Kwaheri Kenya

Two army troops accompanied us on the road northward to Lamu, for the purpose of security. In theory. I’m fairly sure they just protected us from corrupt police, who we met somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen times. After ditching them at the docks, a tiny speedboat deposited us on the island.

Lamu is the most relaxed, welcoming place I’ve been since arriving in Kenya. There are no vehicles except for the motorbike of the district commissioner. Instead, donkeys carry loads of people or goods between villages and through cramped walkways, squeezing past each other when they find themselves head-to-head. Idle donkeys throng along beachside walkways and in city squares. Mozambique- and Lamu-style sailboats, equipped with a single sail and manned by two people, crowd the water adjacent to the seawall and provide ferry transport between islands, towns, and the mainland. People are so nice. As we walked along the beach at sunrise, collecting coral and shells from clusters of rocks dotting the smooth expanse of sand, women approached with smiles and eagerly carried out jabbered conversations. Men said “Hello” in passing, then carried on with their business, unless they were stopping to make sure we weren’t lost in the twisting maze of sandy alleys.

Monday morning we wandered the streets of Lamu, trailing behind a tiny old man who pointed out 400-year-old doors and mosques and led us through the local market. Our guide decided we needed to get more henna, which the Swahili women told us would take a half hour. It took three. As he waited, Charles quizzed all the kids on their studies and bought the lot of them sodas, obtaining the good graces of their parents for all time. However, he abstained from mentioning that the bottle he carried contained a combination of coke, water, brandy and limes.

That evening, we boarded a sailboat. We crossed the straight between Lamu and Manda Islands before continuing seaward along the mangroves. As the deep orange sun sank into the horizon next to the tip of Lamu, the full moon rose directly across the darkening sky before we returned to shore. Although it was breathtaking, I have now decided that sail boats and small planes are the two most terrifying things on the planet.

Tuesday, traveling back to the mainland, we passed Richard Leaky getting into his boat outside his giant private villa. I didn’t even know he was still alive.

Today was all wrap-up. I took my parents to Kibera, we visited a ceramic bead factory and shop (where they’re supposed to give tours, but they’re closed for xmas), and we had tea with my host mom.

I am now on the plane to Addis Ababa where my Ethiopian classmate Adane invited me up to stay with his family for a while. However. He’s gone AWOL, so couch surfing (and a hastily-bought guidebook) has become my new savior. As the flight attendant so graciously informed us, “In the likely event of a failure of the air supply…”

Until next time.

Surrounded by Pineapples and Coconuts

Tsavo West is green. Like, crazy-long-lush-grass-and-shrubbery-everywhere-you-look green, nestled in sprawling valleys between dramatic, clear cut uplifts and cliffs that stand decisively in front of the setting sun. Looking into the distance, the thousand shades of green shift subtly to deep, mellow blues before the hills fade into the ever-present African dust. Above the whole presides Mt. Kilimanjaro, silhouetted against the west, its snowcap extending far down the ravines of its rippled contour.

The rainy season is winding up and winter migrations are taking place. Songbirds rose in clouds of thousands from the brush as we passed through, flying a few meters to settle among the upper leaves and branches of a single tree. Wydas chased each other, paradise-inspired tails trailing behind. Raptors surveyed the scene below from every bare perch in sight. Flocks of guinea fowl scattered like chickens. Dik diks presented themselves absolutely everywhere, bounding into the brush in twos and threes.

So, we visited Tsavo West. Amazing Animal Acquaintances included a herd of bad-tempered buffalo (when have they ever got a mild disposition??), a herd of elephants that decided to pop up straight in front of Kili, another family of elephants that started trumpeting and charging at a jeep when the smoking tourists contained therein used camera flashes after sundown at close range, a family of hyenas (with a cub), and a pride of lions that appeared out of the bush and elected to sprawl across the road in front of us. Oh, and we passed this crazy awesome tree with a strangler fig establishing its roots and slowly, steadily and creepily cutting off its blood supply for all time.

