Masai Mara and Week Five

Here we go… week five. Well the group (QMO) is getting into a good groove and we had a ridiculous meeting tonight…. mostly full of laughter, flashlights and ‘zzz’ oh and of course, the absent rapping (…Alex.) Sorry for the inside jokes, this stuff just had to be recorded.
Anyway, we started this week at a secondary school in Mathari. Today was a good day as we taught about gender and relationships and had time for a gender specific discussion. So the boys and girls split up and we got to hear about what was important to each group. After, the sexes presented their ideas to each other. Kenyans (at least the teens that we have taught so far) are very formal and polite especially in class presentations as both the male and female representative started off their address to the opposite sex with ‘Good evening’ I doubt that this would happen in Canada. Not that either is better than the other….it’s just different cultures.
On the ideas of schools, as I may have mentioned earlier secondary schools are not free and all students have to pay fees to go to high school. Some don’t have enough and have to wait a number of years to accumulate all the money before they can go back. Some turn to other means of making money: prostitution. Some are sponsored by NGOs; some have community sponsors. Imagine not being able to receive high school education? Imagine the drive that it would take to wait a few years in order to pay for two terms of school….Would I even go back or would I just give up? We are so privileged to have free education. Please know this. It is a gift. The students that I have the privilege of teaching absorb so much information and still crave to learn more. They want to be educated because the divide between education and lack of education is vast. Again, knowledge is power. I was talking to my teaching partner today and she was telling me that where she comes from people who aren’t educated don’t know about HIV or how it’s transmitted and prevented. Yet, HIV is a huge problem there. She says that they need to be taught, but who is going there and who can supply the funds for education?
Again there are a lot of thoughts going through my head and mostly likely not translating accurately to this blog, but here it is anyway.
This weekend Amit, Stu, Nat, Becks and I went to Masai Mara. This is one of the national parks of Kenya and is located in the Rift Valley Province in the southwest side of Kenya (look it up on a map if that’s what you fancy). It took 6 hours to drive there and it ws great to be out of the city so that we could experience some of the countryside of Kenya. It is beautiful as the fields are so lush. After leaving Nairobi we past through Central Province and then entered the Rift Valley Province. As our van took a corner the rift valley stretched before us and there was a ‘ahhh’ made in unison by all of the Canadians. It was breathtaking. There are big lush hills descending down into this vast valley of little farm plots and interspersed forest areas. We made a stop at a lookout point to take some pictures and some gift shop owners tried to convince us to buy their overpriced goods. They were beautiful but definitely marked up for the unsuspecting mazungos (“whites”).
The road to Masai Mara is SO bumpy and is littered with potholes. They are so common and the road is only ‘finished’ for pretty much one lane of traffic, that we spent most of the time drive on a vertical angle with half the van on the shoulder and half on the ‘road’. Good thing none of us get too carsick (other than Rebecca, but I think that she is getting pretty used to the Kenyan van trips).
The park itself is beautiful and it is definitely the classic ‘African’ plain: flat grasslands with a solo umbrella tree jetting into the seemingly endless blue sky. We stayed in Flamingo Camp which is located just beside the park in a mountainous area which reminds me of Austrian hills. We stayed in a tabin sort of thing. (i.e. 3 walls are wood and the door is a canvas tent…only 2 single beds fit inside)
On Saturday we spent 3-4 hours on safari in the park. We drive around in a van that has the roof come off so that we can stand and take pictures. It’s also incredibly bumpy so by the end of our weekend and having spent a total of probably 18-20 in the van, my body felt like jello. (It’s like after you swim in the ocean and your body feels like it is moving back and forth.)
We saw SO many animals and were able to drive right up to them. For most of them we were within 8-10 feet. We saw a male lion, lionesses, elephants, zebras, impalas, giraffes, topis, cheetahs, secretary birds, crusted craines, velvet monkeys, etc. I can’t load the pictures on here yet but there are so many and they’re really good…so I’ll try to put them up here soon.
The sky is so beautiful and so big! And to be honest I spent a lot of time in silence (other than our random outbursts of singing and Stu and I playing the ‘I Statement’ game with Amit cringing and moping about like an emo kid). The song that kept going through my head was Newboys ‘He Reigns’…I haven’t listened to this song in a while …specifically the lyrics that kept coming up were ‘…it’s the song of the forgiven rising from the African plain…’ what a beautiful picture. God’s splendor and perfection of His creation were so evident to me as we drove through the park.
It was fantastic and I kept having to remind myself (and everyone else!) that we were actually ON a real Safari on the plains of east Africa. A once in a lifetime experience. Or…perhaps the beginning of more trips on safari because I may have more trips to Kenya.
The other thing is that in this area there are many Massai people. This tribe of people are goat, sheep and cow farmers. The men wear brilliant red and blue cloth over their shoulders and cover themselves all the way down to their ankles. They are a warrior tribe and at the camp we were staying at we met a guy named James who is part of the Massai tribe. On Saturday night he showed us his spear that he carries with him. The spear that he has used to kill 2 lions….crazy, he even let me hold his necklace that has a huge lion’s tooth. He also carries around a club and a machete.
So there is more to this trip but I’m running out of time here and as they say ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ (Julia- I’m doing your quote a day thing). Um, so I’ll end here. I hope that the spring is great in Canada!

