Wild West Part 2

Waking was about as gentle as falling asleep in Sabatia. Rihanna pumped out of the house several doors down and the water pump pumped even louder from right outside our door. We emerged from our room around 7:15 to find Angelina on all fours scrubbing away at the floor before moving outside and scrubbing the area around the door. You see the saying ’Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ a lot around Kenya and they really mean it. Aggressive scrubbing of the whole house and outside happens EVERY morning. Even at the Nairobi office everyone spends the first hour cleaning. There is a lot of dust, but really…

Teacher Carole at the water pump outside our front door

 Our time in Sabatia began with meeting SMAK staff and students and hearing about their various (and many) challenges. Nearly all of the challenges have their roots in lack of finance; Girls unable to pay fees, no money for practice material, girls can’t afford lunch or transport costs and so walk long distances to class and go hungry all day, lack of child care options mean babies are brought to class or mothers have to leave early to pick up children from school… the list goes on. Despite these challenges the students are hard working and their teacher Carole tells us they are, ’So good, they are all SO good’.

On our second day we met two women’s groups in the local area.  Both times our arrival was met with singing and dancing and smiles, making us feel very welcome, and expectant faces, which made us feel more than a little inadequate. In the morning we sat sheltered by a tree in a garden and heard about Maelendeleo ya Wanwake women’s group who take it in turns to visit orphans and offer assistance where they can. They each contribute a little money every month to help people in the community and expressed a strong desire to be trained to care for the bed ridden HIV positive, to learn more about the disease and how to manage it. Hopefully at some point in the future SMAK will be able to hold workshops for affiliated groups such as these where two or three members can come for training which can then be shared with the rest of the group.

Receiving eggs from  Maelendeleo ya Wanwake   

The second meeting in the afternoon was held at the home of one of the women in Shiyiro women’s group. Again we were met outside by singing and dancing before sitting inside in the shade around a low table with around twelve group members, and Grace and Elizabeth. Most of these ladies were older and on first impressions I thought their activities would be similar to the first group, with them doing what they can for the community. What we found though, as we listened and Elizabeth translated, was that nearly all of the elderly women were the sole carers of their grandchildren, orphaned as a result of AIDS or accidental deaths. The more we heard the harder the stories of a lost generation became to listen to. Afterwards, back out in the sunshine, all I could hear was Elizabeth’s voice saying over and over ‘….but her son died… her daughter died…all of her children died leaving her with six grandchildren and no income… her children are all dead…’

Shiyiro women with one of the ladies' cows which were given by the Ministry of Agriculture to help the women sustain an income

Shiyiro women support one another and their families through necessity. They either help to provide for their orphaned grandchildren or the young widows in the group. When a woman’s husband dies, often the brother of the husband will ‘inherit’ her, her children and her home. Either that or the family of the husband will just take the house, leaving her with nothing. The group then assists the woman and her children in building a new home. By and large, the women discourage widows from allowing themselves to be inherited, as often they end up caring for their new husbands’ other children as well as their own. It is common for men in this area to have several wives. In fact the house we were visiting was next door to the home of the husband’s second wife. When I asked  don’t the men feel guilty about taking so much and contributing so little, I was met with hoots of laughter and looks of disbelief.

The rest of our time in the West was spent being introduced to everyone everyone knew. We were plonked in front of a school to tell them about our country (questions included, ‘What is your cash crop? Who was the first president of Scotland? How often do you have elections?’ we got stuck at some of the hard ones) We visited Grace’s family farm by way of motorbike (piki piki); Angelina and I shared one and we definitely struggled uphill… And we were taken to a local polytechnic and CDF office.

Up in the hills near Grace's farm

Before heading back to Nairobi, we spend one night with Angelina’s 93 year old mother in her rural home with no electricity, a huge, productive garden, a cow and a roof so full of honey from her bees that it was seeping through the ceiling. Before it got dark and we were forced to an early bed, we had a nice relax in her garden soaking up the fresh air and admiring the photos of her 15 children and huge extended family bordering her living room. The walls were also covered with her own certificates. She seems to have done every course she’s ever come across and apparently STILL attends various training sessions even today. A bit of an incredible woman.

