Today is the Saturday after my third week in Nairobi, and I’m
currently sitting in a coffee shop called Java at a mall called YaYa. I love
the name of this place and I’m so glad there’s a coffee shop about a ten minute
walk away from Fridah’s apartment. It’s kind of nice being in here though
because it’s known for being a place a lot of foreigners come to since the food
is very similar to back home, and in Munich. I just ordered a banana chocolate milkshake :). That will make
writing this blog so much more enjoyable (than it already is.)
This
week the program I worked with is called ‘Shujaa’ or ‘Hero’ in Swahili. They
work to create a higher awareness of HIV throughout Kenya in different regions
and DISCs (Drop-In Service Centers), or places they’ve set up their services. They
mainly work with sex workers, who are generally women between the ages of 18-20
and some being as young as 16, truckers who overnight on the roads where sex
workers work, and the general population. They have VCT centers (HIV,
Counseling, and Testing) where people can come to get tested to find out if
they’re positive, and then be told what their best options are if they are living a ‘positive’
life. Outside of Counseling they can also participate in Health Education
classes, which teaches them about the overall and side effects of HIV, what condoms are and how to use them properly (condoms
are a really weird concept to Kenyans because it’s ‘not natural’), and really
just how to live their lives as safely as possible.
Monday and Tuesday were days spent
in the office, and Wednesday was the day we took our six hour trip to Eldoret,
which is north of Nairobi and about two to four hours away from the Uganda
border. Every quarter, the people in charge of Shujaa in the Nairobi office
take certain trips to different DISCs in different cities to check up on them,
see how everything is going, see how their target numbers are and whether they’re
meeting them, etc. Basically that they’re providing something for the community
that has been efficient and beneficial. The one in Eldoret is really young, and
we also traveled two hours north of Eldoret to Kapenguria, which had just started in January of this year.
When
they told me the trip was going to be six hours my mouth dropped open—I’d had
no idea it would take so long. But it may have been one of the fastest six hour
car rides I’ve ever had. The scenery on the way to Eldoret is absolutely
gorgeous, and I found myself taking more pictures of the scenery on the way
there and back than I did throughout the whole trip at Eldoret. Every time you
look out the window, there’s the gorgeous Rift Valley, gigantic saltwater lakes
and ponds, animals of every kind (there were even zebras on the side of the
road!!), small shacks that people live in, huts, and even mud houses the closer you got to Eldoret, which is a lot smaller
than Nairobi and more rural. However, it is growing a lot, and I actually find
it better than Nairobi. It’s quieter and calmer, with a lot of beautiful scenery.
A lot in Nairobi is go-go-go, with different building projects, the roads
always under construction, and I always feel like I’m on my toes.
When driving into Eldoret, there’s
a huge white wall saying ‘Welcome to Eldoret, the City of Champions’ and then
it has the painted pictures and dates of all of the Olympic Champions from
their town. I had completely forgotten about
when Zeller always used to talk about how fast Kenyans were in high school! He’d
always told us to run like gazelles or run like Kenyans, and the old memory
made me smile. I asked whether the most champions came out of Eldoret because
it appeared that most years were from this specific town. Catherine, who is the
director of Shujaa, told me that there were two particular tribes who are
actually known for dominating in track. She said in the 800m and faster Kenyans
generally dominate the world, and have for years, and I think one girl from
Kenya recently won a big race, but it wasn’t Olympic. The news on TV in Nairobi was showing it as ‘another
win’ for Kenyans. I think it’s extremely interesting how these tribes, for whatever reason,
just have a very specific gene for running so fast. They train every day their
entire youth and young adult lives, win a gold medal, and can retire before
they’re thirty. To me that’s amazing considering the amount of poverty you see
in Kenya. One talent with one sport can completely change your life in a
country that really struggles at times to support themselves.
The first place we drove to was one
of the Shujaa Discs in the city, and they made us tea and had a general meeting
to see how the Eldoret region is doing with the community so far for this
quarter. PS Kenyans are obsessed with tea. Germans are obsessed with coffee.
And now I’m being made into an addict of both worlds. Also when Kenyans drink
tea, they don’t just put a tea bad in hot water, which is what I’m used to.
