Lazy Sunday

It has been awhile since I’ve seen the internet, or at least it feels that way. Kroll came to visit me in my village last week, and as we speak he is probably trudging up Mt. Kilimanjaro shooting his way towards his goal of 3,000 photos by the end of the trip.

It was nice to have a visitor from home to show off my mysterious African world to. Before I came here I used to read websites and emails from Peace Corps volunteers, and they always sounded so quaint and yet somehow contrived because I had no concept of what African/Central American/East Timorese village life looked and felt like. Sometimes I go back and read my blog posts and wonder if everyone back home feels that way about my dispatches. I hope a lot more of you come visit me, because not even the world’s greatest writers (and definitely not the world’s best guidebooks, not even ones written by Antti Helin--sorry bud) can capture what it’s really like for 80% of the population here. Safaris and mountain treks and beach time in Mombasa are a world that most Kenyans will never know.

Well, at the risk of revealing how retarded I was when I got here, I think I am finally starting get what people mean when they describe stuff happening in developing countries – the corruption, rural socioeconomics and old mamas smiling at you with mouths full of rotting teeth. When I heard about the chickens being killed in Central Asia to stop the spread of bird flu, my first thought was not,“Awww, all those poor innocent chickens being killed,” which is what I would have thought six months ago, but rather, “That’s going to devastate most of the people there who depend on farming for a living.”

When I heard about the earthquake in Pakistan, I imagined it happening in my village and it was suddenly easy to picture not only the devastation to an impoverished population but also the logistical nightmare of getting aid to places where there’s no basic infrastructure as we know it in the U.S. If an earthquake hit my village I know people in remote parts wouldn’t see aid for days, if ever. I complain that I live in the bush but I actually live in the “big” town, where there’s a couple of roads, some shops, schools and a hospital, and some have electricity and occasional running water.

(Quick shout out to PCVs in other countries: Anna “ if another person asks me for money to open a VCT/pay for electricity/buy a water tank/start a school/pay their kid’s tuition/fly to America, I swear you will hear me cursing them all the way from Togo. And Ron “ when I finally get my hands on a big, bloody prime rib I will surely shed tears of joy, especially if there’s a platter of cheese or sushi next to it.)

Seeing how Kroll reacted to certain situations made me realize how I’ve adapted to a lot of things that used to drive me crazy. Like fishtailing on muddy roads in a dilapidated matatu packed with 36 people and four chickens (capacity: 15). Or trying to get a straight answer out of a Kenyan.

“Do you think it will rain today?” I asked.

“I do not know that it cannot,” said our tour guide.

I just assumed he meant “no,” but Kroll said, “Um, does that mean yes or no?”

Which, to be honest, was what I was thinking, too. I’ve just fallen out of the habit of asking for a clarification, and just guess instead. I don’t think we ever got an answer that we understood, but in the end it didn’t rain.

6:12pm. It has also been awhile since I spent an entire day at home. My third hen started laying, but the neighbor’s hen has started sitting on my hen’s hex. Which means every morning it’s a race to retrieve my egg before that feathery bandita makes herself comfortable on my breakfast omelette. Ah, the rural life.

If you’ve ever wondered what really happens to the clothes you donate to the Salvation Army, I have the answer: They end up in Africa. When I first arrived I kept wondering why Kenyan men were wearing sweatshirts with sorority letters or slogans like “99% bitch,” or how a three-year-old orphan in a remote village got a shirt that said, “Shedd Aquarium Chicago.” Every open-air market has vendors selling secondhand clothing -- from America. It’s pretty cool being able to find fashions that you recognize-- from 1995. The only bummer is that it’s hard to find women’s pants because most women here wear skirts. So I own a couple pairs of pants that are snug in the hips and a few inches too long.

Today I ran into one of the fundis (literally, a person who makes things; in this case he makes furniture for the girls’ school where I live), a kid of maybe 21. He was wearing a purple t-shirt that said in a font for the blind, “I’M WEARING MY BIRTHDAY SUIT.”

“Ah, nice shirt,” I said. He nodded with his ubiquitous grin.

“You know what a birthday suit is?” I asked.

