Traveling Cat

(No time for editing or proofreading, so pls ignore typos and misspellings). :)

Nothing crazy and new to report… Life in Malava continues to treat me well. Many thanks to Dad, Mary, and Samantha who have all my love for sending my first three piece of mail! And many thanks for the emails. It’ll take some time to getting back to y’all, but I did read and appreciate them all. As compared to the reports I’ve gotten from Seattle folks, it’s hot and sunny and dry here. The temperature in Malava has been over 100 in the sun, and a sweaty 90 in the shade. We’re in the heart of summer… so it’s not surprising. And we’re in Africa, near the equator, so nothing earth shattering to imagine hot and dusty weather. And dusty it is. The soil here is red, and with dirt roads, it’s very dusty… in your eyes, in your hair, on your clothes, and especially on your sandal wearing feet. My feet are disgusting, and I’m thankful to Maggie for sending me to Kenya with “spa gloves.” I’m not sure if this is their intended purpose, as I’ve never owned spa gloves, but they’re great at scrubbing off some of the red dirt.. though I suspect my feet and toe nails with be stained red for years to come. Moving on from my feet to more exciting things…

Did I already mention we’re getting milk delivered from a neighbor’s cow? We have to pasteurize it ourselves (suppose I can add that to my resume?), and currently have lots left over. We made pudding last week, banana flavored with local bananas that grow in our yard, and it was the absolutely BEST pudding I’ve ever had. It was also the first dessert I’ve had in weeks so that might have something to do with it. Beyond pudding though, we still have extra milk. So, if anyone has recipes for yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, butter, etc… do send them over by snail mail. (No printer at the internet cafe, sadly). Or, if you have recipes for curries where we can use milk instead of coconut milk, or recipes for soups with cream bases, or recipes for whatever – milk related or not – do send them over. :) Our veggies are getting harder to find, and more expensive, b/c of the drought. Even as wazungu we’ve noticed the prices increase in the first month we’ve been here, and have noticed that veggies we had the first few weeks haven’t been around in the last few weeks. We can still find tomatoes, onions, potatoes, groundnuts (peanuts) and have some very expensive kale and cabbage. Why I didn’t bring any kind of recipe book is beyond me… guess I was used to having wireless available anytime I was cooking and needed a recipe.

Anyway, what else to quickly mention? Yesterday we joined Sr. Catherine and Sr. Nekesa on a road trip up north to Kitale to drop off a check somewhere. We didn’t stay long to explore Kitale, but it was nice to see more of the countryside. The trees here are gorgeous and make me wish I had a book on the plants of Africa. Maggie gave me a fantastic book on the animals of East Africa, but I don’t know the plants and the locals don’t always know the names. From what I hear phonetically, here are the names of my three favorites.

DIY: Do It Yourself Website Day

1. Pretend I had the ability to post pictures
2. Pretend I knew how to spell tree names correctly
3. Go to google images and search for the following:
nandi flame trees – short tree with gorgeous bright red flowers (hence the “flame” name)
acacia trees – the classic tall, flat tree you’d see in an Africa postcard, probably with a giraffe pictured underneath
jacaranda trees – amazing tall tree with purple flowers all over
4. Comment on what gorgeous pictures they were, how it must be so amazing to see such wonderful vibrant colors in a place that is otherwise oh so dusty, and how you hope to visit sometime soon to experience the beauty yourself. :)

What else to mention? After we got back from the 4 hour drive to/from Kitale, we got home to find that someone had gotten into one of our windows. There are bars on them so they can’t much more than an arm in and can’t grab anything big, but they made off with some small, sentimental things from Cindy’s room. We know not to store things near windows that can be opened so it shouldn’t happen again. It was just sad for Cindy, but she’s over it.

What’s a sampling of what Cat is reading while in Africa, you might ask?

