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