All That I See

Lots, lots, lots to recap, so I'll try to be brief.
2 weekends ago was my best weekend staying in Nairobi. Friday, we found some delicious Ethiopian food in town after class and hung out there for awhile. Then we went to the Nairobi Gallery to see this photography exhibit. It was interesting and a very different way to showcase photographs (projecting them onto the wall), but a good way to spend an afternoon all in all.
Saturday proved to be one of my more intense "cultural" experiences. We had some friends score us tickets to the Nairobi vs Uganda national teams football game. We had assumed we would be attending with some Kenyan friends, but at the last minute found out we were going by ourselves! So we were tough and totally ready for the lines...until people starting throwing things and fighting and the dogs were brought out to do crowd control. We retreated back into the crowds until I finally went up to the police at the gate and looked like a scared mzungu so they let us in without a problem. WIth that much tension inside and outside the stadium, it was probably good that the game ended in a 0-0 tie.

From Kenya

After the game, we went out to dinner with Collins and some other friends and had good time!
Sunday morning, Emily and I got up bright and early to go see the orphaned elephants!! We got super lost and it took us way too long to get there, but the trek was SO WORTH IT. definitely one of the coolest things of all time. Upon seeing the baby elephants playing, I immediately reverted to baby voice "AWWW wook at da baby ewephants pwaaaaaying" and just about DIED of happiness.

From Kenya

Quite a lovely, lovely weekend all in all. Met some new friends, played with elephants, had some yummy food. It was a good weekend to be in Nairobi.

Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Quite a busy few days to recap here.
Friday after class, some girlies and I went to the StoryMoja festival where we heard Micaela Wrong (author of It's Our Turn to Eat- which we are reading this semester) speak. It was super interesting and a great way to see how festivals and things operate here. Definitely different to an extent, but similar to festivals of the same nature in the US. As we left, I decided the clouds were just breathtaking and had to be really obnoxious and take pictures. Something about the clouds here just blow my mind.

Saturday was our grant proposal workshop. Which was super boring and exhausting but also very informative and helped me start formulating some ideas, which was definitely necessary.
Sunday we went on another excursion to Kitengela Glass Factory which really isn't that far from city center, but 100% got us out of the city. We went on the most ridiculous "nature hike" of my entire life- jumping across rocks and scaling walls. It was intense to say the least. My camera pooped out on me at this time, so I got absolutely no pictures of the factory which was really unfortunate. It was like it knew the exertion it was under and decided it just wanted to rest for a bit. The factory was absolutely fantastic. I don't think we learned anything about development, but it was beautiful and I got some awesome presents to attempt to bring home with me. The biggest thing for me, though, was the suspension bridge made of wire and glass that we had to use to cross a river to get the the factory and back across. I'm not particularly a fan of heights. To the point where as I was debating coming on this trip, the idea of that bridge held me back a little bit and made me pretty nervous. NO JOKE FRIENDS. So I crossed it, with tears in my eyes and gripping the edges like my life depended on it (which is obviously did)- but I did it, damnit. Quite an accomplishment.
It was insanity, basically. Afterwards, we hit up the Maasai Safari Lodge for some dinner. It was kind of a weird place- kind of a country club vibe with a pool, lots of drinking, and mediocre food. We did see a crazy food stealing monkey, a wild boar, some adorable birds, rock hyraxes, and TONS of baboons so that was all cool. It was nice and exhausting. And then I came home and got to skype with lots of people and that was super great! It made me miss home a little bit/ a lot bit, but it was worth it to see some shining faces on the computer.

