Pastor Nelson

February 22, 2006, Wednesday. 11:38pm.

Yesterday was a full day of giving talks on HIV/AIDS. First we addressed
about a hundred guardians of vulnerable children sponsored by a local church
and NGO, and ended up stimulating a lively discussion about whether it�s
actually possible to abstain completely from sex to avoid getting HIV. (The
verdict: no, because men always cheat and women aren�t allowed to tell their
husbands that she doesn�t want to have sex or that he needs to use a
condom.)

Then we addressed some members of another church whose pastor had approached
me last week asking me to conduct some seminars on HIV/AIDS for his
congregation. We asked him what kind of AIDS information he has been
incorporating into his sermons.

�As Christians we believe that AIDS is a punishment from God,� he told us
last week. When we asked why he believed this, he could only say, after a
lot of awkward pauses and false starts, that God punishes you with AIDS if
you�ve broken one of his laws, like being unfaithful or not using a condom.
Using a condom is a law of God?

Hillary and I were a bit distraught about this man�s apparent confusion, so
yesterday before our presentation we sat Pastor Nelson down for a little
chat. Nelson is about 25, and still figuring out his own value system. Not
the best condition to be in when trying to be a steadfast moral and thought
leader in your community.

�Why do you believe AIDS is a punishment from God?� Hillary asked. �Isn�t it
possible for someone to get AIDS who didn�t commit any sin, like a woman who
is infected by her husband who has been unfaithful?�

�Yes, but if you read the book of Job�� Nelson said.

�I knew you were going to quote Job, and you know that�s wrong, don�t you?�
Hillary said. I was so proud of him, and I didn�t even know what he was
talking about. �As a pastor you must know that Job is talking about God
punishing Christians in history, not about AIDS.�

At this point I lost them. Hillary knows his Bible, apparently, so I let him
argue the poor pastor into a corner. I only started talking to Pastor Nelson
recently (in fact I only learned his name last week, even though I used to
walk past his tailoring shop everyday and wave) but unlike other pastors
I�ve met here, he has an open mind, a realistic outlook (�Pastors are human,
too. We can cheat on our wives and we can get AIDS,�) and he�s in touch with
youth culture in the village.

He invited us to conduct a seminar on AIDS in his hometown, near Lake
Victoria. A bishop from his area recently committed suicide after
discovering he was HIV positive, and the news hit Nelson pretty hard. He
started wondering why the stigma against AIDS was so severe that someone
would rather kill himself than face the social disgrace that would surely
follow if his community were to find out. Nelson decided it was time to give
his people the straight facts, so that they would know about AIDS and begin
talking about it, and maybe the next time someone discovered she was
positive, the community would be prepared to support her socially,
emotionally and otherwise.

Anyway, Nelson�s compassion was genuine, but so was his collection of
muddled misconceptions about AIDS, which he had been sharing with his
congregation. I think Hillary�s conversation got him thinking, though, and
he was really receptive to the information in our presentation.

Nelson also told us that one of the biggest obstacles to stopping the spread
of AIDS in his hometown are all the traditions that his tribe, the Luos,
stubbornly cling to. Luos are extremely proud of their culture, which
includes practices like wife inheritance. If a man dies before his wife,
according to Luo tradition, the man�s brother must inherit her by having sex
with her. This creates a problem because if the man died of AIDS, his wife
probably has the virus as well, and she will likely pass it on to the
inheriting brother. In many tribes, if a person dies of AIDS it is not
mentioned as such. This is mostly because of the stigma of AIDS, but is
facilitated by the fact that people don�t actually die of AIDS per se, but
of an opportunistic infection like TB or malaria.

Anyway, if for some reason the wife dies right after the husband, before she
has a chance to be inherited, the custom is that the brother must have sex
with her dead body to indicate that she has been inherited, because an
uninherited deceased wife can bring shame or misfortune to the family.
However, the clever Luos have modified this particular tradition to
accommodate AIDS. Now, instead of the brother performing the inheritance
ritual on the corpse, which might have AIDS, the deceased husband�s family
raises money to hire someone else to have sex with the wife�s body. And
because they don�t want to risk a respectable Luo�s life, they will usually
hire a local drunk or street person, or a mKisii (someone from the
neighboring Kisii tribe, whose life obviously isn�t worth as much as a
Luo�s).

So we have some work to do with Pastor Nelson�s community, but he�s a good
ally with a deep desire to make a positive impact in his community. And so
far he�s never said anything about condoms having holes in them.

Into the Schools

February 20, 2006, Monday. 11:44pm.

