I’ve also come to realize that I have a very short amount of time left here. its terrifying how quickly this whole ordeal is flying by. I spent most of my week scrambling around trying to tie up loose ends of my work plan and get things settled out before i go (more information about my workplan and what the heck i’m actually doing here is already written out on my computer, and i just dont have the heart to retype it for the 4th time. i’m praying my laptop will turn on later tonight or tomorrow so i can get everything up.)

Anyways, sorry for the delays, my computer is apparently addicted to kenyan time now as well, meaning who knows when you’ll hear from me next.

Aside from the fact that my computer is now on the tipping point of being a real goner—I read the words “Hardware malfunction: the system has halted” about 5 minutes ago on an ominous purple screen of death—I am going to try to continue updating this blog as often as I can get my computer to turn on. I only have 4 more weeks to keep my fingers crossed.

In my brief hiatus from life with a computer, I took a long weekend trip for a safari in Masaii Mara. It was completely mind-blowing. I know I say that about a lot of things, but that was before I saw three cheetahs tear apart a gazelle from 10 feet away. Last week I said the rainforest was like landing in the middle of a discovery channel special. This week I got close enough that I didn’t even need a zoom lens. I’m still not really sure words can do the last 4 days justice, so instead I’ll leave you a few highlights.

1. Instead of making a list of all the animals I saw (we started one, but after a while we ran out of names for all of them), just think about all your favorite parts from the Lion King and imagine falling through your TV screen into the heat of the action. Cheetahs, lions, buffalo, wildebeasts and zebras in the Great Migration, elephants, ostriches, hippos, rhinos…birds and lizards of colors you can’t even imagine. I didn’t think I was the safari type, but good god, it was insane.
2. Sunsets get a lot of publicity—and for good reason—but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing that beats a sunrise on the savannah. From now on I’m making it a personal goal to be awake for as many sunrises as possible for the rest of my life (thankfully, in New Hampshire, you don’t even have to be up much earlier than 7:30 for that resolution to come true in the winter).
3. Giraffes are my new favorite animals (sorry llamas). I’m in the process of figuring out how to best manage a giraffe in my backyard for the rest of my life—Stuart (my llama-to-be) was going to be hard enough.

While we were at the Mara, we also got a brief tour of a Masaii village, which turned out to be an interesting anthropological case study in the effect of tourism on traditional culture. While the Masaii culture is certainly unique in itself—they’re one of the few tribes left in the world that sticks to its traditional nomadic herding lifestyle—it was fascinating to watch the commercialization of their culture as they played out traditional dances and exploited their own exoticism in favor of gullible western safari-goers with money. For a culture so deep in traditional history and culture, it was almost depressing to watch them recount tales of their customary coming-of-age ceremonies (5 years in the bush finalized by killing a lion and circumcision at age 18) and haggle prices for their traditional jewelry. In a world of fast-paced business and commercialization, they had learned to exploit their own culture to please the markets—a ploy that regrettably works. The whole experience left me a little bit torn about the tourism industry in general, particularly in the context of development, because of the incredible power western money can have in the face of poverty. If nothing else, it definitely places those abstract capitalism-or-die economics classes into perspective through a distinctly anthropological lens.

At any rate, life on the mara is both thought-provoking and mind-blowing, and certainly provided me with quite the weekend of adventures. Of course, arriving home dusty and covered head to toe in safari dust, I was greeted by a topless Mama J sprawled out in the living room, asking me what age Americans are weaned from breastmilk. Lion hunts aside, there’s nothing like home sweet home.

On Saturday, I had the privilege of attending an event called Stand Up, dedicated to raising awareness about the MDGs. (Its shocking how serendipitous some things are in life…I spent a good part of last fall helping to arrange similar (much smaller scale) events about MDG awareness at Dartmouth.) For those of you who still don’t know what the MDGs are, look it up. They’re important.