He nodded, still grinning. Which in Kenya doesn’t mean “yes,” but rather, “I don’t understand your weird accent but I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”

My guess is that this shy kid who makes desks for high school girls doesn’t know what a birthday suit is. But I could be wrong.

Sudan

Well here I am waiting for some photos to upload to Snapfish and completely blocked about what to write. Something about a blank Blogger window staring at me makes me nervous and unable to have a creative thought. A Kenyan friend told me he applied for a job as a public health training coordinator with Peace Corps Kenya and was one of four finalists for the position. He didn't end up getting an offer, but I reassured him that he was better off because if he had gotten the job he'd have to live in Kitui.

"Ha!" he said. "Kitui is nothing. Try being taken hostage in Sudan."

Well that's not a metaphor you hear everyday, so I said, "Right, whatever. When were you ever taken hostage in Sudan?"

2001 to be exact. He was working for an NGO building water projects near the Sudan/Uganda border. At the time the Sudanese government militia was storming through villages burning everything in sight and taking suspected anti-government activists hostage. "Suspected" is used loosely; basically anyone they didn't know was taken hostage. So my friend's camp was looted and burned to the ground, and he was rounded up, along with three of his colleagues, and thrown in an underground prison cell for a few weeks. IN SUDAN. They were eventually brought out for questioning (I was afraid to ask if he was beaten or tortured or anything else; maybe I'll ask when I know him better) and then held in solitary confinement for another few weeks. All the while the story was making news around the world and Kofi Annan was negotiating with Sudan for their release. After 38 harrowing days my friend was allowed to go home, in one piece. He had requested that his wife not be told that he had been taken hostage until he arrived home safely, but she had heard on the news. He was immediately granted two weeks of paid leave from his NGO. Not the easiest way to earn vacation time. To this day his nickname in my village is "Sudan."

Well that story was retold purely based on my friend's word, but I am tempted to Google it to see what the press had to say, and to see if it made the NY Times or Washington Post.

A Very Few Photos

A fellow PCV has uploaded some of her photos and I'm in like 2 of them. I'm in Kisumu right now trying to see if I can upload some of my own photos to Snapfish; keeping my fingers crossed, but for now you'll have to squint at dark shadows shaped like me. Hope this link works:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenly/search/tags:justina/

If not try this one and search for my name:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenly

No Waterworks Makes For Waterworks

October 14. Well they the more you learn about other people the more you learn about yourself, and today's lesson is: I'm totally stupid. Hillary and I visited a group of old men who started a water gravity project to pipe water to their homesteads. The area is rolling hills, so the group had to run pipes downhill from two protected springs to create enough pressure to pump the water back uphill to their homes. It was a fascinating lesson in rural waterworks.

How is the water flow controlled and accessed once it reaches the homestead? "There's a tap."

Do the springs provide enough water to meet the needs of all its users? "In the wet season there's constant overflow at the source and in the dry season the spring can run dry."

Why is there overflow? "The pipes are too narrow and can't carry water away from the spring fast enough. We want to lay wider ones."

There's no storage tank? "We are looking for funds to build a communal water storage tank for the dry season."

The group has done everything themselves - fundraising from their own pockets, protecting the springs, laying the pipes, building storage tanks. It was satisfying to see how their self-reliance and initiative had already paid off. Most of the members said having a tap at their homestead had changed their lives - their wives no longer had to walk for hourse to fetch water (fetching water, like 90% of the physical labor in Kenya, is the woman's responsibility and no respectable man would be caught dead fetching water), their animals were now easier to water and dip for ticks. I was beginning to revise my initial observations on "mungu akipenda." Maybe Kenyans are only passive about confrontation, but not about water.

I started thinking, which is dangerous. How come it's 2005 and people in rural areas don't have running water? How come I'm 31 and only now learning the mechanics or running water? The government of Kenya (GOK) has provided infrastructure for water only in urban areas, but 80% of Kenyans reside in rural areas and live off their land. All these thoughts suddenly collided into a single epiphany: Access to clean, reliable running water is a basic human right that every government should provide to all its citizens.

Why doesn't Kenya have public waterworks everywhere? "Our government tried that in the 80s but it collapsed due to corruption," they told me.