With a little ingenuity and a bit of begging, Hillary and I revived the
VCT�s mobile outreach program, which had gone on unintentional hiatus back
in November due to, well, you know. Starts with a �c,� but it�s not
Communism. Anyway since the VCT had no funds to pay for transport and lunch
allowances for an outreach program, we decided to ask the village hospital
if we could tag along in their ambulance when they went out for mobile
clinics, and conduct HIV/AIDS awareness at nearby schools. They were more
than happy to oblige, and invited us to be a part of their school health
program, a combination of mobile clinics and health talks.

The best part of all this is not that I get to ride in an ambulance (no
siren, more like a glorified paddy wagon) but the fact that one of the
nurses promised that the next time a newly-dewormed student passes a worm,
she�ll save it for me so I can see what it looks like.

Anyway, Hillary and I went to a primary school today and talked to sixth-
through eighth graders. One of the teachers had been through a workshop on
how to teach about HIV/AIDS in schools. He kindly offered to let us borrow
his notes, which began: �Where did AIDS come from? 1.) AIDS came from
America when homosexuals started committing sinful acts with each other.�

This one was new. No one knows for sure the origins of AIDS; many American
scientists think a researcher conducting research in Africa acquired a
simian form of HIV from monkeys, which then mutated into a virus capable of
living in human beings. In Africa many people believe that AIDS came from
America or Europe; some go so far as to say that the virus was cooked up in
an American lab and shipped to Africa to further oppress Africans. But this
was the first time I�d heard the gay theory.

His notes continued: AIDS is a punishment from God. People get AIDS because
they have committed a sin (with a list of sins punishable by AIDS). Condoms
have holes that allow viruses to pass through (accompanied by a chart with
diameters of holes in latex vs. diameters of HIV and other STDs).
Masturbation is a moral perversion. Private parts should only be used for
the purpose they were designed for; they should not be touched any other
way. Activities that spread AIDS: men having sex with men, women having sex
with women, kissing.

Hillary listened patiently while I railed against the notes after the
teacher had left the room. I was preaching to the choir for the 900th time,
but the choir understood and nodded sympathetically.

We moved to the classroom and began teaching the standard lesson � What is
AIDS? How do you get AIDS? How do you prevent AIDS? It was clear the
students already knew the basics, so I started asking them to ask me
questions instead. The ninety students were silent. Their teacher (the one
with the notes) was watching them.

It was the first time I had taught students younger than high school, and I
hadn�t thought about how to discuss the ABCs (Abstain, Be faithful, Condom
use) appropriately for the age group. Off the top of my head I said, �Be
faithful means for married people like your parents, they should be faithful
to each other. If you have older brothers or sisters and they have a
partner, they should be faithful to each other.� It was totally patronizing
but it was the best I could come up with on the spot.

Finally one grinning eighth grader asked, �So is it okay if we�re faithful
too?� It was one of those high-context Kenyan phrasings, so I had to ask for
clarification. The actual question was, �Which of the ABCs do we use if we
have a partner?�

I knew it was a Catholic school and I knew after reading the teacher�s notes
that the �correct� answer was to abstain.

�It�s your choice,� I said. I could see the teacher cringing in the corner.
�You know the risks of each option so it�s up to you to decide what�s right
for you.� Then I added some other stuff about how if you get pregnant or get
someone pregnant, or if you get sick from an STD, it could cost you your
education and your future, and the teacher seemed relieved. He wrapped up
our presentation by reinterpreting the ABCs for his students:

�You need to abstain from sex to avoid getting AIDS. You need to be faithful
to your partner by abstaining from sex. And C is for condoms, but I don�t
want any of you using condoms.�

We had some extra time afterwards because the ambulance was late picking us
up, so I asked the students to write down any questions they might have on a
piece of paper, anonymously, and pass it to me. I wasn�t sure if I would get
much of a response since I didn�t get many questions earlier. Instead I was
bombarded with questions the students were too embarrassed to ask aloud, in
front of the teacher and their peers.

Do condoms have holes in them? Do condoms prevent AIDS? Can you get AIDS
from kissing? Can you get AIDS from shaking hands with someone with an open
wound on their hand?

The problem, I�m discovering as I talk to more youths, is that people get so
many mixed messages from so many different places in their lives � AIDS is a
punishment from God, yet you shouldn�t judge or shun people with AIDS
because they�re innocent; abstain until marriage, but you�re not a real man
if you don�t have sex to test out your goods before you marry someone; use
condoms, but you don�t need to use condoms because you�re supposed to
abstain unless you�re a prostitute or some other immoral person, therefore
the only people who use condoms are immoral people; everyone is a sinner,
and if you sin God will give you AIDS, so don�t sin.