At any rate, important national events done Kenyan style are quite something. For starters, there’s the bullfighting. Bullfighting in Kenya makes much more sense (in my mind) than this strange matador/cape thing that happens in Spain: its actually bulls fighting. After smoking out the bulls with either opium or weed (I’ve heard both accounts), incredibly riotous crowds surround them, wailing with sticks and colorful flags, chanting, stomping, dancing, and making a general ruckus. At some point they manage to pin the bulls together in a human pen, and the fighting begins, with crowds of riotous fans cheering and screaming on each side, about 2 feet from the thrashing hooves and horns. The rumpus continues—anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes—until one of the bull decides he’s had enough, turns on his heels, and charges out of the game. Meanwhile, humans fly in every direction out of the way in an attempt not to be trampled. Immediately following (regardless of how many have been maimed by charging hooves), the crowd rushes around the winning bull, wailing, while the owner of the bull is hoisted on everyone’s shoulders and crowd surfs his way to victory. The entire event is an absolutely fascinating anthropological experiment, and is the rough equivalent of a riotious European soccer championship.

Unfortunately, my camera decided to malfunction (electronics and I really don’t get along sometimes) and I have zero pictures of the event to prove I was there. I was, however, with a fellow San Franciscan photographer, who was nearly gored several times in his attempt to get on the action. Since he did survive, I’m hoping to steal some of his pictures.

The second half of my weekend included an awe-inspiring trip into the Kakamega rainforest, a night in a grass hut “banda”, some monkeys, medicinal plants, an a sunrise hike to the top of the world. Rising above the canopy and seeing nothing but rainforest for miles in every direction is one of those things you can’t really describe in words. It’s literally like landing on an entirely different planet. Or falling through the TV screen into a scene from Planet Earth. The entire day made me want to give up school and live in the rainforest for the rest of my life, studying trees and monkeys and medicinal plants. Who knows, I could even be serious this time.

Sorry Spain, I think Kenya won this round.

Written on Oct 16

I want to preface the following with a warning that I’m writing this post with smoke still billowing out of my ears over the events of today. I titled this category “kenyan culture: rants and raves,” and this post certainly fits in the former category, with good reason. I don’t mean to come across as an angry psychopath, and certainly don’t mean to implicate anyone or any organization with these observations, so I’m apologizing in advance for any swearing, bad metaphors, general overstatements, and radical political musings. I’ve also made this post somewhat enigmatic so that people at home can rest assured that I won’t be targeted by the Kenyan government, shot, or kidnapped, or whatever the New York Times is telling you might happen to me.

Before I continue I want to introduce Waldo, a key player in this story. Waldo, as many people know, can be found in many different settings. He wears a very distinctive outfit (see below), and depending, can be very well hidden or rather easy to find. In fact, he can be found pretty much anywhere in the world, and he loves causing trouble.

In America, we teach children from a very young age how to “find” Waldo, training our citizens to catch that silly man in the red-and-white striped hat no matter where he is hiding. And by the time we reach adulthood, we’ve trained our eyes well enough to force him into the shadows, where he exists miserably, struggling to survive and starved of power.

In other countries, however, Waldo walks down the street in broad daylight, unafraid of suspicious glares. In fact, in many areas, he is wildly popular, and maintains quite a presence in the community. In these stories, Waldo takes up permanent residence, settling down to a life of gluttony and fame, allowing his little Waldo-ettes to run rampant, multiplying like rabbits. Kenya, I’m sorry to say, houses quite a population of Waldos and Waldo Jr’s. Today, I met King Waldo himself, and boy is he UGGGGLY.

Onwards with the story. For the sake of this large confusing metaphor I feel like I should start with “once a upon a time,” just for effect. So. Once upon a time, there was a kingdom. This kingdom was large and beautiful, and filled with wonderful and friendly people. They ate lots of delicious food fried in lots of oil, and prospered on farms with vegetables and chickens and cows and crops aplenty. Although many of them suffered from a silly concept called “poverty,” (designated by arbitrary definitions from kingdoms far far away), the people of this kingdom were happy, healthy, well educated, and well fed. Things seemed pretty dandy. For a while, at least.

