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.

(Happy) New Year

I keep typing these boring blogs just because I have nothing better to do and I’m completely sick of discussing the election. “Can we really say Happy New year when we are stuck inside the house and not happy?” said Rhoda tonight. We’ve just been stuck inside all day and probably will be tomorrow and the next at least. I just hope the water will get fixed tomorrow-haven’t had it for 4 days. I am getting lots of good reading done, turned one of my Tshirts into a halter top and am really liking this show Weeds. We’ve made it through the first 2 seasons the last 2 days, plus watched all the Lord of the Rings, and a few other movies. We did climb to the roof and looked out at the city and the stars just after midnight and howled a bit and decided to sleep up there sometime. Plus there was chapati and beans for dinner, one of my faves. Good chapati too. Not the New Years I had planned on the coast, but all right just the same.

A Very Uneasy Silence and delayed travel plans as the country waits

Sunday afternoon, December 30

“The country is quiet, an uneasy calm, all waiting the announcement of the results” they say on KTN right now. That is exactly what it is like for everyone including me right now, I’m anxious. We’ve been sitting around the house the last 2 days, not really going out at all, watching movies, hanging out, reading books, but we’re all a little distracted and keep checking the news. We didn’t even go to church this morning. I can see outside to the park which is usually filled with people on Sundays, hanging out after church, enjoying the day. It’s beautiful out today, but the park is basically empty.
I can’t call anyone to figure out what to do with our travel plans that are supposed to take place tomorrow morning but probably will be delayed at least or maybe canceled because the country’s unsafe right now. We were texted last night by our program leaders to tell us that they and the US embassy advise us to “stay indoors until the conclusion of the electoral process and calm returns” Maybe we can still go, just later, I hope. Plus we have no water at our house right now and the electricity has been going on and off a few times these past few days. This isn’t anything too weird, our water and electricity go off from time to time, it’s just weird that it keeps happening while we’re all sitting around waiting. There were riots happening all over the outer parts of the city, like Kibera, there were a bunch of pictures in the paper this morning and a lot of rioting in Kisumu and other cities. Downtown Nairobi, my cousin Maxwell who’s over visiting right now said, there is no one, except police and people causing trouble. Probably a little like I saw yesterday, except maybe even emptier. They did show people at Nakumatt though, probably the only place open stocking up on food. We have a ton left over from Christmas, the dishes are just piling up in the sink since we have no water. I was with my sisters yesterday when I was in town, today though they told me, definitely don’t go downtown today, it’s not safe.
Here is what’s happened so far. The results started coming in since election day 3 days ago, Raila was ahead all along, then he got ahead by more. He was ahead by over a million votes at one point (a huge lead considering an estimated 7-8 million people voted). Then all of a sudden, Kibaki, the current president who hasn’t been ahead in the polls at all leading up to the election caught up, then he caught up more. And now there is only a difference of 20-40,000 votes between them-supposedly. And that’s a very big supposedly. There are 8 provinces in Kenya. The winner is the winner of the popular vote, none of this electoral college stuff. Raila led in 6 of the provinces, Kibaki led in basically 1 ½-Central Province-where the Kikuyu-his tribe-comes from and Eastern Province where he and Kalonzo-the 3rd presidential candidate split. So anyway, Raila had a huge lead and it doesn’t make any sense why Kibaki should suddenly get so close. This is why people are really tense right now and why riots are going on all over the place, and why I can’t go to Mombasa right now. My cousin Maxwell is visiting right now and said, “If they announce Raila is the president, there will be peace. Guaranteed. If Kibaki is announced, it’ll be a weeklong war at least. The youths will go out and riot” I agree, I really think that’s what’ll happen according to everything that’s happened up to this point. We were talking about how it would make a lot more sense and Kibaki could probably get away with it if he were actually more well-matched with Raila, but it’s kind of obvious that Raila was way ahead and then mysteriously lost a bunch of votes. Of the 185 Parliamentary seats, Raila’s party, ODM took 95 of them, Kibaki, 36 and Kalonzo 15, then the others from the other littler parties. I could go on and on with other statistics.
Being here has taught me a lot about how the current president is completely at the advantage and has all the power to rig the votes if he wants to. And even though people don’t like it, they know it happens and accept it, but I’m not so sure this time they will accept it. It’s corruption which is all this country has dealt with in the government since independence. That’s people’s big complaint against Kibaki, that he hasn’t dealt with corruption like he promised, there have been a few really big corruption scandals during his presidency and Raila really took advantage of talking about that throughout his campaign. (I haven’t written at all about the hilarious “Domo Domo” campaign ads that have basically become an everyday term for us throughout this campaign.) “There is nothing that he [Raila] can do, the government is more powerful than him.” It’s true.
I’m sitting here in the dining room with my computer listening to this ODM guy talking at a press conference right now showing that there isn’t any actual documentation about a ton of these votes. He’s saying there are numbers for people’s votes for president, but don’t have any documentation of these same votes on parliamentary candidates-proof that they were just made up. They’re saying that there isn’t actual documentation of a lot of these numbers in different districts that have mysteriously changed, that the numbers were just simply changed to give Kibaki more votes. Now there is a lady praying for the country on the news. Maxwell goes, “If we don’t have food in the house now, we’d better go shopping. No food, no airtime for the next two weeks if you don’t go get it now. Can’t you see, now they’re praying. You know they’re getting ready to announce and it’s going to be bad.” I know he’s joking…kind of-I mean we can’t go out of the house right now.
Anyway, check it on the international news. It’s pretty anxious. So long, Mombasa…I don’t think I’d be too welcome there right now. Kenya is a peaceful country, but it’s a very precarious, fragile peace we rest on. I’ve heard this over and over since being here, and I’m really understanding now what is meant by that.