Tuesday we checked out the Sheitani Lava Fields, a flow emerging from a nearby cluster of cones, known by Satan’s name due to its emission somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 years ago and the undoubted witnessing and subsequent superstition by local tribes. Deep fissures ran throughout the crisp, rock as heat rose in waves from its baking black surface.

Under the rock of the Sheitani flow runs a river which emerges at Mzima Springs, a haven filled with cool, clear water, lined by cluster upon cluster of papyrus, and home to a large number of basking Nile crocodiles. And a ridiculously excessive quantity of fish, who congregated on the bottom of the river and stared at us through the windows of a nifty little underwater house.

Wednesday, amid hills engulfed in morning fog, we departed Tsavo West for Mombassa. If I hadn’t spend a semester in the Galápagos and a subsequent month in the Amazon very nearly breathing water, I would probably claim that Mombassa is humid. As it stands, the city is hot. It is busy, bustling, and noisy. Matatus and tuk tuks (open Indian-style three-passenger, three-wheeled taxis) cram the streets. Beggars abound, even more so than in Nairobi. And they’re more persistent, but that might be due to the big white safari van that broadcasts MONEY to a five-block radius. The vast majority of the population is Muslim, ergo my long pants and frisbee jersey once again made an appearance. Nairobi’s omnipresent food carts that impart the appearance of a farmers’ market scattered by a tornado are accompanied by stalls hawking cassava chips, fried fish and popcorn. And coconuts. The prominence of English in Nairobi is replaced almost entirely by Swahili, kind of making me wish I had put some more effort into that class.

We visited Fort Jesus, originally erected by the Portuguese, who sailed under the Christian flag and built the structure in the shape of their savior floating in the water on his back. And then the Arabs took it over, and I’m not quite clear on what happened from there. But, there were some really cool super-old walls (with spiky things on top), a moat, a very old, very dead Portuguese skeleton, and some wall paintings of chameleons and plundering ships and sacred hearts. And an artillery room connected to a crazy arched passage out to the water.

We crossed to the mainland on the Likoni Ferry, cars and people crammed into every open nook and cranny, adorned by giant signs banning photography. Because blowing up would be bad. Or something. We ended up walking through a Swahili village, following a man who owned a kiosk, winding through houses constructed of stone glued together by mud and covered with vaulted thatched roofs and surrounded by garden plots and mango trees. (One of the kids who waved at us from an adjacent soccer field wore a Blazers’ jersey, which pretty much made my day.) We came to a house where a woman sat out front, tossing balls of chapati dough from hand to hand as she floured and stacked them in preparation for sale the next day. Her husband disappeared into a shack, returning with fresh chapati to pass around the group before we headed home.

Thursday we drove north along the mainland until we arrived at a track leading off the road alongside a quarry, where a group of oryx had decided their day was best spent chilling out in front of the administrative buildings. And then we arrived at Haller Park, and realized that the oryx were actually part of a much larger contingent that made its residence in an expansive tract of marshes, ponds, rivers and woods reclaimed from aforementioned quarry. Oryx were everywhere. So were waterbuck, submerged to their stomachs in the mire, and vervet monkeys, who sat in a bush and placidly stared as a kid walked straight up and roared in their faces. There was a crocodile breeding program (behind fences or in sunken enclosures), a reptile exhibition (with green mambas and spitting cobras), hippos hiding in shaded sludge and giraffes who once again eagerly removed grass-and-honey pellets from our outstretched hands.

Following Haller Park we hit up Kenyatta Public Beach, a stretch of pristine white sand leading down to the turquoise water of the Indian Ocean, lined by rows of ramshackle vending stalls. Men and boys leading camels with super sketchy saddles wove between people sprawled absolutely everywhere, lounging or wading in rented swimsuits and tires. On the way back to the car a palm frond crashed down in front of us, missing our heads by approximately two meters.

