The Circle of Life

Well, I’m officially in a depression coma now that our safari adventure is over. To say that the trip was awesome would be the understatement of the century – it was truly a once in a lifetime experience that I will remember forever. I posted some pictures on facebook, so I urge you all to check them out! The pictures tell most of the story, but I suppose I’ll recap some of the highs and lows for all my faithful readers (basically, my mom).

Highs:

1. Our driver – Our amazing driver and guide, Elijad, deserves a million thanks for dealing with us for three days. I think he is officially the wisest Kenyan man I’ve met thus far. Not only did he know everything there was to know about the animals we saw, but he was also a skilled driver (I’m still shocked that they exist in Kenya) and a good conversationalist. The road from Narok (a small town in the Rift Valley where we stopped for a picnic lunch on our way to Maasai Mara – about the half way point) to Masaai Mara might be the worst stretch of road I have ever driven on. In fact, calling it a road is an overstatement. It looks like someone plowed through a field and dropped some rocks in their wake. It should probably only be about a 1.5 hour drive from Narok to Maasai, but it takes closer to 3 or 4 hours. We must have passed 4 cars with flat tires/broken axels on the way (Elijad stopped to help everyone we saw – another reason he’s an angel) – all of this due to the fact that the road is just full of holes and rocks and most drivers tend to drive with two tires off the road completely so as to minimize the shock to the vehicle. While it took us a while to get to Maasai Mara, Elijad’s slow and steady method definitely won the race; we didn’t have one tire or car incident the entire three days. In addition to his awesome driving skills, Elijad knew the park like the back of his hand. He often took us off the main trails to areas he where he knew we would find some cools animals or sights.

2. Our campsite (and our personal Maasai guard) – I’ll be the first to admit that we were not exacting “roughing it” on this trip. I had assumed (thanks to my one previous camping experience) that we were going to be doing some hard core camping– I was convinced (and managed to convince the others) that we weren’t going to be able to shower for three days and that we would definitely be going to the bathroom in the woods. I think I scared the crap out of Jamee when I told her that she would probably have to take her midnight pee breaks in a dark forest filled with lions. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that most of the people who go on these safaris are incredibly rich Westerner’s and that they probably required more refined settings. As it turned out, our campsite was lovely! I mean we were sleeping in tents, but we each had our own mattress and blankets, and the tens themselves were like industrial strength. I searched my entire tent the first night and found that there was not a speck of dirt or a bug in site. Moreover, our campsite had a hot shower and a flush toilet that worked better than the one in our apartment. Thanks to me, none of us had even considered bringing towels or shower stuff so we weren’t able to take advantage of the hot shower, but it was just nice to know that it was there. The campsite also had a large building where our meals were prepared and where we could sit inside to eat/play cards. There was no electricity but plenty of lanterns. The best part of our campsite though was our guard, a Maasai man named Armala… aka John. John reminded me a lot of Eric in that I think he made up 95% of the stories he told us, but nonetheless we enjoyed his company every night when we were sitting around the campfire. John job’s was to stay awake all night and make sure no animals came into the camp. Apparently lions are “afraid” of the Maasai, so that’s why most safari companies employ Maasai men to be guards. It was really cool getting to talk to John and learn more about the Maasai tribe and their traditions. One of the cooler (or grosser?) ones is that the Maasai often drink a mixture of milk & cows blood. Apparently they shoot the cow in the jugular with an arrow, take blood, and then somehow the cow lives. By the end of the trip, we had been invited to John’s future wedding, where he told us that he would slaughter a cow in our honor and that we would drink lots of Tusker together. One more word about the campsite – we were staying directly outside of the gates to the park and therefore the prospect that animals would show up in our camp was actually a legitimate concern. While we never had any lion visits, we did have a family of baboons that hung out around our bathroom in the morning.