No wonder people are so confused. Part of me feels like dropping in on a
school once a year isn�t going to make much of an impact. Kids (and everyone
else for that matter) need consistent messages from everyone in their lives
� schools, religious leaders, parents, peers � but most of the time they
have nowhere to turn for answers except their peers, because everyone else
just tells them to abstain abstain abstain, and if you�re abstaining you
don�t need to know anything about sex, so why are you asking about it? And
when all your peers are facing the same void of information, it�s just the
blind leading the blind.

One of the most disturbing things I learned this week is that reproductive
health education in schools is minimal, or nonexistent. Students learn about
sperms and eggs and reproductive organs from a strictly biological
perspective, but there�s no lesson about what happens to boys� and girls�
bodies during puberty. And in the Nandi culture parents don�t talk to their
kids about it. Most girls have no idea what�s happening when they get their
period for the first time, and they think there�s something wrong with them.
But they�re too ashamed to tell anyone about it, so they suffer through
their anxiety alone. Even after they realize periods are normal, they�re too
embarrassed to ask their parents for money to buy pads.

I am going to work a lesson on reproductive health into our school health
program. We went around to a bunch of schools to schedule a time to visit
them, and I asked each headmaster what information he or she felt was most
important for us to teach the kids. They all said malaria or AIDS or basic
hygiene, but no one mentioned reproductive health, probably because it�s
just not on their cultural radar screen. We�ll see how well this type of
content goes over on the frontlines. Stay tuned to this space.

Just there. Where? There. There Where? Over there...

I was walking back from a chief’s baraza (village meeting) yesterday evening, stumbling along a dirt road trying to make out the rainwashed contours by the fleeing twilight, listening to some of my friends chatter in Kinandi and trying to convince myself that I understood a few words, when suddenly I thought, “I love being here.” There was no real reason for having this epiphany at that particular moment, really.

At the baraza, I had just given another speech about how to apply for funding for a gravity water project and people had regarded me suspiciously after I told them there were no guarantees that their proposal would be funded. This was after I had sat through a three hour lecture in Kinandi, presented by some representatives from a local NGO that gives out microloans, and felt frustrated about something the speaker had written on the board:

Structures that sustain poverty: time wasted, lack of exposure, selfishness, lack of togetherness, lack of respect

Structures that alleviate poverty: love, knowledge, understanding, environment (nation/tribe, neighbors, self)

It was the same frustration I feel whenever I work with a Kenyan to write letters or prepare presentations, where I feel like their communication style is very non-specific and indirect. I always think about the idea of high-context and low-context cultures when I come across this type of communication (and it happens about 30 times a day), about how American culture is very low-context, meaning we assume that the person we are speaking to may not carry all the same cultural assumptions we do, so we are very specific about what we mean. By contrast Kenyan culture is high-context, meaning people can say very little and understand each other perfectly well. From my cultural perspective this kind of communication can come across as cowardly, passive-aggressive, or just an indication that the speaker doesn’t exactly know what he’s talking about. Kenyans always say things like:

You remember the other time? (Which other time?)
Just there. (Where?)
You know the other person. (Which other person?)
Later. (What time?)
Tommorrow. (What time?)
That one. (That one what?)
Mm. (Yes? No? What are you talking about??)

And they understand each other. I must sound like a three-year-old to most Kenyans because I followup everything they say with a question. Why? What do you mean? Which one? What time?

Anyway, the guy’s presentation bothered me because I was thinking, why is he using these really general and innocuous terms instead of saying outright what the real problems and solutions are? My list would have been:

Structures that sustain poverty: corruption, cultural taboos against confrontation and speaking out, oppression of women (gender violence, unequal division of labor, exclusion from opportunities such as education based on lower social status, i.e. women are property and need to be treated like children), sense of disempowerment due to: low education levels, lack of access to information, community apathy

Structures that alleviate poverty: holding leaders accountable for their actions especially with regard to financial management (asking WHY?), community solidarity, education, access to information, self-empowerment, especially of women, attitudes, i.e. my community is full of valuable resources and I don’t need to rely on outsiders to raise myself out of poverty, STOP BEATING AND RAPING YOUR WIVES, SISTERS, NEIGHBORS, ETC AND GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND HELP HER WITH THE HOUSEWORK!!

