Sunday, October 21, 2007

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.

Posted by Taya @ 11:12 AM