My first opportunity to go to Kenya was inopportune as I had to have major surgery. My second opportunity was not possible due to post election violence. The third opportunity occurred in March 2009 and I was able to travel to Kenya.

I fell in love with the parks in Nairobi, the round abouts, walking around in the various sections considered safe, looking at textiles on Bishara Street, eating great samosas or ugali and chicken at various small places. On one Friday I was able to visit Starehe Boys School. I was impressed by so many aspects of the school and the dreams delivered to so many by its founder – it inspired me to want to return to Kenya, I was unsure in what capacity. For all intents and purposes, there was no visible evidence of post election violence- it was a whispered conversation amongst adults and adroitly addressed in op ed pieces in various newspapers. There was a sense of surrender to an imposed calm so people could function.

During the ensuing months of my first journey to Kenya and accepting a job I attempted to research as much as I could about the most recent ‘history’ of Kenya to begin understanding some of the causes of the post election violence. I did not want to understand the evil people could perpetrate on one another, rather I wanted to find a place in my heart for those who were in the process of surviving. I knew that this pivotal event was essential to any change to be made in Kenya. What I visually saw on line and what was explained in writing and what people said did not begin to address what actually occurred. I don’t think the media lied – there is just no way to express all of these tragic events.

Later, as I was leaving Kenya and a friend gave me the photo book Kenya Burning, ISBN 9966-7182-1-4 that I had a more real glimpse into a portion of what happened. Post election violence was at least partially a result of long standing hatred, jealousy induced by decades of colonialism. What ever colonialism did not outwardly destroy in Kenya, the people of Kenya took one step further and poured out the sickest hatred on their own. The need to win an election instead of demonstrate leadership superseded any and all reason. Living with the secondhand knowledge of this tragedy is not the same as living through it.

There is a picture with a hand resting on a rock. It is only a hand – there is no body. In the back of my mind I saw scenes from the movie Hotel Rwanda. There is an ugliness within each photo of Kenya Burning which rips at my heart and yet I know it is nothing compared to the people in each picture or the people outside the photos but who were present for the violence – their pain is genuine and still raw and it may always be an open wound. The anger Kenyans hold regarding corruption is almost reverent.  It is sewn from a frustration that is in the bone marrow.  It is this environment which prevents education from being able to take hold. The population of Kenya and its destiny is better controlled when people do not ask questions nor expect anything.

It was through these same photos I found a way to obtain a ration of forgiveness to myself for not being able to effect any significant change, for being an observer to corruption and hatred but unable to do anything about it. The whole situation was larger than anything I could imagine and clearly will take more than a lifetime to put at rest. What I saw while working in Kenya was merely a dirty residue to a poisonous pile.

Quite by accident I was thumbing through a magazine in the lobby of where I am staying in Nairobi.  Two words caught my eye: Katima Mulilo…….

Apparently Namibia is in the process of creating The Zambezi Waterfront Tourism Park.  I am not exactly sure how I feel as tourism always seems to mar something which was once beautiful and simple – on the other hand, bringing in money to this impoverished area will raise up the living standards of the people and improve on the depleted wildlife which has lagged due to pollution issues – plastics.

It was so strange to see the ad as I know the exact area being described – I lived right by it.   It takes my Peace Corps adventure and seems to be turning it into a ‘theme park’ which is not what my Peace Corps adventure was about. Times, they are a changing and it would have never occurred to me that this would be an outcome of ten years ago.

Hopefully I will make it to this area sometime while living in Kenya, if not to say good bye to the past and welcome the future, to make peace with the past.

Where is Katima….my e-mail will now apparently be on the internet, not some village in the middle of nowhere Namibia.

Living on the edge of the Kaptawrakwa Forest, I know there are monkeys and once caught a glimpse of one climbing a tree. Despite leaving out cut passion fruits and mango, not one monkey came by where I lived.  My learners and others at the school knew I would love to see a monkey. It happened, it a strange and tragic way – I received what I had wished for.

Apparently some people had set a trap in the maize fields and a nursing monkey got caught and was killed.  She had a baby that could have only been a few days to a week old. A physics  teacher at my school, Bernard Misiko, saw some people trying to let the baby nurse from the mother and knew it would not work as the mother was dead. He brought the baby back to school so we could care for it.

Since I am one of the few who have had the rabies vaccine (thank you Peace Corps!), I became the adopted mother for four days until I could get the baby to Kenya Wildlife Service in Iten.  The baby monkey was named Kimutai (the one which travels about) in Kalenjin.

I fed him with a medicine dropper – milk, honey, mashed bananas and rice congee (Japanese) every hour……and I do mean every hour. Kimutai was either have starving to begin with or just had a high metabolism as a new born in a cold climate. He slept by the bed at night or wrapped in a kitenge on my chest.

