Although everyone is singing the same words, the performance is chaotic, with higher women's voices taking over at times, the drums loud then soft, singers out of tune, boys shouting out the words, but always full of joy. From the house next door, where one of the school staff lives with his wife and small daughter, songs of praise, obviously African, come from their radio. Then, the gong that announces scheduled events for the boys, starts ringing, probably to notify latecomers that the service has begun, although it's unlikely that anyone within a mile of the school could NOT know that they are missing this celebration. JoSHUa, that's how he pronounced his name when I asked what it was, the young man who brings me milk every morning from the school dairy, arrives with a pitcher of fresh milk.../Habari/? he asks. /Nzuri, na wewe?/ (Fine, and you?) I reply. /Nzuri/ he says. We both laugh at the cacophony coming from the dining hall, which now includes some kind of percussion instruments, clicking and tapping in time with the music, and then he says/ haya (O.K. or goodbye), /the word he says every morning as he turns to leave, and he departs. People are whistling with the music now, laughing, drumming, shouting...getting faster and faster, with only brief pauses between songs. My spirit is lifted out of my little house and I'm glad to be in Africa.
I had a "sinking spell" on Friday and came into the weekend feeling homesick and ready to go home. I had received a call on Thursday from from Julius, our contact at the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru, the organization that will be constructing the water filter at Lake Baringo, that they would begin transporting the materials to Baringo yesterday morning. We sent funds to Thomson, our manager at Baringo, for fuel for the boat that would make the 10 or 15 trips across the lake to deliver the materials and to hire casual laborers to load and unload everything. Thomson left his home on Friday to go to Baringo to meet the lorry and coordinate the activity. We were all elated that finally, two months after our planned implementation, it looked like it would really happen. Friday morning, Julius called to say that the CDN Secretariat had decided, again, that they were still not willing to send staff or lorry to Baringo...they felt it was too great a risk, even though there has been little trouble in the area since December. So, the project is back "on hold until further notice" which could be tomorrow, next week or next year.
It was a huge disappointment but I let it go during our day of activities and it didn't really hit me till I arrived home, tired and dirty, at 7 pm at the end of a long, dusty week. I began to wonder if I am really doing anything helpful here, if I should just bag it and come home. As I began to prepare my dinner of cabbage, tomato and kale, my dilemma was whether I should make soup again, using rice or using potatoes, or both, for variety or if I should leave out the water and have just sauteed cabbage, tomato, kale (with rice or with potatoes or both) instead. All of a sudden, for the first time in 10 weeks, I felt homesick, I missed John, and I began to lose my perspective and started to get pissy about Africa.
This is something of how it went. I haven't seen a Western toilet in over 2 weeks and I'm tired of peeing on my feet by accident and forgetting to bring TP so I don't have to shake dry, (my legs muscles /are/ getting a good workout with all the squatting I'm doing), I'm running out of contact lens solution and there is none to be had in Molo, maybe not even in Nakuru; I finished the only novel I had and have nothing good to read; I (and everyone else) am getting tired of the politics around the negotiations... waiting for that to be finished so that the suspense will end and the violence be a thing of the past rather than a continuing threat, so that we can do the water project, so that the refugees can return to their homes, so that....I'm waiting, waiting waiting. The negotiation drama is so silly sometimes..."nonsense" as Samuel says, that I'm beginning to wonder what's going to happen when Annan leaves...the ODM now is threatening civil disobedience and mass demonstrations on Wednesday if the negotiations don't move faster...a quote from the ODM secretary-general "Our call is for a peaceful mass action, but it might be violent if the police try to disrupt it using live bullets and tear gas cannisters." AND they're taking to court the mediation process that Annan has been using to test its constitutionality... I can't figure out how they think this will help /anyone./
I read a letter to the editor in yesterday's paper questioning the "stupidity index" of those in power..it cracked me up! There was supposed to be an announcement Friday from the negotiation teams, then Saturday, and now Monday about the final proposal for resolution. But I don't think anyone's holding their breath. And depending on the content of the announcement, it's possible that all hell could break loose again.