3. The food – Just a quick word on this, but the food we had on our safari was AMAZING! I cannot even begin to explain to you how tired I am of eating RICE. We currently have it at least once a day and it makes me sad every time I see it. On our safari, however, we had amazing new foods, including a buffalo bolognese and a guinea fowl stew (tasted like chicken). Perhaps the high point on the food front was breakfast, where we were spoiled with actual toast, sausage, and omelets! This may not seem like a big deal but when you eat “butter bread” (aka shitty cold white bread with shitty butter) every morning it’s a REALLY nice change of pace.

4. The park and animals – By far the best part of the trip was getting to see all of the animals at the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Over the course of the weekend we did 5 “game drives” – basically 2-3 hour drives through the park. Our first day there we arrived in time to do a game drive around 4 pm, which ended with a beautiful sunset. As soon as we got into the park, we popped the top on our matatu and got to stand up for the rest of the ride. Within the first five minutes of our first game drive we basically drove right into a huge herd of elephants. They were on both sides of the dirt road we were driving on and were at most 15 feet away. We got amazing pictures of the elephants, including some of the adorable (and numerous) babies! At one point most of the elephants crossed the road right in front of our car. It was unbelievable to see them in person. During that first game drive we also got to see zebras (which are EVERYWHERE – there are a billion of them), impalas, buffalo, wildebeest, topi, gazelles, warthogs, lions, giraffes, and a rhino! It was an amazing first drive – got to see four out of five of the “big five” (elephants, lions, rhino, leopards, buffalo). The three game drives on Sunday were also amazing – I especially loved the one at 6:30 am. There was something so incredibly peaceful about being out for a drive as the sun was coming up, surrounded by animals and beautiful scenery. The park was so green and vibrant and the air was so clean - I seriously could have stayed there forever. Some of the highlights from our game drives on Sunday included getting to see two lions mating (this was hilarious actually as the female lion was TOTALLY asking for it), and also finding the mama cheetah and her babies that everyone had been searching for all day. Max was actually the one to spot the cheetahs taking a nap in a bush! We also got to see lion cubs on Sunday… it’s really amazing how playful they look, despite the fact that they could eat your face in about 2 seconds. The lions were by far the most beautiful and impressive animals we saw the whole time. We stumbled upon groups of them probably 4 or 5 different times and I never got sick of seeing them. In the end, the only animal we didn’t see was a leopard, but I can’t even be disappointed because we saw so many other animals. I’m really glad I bought a new camera before I left, as I was able to get some incredible pictures. I actually found myself feeling sad during our last game drive on Monday morning – I didn’t want the safari to end. It was such a surreal experience, and I know that if I ever have the resources to come back to Africa I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was an experience I would recommend to anyone who has the opportunity to do it! Forget Mexico or Europe – go on safari in Africa!

5. The Maasai village – We had the awesome opportunity to visit a Maasai village on Sunday afternoon. While I can’t say that it was a genuine cultural experience, I will say that it was fun. It seems to me that the Maasai make a lot of money off of tourists coming to the park (and why shouldn’t they?) and that much of the visit was well rehearsed. Nonetheless, the experience was still really cool. After paying the village chief $20 each we were welcomed with a traditional Maasai ceremony. For the boys, this meant jumping and singing with some of the young Maasai men, who were all dressed in red and decorated with the traditional beaded Maasai jewelry (which is stunning). The jumping ceremony was amazing – I do not understand how these tall, skinny Africans can jump SO high. It looked like they were jumping on some sort of spring board, when in reality they were just hitting the hard ground each time. Max and Elliot were a sight to see alongside those guys! Next came the women’s ceremony, which involved a lot of chanting/singing and weird neck movements. At one point Jamee and the head Maasai lady had some sort of strange dance off, while Emily and I laughed hysterically. After the ceremonies, we got to see the inside of a Maasai house. One note on this topic – the Maasai women are actually responsible for building the houses in Maasai villages. They build them using cow poop and wood, and each house has a similar structure. Also, the Maasai practice polygamy, so most of the village men have several wives, all of whom have to build their own house. After the visit, we were ushered into a field where all the ladies had set up shop with their traditional jewelry and carvings. It was a total tourist trap but to be honest, I was glad to pay. The Maasai jewelry is incredibly beautiful, and the village uses the proceeds to pay for their local school, which we were able to see.