6:30ish- after watching drama take place for hours on TV and watching electoral commissioners come out and say they saw numbers being changed with their own eyes Kibaki “won” and was waiting at State House to be sworn in immediately. I don’t know what really happened, but now we hear there are huge protests throughout the whole country taking place. So much for going outside anytime soon it sounds like.

Ghost Town

Saturday December 29, 2007

Nairobi was a ghost town today. It was eerie. I took a walk downtown in the blazing heat this afternoon just for a walk and maybe a cup of coffee and to get some phone airtime and literally everything was closed, even more stuff than on actual election day, even the 24 hour Nakumatt Downtown was closed. This whole week because of election day and Christmas the whole city has literally closed up. We still don’t know who the winner is although I glanced at the news for a few minutes this morning. There has been no regular TV for the past 3 days, it’s all constant election updating, saying how many votes for each district they’ve counted so far. Raila was way ahead for awhile, by over a million votes, but Kibaki has almost caught up now and people are saying it’s rigging. Every night on the news, they always have a yes or no question they ask the viewers and they’re supposed to text their answers in and they present the results the next night. The question a few weeks ago was “Do you think this year’s elections are going to be rigged?” 87% of respondents said Yes, which I thought was extremely interesting. There are all kinds of watchdog organizations trying to make sure the election is transparent and fair and free of rigging and the votes are counted in public, but according to what everyone’s told me, there are all kinds of ways to rig this election. Sell your voter’s card, make fake id cards, bribe the election officials, switch the ballot boxes, violence to keep people away from the polling stations, etc. Everyone thought they would know the new president by the next morning, but it’s getting so close now that I don’t know how long it will be before we know….Sound a little familiar?? Anyway, I was disappointed because Java House was even closed, and I thought it would be open, because it was even open on election day. So much for the election, I want coffee!

Election Day

Thursday, December 27

So today was the long-awaited election day, declared a public holiday along with tomorrow, making 4 public holidays in a row with Christmas and Boxing Day. Gloria, my sisters’ friend whom I’ve hung out with a lot in the past few weeks and I took a walk downtown to see if we could find an internet café and buy some juice, but pretty much everything was closed. The city was such a ghost town, so different from the downtown I’m used to, even on Sundays when it’s relatively empty. There weren’t even any buses or matatus running, making everything super quiet. We managed to find a cyber café, but even 24 hour Nakumatt, the grocery store was closed foiling the juice plans. So we just walked around for a bit at a snail’s pace because the heat was so blazing and checked out everyone’s pinkie fingers to see if they voted. They mark your right-hand pinkie finger with this blue indelible ink that doesn’t come off for a week when you vote so that you can’t vote again. So I was having fun looking to see which people had, pretty much everyone I saw had. Now they have constant election coverage until they finish counting which is supposed to be probably completed by tomorrow morning.

Facing Mt. Kenya

Wednesday, December 26

So here’s the story from A to Z
We’re climbing Mt. Kenya, Jamie, Piper and Me
We’re gonna reach the top on Christmas morning
And when we get up there we’re going to sing
(musical interlude)