At one point the presenter said, as an example of how to show love to alleviate poverty, “When you come home and dinner isn’t ready because your wife is still out collecting firewood or washing the clothes or fetching water, go into the kitchen and start cooking some vegetables.” The entire room erupted into gut-busting laughter, including the women.

In the end, Kenyans understand each other through what I consider a vague communication style that drives me crazy, but I think the presenter had effectively communicated his main messages, and people came away feeling like it was within their control to change their lives for the better.

Anyway, so I was walking home from this baraza and realized that for some reason despite feeling frustrated about things I never imagined could happen to me, like having an incomprehensible conversation in English with another English-speaker, or having an entire schoolyard full of primary school kids giggling and chanting “China! China! China!”, I really love being here. My work, and even my free-time, forces me to look for solutions to whatever problem I run into, usually solutions that require improvising with the limited resources available to me, and because everyday is full of problems, it’s like the wheels are always turning in my brain. Which is new.

I’m beginning to understand why people say employers value the resourcefulness and creativity and can-do attitude of Peace Corps volunteers. It’s not just recruitment propaganda. If I didn’t have a can-do attitude I’d probably have to throw myself into Lake Victoria. It’s easy to come here, scan your surroundings, and decide that everything’s hopeless. A lot of people in my village have done just that, and one of the most difficult things about development work is convincing communities, as well as myself, that there is hope for change, and that we each hold it in our own hands.

Still haven’t found a solution to the absence of sushi in my village though.

A Plug For Rondo Retreat in Kakamega Forest

When PCV Sean came to visit me a couple weeks ago we took a little jaunt into the Kakamega Rainforest. The truth is we spent about an hour and a half actually walking in the forest, and the other twelve hours hanging out at Rondo Retreat, a high-end accommodation in the middle of the forest.

I had arranged a ride with the van that takes the headmaster’s kids to school every morning. The driver agreed to drop us at the entrance to the forest on his way to drop off the kids in the morning, and to pick us up again around 4 or 5pm when he went to retrieve the kids. We hired a guide who took us on a nature walk through the forest, into a bat cave, and up to a viewpoint that overlooked the whole forest. She worked for an NGO that educates local communities around the forest about the importance of conservation. She walked way too fast, ditching us as we panted uphill, and seemed tired of pointing out the same flora and fauna that she pointed out to all her tourists, so basically she didn’t point out much. The only time we got any information out of her was when we asked very specific questions. Do local communities see the value in conservation? It seems their priorities would be on survival, not preserving rare birds. What do they say when you tell them they can’t use the forest to graze their cows or chop firewood? It was actually kind of insightful once we peeled some answers out of her. The communities are pretty receptive to the idea of preserving the forest, and they are taught to plant trees on their own land for firewood and how to raise butterfly species only found in the forest for extra income. Then Sean offered to share some of his water with her and she drank it all.

It was a short walk but the heat wiped us out. We went to Rondo Retreat to rest and buy more water. Right away we knew we didn’t belong. The compound is an immaculately landscaped slice of the forest, with rustic wooden cottages topped with solar water tanks, a hexagonal chapel with beautiful wood paneling overlooking a densely forested valley, and groundskeepers who do nothing but rake leaves all day. A night’s stay in one of the spotlessly clean and tastefully decorated cottages (think Tahoe ski cabin) is just under 4,000 ksh (about $60). This price includes three Western-style meals, afternoon tea, hot showers, and electricity from 6:30pm to 10pm every night. Sean and I snuck around the compound, peeking into windows of cottages because we had been warned not to enter any of them, not even to walk on any verandas, since we weren’t paying guests.

“You may stay anywhere on the lawn,” one of the leaf-rakers informed us.

“Can we order food, maybe some chips?”

“Um,” there was an uncomfortable pause. “We don’t usually do that. The cooks make food for guests.”

We were, however, allowed to order cold sodas for 80 shillings (regular price 15 shillings).

It was only 11am but we were already hungry, so we busted out the sandwiches and dried fruit I had packed. This attracted Africa’s fattest cat to our table (which was very much on the lawn), who was so well-fed that she turned up her nose at the bread and went straight for the bologna. I can’t remember exactly what we did between 11:30am and 9pm when the driver finally showed up, five hours late, but in addition to trivial banter about malaria medications and commiserating about our exile to the lawn of the proletariats, I think there was some tag-team napping where we were each sprawled awkwardly across our lawn chairs with heads flopped back and mouths hanging open so that we wouldn’t choke on our own drool, while the leaf-rakers shuffled around us, shaking their heads at the wazungu riffraff who had somehow managed to infiltrate their compound.

