On the Road, Once Again

Dear all,

Today I depart for my month long study on health in Coastal Kenya. I got back from my Educational Tour in Uganda and Rwanda Monday evening, and there are plenty of pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/10290870@N06/?saved=1 or at the side of the blog. They’re also on facebook. This week I have spent doing readings in preparation Independent Study Project (ISP) and writing a very interesting but taxing paper on how development influences public health and how public health influences development. The moral of my paper, I suppose, is that they are inextricably linked. Without adequate development, there can be no access to proper healthcare. Diseases such as cholera and schistosomiasis spring up without proper sanitation and potable water access. Without proper education for everyone, including girls, extreme health issues arise. Similarly, without proper health care, development couldn’t possibly occur in large part because people are too sick to get out of bed. As one of our lecturers, Professor Frank Nabwiso, PhD (a really cool man who helped with the downfall of Idi Amin and also served in parliament for five years), said, ““if the stomach doesn’t have enough food, the brain cannot work.” Similarly, if the body doesn’t have the basics of life, no kind of development can continue.

Anyways, the Uganda/Rwanda trip was absolutely incredible. We spent a gillion hours in a tiny van driving back and forth across Uganda, which was actually pretty fantastic because I managed to read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Speaking of, I highly recommend the book. Not only is it beautifully written, entertaining and enlightening, it may also give you all a good idea of what the next month will be like for me. The book is about a family of missionaries that travel to the Congo in 1959, right before independence. The village they live in has a lot of similarities to Shirazi and has a similar feel. Fantastic book.

So, I few of my biggest highlights of the trip: we stayed one night in Sipi Falls, Uganda and did the most epic hike ever. If you look at the pictures on flickr of waterfalls and rainbows, this is the one I’m talking about. It pours every day in Uganda, and it poured right before we left for this hike so we spent the entire time slipping up and down the side of a mountain. We got really sweet bamboo walking sticks, which I actually stole to bring back to America, assuming customs doesn’t mind. We hiked to the base of two separate waterfalls and stood under them, getting completely drenched. Oddly enough, I can’t think of any time I’ve felt as powerful as I did when I stood underneath that much water, pouring onto my head. It’s just such a rush. Don’t worry though, we didn’t go directly underneath, and nobody was hurt in the process. The hotel that evening was also my favorite, and you can see the amazing view in a lot of my pictures, as well as the incredible swing that made you feel like you were flying and the huge hill where we watched the sunrise and sunset with an amazing 360 degree view. For all of your viewing pleasure, I videotaped the view, which should be the first image on the flickr site.

Another really amazing experience was seeing the Nile River. I remember flying over it on my way here and being absolutely amazed that I was going to someplace I had only read about in my history books and seen in National Geographic, but that day I stood there where the White Nile begins, where it intersects with Lake Victoria. The Nile was pretty green and really did seem grand enough to be the basis of life in Ancient Egypt. I tried to imagine myself at that point thousands of years ago, and it ended up feeling pretty much the same except minus all the vendors trying to sell to tourists and the giant monument saying that some of Ghandi’s ashes has been scattered there.

Those were my biggest highlights from Uganda. We did a lot of educational stuff too, which was good because it was primarily development. It managed to fill in a lot of my gaps of knowledge, since I’ve been so focused on health this semester. Both Uganda and Rwanda are gorgeous countries, far greener than Kenya. I found the biggest difference in the two countries in terms of scenery is that Uganda is more uninhibited green, whereas in Rwanda every single inch of land is agriculture, growing coffee or tee or bananas. We actually only spend 24 hours in Rwanda, but we had enough time to visit the Genocide Memorial Museum in Kigali, the capital, and talk to the second in command of the Peace Corps in Rwanda, which just returned in the last few years after the genocide.

My emotional and academic highlight of the trip was in Rwanda. The day we arrived we visited a church that had been a major genocide site, where Tutsis had been hiding from the Hutus so when the Hutus arrived they murdered 6,000 people. Most incredibly, our tour guide was one of the six survivors from the massacre there. This young man of only 24 years solemnly walked us over to a little hole in the wall that had been his hiding place. He explained that his brother had put his head on the hole, covered him with blood, and told him to stay still. His brother went to check on another child and never returned. The boy did not move for two days, and after two days he adjusted his position slightly for another day. After that he and 15 others who had survived fled to a sewer, where they hid for many more days. Only six made it out of there. The government had asked him to come share his story, and he said some days telling the story brought him to tears and other days he was just telling somebody else’s story. He took us through the church memorial, which held hundreds of skulls and bones that had been found at the church. Walking through the tiny corridor surrounded by the skulls of people who had been brutally murdered just fifteen years before was a chilling experience I will never forget.