Not only did I feel like I was looking into my own past each time I looked at his face and hands, everyone else here enjoyed looked at him as well – and everyone here pretty much has lived by the forest their whole life. We all had the existential moment of looking at ourselves in the past – ourselves in the Rift Valley – ourselves before the time of hominids.

Kimutai took his first leaping steps on my living room floor – straight to the cats scratching post which he loved…..my cat Finley loved Kimutai and slept with him in the box one night.

I gave Kumutai to Kenya Wildlife Services on Tuesday 3 November so he could have a much better life at the animal orphanage in Nairobi and where they could hopefully feed him correctly. I know he will never be back in Kaptawrakwa Forest, his birth home, as he has now had human contact and the other monkey tribes would not be fond of this.  The best I could do for him was to keep him alive – it is what his nursing mother would have wanted.

Upon giving him up, even though it was the right thing to do, I could not help but ponder how in the far past, he was a distant,  genetic relative – he looked like me, a primate.

About 1 Km later, car slid on mud, spun to ditch. It was actually a fun ride in that the mud makes for a slow spin and the ditch was not more than 25 cm. Unfortunately, the car would not start (starter and battery are a mess!). If it were not for 8 local men from Kitany who came along to help push car, it would still be there. Fortunately, one of the men was a taxi driver so as the car was push started, he was able to drive it back to school.

Once at school, the mud was too deep to get the car up the maybe 3% grade so it had to be backed up (read: slid backwards with people pushing) and driven across the grasses and to another area where there were rocks/gravel to get some traction.

Evening was fun merely because it was messy. One could never do something like this in America without fear of being raped, killed, mugged, etc. Not to say that being a muzungu is all bad, just to say that it definitely has its benefits – in this case people in the community know who I am.

Today I had a learner who needed to get to town to have her foot examined.  I had to drive to the Kitany town matatu stop which made the trip 5-7 Km round trip.  Drive was fairly easy and I believe I follwed all the road etiquette I have observed from Matthew, our school driver.

I believe everyone  was watching as you can not hide being muzungu, and know, it would not be because of the quality of driving  :)

In the next week or so I will do more driving lessons directed by Matthew to get past the dealing with mud issues (it is now rainy season and the mud is intimidating as you can not always tell the depth of the mud hole) and also what to do with cattle when it is muddy and you have to share the road.  Someone told  me hitting/hurting a cattle can be about 70,000-200,000 Ksh, so best to be safe.

As far as driving in Eldoret town, I think everyone who flunked driving in Nairobi moved to Eldoret so it will really be awhile before I take on that task.

A worker who was to knock out some stone from a wall where metal trusses will rest for our new school dining hall, fell 10 feet, on his back, to concrete.

There was no construction manager so I became the available person to administer first aid.  I am appreciativel for all the times my parents went through first aid with me, my sister who shared stories from search and rescue, all the classes I have taken from Red Cross and my general knowledge of biology/physiology – those are the real, tangible things that made a difference.

My school is 5 Km from a regional hospital (read: less prepared for emergency than a workers comp clinic in the worst part of the U.S.) upon which the last time I was there with a student, the doctor was heavily intoxicated.  The school is 25 Km from a hospital that can handle emergencies, although getting to either hospital is a challenge as there are dirt roads and the person who was hurt potentially could have had a spinal injury.

The school car had a dead battery (long, long story but I suspect it is from all the travel on dirt roads and fittings being bumped and loose wiring connections) so it had to be jumped via the generator.  There is no ‘backboard’ so we used a shelf from a book case.  Bleeding was stanched with cotton gauze (yes, there were rubber gloves) to get to first hospital for stitches.

When the stitches were put in, the man was given a tetnus shot and immediate dose of antibiotics.  We were not out of the woods yet and had to get him to town.  He was very disoriented so that added the dimension of keeping him still and laying flat as a monumental task so the driver could drive, which we had to do slowly to keep the ride as smooth as possible – all this while another person was translating between Swahili and English.

Moi Teaching Hospital, the university hospital in town, had a broken CT Scanner so we had to go to another hospital 2 Km down the road for the CT Scan.  Then, bring results back to the first hospital so the man could be checked by ER doctors.

I am ever thankful that the man only sustained a skull fracture, concussion and required stitched.  The thought of him being paralyzed or dead was too disturbing.

So, I am adding to an American saying:  A house is not a home until you have guests over.  You don’t really know your way around until you have to go to the emergency room.