Sports Day Pics....

So here are the pictures as promised...a little late, alas. The first tow are of the Sports day from last weekend and the last pictures is of 3 of my students from our first school. They're fantastic!

The girls school....

This week we were at Embakasi Girls Secondary School. It was quite the teaching experience as there are 300 high school girls—57 of which were in our class! That’s a lot of enthusiasm in one room. Each day Nafula, Ng’ok and I were greeted by an unbelievable wall of sound as the girls screamed ‘HELLO!!!’, ‘How are you?’ ‘Welcome’ or just general yelling. Girls are so fun. At the beginning of each of our lessons we started in the field with a psyche game—chanting or clapping or singing to get the girls excited for our teaching. Usually we lead the psyche games at each of the schools, but these girls lead us in one: Balance the Ball. I definitely won’t do it justice if I try to explain it now so you’ll have to ask me in person.
The teaching went well this week as the girls seemed to absorb the information presented like a sponge (…original analogy I know). They asked tons of questions too….we couldn’t even get through all of the questions that they asked us both in class and afterwards. MANY were on relationships with boys! Haha. Things are the same wherever you are in the world.
Other than the girl’s school on the weekend we had our sports tournament this weekend. I think it was probably one of my favourite days in Kenya thus far. There were tons of kids..one little boy in particular (he was probably 3) keep coming up to me and saying: How are you?...the only English phrase I think he knows. There were 5 other Kenyan football teams that played in the tournament and they were amazing! Our QMO/ YESS team played them and they definitely beat us 6-0. Alas… there were a lot of people that came and received counseling and got tested for HIV. The best part was that a number of the students that I taught at the first school came to the tournament. In fact there is a picture of three of the guys. (Hope you like the picture: 3MB… was that the name of the group? I can’t remember….) Thanks for coming! You are great.

Just a note about something that I was thinking of today… Mercy (one of the YESS members) asked me in the mat (minibus) how I felt about being in Kenya. I realize that it seems very normal and I feel like I live here even though this is so far removed from Canadian life. I couldn’t even remember today what it was like to study in Kingston…. I was trying to picture myself at a desk studying, but I couldn’t (…probably for the best…oh exams.) Anyway, I keep comparing Kenya to Nicaragua, not because they are the same but because they are totally different countries from Canada. I feel more at home here than in Nicaragua. I think this is for a number of reasons: 1. I understand the language here, so I have a better understanding of what is going on around me, 2. I am a part of the daily routine of Kenyan life (i.e. I am in the same public school for the week so I get to see the daily routine of most people..especially as we are going to and fro) and 3. I am living with Kenyans and understand their lives. So I think for these reasons I have a better handle on Kenya and feel like I’ve been here for a long time.

