Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Still thawing out from the peaks of Mt. Kenya. We summited
two days ago, watched the sun rise, and slid back down to our base camp on
our butts because the top of the mountain is just a lot of loose gravel and
snow. I wish I could say I got some good pictures, but unfortunately our
camera batteries froze at the summit, so I only got one photo, of a peak
that we didn't climb, but it was next to the peak we were standing on.

I am spending New Years with a bunch of PCVs in Kergoya, near Mt. Kenya.
There is a big Red Cross youth club in this town, and they have planned a
bonfire and food for us tonight to ring in the new year. For Christmas I
went to a new PCV's site near Eldoret; she lives in a convent and parties
with nuns everyday, so we made pizza and Christmas cookies and decided it
would be a good idea to go to midnight mass. It wasn't. First the service
was all in Kiswahili (W'sup Anna? Does this sound familiar?), and because it
was a Catholic mass, it lasted four hours. A couple of us decided that
during the songs where you're supposed to clap and sway, that it would be
more entertaining to do the Macarena. So we did. And everyone in the church
stared, and the PCV who lives in that community was so embarrassed that
after the service she went outside and apologized to everyone who would
listen. We also tried to sneak out of the service early, but four mzungus
parting the sea of 3,000 Kenyans to get to the door are not inconspicuous,
and half the congregation decided to follow us outside, and then crowd
around us and stare, but without talking to us or smiling or greeting. Just
staring as if we were little specimens on glass slides. If I took a step
towards them they would recoil. If I took a step backwards, they would inch
forward as if they were being led on a rope. It was extremely disturbing and
irritating, especially on Christmas eve, to be reminded that no matter how
long I'm here, no matter how well I feel like I understand the culture and
the tribe I live with, no matter how well I speak Kiswahili or even Kinandi,
no matter how much ugali I eat, how well I grow maize or raise chickens, and
no matter how much I feel accepted into my community, I will still be a
foreigner - one who is assumed to have money that she will pass out freely,
and one who is treated like a zoo animal. I know I chose to come here, and
there's all sorts of colonialism and white oppression and poverty to blame,
but I still can't help feeling bitter and a bit entitled to more respect
than I am shown on a daily basis. (Ching chong lee! Ching chong wang!)

Thanks to everyone for their Christmas and New Years greetings. The last
month or so at site has been rough but being away from my village has been
good, relaxing, mzungu time. I know I'm not supposed to hide from reality by
hanging with other mzungus but sometimes stuffing our faces with Reese
Pieces and smores can cure a lot of bad.

Shout outs to people on my mailing list:

Esme - Congratulations! May forwarded me the photos of Francois, tres cute.
Glad you didn't name him Beef. :)

Azwin - SOOO wonderful to hear from you bud, sorry about your father and the
business but it sounds like you're keeping your head above water. Good luck
with everything and of course you are always welcome in Kenya!

Michelle - Thanks for the "Mary is My Homegirl" tshirt. I wore it on
Christmas, appropriately enough, though I think I was the only person who
understood the irony.

Thanks to everyone who sent Christmas packages. I have not been to site in a
week so I don't know what has arrived, but I will certainly let you know
when I get them.

There's Only One Mosquito Net for Three Beds and Matatus Suck

Nanyuki, near Mt. Kenya.

Kumiko and A are already crashed out even though we all spent the same amount of time bob-napping on the matatus today. It has been refreshing to meet Kumiko's neighbor, Brown, who oddly enough is more black than brown, and find the long-sought-after reminder that not all Kenyans are the passive, disempowered, resentful village farmers I usually encounter. He was educated in England and has traveled in Scotland and France. Not only did he not need an explanation of "why I look like a China," but he says what he thinks and asks for what he wants.

"What are we waiting for, bwana?" he asked the matatu driver as we were idling at a junction for no apparent reason.

"That was really rude by Kenyan standards," he whispered to me. " You're not supposed to yell out questions like that."

Which would explain why everyone was giving me disapproving stares, and a lady behind me was tsk-tsking, when I once asked a matatu driver to turn off the radio because the cheap speakers were busted and the only sound coming out of them was a high-pitched hissing that made my ears ring. How dare a person say what's on her mind, especially a woman?