So I leave today back for Shirazi. The more I read the more I get interested in ideas of disease causation and mother’s medicine, the healthcare done at home and passed down through generations. I’m really excited and mildly terrified to get started, but I know it will work out in the end. There’s no Internet there, but I should be going to Mombasa on weekends and will check email there. I promise to post!

Missing you all,
Alix

Back from Shirazi part deux, off to Uganda

hello all,

I've just gotten back from my ISP prep in Shirazi and am leaving in two days for my trip to Uganda. During my brief time in Nairobi, I've been working on my ISP proposal and crazily trying to figure out classes and housing before I disappear into the mostly uninterneted world. Check out the flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/10290870@N06/?saved=1) or at the side of the blog for pictures. In addition to the flickr, I'll put the few most hilarious pictures right in here:


This is actually from the first trip to Shirazi, on Eid. You aren't allowed to wear makeup during Ramadan, hence the intensive eye makeup put on me in this picture. Also, I was dressed very classily. I'm working on learning to carry water on my head, but it is EXTREMELY difficult.


This picture is hilarious because it's so indicative of my interactions with babies in Shirazi. She was put on my lap and immediately started screaming.

Check out the other ones on flickr.

Overall, it was an extremely productive trip to Shirazi. My friend Melanie and I had quite an adventure trying to get to this extremely rural location by ourselves, and the whole experience involved a bus, a tuk tuk (tiny motorcycles that are mini cabs), hotel stay, tuk tuk, ferry, matatu, matatu. It was mildly insane, but certainly an excellent adventure. I made a friend on the matatu who helped us to avoid getting scammed, and thus we were able to get real prices rather than wazungu prices.

Over the course of just two and a half days in Shirazi, I walked to and from Bodo (the nearest town and a forty minute walk) twice and make an extremely overcomplicated map that will surely help me get lost when I come back. I learned how to weave and make roof thatch out of coconut palm leaves, and helped to dig a well with a pickaxe with my hilarious host grandfather (a large man wearing a Muslim keepah and a cut off muscle Garth Brooks tour t-shirt). I was also promised to learn how to fish with a spear gun, which I'm now even more excited about then actually doing my study on traditional medicine in the area.

I also had the opportunity to go to a funeral. The local councilwomen's mother died, so me, Melanie, and our 17 and 20 year old mamas trecked back to Bodo for the event. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there and it was gorgeous because all the women were sitting together with different brightly colored khangas. I wanted so badly to take a picture, but it didn't quite seem appropriate. The women sat while the men prayed, and our mamas dared us to go in and see the body even though they were too afraid to see it themselves. That was interesting experience, as there's no body viewing in Jewish funerals. As they removed the body for burial, the women inside screamed and wailed like I had never heard before. It was a very educational experience. We also visited the nearest hospital, Msambweni (pronounced mm-sahm-bway-nee), to visit a very distantly related relative who is going through breast cancer.

That's pretty much it. Sunday I head for Uganda and Rwanda on an educational tour, and after that I'm just three days until I disappear for my ISP! I miss you all.

Alix

Off I go again

Sorry for the lack of posting, my dear readers, but this has been a really uneventful few weeks. Last week we had the entirety of our in-class development, health, and society lectures all squeezed into 3.5 days and the end of our intensive Swahili classes. This week we had our Swahili test and a bunch of written assignments due, thus reminding me that I'm here for real classes and not just the experiential learning. Of course, now it's over. I would say the best summing up of my Health lectures is that there are a lot of health problems here and although the government has tried to do a lot of reforms, they basically haven't worked for various reasons including corruption and extreme miscommunication.

Tomorrow I'm headed back to Shirazi in order to prepare for my month there in November. Part of my program is a month long Independent Study Project (ISP) where we take all of our in-class and experiential learning out into the field to study something and use our Swahili. I've decided to head back to Shirazi, the little village I fell in love with, to study the interaction between traditional medicine and Western medicine. When I was there before, we were split into groups to study different aspects of the village and I was in the traditional medicine group. When I was there, I found that the local traditional medicine consisted a lot of herb manipulation, but more interestingly, the idea of the djinn. Most of the coast of Kenya is Muslim, and in the Qu'ran there is the idea of the djinn. Allah made three types of beings: the people of the earth (us), the people of the air (angels), and the people of the fire (the djinn). According to the Qu'ran and Shirazi culture, there are good djinn and bad djinn and the bad djinn are the cause of a lot of diseases. For some reason they decide you have done them wrong and they sort of take over and cause these illnesses. Much of the traditional medicine in Shirazi and the surrounding area involves certain spiritual people using the good djinn to fight off the bad djinn and cure you.