Lows:

1. BUGS – It’s almost hard to even consider this a low but I definitely did not enjoy the creepy crawlers that were all over our campsite. I got my first wasp bite/sting ever on Sunday and I still have a weird red mark on my leg. I wasn’t even provoking the wasp! The worst bugs by far though were the dung beetles. I have NEVER in my life seen beetles as big as these things – they looked like birds. To make matters worse, they hissed! What kind of beetle hisses?!

Whew, so that’s a brief recap of our amazing trip. We got back to Nairobi Monday evening and have spent the last few days diving back into work. We are officially done with all of our home visits and have written all of the kid’s bios. Most of the website content is written, and now we are just waiting for Matt to finish building the website’s foundation so that we can start adding content. We are also waiting for our logo to be finalized so we can start working on branding. Overall, we’ve made incredible progress and I feel good about where we are!

Given that we’ve gotten so much done in the last 6 weeks, it seems a perfect time for vacation. We are headed to Tanzania on Saturday (after a minor setback, thank you mom for coming to the rescue!) and will move on to Mombasa and the beach from there! I am really looking forward to some down time. I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to write while I’m gone, but I promise to update everyone on our vacation and adventures as soon as we return.

In case we forgot that we were living in Africa...

I started this blog at the end of last week but forgot to post it once I was done:

I think God has decided that we’re getting a little too comfortable living in Africa. In order to remind us of what it is like to suffer a bit and to live uncomfortably, he decided to shut our water off.

We came home today to find that the water to our apartment has been completely disconnected. Honestly, my first assumption was that Eric forgot to pay our water bill, and I was slightly (ok, really) annoyed. All of us were sweaty and dirty and looking forward to cold showers, so coming home to ZERO water was really irritating. Not only could we not shower, but we also couldn’t flush the toilet. To not be able to flush a toilet that is used around the clock by 7+ people is a really horrifying proposition – let me just say that there are a lot of beans and strange things in our diet, if that helps with the mental picture at all. Anyway, as annoyed as I was, I figured the problem would be solved quickly as this has happened with the electricity before and because Kenyan’s generally pay their bills through a phone application called MPESA which delivers quick results.

Unfortunately, at soon as we got a hold of Eric we realized that the problem was not that he hadn’t paid the bill but that ILLEGAL shit had gone down. Apparently, Eric pays our water bill to the landlord, who then pays the water company, etc. Well our landlord is what I like to call undependable, which is a nice way of saying that he is a thief/cheater. Apparently this landlord has not given the water company our payment. This, however, is not the only illegal stuff that has gone down in this whole water debacle. The water company who came to disconnect our pipe is essentially required by law to give us a formal warning ahead of time if they have not received payment, but no such warning occurred. Instead they just came into the building and disconnected our particular pipe from the water tank, rendering us absolutely waterless.

So how did we deal with this maddening situation? Well, we broke the law right back. Eric and the boys have now rigged our water pipe (using some sort of tubing and extremely strong tape) so that we can pump water to our apartment. When I asked Eric if we could go to jail for this he said “yes definitely, but they started it.” Nice.

As of now, almost a week later, we are still illegally pumping our water, despite the fact that the water company has been paid. Eric said that it could take months for them to come reattach the pipe (they’re pretty much waiting for us to get desperate enough to pay them MORE – talk about corruption) and we obviously can’t wait around for that to happen, so I’m totally at peace with our decision to break the law. Take that Africa! 