I think another thing that's getting old is "living in a fish bowl". In these rural areas, I'm a spectacle everywhere I go. It used to be kind of amusing, but I now find myself longing to be just ordinary, a /wananchi /(local person). I don't know how many times (hundreds) I've heard the word "mzungu" (white person), or the Kikuyu version "mthungu", mostly from the children..on the streets, in the camps, at the school where I'm staying. "Habari, Mzungu"..."How ah you, Mzungu?" I don't think I've ever really valued my relative anonymity and privacy at home to the extent that I do now. The boys at the school peek through my fence, into the yard, into the kitchen, every time they walk past...yesterday morning, the entire school, for some reason walked past my house to go to the field in back and they all looked through the fence. On their way back to the school, they did it again. The kids in the camps come running when we drive up, pound on the car windows if we don't get out shouting "mzungu, mzungu", and follow me around, delicately touching my hair, the skin on my legs and my arms. Or saying "/picha, picha" /(picture) when they see my camera.
John Munene told me that people here look at our pale skin and think it looks like their black skin after they've had a bad burn...tender, delicate, fragile, colorless. They want to see if that's true. The women look at my long hair and laugh, because if they want long hair, they have to go through a laborious process of having extensions attached to their shorter hair to acquire a similar "style". In one of the camps the first week, our friend John told me he had overheard some of the people talking about my gold tooth...a crown, really, which they had glimpsed when I laughed. They were amazed and were telling each other to try to make me laugh again so that they could see it.
Otherwise, people stare...and stare. Mostly unsmiling, unless I smile first. In the beginning, I was put off, worried about the solemn faces, thinking that I was intruding and they were not happy. This is my White Guilt...for the Native Americans, for slavery in the U.S., for the White Colonials in Africa and the World. But I've discovered that if I hold my hand out in greeting, and say "habari", there are very few people whose faces are not immediately transformed by a smile, and who do not say "karibu sana"..."you are most welcome." Yesterday, at a camp, some women sat in a group laughing and pointing at me. They did it every time I walked past them. They didn't speak English, and apparently thought something about me was hysterical. But now I know it was not mean or critical laughter...they were probably pitying me for my fragile skin... or perhaps they were incredulous that my hair is actually attached to my scalp.... or that when I laugh, they can see gold.
After writing a whining message to my friend Jeanne yesterday morning, I immediately realized that I needed to get a grip. How could I be so pathetic when everyday I'm among thousands of people without homes, adequate food, beds, clean clothing all in one piece, decent shoes, clean water, sanitary toilets or hope? They are mourning husbands and wives, parents and siblings, children and grandchildren. I have fresh cabbage, kale, tomatoes and potatoes, a house rather than a tent, soap for bathing, fuel to cook my food and make my coffee, and relatively more privacy than any resident of any camp. I'm worrying about running out of contact lens solution, and most people can't even afford glasses, much less an eye exam. I am sitting now, in relative luxury in my house, drinking coffee while I write this letter on a computer, which few people here, except for a few wealthy businessmen, will ever own or have access to. Even here, at Michinda, one of the best boarding schools in Kenya, whose students come from relatively wealthy families, there are only 6 used, donated computers, and no internet connection. But what makes this discrepancy real is knowing that I can leave Kenya at anytime and go home to what is, relatively speaking, incredible wealth and prosperity.
Before I continue, I want to clarify something. I am not trying to paint a picture of poverty and despair, even for the residents of the camps here, who, as I mentioned last week are business owners, farmers, accountants and teachers who have experienced a devastating blow. Even though they will start over with nothing, with support, they will recover and resume their lives as soon as they are able. So, while there is poverty and despair in Kenya, as there is in every country in the world if you look for it, there is also a great spirit of entrepreneurship, ongoing development and progress, and in cities like Nairobi, which is in many ways a very modern city and the business, economic and NGO hub of East Africa, there is incredible wealth.