America the Beautiful

Feeling pretty patriotic today and definitely listening to my "goodbye america" playlist on itunes as I write this. It was a rough day to be an American in my International Humanitarian Law class today. Last thursday, we watched the movie Green Zone. It has Matt Damon in it (yum), just came out this summer, and is about the hunt for mysterious WMDs at the beginning of the war in 2003. Our assignment was to answer some questions about the type of warfare, classifying the conflict, blah blah blah. Basically, write about it as if it were a true documentation of the war and the events preceding it. I had a problem with this, since I knew the kids in my class would think the movie was REAL and not fictional, which would ultimately cause problems. Never in my life did I ever think I would DEFEND the war in Iraq, but that's exactly what I found myself doing today. People were being mean about America and I had to defend my homeland with all I had.
After reminding a few people that the movie was a MOVIE and not a documentary, things turned to Guantanamo Bay and got reallllly ugly. [Just to really put this into perspective of how much it bothered me, I honestly just spent over an hour researching Guantanamo Bay instead of doing more important work]. So, Guantanamo. Yeah, it's not the best, it's pretty damn controversial, but most people in the US are going to agree on those two facts. This one girl in my class, Yvonne, spoke up and expressed an interesting opinion (interesting in the way that it wasn't entirely Anti-American) saying that she understood the motivations behind the creation of Guantanamo but couldn't understand that if the US was treating prisoners SO BADLY, why nothing was done about it. I found this point really interesting and would have loved to discuss it in detail to find out what people though. However, it caused both our teacher and the entire class to get into quite a tizzy. Somehow from this, they called her a murderer and made it seem like she thought everything done at Guantanamo was okay.
I have actually never seen anyone so disrespectful in a classroom environment as our professor got, though. She interrupted/cut off the girl speaking more than once while she tried to defend herself. She raised her voice and told the girl never to speak in class again until she had facts to back up her arguments. And the kicker, really, was that not 15 minutes prior to this conversation, the professor had said how open she was to opinions and that not everyone had to suckup/agree with her. She reiterated this "free to express opinion" point while tearing Yvonne down, and the girl retorted with "that's exactly what I did and you completely threw my opinion away." I have never felt so bad for anyone in a class before; poor girl was so targeted and yelled at by everyone in the class that she issued an apology by the end of the class period.
I ended up walking out of the class early because I couldn't really handle her hate-mongering speech any longer. For a professor who stresses having our own thoughts and opinions, it sure seems like she only wants to hear what she agrees with, and that will 99.9% of the time be Anti-American/western world feelings. I can usually keep myself calm and collected in classes where I disagree with what is being said, but I think this blatant prejudice and hatred just overwhelmed me today. I actually felt unsafe to even voice my own thoughts, even though we would obviously be the most educated on the topic. Oh and my favorite part? When she told the girl that she just must be getting her information from CNN. Wait, what? Since when did CNN become a defender of the war on terror/Guantanamo/president bush/etc. Maybe she should try watching CNN once in awhile to actually know what the hell she is talking about.
After some research, I have actually found out that a few things my professor claimed as 'facts' are actually false, and I definitely plan on bringing these points to her attention on Thursday. I feel the need so strongly to defend my country and defend what we stand for that I will risk my grade in this class to stand up for myself. Not really a choice I ever hoped to make, but it seems like a necessary evil at this point.

It's Nice To Go Traveling

So this weekend we finally got the hell out of Nairobi for a bit and it was EXACTLY the refresher I needed after such a rough week. Our first stop was Olorgesailie to check out some bones and handaxes and make us feel how young we were compared to the earth! Crazy! It was fun, but a little boring and super hot even though the sun was nowhere to be seen; thank goodness it wasn't out or we would've roasted. After that, we met up with a Maasai warrior named Joseph who has actually been to AU once this year so knows kind of who we are and what we're about. He showed us a bunch of development projects he's working on with some funding and lots of donor assistance. Then he took us to see giraffes in the wild, NO BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING. It was pretty freaking cool and made me really happy to be here. Then he took us to his house which he is basically operating a non profit out of and made us all food and we sat around and watched some boys dance and sing and it was all around a lovely, lovely, lovely day. Later saturday night, a few of the girls and I met up with a friend for some drinks and dancing and had lots of fun. Good weekend, all in all. I can't wait to get out of Nairobi this weekend or next weekend, already though. haha. It's not that intense of a city, it's just the constant pressure of being the only white person around and being stared at and harassed and asked for money-it just gets overwhelming pretty quickly, even for this total city girl.
Then today I was back at Lea Toto for the day with Beth, who I worked with last monday and really enjoy being around. She is very open with me and explains things and always translates for me, which I appreciate. We spent about 6 hours in the Kangemi slum doing home visits with clients. It was probably one of my favorite days here. Everyone was surprisingly nice to me, the kids all loved me and sang silly songs to me, even if they were a little scared at first (we've decided some of them are scared of us because they think we are albinos, which is a big scary thing in Kenya right now), and it felt like a productive day. I even managed to squeeze in buying a kanga to keep me warm and some vegetables for dinner. So nice to eat something other than peanut butter and carbs.
Also, for those of you looking at my pictures, it turns out that Flikr really sucks so I made a Picasa instead, which is linked to this blog AND my email so you can search it by that. AND it's currently updated with all of my awesome pictures from this weekend, so check it out!
Lots of love.
Also, is it too much to ask for someone to mail me some hummus? It's killin' me.