Home Visits & Nairobi Nights

So to pick up where I left off with my last blog – we started our home visits late last week. Max and Elliot accompanied Eric to Kibera on Thursday and were able to see the school and meet all the kids. Once school let out, Grace took them to 12 of the kids’ homes to meet and interview the parents. Both boys seemed to have been pretty overwhelmed by the entire experience… I’m sure visiting Kibera for the first time and then hearing some of those family stories was a lot to digest, though they said the kids and parents were incredibly welcoming and in generally good spirits, which has been my experience in Kibera thus far as well. Reading over their interview questions and answers, I was really shocked to see just how bad some of these families have it. The poverty in Kibera is evident, but just seeing it alone does not do justice to the types of challenges people are actually facing there. Like Ken said last week, life in the slums of Kibera is absolutely hellish for these kids. The majority of them come from families where neither parent is employed (that is if there even are two parents) or where families of 6 are sleeping in one bed in a one room shack. Most of the homes don’t have electricity, and none of them have private bathrooms. Some of the parents told us during the home visits that they can’t afford to feed their kids more than once or twice a day. If you consider that most of these kids are around ages 2 to 4, that kind of malnutrition is bound to be detrimental to their physical and mental development. Makes me realize that the feeding program Lisha Mtoto is running is equally as critical as the education we’re providing.

I want to avoid sharing all the kids’ stories on here, as we are in the process of writing up bios that will be available on our website for all potential sponsors, hopefully within the next month. I will say that you learn a lot from just observing in Kibera. For instance, two of our students are twins named Stanley and Stellamaris. During their home visit we learned that their mother has 7 children in total, and had previously lost 8 other children. She is unemployed and has no husband, yet she still manages to pay rent on her shack and provide her kids with meals once or twice a day. Without sounding horribly pessimistic, we can probably assume that she is a prostitute, as that is how most obviously unemployed and single women manage to stay afloat in Kibera. I say that without an ounce of judgement because I really can only imagine how hard her life is. Prostitution and drugs are an easy thing to fall into in Kibera, and HIV/AIDS is subsequently a huge problem as well. On a less depressing note, I’m glad to see that this mother has gotten Stanley and Stellamaris to our school and that we have the chance to potentially help the entire family. The twins are adorable and seemingly happy despite everything… they even insist on dressing alike everyday – I can’t wait to be able to share pictures with all of you!

We have about 12-15 more families to visit this week and then we’ll be done with the home visits, which is a big step! Now we just need to get this website up and running and hopefully we’ll see some interest in the child sponsorship program. I can tell you that with every passing day, we all become more attached to this cause. I want more than ever to see this organization succeed and these children get sponsored. There is still a lot to be done but we’re making progress and we all feel pretty good about where we are at. So good in fact, that we allowed ourselves to have a little fun Friday night… fun that involved a lot of Tusker’s (Kenyan beer)!

We haven’t really gone out or gotten too wild here at the apartment since we arrived, so I think Friday was a much needed night of fun and group bonding. Unfortunately in Kenya, buying beer is more difficult than it is in the U.S. – go figure. While a few grocery stores sell beer and liquor, it’s easiest to just go to a pub and buy bottles. What sucks however, is that you have to bring the bottles back when they’re empty or else you cannot purchase anything else. The result of this dumb system is that we had to go back to the pub down the road about 4 times on Friday night and exchange our empty bottles for full ones. I think the bartender was somewhat horrified that we kept returning hourly to restock. Might have something to do with the fact that we don’t have a refrigerator or anyway to keep beers cold, so the name of the game was simply drink fast. During all of this drinking we managed to organize some household drinking games and had a grand old time trying to teach Eric how to play. My personal favorite was watching Eric try to play “Never have I ever…” during a game of Kings. For whatever reason, his first two rounds consisted of “never have I ever bought my uncle a beer” and “never have I ever killed someone” – incredibly random answers if you’ve ever played the game before and hilarious even if you haven’t – he basically had us all in tears. He was also very eager to teach us his favorite drinking game, called Mafia, which required some elaborate storytelling – right up Eric’s alley. One story involved bad guys killing two boys and then everyone in the story simply going to sleep. The night ended with Eric asking the boys for advice on how to “cancel his girlfriend.” All in all, Friday was a hilarious and enjoyable night in Nairobi. One more word on alcohol in Kenya – apparently some people here make homemade liquor known as chang’aa. If you think moonshine is bad, the ingredients in chang’aa include marijuana twigs, battery alkaline, formalin, and dirt. Sounds delicious, right? We were all joking around about this stuff on Friday and then actually saw on the news yesterday that 10 people in rural Kenya had died from drinking the stuff recently. I think I’ll stick to Tusker for the time being…

