Pictures

Kadogo! Her name means "small", and that she is. She lives next door to me in Kiboswa. She comes over every morning and colors with crayons that I brought.

Erastus in one of his strange picture poses.

Me with a cool goat--mohawk and long bead--and some Nyahera girls during field interviews.

Sarah Hussein Anyango Obama

One major plus to my Independent Study research is its proximity to Alego, a small village in the region Siaya, home to Barack Obama’s grandmother, Sarah Hussein Anyango Obama. Just this last weekend, two students studying in Kisumu town, my buddy Jon (studying Luo politics in Nairobi), and I were lucky enough to spend 3 days in Siaya and visit this lovely lady.

On Saturday, we arrived in Alego via car from Simenya, the tiny village where we stayed with Samm, our homestay coordinator in Nairobi, at his rural home. As we pulled up the driveway, heading completely unannounced to the home of the grandmother of one of the states’ most prominent politicians (I’m thinking you probably couldn’t do this for any grandmother of a US politician living within our borders), Sarah (age 85) was hard at work in her shamba, where the family plants beans and corn. She dropped her hoe and headed over to her small, humble home, barefoot and sweating, to welcome the four of us wazungu students.

We spoke with Barack Obama’s grandmother for 2 hours. She talked about the Senator’s visits back to his homeland, where he has helped to bury his mother and even build himself a small hut, his quest to discover more about his Luo father, Hussein Obama, and his prospects of becoming president of the US. Sarah was a little “hush-hush” about political issues, as she’s apparently been misquoted by some prominent American sources in the past. I laughed aloud when I thought about the idea of this 85-year-old Kenyan woman, who has spent her entire life working hard in rural Kenya, strolling through the White House while visiting her (maybe) President grandson. Crazy to think about. It was nice to hear that Barack is true to his roots, recognizing that Kenya is his real home, and it’s nice to think that, should he succeed in winning the Presidency, help will maybe proceed to this country in dire need. Can’t say I’ve made up my mind who I will vote for come Primaries or November ’08, but I also don’t think I’ll be able to say I’ve spoken with Hillary’s or Edwards’ grandmothers. A cool connection, for sure.

Pictures from ISP

Just a couple at a time, I guess. Me cooking some ugali and my favorite interview thus far, 3 young mothers and a grandmother. Plus kids.

ISP Happenings

Sorry for the lack of updates, not a whole lotta internet in the village. Things are great (especially research-wise) and interesting (both research and my living situation).

The living situation…I’m staying in Kiboswa, a tiny market community just down the “main road” running through the area from central Nyahera. Kiboswa is pretty classic Kenya. Commerce and, well, basically life, revolves around the two days per week considered “market days”, where hundreds of old women bring their produce or crafts and sit in the hot sun all day to make a few schillings. There are some rowdy rural pubs, a couple of Coke kiosks, and a few salons (I think my hair is reaching cornrow length now…uh oh…) also. It’s a fun little place.

I’m staying with my host brother named Erastus Otieno. He’s 22, lives solo in the compound where he grew up (the rest of the family has moved to downtown Kisumu recently), and teaches at a nearby primary school. Living solo, I think, has made Erastus a wee bit excited to be hosting me, his first American friend. Although it’s great to be appreciated and have somebody excited to host me, sometimes the excitement gets a little bit out of control. We have some strange photo shoots, per Era’s request, attempts to hold hands on the way to the market or the matatu stop is not an uncommon event, and there are some near-tears conversations when I explain that I’m leaving for a little bit (like last weekend, or tonight…I’m downtown staying with some friends). When I first arrived, Era showed me to the room we’d be sharing…a little nook with a less-than-twin-sized bed that we’d be sharing. I kinda put my foot down on that one and bought my own mattress for less than $10 at the market. Not a whole lot of independence is tolerated…Era won’t allow me to get my own rain water for a bath, won’t let me boil my own drinking water, and won’t let me do my own laundry. A nice guy, for sure, but I wish there was a little more space and understanding that I’m a capable dude…

Otherwise, though, the homestay is the straight-up rural experience I was looking for in this ISP. We live on a little plot of land with Granny Otieno, a solid 80-years-of-age and permanently bent into a right angle from years of hard work cultivating crops. She’s great, highly amused when I pull out a little Kiswahili greeting and always looking cute in her white robe and the hat she wears for her church. Also with us on our plot are Beatrice and Ayub, parents of 6-year-old Kadogo (“small”), who is absolutely tiny for her age, 2-year-old Isaac (petrified of me), and a baby whose name I don’t know. Kodogo usually comes and joins me when I’m reading in the mornings, and I set her up with some crayons and paper to draw. I bathe with and drink rainwater, collected with intricate gutter contraptions leading into huge pails. So far, no diseases, and it tastes pretty darn fresh.