They make really hot whole milk, put it in a large thermos, and then put tea
bags in mugs and pour the milk from the thermos. My body is not used to the
thickness and creaminess of the milk at all, and it has made me unbelievably
sick on many occasions, so I have to stick to regular hot water. But they’re
always incredibly surprised when I tell them I can’t drink the milk.
Anyway, the meeting lasted for a
couple of hours, and then after Catherine showed me around their facilities,
which were so interesting. I’m always so curious to see how various places in general are
set up, whether it be an office like Shujaa, a restaurant, a hotel, mall etc.
Sometimes it looks like regular places like home and other times it looks like
old, torn down-ish buildings on the outside, but fixed up nicely on the inside.
I kinda like it. It’s really all you need.
After the time at the Disc, we went
to church at the Eldoret Church of Christ, which is also a sister church of
Nairobi, Munich, and Clemson. I had no idea one existed in such a small town,
but it was really encouraging because instead of being overwhelmed by many
people, there was maybe around sixty and you could see they were all really
close with one another. It reminded me a lot of Clemson. Their church gathering
was in an old school building near a large field overlooking a few tall
buildings from the city center. The sun was setting and streaming through the
trees, while some of the school kids played soccer out in the large field. I
tried taking a picture, but I feel like a picture just never gives such
beautiful sites the justice they deserve.
After church we went downtown to
find food to eat, and specifically that my body wouldn’t reject, which took a
little bit since it was getting dark and the night life was picking up. As soon
as I got out of the truck, a child came up to me asking how I was, telling me
their name, and that they wanted to go to school. Then a couple more kids ran
up to me and starting saying the same things, and Catherine, Rosaline, and
Boogwa pulled me away from them and said to keep walking.
Apparently there are
a lot of street kids in Eldoret due to the elections from 2007. I didn’t know
this beforehand, but apparently around that time they had a new election and
after their current president was elected, riots broke out everywhere and people kind of lost their minds. There were
killings, bombings, fires, and all kinds of devastation. Many kids lost their
parents and homes, making street children a lot bigger problem than they’d
ever previously been. That was really scary, and sad, because these kids out of
desperation and hunger are turning into people that they shouldn’t be forced to
be.
After we ate, we went to our hotel
called Pacifica, which was just recently built and on the outside of town, and
quieter. This hotel was SO NICE. I was absolutely shocked due to the fact that the
room they gave me was bigger than Fridah’s room and my StuSta room combined
times three. And they gave me two
beds, there was a balcony, and I had a gigantic bathroom and wireless. I haven’t had wireless at
night outside of the office since I’ve been to Nairobi, so I was extremely
excited. (Unfortunately, however, it did cause me to lose more sleep than
necessary.) The first night I was also having issues with the plug. I have an
American plug, a European converter, and nothing to fit in the wall. So the
staff downstairs took almost twenty minutes looking for an adaptor for me while
I watched ‘Charlie St. Cloud’ in the lobby with Zac Efron. An American movie in
English in a foreign country on TV was a beautiful thing. Although I think
hearing Zac Efron in German or Swahili would have been highly entertaining as
well.
My hotel room!
Thursday was another traveling day further
north from Eldoret. We had breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet (and they
had normal food!!!) and then drove to the building they’re thinking of
utilizing as a Disc for Eldoret. It’s a truck stop road a little ways out from
the city center, and a really excellent location. You can always tell when a
highway generally has a lot of large trucks because the trucks are usually so
weighed down with what they’re hauling, that it leaves deep gauges in the road
from the tires. The weight from the trucks literally changes the shape of the
roads, making it miserable to drive on at times. The building they want to use
is located directly in front of a lodge for truckers, which actually works
really well for the program because one of the lodge rooms is going to be
permanently turned into an HIV testing room, allowing truckers to privately
come in and test at will.
After seeing the office (and stopping
a market with houses made out of mud!), we drove two hours north to Kitengela,
which is where they’ve just started the January Shujaa program. We met the
Kitengela Shujaa coordinator at a restaurant and then they showed us their ‘possible
VCT/Discs buildings’ and any implementation ideas. Katherine and Rosaline had a
meeting to attend, so Boogwa and I went to the Kapenguria Museum. I had no idea
what to expect at first since it was such a small town, but I very quickly
learned about Kenya’s famous ‘Kapenguria Six’ that were imprisoned in this
small town. The cells they were locked in were behind a sign labeled ‘The
Heroes Cells’, and each cell had the name of where each person stayed. Biographies
were placed in the cells of each person, along with their portrait. One cell
was ‘dressed up’ to look like it had when they’d stayed there, which consisted
of a weaved carpet and big tin bucket for waste.