• I finished Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama – definitely recommend it to everyone. First half is about racial identity in the states, the second half is about his trek to Western Kenya to meet his father’s side of the family. They are from Kisumu, about 1.5 hours from here, so the traditions mentioned in the book are all very real to me as they’re still alive and well in Malava. Men have multiple wives. There is domestic violence. People live in mud huts. Read it and you’ll get a vivid picture of Kenya’s Western Province where I’m living.
• Also finished Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith – not bad. It takes place in Botswana and my biggest complaint is the simple writing style and simple plot line. That said, it was fun to read fiction about Africa. Botswana is further south, right next to S. Africa, and hosts the Kalahari Desert. The story includes lots of details about life in rural Africa, so that part of it was fun. It’s a quick and easy, light read.
• Simplified Swahili by Peter Wilson – excellent guide to teaching yourself Kiswahili. I’m borrowing Cindy’s copy when she’s not using it and it’s super helpful. Did you know Kiswahili has 9 noun classes? And that there’s nothing simple for plurals like adding a “s” at the end of the word. Nope, you change the pre-fix to designate who you’re referring to (2nd person singular, for instance), change the in-fix to designate singular or plural items, change another in-fix if you want to make it negative, and then change the suffix to designate other stuff I’ve already forgotten (like tense). Makes it hard to look up words you see or hear since the prefix and infix aren’t the root word. That said, I’m told by the locals that I’m a quick learner. They also said I know more Swahili in my first few weeks that Sr. Carolyn knows after 30 years in Kenya. (I’m not sure if that’s a compliment for me, or a statement on Carolyn’s lack of attempt to learn Swahili, but I’ll take it and will keep at the book… I’ve got another 50 chapters to go).
• Disabled Village Children by David Werner – amazingly relevant and helpful and INTENSE. I can only read a chapter at a time b/c it’s just too intense. It’s by the same guy who wrote “Where There is No Doctor” and it goes step by step through common disabilities… how to diagnose/detect, prevention, treat with therapy or surgery, how to build aids (crutches or wheelchairs) when you don’t have places like hospitals or Home Depot for supplies, how to help them fit into the home or village, etc. Very intense, but very relevant every step of the way.

What else to mention? I did laundry this weekend (in wash basins, outdoors of course, scrubbing together my clothes with bar soap). I also swept with a straw broom banded together by a piece of rubber. I also cooked some arrowroot and kunde (cow peas). Finished another African themed book. Haven’t been sick yet. New digital camera still won’t work. Lazed around abunch.

Would you believe I’ve been consistently sleeping about 7 hours per night? This might be a record… I honestly don’t think I’ve slept this much since I was in middle school. Now I need to find a 24 Hour Fitness and start working out to be truly healthy. The foods here are so starchy, and the milk is definitely whole milk, so I might just come back from Africa a few sizes larger than I left. Starving Africans or not, this starchy food cooked with oil and fat isn’t good for my waistline.

We hope to get bikes at some point, so that’ll be nice for exercise and for exploring the area. It’s not like I can put on a tank top and shorts and jog around Greenlake or Town Lake… that wouldn’t fly. But a bike eventually will be great, even if we are the only women in town riding. Men are the only bike riders here, and the main transportation in the area is bike taxi. Not to be confused with bike rickshaws like in India or China. Here a bike taxi means sitting/balancing on the back of a bike above the rear tire. Imaging have a disabled youth and needing to make a 40 km trek to Malava for therapy. How easy do you suppose it is for a mom to bring her 14 year old child who can’t walk? Difficult, to say the least.

Okay… not sure what else to tell y’all. The kids are great, really really great. It’s fun to be working directly with kids again after 4 years in an office, though it’s super INTENSE. That might be the theme of the work. I’m getting to know them. Some are unable to move limbs or respond to noise. Some are deaf and mute. Some are too tragic for words, and some are too adorable for words. One little one called Julia is working on gross motor control (upper and lower limbs). She’s starting to walk, but has awful balance and equilibrium. She’s deaf and mute, but squeaks and squawks like a monkey. She’s fond of climbing all over me, likes to sit in my lap, and likes her belly rubbed. (A girl after my own heart). She also likes to be chased around the yard, like to drool, and has the best, most infectious giggle in the world. Hard not to fall in love with the kids.

I was playing soccer the other day with a three year old with club feet. We were both running around, sweating in the hot midday sun, occasionally saying something in our own language that we knew the other wouldn’t understand, and all the while smiling from ear to ear. And I had the moment of awe and reality: “I’m living in Africa working with disabled youth and life is good.” I love those times in life when you can have a moment like that and think “yes, I’m truly happy and content with life at this exact moment in time.” I’d like to bottle them up, or at least write them down, for there are definitely moments in life when nothing is working out and everyone sucks and at those times it’s good to have the reminders about the good days. Anyway, it was a great moment. Perfect blue skies. Playing games and kicking around a soccer ball with a sweet, sweet, sweet three year old. With club feet. In Kenya.