Guess I should have figured as much. But if they laid the infrastructure at one point, isn't it still available for people in rural areas to revive as a starting point for their own water system? "It was a long time ago and the pipes have become dilapidated."

We turned down another dirt path and they pointed to a crumbling PVC pipe sticking out of the ground. "There's one of them."

October 20. A few days later Hillary and I were biking through another village when we passed a huge water tank. "Must be a million liters," he said. I don't know if that was an accurate estimate since the metric system still means almost nothing to me, but he told me the tank was another leftover from the GOK's public water project decades ago. It was a good water tank, though a bit weathered. I asked why the village couldn't just pipe in water from their spring and start using the tank.

"You have to get approval from the Ministry of Water," he said. Is that hard to do?

"I don't know." The villagers should write a proposal and see if the Ministry will approve it. The tank's not being used otherwise. They could probably get funding from the government or an NGO.

"Mm."

So with that inconclusive response we pedalled on to our destination, Nandi Rock, a pile of stones on an escarpment (oddly enough called Nandi Escarpment) overlooking Kisumu, Lake Victoria and the farming plains of Ahero. I still haven't quite figured out how to interpret all the different "Mm"s I get from Hillary, but I think this one meant, "Sounds like a good idea that might not fly because of corruption." I've filed every conversation like this in the back of my head for future use, because there are so many opportunities for improving access here - to water, to information, to technology - but at this point I don't know what kinds of resources are available locally to address these needs. And more importantly I don't know how to navigate the corruption.

October 20, 7:48pm. I was talking to a Kenyan fried today, half seriously brainstorming ways we might be able to bring high speed internet to my village. Every idea eventually hit the same wall: no infrastructure to support it. Lack of infrastructure is the reason for so many problems in my village - no running water, unreliable phone lines, limited modes of transport, and poor access to services and supplies for people in the most remote areas.

But what's behind the lack of infrastructure? The untarmacked road through town is a perfect example. Since 1963, the government has been promising the people here that a paved road would be built from the town of Shamakhokho to Kaptumo, about a 50 km stretch. The GOK attempted to pave the road several times but each time the project collapsed due to - what else - corruption and political bickering. Now over 40 years later the government has finally contracted with a Chinese company to build the tarmack, and the people, while still refusing to believe the road will ever be completed, are at least hopeful that because it's not the GOK itself doing it, that one day maybe their children will see a tarmacked road here.

At one point I said to my friend, "This country would be so amazing if it weren't for the corruption." And I actually felt tears welling up in my eyes. It was weird, and hoakey. It reminded me of something tragic and brilliant I thought of a few weeks ago, and I decided I must have heard it somewhere before because it was such genius: This place will steal your heart...and then it will break your heart.

The corruption here is entrenched and perpetuated by the powerful few, at the expense of those who already have very little to lose. They take advantage of the poor, the ignorant, and powerless, the women and children, withholding legal protections, throwing out propaganda that they know the uneducated will never decipher. Really, this country, and all those like it, has the potential to be so amazing. I'm not sure you can point to corruption as the singlemost oppressive factor, because there's lots of things - international trade practices by the world's superpowers, developing country dependence on foreign aid, the cultural inferiority complexes left by colonialism and the brand of narrow-minded non-thinking religion left by missionaries.

Radio Free Kenya

October 11. The morning after a three-day weekend here in Kenya. Yesterday
was "ten-ten," Moi Day, the day former President Moi came to power more than
20 years ago, and possibly the last Moi Day this country will ever
celebrate, if the proposed Constitution is passed, which eliminates public
holidays for individual Presidents and replaces it with the all-encompassing
"Hero's Day." Anyway, that was just about the most boring piece of trivia
I've ever shared.

More interestingly, for you Africaphiles or political history buffs, the
former president of Uganda, Milton Obote, died yesterday at 80. The only
reason that is interesting to me, besides the fact that Uganda borders Kenya
and is notorious for having the highest number of coups in African history,
is because one of my Kenyan friends is named after him. My friend was born
on the same day that Obote came (back) into power in 1979, eight years after
he led Uganda to independence--and then was quickly overthrown. He was
quickly overthrown again the second time around and exiled to, um, let's
see...what did they say on the BBC again? Zambia? Public reaction to his
death is mixed in Uganda, with some people declaring him a hero whose body
should be returned to his homeland and others saying keep the traitorous
bugger out.