Anyway, sorry that this is short, it’s late here and we’re getting up early to go on another safari outside of Nairobi. Should be fun! The pictures I included are more from Nairobi National. There’s a good one of a baboon baby, baboons on the path that we were walking on, Ned again and this waterbuffalo that I’m naming Patrick. There’s also a couple pictures from sports day (there are so many more that you’ll have to see when I get back).
Hope everything is well! Please know the privelge you have in Canada for free education and health care. It is a gift. Hi to the LITs!! Sorry that I missed you this weekend, I was thinking about you… can’t wait to see you all in June..I’m glad my stick represented though.

Safari Shots....

Here's the giraffe. Pretty cool eh? His name is Ned. I named him.

This is the team (minus Guz and Alanna). L-R StuE, NattE, Bex, Amit (big baby), Cankles (aka the Navigator...or Alexander Clive Oliphante Makin ESQ) and moi.

Week 3: Outreach Week

This week has been not quite as busy as last week. We spent the last couple days visiting various organizations around Nairobi. On Monday we visited an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. It was a really great facility and the kids seemed to be well loved and well treated. Yesterday we also went to another orphanage for abandoned children. This one too was well run and was overflowing with volunteers. As we had a tour of this place we got a chance to look at some pictures of the babies that were found. Most come into the centre malnourished and emaciated. There was a picture of one child who was so skinny that a wedding ring could fit around his forearm. Most of the children were abandoned. One was found beside a pit latrine (“toilet”—hole in the ground). Guz said that most likely this child was abandoned by a teenage girl who didn’t know what to do with her child. Now I don’t want to just shock you with stories that play on your emotions because I think that we do that too much in North America. This is just the reality. The hopeful thing is that beside each of these pictures there was an after shot of each child. In the shots the once abandoned infants were healthy and happy. Not all of them made it, but most did.
We also spent some time at various schools that QMO and YESS have taught in the past. We went to encourage the students to continue to work hard and get to university. We visited Kibera. This is the biggest slum in all of Africa with roughly 1.5 million people living in an area the size of an average golf course (in fact there is a golf course right beside the slum). I felt pretty prepared going into Kibera. We drove to the end of a road and got out to face a sea of rusty tin roofed houses stretching up and beyond a hill. This is the beginning of Kibera. We then started our way up through what seemed like a labyrinth of houses and alleyways. A narrow stream that provides the water supply for Kibera runs along the path that we took. It is a yellowish, green colour and garbage litters the gutter and the path. Because the houses are so close together, I felt like at each turn we were intruding into someone’s living room. Most people are outside and kids are everywhere. At one point a 5 year old boy and I exchanged a game of peekaboo.
The school that we went to is sandwiched by houses on all sides and is the shape of a narrow rectangle. There are probably about 10 classrooms. Five on the first floor and five on the top. This is probably one of the only two storey building in the area.
Despite all of the poverty, the people of Kibera are quite industrious. The main road is littered with hairdressing salons, welding shops, “fresh” fish stands and even hotels (one in particular, “Lord’s Blessings Hotel”…probably smaller than my room at school.) The people are brilliant and seem to have a resiliency that is so foreign to our cushy North American lifestyle.
One more thing to add about Kibera to give a full story is that though many people live in the slum out of necessity, there are those that live there to reduce housing costs so that they can afford good cars and live close to the city.
There is so much more to talk about…. I’m learning so much… especially about our responsibility as affluent North Americans. I can’t go into it now, but please ask me about this when I return.
On Wednesday we visited a school that QMO has taught at in recent years to encourage the students. After spending about an hour with them, we traveled to look at the YESS office nearby. This took about an hour. After this we got back onto the highway to travel back to Nairobi. This was about 5:00pm. As we started down the four lane highway we noticed a crowd on the side of the road. As we got closer I noticed a body on the ground, covered in a cloth except for legs sticking out. We pulled the Matatu to the side of the road just up ahead and some of the YESS members darted out to see what was going on. As we were waiting in the car, we noticed beside us a large flat bed truck containing bricks. The left side mirror was completely smashed. After we noticed this, the YESS members returned with grim looks on their faces and I immediately had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. What had happened was this girl was waiting or walking on the side of the road and the breaks on the flat bed truck gave way and he hit this girl. The girl was dead. The incident probably happened five minutes before we got there. The horrible thing in all of this was that this girl was one of the students that was at the school that we had gone to see a hour previous to this.
….life is so fragile. And judging from the reactions of some of the Kenyans, this sort of loss is not uncommon. Death is an ever present thing. One of our wonderful YESS members lost her niece and sister to pregnancy complications last week.
Taking all of this in, it’s so easy to emotionally detatch myself. I don’t want to. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism….or maybe it’s because I can’t relate completely to the commonness of death. I don’t know….