Around 6:30, when the electricity came on, we moved to the reception office where we met a very nice couple, an American woman from Tennessee and her Kenyan boyfriend. After we introduced ourselves I said what I say to every American I meet who isn’t a Peace Corps volunteer:

“Yeah you start to understand things you only thought you understood before like before I came here I never really got what it meant for people not to have the things we take for granted like roads and electricity and I’d always heard that most people in the world don’t have access to clean water but I never really got it you know I didn’t really get it until I got here and saw how most people in my village get their water and how there’s just no infrastructure and then you have to ask why and then you find out it’s because of corruption and because of a government that doesn’t have the interests of its own people at heart and they just steal money from their own people instead of trying to raise them up and provide things for them like education and water and all these other things that would make this country so great and reflect well on the politicians but I don’t know why people are just so greedy and selfish and then I tried to fetch water by myself the other day and I can’t believe that women in this country do this ten times a day and they have to go down into a valley to where the spring is and then climb back uphill to their house with a heavy bucket of water on their heads and because it’s women’s work the men don’t lift a finger to help and then the water might not even be clean because most springs aren’t protected and then your family gets sick and your kids get worms and typhoid and dysentery and by the way it’s weird now for me to realize that in America the water we use to flush the toilet is safe for drinking and all it takes is for the government to invest in some infrastructure instead of some MP buying another Mercedes and most people in rural areas don’t even know about CDF money or how to write proposals so they can get the money to protect their springs or they assume CDF is corrupt anyway so they think why bother if the money’s not even there anymore because their MP stole it and it’s so sad and most people in the U.S. never get to see these kinds of things and they’ll never get it unless they see it for themselves I mean I never got it until I came here even though I always read about stuff like this in the paper and I thought I knew what it was all about then I think every American should be required to serve in the Peace Corps but then I think I wouldn’t want most Americans running amok in developing countries being a representative of my country and my people because when I think of the average American they’re fat and lazy and wouldn’t want to use a choo or eat ugali.”

Peace Corps volunteers seem to elicit a lot of simultaneous admiration and pity from American travelers, so they offered to let us use their shower, despite my chattiness. We said, no thanks, our driver should be here any minute. An hour later they saw we were still in the office waiting, so they said if we were really out on a limb we could share their cottage for the night. We said, thanks but our driver should be here any minute. An hour later they saw us staring cross-eyed at a Disney Magic Eye book, trying to make out images of Snow White and 101 Dalmations, and offered to buy us dinner. We said, no thanks our driver should be here any minute.

“You’ve been saying that for the last two hours,” the woman said. “Let me at least buy you dinner so you won’t go hungry.”

We were really tempted, and in retrospect I don’t know why we didn’t take her up on it, except that Sean and I had been discussing a steak-and-potato dinner with cheese-stuffed green peppers that I was going to cook when we got home. By that time the staff at Rondo had been eyeing us suspiciously for several hours, thinking we were trying to bum a free night’s stay by claiming we were stranded. Our driver finally showed up at 9pm, with the headmaster’s kids who had also been stranded at their school with no electricity well after dark, and Hillary, who had thoughtfully bought some sheep steak for me before the butchery closed and came with the van to meet us.

We finally arrived home cold, tired and hungry. Dinner was at midnight, and delicious. In the morning we even had enough meat leftover to have steak and eggs for breakfast. And I’m telling you all this just to say that based on what I saw by pressing my nose against a bunch of cottage windows, and despite their policy of exclusion if you’re dirty-looking and not paying for a room, I highly recommend Rondo Retreat if you are up for $60-a-night-luxury in the middle of a thick, vibrant rainforest. The sodas are really, really cold and the cat is really, really fat.

Negative-Only Marriages

Just gonna make this a quick post because I hear my pillow calling. Yesterday a young couple came into the VCT for an HIV test because they wanted to get married. Their pastor had told them that he would only marry them if they were both HIV negative. Since the V in VCT stands for voluntary, Hillary asked if they had come of their own free will, or if someone had forced them to come. They gave each other uncomfortable looks while their pastor, who had escorted them to the VCT, sat nearby observing. The couple assured Hillary that it was their idea to come for VCT services, and yes yes just go ahead and release their test results to their pastor. At the time I just rolled my eyes and had some fleeting thought about what a gross violation of privacy it was for a church to have this kind of policy, followed by the usual dismissive thought about how much I hate churches in Kenya.

Today I realized the reason it annoyed me so much is because it perpetuates the stigma against people who are HIV positive. The implication is that someone who is HIV positive isn’t fit to be loved, and therefore isn’t fit to be married. Someone who is HIV positive isn’t capable of being in a healthy relationship or doesn’t deserve to have their emotions and need for companionship acknowledged as legitimate.

