Life of a Mzungu in Kisumu

Around 6:30 am, I begin to hear the roosters from our small farmyard crowing. The rest of my family rises around this time (this I am assuming, since I’ve never been up early enough to verify) so that they can be out the door by 7:30. I, however, am less driven, so I get up between 7:00 and 7:30. Breakfast is always on the table waiting for me—a thermos of chai made with the whole milk fresh from our cows; stale white bread made into sandwiches with jelly and margarine, sometimes toasted in the new sandwich maker; juice; and maybe some toasted sesame seeds.

the cows

the backyard

My preparations for the day happen at a leisurely pace since no one at work seems to care what time I arrive or leave the office. Twice I have gone for a jog in the morning before the sweltering sun gets too high. This resulted in many quizzical looks from the locals and me nearly getting completely lost with no way to communicate where I wanted to get back to. So for now, I’m settling for some push-ups and crunches in my room to mitigate the effects of the white bread and customary 2 spoons of sugar taken in each cup of chai.

the house

My 600 meter walk from the house to the bus “stage” is beautiful: red dirt contrasting with the lush green hills and farms of the semi-rural area. I answer the question “how are you?” with “fine, thanks” about 50 times before I have even reached the main road. The small children call out “mzungu” as I walk by and prod each other and giggle to themselves when greeting me. Without fail, at least one boda-boda (a bicycle equipped with a cushion behind the rider’s seat to transport passengers) asks if I want a ride hoping for a few extra shillings for his pocket. There is certainly no blending in here.

After a 30-40 minute ride on a matatu (a modified Nissan van serving as a 14 passenger public taxi), I arrive at Varsity Plaza where IFP’s office is. The office is quite small and unofficial. We share the 3 desks and 1 secretary with the chairman’s private consultancy firm. Luckily, neither the 5 staff members nor the director are actually here often. In fact, the only people that seem to show up on a daily basis are the secretary, the other American intern, and I. Right now, I am just working on some background research about policy issues in the area that involve fishermen. This could not possibly consume an 8 hour day of work, so I also pass time by writing blog entries, checking Facebook, and chatting with Samantha, the other intern. Long lunch breaks also help. Samantha and I have been frequenting “7-11,” an unfittingly named eatery serving both nice Indian dishes and some decent pizza. And yesterday we discovered the shockingly-Western “Laughing Buddha” serving real coffee, decent hummus and pita, and tempting looking brownies.

the kitchen

I return home at the end of the day either by matatu or in the UNDP car with my host dad, Martin. I’m trying to force my way into helping prepare dinner, but I usually don't get too far. Yesterday I had a minor success and graduated from plucking the leaves off cilantro to being put in charge of peeling potatoes. On the menu is usually some sort of stew served with the customary rotation of ugali, rice, and chapatti and some sukuma wiki (shredded, stewed kale). Recent mix-ups to the menu have been beans and rice, beans and maize (called “githeri”), and I am promised spaghetti tonight. We always eat after we have watched the daily installment of the English-dubbed, Mexican soap opera “Storm Over Paradise”—the fate of wrongly-accused Aymar and her lover Nicolas hangs in the balance as the imposter posing as Corina Rosenberg plots against them to take custody of Nicolas’ baby and gain the fortunes of the Rosenberg name…duh duh duh…And finally, bedtime by 10pm after the English-language showing of the news on Citizen TV.

A few photos

Playing tug-o-war at our picnic in Nairobi Arboretum with the kids from Inspirations Center. Some of these kids had never even been to this side of the city.

The cutest 2 boys at the picnic!

Learning to make chapatti at Aimee's house

Finally to Kisumu! What did we do the first day? Rode upcountry with this sheep in the back of the car to a funeral, of course!

A "short" walk into Kisumu landed us here at Dunga beach, where we took the boat on the left on a tour to see some hippos.

There they are! The tour operator tried to cheat us into accepting a short trip around the point where no hippos were to be found. We finally convinced him to take us farther to the real hippo spot.

Finally in Kisumu

I’ve got so much to report, but just not sure where to start or what to include.

I finally reached Kisumu to begin doing what I came here to do. With some trepidation, I bought a ticket on Easycoach for the 9pm bus from Nairobi, which meant I would be travelling through the night to arrive to Kisumu at 4am in hopes of encountering my home-stay coordinator (Jamine—the chairman of IFP) in the waiting room. I have found Kenyans poor planners in terms of exact details, so with little more than “we’ll find each other,” I, the only white person, boarded the bus headed west. After leaving far behind schedule and enduring a looonnnng and BUMPY 7 hours through the dark, the bus pulled into Kisumu station. Several people stayed aboard and I, being convinced that we could surely not have arrived on time, was prepared to stay on with them. Good thing I finally got up the courage to ask the half-asleep man behind me where we were, or I would have missed Kisumu completely. My nerves were calmed when I found Jamine no problem and we returned to his Kisumu home at 5am.

Before actually getting to meet my host family, and after only 2 hours of rest and no shower, I was shuttled off with Jamine’s family and the other American intern to a funeral in the country-side for the son-in-law’s grandfather. SUCH A LONG DAY! Several hours shoved in the middle of the back seat of a small Toyota over rutted and pot-holed roads to the village. A very long African Catholic service in the hot sun in a local language even our hosts could not understand sometimes (thank God we white people are embarrassingly treated as royalty and given “VIP” seats on sofas!). I was shocked by the attendance at this ceremony. Partly because this man had 2 wives, 67 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, and partly because everybody and their 3rd cousin turns up for events like these, there were easily over 300 people there. Even the Minister of Parliament (MP) for the area showed up. We left after a traditional Kenyan lunch, stopping in Jamine’s old town for a few drinks, and back to Kisumu by 9pm.