I was on yet another matatu a few days ago on a winding dirt road. There was a matatu next to us, and before long the drivers were racing to be the first to pick up passengers waiting along the road. I asked the driver to slow down so that we wouldn't pitch over the edge into a valley, and everyone on the matatu laughed. He slowed down for a few seconds, but soon the matatus were leap-frogging each other competing for customers and kicking up thick clouds of dust. We were going way too fast and there was no visibility except for orange dust. We reached a stretch where the road became narrow and uneven because there were piles of dirt and gravel and construction trucks working.

What would you, as a responsible matatu driver, do in this situation? Our driver floored the gas, and the other driver floored the gass, and I looked out the front windshield and saw a giant dump truck barreling towards us on this narrow road obscured by dust.

"SLOW DOWN!!" I screamed in a panic, thumping the driver on the arm. "ENDESHA POLE POLE!!!" He and everyone on the matatu just laughed, but he also slowed down (and the other matatu got the next passengers). What's wrong with people? Do they not value their lives, or am I just neurotic and obsessed with safety? I have to revise my previous complaint that I don't know how to make Kenyans laugh. I do - just scream, panic, show anger, impatience or frustration, or speak Kiswahili or their local dialect. I wonder if laughter has a different meaning in this culture. In some cultures, a person will laugh if you have embarrassed them. I don't know what it means here, but maybe it's not always a form of mockery, but an expression of social discomfort. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better because I'm tired of being laughed at everytime I think I've just put a harrassing tout or vendor or street kid in his place with some clever retort.


The conditioning to create a docile masses begins early - kids are not encouraged to ask questions or to question authority, they are ridiculed if they say something the teacher doesn't like or agree with, fostering a sense that there is only one correct answer and it's better to wait and be told what it is, than to risk being shamed for attempting to figure out an answer themselves. Students in secondary schools are not encouraged to discuss different sides of an issue, just to accept whatever doctrine their teachers or the funding institution (usually a church) wants to disseminate. People aren't encouraged to develop critical thinking or decision-making skills, because that could lead to dissent from the grassroots and then where would the powerful people be with all the little people arguing with them and questioning their decisions all the time? When I've taught about HIV in high schools here, the students are completely silent and won't ask questions or engage in discussions. They fear making their voices heard, especially the girls. It was only when Hillary took over and used the typical teaching style of inflecting his sentences to elicit obedient responses that they would respond. "HIV makes your body vulnerable to opportunistic infections," he would say. Then he'd repeat, "HIV makes your body vulnerable to opportunistic...?" and the students knew that was their cue to say "infections."

Seasons Greetings From Far Away!

Back to Justina Again Chatty Chatty Chatty

December 23, 2005. 5:03pm.

Whew, what happened to me? It�s like an alien abducted me for two weeks. I
was miserable. Doing much better now, thanks. Am in Eldoret using FREE
wireless internet at Indiana University again, woo-hoo! Of course it�s down,
but the computer time is free. There are three PCVs baking Christmas cookies
downstairs and I�m keeping them busy by eating them as fast as I can.

Earlier this afternoon I was crossing the highway and ran into my doctor
friend, the one named after the late, exiled president of Uganda. He was
sprung free from boot camp in the Kenyan army just today (the living Milton
Obote, that is), and has been posted to Mombasa to do whatever people do
when they are doctors serving in the army. The point: I now have a friend
who lives steps away from the beach in Mombasa, so all you travel-happy
peeps back home, karibu Kenya! We have a place to stay on the beach!

Kenyan Mystery #3052. Today I asked a guy, in English, �Do you know where
the post office is?�

�Yes,� he said, and continued reading his newspaper. I waited for him to
start giving me directions, but he didn�t.

�Um, where is it?� I said after a minute had passed.

�Oh!� he said. �It is just down the road. Come, I will show you the way.�

Later I was trying to find my way to IU, so I flagged down a bodaboda (bike
taxi).

�Unajua Indiana University?� I said. Which means, Do you know where Indiana
University is?

�Go down this way, you�ll see a junction after all the bodabodas. Turn right
and follow the road,� he said in Kiswahili.

Why is it that if I ask a question in Kiswahili people know what I�m talking
about, but if I ask the same question in English they don�t?
-----------
During IST someone pointed out that one of the keys to building trust and
friendships with Kenyans is to give them credit for being able to understand
cultural differences, by being honest when they do something that bothers
you, instead of keeping quiet. I thought it was insightful advice and I�ve
been trying to apply it more often in my interactions with Kenyans. I�m
still learning to be tactful.