With the immense stigma and taboos against AIDS in much of Kenya, especially in rural areas, a church that encourages discrimination through policies like “negative-only” marriages is abusing their power to promote irresponsible agendas of hate, when they should be spreading God’s love through acceptance and compassion and charity towards the weak and vulnerable. After all, like Garth Brooks, Jesus had friends in lowww places.

Instead the usual hypocrisy prevails. Isn’t one of the cornerstones of Christianity to love others unconditionally? Not to judge lest ye be judged, to love thy neighbor as you love thyself? Jesus is not happy about this one.

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

10:35pm. Electricity is out on the school compound so I’m once again averting kerosene lamp poisoning by lighting my room with my laptop screen. Today a 4-year-old girl pointed at me as I was coming out of the hoteli where I had lunch, and said, “China! China!” Her mom was standing next to her, beaming.

“No,” I said. “Not China.”

“From where?” her mother said.

“America,” I said. “But no matter where I come from it’s rude to call people those kind of names.”

“I know,” she said. Then why is she just sitting there letting her kid point at strangers and call them racist names? “But the kids don’t know.”

“Yes but you can teach them. She can understand at her age,” I said.

“They just see you and you look just like the people building the road so she calls you a China,” she said.

“But you can’t assume you know something about someone you don’t know,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Pole bas.” Sorry.

I had already had a bad day, so this conversation just left me more irritated than ever. Nevermind that somehow I had managed to point out that the kid’s behavior bothered me without killing her or screaming at her mother. I could only focus on the fact that despite Kenyans acknowledging that they define rudeness the same way I do, they still don’t bother to teach their kids accordingly.

I can walk down a road and have literally twenty kids come tearing out of their huts to stare at me, and then all start chanting, “Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Chinese!” for a solid two minutes, while their parents just stand there grinning, never once thinking that maybe they should correct their kids. Once I summoned the kids over with no intention whatsoever of drop-kicking every one of their snot-covered faces clear across the Ugandan border, and then patiently explaind to them in Kiswahili that I’m not Chinese, and that my name is Justina and next time please remember my name so you can call me Justina when you see me, and the whole time Hillary was translating into Kinandi because most of the kids weren’t school-aged yet so they didn’t understand Kiswahili, and they all nodded and the older ones repeated my name and they skipped away happy that I had greeted them and told them my name…and before I’d taken three steps I heard them chanting: “Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Chinese!”

Corruption, Part II

Note to self: Don’t use overripe mangoes for mango curry. Mushy. Yuck.

I attended a workshop my first month here that I didn’t really understand at the time, probably because it was conducted in Kiswahili and the title of the workshop was “Entrenching Good Governance From Below.” The invitation read: “The above project EGG-B aims at entrenching good governance practices as well as enhancing constructive civic engagement and participation of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in governance issues at the grassroots.” Huh??

The workshop was basically an anti-corruption class informing people about the various government funds (like the notoriously corrupt Constituency Development Fund, or CDF) available for community projects like improving schools, wiring rural areas for electricity, or building water systems; funds that the average Kenyan bush yokel would otherwise not know about because the politicians and officials who are in charge of distributing these funds often conceal the fund’s existence, or at least how much money is available. The attendees appointed representatives who would meet with the officials in charge of disbursement to find out how much money is available and how communities can apply for them.

Educating rural communities about what resources (especially money) are available to them locally and who to contact is only part of the solution. The other part is much harder to address, because it’s rooted in culture. Every single Kenyan I’ve ever talked to about corruption will rail against it, describe in detail the power dynamics that perpetuate it, lament what a shame it is and shake their heads and sigh. But when confronted with blatant cases of corruption—when it’s waved in their faces and they have the opportunity to say, “Dude, what’s this?”—most Kenyans I’ve met won’t do a thing. It really boils down to culture, especially among the Nandi tribe, who are extremely non-confrontational. They have a flight instinct, as Hillary says. It’s seen as disrespectful to question or confront anyone who has status in a community – politicians, religious leaders, headmasters, government ministry officials, rich businessmen. And especially among the rural poor, most of whom aren’t educated beyond 8th grade, there is an overwhelming sense of disempowerment, feeling like nothing they do will have any effect on anything.

