Sunday, October 21, 2007
Construction time in Kazamoyo
October 10, 2007
We've had our first real taste of living in the field, and I must say I enjoy staying in the village much more that driving back and forth on the worst roads in the world every day.
We are working in Kazamoyo but living in the village of Samburu. This is necessary because SP works in a lot of different in villages in the area and we want to avoid accusations that we favour the village we live in. Anyway, we were under the impression that our house wasn’t ready yet, so we had planned to sleep in tents for the first few nights. But, it turned out that the work was done after all, so we moved in, setting up our bunk beds, mosquito nets, and camping stove and cleaning up everything as best we could. The house (not a hut, unfortunately) is great. It's made of stone and is quite large, and we even have running water. We also have rats, frogs (in the shower, toilet and sink), bats (one of which died on Teresa’s mattress – she wasn’t too happy about that), and a snake that lives under the house and eats the bathroom frogs. We’ve also had chickens and a hedgehog saunter through the house, and we have a huge, and I mean huge, spider living right above our front door. His name is Mfupi, which means “short,” and I’ve been told he’s poisonous. We'll be living here for a month. We've already made friends with the neighbour kids, who have made themselves at home in our house.
We spent Monday and Tuesday in Kazamoyo, constructing of our filter-building work site. This was an unexpected change in plans: we were supposed to be doing filter installation in a different village this week, but someone had died from AIDS, and when there is a death in the community no one goes to work. Apparently, delays in work plans are quite common due to frequent funerals.
Anyway, we need to build a shelter/construction area to shade us from the sun when we are building filters, and to store our molds and other supplies. Basically, we're building a fairly large structure with nothing but pangas (like a machete), and saws, and nails (no hammer), and the whole time we were working I felt like I'd stepped back into cave-man days. We started by pacing out the dimensions of the shelter and then marking it with sticks. We dug holes with the panga where the main supports of the structure would go, then went into the bush to cut down trees (really thorny trees that have ants living inside them that will come out and bite you) and then stripped off the branches. Then we carried them back to the site and straightened them - yes – we learned how to straighten a stick. This is a fairly time consuming process that involves making lots of strategic cuts along the trunk and then inserting small pieces of wood into the trunk to force it to bend one way or another, thereby straightening it out. Then we took the timber and formed the walls, putting each tree into the hole we had dug. We strung rope made of tree bark across the tops of the timber (poles) to make sure they were level. Then we went back into the bush to cut more trees for cross supports, and started nailing them on the poles to make the walls. We don't have a hammer, so we used the flat side of a wrench. This has taken tree days.
We also built a slab for latrine we are going to be building behind the village church. There is no latrine in the entire village yet, so we are going to be building a lot of them. The slab is the concrete block with a hole in it (that you pee into), that covers the latrine hole.
Of course, I have no idea how to do any of this, so we have been working with and learning from the men in the village. There are about five who have been helping us, one of which is the pastor of the church. It's really challenging because 1) their first language is Duruma, not Swahili, and 2) they are men and we are not. I could tell that at first they didn't know what to think of us. Construction is seen as men's work, and it was strange to them for us to be there. But, eventually they got used to us and started to see that we wanted to be part of the work and to learn from them, and that made them happy (I think). It's crazy how you can communicate with people who don't speak your language if you really want to.
I'm also excited to work more with the women because I think they will be a bit more accepting of us. The first day we came to the village they showed up at the work site to check us out, but I've haven't seen any of them since then. I've been told that since building the work site is seen as "men's work," they will wait until the site is ready and then come to help with filter construction. I hope so.
Oh yah, one cool thing: The village church is about 20 steps away from our construction site and inside the church there is a big drum made of cow hide. On our first day, a group of kids hauled the drum out of the church and sat a few feet away and beat on it while we worked. It sounded amazing. Yesterday I got to try, and I was so much fun. I'm hoping five months in Africa I might be enough time acquire a sense of rhythm!
A New Name
October 3, 2007
After spending a week in Nairobi and two weeks in Mombasa preparing for the field, Abraham, Winnie, Judy, Teresa and I have finally begun our work in the villages. (In case you need a reminder, Abraham is the Household Water Program project manager, Winnie and Judy are the two interns from Nairobi, and Teresa is my fellow Canadian water intern).
