Nairobi. We had an exciting couple of days, front row seats to some riot action out our window. Michelle, Moni and I made a couple of runs up to the roof when we started to hear stuff going on. We are no longer under house arrest of course and the city is pretty much back to business as usual. We finally got our water back 5 or 6 days ago after not having it for 9 (NINE!!) days—while not being able to leave the house, mind you—it was getting pretty bad and we all rejoiced when it came back on by running around turning all the taps on for a few seconds and doing a water dance (ok, the water dance part is made up, but I did my own happy-we-have-water-again-dance). Other parts of the country are still encountering a lot of violence-Eldoret where Moni and Cheryl go to school is still pretty bad. Their schools have been closed indefinitely, so they’re not sure when they’re going back. Cheryl heard from some of her classmates that they were really worried their university is going to be burned down..I hope that doesn’t happen (obviously). Our Mombasa trip got completely canceled even though Stacey and Lisa made it there since they came by way of Zanzibar, but they said it really wasn’t fun at all-crappy beach, shallow water with coral so you couldn’t swim, absolutely nothing open, not allowed to leave the hotel and a night without food or power. The place where they were didn’t see any of the violence that was in the city, but it was still dangerous for them to go anywhere.
Anyhow, everyone’s back in Nairobi now and we all met up a few days ago for yummy expensive food and bowling at Village Market and shared stories. Today a few of us went out to the movie theaters and hawker shopping-which are really great right now because they’re all trying to get rid of their stock before the president kicks them all out. (I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but the hawkers that have been all over the place in the city the past few months really aren’t supposed to be there, but the president was letting them stay at least until the election was over in an effort to win over their votes…I don’t really get it, but hey, it’s really cheap stuff so I’ll take advantage while it lasts!) We got word from our directors that the University of Nairobi is opening on the 14th rather than the 6th like it was supposed to, so this week’s just kind of an off week. I’ve kept myself pretty occupied so far—hanging out with other people, shopping, movies, I got my hair rebraided this morning. It’s black this time and curly and pretty hot in my opinion! The other day Gloria, Dennis-another friend, and I organized a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood and went down to the YMCA and went swimming all afternoon. It was great!! There were about 25 of us and we played all kinds of games and Dennis had a video camera and made a DVD of the story of the Mamlaka Hood (Mamlaka is the street we live on) Gloria just got a digital camera so I got a bunch of pictures from her of it. I made a bunch of new friends that day. Sunday after church my sisters, Cousin Maxwell and I went to this volunteer thing for the Red Cross and packed up all kinds of clothes and food for all the displaced people right now. I’m getting restless though and want to get the heck out of Nairobi and just travel especially since I spent the week we were supposed to be in Mombasa lounging on the beach in lockdown and all greasy-like from no water. There are plans in the works for an excursion next weekend to Lake Naivasha and Nakuru which are only an hour or so away from Nairobi so very easily done. We’re also going to make a trip to Hell’s Gate National Park-which you can rent bikes and ride around in! These are our immediate travel plans, with all the grand ones coming later. I got proposed to a few times this week (this isn’t the first time) and an invite to Tanzania (I’m not going, at least with this guy, rest assured) and got hit on by a record number of people (and that’s a pretty big record at this point considering Kenyan guys are relentless).
I’m getting kind of unenthusiastic about my ICRP…which I feel bad about because I was so excited about it at the beginning. But having lost yet another week to do it since our program’s not resuming until next week, I can’t see myself getting as in-depth as I really wanted to, so I can feel myself sort of mentally giving up on it a little bit. I want to instead focus my efforts now on traveling and just exploring…I’d rather do that at this point than spend my time in Nairobi on this ICRP thing. I’m not even sure how some other people are going to complete theirs since their ICRP’s are in Kibera—I’m kind of positive our directors won’t let them go back there at this point.

Finally!

Wednesday January 2
I am finally at an internet cafe because at least a few things are open today!
We're going on Day Number 6 of no water and I'm really hoping it's back on by the time I get home. Surprisingly I look decently presentable.
Our Mombasa trip got canceled due to continued violence and I'm really hoping we get a refund. The violence continues throughout the country, but here everything is relatively fine. We're just sticking close to home. Over 170 people are dead, over 70,000 displaced from their homes countrywide right now. Places like Kibera have just been in flames and constantly demonstrating since the announcement. I just hope Raila will see that at this point he's the one with the power to tell people to promote peace and not just think about how he was unjustly treated in this election.
The US and the EU aren't recognizing the election tallying as fair and Kibaki as the president. A lot of the ECK (Electoral Commission of Kenya) officials have come out and said that there actually were a lot of discrepancies in the tallying. I think the announcement of the presidential winner was made when it was-before checking everything again and making sure the results were accurate- because a lot of bribing was going on..Too bad they forgot to bribe everyone on the commission and now all these other officials are coming out and saying it really wasn't fair or accurate. I think there's going to be some kind of investigation, not really sure what it will do or what will come out of it. Raila said he's willing to talk with Kibaki, but only if he admits that he isn't the rightful winner of the election..Kibaki's never going to say that, so I'm disappointed with Raila because that's not going to help a peaceful situation at all. Raila says he wants to have a rally on Thursday in Uhuru Park, but I don't know if the government will allow it. There were also rumors right after the announcement that he was going to have a rally and the government quickly said if anyone was assembling in the park it was illegal and they would arrest you. There was heavy police guard everywhere.

I think most people just want things to go back to normal as soon as possible, most people are just sticking to home. I hope the violence stops soon and we're able to travel and do normal things again. This is a wonderful country, I don't want to see everything they've built here ruined.