I’ve seen it so many times in community-based organizations, and it’s just a microcosm of the way it works at every level of society up to the highest ranking politicians. Everyone complains about all the corrupt things some dude is doing, but when they have a chance to simply make it known to him that they know about it, no one will say anything. The perpetrator will be lying to their faces about how much money he spent (140,000 ksh for something that retails at 80,000 ksh…hmmm), and everyone will know he’s lying, but no one asks questions. The perpetrator knows that he will get away with what he’s doing NOT because he’s successfully pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, but because no one has the courage to confront him. Corruption happens not just because the greedy want money and power, but because the people around them let it happen. That, I think, is the biggest obstacle to getting rid of corruption, because it’s about changing cultural and behavioral norms. Based on the behavior change work I do with HIV and AIDS, I can safely say it’s going to be a long, slow journey. Bring a good book.

The Tummy Grows Progressively More Negative Despite Being Larium-Free...

There’s this donor mentality that crops up in every developing country when NGOs, foreign governments and large private donors come in and start pouring money into development projects. I can’t figure out if it’s because of improper implementation and monitoring of donated funds or what, because all these funding organizations know about the importance of sustainability, but yet the organizations give money, impose stringent monitoring and recordkeeping policies, require detailed descriptions of workplans and timelines and sustainability plans, and yet it all just seems to give developing countries like Kenya more incentive to continue being corrupt and flounder around in their myriad problems even longer.

I realize powerful countries like the U.S. give money to poorer countries to boost their own diplomatic interests, and not out of sheer compassion, so I’m not going to get all self-righteous about non-existent noble intentions. But sending money into any country where corruption is institutionalized isn’t exactly brilliant foreign policy, and in the long run the beneficiary country as a whole develops an unhealthy dependence on outside donors.

The flip side of the situation is more frustrating, because you want to believe that people – the beneficiaries – are inherently hard-working and honest and all share the same basic goals in life, to make sure their families and loved ones are healthy and have the basic necessities. But instead you find out that charity is often met with indifference, or more commonly, a heightened sense of entitlement and expectations.

When I get annoyed with someone I like to repeat this mantra: PEOPLE ARE STUPID.

And I’m finding myself repeating it a lot these days, especially when I hear stuff like:

1. Why do you care what I did with the money? It’s not money we had to work for; it came from a mzungu. So stop asking questions.

2. Don’t tell Justina anything. She is a mzungu and she doesn’t understand how things work. Anyway, she’s leaving in two years so why involve her in our business?

3. Where’s our money? Justina has been here for six months and hasn’t given us any money. It must be because she’s young so her friends and family don’t have much money yet.

4. Justina is a mzungu, of course she has money to give us, and if she tells you differently she’s lying.

5. Why should I pay back the loan? It came from a mzungu, so who cares if we waste it?

The Vomit Clinic: From the Frontlines

February 4, 2006, Saturday. 9:47pm.

Whew, I am still stuffed. I went to Julia’s house to see her vomit clinic, and of course she and her sister Emily made sure I ate so much I couldn’t walk straight. For some reason someone got the idea that I like liver, so they heaped like a whole sheep’s liver on my plate. The cat now loves to hang out under the chair I was sitting in.

I felt weird taking pictures of Julia’s clients as they were barfing into a basin, but apparently in a culture where no one thinks it’s strange to pick your boogers in public, to have a baby dangling from your lactating boob anywhere you go, or to stare, laugh and point at people who don’t look just like you and your neighbors, no one sees it as a violation of privacy to take pictures of sick people puking either.

Julia had nine clients today. She took me around to each patient as she analyzed their vomit by swirling it around with a tree branch. I saw brucellosis, which is indicated by greenish puke and a thick mucus; malaria, which is dark orange-yellow; a migraine with a cough, which is a clearish mucus that comes from the spinal cord and causes the headache; a lung problem with worms, which is chunky yellow mucus that stays in one corner of the basin; and pneumonia, which includes a small spot of blood.

It was all very fascinating, and completely disgusting. Julia said all of the clients she saw today would get well on their own, without any further medication. Just expelling the mucus usually gets rid of the bacteria or toxins causing the disease, she says. I’m not a doctor but I’m still a little skeptical. People in the village swear by her vomit clinic, though, so what can I say?

They sent me home with three pineapples fresh from their farm and a huge bag of boiled peanuts (peanut milk, anyone?) They also promised, after I foolishly asked whether they had ever heard of a drink made of milk and blood that is common among the Maasai tribe, that they would prepare some mala na damu (sour milk with blood) for me next time. The Nandis love their milk: fresh from a cow, soured in a gourd or, apparently, soured in a gourd then whisked with boiled gelatinous sheep’s blood. Yummers :/ .