So other than that, Kenya has been amazing! It’s been so wonderful to see the impact that YESS is having on students. As cheesy as this is, it’s true: Knowledge is power. It’s not by money or resourses alone, it’s education. This is what makes the difference.
Tomorrow we’re hosting a Sports Tournament and VCT (Volunteer Counselling and Testing Day) in a local slum. It’s going to be great. There are a lot of teams entered into the tournament and from what I hear the teams are going to be pretty intense. Pretty much everybody and his mother plays football here. It’s going to be crazy because we have no idea how many students/ local kids are going to show up, but I’m pretty excited to see what happens.
Also on Sun we went to Nairobi National Park. It was an overcast day so we didn’t see a lot. We did see this giraffe, baboons, army ants (the coolest), waterbuffalo and their sidekick white bird that eats their ticks. We also saw a rhino and a crocodile. I’m excited to go to a more southern park in Kenya where we will hopefully see lions, zebra and elephants.

Lastly, I wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU to Mr. Chan, Alanna’s church and Frank and Joyce for their generous donations. Your recent support has gone a long way. Some of the money will allow high school grads the oppourtunity to go to a career fair that will basically guarantee jobs. This is a once in a lifetime oppourtunity for these students. In Kenya the government supports some students with need (the majority) to go to university. The application procedure takes 2 years after high school. In this time, students can loose interest or get involved in other things. This career fair will be really great to get these students plugged into some successful jobs and secure a lot of their future. It only takes a little from us to have a big impact. So again thank you.

Week 2: Maina Wanjigi Secondary School

It’s been a great week. Long, but great. We taught in our first school called Maina Wanjigi Secondary school just outside of Mathari slum in Nairobi. We’ve rented a Matatu (minibus) with a driver named Anton. Pretty much he’s the best driver I’ve seen. Yesterday it rained and since the road of Nairobi are full of potholes to begin with and there is no drainage system, Anton had to avoid hitting the holes for fear of the car flipping, or at least the tire getting stuck in one of the holes. He had to do this driving standard. I was sitting at the very front of the bus and at one point because the holes were so big, it seemed that the bus was driving into the ground. Hopefully this makes sense…in any case it was quite fun. This was on the way to the school.

On the way home, it’s Jam. Jam being the obvious equivalent to Rush Hour. Jam literally is a jam. At one point the other day, somehow our Matatu was perpendicular to the flow of traffic. We were all stopped and looking on either side of our Mat, all you could see was cars, trucks, etc. We were surrounded by cars, so close that I could reach out through my window and into the window of the car next to me. I’ll try to show a picture. (Above there is a picture of the truck getting past traffic by driving on the sidewalk and the road. There is a lso a picture of the jam and of nat and I in the bus on the wy ho me froma school)

Also in this Jam, Anton, decided that the sidewalk was a good spot to drive to get past the line up of cars ahead of us. I have no idea how he even got back into the line of cars that were bumper to bumper, but apparently this was not his first time.