For some reason Erastus wakes up at about 5:30 am, blasts the battery-powered radio, and stays in bed…I have no idea why. I struggle to sleep a little longer through the never-ending cycle of Justin Timberlake, Akon, and Beyonce, and usually get out of bed by about 6:30. I go for a short jog, looking out over a beautiful sunrise and Lake Kisumu, then return for a breakfast of bread and butter and dissolvable coffee in a hot milk/water mix. Milk comes from the cows kept on our land. Erastus leaves for school around 7:15 (usually a pretty emotional goodbye, just for a day), and I stick around and read for a while. I take a bath with rainwater in our cement bath compartment, then I head for Nyahera Hospital.

So far, the Hospital has not been a major contributor to my research. The Hospital staff is very hospitable, and I often find myself riding the matatu with many of them in the morning. They’ve set me up with my own little “office”, a family-planning room right next to the main consultation room, and I (sometimes) get to interview mothers of young children of babies suffering from malaria. Overall, though, the Hospital is not very busy (I guess that’s a good thing, or maybe bad, if people don’t have access), and I interview maybe 2-3 mothers per morning there. It’s been a good chance to catch up on some reading, though. I’ve been lacking in that department over the last few years/my entire life (love you, Mom). I’ve asked if there’s any way I can volunteer and do a little work to help out around the hospital, but so far that’s been unfruitful. Soon, I hope to interview the lead nurses/doctors there, which should be a pretty valuable contribution to the ol’ project.

Afternoons in Nyahera are awesome for research. I meet up with Becky, Erastus’s sister and a English-ly fluent 19-year-old who lives in Kisumu town. Becky and I trek through back roads of Nyahera surrounding the Hospital (the village is pretty huge), stopping at homes which strike us as welcoming to ask some questions. My interviews center on malaria and now water-borne diseases, which I found are a major problem in Nyahera shortly after entering my homestay here. Families are awesome, usually welcoming me into their homes excitedly and with open arms, and it’s great to sit down and talk with such a great range of Luo personalities each day. Sometimes we’re offered food (some ugali, sardines, and green vegetables) or some chai, and my interviews usually last for about a half hour with Becky’s trusty translations. I’ve got a good amount of interesting data already, through approximately 30 interviews conducted at both the Hospital and in the field…

Malaria occurs atleast 1/month among young children in the families here
About 50% of families use insecticide-treated mosquito nets for their young children
Many people don’t understand the cause of malaria, mosquitoes, and simply attribute the constant sickness their children confront to “cold temperatures”—cold here, mind you, starts at maybe 80 degrees Fahrenheit
A woman living in rural Kenya referred to the “dot com generation”. There’s no internet within miles of her home.
The Hospital should be distributing nets for free, but instead charges 50 Kenyan Schillings (maybe 80 cents), or the equivalent of maybe 4 days of food for families here
People would welcome sprays of insecticide on their interior walls and roofs, but they have seen no such efforts by the government or NGO’s
Drinking water usually comes from the river, rainwater, or a communal tap (treated with chlorine or untreated), and because families usually can’t afford WaterGuard chlorine treatment or extra firewood to boil water, kids are plagued by diarrhea (whether it’s cholera, typhoid, or dysentery doesn’t seem to matter)

Just some unofficial trends I’ve observed so far, don’t quote me until I finish with the final paper. But it’s obviously quite cool that family after family welcomes me into their home to ask them questions about the sicknesses plaguing their children with nothing, except a desire to come back here someday and address these same diseases with a more complete understanding of public health, to offer as a remedy.

Families are so funny. I once interviewed 3 mothers (maybe of the same husband) and a grandmother, and when I asked about the age of the well from which they receive their drinking water, all 3 young mothers turned to the elder grandmother. After she responded that the well was constructed in the 1940’s, I said through Becky that I was surprised she answered the question, because she looked the youngest out of all 4 women. That was a big hit with the ladies. I’ve started taking pictures of the families I interview, which I will print and return to them before I leave this area, and they love it. One grandmother took 20-minutes picking out a beautiful pink Easter dress for her 2-year-old granddaughter. It’s rainy season here, so Becky and I frequently find ourselves caught in 30-minute torrential downpours, and each time we are welcomed into a home to keep dry, occupying the time with discussions of Kenyan politics, American politics (lots of Obama hype here among the Luos), and differences between American and Kenyan life. It’s usually tough to talk to one another over the PANG PANG PANG of huge raindrops on the corrugated metal roofs of the homes.

