Sunday, October 21, 2007

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.

Posted by Taya @ 11:41 AM