Inside of this kingdom there was a hospital. Although most of the community prided itself on its health, there were times when the peasants would fall sick, and the nurses and staff at the hospital worked very hard to cure them. The hospital was highly regarded among the community members, and when problems arose, the community was quick to respond, fundraising to help its health center. Technically, the king of all the lands was supposed to help fix the hospital, but often his actions were slow and by the nature of bureaucracy, inefficient.

One fine day, it was discovered within the hospital that there was no water. In fact, the supply of water in the whole community had been turned off, thanks to the malicious trickery of one of the King’s sons, Waldo Jr. Rising to the occasion, a few dedicated community members took to carrying water for the hospital up the hill from the river every morning, the jugs on their heads. The water was untreated and hardly clean, but it was better than nothing. Clearly something had to be done.

So the community got together. Once a year, community members were allowed to gather to determine a project to further their well-being and development. The hospital’s water crisis was identified just before that year’s gathering, and community members gathered in plenty for the meeting. The vote was unanimous. Hospital representatives presented the needs, citing prices quotations and research done to solidify the plan. Every community member agreed that this year, the hospital’s situation deserved priority.

As we have mentioned before, Waldo loves to cause trouble. He also loves playing games, and in this particular community, had boosted himself into quite a prominent position. He paraded around in the open, his red and white striped hat visible for all to see. Unfortunately, in this community, nobody was asked “where’s waldo?” from an early age, and hence, nobody recognized him for who he really was. Meanwhile, he stood in front of their eyes, switching the rules in front of their democratic noses.

This is the part where I edit out a string of expletives and all previous political inklings go out the window. Democracy sucks. Ok, maybe not in all cases, but whoever said democracy is the best solution for the developing world has clearly never been to the developing world. The fact that a unanimous vote in one direction can “recorded” as a vote for something entirely different is absurd. The fact that throwing money out the window of a car counts as a political campaign, and that a few rounds of sodas holds more sway than 3 hours of intellectual debate is a reality that merely mocks the entire idea of democracy itself. Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to espouse a growing political philosophy here (among muzungus anyway) of “benevolent dictatorships” as the political solution for the developing world. Without going into a long-winded political theology, I’ll just leave you to think about it for a little bit. It at least makes for an interesting discussion.

So. Regardless of whether or not that made any sense, I’m pissed. Today, I witnessed a complete failure of democracy, and to be honest, my head is still spinning from what happened. All metaphors aside, I actually witnessed a unanimous vote today (which first off all rarely happens in any democratic system), and I actually witnessed it being rigged in front of my own eyes. There were about 50 people in that audience today, and all of them voted for water. A few minutes later, 2 others showed up, proposed some weak &*($#@& about roads, and despite receiving zero votes (aside from the 2 presenting), left that day with more than a million shillings supporting their project (which realistically means more castle-building).

I think it’s also worth mentioning that this entire meeting happened in Kiswahili, and from what I can tell, was in the minority of people truly peeved about what happened. And I probably only understood maybe ¾ of the words spoken. The fact that such blatent rigging could take place without a PEEP from the engine of democratic power (minus a few who were told to shut up and sit down), is insane.  Just to be a little bit edgy at the end (my seat at the front of the room gave me a prime location next to the center of all of this hoshposh), I sweetly asked a few “clarification” questions about how the board could have possibly decided that the water project shouldn’t be funded when there was a unanimous vote. After hearing some &*($#@ reply about “re-educating the people and taking a new vote (which also, by the way, didn’t happen), I said “oh, wow, I guess Kenyan democracy just works a little differently than the one I’m used to at home”.

(insert more expletives here, because i didnt include enough in this post already) you, Waldo. Go back into hiding.

One of the many perks of being the only muzungu for miles around is that everyone knows your name. Or at least some version of syllables close to your name. Running through town in the morning I am greeted by a chorus of “buschele Andrea”s, and while I breathlessly try to greet all of them back, I get an odd satisfaction in the fact that this is probably the closest I’ll ever come to being a full-blown celebrity. Huffing and puffing none the less.