That’s the first verse of the rap I made up along the trail up Mt. Kenya…haha, hiking—no, climbing—for 8 hours a day makes for plenty of thinking time and lame songs. So where did you spend your Christmas morning? Probably opening presents and hanging out with family in a warm house. Where was I? Sitting at the top of the second tallest mountain in Africa, Mt. Kenya watching the sunrise after waking up at 2am for an amazing 3 hour climb to the summit in the dark. You could see the entire world it seemed, all the way to the coast and with the full moon, we didn’t even need flashlights to climb the night part. The rock and snow were completely illuminated, it was magical. It took us a total of 4 days to climb up and down the mountain. 2 ½ days up, 1 ½ down. This was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had, and definitely one of the coldest, but it’s a Christmas I’ll never forget.
We started out on the 23rd taking a long distance matatu to the base of Mt. Kenya. By 3pm we were making our first hike up to the base camp, Old Moses Camp, along with our guide, porters and cook (yes, all of those people
I guess were necessary just to accommodate the 3 of us up this mountain) I thought we were planning on staying in tents, but each day we had a specific camp to get to and there was a bunkhouse there for us to sleep in and hot meals and tea courtesy of our cook. We wondered how many other people would be there since it was Christmas and there were surprisingly a lot. We hiked all along with this guy from Los Angeles who’d traveled all over the world and was taking a month to climb Africa’s mountains. We also met these 3 Finnish sisters a little older than us and working in Kenya and their parents who were visiting for the holiday. Our guide, Isaac was great, if a little bit bossy, who scolded us every meal for not eating enough, but it only looked like we hadn’t eaten anything because they put a mountain of food on our plates each night (no pun intended) and you could hardly make a dent. Every afternoon we’d arrive at the camp at about 2 or 3 and eat dinner and chat with everyone at the camp. At night everyone went to bed early, like 8 or 9 because we were so tired and had to get up early and it was really cold just sitting around anyway. I’d bundle up in nearly all the clothes I brought, tie about 2 scarves on my head and put my 50Ksh Puma hat on top, stuff my hot water bottle down to my feet in the sleeping bag and go to sleep.
In the morning we’d wake up to tea and breakfast, pack up and head off with our guide. He was pretty talkative and pointed out all kinds of animals and birds and plants to us and told us all about them. We sang a few Christmas carols and chatted and were also silent a lot, which was kind of nice. We’d stop for frequent water breaks especially when the climbing was really steep. It was kind of like climbing a steep hill a lot of the time, but other times there were rocks to climb up.
Our Christmas Eve was so much fun. There were probably about 20 people at our camp that night and a lot of us were doing the night climb up to the top to the sunrise in the morning. Nearly all of us were kind of displaced people, mostly foreigners who couldn’t be home for Christmas so everyone was in a good friendly mood with each other. There were some Norwegians who’d brought candles on our table and we sang Christmas carols and did nothing but sit and chat at our big long table with the other people from 3 until we all went to bed around 9. We met a group of about 6 or 7 Peace Corps volunteers-one of the guys went to Western Michigan and we sat around talking about Kalamazoo and the Peace Corps for awhile. He gave me the address of a campsite right on the beach in Mombasa he’s helping manage that just opened. We met some cool Germans, and even though I’ve been in Kenya longer, my German is so much better than my Kiswahili I realized-I could understand so much more of what they were saying. I talked for awhile to this interesting Australian guy who’d backpacked pretty much all over the world and had all kinds of great stories. We were with our outgoing friend from LA again who reminded me a lot of Uncle Brian, some Indians, some Kenyans, etc. All in all, it was a really nice Christmas Eve dinner, playing cards, chatting and munching on our smashed, yet divine-tasting chocolate bars we’d been saving up for the occasion by the candlelight.
The final night climb up to the summit was pretty treacherous and the coldest part since it was still dark, but it was also my favorite climb of the trip. Walking out of the bunkhouse at 3 am all packed up was an amazing sight, the snowcovered mountain right in front of us looking huge and intimidating with a full moon and bright starry sky. We weren’t doing the technical climb route where you use ropes and stuff, but I felt sort of like we needed them a few times. It was super steep and all rocks, our guide would have to climb up sometimes and grab our hands (which eventually were very very numb and not really capable of functioning). We would stop about every 15 min or so to rest, take deep breaths to avoid altitude sickness and dizziness. Jamie started feeling sick and dizzy for part of it, and I didn’t feel so great myself for a little while, but we had warmish water to drink which felt good. Although catching your breath was nice, you’d also not want to stop long because you’d start to freeze again, the wind was so strong and just bitter cold once we climbed past some part really near the top. We saw a huge glacier down this cliff below us (although I didn’t know till the guide told us because it just looked like a bunch of snow) I also thought I was going to die a few times for a second or 2 when I’d take a step and wasn’t quite balanced and not hanging on to rocks and there was nothing but huge cliff and a lake below me. We all made it up and in time for the sunrise, which felt like such an accomplishment because quite a few don’t actually make it, get too sick or tired or something.
Emerging at the top was amazing too, all I could see were the silhouettes through the lightening sky of the 10 or so other people that were up there before us and a big Kenya flag like we’d landed on the moon and then nothing but mountains and clouds for miles below us in the distance. I almost cried, but knew I shouldn’t because it would make my face freeze, instead I just took a picture that I really hope turns out. We sat up there at the top maybe 20 or 30 windy and spiritual minutes watching the sun come up and transform everything-and make us a ton warmer. Tried to make a call home to the US from on top-since it was still 10pm Christmas eve there, but no luck, got them later that day though back at the camp. Took some pictures and hurried back down because moving again felt nice, even though my legs were a little jelly-like and stiff after stopping. We ran/climbed/scampered/snowboarded our way back down the steep hill which was a lot easier, but tired your legs quickly, each of us falling at least 3 times, even our guide because our legs just gave out, not in the danger part though, just on the open gravelly part. We’d stop and look up, amazed at how far it was that we’d climbed and how fast it was to come down. I took a ton of pictures once back at the camp for breakfast because the morning light was fantastic. I’ll hopefully get 1 or 2 up soon. Then we made our way the rest of the way down over the next 1 ½ days and came home back to hot Nairobi. Oh and I took my braids out on the way home with Piper and Jamie’s help, took the whole 3 hour ride and I still wasn’t finished. It ended with the fake extensions all in a big gross pile on my bedroom floor and my real hair looking like an afro. After a shower and losing a bunch of my real hair, it’s all back to normal. So nice to have a light head again! Now I’m home the next few days for elections and will leave the 31st for 6 days in Mombasa joining up with the rest of our K group! Beach!

December 22

Today was fantastic, and I think everyone I came across could tell because so many people struck up friendly conversations with me today. Plus, I met some people from Williamston on the street today! I was wearing my Kalamazoo shirt and this girl who passed me goes, “hey are you from Michigan?”
Me: Yeah! Why?
Her: So are we? Where are you from?
Me: Just outside Lansing, Mason.
Her: Hey, I’m from Ann Arbor and he’s from Williamston!
Me: Holy crap!
So anyway, they were only in Nairobi a few days, they’ve been backpacking their way up from Cape Town, South Africa since October! Eeps! Everytime I talk to backpackers or travelers I get so excited and catch such a travel bug!! Besides that, today I was emailing a bunch of stuff about this grant to do international peace projects abroad. I have an idea for what I want to do and want to make it into my SIP whether I get this grant or not! Now this kind of stuff makes me really excited as well.
Plus I got a lot of Christmas shopping done today, got the rest of my mountain stuff and found a bunch of dirt cheap hawker clothes that fit really well.