Let It All Out

I'll say it. I'm feeling a little lost and homesick this week. This is our first week of our internships and the emotional turmoil of mine, combined with the bullshit of USIU, and feeling pretty sick just really is dragging me down. Monday I had a pretty good day at Lea Toto. I went with Beth, a case manager who deals with all of Kangemi and has 250 kids on her caseload, to bring a girl to the hospital to get checked for sexual abuse. All turned out okay though, but we still brought her to this rehab place since her father is neglectful and she doesn't get to take her medicine and doesn't get fed well. Hopefully she will be healthier after spending a month there and we can find her a new permanent, safer placement. I really like Beth because she's very open with me and I'm not afraid to ask her questions, and she will always translate for me. It was a tiring day, but all in all, I felt good about it.
USIU on Tuesday proved to be a nightmare in getting one of my classes changed. All ended well there too, but it was bad and an advisor was just unnecessarily rude and disrespectful to me. Got home and went to the movies for some American time, which was very much needed.
Wednesday I was back at Lea Toto for food distribution day. Basically the most needy families come once a month and get food provisions like flour, corn, and oil to ease some financial burdens. All was fine until I was left to do the process with clients entirely alone for 20 minutes. I wasn't about to just sit there and not help these people, but the language barrier made things kind of difficult. Finally, the worker I was helping came back and things were fine. After that (and scarfing a quick pb&J since they don't have lunch breaks here?), I went out into the field with another case manager, Faith. Her area that she oversees is much more rural and outside of Nairobi proper- I think in Western province. So it was quite a trek and it really just hit me on that ride that I was actually here. Everyone spoke Swahili or Kikuyu without translating for me, even when I timidly asked. The families we visited were literally more poor than the slum families I've seen, and one father was very obviously not taking his ARV's and looked horrible. The kids were all just pretty confused as to who the HELL I was and what I was doing there. Since they're much more rural, a few of them had never even seen a white person before, so they were pretty scared of me at first. That's probably one of my biggest obstacles here. Kids always LOVE me, that's why I work with them; and facing kids who burst into tears because of my skin color is a huge blow for me. Most of them were really shy, but would come up to me and want to play, but those few who I just TERRIFY really get me down. It just got to the point yesterday where I thought to myself, "what am I doing here? And how am I possibly helping anyone?" I just felt like a tourist to poverty and that made me feel terrible.
I'm really just looking forward to this week finally ending, and getting some downtime. We're going on a little excursion Saturday to look at excavated bones and stuff and I'm really happy about that. I feel like I need it to remind myself of all of the good things in Kenya and why I'm here. It will be nice to get out of Nairobi for a bit.

also, sorry for the lack of pictures. I'll try to take some this weekend.
xo

Red Right Ankle

So I'm sick of just recapping stuff until the end of time. SO I'll just start with what's going on now and go back later when I have time to talk about some other crazy stuff that's happened in the past 2 weeks. We started classes at USIU this week. It's a beautiful campus, but the kids are really immature that we go to school with. I love one of my classes since it's a senior level class, so everyone is older and more mature and reasonable (except for the one girl who blamed America for there being homosexuality in Kenya...?). Adapting to the way classes are here is a little strange, as it seems like the professors don't have much control over classes. It's definitely different.
I PLAYED WITH GIRAFFES ON WEDNESDAY.

