Stuck Thoughts

Phew! It’s been awhile. Thanksgiving has long since come and gone and it’s December already?! Although I could convince myself at any given moment that it’s actually the middle of August. It has been unbearably hot the last few weeks. It’s unrelenting as soon as the sun starts shining at around 8 am. I really shouldn’t complain as I hear it’s snowing at home, but I have to say I am looking forward to scarves and boots when I return. I imagine it will only be a few days at home in the cold before I’m wishing I were back on the equator by the sea, butthat’s just the way it goes I suppose.

So World AIDS Day was December 1^st and a group of us from the EAC went to a village about an hour and a half inland for the districts celebration of the day. There was a parade procession and in typical Kenyan fashion lots and of skits and dramas. Acting out scenarios seems to be the best way to pass a message around here. We brought with us a few of our kids from Vutakaka Primary and they acted out a skit about love and AIDS. The crowd loved it. We had an event for Takaungu on December 4^th which went really well. Between a few of our community health workers, and teachers me and a few other volunteers put together 15 minute speeches for them to talk about on HIV topics. We made and hung posters, gave a condom demonstration and provided testing and counseling. The PA system and music lured people in then we bombarded them with information. We had an excellent turn out and 55 people got tested, only one of them came up positive, which is obviously unfortunate but out of 55 not half bad.

I’ve been doing A LOT of thinking lately, which is not hard to do given my surroundings. Having been in East African almost 3 months I’ve had enough time to get comfortable and really take a look at how things work, and don’t around here. And in seeing how things go along it makes you wonder how they got to be that way. If you look closely enough, and sometimes not closely at all you can see post colonial issues. Kenya has been independent less than 50 years so naturally there are colonial scars and a country that is trying to figure things out. Poverty is woven throughout. Add on top of that add a corrupt government, which in African is nothing new. You can experience it without having to try very hard. Bribes are common place and often necessary. In this corrupt government comes religious ideas that effect health and education ideas. It trickles down to the towns and villages where the people live and runs face first into old traditional African ideas and customs. In each small village and group of people there is a very distinct, very different combination of these traditional ways and Christianity, or Islam. In Takaungu alone you can see a mud house, which is unique to Africa and only 20 feet away see a modernish concrete house. This is repeated around the village. Most likely in the mud house there is a Guriama family who practices a marriage of old African traditions and probably some Christian ones. In the concrete house a Swahili Muslim family is praying 5 times a day and combining the local African ways with Islam. In one of these Swahili homes I have been positioned with my western ideals and liberal thinking. It is easy for me to see that there are problems, from a ghastly amount of teen pregnancy, or HIV/AIDs to tons of people sitting around all day to due to lack of jobs and low literacy rates. Overcrowded schools with no resources and kids working on their parents farms all day instead of going to school because either their parents didn’t go to school and don’t see the need to send their kids, or they don’t have enough money to pay the school fees, or both. All of these things can be seen, it may sound unbearable but people are getting by. So with all of that being said my thoughts whirl in circles about what the main issue is, and why it is that way. And what if anything can be done? And most importantly do the people want anything “done”. It is impossible to pinpoint one issue that makes things the way they are. In having conversations with local educated people they scratch their heads and ask themselves the same questions. We agree that health and education are where the answers lie but then the conversation goes back to the beginning. The government is not putting the much needed money into health and education programs so the people simply aren’t getting them. When I stroll in with my ideas of educating the youth about safe sex as a good starting point some people look at me like I have 5 heads and some agree. However, the ones that agree know it’s illegal to teach such things in the schools and the village people would simply freak if one of their kids was caught with a condom. In comes government and religion. Sometimes I just want to pull my hair out.

I was having a conversation with Saade last night. She is witty, educated and has pretty open way of looking at things, she is also a strict Muslim. Sometimes we will be chatting away and I think we are totally on the same page then when a subject such as dating (which Muslim girls don’t do) comes up I realize that we come from very different worlds. Either way, we have great conversations and have learned a lot from each other. Last night I told her that I don’t personally know any family in the US that has 5 or more kids and she was shocked. Here, men want kids. Lots of kids, although often the men are absent it is a sign of success for them to have multiple kids. Honestly if you ask any woman who has 9 kids and is pregnant with her 10^th (it wouldn’t be difficult to find here) why she is about to give birth to her 10^th child you probably wouldn’t get any answer that makes a whole lot of sense. “Sense” being a relative term. The answer most always would be, my husband wants lots of kids, end of story even though it’s likely for the husband to be off with multiple girlfriends and wives producing more babies and possibly bringing home HIV. So where does that lead us? Tons and tons of kids that can’t be provided for that mostly won’t go to school and many will become pregnant before the age of 16 and who knows how many more will get HIV because they aren’t educated. Around and around and around and around it goes. Coming from the land of good free primary and secondary education, big clean hospitals, on average small families, a place where I personally know not one person infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and where I myself identify with no religion and believe strongly in equality between men and women makes me quite possibly more interesting to the village than it is to me. All of this is not to say that there aren’t problems in the good old US of A. There’s problems everywhere. But the contrast between the problems where I come from and the problems here are striking. Sometimes I wonder if both worlds are just so different, too different and no matter the reasons the reality is they will never bond. This term “development”, is it working? To who is it working? Who can be the judge of whats working and whats not? The average westerner would come here and be shocked, as I was when I first got here. But now, even though the issues are much clearer to me I see smiles on peoples faces. Where I sit now, in the small Village of Takaungu, Kenya on the coast of this gigantic continent people are generally happy. So is happiness the judge? I have been bouncing back and fourth between feelings of defeat and small triumphs. I have learned a great deal of patience, and perspective. Objective perspective is perhaps the most difficult thing, and if you are a human it is impossible to be objective all the time. We are a product of our culture, all 6+billion of us. Our culture is what makes us human. If a culture produces outcomes like the ones I see here then who am I to try and make a change? I don’t want to change a culture, so I guess the only answer is to impact individuals. When I go home I can only hope that my little lesson plan and curriculum will teach just one kid something they didn’t know that will protect them from the challenges they will have growing up, which are many and dangerous. I am extremely lucky to be working with the people I work with here, who, for whatever reason see the importance of basic health care and education.

That’s my rant. I haven’t posted any blog entries in awhile because most of these thoughts have been stuck. Now they feel a little unstuck. Kris and I would have conversations about these stuck thoughts and ultimately kept coming back to the same word to describe Africa: Intense.

On another note, my host mom has moved to England to be with her husband. That leaves me with grandma, or bibi, and a revolving door of family members that have come to keep her company. Her other kids come and bring their kids and stay for a few days. Sometimes I get lucky and there’s a few English speaking people in the house and sometimes, most times I don’t. At the moment there’s a small pair of twins visiting, and they cry, a lot. Somehow everything is moving on relatively smoothly and bibi and I are buds. Kris and Krstyle have also left for the US so I am the only mzungu around. This weekend I went to Mombasa with a group of other volunteers and experienced the night-life and danced until the middle of the night. Fun but exhausting.

I have less than a few weeks left so I have to start wrapping things up. I will finish up my work, maybe read one more book and then it’s back to “Obamaland” as they call it. I was hoping for a big epiphany in Kenya, although I don’t remember a specific moment where a huge light bulb went off a bunch of little ones have been flickering the whole time. I have a clearer idea of what I want to pursue once I get home I’m already looking forward to my next overseas adventure.