�Justina, you look fat!� one of the counselors at my VCT told me last week
with a big smile on her face. She tells me I look fat at least once a week,
and I always just say, �Great, thanks a lot,� and stalk off.

This time I said, �God, that�s so rude. Don�t say that to me anymore.�

�But you do look fat,� she said, visibly hurt.

�Okay, look,� I said. �In the U.S. it�s impolite to tell someone they look
fat. People like to look thin. I know it�s the opposite here, but Americans
don�t like it when you tell them they look fat.�

�Oh, I see now,� she said, looking relieved. �In Kenya it is healthy to be
fat. It is not good to tell someone they are thin. It�s so funny how
opposite!�

I declared a small, clumsy victory. Yesterday was not so graceful. I was
walking in the forest on my compound, and ran into my neighbor�s brother
(the hottie), who is visiting for the holidays.

�What are you reading?� I said, then saw the book and immediately regretted
asking.

�Oh, it�s a book on spirituality,� he said. �Let me ask you, are you a
Christian?�

I spent the next five minutes trying to dodge the question of why I used to
go to church and no longer do. How do I explain to a devout Christian that
it disgusts me the way Christian (and other religious) teachings are
perverted in order to control the way people think and act?

�I think you should reconsider your decision,� he said. �You need to revive
your spiritual life again.�

�My spirit is doing just fine, thanks. It didn�t die,� I said. �I have to go
make a phone call now I�ll see you later bye.�

Later I wondered why I didn�t try to explain it to him. Christianity is the
one topic that instantly puts me on the defensive with Kenyans. But I sensed
that he wasn�t trying to judge me or shame me into repentance for my heathen
ways. At one point he said, �I really just don�t understand how someone
cannot follow a religion.� And he meant it in the purely objective sense.

But because I was feeling really defensive I said, �Well, it�s pretty common
in the U.S. not to follow any organized religion. It�s just a choice; it�s
not because we�re immoral or something.�

�I know, I understand,� he said, perplexed as to why I was getting so worked
up.

I�m off to Mt. Kenya for a week, but I�ve decided that if he�s still in town
when I get back to my village that I�ll try to explain it to him. If nothing
else it will expand the boundaries of my composure. Can a mzungu get a
Kenyan to understand her views on religion without flying into a defensive
fury?

I find that many Kenyans also don�t give mzungus any credit for being able
to integrate into Kenyan culture, and I blame it on all the mzungus who
refuse to eat ugali. Every Kenyan is blown away that I can say a single
greeting in Kiswahili after being here for six months, that I wash my
clothes myself, and that I eat beans. BEANS. I ran into my neighbors, two
teachers at the school, on my way to the shamba last week.

�Oh, you have a shamba?� they said, visibly impressed. �Who�s digging it for
you?�

Why would they assume that someone else would dig it for me? Mzungus have
hands, too.

Hoe Hoe Hoe!

December 20, 2005. Tuesday, 9:06pm.

Mistaken Identity Story, Continued

I�ve started running in the mornings again, trying to get ready to climb Mt.
Kenya next week. Every morning I pass Alfred, my neighbor who thinks I come
from a place in the U.S. that�s next to Argentina. Today he had a friend
with him.

�Where are you going?� the friend asked me, after we had all shaken hands
and exchanged five greetings each.

�Back to my house,� I said, knowing what he would say next.

�Oh, you mean over there,� he said, pointing to the camp for the Chinese
road crew.

�Why would I live there?� I said, annoyed. �I�m American.�

�But you look like a Chinese,� he said.

�No, I don�t,� I said, without hitting him. �I look like an American.�

�Don�t you see,� Alfred scolded him, proud to show off that he knows
something about me. �She�s American.�

-------------

I started tilling my shamba, and by tomorrow the entire two points (44 x 22
yds) should be done. Guess what? I know how to use a hoe now!

�You mean you have never hoed a garden before?� Hillary asked, incredulous.