Outside Angelina's mother's house

A change from traffic jams in Nairobi

A 5am start the next morning and half hour walk to the bus in the pitch black along the dirt road brought our time in the wild west to an end. We gladly returned home to Ruth and her chapattis and tea on Friday evening laden with fresh fruit and vegetables given to us by each group we had visited in the West and brought back to keep us going for at least a week.

Wild Western - Part 1

On the evening of Saturday 12th March, four grenades were thrown out of a car window towards Machakos Country Bus Station in Nairobi, around an hour and a half after we had driven past the station on our way home from town. At least six people were killed and many injured. The next morning we got up unnaturally early for a Sunday and went to catch a bus to Western Kenya from the scene of the attack. Machakos is a busy, chaotic bus station and even at 6am on Sunday morning it was hectic and intimidating, with men rushing to carry our bags to the bus for a payment. Angelina let a couple of guys help us and we noticed one had a bandaged finger, which he told us was injured as a result of the blast the previous night. She questioned him about it for a while in Swahili before loudly shouting at them in English, ‘No! You can’t afford them! My girls are TOO EXPENSIVE FOR YOU!!’ At which point the men got off the bus laughing. Thanks Angie…

So after seven weeks in Nairobi and given the events of the previous night, I was very excited to be getting out of the city. This made around the first hour of the eight hour bus journey bearable. The heat didn’t help and we were NOT amused when after three hours the bus pulled up at a lay by in the middle of nowhere and Angelina informed us this was the toilet stop. We thought she was kidding until everyone started piling off the bus with men going in one direction and women and children the other, heading off into the bushes. At some point in the middle of the journey a man got on, stood at the front of the bus and loudly tried to sell some dodgy health supplements to everyone on board and wouldn’t get off for MILES. The last few hours were the worst as the road surface deteriorated, it was HOT and people kept getting on and sitting next to us with their flapping, clucking chickens.

Anyway, after all of this we finally arrived in Sabatia, a tiny market town in Western Kenya. SMAK has a tailoring project there which was begun at the start of this year and we were staying in a room behind the workshop, in a row of other small homes. We quickly realised it was going to be a week fully free of luxury. Kimberley and I topped and tailed a single bed and Angelina slept on a sofa in the living room. Water was from the pump outside, the toilet was drop style and the shower was a bucket of cold water. All cooking was done on a little jiko outside. We were made to feel very welcome by Grace, the Project Manager, Carol, the young tailoring teacher and Elizabeth who volunteers and helps with the project. So on Sunday evening we ate, had a little explore, chatted and went off to our cosy sleeping arrangement to the rural sounds of loud thumping music played by all of our neighbours.

Carole, tailoring teacher

Elizabeth

Grace, Manager

International Women's Day

I wasn’t going to post again until after our trip next week but I don’t want to forget to mention today! We really weren’t looking forward to Women’s Day that much as we didn’t actually start planning until Monday, sent invitations on Tuesday and came up with the programme yesterday afternoon without being sure if anyone (including entertainment) would actually show up. To top it off, seeing as Kimberley and I were the ones to insist we serve some kinds of refreshments we ended up being responsible for preparing snacks for anything between 5 - 150 people.
As a result, we bought ingredients on the way home from work last night, got stuck in a traffic jam, arrived home at seven and Ruth informed us we needed charcoal as mandazis are cooked outside on a jiko, went to buy charcoal and sat outside until almost midnight frying mandazis over a smoky jiko. Poor Ruth had to help us, seeing as we clearly had no idea what to do and would have been there all night. We didn’t count but we DEFINITELY made over 500. And ate roughly 30 each during the process…

Late night mandazi cooking

So this morning when we left the house just after seven with our mandazi’s and juice we were not feeling awfully optimistic. The event was advertised as starting at 8:30am so that people would come and we could begin by 9.00am. At 10:15am only one speaker had arrived and none of the entertainment, and Angelina the director had gone off to be interviewed by a local radio station. Thankfully DECEMAC (Development Centre for Marginalised Children) arrived and sang some songs to keep those who had come on time entertained, and somehow the rest of the event ran almost smoothly!

Boys from the dance group

Children from DECEMAC performed songs, various women spoke about their work with women and families and other issues (a lot of it was in Swahili) and a couple of boys from SMAK’s Chipukizi talent group danced. Hopefully at a later date I will be able to post a poem written and performed by a girl called Phranter, from DECEMAC about what it is to be a girl and for life to be hard but to still believe that you are great. She performed it so well and I really hope she’ll come back to talk to us and show us the poem written down.