For my month in Shirazi, I'm going to study the interaction of traditional medicine and Western medicine by going around and talking to the villagers of Shirazi and Bodo, the next town over, to get an idea where their faith and confidence lies. There is a Western clinic in Bodo, and I'm going to spend some time volunteering there as well. I'll be doing a lot of sorting of drugs and doing blood pressures. Very exciting!

So anyways, tomorrow I head back to Shirazi to figure out my living arrangements, translator information, transport, etc. Plus I'm going to get to see a wedding! Very exciting. When I come back, I'll be back in Nairobi for just a few days and then I head to Uganda and Rwanda for an educational tour.

Miss you all!

Alix

My Heart Remains in Shirazi

Right now I am sitting in an internet cafe in Mombasa, the oldest city in East Africa. We're been in Mombasa for about five days now after spending 9 days in the tiny coastal village of Shirazi, and unfortunately we leave tomorrow. Mombasa is a beautiful city, much nicer and cleaner than Nairobi. It is right on the ocean, so I get swimming time almost every day, and the people are even friendlier than they are in Nairobi (which is both a positive and negative).

I'll try to upload my pictures in Nairobi, as I'm not sure that my words can fully describe my experience in Shirazi. The village consists of about 200 people, and is what many of the people here in Mombasa have described as "bush." That description isn't a compliment, but I completely fell in love with the place. The houses are made of sticks and mud and thatched with palm leaves. There are palm trees and mango trees everywhere (fortunately for me mangos are out of season right now) and so everything we ate in Shirazi was bathed in coconut milk. We had coconut rice, coconut rice bread, coconut chicken, and more, but the coconut was also used for cleaning and candle making and oils and pretty much anything else you could think of. The kitchen was outside, as was the bathroom and the shower, which gave me full view of the palm trees, monkeys, and stars whenever I wanted. Our classroom was outside as well, so I was lucky enough to spend my entire 9 days outside.

To chose our homestay parents, the village got together and nominated families that had the means and warmth to let in college students. I had an interesting family who I was really apprehensive about at first but soon fell completely in love with. I lived with my baba (father), 24 years old and worked at the sugar cane fields nearby, my mama, 17 years old, and Halima, my two year old little sister. Most children under the age of 2.5 here are terrified of Wazungu, and my little sister was no exception. For the first 6 days we lived together, she would cry every time she was put near me. We have a few theories as to why that fear exists, and it's either because the only Wazungu they've seen have been doctors so they think we're going to give them shots or they think we're skinless.

At first, I was really weirded out by the fact that my parents were so young, especially that my mom was younger than me, but it ended up forming a really unique relationship. I was basically a child in Shirazi, as I couldn't do anything that qualifies me as a woman like cook or clean, so my mama was still my mama, even though she was born in 1992. My parents were adults in Shirazi society, but they were still sooo young. It was interesting to watch them straddle the child/adult boundary by cooking dinner for the family or coming home from work and playing around with the other kids who were so close to their age.

Even though I wasn't married (according to their cultural age laws I should have 2 or 3 kids already), I was still of marrying age and so I had to keep my head covered whenever I left the house. In the tiny Muslim village, the standards of dress were different than anything I've ever experienced. Every day we wore khangas or mumus, which are basically big rectangle fabric sheets that are used for all forms of clothing: dresses, skirts, tops, baby slings, head scarves, and more. We bought some khangas before we went to Shirazi, but every day the women of Shirazi dressed us students like dolls. After showering (bucket showers and boiled water), mama would knock on my door and pass me a new khanga set and scarf or mumu or dress. All of the SIT students would get together and laugh about our ridiculous outfits, but we never complained, mostly because we don't know enough Swahili to do so.

I completely fell in love with the village, and especially my family (which actually included about half of the village). They took me in with such open arms, especially the women of the village. My mama and two grandmas and aunts and cousins took me in as one of them without any questions. I've never felt so much a part of a community of women like that. I met them and immediately I was a part of their family, and I really felt at home there. I think I'll be going back for my Independent Study Project (ISP) in November, so fortunately I will be able to be a part of that community again. I'm really interested in studying traditional medicine and working in the nearby clinic.