It was probably the coolest thing I have ever done. There are tons of pictures on my flickr too, so check those out.
Basically we're just been riding matatus around and exploring Nairobi (but mainly just our neighborhood, Westlands). I do have an infection in my ankle where that crazy ass wasp stung me over a week ago. Had to go to the doctor today to get antibiotics and stuff. Glad that it will finally heal now though, cause walking on it this week probably would have killed me.
I start my internship tomorrow at an organization called Lea Toto that deals with HIV+ kids, giving them services and helping them and their families with counseling services to try to deal with the stigmas of AIDS. I'm nervous but also excited to see what I can do in the organization to maximize the impact of me being there. I'm supposed to be stationed in the Kangemi slum which is fairly close to our neighborhood, but I really want to talk to them about bouncing around to fully understand the entire organization and to see the differences in the neighborhoods and the way HIV is dealt with around Nairobi. I hope all goes well.
We went out to our first bar experience on Friday night. It was pretty fun and funny and the DJ played super awesome music that I'm pretty sure was added to the playlist just for us (a lot of old American pop music). We hung out with the prostitutes since they were the only ones who were being nice to us, and made baby Megan take ridiculous birthday shots. It's cool to be legal in Kenya, haha.
I've been dealing with a lot of internet issues here so far. Some places have really good wireless for free so I've been taking advantage of that this weekend (that's how I'm posting this now). I bought a wireless modem to try to use in the apartment but the service is embarassingly bad. I planned on taking it in today to the store and demanding they make it work better, but it's Sunday so they're closed, duh. I'll see what I can do this week. So it seems, though, that I can skype pretty well in the coffee shop that I frequent- talked to Momma for 20 minutes today. So I will be online there on Sundays or Saturdays so coordinate with me on weekend skype times!
More to come soon. Always so tired here.

I Fought The Law

TUESDAY
We basically passed out Monday night and then had to get up bright and early to hop on the bus to Naivasha. I literally have never felt so carsick in all my life than I did on that bus. There wasn’t much of anything to eat in the apartments so my tummy was pretty empty. That combined with the malarone from the night before, the bad jetlag, and the bumpy ass ride it did not bode well. I really thought I was going to be the first person to throw up, but just before it got really bad, we stopped at the Great Rift Valley viewing point. Ugh it was disgustingly beautiful and we all took tons of touristy pictures and it was fun.

The rest of the ride to Naivasha was interesting and we passed some former IDP camps that are in the process of becoming little legitimate towns and it sparked lots of stories and info about the post election violence. When we got to the hotel, we had lunch and then went on an adventure to find an atm which was interesting. Everything else that day was just orientation information yada yada and learning about lots of things. We went back to the hotel, had some Tusker and chilled. Dinner was delicious and we were having super intense conversations throughout it. As we left and went upstairs, Emily realized she didn’t have her purse. Turns out it was stolen from the dining room in the hotel which was really upsetting and horrible and a really bad bad second day experience. Victor decided we should go to the police station so I went with EM for moral support (cause for real, who would want to go to a Kenyan police station alone as a mazungu girl with a stolen purse issue? I know I woulda peed myself). So we give the “police report” of sorts and basically just listen to a lot of Swahili, which was great practice. Then we went outside and started talking to one of the police guys. All of a sudden, all of the men-including Victor-start having an intense conversation in Swahili as Emily and I just stand there sort of awkwardly. Finally Victor explained that they were discussing how there was a cannibal living in the woods right around the police station. They described him as having demons in his head so that was why he was crazy and eating dogs and young women. But the police were quick to tell us that they had killed him. Probably our first truly intense cultural experience. They asked “this does not happen in the US?” and we pretty much said that that was rare, but I did tell him that many people believe in demons in the head (to an extent, and to find common ground) so that was helpful. Then we discussed animals/trees, and I had to describe what a ZOO was and also explain how Americans like getting rid of trees to build businesses and houses and things which was probably the weirdest thing he had ever heard in his life. It was an interesting chat and helped us practice our Swahili a little bit too. We finally went back to the hotel and passed OUT cause it was such a crazy evening. But not before Victor (he travels with us as security but also does programming) pulled the defense sticker thing off of a grasshopper so we could play with it. Weird? Yeah, a little bit. But we just went with it and played with the grasshopper before he flicked it away. Basically a really strange ass day.

p.s. just made my flickr, here's the link: check it out
hope that works!