After our interviews each day, I try to construct rough freehand maps of the areas in which Becky and I have done interviews, and I take pictures and attempt to map out major sources of stagnant water and drinking water. Pretty unofficial.

Overall, my stay in Kiboswa and the research I’m working on are very enjoyable. I’m learning tons, meeting great new people, and facing cool new opportunities each day.

I'm going to try and post some pictures next, we'll see how that goes.

Time to hit the village

It’s time for ISP—Independent Study Project—the heart and soul of SIT study abroad. A month of independent research in a Kenyan location of my choice with a 40-page monster as the final product.

I’m heading to Nyahera, a village in Western Kenya near Kisumu, to do some malaria research (both scientific and sociological) on barriers to prevention among children. As of now, the title of my ISP is “Inexcusable Infections: Children, Malaria, and Barriers to Prevention in Nyahera Village, Kisumu, Kenya.” In developing this title I came to an important realization—that a colon makes a title about 10x more intense.

I’m thinking that my “home base” at Nyahera will be the one small clinic in the village, population 10-13,000. So it’s like working at the St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Milford, or not like that at all. I hope that I’ll be able to do some volunteer work at the clinic, get a feel for malaria in the village, and soon start doing some fieldwork. The sociological aspects of the project will come through interviews of both adults and their children—getting a gauge of the peoples’ understanding of malaria’s causes, how it can be prevented, and the proper use of insecticide-treated nets. Today I wrote up some “Participation Agreements” in English, and Susan helped me translate them into Dhuluo, the native language in Nyahera which is currently complete gibberish and makes my head hurt. When I get out to the village, I’ll have to find somebody who will be able to come with me to interviews and interpret.

The harder science will come through some surveying of the village—looking at haphazard sources of standing water where mosquitoes can breed, their proximity to homes, and combined with the interview data, relating these pools (in hoof prints, garbage, bumps in the road) to prevalence of malaria cases among families and children. Dr. Waters, my professor at school who is advising me on this to help the credit transfer easily, even suggests that I incorporate some old-school mosquito larva counting methods in these pools….attaching a tin can to a stick and dipping it into a pool without the vicious little killers seeing me, then quickly counting the larva on top of the pool. People in this village are going to be talking nonstop about this crazy mzungu who plays in dirty water with his silly little tin can toy.

I’m staying with a host brother in the village named Erastus Otieno. He’s my age, lives by himself in the village, and works nearby. His parents recently moved out of the home into downtown Kisumu, so I’ll get to spend time with them, too. Not sure about other siblings yet. Our home is right on the corner of Kakamega Road, the route out of Kisumu and up the western wall of the Eastern Rift Valley. Confused? There’s a little market-type area near my home with the basic necessities and some sweet little pubs. Anyway, I’ll have to take a matatu or boda-boda to the clinic each day, because it’s a solid distance away from my house. I’m thinking boda-boda, for obvious reasons…because it’s fun to ride on the back of bikes. You should see the quads on these guys…

Here’s my schedule for the next month, so you can track me with thumbtacks on the map you have on your wall:

Friday, 4/14…Leave for Kisumu via overnight bus

Saturday 4/15…Meet my host brother Arakas at the bus terminal and head up to home sweet home in Nyahera

Monday 4/17…Start my volunteering at the clinic and try to get my research started

Friday 4/21…Meet Samm, our homestay coordinator here in Nairobi, in downtown Kisumu

Saturday 4/22…Head to Nyangoma-Kogel0, the village where Barack Obama’s family and family friends live. Search on google for something like “Barack Obama father sitting village”. Hopefully, you’ll find the picture of Barack and his late pops sitting in front of the family hut in the village. That’s where I’ll be.

Sunday 4/23…Back to Nyahera to continue research

Sometime around 5/6…Head back to my home in Nairobi for some serious writing sessions (me vs. 40 pages is going to be quite the battle)

Sometime in there…visit my Nairobi family’s rural home with Mama and Baba, who’s coming home from Sudan at some point

I’ve got some pretty legit reasons to be both pumped up and pretty nervous about this whole ISP deal.

Pumped up:

-Living in a village with a guy my age

-Learning how to make my own Kenyan food

-Studying malaria in a place where it’s kind of a big deal

-Experiencing a rural clinic first-hand

Nervous:

-Being solo with no other SIT students

-Knowing absolutely no Dhuluo and having to get an interpreter

-Finding a starting point for my research

Even with these concerns, I know that once I get started I will have no reservations…I really can’t believe I’m about to have this experience.