�Where do you think I come from?� I said. �In America my garden was called
Safeway.�

�Let me dig it for you,� he said. �You can sit under that tree and rest.�

�Aw, how sweet, just like colonial times,� I said. �A mzungu comes to Africa
and makes a black man do all her work.�

�Mm,� he said vaguely. But he didn�t try to stop me when I began to hoe.

The next step: collecting cow poop to fertilize the soil. I am picturing
long days of trudging back and forth from the forest (where the cows graze)
across the football field to my shamba with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.

Of Mailmen and Minnesotans

December 17, 2005, Saturday, 8:26pm.

Hillary and I rode our bikes through the forest to a town called Yala, about
25 km away, where we saw a minivan with a blaring bullhorn advertising
mobile VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) services. The van belonged to
a VCT in a nearby town, one that my VCT hopes to model itself after (fat
chance).

We decided to drop in and see how their services compared to ours, and
discovered that their clients are given two different HIV tests per session:
Determine (a non-specific antibody test that can give a positive reading if
a client is HIV-negative but is carrying antibodies for viruses similar to
HIV, like, um, I don�t know, TB or typhoid or something) and Unigold (an
HIV-specific antibody test). Two tests are a standard Ministry of Health
requirement for VCTs, and they must keep a third type of test as a
�tie-breaker� in case the first two tests give discordant results. Of course
my VCT only uses Determine, which means it�s failing to comply with minimum
government standards, which is ultimately not that surprising considering
our chicken-with-its-head-cut-off leadership. Not that I�m bitter.

Today was the first time I�d traveled the road from my village to Yala, so
of course people came streaming out of their huts to look at the white zoo
animal riding a fancy mountain bike. I was still feeling irritable, so the
gawking bothered me to no end. I passed a crowd of primary school kids who
were laughing uncontrollably at me, which annoyed me for no good reason, so
I pointed at them and said, �HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Look at you! HAHAHAHAHA!�

They thought I was playing a game with them, and squealed with delight,
covering their mouths and giggling shyly. It was sincerely cute and
innocent, so I felt better, and smiled and waved at them. Who thought losing
a message in translation could improve mental health?

Further up the road were a few old men lying in the grass staring at the
world passing before their eyes. One of them was wearing a U.S. Postal
Service uniform shirt (I�m telling you, the Salvation Army delivers to
Africa), so I pointed at him and shouted, �Hey! You look like a mailman!�
They all thought it was hilarious and slightly miraculous that I was
speaking to them, so they waved and greeted me: �Habari! Hallo!�

When I got back to my village I stopped by the trading center (basically the
town center where there�s a bunch of shops, a hospital and a petrol station)
to buy toothpaste. A woman I�ve never seen before walked by and greeted me
in a perfect American accent, �Hi, how are you?�

My American no-staring reflex was too strong so I didn�t do the double-take
I wanted to do, but I ducked into the nearest shop and whispered to the shop
owner, �That lady talks like a mzungu but she�s African!�

The shop owner just chuckled and said, �That�s Cherumbose�s daughter who ran
off to Minnesota and got married.�

Cherumbose is a rich businessman who owns a lot of the shops in the trading
center, who yells across the road everytime he sees me, �Hallo, California!
Come here, I have just returned from America,� and then proceeds to talk to
me for the next half hour about all the amazing things about my country,
like tarmacs. I was really excited to hear that his daughter is back in the
village for a visit, and I�m trying to corner her one of these days to ask
her all about, uh, Minnesota.

I Am Crankypants

December 16, 2005, Friday, 10:51pm.

Today was a bad day. Not because anything particularly bad happened; it was
more like waking up on the wrong side of the bed, which is bad in itself
because there�s only one side of the bed I can wake up on without hitting my
head on the wall. I stepped outside my house and the compound was full of
people � old mamas, middle-aged men, kids in church uniforms. They were
obviously not from my village because when they saw me, all movement came to
a complete standstill and they stared dully at me like they�d never seen
anyone walk by putting one foot in front of the other. And as usual they
assumed that foreigners don�t have ears, because they started whispering,
�Fffsstssfzzfsfff mzungu fffsssttsffs.�

Well it�s probably not the best idea for me to try to write a blog post in
this kind of crappy mood. But the truth is that I�m tired of not doing
anything day after day. Spending a week in Kitui at in-service training was
good for getting some distance to reflect on things and realign my
perspective with reality. I�m going to try to start working with other
groups in my community and detach myself from the organization that I was
originally placed with. There�s no point trying to work with an organization
whose management is corrupt and ineffective, and whose members no longer
attend meetings because they�ve lost interest in working with leaders who
sabotage all their efforts at progress. For awhile my counterpart and I were
plotting different ways to stage a coup, but I�ve never heard of a
successful two-person coup. I also realized that rule number one of
sustainable development (okay, maybe it�s rule #3) is that any project, even
a coup, needs to be initiated by and include the active participation of the
community or group it benefits, otherwise they don�t feel a sense of
ownership and therefore...(chorus) it can�t be sustainable. The members of
my VCT got so discouraged and apathetic that they weren�t even interested in
overthrowing the leadership. They just stopped showing up for work.

It was also helpful to think about better approaches to community entry
after all the different assumptions people in my village have made about my
purpose in being here. Actually there�s only one assumption, and that�s that
I suddenly decided to leave my comfortable lifestyle in the U.S. to come to
Kenya to pass out money for free, and by some stroke of luck this remote
community dominated by tea fields and dairy cooperatives (Nandis love their
milk) is going to be the beneficiary.

From now on, instead of introducing myself by saying, �I�m a volunteer with
the U.S. Peace Corps,� which sounds to the Kenyan ear like, �U.S. money
money money money all for YOU!!� I�ll explain that the Peace Corps is not a
funding agency, I�m not a funding agency, and neither are my friends or
family back in America. I�m merely here to facilitate people�s efforts to
identify resources and solutions within their own communities. There is
nothing that perpetuates a person�s sense of powerlessness than believing
that the things they need to improve their situation can only come from
outside.

Well, I�m starting to sound like someone�s Master�s thesis, but somehow the
theoretical babble makes me feel a little more optimistic, like it provides
a structured framework for understanding all the madness.

YUCK there is a hairy spider on my window curtain.

Back to the Village. I GOT A SHAMBA!!

December 15, 2005, Thursday. 9:57pm.

You know how your mom used to tell you to finish all your food because there
are children starving in Africa? The guilt is compounded when you actually
live in Africa and know the names of some of the starving children. My
neighbor Nehemiah (who STILL owes me 200 shillings, the bum) just told me
that if I leave my leftovers on the lawn that something will eventually come
along and eat it � either the cat, a wild dog, monkeys, porcupines,
mongooses or the chickens.

Life is hard for chickens in Kenya. One of my hens lost all four of her
chicks, poor mama. A hawk took one, and the other three got the Droopy
Chicken disease, called coccidiosis or something. The second hen hatched six
chicks; they all got chicken fleas around their eyes and I had to swab flea
powder all over their faces. One chick died of the fleas; I�m not sure the
connection between fleas and sudden chicken death syndrome but it was blind
in one eye and kept getting lost when the others would run after some food.
Naomi, the headmaster�s oldest daughter, saw me swabbing the littlest chick
today and said, �It is going to die.� Thanks for the Kenyan frankness, lady.

Today I approached the headmaster for the 14th time about getting a shamba
to plant broccoli and spinach and Chinese water convoloulus (hey that�s what
the seed packet says; it looks like kong xin cai to me) and all the other
vegetables that aren�t sold here because for some reason Kalenjins won�t eat
anything but collards, black nightshade, and kunde (bean leaves).

�Sorry to keep bothering you about getting land for a shamba,� I said. �I
hope I�m not asking for too much.�

�There�s 100 acres on this compound,� he said.�I think I can spare you a
point.� A point, for those people who are agriculturally retarded like me,
is 22 x 22 yards, or 11 x 44 yards. I think an acre is ten points.

He ended up giving me two points, which just seems vast to my San Francisco
spatial sensibilities. I even found a stray potato in my new shamba that
they forgot to harvest last season. Yay! Must be a good omen, and I�m
looking forward to learning how to use a hoe and a panga (a long metal blade
used for gardening, or murdering people who steal your cattle).