And with that, I’ll offer a reminder request for recipes, and will let you go. I’ve got to get home to start dinner and water my sukuma and kunde. (Did I mention we’re trying our hands at farming? We did the planting last week and the week before, and the kunde is starting to come up!! The sukuma isn’t looking too great, but it’s too early to tell with it). Wish us luck. Lots of love to everyone…

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
– Henry Miller

Hi all,

I feel so aware of everything right now… like a child experiencing the world for the first time. I’ve been soaking it all up every minute and at every turn! I’m happy to report that life is Malava is going well! (Thankfully!) It’s true that I wake up and see cows, sheep, and chickens in my front yard every day. It’s also true that mud huts are the norm in this region of Kenya’s Western Province. It’s true also that I’m healthy, happy, and still very excited to be here! Life in Malava… let me begin to explain. More will have to come later, but for now I’ve made a trip into Kakamega, found a cybercafe, have some shillings in my pocket and might as well begin.

Cindy and I are quite an oddity, as you can imagine, for a village where most folks live in mud huts with thatched roofs. Lots of folks gleefully shout “mzungu!” (whitey) as we pass by, and many of the school kids (and adults too) will shake hands shyly if we say hello in Kiswahili. Kenya’s having quite a drought right now, so water is scare, and veggies are getting scarcer and more expensive as crops and cattle are dying from lack of water. Our well is dry at our house, but the rain tank has a little bit of water in it yet. Water conservation is key. Burning trash is the norm. And there’s a crazy lady in the village who follows us, reguarly, hitting us, dancing in front of trucks, removing her shirt in public, etc. And by crazy I mean mentally ill, shaking, and stealing from the Catholic church offering at the front alter last Sunday which caused quite a stir. Glad to know we’re not her only targets, but stealing from a church, even for a crazy woman, isn’t cool. Nor is pushing us into the street, which is surprising, but also funny funny, all at once. The bike taxi guys all laugh when she harasses us, mostly at her, but perhaps a tiny bit at us as well? It’s kind of a saga by now, with daily updates of what encounters we’ve had with the crazy woman. But, I digress…

My village is small… no supermarket, no cyber cafe, just subsistence farmers selling veggies on tarps on the side of the road. We’re usually able to find kale, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, and mangoes. As you can imagine, our meals aren’t too imaginative, but we hit a “big city” last weekend that had a store (!) and were able to pick up four spices! Life is good! Friday is market day and there are other vendors from nearby villages that often have stuff like carrots or oranges. Market day makes Cat a very happy girl. Lots of hustle and bustle, loud music blaring over awful speakers, and all of the second hand clothing in size XL that you could ever hope to see outside of a Value Village dumpster! It’s definitely the highlight of the week for me, entertainment wise.

Work is going great. The disabled youth at the Center for Disabled Youth are suffering from so many awful, crippling diseases. I almost cried 5-10 times the first day I was there, so many kids is such rough conditions. Apparently our region (division) has more disabled youth than anywhere else in Kenya… very sad stuff.

Disability here is often thought to be the curse of an enemy or God cursing a parent for something they did wrong. This means most disabled youth are shunned, not treated, and often hid. The head therapist at our center told me that some parents build cages in the backs of their land for their disabled kid since they wouldn’t want others in the community to see them with such a cursed child. Our center provides physical therapy, and assists with surgery and medicine when possible. We serve over 200 kids with physical and mental disabilities, and many are multi-handicapped. Spina bifida, cerebral palsy, club foot, clef palette, and epilepsy are common in the kids we see. Complications of the diseases have left many without the use of legs, arms, and often vocal abilities as well.

The staff, therapists, and nuns have all been very helpful and educational during our first two weeks… answering tons of questions and explaining many conditions, causes, and beliefs. They’re also trusting! The director already asked me to facilitate the 2-day annual planning meeting for the center despite the fact I’ve been there only two weeks. Crazy. Guess she has faith, which is a good thing for a nun. :) Most importantly, the kids we serve are very sweet, and I definitely feel like I’m able to contribute, help, and connect!

Our house on the Catholic parish land is nicer than I expected, quite comfortable. It’s not a mud hut, it’s concrete blocks, and we have both a floor and a ceiling (don’t laugh… many “nice” houses here go without either). Yes, we pee in a hole in the floor, but it’s an indoor hole and that’s pretty sweet in my book, especially when you have to go at 3am. The kitchen is separate from the house, and is manageable. We even have electricity in our house… one of the few places in the village! That means we get a light bulb hanging from a wire in each room, and a small fridge in the kitchen. It goes out regularly, but some is way better than none, which is what I was originally expecting!