I’ve been seeing so many more wazungus around the city this past week, maybe visiting for Christmas. Lots of “professional tourists” as we’ve nicknamed them. You know, the ones with their backpacks on the front, their socks with their safari sandals, their khaki shorts and safari hats and occasionally a really painful looking sunburn and mosquito bitten legs. Others are better at blending in, despite the noticeable skin color difference. I like to think I’m one of those at this point.

I love some of the intimate family moments we have at our house. At the beginning I was disappointed that we don’t really have family dinners together. But we do, in our own way. We usually do eat together, or at least eat at the same time as each other in the living room while chatting or watching TV at the same time. Lots of evenings all of us girls end up in my hostmom’s room sitting on her bed in our pajamas chatting about our days and picking out her outfit for work the next day. She’ll critique the outfit and tell Rhoda which parts of it to make sure to iron really well. Then we’ll usually move over to the other bedroom and Rhoda will iron whatever outfit she picked out for my mom and hang it up for her. I love her, she’s kind of demanding sometimes, but also really warm and easy-going. That’s the relationship kids have with their parents here, they’re expected to serve them and treat them with ultimate respect. We have sort of a formal relationship at times, but I also feel like I could tell her about absolutely anything, her real daughters certainly do. Yesterday Moni’s friend was over and was asking her how many sisters she had. “5” she said-I was included! I love feeling so included in their family, my hostmom always introduces me as her daughter. Once a long time ago, maybe 2 months now, we were talking about Michelle’s eventual wedding and she was saying how she didn’t want more than 10 people there-just immediate family “And Alexandra, because she’s blood” Yay!

The Large Gap

December the 21st

Sorry for the very large space of time which has occurred between now and the last time I wrote in this thing. This is due to a number of important reasons. First and foremost, I had university exams which, for the first time made up an extremely large portion of my final grade. This doesn’t mean, however, that I studied any more than I usually do, which isn’t very much in the first place. Nevertheless, simply thinking about these exams and pretending to myself that I was studying for them consumed a vast amount of my time these past weeks. Furthermore, I had an inordinate number of final papers to write, 5 to be exact, all due within a week of each other and from 5-15 pages long. I actually got quite into the writing of them and enjoyed myself more than I think I ever have before writing a paper, at least for the Geographies of Development final which was titled, Where is the Love?, after the Black-Eyed Peas song. Finally, my dog (katika US) alikufa, or died, somewhat unexpectedly. Many may already know this, but this event made for a few teary evenings and a fair amount of moping around. On the flip side, all of this is behind me now and I am feeling quite on top of the world at the moment. My internship is going to be quite fantastic at the GoDown I believe. I am leaving to climb the second highest mountain in Africa on Sunday, to reach the summit at sunrise on Christmas morning. The election is less than a week away now. Today I finally received my Christmas package which was sent a month ago. I am spending New Years on the coast in Mombasa. And I realized that I won’t be attending a single class until April which is the longest break I believe I’ve had since I entered preschool. The world is my oyster. Furthermore, I’ve also been reading a few travel books and have caught the bug in a big way and am planning a number of exciting excursions so long as the money holds out. Tanzania, Uganda or Rwanda with my host sister, Egypt, South Africa, Zanzibar and Lamu are all in the mix. Not that I actually have the money for all that, but at least some of it will happen.

Some exciting things that have happened in recent weeks:
I am now an official registered alien in Kenya. I have a special Pupil’s Pass in my passport and a big stamp acknowledging my alien status because I have been here for 3 months and visas run out after that time and you have to renew it, become an alien or figure something else out. They have all of my fingerprints 4 times given by me in a room full of men with huge guns and many many many papers filled out by me after a 4 hour wait. Yay Kenyan bureaucracy!

Speaking of guns, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but they’re something I will never get used to. Soldiers and security guards walk around all the time carrying AK-47s and it freaks the hell out of me. It gives me reason enough to shut up and keep my head down though.

The weather is nothing short of amazing right now. It’s become summer, really. Not that it wasn’t great before, but in the past week or so it’s become really balmy and hot during the day, just like summer should be and I love it. Even though it’s hot, I just bask in the sunlight and think of all the shriveled-up, pale people in the Midwestern United States and smile.

We finished the OC season 2 last night…whoa, dramatic ending, and this show will forever be associated with Kenya for me even though it all occurs in California. I started up a new TV season, Weeds, courtesy of my Secret Santa who gave me the first 2 seasons.

Today we went hawker shopping to find stuff for our mountain climbing excursion. Found hiking boots, snacks, scarves, earrings, books, gloves, long underwear, a hot water bottle, a new watch. Spent a total of about $50. Expensive day in Kenya, cheap day in America.

I am so incredibly dirty all the time!! Having these braids only gives me an excuse not to shower very often since my hair doesn’t have to be washed. I realized the other day as I was standing in line at Nakumatt that in the fluorescent lighting my upper arm had a grey-tannish unnatural tinge to it because it was covered in a layer of dust. This is partially not my fault, sure, the not showering part is, but even when my skin acquires this color as it has on a few other occasions and I scrub and scrub, it sometimes refuses to come off…Joys of living in a smoggy, dusty city.