Well I wasn�t completely honest when I said spinach isn�t sold here. It is,
but it�s hard to find. I went on an hour-long search for spinach a few days
ago, and eventually discovered a shamba at another girls� school that was
growing some. The old mama in charge gave me a giant armload (I�m not
exaggering; my arms were tired from carrying it all) for ten shillings, and
I�m not sure if it was because it�s a fair price, or because everyone hates
spinach and she just wanted to get rid of it. Anyway, I�ve been eating
spinach for the last three days, and have barely made a dent in it. Spinach
mushroom soup, spinach and cheese crepes, spinach with garlic and soy sauce�

In-Service Training, Kitui

December 6, 2005, Tuesday, 9:10pm.

Kitui is different these days. Green. November is the month of the short
rains in Central Kenya, so now everything is sprouting and blooming, and
people have food in their shambas. Even barreling through the countryside
from Nairobi (�Jesus Christ, bwana. Slow down! Slow down!�) I noticed
something was different. The yellow brushy landscape and desperate-looking
white thorn trees have now sprouted a vibrant green fur, and formerly
scorched hillsides of ochre soil are now lined with green terraced crops.

I haven�t been to Nairobi in four months, either. Everytime I got there it
feels like I�ve alighted from a space ship and stepped onto another planet.
People aren�t wearing the exact same Fubu shirts imported from China, and
only a few women wear the traditional African-print dresses with the puffed
sleeves and matching head wraps. No one has holes in their clothes or mud on
their shoes, and the only person who looks dirty is me. I also forget that
Nairobi pickpockets aren�t as incompetent as Kisumu and Eldoret pickpockets,
but this time I�m armed with safety pins (thanks Mom and Dad). Nairobians
are sophisticated, man.

It has also been good to have a week to get together with the rest of my
training group and exchange ideas and feedback on our experiences. In the
last month or so I feel like I�ve lost a little bit of focus on why I�m here
and what role I�m supposed to play in the community; instead I�ve been
getting bitter and cynical about the natural order of things in rural Kenya.
I�m probably the person facing the most blatant cases of corruption in her
community, although maybe other volunteers have just had a better attitude
about it. Anyway it has been good to have my perspective refocused and
realigned. In pre-service training we were introduced to a bunch of tools
for needs assessment and problem solving in our communities, but at the time
they didn�t seem all that valuable, and some of them didn�t really even make
any sense. But being in my village for several months has give these tools a
practical context, and I�m starting to see how I can apply them.

If that woman who came to me a month ago with her sob story asking for a job
came back to me today, I�d whip out a flip chart and marker and map a
problem tree (looks like broccoli but with roots called corruption,
unemployment, drought, etc.) and problem matrix with her. It sounds really
corporate and type-A but I really think that it�s better than shrugging my
shoulders and saying �Pole,� and it helps both Kenyans and me to be albe to
break down the problem visually to understand how they perceive and rank all
the various challenges they face.

But although I�ll go back to my village next week with all these tools and
visions and ideas in my head, I know that I�ll instantly be confronted with
the same conversation stoppers: �Why can�t you get money for us from your
friends and family in America?� This one question has ended conversations
with at least ten groups in my community, and now I have to go back to them
with an open mind, and try to explain that they have resources in their
communities, too, and that the key to improving their lives does not lie
only outside.
-----------
December 10, 2005. Saturday, 10:16. Nairobi.

Just made a list of things I like about Kenya. In our first session of
in-service training last week we were asked to name something we liked about
Kenya and I couldn�t. That�s a sign you�ve become really bummed out about
things.

Today I went to mzungu central in Nairobi, the Java House in city center. I
met two couples in their 20s, typical sophisticated Nairobians. I couldn�t
understand their Kiswahili because they used so much slang, and when I asked
what village they came from they all rolled their eyes the way I do when
people ask me if I�m from China.

�We�re from Nairobi,� they said. �There are people who are born here, you
know.�

Then they proceeded to pour more whiskey into their cappuccinos and laugh
about being alcoholics.

USA, So Far Away

I actually started this list first, but then got carried away making the other list (previous post).

Things I miss about the U.S., in no particular order:

1. cheese
2. spinach salads with candied walnuts and feta cheese (especially from Q Cafe on Clement Street)
3. ice cream
4. sushi
5. seafood
6. In and Out Burger
7. a nice California zin or cab or syrah or...
8. Two-Buck Chuck
9. cycling Marin County
10. swimming
11. eating vegetables raw
12. an ice cold glass of milk
13. cheap Chinese food
14. high speed internet
15. anonymity
16. steak
17. being able to say what I want, whenever I want
18. staying out after dark
19. green tea ice cream crepes from Japantown
20. olive oil
21. 22nd Avenue produce market in the Sunset
22. dungeness crabs
23. boba nai cha
24. having muscle tone in my arms and legs
25. San Francisco fog

Mental Health Is Good, Really

December 10, 2005, Saturday, 8:13pm.

