Pole Sana, nimechelewa

I know I said that I would do one post everyday this week but circumstances have prevented me.  Yesterday I was sick and the day before I was really hot and lazy so I really don’t have an excuse other than being on the East African coast…

So the continuation of my last blog post starts the day we moved into our Nairobi host families.  Everyone was placed in a family within about a 10 minute walk from our class building, expect Val and Amana who were a bit farther (but they had a pool so it balances out?).

I lived in an apartment building in the Jamahuri Neighborhood of Nairobi, near Togo flats and Woodley Estates (right near where Obamas Dad lived when he was in Nairobi).  My homestay for me brought a lot of firsts.  Firstly, my host father was a polygamist. I lived in the home of his first wife, although his second wife lived a few buildings down from us. The community that my family belongs to, “Luos” from western Kenya, practices polygamy often.  There a few reasons they practice polygamy. For one, when the first wife of a man begins growing older, he will marry a second wife so that when the first wife is unable to take care of him and the family the second wife can step in and take care of him and the first wife. Also (this was NOT the case in my family) there is the concept of wife inheritance in the Luo culture, where if a mans brother dies, he is able to “inherit” his wife and children so that he can provide for them. This concept is one of the many factors that has contributed to the high impact of HIV/AIDS in the Luo community.  At least in my family, the relationship between the two wives and their children was beyond amicable. The children had beds and both places and would come and go at both houses. To me, it all seemed like one big family and they were all amazing

My family was great. I lived in a room with my host brother and sister. He was 20 and was hoping to become a pilot, and my sister was in her mid twenties and was hoping to start a new job at a restaurant in Dubai.  My host mother was an excellent cook and always made sure I overate her food at every meal. They were all very patient with me as I struggled through my first few weeks of Kiswahili. At that point I probably knew about 20 words so they answered “where are you from? What is your name? What do you like to eat?” probably 10 times each.  We all diligently watched a Mexican soap opera “wild at heart” every night and I honestly would be curious every night as to whether Mr Allejandro would survive his illness.  

 Being a somewhat of an introvert, I wasn’t really looking forward to the homestay aspect of the program. its a lot of mental energy to be friendly to people you don’t know and to constantly be watching what you say and do. But after a while, it honestly felt like I was part of the family and I felt comfortable doing and saying pretty much anything around them. 

 

 

Never Too Late?

Looking out over the Rift Valley from Mount Longonnot

SO I’ve been in Kenya for a little over a month and a half and it is safe to say that I’ve dropped the ball in terms of blogging. At first I didn’t write any posts because I didn’t have any pictures and I thought maybe I needed more time to experience things before writing about anything but before long I just became lazy and now it’s been seven weeks…. I have a plan though! This week I am going to write one post every day summarizing my trip so far.  I will try to go in chronological order but I apologize if my memory serves me wrong at some parts.

So my first post I guess will cover my initial arrival into Nairobi:

I suppose a short intro of my program would also be a good idea.  The program is called Kenya: Urbanization Health and Human Rights and is based out of the School of International training (SIT).  Usually the program has about 20-25 students, but this year there are only 7 of us.  This is likely due to the recent insecurity in Nairobi at the Westgate Mall this past year that probably made a lot of kids (or their parents) second guess going. Our program spends about 4 weeks in Nairobi, 1 week in Kisumu, 1 week in a rural coastal village called Takaungu, 2 weeks in Lamu and 3 weeks in Mombasa.  After all of that, each on of us spends 4 weeks in a location of our choosing to conduct an independent research project (ISP) on pretty much any topic that we can manage to write a proposal about and get approved by our director.

I arrived in Nairobi on the 2nd of Februrary after a long lay over in Amsterdam (could have been worse…) at 6am.  Theres something disorienting about getting off a plane in a warm place after being in a New England weather.  At first I thought “fantastic, I was so tired of the cold” but after about an hour and a half of waiting in line to get my passport and visa stamped I was dripping in sweat and already accustomed to despising heat again.  The airport in Nairobi, however, is right in the middle of a national park, so as we were making our descent, the sun was rising over the savannah and although I know the noise pollution from the airport must be terrible for all the wildlife in the park, I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome into Kenya.

After getting picked up by our program directors we were driven through the chaotic streets of Nairobi to our new home for the following week – a convent/guest house staffed by franciscan nuns in a very nice/safe area of Nairobi west.

The first week was spent getting to know eachother, taking our first classes on our program topics, and starting our swahili studies.  We all get along fantastic, which was a blessing because being such a small group posed a risk to all of our sanities if we ended up not getting along. The first week the classes were a bit confusing, mainly because the teaching style of our professors is quite frankly a jumbled mess compared to what I am used to, but their personalities and geniality towards us made class fun if not a little awkward.

Overall the first week was a lesson in adaptation/awkwardness/language/remembering to wash hands/how to convert dollars to KES in my head/learning to never bring travellers cheques anywhere in the future/how to bargain/not walking on the street at night/what brand of Kenyan beer is good/making friends in a strange country.