The first half of our internship will be spent in Kazamoyo, a remote village comprised of about 80 households. We sleep in another village named Samburu and make the rather uncomfortable, hour long drive out to Kazamoyo each day, on the washed-out, bolder-strewn road. Getting there is usually an adventure, and I’ve been enjoying riding in the back of the SP truck, squinting against the wind as I try to keep my eyes peeled for elephants.
How’s the village? What is it like? Being here is a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to go to Africa, and now I’m definitely in the middle of rural African life. Winnie says Kazamoyo looks like Sudan: mud huts, red earth and blue sky. The ground is as hard as concrete and everything that grows is covered in thorns. The sun assaults your body as you bend to labour beneath its glare. But as harsh as the landscape is, the people are beautiful. I don’t speak much Swahili, and even less Duruma, but communication does not always have to be verbal. Handshakes and smiles speak louder than words, and despite not knowing us, people have been very generous in welcoming us. Rarely have I ever felt such hospitality.
Although we will be working in Kazamoyo for the first half of the internship, we spent our first week in the field in a village called Mwangoloto. This community was the recipient of the last BioSand water filter project, so we went to meet the people and do follow-up in the homes of filter beneficiaries.
Follow-up consists of visiting households that have already received filters to check up on how it is being maintained, if it is being used frequently, if it is working properly, and if the health of the people has improved. This is also a time to review health and hygiene practices (ie: hand-washing and latrine use, etc). So, off we went, with our BSF follow-up sheets, full of anticipation, to check in with a number of households who had received filters two months earlier. It was cool to finally see the filters being used by the real people, and we visited about 13 households over the course of a day and a half. For the first time I was able to witness how rural Kenyans really live.
If you have any sort of romantic notions about mud huts (and you probably don’t) let me just confirm that at first glance they leave much to be desired. The walls are constructed of intertwined sticks and then packed and covered with mud on both the inside and out. Most huts are very dark inside because there are no windows, or only very small ones. The poorest people live in huts with thatched roofs, and wealthier people in the village have roofs made of metal sheeting, called mabati. (Even in rural Kenya, where at first glance everyone appears to be desperately and equally poor, you find economic stratification). Yet people here are very happy, and they are eager to share what they have – and they share it with us! The people who have come to “help” them! We’ve already been blessed with sodas, kuku (chicken) and ugali several times, and I know that in order to provide these gifts to us the givers have made substantial sacrifices. Talk about being humbled.
Anyway, doing follow-up was interesting and frustrating. We went through a check-list to evaluate of how the filter is being used and maintained, where beneficiaries get their water, what other steps they go through to treat it, what hygiene practices the household observes, how their health has improved since receiving the filter, etc, etc. Most of the households in the region are polygamous, so the wife who is responsible for filtering water would conducted the interview with us. My Swahili isn’t so good, so this was challenging because I really want to talk to and understand these people. For now, I need to have almost everything translated, otherwise I have no clue what’s going on. However, frustration with the language barrier has provided the motivation I need to work my butt off to learn Swahili, so I guess my frustration with my inability to communicate is a good thing.
Doing follow-up was hard for another reason: even though I desired to enter the homes of each family as humbly as possible and interact with them in a way that affirmed them and upheld their dignity, I still felt like the “white expert” coming to tell the “ignorant African” what to do. I hate that. I know that SP’s goal is to for its staff to work in communities as servants, not kings, and we are striving to do just that, but there are cultural barriers that make this hard to do, even if you are very deliberate about it. I’m very thankful that Abraham, Judy and Winnie are Kenyan, because that gives us some credibility, but it still feels awkward. I realize that I have a lot of learning to do about cross-cultural interaction and that I’m going to have to expect that things will be awkward until people come to know us. After all, how would you feel if a stranger came into your home and asked you (even in a gentle, respectful way) about the last time you or your children had diarrhea??
After a day and a half of follow-up we went to work digging in the hot hot sun. The village’s water source (a dam) has almost completely dried up because the people neglected to maintain it, so now it resembles a large mud puddle. Run-off from the steep sides of the dam has caused it to fill with silt, so we set to work de-silting the dam. If you’re confused about what I mean by “dam,” then picture a large pond, 50 ft long, 30 feet wide and about 7 feet deep, that has completely dried up except for a small puddle at one end. It is here that people draw water and goats come to drink.