To give you an example of what Nairobi is like, I’ll try to explain a few things about our drive over to the school. We start off in a nice part of town: big palm trees, fairly good roads, beautiful houses enclosed in big fences (…some using the Nicaragua style of broken glass along the top of the fence to keep out intruders), at one point we pass the president’s compound, a stretch of big white fence that stretches on for a kilometre or so. We can’t even see his house, because it must be far back from the fence and surrounded by trees. Police patrol the perimeter of the compound. As we get closer to the school the scenery changes: the house get smaller and become more frequent and the potholes increase. The number of people around and walking on the road is greater as well. As the roads become unpaved we see tall apartment buildings grey and pale brown in colour, seemingly half finished as some of the rebar sticks out. On these buildings though, beautifully vibrant laundry is hung to dry. (Kenyans are mad about looking good—shirts are always ironed and sparklingly. I feel like a grub compared to my friends here considering ironing is not my forte…) Along the streets as we drive by there are people selling tomatoes, shoes (yesterday I saw a man polishing white LaCoste shoes.. I wonder if these are as expensive as the ridiculous amounts asked in North America), grand wooden bed frams, little plastic trinkets, corn heated on the BBQ, etc. On one corner we pass someone selling chickens….we haven’t decided yet if they are alive or dead. There are about 20 or so lying on the sidewalk in a heap. They seem to be able to move their heads a little, but the rest of their body seems to be paralyzed.... the people that we pass are usually already looking at the bus full of mazungoos (white people) and as soon as you smile at them, they smile back without question. This is especially true for the little kids. They stare at you first with curiousity and then break out into a big smile.

Surronding the school there are small homes, dirt roads, vendors and garbage in the ditches. Just inside the school compound, the scenery changes as there is probably a number of acres of green grass, a garden and school buildings. Just behind the school there seems to be a nice subdivision of houses. I was told that they are government subsidized homes. To be honest I didn’t think that there were subsidized houses especially looking that nice. My own ignorance I suppose.

In our class, there are 21 students: mostly boys. There are so receptive to what we are teaching and they have the most interesting questions. We split up the group into girls and guys to discuss issues pertaining to each gender. We then came together yesterday and had them each have a spokesperson talk to the opposite sex. It was great. Olo, a tall, form 3 (grade 11) guy spoke on behalf of the guys. This guy has the deepest, rich voice I have ever heard. He talked of the need for girls to realize that guys are not made of money and a relationship should not be based on it. Mary, spoke of how there needs to be equality between the genders—a topic hard and intimidating to bring up in a class perdominanted by males. It was received well. It’s also been amazing to tell the students, that we have now given them the tools to teach others and that they now have the power to change their communities and countries becaseu they have education..especially about topics such as HIV/AIDS, responsible sexuality,etc. Making them feel that they are power is incredible. As we tell them this, their faces light up. There is great hope here.

I think that I’ll end this here as I have to go. We’re teaching our last lesson to these students today about Abuse. It’s a tough subject and often I feel inadequate to teach it. There are situations that I will never understand and due to this, I sometimes question how I can even teach about it. We’ll see.

Tomorrow we’re going on safari…….I shall have to fetch my tilly hat.

em

Monkeys and such...

Hey everyone,
I't been a fantastic week (I have a feeling that I probably will be saying this a lot.). We've spent most of the week going over kits (this is the equivalent to each of the 'lessons' or topics that we are going to teach.) with the Kenyans. It's been interesting lesson in learning the differences between our culture and the Kenyan culture. Here are some things that I've noticed so far:
- Kenyans drive in the right seat on the left side of the road (always fun for crossing the street-- I always look the wrong way... Nicola-- you'd love it here.)
- when passing someone, Kenyans go to the left as oppose to us going to the rihgt
-- when greeting someone you kiss on either side of the cheek, starting the the left side of course (this is kind of funny when we're used to going to the right, so as you can imagine trying to kiss the cheek of someone when you are both going the same way....ha.)
-- the toliet handle is on the right when looking at the toliet
-- Kenyans are very affectionate. I'm normally not an overly affectionate person, but I ind myself touching everybody. For example, we do a lot of laughing with the Kenyans and whenever someone says something funny, those in close proximity have to shake their hand/high five them/ hit their knee...it's so natural here and so funny.
- when asked a question, Kenyans listen and there is a little bit of a pause before speaking. Whereas we not only answer questions immediately, but tend to interupt each other (a HUGE pet peeve of mine)
- monkeys are the same as squirrels: they're everywhere, they eat garbage, they fight with each other and they climb trees. I love them. More on this later...


Okay there's lots more but that's all I can think of right now. We are living with the Kenyans. I share a room with Nat, REbecca and two Kenyans named Hadeja and Joyce. It's fun... we also share the room with a number of bugs. We used to be freaked out, but now theyre our friendly friends. (<-- wow I'm a literary genius.)