Today however, my fame outdid itself. Invited into a stranger’s home while shopping for dinner in town with Mama J (not an entirely foreign occurance since the word “stranger” doesn’t really exist in Joyce’s life), I was soon presented with a bundle of blankets and a number of very rapid explanations and blessings in Kiluhya. Looking to my host mama for a little help with the translation, I soon discovered that the bundle of blankets was exactly one week old, and the adorable little girl had been named Andrea, after me. Flattered (and to be honest rather flabbergasted) that my presence in the community could have moved a family to name their first born child after me, I soon learned that the mother had gone into labor while I had been standing next to her in the church, and I was now considered a good luck charm to the family. A bunch of pictures, greetings, and blessings later, I had become an honorary member of the family (mind you I’d just officially met them a half hour before), and was invited to come to their home anytime to visit my namesake.

Yowza. That certainly doesn’t happen every day. It was only discovered as we were leaving that the baby was actually named Entria, an easy mistake considering “Andrea” is impossible to pronounce with a Kenyan accent anyway. It still counts, right?

From my first day on the job, almost every staff I talked to was quick to identify at least 3 major projects the hospital was purportedly working on. Land expansion; building new wards; building a canteen; buying an ambulance; hiring new staff; buying new equipment; drilling a bore-hole…the list went on the more people I talked to. When it came down to it however, the hospital was relying on the same government fund—the CDF (constituency development fund)—to support all of them. In addition, despite having waited for funding for most of these projects for nearly a year, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of an effort to speed up the process. Advocacy was certainly not a word in the hospital’s vocabulary…it was more of a sit-and-wait kind of thing. So, I decided—3 days in and knowing essentially nobody in the community who could help me—that the hospital was going to learn to advocate for itself.

Sitting down to tea with Mama one afternoon that very first week, I soon discovered that I was sitting next to the answer to my problems. As a social worker, Mama Joyce literally lived to mobilize the community. In addition to being connected to basically everyone of importance (and well-respected to say the least), Mama also informed me of a local government fund dedicated to serving the community’s needs. The next LASDAP (Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan) community meeting to decide on a project would convene October 16^th, and I soon adopted LASDAP as a key feature in my new agenda.

Over the next 2 weeks (make that the last 2 weeks), I spent my time organizing staff meetings to prioritize the hospital’s needs, researching the LASDAP process, and identifying ways to mobilize the community in support of the hospital. The way I saw it, the hospital served the community, and while the hospital remained so underfunded and under-resourced, the hospital’s problems were the community’s problems. My argument had a lot of sway with Mama J and her network, and I soon had countless community leaders mobilizing citizens to come support the hospital at the October 16^th meeting.

At the same time, it was discovered within the hospital that a scandal in the larger community had cut off the hospital’s water supply, and workers were now forced to walk down to the river and back with large tanks to supply the hospital’s water needs. Even overlooking the lack of running water in the faucets and toilets, the supply of water was literally limited to the amount volunteers could carry up the hill—a situation that seemed almost comical when considering the number of people the district hospital had to serve every day. At least by identifying this particular caveat we were able to immediately unite the staff—and much of the community—on a prioritized project to pitch at the LASDAP meeting.  

My first two weeks of work were, of course, much too good to be entirely true. As in any story, there is always a bad guy, and the next part tells of the downside to grassroots development: the weeds. Considering Kenya is ranked among the top 3 most corrupt nations in the world, it’s surprising that corruption didn’t enter this story earlier on. But we knew it had to happen sometime, so…[enter corruption].

 *note, some of this part has been edited so as not to accuse any specific individuals of corruption or implicate the hospital or FSD in any of my personal observations*

Last week, excited about our rapid progress, the hospital team (me, Dr. Bomji (the hospital Director), and Kimani (the Hospital Administrator)), sat down to discuss LASDAP and our project idea with the experts–unnamed representatives and local government officials. In addition to grossly under-stating the funds available from LASDAP (I know how to do my research thank you very much) and misquoting the timeline, budget, and entirety of the process, we soon learned that government processes, despite any and all good intentions to focus on “transparency,” are about as transparent as a brick wall. Without going into excessive details of how last year’s fund was turned into a private hotel business run by local officials, its safe to say we were butting heads against quite a bigger beast than i originally planned on tackling. Oops.