Finally, today I have arrived at my home-stay. My host father is the brother of Jamine. They live outside of Kisumu, just past the town of Mamboleo. Their plot is very big and nice—basically like living on a farm. We have 3 cows for milking, some land for growing cattle feed and veggies, chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Prepared for throw showers and no electricity, I was pleased to find a gorgeous home, my own room with comfortable bed, a flush toilet, a full stove with an oven, and satellite TV! Martin, the dad, works for the UN Development Program as well as teaching a few classes at the university and owning a restaurant. The mom, Lucy, works for the CDC at a hospital a bit far from Kisumu. I feel quite comfortable here already and am looking forward to getting settled in even more and starting my work for the next 3 months.

I "started" work today, but in the usual Kenyan fashion, plans have been a bit delayed. I was supposed to meet with my boss, Nyang'ori, but he is out of town. I've made the trek into Kisumu town expecting at least some documents in my email inbox to get started on, but Nyang'ori has not sent them yet. The good news is that I bought this nifty little modem thing that allows me to connect to the internet wirelessly wherever there is cell service...skype me!

A Taste of Kenyan Corruption

In my studies of Third World countries, I’ve read about the terrible corruption that plagues places like Kenya. Two days ago I got my very own taste of what it means to live in a nation where corruption permeates everyday life. A mere day after Ken finally got his and Aimee’s car out of the garage, he was pulled over by the police for not having his car registered properly. They called him a thief and threatened to have him to jail and his car to the impound lot. After negotiating with the cops for a bit, they decided that 50,000 shillings (or about $700) would be sufficient to bribe them off and ensure he would not be bothered again. $700! Delivered that day! What’s more, the only reason the car wasn’t registered was because the registration place also wanted a bribe to do things properly.

Aimee and I spent the entire day taking buses from the house to town to the international calling place to town again to the bank (which we now know close as early as 3pm) back to the house back to town, etc,etc…. while Ken was chatting up his new policeman “friend” and trying to persuade him to give him more time to get the money before he was thrown in jail. Luckily, Aimee’s mom in the U.S. was able to loan them the money and deposit it today. It made me wonder what the heck someone without those sorts of connections would do in the same situation. It was so easy to hate the policemen, but then you also realize that the whole system is set up to support this kind of thing and the cops’ livelihoods are dependent on these bribes since they are paid such small salaries by the government. If this corruption is so entrenched in every interaction between civilians and government agencies, how is it to be stopped? It sure made me appreciate the USA’s justice system that I so often take for granted. If this corruption is so entrenched in every interaction between civilians and government agencies, how is it to be stopped?

Tale of a Recovering Vegetarian

grocery shopping and eating here has been quite different than I am used to. Though I abandoned my pseudo-vegetarianism a couple of months before I came to Kenya, I am still adjusting to being a meat eater. Every evening around 6 or 7 Aimee and I venture down the block to the
“shopping center” in her neighborhood, Jahmuri. First we go to the butcher’s: a small concrete room on the ground floor of an apartment building, with the skinned leg of a cow hanging,
unrefrigerated, from a hook in the window. Our choice is between chicken, beef, goat, or their various organs displayed in the deli case (refrigerated?). We always choose beef—either 1/4kg of steak(which they conveniently cut up into cubes) or 1/2kg of minced meat—because it is cheaper than chicken and who wants to cook goat?

The “produce aisle” is the small wooden booth around the corner on the side of the dirt street. There we buy tomatoes, tiny red onions and green peppers, garlic, cilantro,chili peppers, carrots, potatoes, and sukuma (kale/chard-like veggie). We combine these with our meat choice to produce some variation of stew or meat dish with veggies. For our starch, we- and
by we, I really mean Aimee- make rice, chapatti (tortilla-like flatbread), or ugali (a thick corn-flour mush eaten with your hands).Milk for chai comes in a plastic sack, the eggs are kept at room temperature, and shopping is hardly done for more than a meal at a
time.

My days of packaged tofu and fresh veggie salads are gone for now, but this provincial style of eating is somehow more satisfying. I know the cattle, though extremely skinny, are not being kept in huge feedlots, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. The produce is grown domestically and the veggies look and taste like they were naturally grown, not manufactured like their super-sized-diluted counterparts in the U.S.

Under African Skies

Habari everyone!
I've been in Kenya for just about 4 days now, and it's going great. I was greeted in Nairobi's airport by my long lost friends Aimee, Ken, and Moses and boy was it good to see their faces. Since then, I've just been living life day to day. I'm living at Aimee and Ken's place--just a tiny little apartment near Kibera--and generally just getting used to the pace and style of Kenyan life. Despite the slightly annoying fact that everywhere I go, I can hear people calling out "mzungu" (white people) and know they are talking about me in swahili, exploring the city has been fun. I returned to Mathare, a slum where Moses lives and works, to visit his Inspirations Center and play with the kids there.

There is lots to tell, but I think I will spare you for now until I have some really great stories and a few pictures to go along. I love you all!