Part of the reason that I fell in love with Shirazi was because of the simplicity of it all. I could spend all of my time outside with people who loved me, and that was all I needed. I've grown up in the west and known choices and extravagance, something these people have never known. I wondered why anyone would need more than this incredible place, these simple lives. I struggled with why the other SIT students talked about development and building up the village, as the villagers seemed so content with their lives. I wanted to give my little sister a gift, so I asked one of the directors who was coming from Mombasa to bring a doll. He brought this bizarre bird in a cage that moves and sings when you clap. I thought it was stupid and my little sister would like it, but she was completely fascinated by it. Even more than my sister, my mama and baba loved it, and I realized that they were so interested because it used batteries and moved on its own, but also because it was completely useless. They didn't own anything that was useless.

Spending the high holy days in Kenya was really wonderful too. In Shirazi, I got to share Rosh Hashanah with my family, explaining the significance of the apples and honey in very broken Swahili to 20 the kids and adults who crowded around. In Mombasa, me and a fellow SITer magically found challah at a small bakery and did Tashlikh, a tradition where you throw bread into the water as you cast away your sins. Rosh Hashanah was on the same day as Eid, which was a huge celebration in Shirazi. Eid marks the end of Ramadan, and so the villagers were thrilled to slighter a cow and a chicken for a full village feast. We all get specially ridiculous clothes and feasted on fried treats for days.

This was a really long post and kind of fragmented because there were so many incredible things I experienced there, but hopefully the upcoming pictures will help smooth things out a bit.

Just a Few Pictures Before I Go

Meet my adorable family! You may notice that there is one thing that is not like the other... But anyways from left to right: Scovia (the house help), Isabella, Mama, Chris, and me. Vanessa is at boarding school and thus not pictured.

I have a million other pictures of my host family, as the kids love taking pictures of themselves and videos of me studying, but the internet is being far too slow and it's almost dark so I really need to leave the internet cafe.

Just a Trip to the Coast

Hello my blog readers,

It's been quite some time since I've had the internet to post, and unfortunately this will be my last for quite some time again. On Wednesday we leave for a few days in Mombasa, on the coast, and then ten days in Shirazi, a tiny village nearby. Shirazi is a pretty isolated Muslim village where they don't speak any English and have never seen Wazungu before. I'm really excited for that experience, as I know that my Swahili will get so much better when I'm forced to speak it that consistently. We’re going to continue having intensive Swahili every morning and then our afternoons will be basically free to go to the beach and swim in the ocean, but also to do a group assignment. I’m in a group that is supposed to study traditional medicine there, which will be very difficult to do only in Swahili but I’m pumped about it. It will be really good training for our Independent Student Project (ISP), which is the last month that I’m in the country and off studying something on my own.

Since I last posted, I’ve had quite a few interesting experiences here in Kenya. Last night, I went out to a Kenyan night club which was really fun. We went to one and there were way too many Wazungus there so we left for another one to find some Africans. This morning I went to church with my host family. They’re Pentecostalists, and it was one of the most engaging and enjoyable services I’ve been to. There was so much joy and singing and praying despite the fact that so many of them are so destitute. I’ve had some pretty ridiculous attempts at bargaining in the local markets. Unfortunately, that is something I still really need to work on, though I’ll probably always get Mzungu prices which are far higher than they should be.

Swahili in the morning has been fantastic, and we’ve been spending our afternoons either prepping for our village homestay or having lectures or going on trips. This week we’ve visited a bunch of really amazing NGOs that are doing really incredible things for the country. It’s been strange to realize that there doesn’t seem to be too much I can do here in a service sense. It is so important that the aid comes from within, from other Kenyans or at least other Africans, that I’ve really been struggling to find a positive way that I can help other than just sending money from the States. On Thursday we went to see WOFAK, Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya, which really enlightened me to this fact. The organization was started actually started in Kenya (a rarity amongst this kind of organization) and it provides support to women and children affected by AIDS. We actually got to go with a few of the social workers into a slum to see the work that we do. We split into small groups to visit families, and we went to this tiny little household in Koyole, a one room concrete house crammed with two beds and a tiny stove. There were four children and the mother was nowhere to be found, the eight-year-old daughter raising the twin two-year-old girls. When WOFAK arrived the twins weren’t even walking yet. The WOFAK women, all Kenyan, come in every day to bring food and care for the children, who are under consideration for being taken away from the mother for a while. When the WOFAK women arrived, the children were so happy, but reacted so differently towards us Wazungu. All of the children look at us differently. They all stare at us when we walk by and just see us as good luck cash machines, so it provides a very strange role. It’s something I’m struggling with, trying to see myself from their eyes.