Despite the change of course, I was certainly not about to let this particular incident discourage the larger plans of the hospital to connect with the community. In fact, since that meeting, I have made every effort to redouble our mobilization. Armed with Joyce (have I mentioned yet she’s not someone you want to cross?) and her network of community leaders, teachers, preachers, piki piki drivers, social workers…the list goes on, we now have a grassroots army growing behind us in support of the hospital’s projects. What happens on Friday remains to be seen, but the larger goal of the cause–tapping into the power of community initiatives and grassroots mobilization–has already planted the seeds for success. Now I think it’s time for a little bit of weeding.

Today, I witnessed the power of the community. There’s a lot of commotion out there surrounding the idea of grassroots movements—the organization I work for in fact, prides itself on partnering with grassroots organizations to promote sustainable development practices—but aside from the big words we throw around, no one ever really stops to emphasize what this really means. Today, I found out.

As typical of any Sunday routine, much of the morning events centered around the church. But in addition to the usual preaching, singing, and dancing that normally accompanies Kiluhya prayer, today’s schedule extended a bit further. For starters, a whole section of the church was set aside for a fleet of “special guests”—rows of visitors to the church whose presence was announced at the end of the traditional service. My momma, dressed in traditional Quaker-church-official-garb, stepped up to the podium to introduce the guests, launching into a speech which I would later find out explained the purpose of the fundraiser that was to follow. (Unfortunately, despite my efforts, my current understanding of kiluha only got me through introductions, leaving me to guess at almost everything to follow in the next 2 hours).

Despite the fact that I was left a mute observer to the events that followed, the process of the fundraiser was absolutely fascinating. For 2 hours, church leaders would introduce visiting “guests” from other churches, counting bills and coins and announcing donations. There was singing, dancing, celebrating, and many rounds of donations through the congregation—so many that you were in fact obligated to give up pretty much all the money you had with you to help the community cause. Every member participated. Every member owned this project, and every donation—even 10 or 20 cents, was celebrated. The whole event raised more than 126,000 shillings—a shitload of money for a congregation of about 50—for a project I later found out would go to rebuilding and expanding the building for the Sunday school.

By the end of 3 hours in my pew, my view of all this academic development jargon had changed. This was grassroots development. This was the power of community. Every person in that congregation played a role, and every member of this community was bought-in. There was no one representative speaking the voice of others, no government bureaucracy leaving space for corruption. Every voice in that church joined together, in song and in support of the same cause. And it was powerful.

Shida, my adopted brother, with dinner

Written Oct 8

Discovery of the day: Kenyan physiology

Today, I killed a chicken. It was traumatizing, terrible, wonderful, and delicious all at once, not to mention extremely educational. In fact, had I come to Kenya just a few years back, I may not have had failed physiology, and may still be miserably working my way through the pre-med track at Dartmouth. Aside from learning every minute bone and organ in the body (and the local beliefs associated with eating each one), I also learned that Americans are a) incredibly wimpy and b) incredibly cheated every time they eat pre-gutted rotisserie chicken from the store. For starters, we lose about ½ the mass of the chicken by not eating such things as the head, legs, heart, gizzard, kidneys, lungs, liver, testicles, intestines, and bones (yes…bones). We also miss out on the extremely educational benefits of learning how all of these systems work, while slurping guts out of each and every one of them. I couldn’t quite muster the nerve to gnaw the tongue out from the still-intact chicken head (although it apparently is a delicacy), but I’m certainly getting there.  Happy birthday dad, I did this one for you.