My taste for foods is changing so much. I get really excited now when we’re having rice and beans for dinner or sukuma-wiki and ugali. (Sukuma was the most disgusting thing in the world when I first came, it’s really bitter and dark green leafy stuff that looks like spinach but tastes nothing like it) I wonder if it’s going to be hard getting used to eating the usual foods I eat when I’m in the US again because I have really rich foods so rarely. I made no-bake oatmeal cookies the other day (since we don’t have a working oven), ate 1 ½ and my stomach felt like crap for the rest of the night, from all the sugar I think. Whenever I eat really rich foods now they’re more amazing than I can ever remember food tasting, but I can only eat a little bit.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE KENYA?! For some reason more than ever the past week or so I’ve really been in love with everything about it. The heat, the flowers, the people, my family, the relaxation about everything. I think it was partly finishing up classes and realizing I’m completely free and have no obligations and can do and go whatever and wherever I want

I was presented with an endearing gift from Rhoda today, a wooden statue of an African woman with her hair blowing in the wind and her head is partially chipping off. She’s had it for years but said she thought I’d like it more and said if I didn’t want it, she didn’t mind, but I love it. I named her Rhoda, after Rhoda and she stands guard at the dining room table.

Kenyans in general are a lot more blunt and upfront when they have a problem with something. I also love this quality in terms of speaking of race as well and they’ll just come out and say it. “This is this way because you’re white” For example, when I complain about not having anything to wear when we’re going out while my sisters are spending hours getting all dolled up, they say, “Seriously, don’t worry about it, you’re white, everyone will love you no matter what you wear.” In the US, we tiptoe around the subject of race so much and think we’re probably offending someone if we even mention it, and Kenyans have no problem talking about it. It seems a lot healthier to me. I get sick of political correctness.

Here’s a blip from my GoDev paper about how my perceptions of race have altered a bit:
“I grew up in a virtually racially homogenous community without a lot of direct exposure to other races and the effects of racial tension and came to Kenya in hopes of experiencing what it felt like to be in the racial minority in a place, which I certainly have felt. However, I will always be seen as privileged because of my skin color, which I am and never be seen as the economically disadvantaged racial minority, unlike racial minorities in the United States.”
This was something I didn’t really think about when I came to Kenya. I knew it would be a trip to be a white person in a black country, but didn’t really think about how the experience would be different from being a racial minority in a primarily white country. The difference is that whites are the privileged ones pretty much wherever they go. Even if I don’t fit in with everyone else, I still get preferential treatment sometimes-things like getting into clubs and not having to show my ID and begging them to let my sister in (who is 4 years older than me), or walking into the grocery store with a huge shopping bag and not having to turn it in to the bag counter (maybe they’re just sympathizing because they think I don’t know any better). Some things that might be the same though as other races experiencing being in the minority is the way you always question people’s motives for talking to you..do they want something from you or do they genuinely want to get to know you because they’re interested? Are they asking to take your picture with them because you’re their token white friend (a Somali couple asked me if I would have a picture with them yesterday while I was sitting in the park. When I asked them why, they said they wanted to send it back to their family and show them that I was one of their friends. I just laughed and thought it was kind of funny and chatted with them for a little while) I understand completely why being in the racial minority makes you paranoid about anyone who tries to talk to you. For awhile there a few months ago, I was a completely closed-off unfriendly jerk to anyone who approached me on the street and avoided making eye contact with anyone because it was always badgering you for something-money, a visa, to look in their shop. Then I started to feel bad when I realized how mean I was being even accidentally to people I knew who saw me across the street or something. It’s getting a little better now, and I’m a lot more comfortable in my surroundings to feel ok being friendly to people and not like I’m going to get ripped off if I actually smile at someone. I’ve been sharing a lot more laughs with people and a lot more random conversations with strangers because of it.

Masai Mara

Moja (1st), Decemba--i yie yie it's decemba!

This past week Wednesday to Friday we went to Masai Mara National Park for 3ish days. This was our last K-sponsored trip, the rest of our traveling we do is on our own. 3 of our professors came with us, Roseanne, Lillian, and Fred. I don’t think it’s the biggest national park in Kenya, but it’s the one that all the tourists want to go to because it’s supposed to be the best. The park is south of Nairobi about 3 hours drive and filled with all kinds of animals…the heart of Lion King. Hey, I found out the other day there is an actual place called Pride Rock, you know the place where the lions live in Lion King, it’s in Lake Naivasha about an hour away from Nairobi…I really wanna go.

Anyhow, in Masai Mara we did nothing but eat really delicious food, hang out at our “campsite” and go on game drives. It was so so so so much fun and I wished we could have stayed at least 2 more days, but I guess it’s expensive (not like K’s making a profit out of me going to Kenya or anything, I found out the other day tuition for international students at the University of Nairobi is something like 2,500 US dollars…and I’m paying K’s regular tuition price to be here? Anyway, that’s a rant for another day)

First we arrived at our “hotel” in the afternoon on Wednesday and got our “tents”. Ok, they were technically tents but, have you ever seen a tent that had a bathroom, shower and electricity? The bed was really comfy, they folded back your blankets in the evening and gave us all hot water bottles to keep us warm at night. We went to dinner at the lodge which was 4 courses of basically gourmet food-salad, soup, main course, dessert, with cheese and crackers and fruit salad at the end. If we stayed any longer than we did, we all would’ve gained 10 pounds because every meal was like that, and delicious so you wanted to eat it all.

In the evening we went on our first game drive, which consists of driving around the mara in our Land Cruiser with Juma, the same driver we’ve had for our other trips (we requested him for all our other trips after he took us to Mombasa and we all made friends with him) and looking at the animals we can see. There were little doors that opened on top of the Land Cruisers for standing up and picture taking and once we figured out that we could ride sitting on top of the Land Cruiser, it was really fun. How many times do you get to ride around on top of a car with the breeze and the sun and all kinds of animals? The path was also really hilly, so it was kind of a roller coaster too, adding to the excitement. Juma has taken groups to the Mara maybe 15 times so he’s a great tour guide, knew where to find all the animals and could tell us all about them.