Tomorrow will mark my 5^th week here! I can’t believe how fast time has going, and the next few weeks will probably go even faster as we have so much planned! Next weekend is our safari to Masai Mara, which I am extremely excited for. We met with the safari company on Saturday and got to see pictures of where we will be staying. The camping scares me a little bit (I have unpleasant memories of Outward Bound) but I think I’ll survive. We will have Masai warriors standing guard around our camp at night so hopefully we don’t get eaten by lions. I promise to take tons of pictures and blog about our adventure when we get back next Monday! In the meantime, I hope everyone at home has a good work week! Miss and love you all.

and so it goes...

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since I last blogged – I sincerely apologize to all five of my faithful readers. Life has been busy over here in Kenya! Who would have thought that starting an NGO would be so much work?

A lot has happened in the past week, though the best thing has been the arrival of Max and Elliot! Not only are they two extra (and eager) set of hands to help with all the work, but they have definitely brought a lot of energy and humor to the group. I went with Eric and his brother-in-law, Kyalo, to pick the boys up on Monday morning, and so far it’s been awesome having them here. They both seem to be settling in well – much better than the rest of us did, that’s for sure. They have been much better sports about the living arrangements than I would have been – they are not only content but GRATEFUL to be living in the middle of the sitting room. They have also really taken to the kids around here, and have spent the past two evenings playing soccer on the street and making tiny friends. Elliot has learned a significant amount of Swahili already and pretty much talks to everyone he sees, which is hilarious but also worrisome in that he made friends with some apparently “bad men” last night. Hopefully they haven’t figured out where we live yet! Max and Elliot have also really hit it off with Eric… last night we spent several hours sitting in the living room just talking and joking around. The evening ended with Eric wearing Max’s new sunglasses and walking around bow legged again. Tomorrow the boys will get to go meet our kids in Kibera for the first time and do the first of our home visits. Although they’ve seen a decent amount of Nairobi so far, I think they will be in for a shock when they get to the slums tomorrow. It’s one of those places that you have to see to believe.

On the work front, we have been doing a lot of networking of late. Yesterday we visited an NGO called the Children of Kibera Foundation (CoKF). I encourage all of you to google them and take a look at their website, as they are an incredibly impressive and different organization. CoKF was founding by a guy named Ken, who grew up in Kibera and has actually lived and taught in the U.S. over the past few years. Unlike most education focused NGO’s in Kibera (which focus on quantity - getting as many kids into school as possible), CoKF focuses more on quality of education for the best and brightest students. We were fortunate enough to actually get to meet Ken himself yesterday, and were able to talk to him for over an hour. I really liked him – he had one of those no bullshit personalities, and he shot us straight about the realities of Kibera – mainly that not every kid who receives an education is going to succeed, as there are so many traps and distractions in Kibera that can overpower a child’s judgment. To this end, Ken and CoKF have chosen to focus on the most promising kids rather than on every kid in the slums. While he said it was incredibly hard to pick and choose which kids get to come to their school, he said ultimately he’d rather see the 10 most promising kids SOAR than 60 kids get an education and never get anywhere.