The rural towns of Molo, where I go everyday with Samuel, and Elburgon, where I am living, seem to be healthy and thriving. There is a lot of poverty here, too, mainly because of the issues around inequitable land distribution and use and the fact that the timber industry, on which these towns were built, crashed when all of the trees that fed the sawmills were cut down. Nevertheless, here, it seems to be business as usual, except for the continuing parade of lorries through town, with families and their personal possessions on their way to somewhere else, and the pickup loads of burned /mabati/, the corrugated iron sheets that used to be roofs and walls on the torched homes of the people in the camps, coming in to the scrap metal places for recycling.
The large town market in Elburgon, through which we drive every day, is laid out along both sides of the road that leads to Michinda, from the highway, across the railroad tracks and along the curve in the road that takes off uphill. It offers anything one could need in the way of food, clothing, shoes, and gadgets... watches, chargers for cell phones, utensils, funnels, pens, screwdrivers. Each vendor has a space where, every morning, what she or he has brought for sale is removed from plastic bags and arranged on blankets, feed sacks or tarps on the ground, in orderly piles or simply spread neatly from one side of the tarp to the other. Similar items seem to occupy certain areas, so that clothing and shoes are together in one place, fruit and vegetables in another. Some vendors sell a variety of items, but many specialize and may have many of the same item, say a hundred tomatoes arranged in several shiny red pyramids, or a hundred of the same style of sweater, arranged in stacks according to color. The shoe vendors display every one of a hundred pairs of shoes, each pair set out for perusal by the customers. There may be several, or many, people sitting next to each other in a row, selling the same kind of tomatoes, sweaters or shoes. Fruit and vegetables are often displayed on counters in small kiosks, precarious stands made of lumber offcuts from one of the small remaining sawmills nailed to poles made from the trunks and branches of small trees. The mangoes, bananas, sugarcane or pineapples may also be laid out on the ground on plastic or stacked in plastic buckets. Every evening, the goods which did not sell are packed back into the plastic bags and taken home. Hundreds of people mill about, chatting, buying, looking. Babies peer out from the slings in which they ride on their mother's backs, or are hidden in the depths, sound asleep.
But there seems to be little connection between this agricultural community and what goes on in Nairobi, except for the two daily papers that bring the news from the city, and the matatus, carrying people back and forth at all hours of the day. Although as the crow flies, the distance between here and Nairobi is not great, the poor roads make travel an unpleasant experience. The roads are improving, but the long sections where paving is underway are bumpy, dusty, and jarring to vehicle and passengers. This reminds me of one interesting form of entrepreneurship which we saw this week. There is a huge /crater/ (enormous pothole) in the road to Molo, from one side of the road to the other. Vehicles slow down as they approach the crater, giving the driver time to decide whether to leave the road and drive around the crater on the shoulder, or to risk driving on the wrong side of the road, in spite of oncoming cars, in case that side might be better. On Tuesday morning, some enterprising person had shoveled large clods of red dirt into the crater, which, during the course of the day, vehicles would pack down as they drove over it, so smoothing out the road, until the next rain, anyway. This person had then stationed himself at the side of the road with his hand out, hoping that passersby would show him some monetary appreciation for his help in repairing the road, which really was much improved. Sadly, I didn't see anyone stop, not even us.
But the point I was trying to make is that the disconnect between the rural areas and the city and between the middle and upper classes and the peasants is great. This inequality, especially in regard to land, is one of the issues that is fueling the current conflict, beyond the post-election violence, which is not really about the election any more but has morphed into opportunistic thuggery, banditry and mayhem as those in power continue to serve their own self-interest by trying to ensure their personal wealth and comfort, and ignoring the wananchi and what they were voicing with their vote. The headmaster from Michinda told me yesterday that he had seen on the news Friday night an interview with some of the top politicians in Nairobi. Apparently, GM has brought whole fleet of Hummers into Kenya and these guys, I think they were Members of Parliament (MPs) were speculating on which Hummer they might select and the color they would choose and whether the 3 million KSH they were given by the government as a vehicle allowance would cover the purchase. The disconnect here is obvious on several levels, especially because, since the election, the MPs have been receiving a good salary and yet have not left Nairobi, have not visited their constituents in the areas in which they were elected, have not seen the people in the camps, have not heard their voices. Maybe they have been waiting until they had their Hummers so they could arrive home in style.