There’s no running water, and with the drought, water is scarce. That’s probably the hardest part… think of how often you flush a toilet, wash clothes, take a shower, wash dishes, water a plant, boil an egg, fill a Nalgene water bottle, rinse veggies from the store, make oatmeal, have a cup of coffee or tea, etc. Think of how much water you use on a daily basis, and think of it in terms of pints or liters . Imagine working in a dusty rural village with kids, and imagine not having a sink to wash your hands. Imagine helping a therapist build and apply a plaster cast on a child with club foot, and no sink afterwards to wash off the gooey plaster of paris. Imagine collecting rain water in buckets, full of mosquito larvae and tiny worms and knowing that’s the water you’ll use for dinner tonight, and for flushing, and for “cleaning” your hands and dishes and clothes and drinking and yada yada yada. We collect it, filter it, and chemically treat it, but it’s a slow process. We do it throughout the day to make sure we have enough. I’ve haven’t bathed much yet as it feels so wasteful when there are people, crops, and animals dying from the drought.

We’re living quite the high life, compared to what I was expecting, and apart from the water thing life is pretty easy. Work is good. We’ve started a garden to grow sukumawiki (kale) and water it twice a day. At home we cook every meal, which takes time, and boil water to wash pots and pans and plates, and by that point we’re tired in the evening and ready to read or journal or go to bed. We’ve got a ready supply of folks inviting us to visit their homes locally, and Father Gasper has invited us to go home with him to visit his family in Tanzania. (He’s from the Masai people… the tribe that probably gets most of the publicity in Eastern Africa. I’m not interested in trying the “goat stew with cow’s blood” that he’s mentioned, but Tanzania is definitely on my agenda at some point. Not sure that I’d go with him, but I do hope to go).

Anyway, my time here is about up and so I’ll close now. Not exactly an organized and detailed account of life abroad, but it’s a start. There’s so much to say, but limited time. For now, please accept this as a beginning. And please feel encouraged to send email or snail mail. It’s going to cost me about $1.50 to send a single piece of mail back to the states, which feels costly when $1.50 will buy the food for half a week. I’m still figuring out is snail mail, or a trip into town and cyber cafe fees, will be easier. I’ll keep you updated. But either way, contact from the outside world is always good. And now I’m off.

Lots and lots of love from Kenya,
Kwa heri,
Cat

In about 9 hours we’ll wake up, pack up the truck, and begin the drive to Malava to see our new village and new home. Along the way we’ll drive through the towns of Eldoret and Nakuru (where Sundi went to school as a kid), and pass by Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru (both famous for hosting tons of pink flamingos). I believe we also drive along the Mau Escarpment and have the chance at seeing zebras and giraffes (and maybe elephants way off in the distance). But… I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today we took a trip across town to Langata to visit the other community house. My former co-worker Gerri is there, along with about seven other women. Their house is at the foot of the mountains in the Karen part of town (so named for Karen Blixen, the woman who wrote her famous memoir, Out of Africa about her move to Africa and the coffee plantation she ran on the land at the base of the hills.

On the way to Langata our supervisor Judi asked if we’d be up for a trip to the Giraffe Center. The 500 kSh entrance fee wasn’t appealing, but we definitely wanted to visit. Imagine my surprise to see that it was the very place I’d seen on a PBS program about Kenya and giraffe rescue efforts! Anyone else see the one about the family that started Giraffe Manor? Look them up at www.giraffemanor.com (I think).

The place does free education visits with student groups… which is well needed as many poor families from across Kenya end up leaving their home lands to seek jobs in Nairobi. Most kids don’t get to see native dancing, animals, etc without places like Giraffe Center. Well, we got to stand right there and feed the giraffes, pet the giraffes, and even hug the giraffes. There are only three types of giraffes in Kenya, and this family that started the center took a breed that was down to only 80 giraffes nationwide and have helped increase their population to over 300. We probably hung out with about 10 giraffes today and it was fun to be up close, getting slobbered all over while feeding, and scratched by their 18 inch sandpaper grey tongues. Side note: My new camera hasn’t been worth a damn yet… the flash won’t work and it won’t stay turned on for more than two minutes before telling me “change battery.” The sad part is that it’s done this with three entirely different sets of batteries in a row limiting the number of photos I’ve taken to less than a dozen over the course of the month. I was able to snap a few pictures today before it died (maybe 4-5?) and pictures on this site might follow some day if we find a computer that can read my USB memory stick. This computer in Nairobi has Windows XP, but reading memory is beyond it.