One thing about Kenya that I find to be rather stupid is that high school is basically as competitive as college. During the 8^th grade year, students take exams in order to qualify for entry into high school. There are several tiers of high schools, national and provincial being the best schools. There are only 20 national schools in the entire country, so you can imagine how competitive these schools are. Not only are they competitive, but they are also incredibly expensive. Essentially then, only the kids at the very top of their classes get into good high schools and have any real shot at going on to university. Ken and CoKF are committed to providing every resource necessary (high school tuition, uniforms, tutors, computers, SAT training, resume/college essay work, exposure to arts/music, etc) to see their kids get into the top high schools and the best universities. Ken himself was awarded a scholarship to high school from Save the Children, and he really credits that opportunity and Save’s resources for allowing him to get out of Kibera and be successful. His hope is that in 10 years he will be seeing their students graduate from college and come give back to Kibera as he has done. Overall what they are doing is really interesting and really different from what most other NGO’s are doing, so it was awesome to be able to see that. Ken encouraged us to keep chucking, no matter how long it takes – he reminded us that he was in our shoes just a few years ago. He also said that we will have to learn to become shameless about asking people for money in order to help our organization and that we might have to knock on 100 doors before we get even 1 answer. Before we left for the day we got a tour of the school (CoKF doesn’t have its own school but rather sponsors and funds a school called the Red Rose School) and the kids were amazing! We got to meet every class, starting with baby class and going all the way up to the 8^th grade. It was really cool to meet some older kids for a change, and it was refreshing to see them so hard at work and studious!

Aside from meeting with CoKF yesterday, we’ve also had two meetings this week with website designers. We were toying around with the idea of just paying someone to make the website for us, but have since realized it will probably be too expensive. We did see some really impressive work yesterday from one company, and Matt and Elliot are both familiar with the program they use and feel confident that they can do it themselves. One of the biggest issues with any website we make is that it needs to be easy to use and update, as Eric will have to be updating it regularly once we go. It may take longer for us to do it ourselves, but it’s probably the most cost effective choice at this point. We’re hoping to have it up by the end of the month! In the meantime there is a ton of other work to be done – home visits, setting up a blog and twitter account, reworking our facebook page, getting a logo and doing some basic branding (getting Eric business cards), writing up all of the information that we will need on the website and designing a layout, creating a budget in Excel that will be easily updated, etc. There will be no shortage of work for the rest of the summer! In between all that work, we also plan to visit the greenhouse at least once a week. We went there today and had a great day in the sun, though we’re all sunburned now! We picked some tomatoes for ourselves and the kids, and also helped Lydia with moving some manure (ok, the boys did this). It’s always nice to see Lydia and spend time in Ruai and away from the city. 

So what else has been going on? Well, we got in our first matatu accident yesterday! Our matatu more or less slammed into the side of another matatu and shattered one of its windows. After some yelling, the conductor of the other matatu shoved our driver back into the bus and we continued on our way without exchanging information or anything. It was quite exciting at the time, but I’m sure if we had been the ones hit it I wouldn’t have been laughing. I did think it was perfect that it happened on Max and Elliot’s first day though – what a welcoming! In other exciting news, we are going to be booking our safari and vacation this week! We will be going on safari to Masai Mara National Park for 3 days starting June 18^th and I am so excited. Masai Mara is supposed to be the best game park in the country, so we are guaranteed to see all the big animals! It’s a camping safari so we will be sleeping in two person tents at night and then doing game drives during the day in a private car (thank god, no matatus). Masai Mara is also the home of the Masai tribe, who are generally very open to meeting foreign travelers and discussing their lifestyle, so hopefully we’ll get to meet some cool Masai warriors! After the safari, we will be back in Nairobi for a week and then we will be leaving for Tanzania and Mombasa for a 9-day vacation. We are going to be traveling to Moshi, Tanzania to see Mt. Kilimanjaro for a few days and then will make our way to Diani Beach in Mombasa. Diani is supposed to be absolutely beautiful… crystal clear water and white sand beaches. We have rented a cottage right on the beach for six nights, at a cost of only $75 per person! I think all of the traveling will be a welcome timeout from life here in Nairobi and from work in the slums.

Alright time for some dinner… waa and rice tonight, my favorite! The food is really growing on me – I’m hoping to learn how to cook a few of my favorites so that I can introduce the family and Frank to African cuisine when I get home J Hope everyone at home is doing well! Thinking of and missing you all <3