This morning, messages from some of you brought me kind words and encouragement from home, and I remember why I'm here. I have a new perspective on my Friday "sinking spell" ...I think it was yet another lesson, another call for me to forget about myself, to put aside my own /mahitaji/ (needs) and open to what is all around me; a reminder to recognize that what I think I need is relative, and that if I examine my situation, I will see that I have everything I could possibly need for today.
Suddenly, I'm excited about tomorrow ( I have no idea what Samuel has in mind, but it will be something to benefit the people in the camps); excited about the plans that Samuel and Karangathi and Chege and I made at our meeting Friday afternoon to publicize and raise funds for school supplies for the nurseries and for the much needed counseling sessions that NECOFA initiated last week; about the 4-day trip we'll take to Baringo on Saturday to see the completed nursery school for which we provided the resources in January and to see the site the community has prepared for the much anticipated water filter, whenever that might happen; about meeting with the sewing group and with the school committee at Baringo; and delivering the truckload of chickens we are taking to Kailer and Baringo, to the groups of women who will raise them and eventually sell chickens, meat and eggs to generate income for their family.
I'm going to do my laundry in the white bucket under the tap outside my back door, sit in the sunshine and spin some of the lovely silk that I brought with me, on my drop spindle, maybe knit a bit and study my Kiswahili. I'll prepare cabbage, onions and potatoes for dinner (I'm out of kale), and have a mango for dessert with my coffee.
So, /thag yu/....that's Kikuyu for "thank you".../thag yu/ so much for your messages and for your donations to assist the efforts in the camps. This week, we delivered huge boxes of the soap which we purchased with funds from some of you, to grateful residents in each of the camps. We also delivered blackboards that Samuel arranged to have built last weekend and school supplies so that the nursery classes could begin last Monday. On Tuesday, Amos, the Headmaster from Michinda and several of his teachers came with us to deliver items donated by the Michinda staff... 6 huge bags of maize flour, 60 kgs of rice, a giant bag of kale from the school garden, 180 dozen exercise books, pencils, rulers, wall charts, and several large bags of clothing...it was like Christmas! This weekend, I drafted a letter to other schools in the area asking them to consider doing something similar. Amos also made a donation to have the children's heads shaved, which they usually have done but it just hasn't been a priority recently. It's actually a good idea, to prevent the spread of lice and fleas(?). We visited a few of the temporary /kinyozi /(barbershops) on Wednesday and Thursday.
The church service here has ended, the scraping sounds from the dining hall signal that the benches are being moved back in place for lunch, and now I can hear discordant singing over loudspeakers from the churches in the valley. The notes are heartfelt, if not quite true and are followed by preaching in either Kikuyu or Kiswahili. They are too far away for me to tell. Now the singing again. If today is like last Sunday, the preaching and singing will continue into the late afternoon. From another direction, a male voice, accompanied by drums and sounding a bit like a Native American pow wow. From a third direction, something that sounds like the muezzin calling people to prayer from a mosque. It's impossible to feel alone or isolated or hopeless with all of these voices filling the air and simultaneously proclaiming their faith and hope, and most probably imploring God for a peaceful end to the negotiations.
There is a young man, probably in his 30s, who dances in the parking lot in front of Samuel's office. He has some type of disability, but his rhythm is perfect. He comes everyday, with a bit of string that he flips around as he dances, always with a smile on his face, and a high voice humming along with the song in pure pleasure. He dances hour after hour, stepping from side to side in a large groove in the ground that he has carved with his feet over time, stopping when a song ends, and slowly revving up when the next one begins...African songs, great rhythms, happy music. I smile every time I see him, and feel happy. I mentioned to Karangathi one morning that if everyone were this happy, dancing and smiling all the time, the world would be a much better place. He replied, "Yes, but we'd all be hungry!"
/Inatosha/...that's enough. /Baadaye/...later and /thag yu!
/Salama,
Gwen
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