So what does all this mean? It means I got a (free) radio this weekend. BBC
IS MY BEST FRIEND!! It's my only link to the outside world aside from the
month-old Newsweeks the Peace Corps sends me every once in awhile. I haven't
figured out all the stations yet, but from a quick scan there's lots of
Christian reggae, a music station called Capital FM that plays a lot of
American music including Rick Dee's Weekly Top 40 on Saturdays, a station in
the local KiNandi language, and Kiswahili BBC that fortunately has English
BBC in the mornings.

Saturday I met up with some other PCVs in Eldoret. We drove to Mt. Elgon on
Sunday and hiked up to a couple of caves with waterfalls. It was beautiful,
but bat poop city. We saw a group of Hash Hound Harriers, that worldwide
network of drinkers with a running problem, although this particular chapter
didn't seem to have much of a running problem at all since they were mostly
sitting under the waterfalls cooling off. I cooked Chinese stir fry for
everyone Sunday night, which was a spectacular success, although we survived
a lot of drunken harrassment, attempted pickpocketing and one ass-grabbing
in order to gather the right ingredients at the market. Everytime stuff like
that happens I get out my Kiswahili dictionary and write down snappy
comebacks "for the next time." But as in all things in life, I've never
actually had the presence of mind to whip out a retort in the moment. For my
friend who had her ass grabbed, I wrote down, "Unataka mikono yangu inakatwa
kabisa? Halafu, usiniguze tena." You want your hands cut off? Then don't
touch me again. And the universally useful (and as yet never used), "Adabu
yako iko wapi?" Where are your manners?

I'm definitely beginning to show signs of being in Kenya for too long. I
remember the first week when we were on a bus in Nairobi, a fellow volunteer
tossed a passion fruit peel out the window. With full-on California
indignance, I was like, "Did you ACTUALLY just throw that out the window?"
Now, if it's biodegradable, it goes out the window.

October 13. Mail update: I think I've got the mail fiasco sorted out for
now. I've received everything sent from the U.S. to my village (box 159 and
the old one) so far, but there are a few packages sent to Nairobi that I'm
still trying to track down. Also, thanks to Phillippa for all the soap you
stole from Bangkok, the diskettes you stole (from you know where) and the
candy (also stolen?). This is not to imply that I don't appreciate
everything you sent. The less you spent the more proud of you I am. Also
send me your new mailing address, lady!

Well as some of you may know, the last two weeks have been a bit rough,
dealing with corrupt people in my community, nasty rumors about the
camera-happy mzungu, and a poisoned village doctor. Most everything has been
resolved and I am no longer hiding in my house or clinging to my counterpart
for moral support. I'm attending the burial for the doctor on Saturday with
my co-workers, and if it's anything like the burial I attended in Kitui I'm
prepared to be bored out of my gourd for about nine hours. In other news,
one of my hens hatched four chicks this weekend, and (as you've inferred
from above) my camera is working again. Unfortunately I have a new problem,
which is that the cost of printing photos from digital cameras is highway
robbery here - 120 shillings per print. 73 shillings = US$1.

Gotta run, the rains are coming. As they say here, I live in God's bathroom
and he likes to take showers in the afternoon.

ISO male. I mean mail.

So it's time to do some sleuthing around for my lost mail. If you sent me
something and I have not acknowledged receipt of it, can you please send me
an email telling me when you sent it and to which address? I have a list of
suspected mail thieves and I'll be hunting them down with your help (or
rather, hunting down my Clif Bars and miso soup mixes as it were).

Anyway, I also wanted to throw out a quick request - if anyone has a laptop
that they're willing to send to Africa for a worthy cause, let me know. It
would be for my personal use as well as for my organization until we raise
enough money to purchase our own computers. If not I'll have to do some
online shopping, something I'm a bit afraid of due to slow Kenyan internet
connections.