In other news, the Sox are looking pretty awesome. I can’t believe how good Dice-K was in his first start. Still can’t believe we get ESPN via satellite here at my Nairobi house, but I snuck in a little Sportscenter this morning and saw the highlights of opening day at Fenway. My favorite highlight: Big Papi giving Dice-K a little Asian head bow instead of a high-five or fist pump during introductions. He’s so cultured. Now, I’m eagerly awaiting 2 am, which, on the satellite program here for ESPN, says “Wednesday Night Baseball.” No way to determine which teams are showing in Kenya, but I’m really hoping it’s the Dice’s home opener. Haha, who ever would’ve thought I’d be thinking about watching the Sox in Kenya?

No guarantees for email response in the next 3 weeks, because it may be tough for me to get to downtown Kisumu cyber cafes. I’ll try to get there at least a couple times during my ISP.

I hope all is well for everyone at home/school! Take care.

Uganda Pictures

No idea how these are going to orient themselves, but here are some descriptions. You can play a fun game where you try to match them up yourself.

-Sipi Falls, Eastern Uganda (one from afar, one up close after an intense hike)
-Brian, me, James, and Jeff at Sipi Falls
-Me and Odoch rocking some Ugandan drums
-Baboon mama and baby in Queen Victoria National Park

2 new countries and 4,000 km later...

I got back to Nairobi last night after a tour of Uganda and Rwanda. The trip was amazing, and although I don’t really think I can do it justice hear on the blaaahg, I’ll try.

10 of the 26 students in our group elected to travel to Uganda/Rwanda, while the rest traveled to Tanzania. Odoch, one of our Academic Directors and a native Ugandan, led our trip. We traveled well over 4,000 km in just 10 days, mostly in our tiny matatu, barely fitting the 10 students plus Odoch, our driver Muna, and all of our luggage on top. I’d say we probably drove an average of 4-5 hours a day, with a couple of monster road days of 9-12 hours thrown in there. No complaints here though, because the time spent bouncing through potholes let me see some of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. I’ll split them up by country and city/site:

Uganda

Busia- A small town on the Kenya border. We didn’t do much here besides cross into Uganda, but the cool thing about Busia is how it contributed to the development of boda-boda travel. Boda-bodas are old-fashioned (by American standards) bikes with an extra seat on the back. They became a popular mode of travel starting with the oppression in Uganda under President Idi Amin (see “Last King of Scotland”), when people frantically crossed the border into Kenya, avoiding customs and immigration by taking boda-bodas through the woods.

Sipi Falls- We spent a night at these beautiful waterfalls atop Mt. Elgon, which spans the Uganda-Kenya border. Our matatu started overheating as we drove up the mountain to our hostel, so we stopped to give it a rest. Some of us were taking pictures of the scenery when we heard a man say, “Now ME.” We turned and a Ugandan man was standing there displaying his hands, each adorned with six fingers. That was interesting. But anyway, we hiked to these waterfalls and those of us not scared of contracting strange snail parasites from fresh water took a quick dip in the pool at the bottom of the larger one. I think both falls were about 90-100 meters high.

The Nile- How many people can say they spent their 21st birthday on the Nile River? We stopped off to see some crazy rapids which, unfortunately, will soon be lost to a dam. Sometimes development is bad news. We were greeted at the rapids by some annoying/American/extreme/drunk outdoors enthusiasts shouting, “BEERS! BEERS! THESE DUDES WANT BEERS!” and got to see others tackle the rapids in their rafts. Lame program rules prevented us from doing the same, but the rapids were cool nonetheless. We also visited the source of The Nile at Lake Victoria, taking a small canoe around the lake and seeing lots of birds and some huuuuuuge monitor lizards—like komodo dragons/dinosaurs.

Kampala- The capital and largest city of Uganda. Although sometimes it seemed like the population of Maribou Storks (enormous, dirty, birds) may be higher than the population of humans. The storks, which I am convinced are actually mammals due to the ratty gray hairs sprouting from their bald heads, eat garbage and are comfortable standing within just a few feet of people. A few of us dreamed of a world where abductions by storks are common (people ducking and yelling, “STOOOOORK!” everywhere) and wished they were more of a threat to humans, but they’re actually harmless. Except for droppings, which landed on James and Tara one night while walking under a tree. Other attractions in Kampala included some tombs at the former home of the King of the Buganda people, the touristy Club Silk, where I was treated to my 21st birthday night, and the Ndere Dance Troupe, who are featured in Last King and put on an incredible 4-hour performance for us and other wazungu. Great dancing and drumming, beautiful Ugandan women, and delicious nyama choma (roast meat) at the performance.