We saw so many animals: all kinds of antelope, gazelles, impalas, élan, topis, wildebeest, zebras, ostriches, bushbucks, hippos, storks, herons, baboons, jackals, hyenas, and my favorites-twigas and tembos (giraffes and elephants)!!! There were probably a lot more that I’m forgetting. We missed out on the simbas (lions) even though we searched hard for them. Oh well, it was so fantastic and yes, looked just like the Lion King-hey, that’s most people’s relation to the way Africa looks. The plants and trees were great too, we kept passing these giant thorn bushes that had 2 inch long brilliant white thorns and giant dark black berries on them. We saw a herd of elephants taking a mudbath about 30 feet away from us! It was so cool to see the animals in a relatively untouched (I mean, apart from the Land Cruisers driving around) environment, rather than in a zoo, just doing their own thing. It made me really want to be a scientist and be able to study them.

In the evenings we ate dinner, hung out on our "porches," played cards, chatted with other people staying there, played Capture the flag, looked at stars after they turned the electricity off at midnight-clearest, brightest sky I've ever seen, ate the best brownies and chocolate sauce ever-or maybe it tasted that good because i haven't had anything like it in a long time, played with the bushbucks that hung out all around the campsite and were kind of like puppies but shyer, sat around a campfire and listened to a Kenyan guy play Bob Marley songs on a guitar.

We also went on a long game drive all day Thursday, it was gorgeous out and really warm and great breezes sitting on top of the car the whole day. Part of our reason for being there apart from checking out the animals was to study the relation between tourists and the Maasai people whose land the park is on. In a way, it helps to preserve their lands because they still can herd and graze their cattle and move freely all over the land, in and out of the park, and even between Kenya and Tanzania without a passport, wherever the grass is good because they’re a pastoral tribe. But mostly, it just commodifies their way of life and turns it into a circus act, tourist attraction, it was pretty sickening at times. Like Thursday afternoon, we visited a Maasai village where they showed us some of their traditional dances, gave us a tour of their houses and village and then we went to their market. Although it was interesting to see, we know they get paid just to show tourists this stuff and it felt so wrong being there, just that my presence as another package tourist there was destroying something. I guess I’m being kind of vague in the details right now, I’m going to write a paper on it in a week, so I might write more on this later. I got what I think will be a fantastic picture of the Maasai starting to come out of the gate of their village to greet us and right at that moment a plane flew really low right overhead-there’s an airstrip in the park for the super wealthy to come visit that way. It perfectly depicted these contradictions.

Patrick, Fred and I had a good conversation that night at dinner about all of this and the way that tourism can be executed in a positive way that actually benefits the community living there rather than exploits them, like if the hotel we stayed at was owned by local Maasai rather than the elite Kenyatta family-one of the richest families in Kenya. At least it’s Kenyan, not European, but still, it’s not much better. What I saw though, was some Maasai warriors dancing for us tourists like a circus act, being paid peanuts for it. I clapped along reluctantly like they expect us to, pretending I enjoyed it and wasn’t noticing all the contradictions and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s dehumanizing. Yes, they get paid for doing this, but they’re not doing the naming-ceremony dance because a baby is being named, they’re doing it because we paid to go on this tour. And it’s money that only gets them by, doesn’t sustain them for the long run, and which continues to keep them down and unable to get ahead. This is not positive development, it’s exploitation. And Fred said, this happens to the Maasai and wouldn’t to other tribes because they’re one of the minorities, and no one cares about them.

All in all though, it was a really really really good trip. It made me think more deeply about some things I’ve been considering a lot already during this experience. I am learning so much, but Kenya’s hard, it’s really hard seeing all of this injustice and harsh reality that you hear about. I’m having kind of a hard time even writing this, even though I’ve hardly gotten into the details. It’s sometimes hard to justify even having a good time here when there is so much unfairness. How can one be satisfied with their own life when there are other people right next to you being so used? Everywhere, it’s everywhere I go-in Nairobi, in the Mara, in the rural villages, in the slums, in the second-hand markets, in the communities like Karen that the white people use to try to close themselves off from facing the realities of the severe injustice. What is my place in being here? Do I even belong here? What am I doing here besides supporting an unfair system? I know I am learning, but is it enough? Can I even do anything to help change this system and these legacies and can my place as an American be used to help change this?

Weekend shopping, braiding, eating

Ishirini na sita, 26 Nov.

Fun weekend. Saturday morning Michelle, Gloria and I went out to the Toi (spelling?) Market in Kibera, which is a huge 2nd hand market where clothes are really cheap. Got really muddy and got quite a bit of stuff, like 6 new shirts for about $8 total, some used books to read-Roald Dahl, some Shakespeare, Mark Twain and a few Kenyan authors. All of our birthdays are coming right in a row-we’ve already had Rachel’s, Patrick’s, Annie’s, and this weekend was Piper’s, next week is Wills’, the following week is Erin’s.
So since it was Piper’s birthday a bunch of us came over to her house in the evening and made a fantastic dinner. We’d found actual corn chips at one of the grocery stores (the one in Karen, where all the white people live) and made nachos with guacamole, cheese, homemade salsa, I was in heaven. Then for the main course we made fettuccine alfredo, plus Piper’s househelp made chapati and dengu, which is most of our favorite Kenyan meal. Then her parents walked in, home from work with all kinds of soda and juice for us. It was a fantastic filling meal, Piper’s family is way cool, she has younger host siblings and her parents are really friendly and chatty. Then later we went out to Westlands.
Sunday morning I got my hair braided-it’s about 2 feet longer than it was before and perhaps the coolest my hair has ever looked (and it’s blonder-the hair extensions are blondish). And now I hardly ever have to wash my hair! Yay! It took about 3 hours to do, the woman who did it, Naomi really seemed to like me and she offered to teach me how to braid in Kenyatta Market, where she works. It’s heavy having hair this long, but I’m used to it by now. Sunday afternoon we went out for a family lunch, the first real family lunch we’ve all had together and I found out during it that it was all in my honor since we hadn’t really done this since I’ve been here.