The story of the “Kapenguria Six”
is really long, but really interesting, so here’s a link to them on Wikipedia.
Kenyans adore these men, and they’re
famous in Africa. Seriously, educate yourselves!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapenguria_Six
There was a lady who gave us a tour
and she was very sweet. We went in and through each part of the museums they
had, which basically displayed various tribes from their region and how they
used to look like, dress, the tools they used, and houses they lived in. She
took us to an area behind the buildings that had four mud houses! I got so excited because I’ve always wanted to see
what they look like on the inside. There was a house for the ‘first wife’, the ‘second
wife’, the ‘first boy’, the ‘livestock’ for nighttime and a large pen area for
during the day. We took lots of pictures and at one point the lady asked me if
my head was burning (because I’m white), and got really excited when we took a
picture together inside a mud house. She liked me because I’m a Musungu haha.
After the museum we picked
Katherine and Rosaline up and went to get lunch before heading back to Eldoret.
Boogwa wanted to stop and get fish for dinner, so we waited in the car and
devoured mangos. Mangos are so popular here and Kenyans eat them like champs. I
eat them like a child, with it all over my face and clothes, and they serious
have no such problems. Then Catherine went to meet a friend in the city while
Rosaline and I got tea and food, and talked for a while.
Thursday night I also had an
epiphany about my life and freaked out looking up ten million things on the
internet as far as jobs, internships, and volunteer stuff with CDC, DSW (a
German company has a partnership with HOPE in Kenya, and they even have an
office here!), and then graduate programs involving public health (HIV) and the
Master’s International programs. Master’s Internationals are graduate programs
partnered with Peace Corps, where the first two years of graduate are done at
the university, and the last two are done at the country you’re assigned to or
have chosen. The problem for me is that they don’t have partnerships with medical
schools, so I’m looking at having to choose between graduate school and medical
school. CDC offers a specific fellowship for medical students in their third
year (clinical year) where they’re allowed to practice in a foreign country,
but only if their interested in doing international work. And it looks very
competitive.
I think part of me is really trying
to push away the idea of medical school just because of the stigma that comes with
American medical schools. I’m just really not interested in going back into the
dog-eat-dog approach to school like being pre-med produces. I know a lot of other
programs are hardcore too, but there’s something about medicine that’s just
unbelievably cut-throat and aggressive, and I don't like the idea of being pushed into that personality type just to succeed in medical school. I just want to be like Patch Adams and build my own hospital and play with kids all day. Is that really too much to ask? I still have time though, so thank
goodness I don’t have to choose between MCATs and GREs just yet. I find
standardized testing unbelievably irritating by the way. I felt like that
opinion was important to include in this blog.
Friday I woke up early to meet for
breakfast and head to another meeting at a clinic called AMPATH. They wanted to
meet with Shujaa basically because both programs are fighting to help the
community in the same ways, and they’re afraid of reporting the same numbers
and making it seem as if more people are being helped than actually are. I
actually found the meeting very entertaining because the two groups were forced
into agreeing to a partnership, but you could see from both sides that neither
was budging, and neither was going to pack up and leave Eldoret. So it turned
into this very polite form of ‘we refuse to leave’ game. It took three hours
for them to decide to partner and find specific actions to move forward. However,
It was an overall encouraging meeting for both sides because now they can work
to make a lot of progress in the community together.
This coming week I will start
working with Fridah and her Blood Safety department, and then continue with them
next week since, on Wednesday, I’M GOING ON A THREE DAY SAFARI TRIP to Masai Mara!!!!
I’m so excited. I’m going as a single
in a group of seven other people I don’t know, but I’m okay with that because
it’s a safari and I’ll be taking tons of pictures anyway. And they’ll probably
be tourists like me from other countries, which is always something interesting
to look forward to.
I hope everyone has a wonderful
week and I can’t wait to write about working with Fridah and the safari trip!
Until next week, Jessica
PS: Here's a link from the HOPE Worldwide website about the 'Sleeping Children around the World' day in Mukuru. Enjoy!
http://hopewwkenya.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=330:sleeping-children-around-the-world-scaw-visits-mukuru&catid=45:care-a-support-information&Itemid=263
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