Anyway, we arrived at the site, met the people - greeting them in clumsy Swahili, and got down to work. The men were in the dam with picks, shovels and sledge hammers, digging up the dirt and mud, smashing the large rocks, and then shoveling them into 20L jerry cans for the women to pick up, balance on their heads, and carry up and out of the dam. The really big chunks of rock (the ones that are too big for the 20L buckets) are balanced on the women’s heads without being put in a container. They do this wearing skirts, flip flop sandals, and sometimes with a baby tied onto their back. After greeting everyone and shaking many hands, it was our turn to try (gulp!) They loaded up a bucket of dirt and rocks, perched it on my head, and watched with big smiles and cheers as I made the precarious journey up the side of the dam to dump the bucket at the top. I thought I might wipe out, but I did it!!!! And then I did it again. And again. And again.
We worked for a long while, resting now and then under a very thorny tree. Despite my horrible Swahili, people were very happy when I tried to talk with them, and I realized that they genuinely appreciate it when mzungus (white folk) aren’t afraid to try and speak their language, even though we might sound a little silly. It was very humbling, but they were very gracious. At the end of the day we all gathered under the tree and Abraham addressed them for a minute or two, encouraging them to continue working together on the dam. Then he asked each of the interns to stand up and introduce ourselves and tell the people our impression of their village. I said as much as I could in Swahili (which again produced many big smiles), and Abraham translated the rest. It felt really good. Then the people gave us new village names - they called me Kabemba, meaning “small grain.”
Then the community asked one of us to pray to close the meeting, so I stood and thanked God for the people of Mwangoloto and the work He is doing there. I prayed that He would be with them as they work together and that He would give them sweet water from the dam. I asked God to bless each person there that He would unite them in love as they work together. Then we all said good-bye and shook hands, and the children waved and chased our Land Rover down the road.
If the rest of our time in Kenya is like few days we spent in Mwangoloto, then I know I’m going to love it here.
Getting our bearings in Mombasa
September 26, 2007
The following are a random assortment of paragraphs I've written over the course of the last few weeks. It may have become obvious to you that I haven't been too successful at blogging on a regular basis: please forgive the time delay between when this stuff was written and when it was actually posted. Sorry!
Teresa, Judy, Winnie and I are living in the Samaritan’s Purse (SP) house in Mombasa until we go out to the village, and let me tell you, I'm getting pretty anxious to go. Besides learning Swahili and talking about filter construction and other project related business we haven’t done a ton of work yet. There are, however, a whole bunch of good reasons for this: Robinson and two project managers are at a conference, the staff just moved into the house we are living in four days before we arrived so people have been busy with moving, our village house isn’t aren't ready yet, and…it’s hot here and people move slowly! In our ample spare time we've done some sight seeing in Mombasa, which was nice, but now I'm ready to mix some concrete. Everybody in the house knows this, and they just smile and tell me, "Taya, don't worry, you'll have plenty of time in the field. In a few weeks you'll long to come back to the comfort of Mombasa." We’ll see if they’re right.
There are nine people in the house - four interns, Robinson and his wife Mbeyu, Peter, Phanuel and Abraham. Robinson is our soft-spoken, passionate and extremely busy supervisor. Peter (not sure of his title) oversees the Household Water Program and will work with us, traveling back and forth between Mombasa and field. He has also been our "tour guide" for the past week. Phanuel is the SP accountant and logistics guy, and also our faithful driver. He’s 6'5" and plays basketball for the Kenyan team. Abraham is the Household Water Program BSF Project Manager and is the guy we will be working and living with in the field. He’s deeply respected by the communities we work with in the field and I’m excited to learn from him. Mbeyu (nickname: First Lady), is not SP staff but is definitely an important person in the house. In fact, I think she’s the one who keeps it from falling apart. I’ve already felt very thankful that she’s around. That’s the "family."