Anyway, the trip to the Giraffe Center was lovely, meeting new folks and seeing the house in Langata was lovely, trying Bitter Lemon soda wasn’t lovely (but was interesting!), and now I’m off to bed. It’s 9:30pm and we’re going to wake early tomorrow for the 8 hour trek to Malava. Might not have net access in a while, so in the mean time, hope everyone is well!

PS Kenya is a former British colony, so everything here is Brit-speak, including the spell check. You’ll have to forgive me in advance if I end up spelling color with a “u” or center with a “re.” G’night…

Hello again! We’re still in Nairobi for another day, which makes me feel like I should live it up while here in the land of electricity, running water, and internet access. Yes, the community house in Nairobi has all these modern conveniences. Not to say it’s modern, fancy, or bug free… but it is quite comfortable, has mosquito netting for our beds, and shares a block of land with a church, a soccer field, and a car repair/junk yard business.

The house is only a few blocks from a public market, so this afternoon I borrowed a key from the sisters, said goodbye to Cindy, and killed some time with a walk through the nearby market. It had the kind of crafts I’d have expected to see if I’d thought ahead and guessed about what might be present. I saw old women sitting on the ground weaving colourful baskets. I saw young women trying to sell batiks and necklaces. There were young men carving giraffes and lions out of rosewood and ebony. And there were old men who were making shoes… which was much more interesting to me this afternoon. It was like a how-to for shoe making, all in one bustling, dusty, smelly, crowded outdoor market. One guy in a stall would use a knife to shred a car tire into strips of rubber for the soles of shoes. Another stall would have animal hides hanging in the breeze tanning for the leather uppers. The next stall had men cutting scraps of leather and sewing them on old foot pump Singer sewing machines. And another stall had men staining leather with dyes for shoes that could be black, red, or blue. After that you’d have a guy with all measures of clasps, clips, and fasters appropriate for any style of footwear. One artist I saw even did leather work and pounded rose shapes into the shoes and painted strips to mimic a giraffe’s spots. I suspect that kind of fancy giraffe pattern shoe is good for tourists, though I can’t be sure as I was the only muzungo (white person) in the whole market.

I probably spent an hour and a half there talking to various friendly vendors before heading back to the house. When I got back there was a lively soccer game going on with teenage boys (who were quite content to use a basketball in place of a soccer ball). There was also a slew of girls and younger boys along the sidelines, who promptly mobbed me once I sat down to watch the game. They all spoke some English, and even the five year olds English was much better than my limited five words of Kiswahili. They were very sweet (see photo above), they wanted a million pictures taken of them (mostly showing the peace sign with their eyes closed), and were helpful teaching me words for play, game, soccer, etc (all of which I promptly forgot).

Eventually I headed home, we had leftovers for dinner (more beans and rice, for the third meal in a row), and we called it a night. Tomorrow we’ll visit another community house in Langata, and maybe see giraffes or take a nature walk. I’m hoping for giraffes, but a nature walk would be a lovely second choice. For now, I’m signing off and going to read for a while before bed. G’night all…

The big headlines in Kenya right now are the drought and famine. The dry season is very harsh this year, and people, livestock, and crops are dying from the lack of water/rains. Malava has about 6 ft of water in our well right now, but that’s not tons. And certain fruits and veggies are apparently no longer present in the market. That said, I suspect we’ll do okay as Americans with money for food. My favorite meal in Seattle was rice and beans, and I’m told it’s still easy to get both of those.

The school visit yesterday was interesting. We meet two young men who gave us the tour. Both were from slums and both were in the school by the grace of a foreign “sponsor” who paid for their education, room, and board. Doesn’t cost much, but it’s an opportunity for education they would otherwise never have.

So, in the mean time, when you see the informercials for starving Africans where you are asked to send pennies a day to keep a child feed and in school, know that they’re actually legitimate. Kind of bizarre to experience it in real life on day one in town…

Just a note to let y’all know we made it safely to Nairobi after the 30 hr trek from Austin. We slept 12 hrs last night, ate mango and bread for lunch, and are going on a tour of a local school in 45 minutes. Monday morning at 7am we leave for our village. Not much else to report yet. Hope y’all are well!

“You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens.”
~Rilke

“Africa” by Toto

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stop to know that along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”

Refrain:
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I passed some rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serangetti
I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become

Refrain

Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I passed some rains down in Africa, I passed some rains down in Africa
I passed some rains down in Africa, I passed some rains down in Africa
I passed some rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had