Just finished a week of in-service training in Kitui. On the first day our facilitator asked us to name a few things we liked about Kenya, after we had just spent an hour complaining about all the "challenges" we've faced.

I said, "Um...gee, that's a hard question. I guess I like the simplicity of the lifestyle here." Which sounded really dumb because it's not simplicity, it's poverty.

Anyway, afterwards I decided I needed to make a list of things I like about Kenya, because lately I've been too focused on everything that drives me insane about this place.

In no particular order, things I like about Kenya:

1. chickens
2. sunsets over tea fields
3. Kitui in December (green!)
4. kids swimming in the river like they have no cares in the world
5. curious kids
6. smiles
7. Peace Corps medical staff - Dr. Patti, Sylvia and Ruth
8. sms
9. Nairobi youth (not street kids)
10. mango trees
11. bouganvillas in scores of fiery colors - red, purple, fuschia, orange...
12. Nandi Rock and the fact that I didn't plummet to my death climbing it
13. colobus monkeys outside my window
14. the girls at my school, especially the Form 3 troublemakers
15. the neighbors' kids, especially Joy, the precocious 3-year-old who speaks Kiswahili better than I do
16. donkeys!
17. hot Kalenjin runners
18. landscape of Nandi Hills
19. fried tilapia and ugali
20. Upper Hills Campsite in Nairobi
21. Mamba's fried chicken and chips in Kisumu
22. mornings
23. singing, even church songs
24. the hundred of ways women can braid their hair
25. the amount of weight women can carry on their heads without using their hands
26. landscape in my village, especially the walk to Kirondio and the view overlooking Chemase
27. smell of tea ready to be picked in the fields
28. chameleons!
29. fruits and vegetables fresh from the shamba
30. sounds of the forest, especially bird calls
31. handicrafts (that I can't afford)
32. beautiful women in Nairobi
33. flamingos on Lake Nakuru
34. Mt. Elgon
35. starlings - birds that shimmer like blue-green satin
36. hanging birds nest in Central Kenya, and the yellow birds that build them
37. acacia trees on the savannah
38. receiving letters and packages from home
39. staff of Abacus Computers in Kisumu
40. Kibet and Stacey (the APCDs)
41. getting milk from a cow every morning
42. the school compound I live on - 100 acres of forest, tea, pineapples, tree nurseries, rivers, and of course, a girls' high school
43. baby sheep - their fleece really is white as snow
44. giant avocados for 5 shillings each
45. chai masala
46. hailstorms

Care Package Wish List

A lot of people have asked what I want in the next care package, especially with Christmas coming up, so here is a list of things I've thought of:

cheetos - the crunchy kind, not puffs
Keebler grasshoppers, mint Oreos, or other chocolate-mint cookies
Christmas candy
a string of Christmas lights - white; for year-round use haha
hair ties - you'd think they'd be easy to find but African hair doesn't need tying, apparently
hemp rope for jewelry making, and/or some cool beads
smartwool-type ankle-length socks
nailpolish in goofy colors
outdoor games involving balls or other objects that can be thrown around
CDs - especially comedy i.e. Margaret Cho, Eddy Izzard, etc. and the holiday music you hear at the Gap etc (I know, can you believe it?)
DVDs (encoded for Region 2 or all regions)
small, portable speakers to plug my iPod into
sample size anything, except ketchup
photos

OH MY GOD!! The internet cafe I'm at is playing jazzy Christmas music!! And I'm happy about it!!!

Anyway, anything I get in the mail is always immensely appreciated like you can't even imagine, and the more creative the better. Stuff that might be helpful for you to know:

I have LOTS of time on my hands
Anything that makes me laugh is great for mental health
I have about a year's worth of antibacterial gel (thanks Mom, Lynn, Alyssa and everyone else who sent some)
I need to spend more time outdoors
I'm still at P.O. Box 159. Stuff sent to Nairobi may take a few months to reach me.