Safe and sound

So, I am here in Kenya, safe and sound. Sorry for the delay in posting but it has been a crazy few weeks. This post might be a bit disjointed and random but I will try to make some sort of order. We arrived in Nairobi airport Wednesday May 26 and all managed to get all of our bags onto two matatus (van that acts as a passenger bus) and headed to a compound about 30 minutes outside of the city. We stayed there for two days and then headed to our training city, Loitoktok. Loitoktok is a border city to Tanzania and boasts awesome views of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Homestay

My homestay family is great. They have made me feel so welcome and we all get along great. In the family is my mama, baba (dad), and kaka (brother). I also have another kaka and dada (sister) but they are away at school. Man, my mama works HARD. I hear her outside my bedroom window about 6am every morning milking the cow (we have a shamba [farm] with beans and maize, chickens, and a cow) and getting firewood together. The house is small but cozy. We don't have electricity so mama cooks by either jiko stove (charcoal) or, most often, over fire. The food is... food. It not great but it's not bad and it's nutritious (sort-of). The main staple food in Kenya is ugali. Now I had had ugali before and it tastes alright to me but it wasn't until last weekend when I saw my brother made it that I had to pause. This is how my kaka made ugali: Boil water in a pot. Pour in two big bowls of flour. Stir vigorously. Watching this I thought, isn't this what we call PAPER MACHET in the States and use for children's arts and crafts??? This is now my dinner a couple times a week. Along with cabbage or kale and beans or potatoes in stew. All in all, things on the homefront are pretty good. The lack of electricity is only a bother when I need to charge my own things, part of the reason it has taken me so long to post and email. I get home from training about 6:30 (our curfew), have chai (milky tea), help mama in the kitchen a bit, take a bath (more on that later), eat dinner (by kerosene lamp), talk with the family and by 9PM I am snuggled in my bed reading or, most likely, falling asleep. Quite a change from my summer last year! After the day of training and all the walking, though, I'm tired anyhow so I don't mind going to bed early.

Training

Most days of training start out with a morning full of language (anywhere from 3-5 hours), then lunch, then either technical training, culture lessons, or medical. The first two weeks we were all learning KiSwahili but now that we have our site assignments, we are learning the local language spoken where we will be placed. English and Ki-Swahili are the official languages of Kenya but the country is made up of around 42 tribes, each with their own language. Some are close to one another and some are just as foreign as Japanese to English. I will be learning Ki-Maasai (or Maa) and feel very lucky because my host family is also Maasai so I am able to practice with them every day. For technical training, since I am a SED (small enterprise development= business) volunteer, we are partnered with local groups and will be helping them start and run a business that will hopefully turn a profit before we leave in 5 weeks. My group wants to raise chickens to sell eggs and I think we will be able to get started selling by the end of next week (inshallah). So far we have been meeting with the groups, small business people in the area, and conducting market research. Culture lessons deal a lot with gender roles (I'll have to do a separate post on this one!), Kenyan history, and some details about the different tribes and politics. Medical sessions are usually the worst. Basically, they detail all of the 1986398710984 things that can kill us while we are here, how to spot them, when to call medical, and how/if they are treated. There's also the rounds of shots, but we get snickers after them so I say it's a fair trade :-)

My Job
Our group was quite lucky in that we found out our site assignments 2 weeks into training. The first group back after PC evacuated Kenya in 2008 (due to post-election violence) found out their site assignments literally two days before they were set to go. We now have the advantage of knowing where we will go and what we will do so that we can tailor our training to be the most effective. I will be going to the lower rift valley and working with the Masai tribe. My internet isn't as great as before so I can't put in all the hyperlinks but search for Masai/ Maasai and you will see the population I will be working with. My closest town is Narok, which is about 2 hours from Nairobi. However, since it has been affectionately nicknamed “Nai-robbery” I don't plan on visiting much. My assignment is to work with an NGO, Mission with a Vision, that provides a safe house for girls who have been victims of FGM (female genital mutilation/ female circumcision) and/or early marriage. The Maasai is one of the tribes that still practices FGM and some girls are married as young as 12 or 13. The safe house is a place they can run away to and be enrolled in secondary school. The organization tries to reconcile the girls with their parents after some time elapses, and they say there are many times successful in doing so. I will also be starting a micro-finance institution there and helping the women and girls start small businesses. I'm really excited about the project, the SED advisers really did a great job in placing people according to skill sets and interests.

OK, this post is really long at this point so I'll just end with this: It is 10:05 on Saturday morning and I have already made and eaten breakfast, washed this week's clothes (by hand of course), “washed the house”, and finished a book. My kaka also tried to get me to wash his clothes but I am trying (slowly) to undo his learning about static gender roles. Now it's time to start lunch and go to the market! Electricity provided, I will post more later this week. Any questions or comments feel free to tell me below or send me an email (megan.d.browder@gmail.com). Sera!