Later in the afternoon we wound our way into a market, navigating narrow, twisting aisles of new and used clothing and emerging in an alley lined by boatloads (literally) of fresh watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, apples and oranges piled head-high. Fruit gave way to women selling fresh veggies laid out on cloths spread in front of them. Finally, we stepped into a shop lined in row upon row of sacks of beans, maize and rice. Swahilis busily weighed, packaged and priced little paper bags of saffron, paprika, pilaf mix, curry powders, tea spices, lemon salts and tomato powder that adorned shelves on the back wall. It smelled wonderful.

In the evening we wandered the streets of a secluded neighborhood, searching for an acquaintance of our local guide who did henna. A few phone calls, several U-turns and some rapid Kiswahili swapped with passers-by later, we stood at the front door of a mud-and-brick home. She was praying, so we waited. When she returned, she found herself occupied with other clients, so we waited some more. “It is a busy day,” they told us. “She is busy on Thursdays, because weddings begin on Friday. She is too busy.” And so we wandered the streets again, searching for her back-up. Eventually we arrived at the feet of an old, wrinkled woman sitting in front of the door to a bleak concrete building. “Yes, this is the place. My granddaughter is here, but she is busy. You will have to wait.” And so we waited. And then her granddaughter invited us in, squeezed henna into a tube, and covered our arms in intricate floral Swahili designs.

Friday, we drove northward to Malindi. The small city is situated along a stunning coastline, characterized by a large Italian population and culture and absurdly excessive numbers of guys hanging out on the beach, looking for hookups and money and preying on unsuspecting white tourists.

We detoured into the Gede Ruins- the remnants of a Swahili town abandoned in the 1600s that remained undiscovered until the late 1800s. Most noteworthy was the king’s palace, which contained his tomb and those of his four wives and as his own private bathroom (with two stalls). There were also baobabs, strangler figs and a new kind of monkey, who quite literally came up to us demanding bananas.

Yesterday I dove the barrier reef just off of Watamu. It wasn’t as dramatic as the Galápagos, but it was still pretty freaking awesome. The water was for all intents and purposes a salty, tepid bath. Rocks were graced by four-ft. sea anemones (Like insane giant aliens! I didn’t even realize what they were until I backed up a ways…) and crazy corals growing everywhere. Lionfish lurked below overhangs, while mottled yellow and green leaf scorpionfish waited among beds of sea weed. Deep, brilliant indigo triggerfish wandered past, as did an unflappable puffer. Nudibranchs clung to the coral, backs striped vivid violet, orange, and black or bright blue. Bright violet feather coral swayed in the current. Blue-spotted stingrays darted away as we disturbed the water around them, and we wrote our names in the sediment layered on the back of a giant sea cucumber. Also, I managed to lose a fin, sending it wafting down to 25 meters, fully convincing my divemaster that I was, in fact, the world’s biggest idiot.

And then we all came back together as a big, happy family and visited a community woodcarving co-op, where (local) people have come together to make lots and lots and lots of pretty stuff that sits in a showroom, waiting for unsuspecting outsiders (that would be me) to wander in and amble aimlessly through the aisles and gawk and leave with a little less money.

This morning before departing, we cussed away the swarming boys and wandered down the beach and out into the sea grass exposed by the low tide, discovering bright orange coral, sea urchins, neon-blue fish, brittle stars and tubeworms.

And now I find myself in Lamu, but that is a story for another day.

Mountains, Mambas and Maasai

Tuesday evening, I headed out to meet up with my family in Maasai Mara. Traffic, rain and a certain pair of corrupt policemen lengthened a four-hour ride to six, and we arrived somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:15 AM. I wanted to go to sleep. “Let us take a late dinner!” Are you kidding? No, thank you. I’m not hungry. Seriously, I just want to go to bed. “At least warm your stomach!” Right. Whatever. I give.