I continue to challenge myself to think about death – I have seen it in so many ways before: the alarming HIV/Aids rate in Namibia during Peace Corps, human vs. nature out in the wilderness, an ill parent.  If anything, I have grown over the years to appreciate the time we have with the living, which is far too short and precious, and to understand the limits of a life well lived.

There is a door in the Moi Teaching Hospital ER call ‘The Last Office’.  I found out it is the place to put people who died in the ER, before the bodies go to the morgue.  Saturday 10 October 2009, the last office did not need to be used.

Head Custodian Rael

Beautiful Fresh Flowers Always Greet Me

The most important part of running any school is that it is clean.  Not only does it set an image, it demonstrates organization and tidiness.  In places with abundant water, this is a fairly simple task.  At my school, water is a privilege and water to clean with almost an extravagance beyond imagination.  I do not know how, but Rael performs magic each day.  She is able to make our school beautiful and clean from one end to the other and still have enough water for things such as washing the rims on the school car tires or the floor mats (mud is epidemic here from the rains).

When Rael realized I love flowers, she made it a point of bringing me fresh flowers every few days.  They are a treat and treasured by me because so much here is productive vegetation that  receiving flowers for the sake of pure enjoyment in beauty is indeed special.  There is something that stirs the soul when one sees these lush, gorgeous flowers, unlike what one would see in America.  Rarely do flowers have scent in Kenya so their beauty is what attracts the  nyuki  (bees) or other wadudu (insects).

Rael has a job that is endless as my school has many learners (female) which as much as I wish were perfect learners, they are human and sometimes leave little messes.  Rael sings when she works and is a fun person to have at school. When she smiles, it lights up everything….just look at the picture!

View 'out' from my porch

View from porch furthest left

View to right from porch

Far right view from porch-see forest in background

View looking at house

Apparently I do not give Sabina, my housekeeper, enough to do during the time she is here (which is amazing for those of you who know me since, left to my own devices, I would live in somewhat of a roundabout mess of books, fabric and such strewn about), so she has taken to starting a garden for me.

The work involved in starting said garden is pretty much backbreaking unless you are from Africa and are raised up knowing how to swing a panga to clear the grasses.  A Panga is a long piece of heavy(at least 4-5 Kg) steel (metal tools started in Africa) about 3/4 meter long and about 5 cm at one end is slightly curved at about 15 degrees.  When the panga is swung with enough force, the 5 cm end effectively wacks/knocks out/removes the grasses.   Sabina started using the panga one day after she got done with my lack of work and started bringing flowers with roots to grow.

My task is to put water on them each day until they root and then they will be able to obtain enough moisture from the air at night to maintain themselves.   I counted this morning as I filled my 6 liter pot and it took 11 fills to water the plants.  I don’t mind- I would love to have more time to putter around outside but right now I have many things boiling up at school.  I enjoy the exercise and want nothing more than to nurture the flowers into growth.

Sabina and myself have these great conversations in a mish mash of my poor Swahili and her learning English. It is fun and sometimes we have to physically show each other what we mean but we do communicate.  Part of one discussion which came about is my appreciation of the garden and all her work. I showed Sabina pictures from when I lived in Namibia and the hut I learned how to build.  The woman in Namibia who helped me learn to build the hut was named Grace. She was my housekeeper (she had worked for the previous Peace Corps Volunteer) and it was great as her son was partially deaf and went to the special school near where I lived.  Working for me allowed her to walk and pick up Eric from school, a great relief since he was hard of hearing and there was much craziness in the forest along the river with wildlife.

Sabina was quite happy knowing that I love all the mamas in my life (in Kenya, mama is a term usually reserved for women 35+ or who have had children and is a term of respect/endearment).  I needed to record my garden for everyone to love.

Here are pictures, including Sabine and her daughter who was able to visit one day when it was school holiday.

Celebrity Chef Jumba

My school has the best cook!  Jumba makes delicious and nutritious food on a regular basis.  My personal favorite dish ( partly because we get to eat with our hand) is ugali and kales.  I also love this dish as it just tastes healthy and you know you are eating well.

The local kale in Kenya is ginormous by any measure. It is also the most radiant green.  Seeing a chopped pile is like being in the emerald forest (uh, we have a forest where I live also!).

Jumba finally shared the recipe and I was able to see part of dinner prepared. I keep missing all the steps as I work at a school and am always moving about.  I will add photos as I get more time in the kitchen.

Here is the recipe:

Obtain the best kale you can find and slice it very thin/fine (1/4 cm)

Boil water with salt to taste

Put sliced kale in boiling water for 10 minutes to blanche

Drain kale thoroughly                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Fry the kale in vegetable oil with finely diced white onions and finely diced tomatoes

Season with things such as garlic, white pepper, salt or something found in Kenya called

Aromat

Precision chopping the kales