New photos from our trip to the Mara

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2009_09_21 Kweisos

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I love it here, I love it not, I love it here, I love it not....

Ok, so there are some things that are not totally lost to me. There are a few things that I can say I still enjoy about being here. My job, for one. It is very fulfilling for me. I am not stuck just doing the same old thing day in and day out. And what I do is having a real and measured impact on the community. There is a video documentary I made of a woman’s HIV support group that is now being shown to community groups all over the district to disseminate the finding of the study the group was connected to. I have been told it’s a very powerful tool to help people feel they are not alone in their battle with HIV and cultural taboos. It helps gives other women strength to seek help and not feel they are the only ones who have these problems and they can be overcome. I am very proud that I was able to do this. And I am excited to do more projects like it.

It’s nice having a staff of four working at my house, no doubt about it. I have barely cooked a meal or clean a dish in three years. I know this sound snobbish. But I also know that the people I employ are honest hard working and can afford food, housings and health care for themselves and their kids and even grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. All on the salary we pay that one person so although it sometimes feels overwhelming it also feels good that we can support them.

About a month ago I was walking though the ICT section of the building I work in and I noticed they had new interns from the local college working. One young man noticed me too, stood up from his computer and with this big happy smile said “hello Alan” like he knew me. Now it’s not so unusual for people to say hello to me and I can remember, old age creeping in I guess but I was really taken aback by his enthusiasm and how heartfelt he sounded, like I had just save his life or something. Turned out I practically had saved his life.

One night I got a call from this man who is tending a plot of land owned by a friend who is not living in Kenya at the moment. He and this young boy were living on the plot. They were both taking care of things while the boy was also finishing a degree at the local college. Seems the boy was incredibly ill and needed to go to hospital but there was no way to get him there. They were located in a small village just outside of town. The road to the plot was difficult unless you had four wheel drive and it would also be hard to find them in the dark if you didn’t already know the way. I agreed to go out and bring them to hospital. Normally I don’t like to drive at night, for various (and obvious) reasons be how could I say no? So when I got there the boy looked totally emaciated, weak and seemingly and literally on deaths door, no wonder I didn’t recognize him when he said hello to me at work. He said nothing the whole way into town, only coughing and wheezing. I dropped them at the hospital and gave some money for x-rays and meds. Turned out to be TB and, yes, he would have died had I or someone not got him to treatment fast. So when I saw this boy again, and he reminded me of who he was and how he was so so so grateful for the thing that I had done for him. Such a simple thing, really, to give someone a ride, I was really almost moved to tears.

Everything here seems to be about survival of one kind or another. Not just ‘will I find a job’ but ‘will I live long enough to find a job’. Life is raw here. Life is cheap here. For me experiences here have been intense. I know I am forever changed by being here. Once we leave here it will be hard, for a while I think, to relate to people who have not been here. It will be hard to explain why I am so conflicted about this place, why I both love and hate being here. Hell, I don’t completely understand it myself yet.

It's been a while...

Yes, I know, it’ been a while. I have been thinking that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, like my mama told me, I shouldn’t say anyting. But, really, that is not what this blog was suppose to be about. This was originally fashioned to keep a dairy for our kids so they will have some sense of what was going on through these years in Africa. I have sort of lost site of that. I really should be writing about the good AND the bad (and the ugly?). so I have been trying to spare my readers my moaning and groaning about lifeand forgetting that this is something I need to document. So, sorry folks but I am back on the blog to bitch.

There is a lot to catch you up on so I’ll do my best to bring you up to speed.

The real kicker for me has been a one two punch of physical ailments for the past year. Literally a year ago some strange illness began which is only now beginning to subside. After numberous tests, which included flying back to the US for test they have determined that I contracted some sort of mystery virus that effected my liver and presented with irritable bowel symptoms. A little Metamucil and a lot of rest seems to be able to control it, but not eliminate it….yet.

At the same time, during our home leave last year I had a Lipoma removed from my arm which left that hand partially paralyzed for four months! The worst was just not knowing if/when I would ever get my right hand back. Of course I did but that’s not the point, the point is that I have really really not felt well at all for quite some time. And as I have had very little go wrong with my body up til now for my whole life I have not been an easy person to be around.

How much of these physical problems have been influencing my ambivalence about remaining in Kenya I don’t know. Probably at least some influence. but I am ready to leave. My wife is not, but that is another story. Actually the truth is TODAY I am ready to leave, tomorrow I might feel differently, I vacillate constantly; drives me nuts. I am exhausted by what I used to think was quaint and don’t have patience anymore for being misunderstood. I believe in justice and fare play and the corruption as a way of life here is what is probably really giving me my irritable bowel symptoms. Tired of being seen as the only hope for people who have no chance in hell for a better life except through my intervention. It’s all just too much for me. And I have almost become virtually too terrified to step out my compound for fear that some medical emergency will occur and one of my family or me will have to be sent to the local hospital where chimpanzees would probably do a better job of taking care of me than the local doctors.

The expat community in Kisumu is very small and close knit. So when someone leaves, as is inevitable, it makes a big impact. I have done far worse at this then anticipated. I really get depressed when someone leaves. By the end of this year nobody will be left of the original group that was here when we arrived three years ago. The kid population is steadily dropping too. Right now Max has only one American friend here. We would love to have more Kenyan friends but because of economic differences it’s not so easy.

So let’s say we did leave. But wait. This is not really the best time to be restarting a life in the west, right? I hear everyday, almost, how one of my friends has been laid off or just how difficult things are right now. So it’s better for us to wait it out here for the next two years, if we can handle it…..

I am bored of the Masaai Mara (I can’t believe I’m saying this but it’s true) and camping and driving on shit roads.I have taken all the photos I want to take here, I’ve been ‘taken‘ by all the Kenyan’s I care to as well.

I have always been a person who felt I required a change of venue every few years anyway. These feeling are nothing new actually so some of this is just my cycle.

Let’s hope I wake up in a better mood tomorrow………

Yes, It's Really Real and It's Alive!

Pamela

As if Pamela needs anything else to happen........

So two weeks ago our nanny Pamela’s sister-in-law died while in labor, her baby died too. The sister in law’s husband abandoned her and a 4 year old daughter a couple months earllier. So now Pamela has to go to Nairobi to bring the body to Kisumu for burial in there family home, and now, I guess, Pamela will be looking after the little girl too.

They have been waiting all this time to bring the body back because Pamela's fathers house which is made from mud, sticks and tin fell down during the rainy season in April, they haven’t been able to rebuild, and because of Luo culture no funeral until rebuilding. We financed the rebuilding so now they can bring her back. This place can be so exhausting and just plain sad.

Simon

Our friend Simon started by building the school at the orphanage we have supported in the past. Now he goes all over Africa building schools in the most unlikely and unusual places.

Message from simon:
The Pic here are of our Liberia Projects...the biggest of them is the Belle Yelle Agricultural school.To get to Belle Yella you have to ride a jeep for about five hours over very crazy bridges as you will see here in...you then get to a small village(We have completed a primary school at this village and students are in class), here the road meets the river and after crossing the river by canoa you have to walk for between ten to thirteen hours depending on how fast your legs can carry you!"