I decided that while we were on the topic of traditional food that sounded gross, I would ask about termites.

“Oh, they’re so sweet when you fry them,” Hillary said. “They’re only fat.”

“So they taste like the big chunks of sheep fat we just ate?” I asked.

“No, even sweeter,” he said. “Don’t you remember that old man we saw in front of his house who was chasing his chickens away from a termite hole because he wanted all the termites to himself?”

Woo-hoo. Hook me up.

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Julia, Emily and Hillary also briefed me on the favorite foods of various tribes:

Nandis (and Kalenjins in general) are fast runners because they love milk.
Luhyas are strong because they love chicken and bananas.
Luos are smart because they love fish.
Kikuyus are strong because they love githeri (a mixture of maize and beans).
Kambas are strong because they love bahazi (cowpeas), the bane of my existence during my homestay in Kitui.

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A popular traditional drink in the Nandi tribe is maziwa lala (sour milk), or mala for short. You can buy it in all sorts of flavors at the supermarket – strawberry, pineapple, coconut, vanilla, black currant – but commercially-produced mala just tastes like drinkable yogurt. Mala made in the villages is much different. I was nervous about trying it because one PCV described it as having “a thick texture with little chunks and a grayish tint that makes it unappetizing.”

Since I’ve been visiting more community groups who invite me into their homes, I’ve also been drinking more mala. Personally I like it because it tastes like a cross between yogurt and sour cream and cheese. I’ve also decided that with the right marketing, mala-tasting could become a high-end consumer industry, much like wine snobbery in Napa Valley. Every batch of mala has its own unique qualities, depending on the souring process. The Nandis use a hollowed-out gourd that has been treated on the inside with a preservative made from the ash of a local tree. They fill the gourd with fresh milk and let it age for about four days.

The first batch of mala I tried had a mild flavor, like sour cream and cheese. It also tingled a lot in my mouth, like when you accidentally gulp milk that’s past its date. Yum. The second batch had a nutty, smoky flavor, but no noticeable tingle. I had two glasses from the third batch – the first glass was from the top of the gourd, and tasted like glue. Yuck. The second glass, from the bottom, tasted like smoked gouda. Delish!

Corruption, Part I

This is what I don’t get. It’s one thing to be a big politician in Nairobi stuffing public funds into your own pocket. Funds that might otherwise go towards building a rural water infrastructure or opening new universities or making secondary schools free or paving rural roads or rehabilitating matatu fleets to make them one notch above life-threatening or upgrading district hospitals so that they have basic supplies, equipment, drugs and tests. But a big politician doesn’t always see the people he’s hurting when he does this.

When you’re a little civil servant working in your own community, going around meeting self-help groups, churches, widows, youth, orphans and neighbors on a daily basis…but you’re corrupt—stealing money that has been earmarked for these people whom you know, people you live and work with, whose kids go to school with your kids, so you see how they’re suffering because you stole their money—I just don’t get it. How selfish and sociopathic do you have to be to do this and not feel enough remorse to stop doing it?

One’s cultural perspective is hard to break out of. A Kenyan could probably give a rational explanation for corruption – why people do it and why other people don’t do anything to stop it: It’s necessary for survival, it’s a sense of powerlessness to change the status quo, it’s easier to work with the system than to fight it.

Americans believe in the power to change things for the better. We’re really idealistic. Things that we accept as basic human rights – to treat others and to be treated with dignity and respect, for example – are privileges that many people here just assume they will never have. So it doesn’t make sense to us why someone would sit back and let wrongdoing happen. It doesn’t make sense to us why you would be corrupt, unless there were something deeply wrong with your moral and social character. We also don’t have a 50 percent poverty rate and 70 percent unemployment and drought and famine every year.

So yeah. I walk away from community groups feeling guilty that I can’t give each member $100 to start a small business so their kids can go to school past 8th grade, and there are people in these villages who don’t feel an ounce of guilt for being the cause of a neighbor’s suffering.

A funny sad story: There is a road that runs for 5 km connecting two towns near me. It is part dirt and part tarmack –there are portions where a tarmack starts, then half a kilometer later it ends and the road is dirt, then another half a kilometer later the tarmack starts again, then another half a kilometer it ends and the road is dirt. Et cetera. The parts where the tarmack is missing are where the funds for paving the road were stolen by corrupt officials. It should be part of some tourist attraction displaying the cultural heritage of Kenya. Visit a traditional Nandi village! Taste traditional maziwa lala (sour milk) aged in handmade gourds! See the long-standing tradition of corruption manifested in the local infrastructure!