But things are generally so wonderful here! I basically only have to worry about Swahili, although I do have a paper due tomorrow that I’m currently avoiding by blogging to you fine people, and get excited for the next few weeks on the coast. I hope everything is wonderful back in the states, because I miss you all! And I'll unfortunately be missing the High Holy Days, though there is a synagogue here in a Nairobi, so Shana Tovah and and an easy fast. I'll be celebrating in my own way in the village, Rosh Hashanah is the same day as Eid though, very exciting! And I'll be fasting for Yom Kippur.

Back around the 3rd of October,

Alix

PS - some pictures for your enjoyment that I stole from other people:

Homestay Excitement and Kibera Slums

Hello all,

I’ve had no internet for quite some time, so there is a lot to tell. The most important part is that we moved into our homestays on Saturday, and my family is wonderful! I was a little wrong about the information before. I do have three little siblings, but I have two sisters and one brother. Vanessa, 15, is really sweet and outspoken, but unfortunately she had to go to boarding school yesterday. Most of the schools in the area are boarding schools, and even though her school is less than half a mile from our apartment we still wont see her at all. She has a weekend home in October and a visiting day at some point, but she is so close and so far. She was so sweet to have taken me in as a sister immediately. She gave me a little stuffed animal of Winnie the Pooh in a Tigger outfit which her mom gave to her. I tried to say no, she should take it, but she said it went from mother to daughter to sister. Chris, 13, is a cards whiz. I brought them a deck of cards from Washington DC and we’ve been playing nonstop. He said I’m the first person to have ever beat him at split. I’ve also taught them how to shuffle Conset style, which they’ve gotten really excited about. Finally I have Isabella, 10, who is so sweet and observant! They’re undoubtedly fascinated by me because of my white skin and American background, and she noticed immediately that I was left handed. She’s quiet but them more I’m around she comes out of her shell.

In addition to the kids, there is also Mama Carole, who is so sweet and has taken me in so soon! She does work for the UN as an Administrative Assistant in the Environment Department, helping to organize the big conference in Copenhagen. There is also a house keeper, who so far I have a confusing and undetermined relationship with.

There are intense water shortages here, and the water runs the electricity so there have been intense rationings. The water is turned on from Wednesday to Saturday and the power is turned off Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 6 AM to 6 PM. They leave the tap on all day when they’re there and run when the water turns on to collect the water into big dubs. They then boil the water for “showers” in the mornings. I kind of enjoy it, actually. Other than that, we’ve been playing a lot of cards and watching bad TV. I watched “So You Think You Can Dance” for the first time here, as well as a ridiculous English dubbed Spanish soap opera. I was also lucky enough to watch Cinderella 2 and the Little Mermaid 2, which the kids love.

Today we had our first full day of classes, with three intense hours of Kiswahili in the morning and then in the afternoon we had a Society lecture by way of Carolina for Kibera. Kibera is the big slum in Kenya, the biggest in Africa and the second largest in the world. We had a discussion and then asked a lot of questions, and then we walked through the slums to get to the clinic. It was one of the most intense experiences I’ve had, though I haven’t yet had the chance to fully process it. We walked through the slum, as no car could get through, and walked past shacks with tin roofs and children repeating in a chorus “How are you! How are you”” as that’s the only English they know. The paths were covered in trash and what smelled like human waste. They’re known to have “flying toilets” there, where you go to the bathroom in a bag and let it fly. The kids were sweet and very excited to see Wazungu (basically Gringos), but most of them were filthy. Running in the middle of the streets we mini water paths, I suppose for some kind of irrigation, that looked like they may have been covered in human waste. It was hard to walk through there, but when we got to Carolina for Kibera, we were happy to see such a diamond in the rough. They offer completely free healthcare for local residents. It was an area that most Westerners got to see, and I was glad to have experienced it. I’m not sure I could have handled it for more than that hour, though.

Overall, I’m having a wonderful time. My family is incredibly sweet and loving, the other students are great, and I’m learning Swahili quickly. By the end of the next class, I’ll probably know more Swahili than I’d learned in the six years of French I took. My internet time is sparse, hence the rarity in posts and emails, but I think it will pick up as things get a little more regular.

Miss you all! Lalaa Salama (good night!)

Alix