Anyway, here are some pictures we took when going to the monkey park. A park in the middle of Nairobi where monkeys live. People come (mostly tourists) and buy peanuts and feed the monkeys. It's hilarious! If you offer peanuts in your hands, monkeys will swarm to your hand and grab the nuts. IF you put them on your shoulder they'll climb up and sit on your shoulder. (again like squirrels). This is a picture of me telling a monkey to share because he was being greedy and not letting other smaller monkeys get nuts. Anther picture is of my teaching partner named Nafoola. She's in second year. She can dance beautifully...actually pretty much all Kenyans can. Last nigh, the Kenyans were sharing their culture with us. They showed us a whole bunch of dances-- beautiful.
I have more to write, but we have limited time on these computers.
Okay, you guys are great. You need to come to Kenya. A shout out to crew! I hope you're having a grand time racking.
Hope everyone's springs are going splendidly.
em

First Day in Kenya-ya!!!!

Alright, so we're now in Kenya!!!! The flight over, although 24 hours of travelling time, seemed to go by fairly quickly. I had a window seat from London to Nairobi and it was sweet. I probably took a million pictures. It was such a clear day so I got pictures of the Alps, British coast line, Lybian desert, etc. Okay, weirdest thing though. In the desert there about 16 large circles. From the plane (38000 ft above) the circles were pretty big, so on th ground they must be huge. They look like crop circles..... does anyone know what they are?
Anyway, enough about the plane. We arrived in Nairobi last night at about 9:30 pm Kenya time (so that's 2:30 pm on Mon Canada time). It was such a rush to see the lights of Nairobi and to feel the instant humidity when we got off the plane. I couldn't help but smile the whole time we were in the airport, getting our visas, picking up luggage..and then meeting the kenyans!!! Everyone greets you with a kiss to either cheek and hug/handshaking combo. They were all so welcoming. We then took a matatu (small minbus) into Nairobi to where we are staying. I think the best part of traveling to another country (or one of the best) is driving through the city at night. Everything is lit up, the music is loud, people are singing (in our case). There are a lot of advertisements for car tires (of all things) also cell phones and banks. The other thing, which I LOVE is all of the flowers: there are the beautiful pink ones we see in Nicaragua (to those who know what I'm talking about,....) also the ones you see in Hawaii, so many different colours! (Clearly not bontanist.... (or a speller apparently).) What else? Oh yes, so last night we had dinner together with the Kenyans. There are about 7 Kenyans from Nairobi U who we are teaching with and 10 or so exec meembers. They are beautiful people. They love dancing and today we learned (or rather, tried to learn) the Kenyan national anthem.
There are so many thoughts going through my head, but I don't know how to express them all. I'm trying to give you a little bit of a taste for what it is like. Once I get some pictures up it will be better.
Today's a holiday in Kenya so the city isn't really crowded, rather everyone is at one of two parks. Everywhere you go there seems to be a lot of hiphop music. It's almost like the unspoken vibe of the city.
As for the rest of the week we will be teaching the Kenyans our kits (each of the lessons). I think we'll be doing some site seeing as well.
Oh, okay here's a good story: there were two little kids outside of where we are staying. At first the little girl was pretty shy to say "Hi, Auntie" (a term of endearment, I suppose) to Nat, Becca and I, despite promptings from her caregiver. So we tried to get her to talk, but eventually went to our room. A second later, she knocked on the door and said: "Hi Auntie" Then her and her friend started this game where they would run down the hall, I would cell their names and then they would come running back giggling to give us a hug. We did this for a while and I think we would still be playing this game now, exceptr for the fact that we had to go to town. Kids are great and are the same no matter where you go.
Okay, that's it. Excpet I strongly urge you to see "The Pursuit of Happyness" I watched it on a the plane and it's my fav movie right now. A beautiful story of joy in situations that humanly speaking should not be joyful. I was left with a better and more complete understanding of what Jesus meant when he said that those "are poor" will inherit His Kingdom. Check it out.