Laptop Woes, Turkana Heroes, and Their Dogs
It’s Cinco de Mayo and six months ago Mika sent me a package via surface mail. It arrived today. Everything was intact, but at the time that she started writing the enclosed letter (in September) she hadn’t had her baby yet. Now little Elise is eight months old, and so are all the Clif Bars, soy sauce packs (about 67), trail mix, and McCormick’s pasta seasonings she sent me. Thanks, Mika and Guillaume, for all the goodies. You have set a new record for the longest time a package has taken to reach me, previously held by my parents, who sent a package in July that arrived in November. Still in the running are the Girl Scout cookies Nandita sent by surface mail in February.
Well, Nick sent me a laptop through somewhat circuitous means last month. He mailed it to Seattle, to the Australian cousin of an American woman I met here who was working for an NGO in Bungoma. The cousin brought the laptop when she came to visit in April (the American, and her cousin, have both since returned to the U.S.) I trekked to Nairobi to pick it up, took a detour with it through Webuye to visit another PCV who bribed me to come over with an offer of his fartin’est chili, and finally arrived with it in my village a few days later.
Like most high-tech gadgets that arrive in Kenya for me, it went inexplicably kaput soon after. I took it to my friend Joseph, who is the IT guy at the college of social work in my village, to see if he could do anything. He took it home to Eldoret for the weekend, to take advantage of Eldoret’s access to the rest of the modern world.
It turns out Joseph is a Turkana, originally from the Lake Turkana region in northern Kenya. I don’t meet many people from the remote northern or northeastern regions of Kenya, so I got inquisitive. He told me how he ended up visiting the U.S. for a few months to help a Belgian friend, who was getting a master’s at Johns Hopkins, with a presentation. The friend’s thesis was on a disease common among the Turkanas. I forget the name exactly, but what interested the student was how some cultural practices of the Turkanas contribute to the spread of the disease among humans. It’s a bacteria (or parasite or virus?) that usually affects domestic animals like cows and dogs. Dogs are valued highly in Turkana culture, and a typical Turkana family can have six or seven dogs, each one for a specific purpose. Some live in the house and some live outside, depending on their purpose. (An interesting bit of gross trivia, as long as you’re not eating: Turkanas used to train dogs to keep their babies clean. In other words, when a baby pooed itself, the dog would come along and lick up the mess. Eeew.) Because Turkanas are in such close contact with their dogs - living, sleeping, sharing food and water, stepping in feces – they often contract the disease from their dogs.
Turkana is an area that I – and many Kenyans – don’t know much about, except that they’re famous for really amazing woven baskets, so it was fascinating to pick Joseph’s brain about his home. From the little I’ve heard and read, Turkana is extremely isolated and undeveloped, far more so than any of the communities I work with in my village. The landscape is supposed to be beautiful, especially around Lake Turkana. The more intrepid brands of tourists find their way up their often enough, and the areas close to the border with Sudan and Ethiopia are saturated with NGOs, which makes prices for accommodation and food really expensive for visitors, an unexpected irony given the poverty in the area. Joseph described Turkana as a place that’s still “uncivilized, where people still walk around nearly naked.” A lot of kids don’t go to school because there are no schools nearby. He says that Turkanas think of their place as a different world altogether from the rest of the country, so that when they travel out of the region, they say, “I’m going to Kenya.”
With Joseph’s help, his friend’s presentation was a huge success. People all assumed Joseph was a doctor, when in reality he only had a 12th grade education. The friend was so grateful that he offered to pay for Joseph to go to university, an opportunity that very few Kenyans have. And now, lucky me, there is someone in my village who knows more about computers than I do. It’s not bad being the second most knowledgeable computer person around, although the fact that I am, is sad.
Well, Nick sent me a laptop through somewhat circuitous means last month. He mailed it to Seattle, to the Australian cousin of an American woman I met here who was working for an NGO in Bungoma. The cousin brought the laptop when she came to visit in April (the American, and her cousin, have both since returned to the U.S.) I trekked to Nairobi to pick it up, took a detour with it through Webuye to visit another PCV who bribed me to come over with an offer of his fartin’est chili, and finally arrived with it in my village a few days later.
Like most high-tech gadgets that arrive in Kenya for me, it went inexplicably kaput soon after. I took it to my friend Joseph, who is the IT guy at the college of social work in my village, to see if he could do anything. He took it home to Eldoret for the weekend, to take advantage of Eldoret’s access to the rest of the modern world.
It turns out Joseph is a Turkana, originally from the Lake Turkana region in northern Kenya. I don’t meet many people from the remote northern or northeastern regions of Kenya, so I got inquisitive. He told me how he ended up visiting the U.S. for a few months to help a Belgian friend, who was getting a master’s at Johns Hopkins, with a presentation. The friend’s thesis was on a disease common among the Turkanas. I forget the name exactly, but what interested the student was how some cultural practices of the Turkanas contribute to the spread of the disease among humans. It’s a bacteria (or parasite or virus?) that usually affects domestic animals like cows and dogs. Dogs are valued highly in Turkana culture, and a typical Turkana family can have six or seven dogs, each one for a specific purpose. Some live in the house and some live outside, depending on their purpose. (An interesting bit of gross trivia, as long as you’re not eating: Turkanas used to train dogs to keep their babies clean. In other words, when a baby pooed itself, the dog would come along and lick up the mess. Eeew.) Because Turkanas are in such close contact with their dogs - living, sleeping, sharing food and water, stepping in feces – they often contract the disease from their dogs.
Turkana is an area that I – and many Kenyans – don’t know much about, except that they’re famous for really amazing woven baskets, so it was fascinating to pick Joseph’s brain about his home. From the little I’ve heard and read, Turkana is extremely isolated and undeveloped, far more so than any of the communities I work with in my village. The landscape is supposed to be beautiful, especially around Lake Turkana. The more intrepid brands of tourists find their way up their often enough, and the areas close to the border with Sudan and Ethiopia are saturated with NGOs, which makes prices for accommodation and food really expensive for visitors, an unexpected irony given the poverty in the area. Joseph described Turkana as a place that’s still “uncivilized, where people still walk around nearly naked.” A lot of kids don’t go to school because there are no schools nearby. He says that Turkanas think of their place as a different world altogether from the rest of the country, so that when they travel out of the region, they say, “I’m going to Kenya.”
With Joseph’s help, his friend’s presentation was a huge success. People all assumed Joseph was a doctor, when in reality he only had a 12th grade education. The friend was so grateful that he offered to pay for Joseph to go to university, an opportunity that very few Kenyans have. And now, lucky me, there is someone in my village who knows more about computers than I do. It’s not bad being the second most knowledgeable computer person around, although the fact that I am, is sad.
posted by Justina at 11:57 PM
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