We made a day trip out to the field for the first time on Friday; everyone was really excited and it ended up being a great day. The villages we'll work in are about an hour out of Mombasa and then another hour past Samburu, on horrible dirt roads way out in the middle of nowhere. It's really dry out there, with cactus and shrubs and thorny trees, growing in the red soil. We visited Chengoni, a village where SP has built a school, and met some of the community members. After we greeted and shook hands with all the children in the school, we helped set up some tents for a meeting that was happening later in the day. This was rather comical because half the tents had missing or broken poles, so we did a lot of improvising. After struggling with the tent and finally succeeding in setting most of them up, we went back over to the kids, who surrounded us and shook our hands and stared up at us, asking repeatedly what our names were. They were proud that they knew some English and each of them wanted to show us they could speak it, so I ended up saying "My name is Taya, what's your name?" fifteen thousand times. When they got bored of that, they sang songs. It was kind of fun. .
After Chengoni we when to Chanzou I & II to visit some households and check up on their filters. We were invited into a number of people’s homes and walked around the villages for a while. By the end of the day I was super sweaty and tired, and both happy and a little scared. It's going to be challenging to work in a place where the entire community is constantly watching your every move. In fact, I’ve never felt so naked, and it seems to me that field work is going to expose who I am, and what my strengths and weaknesses, are in a very blatant and brutal way. There’s no faking it out there.
On the way back to Mombasa we saw a whole bunch of elephants - at least 20 of them. We spotted them from the highway and pulled over the watch them for a while. They're actually pretty dangerous and make a mess of people's crops, so we were hoping they wouldn’t go in the direction of the village.
What other animals have we seen??? One of the rules at the house in Mombasa is to keep all doors closed because there are so many monkeys in the backyard. They're so funny, I love watching them. They'll actually come into the house or the laundry area and make a mess though, so we have to watch out for them. One day I was standing on the balcony eating a carrot and a monkey saw me, and I'm pretty sure he would have taken my carrot away if I didn't run inside. Some lizards with red heads and blue-green bodies also live in the yard, along with four spiders gigantic spiders named Winnie, Judy, Teresa and Taya. We've also seen giraffes, hippos, warthogs and tortoises - but they were all in captivity.
Mombasa is pretty interesting right now because Ramadan has just begun. The city has a large Muslim population and during Ramadan people close their shops and fast for the entire day until the sun sets. Then at night vendors come out to sell all sorts of food, and the streets become crowded with people. It's not super safe to be on the street at night though, so we've only been out a few times and always with an SP guy. Every day we can hear the calls to prayer coming from the mosque that’s near our house. Muslim women are totally covered from head to foot and the men wear long white tunics and little hats (not sure what they’re called). I really hope I can make friends with a least one Muslim woman while I’m here.
This year is an election year in Kenya, with election day happening sometime at the end of December. Campaigning has begun, and I’ve had a chance to witness what a big deal politics are in this country. People go nuts at political rallies. I've been trying to read the newspaper to figure out what is going on, but it seems like every two seconds someone is defecting from their party, or someone is forming a coalition with someone else, and I can't keep all the acronyms straight. One funny thing: every single store in the entire country has a framed picture of President Kibaki hanging on the wall. You can find his chubby face smiling at you everywhere you go.
The other interns and I have also been doing a ton of cooking, which is pretty funny. By the time I come home I expect to be an expert at cooking traditional Kenyan food – meat stew, rice, ugali (a kind of “cake” made with corn flour and water), chipatis (fried flat bread), pilau (a rice dish)…the list goes on. We basically cook lunch and supper for all nine people in the house everyday. At first I didn't know what to think -- I've never cooked for that many people before, we have to stick to a strict food budget (everything we buy has to have Phanuel’s stamp of approval), and none of the food that I would cook at home is available here, so we kind of make things up as we go along. Last night we had rice, pumpkin, and some freaky looking fish that had really huge teeth. We're also expected to cook for the guys who sometimes help, but usually don't. I have to watch my attitude about that and remember that people think differently about women's roles here -- I'll just go with the flow for now and find out what it’s like to be a part of a Kenyan family.
Oh, and I know you’re just dying to know how the bowel movements are coming along… no diarrhea yet!! Woo hoo!!
That's all for now -- hope this give you a better idea of what things are like down here.
I have some prayer requests if you have a minute to spare -- please pray that Teresa and I will be able to learn Swahili quickly, that our team will gel and we'll work well together and find favour with the people we are serving in the villages.