Bushenyi- A small town in Western Uganda. Here we visited a great NGO involved with traditional/herbal medicine—a very popular choice (and seemingly effective in many cases) for people who can’t afford or can’t access Western medicine. The NGO we visited also works on sustainable forestry, harvesting the trees and producing its own medicine. Their most interesting herbal product is a strange green powder called “Sexual Power.”

Queen Victoria National Park- Here we had to take part in the prototypical “game drive” searching for the “big five” (lions, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, wildebeest, I think). We saw lions from afar, resting as they had just killed and eaten. No cheetahs or rhinos, but we saw elephants within maybe 30 feet of our matatu on the side of the road, tons of buffalo and gazelles, and some hysterical baboons, also right next to us on the road. From afar, the baboons actually looked like one of the normal roadblocks in Kenya by police officers, looking for bribes from passing matatus and taxis. We also toured Lake Edward in the National Park, seeing hundreds of hippos, water buffalo, and beautiful birds. We were treated to FAAAAABULOUS commentary from a Texas man/know-it-all who thought it was necessary to name and describe each of the hundreds of different birds we saw.

Rwanda

The scenery- Rwanda is called the Land of 1000 Hills, and for good reason. The terrain and scenery are out of this world—lush green, tons of bananas, cool-looking crop fields, and mountains everywhere. I’ve never seen a more beautiful area.

Kigali- The capital and largest city. We stayed here for 2 nights. Kigali was the epicenter of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, making parts of the city difficult for us to stomach (see below). However, the city is beautiful—the roads are in much better shape than those of Kenya and Uganda, everything is very clean, and everything is built into the rolling hills.

The Genocide Memorial and Ntarama Church- These were tough, but as my dad said in an email, they’re “something everyone in this world needs to see.” In case, like me before this trip, all the information you have about the Genocide is from Hotel Rwanda, I’ll give you a quick briefing (skip it if you think I’m being annoying)…Rwanda has only one ethnicity, the Banyarwanda, as opposed to the many, many tribes in both Uganda and Kenya. Primarily due to colonialist powers (Belgium, in particular) wanting to control their colony more easily, the Banyarwanda became divided into two major “classes”—the Tutsis (the tiny, elite, cattle-owning class), and the Hutus (the peasant majority, agriculturalists). After independence, the Tutsis always led the government, with the former colonial powers supporting this minority and furthering the chasm between the social classes. The Hutus eventually revolted, taking control of the government and forcing Tutsis out of the country and into the former Zaire and Uganda. Tutsis trained in these countries, hoping to recapture the government by force. When they tried in 1994, Hutus initiated and carried out the genocide—mercilessly killing Tutsi men, women, elders, and children. Torture, mutilation with machetes, live burials, and burnings ran rampant. Radio propaganda made things much worse, encouraging Hutus to kill and kill.

The Genocide Memorial reminded me a lot of the Holocaust Museum in DC. The hardest part was a section with profiles on many of the children killed in the massacre, complete with pictures and plaques describing their personalities, hobbies, aspiration, and then a description of the brutal method by which each was killed. While difficult to stomach, the Memorial was very nice and had lots of important information.

Ntarama Church still haunts me. I knew going into it that it was the site of one of the largest slaughters of Tutsis during the Genocide, with 5,000 people of all ages dying during a Hutu attack. I expected that it would just be an empty church, and was pretty taken aback when we walked in and the church was filled with shelves and shelves of human skulls, the remains of the slaughter’s victims. Other sections of the church had piles of human clothes, smaller bones, and personal belongings from all of the victims. Powerful does not begin to describe it. A banner outside the church, written in French, read “If you knew yourself and you knew me, then you would not kill me.”

Gacaca Courts- Following a tough morning at the Memorial and Ntarama Church, we had a discussion with a government official working with the Gacaca Courts—the specialized judicial system set up to bring the 800,000 Rwandans suspected of genocide-related crimes to justice quickly and smoothly, helping the country move forward. It was interesting to hear how lenient some of the penalties seem to be for people convicted of killing (raping and murders involving mutilation or torture are taken more seriously) during the Genocide. Many are released from prison eventually, and even more surprisingly, are completely accepted back into society. Even victims’ families are willing to welcome killers back into their communities. There is a widespread belief that the devil was the instigator of the Genocide in Rwanda, and as long as people who committed crimes are willing to admit their guilt and repent, they are pretty much given a second chance. The more I think about it, this seems like the best way for the country to move forward.

Sorry to end the post on a pretty dreary note, but that’s what we saw in Rwanda. It definitely seems like people are working very hard to move on, which I found very encouraging. Plus, the country is gorgeous.

It will surely take a while to digest everything I experienced in Uganda and Rwanda. What an experience.