Useful kiswahili

November 26

I told some Kenyan men off in Kiswahili today who were following behind me being extremely obnoxious and rude as I was walking home which made me feel kind of proud of myself. I won’t say exactly what I said, but basically I told them they should grow up and shut up along with a few other choice words. An older Kenyan woman was walking near me and started laughing at them. No, actually that’s a lie, she didn’t start laughing but she gave me a look and smiled like she admired my sticking up for myself.

Day after turkey

Ishirini na tatu Novemba
23 November

Today was a really good day. Some days up until now have been either Oh my god! This day was so amazing! Or Oh my god! This day sucked (there really weren’t too many of those) but today, and the last few weeks in general have been a pretty consistent, contented, non-sporadic Good. My sister Monique came home from boarding school this morning and is home for about a month. She’s the 15-year-old, I really like her. I wrote a really good paper this morning about development issues we witnessed on our Kisumu excursion. It was supposed to be 5 pages and I was close to 10…then I took out a few things, widened some margins, you know…this is a problem I don’t often have. I had a really good time writing it. Then I hung out with Rachel and Erin and then a few others wandered in after they got done with their internships for some good day after Thanksgiving chats and hanging out under our tree.

Thanksgiving yesterday…so much fun. The 10 of us got our afternoon classes canceled yesterday (I didn’t have any anyway) and got to go the Pan Afric hotel where we got our own little room and everything we’d ordered for Thanksgiving….so so so yummy. However, my stomach has definitely shrunk since I’ve been here. I ate as much or maybe less than I usually do on Thanksgiving and felt completely stuffed to the point of exploding for at least the next 6 hours. I ate nothing for the rest of the day. So yeah, what’d I eat? All the best stuff… We’d written up our ideal Thanksgiving menu about a week ago and the restaurant made nearly all of it. Stuffed turkey that would probably rival most of the turkeys you folks were eating, soup, salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, chocolate cake, ice cream and yes, mac and cheese!! And cheese and crackers (I have been quite cheese deprived these past months) The mac was so delicious…I never really eat it in the US but I’ve been craving it these past few months and this surpassed expectations. Ok, I’ll stop raving about the food, I was pretty stoked about the cheese though. I had everyone do the thing we used to do on Thanksgiving where we wrote on little pieces of paper what we were thankful for and then read them all anonymously during dinner. It was sweet and very thanksgiving-y. Then we sat around the table chatting for 2 or 3 hours feeling the genuine Thanksgiving vibe. Then that night after I gave the Aboks the hand-turkey card I made for them, Mom (katika US) called and I got passed around the Leonard-Revis thanksgiving table. Oh happy day.

On another note:
These are a few things I know I’ll miss about Kenya, or at least that make me laugh:
-Flowers flowers everywhere in every single color and vibrancy you can think of
-Baboons walking along the road (not downtown but on the way out to Karen I’ve seen a boon or two, zebras and the occasional ostrich too on our drives to Mombasa and Kisumu

-morning downpours out of nowhere, gorgeous afternoons
-dressing rooms in 2nd hand stalls where the vendor holds up a sheet for you to try on pants behind
-messing up Kiswahili words and somehow having the meaning always be something bad!
-hawkers tables with 18 movies on 1 disc for 150Ksh ($2) or earrings for 10Ksh
-our tree on the quad at the university
-grilled mahindi (corn) sold on every street corner for 5Ksh or less
-chapati na dengu
-chaotic matatu stages, like the one on Tom Mboya
-relaxing on rooftops, in parks, in pubs, in the K room
-Mangos
-scrubbing my feet before bed every night
-the look of surprise when you speak Kiswahili, or jump into a kiswa conversation people didn’t realize you understood

Matatus (Or ma3’s since tatu is 3 in kiswa and they used to cost 3 shillings to ride) I love them! They’re big white 14 passenger vans often with a yellow stripe painted on the side and the number route they drive. After dark it’s unsafe to drive in them because the drivers are occasionally drunk and can drop you off in the middle of nowhere (I haven’t done this, no worries, just heard stories) but they do have blacklights on the inside at night. They usually have meaningless words written in big letters on the outside like “The Hulk” or “Sparkletown”-I really don’t think anybody knows what these mean. Or they have pictures of famous people, usually American hip hop and r&b singers, or, in the case of a matatu I saw a few weeks ago, Barack Obama giving 2 thumbs up! Inside you’re always packed in, I’ve been in a matatu with 25 people riding at once (they’re supposed to hold 14) The music inside usually blasts your ears out, can be offensive and/or really terrible but always has a catchy, sunny beat, (usually because it’s reggae) and can be extremely entertaining-like when it’s a reggae version of Jesus Loves Me This I Know or This Little Light of Mine. Sometimes you make friends when you and the people next to you are singing the words. When you go the same routes consistently the matatu drivers know you and look out for you. They drive crazy, you sometimes think you’re going to die and the drivers of the different matatus fight over you because they all want you to ride in theirs. And they’re cheap and everywhere.