proof that i actually did it

proof that it was delicious. at least walter thought so

so did mama j

Written on October 7

Although I’ve been working at Iguhu now for nearly two weeks, it has occurred to me on multiple occasions that this experience abroad, while enlightening, has only served to further muddle my thoughts about my future. For starters, I’m the youngest of the interns working for FSD, and pitted against accomplished business professionals and college graduates with impressive sounding jobs and career goals, I look like a highschooler. When asked what I’m studying in America by my coworkers, I often find it hard to explain why I’m working in a hospital if I’m not headed to medical school (most of the time probably because I’m not entirely sure myself). In fact, I’ve spent a lot of my time up until now dabbling in different fields, throwing out a line here and there to see if I get a bite. Anyone who’s spent much time with me in college knows that my major changes about once a week (a habit I should really nip in the bud given that I’m now a Junior), and I have the tendency to make most of my decisions relatively spontaneously, based on what I feel is right at the time (also not the best tactic for long-term life planning). Although I tend to spend most of my life frolicking along and taking opportunities as they come (also known as making decisions at the last minute), it has crossed my mind that eventually I have to figure it out. Probably sooner rather than later, if I want to graduate in less than 10 years.

So, I came to Kenya. For the most part, the factors that got me here (finding FSD while writing a term paper for a development class; becoming interested in global health after randomly stumbling upon a Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health meeting last fall) were the work of my gut-feeling attitude towards decision making. I was interested in global health, needed a term away from Dartmouth, and had always longed to visit Africa thanks to an inspiring class I had taken in highschool. If I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life at home, I figured I might as well think about it while doing something useful, traveling somewhere new, and working in a field I found challenging and exciting. When it comes down to it, I think I base a lot of my life on an underlying philosophy that most things happen for a reason, and although I’m not entirely sure why I felt moved to live on a rural farm in Western Kenya this fall, I knew it was the right thing to do.

Today, I took one more little tiny baby step forward into the world by finding the PMTCT program at the hospital. Stumbling upon a PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission) meeting at the HIV ward for the hospital completely by accident, I found something that’s certainly changed my view of the hospital’s work, if not my view of health work and HIV treatment in general.  It’s hard to describe entirely (particularly without sounding like a complete fool on the internet), but it was one of those moments where something  just clicked.

The meeting itself was simple in purpose and focus—structured somewhat like an AA meeting with introductions, stories, suggestions, and support—but something about these women and their children really got to me. Here I was, a total stranger who didn’t even speak their language well enough to understand without the counselor translating for me, yet these women opened their hearts, sharing stories of optimism, thanks, and hope for the future. All of the women at the meeting were living positive. Many of the children present were also HIV+, although there were an equal number of successful PMTCT cases—healthy children whose freedom from a stigmatized future they were still too young to realize. I think what got to me the most was their faces—the histories of struggle, challenge, and triumph you could see in the lines around their eyes.

For that hour, it wasn’t really about the larger vision of HIV prevention, or the national policy on condom distribution. It wasn’t about how to make the hospital more efficient at treating more patients in less time, or how USAID is helping to make ARV distribution free for hospitals and health centers around the country. It was about those 20 women, their families, and their stories. Regardless of how many cases the hospital had to refer that day because of inadequate resources, those 20 women shared stories of hope and success, and together formed the face of progress.

Looking back, I guess you could consider today’s lesson another one of those “slow down and smell the Kenyan roses” moments where you realize that American efficiency isn’t really getting you anywhere if you go too fast. Clearly there are miles ahead on this rocky road, and even within the hospital, there are an endless number of projects to be done that could make things a little better, or make the process a little faster. But before you get too caught up in the system of change, its worth stepping back to appreciate how far we’ve come, and celebrating those baby steps when they happen.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work quite as advertised (“kills instantly”), but instead “really irritates instantly, kills soon after” causing them all to leave their dark unseen hiding spots angrily before dying dramatically belly-up in the middle of the floor. I discovered this lovely fact this morning, when I awoke to a sea of carcasses littering the floor (in reaction to last night’s decision to test out my new cockroach spray). Ick ick ick. I hate cockroaches.

*Note: I actually discovered a lot of things today, many of them pertaining to my life plan, future goals, and philosophy about the world. However all of these discoveries are much deeper and therefore require more time to digest than my relatively simple discovery about cockroaches. I’ll talk about deeper matters tomorrow.