Phranter performing her poem

The other stand out performance was by the Gender Based Violence group who performed a drama which I think they only prepared yesterday! It was on the issue of husband beating, which has been all over the news in Kenya in the past few weeks. One of the ladies played the part of the man. It was all in Swahili but I think the general gist was that the man came home to his wife drunk, hanging around with another woman, and then there was a hilarious fight scene which involved the ladies actually rolling around the dusty ground hitting each other.

Fight scene in the Gender Based Group's drama!

After the programme finished various people took turns to speak and then right at the end Angelina arrived just in time to say a vote of thanks before everyone enjoyed our mandezi and juice (at least there wasn’t any remaining when the guests left). I think everyone enjoyed  the day- various women from the Ministry of Agriculture who had visited before to demonstrate juice/yogurt making etc came back to join in and new connections were made with various local groups.

Angelina speaking to the group

To top it off we were allowed to leave early and so walked into town on our own for late lunch without getting lost or mugged despite everyone warning us as we were walking out the gate, ‘BE CAREFUL IT’S VERY DANGEROUS PEOPLE WILL SLASH YOUR BAGS AND SLICE YOUR ARMS OFF TAKE YOUR NECKLACE OFF SOMEONE WILL STEAL IT DON’T GET RUN OVER’ etc.
Successful day in Nairobi.

Chapattis

The disadvantage of being on my own in Nairobi is that it’s not that safe to travel around on my own, especially at night. So up until now I haven’t really done an awful lot (anything) past dark because it’s such a hassle getting home. Which is why this week has been a big improvement with the arrival of another volunteer. Kimberley arrived on Monday and is staying in the same house and working at SMAK too. So the past few days I haven’t been relying on other people chaperoning me around the place. I’ve supposedly been chaperoning Kimberley. Hmm. The first day we got a matatu by ourselves it changed route and I got off at the wrong stop. The second day it stopped for a long time while the driver fixed something. The third day it started making a crazy noise and the driver lifted up the front seats to reveal the engine making a racket sounding very dodgy indeed. We eventually had to get out and waited over half an hour for another matatu. Usually the journey is uneventful and if anything out of sorts happens Sophy demands to know what’s going on and sorts things out. But we got home safe on our own each time regardless!

My Nairobi social life has come on leaps and bounds in a short time and I spent neither Friday nor Saturday evening sat at home in Buruburu for a change. We had dinner in town on Friday and on Saturday met up with some other volunteers and spend the afternoon and evening with them. At the last minute we found ourselves at the French Cultural Centre (Alliance Francais) for a concert by an Italian singer who was born in Mogadishu, has an Ethiopian mother and an Italian father. She was a bit like an older, African, not-as-good Shakira. And she talked a bit much. But it was fun to see some live music! Afterwards we went for some Ethiopian food, which was very good. And we met some new people. Successful Saturday! (Although we were still home before midnight)

Today we were VERY good girls and stayed at home and made a billion chapattis. Ruth offered to show us how to make them and taught us how to roll up the dough and divide the mixture and fry them. We then discovered she’d made more dough than usual and went off to do other chores while we sat in the kitchen for HOURS rolling out and cooking a total of around 60 chapattis on a little charcoal jiko cooker on the floor. Afterwards we went outside to catch the sunshine but realised we’d missed the whole afternoon flipping African pancakes inside. Oh well, now we’re chapatti experts so it all balances out.

Enthusiasm for learning

Getting a bit tired 30 chapattis in

 Amongst other bits and pieces I’ve been working on I’ve made a couple of blog sites for SMAK. One for SMAK itself and the other for Ibrahim, resident bead expert. (Click here and here to have a look) They’re both a work in progress. Last week we also went to the National AIDS Control Council (NACC) open forum meeting. There were a lot of people present from a wide range of organisations working in various ways to support those affected by HIV/AIDS. The meeting was long. Not helped by the introduction which involved EVERY single person in the room introducing themselves to the room, including us. And there were well over 100 people there. The aim of the meeting was to involve some of the participants in planning the next few years of action against AIDS in Kenya, so hopefully something good will come of it.

Next weekend we are finally leaving Nairobi to visit some girls in a small Eastern town and then we are off to the rural West for a few days straight after. So I should have something interesting to say in the next post!