Background painting in Kibera

Saturday, November 17
This morning a group of us took the bus down to the primary school in Kibera where Erin’s internship is because the kids there are performing a play for Christmas. The school wanted Erin to help paint the background for the play, so she recruited Lisa and I, the 2 art people to help draw this background. We spent all morning and a good portion of afternoon painting Joseph being presented his coat of many colors, him falling in a pit, and him talking to the Pharaoh. It was a lot of fun, a rainy day, so we got pretty dirty-Kibera is muddy even when it’s not raining and the backdrop turned out great.
It’s fun getting involved with what other people are doing at their internships, but also stresses me out about my ownBad news about my internship at the GoDown, it kind of fell through because the supervisor for us resigned or something, I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like we can’t really do anything until January for it, and even then we’re not at all sure what we’ll be doing. No one seems really eager or willing to help or to help us develop a project with a specific focus. I’m going to talk to our supervisor at the university about it, but it sounds like we’re kind of on our own to come up with a solution.

Mwizi

November 15
Patrick isn’t sure if he might have signed some man’s death warrant because he tried to steal his phone yesterday. He was going to his matatu stop near Kangemi, where he lives and was hanging out joking around with some of the matatu drivers because he knows them and felt a hand reach in his pocket. He grabbed the hand and turned to look at the guy who twisted away. This has happened to me a few times too where I felt someone try to reach in my pocket or bag and as soon as I saw them and turned they laughed as if it were a joke and backed off. The man had gotten Patrick’s wallet partly out of his pocket but didn’t take it and then Patrick realized his phone was gone and pointed to the guy out of the crowd to the other matatu drivers he was with. They all set out after him through this crowd of people and finally caught up to him. In the meantime, another of the matatu drivers had found Patrick’s phone on the ground, the guy must have dropped it, so nothing was stolen from him. Still the group was pursuing this thief to beat him up, as is so commonplace in Kenya whenever a crime is committed in public. The mob mentality becomes so hot as soon as someone yells “mwizi!”-thief. The man was thrown out into the middle of the crowd that had formed and all these guys started kicking and hitting this guy. Patrick came into the middle and said “hey, I got all my stuff back, everything’s ok, stop” and he pulled the guy up off the ground, but the crowd just kept beating him up. One of the guys told Patrick that he should just get out of there because there wasn’t anything he could do. Patrick didn’t know what else to do and left. He tried to tell the people to stop beating up this guy and they wouldn’t. Today when he was telling the story before class, Fred, our poli sci professor said probably if Patrick hadn’t gotten his stuff back they would have killed this guy. A lot of times the mob will even burn a thief to death right there on the spot. It’s good that as soon as you realize you’ve been robbed people are really helpful to help you find the thief and not let them get away, the same way they did when I found out my camera had been stolen, but it’s so scary what happens when they actually do catch them. It makes me a little bit glad that my camera actually did get stolen and I didn’t find the person took it, because I don’t want to know what could have happened. As Patrick said, “I wanted my phone back, but really, is that worth a man’s life?”

People always talk about the need for security in this country, and it’s true, security is a big issue. But a country doesn’t build security by building more walls and barbed wire fences and hiring more Maasai warriors as their guards and getting more guard dogs. (The Maasai tribe have a really strong history as warriors) The reason for all this insecurity is because of the huge huge gaps between the rich and the poor here. Over half the people that live in Nairobi live in the slums like Kibera-that’s over 2 million people living in shacks made of sheet metal with no sanitation, electricity or roads. And yet the Kenyan parliament is among the highest paid government officials of any in the world-they get paid more than US politicians despite the widespread poverty. Less than 30% of the population have access to electricity, about 40% no access to clean water. If the country worked to build its domestic economy and create jobs for people-there are so many trained people here without jobs-unemployment is 25% nationally-this would do so much more to solve the internal security issues. Then you wouldn’t see barbed wire and glass glued to the tops of fences absolutely everywhere you go. Then people wouldn’t have to literally lock themselves from the outside in each night-outside walls and guards, inside gates, house doors and windows, gate to the upstairs, and finally the bedroom door. My house doesn’t lock this way each night, but some of the other students’ houses do. I’m merely protected by a giant wall with barbed wire fence, a night guard and a locked door.

This is why the political situation here, although I’m very interested in it, is very frustrating to me, because ultimately Kenya’s future and ability to further its development really lies with its leaders and so far it’s leaders haven’t done nearly enough in my mind to further Kenya’s situation and have instead acted very opportunistically and selfishly to build their own power and make more money for themselves and their small enclave of rich and loyal supporters. I don’t really like any of the candidates running for president, and I’m not really sure who I’d support. At this point, my mind is starting to change over to Kibaki, who is the current president running for reelection, because although he’s been involved in corrupt business, he also has helped the country move forward in a number of ways. And I’m not really sure what Raila would do with the presidency, it’s a little scary, because the president has so much unchecked power here, so it’s a really big deal who it is. We need a Kenyan Nelson Mandela who actually cares about the country and helping the people improve their situations. And we need a new Constitution that puts checks and balances on political power-not the one we currently have that was written by the British-Raila says he’ll do that within 3 months of the election if he wins, but honestly, all the candidates are literally promising the world to the Kenyan citizens, I don’t know how many of them will actually happen