Wednesday, we headed into the bush in the middle of nowhere (otherwise known as Maasailand) and got dropped off with two guides, a cook and three porters. We walked across the scrubby desert, found a tortoise, passed several houses and crossed a dry river before arriving at the outskirts of Naarasura, a small town situated at the base of the Loita Hills. Tents were set up in the front yard of the mud house of a family of seven: a mother, two daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom was named Lydia, nine years old, and in Class (grade) 5. Lydia, who was entirely grossed out by my nose stud, lives in a tiny shack in the yard constructed of burlap and several sheets draped over wooden poles. It contains a small bed, a fire, a pot and three stools. In addition, we shared the yard with a bleating goat tied to a post, a dog, and a corral containing three cows and a calf.

That afternoon we walked into town and found market day in full swing, the land awash in blazing red and orange blankets as Maasai bartered en masse and made their way home, decked out in layer upon layer upon layer of beaded regalia.

After dinner we lit the travel menorah with birthday candles and celebrated the eighth night of Hanukkah with Lydia, her mother (who spoke only Maasai and Kiswahili), and the rest of our company.

Thursday morning, Lydia and I traded earrings and a blue beaded bracelet before she left for school. We made our way through town and up into the hills, climbing through scrubby, thorny trees and over light orange rock sparkling with minerals under the sun. As we crested the first hill we looked back over the desert below us, stretching unmarred past Naarasura and its distinctive blue-roofed school into the distant haze. We descended into a valley and continued through sand and mud and planted plots, sharing the trail with Maasai warriors and women much more badass than myself, running marathon-plus lengths through the hills as part of their daily business or returning home bowed under the firewood stacked high across their backs. Oh, and convincing endless herds of goats and cows to Part the Red Sea and let us through. Please and Thank You.

When we passed through a manyatta that consisted of (according to Zach) 1 husband, 7 wives and 25-30 children, we picked up a tail of two men from the community. Who turned out to be something a bit akin to Maasai bandits. Because the Maasai believe the land and the road (aka barely discernable dirt track) are theirs. And we paid fees to cover passage in the nearby town of Narok, which were supposed to be distributed throughout the community. But this is Kenya, and the dough got stuck in a bank. And the community wanted their money anyway, and didn’t care that we had already paid, so as we walked a conversation ensued that involved excessive repetitions of the word “pesa” (money). An hour later when we arrived at a river teeming with tall trees decked in masses of vines, the warriors charged ahead of us, posted themselves by trees on either side of the path and shoved their spears into the ground. An elder arrived to contribute to negotiations, we sat down on a log to wait, and a geezer super drunk off of traditional brew (which commonly makes people go blind) showed up and started claiming that we all belonged to him. In Maasai. While shaking a traditional club decorated with dozens of bottle caps with the tops cut off in our faces. After another half hour, in which the conversation moved off to the side into the vines, voices were raised and the warriors’ pangas (crazy badass knives) appeared to be drawn, money changed hands and it was decided that we would camp on the opposite bank.

That evening around the campfire, we traded stories from our homelands with our guides. Simon, our cook, made phenomenal food over the fire. Peter, one of our porters, is the nephew of Ganisha, my guide on Mt. Kenya. Julius, our other porter, is possible the quietest person I’ve ever met.

John, our lead guide, is Julius’ brother. He told me he used to drink. Then he started climbing Mt. Kenya, and realized that in order to guide professionally at high altitude, he was going to have to cut the habit. Now, when kids from towns he passes through help him to carry things, he pays them the money he used to spend on beer.

Mwangi one of the most companionable people I’ve ever met, is from Nanyuke, a town to the west of Mt. Kenya. When I asked him what was the craziest thing he’d ever paid off a cop for, he told me a guy once decided to arrest him for walking across a street while on his phone. And because he was late to the airport to pick some people up and couldn’t take the time to go to central police station, he actually had to spit up the dough. And he told me about the first time he came to Nairobi and went to the bathroom, and had never seen a toilet, so he stood on it instead of sitting down.

Zach, our Maasai guide, is involved in a campaign to stop the tradition of female circumcision within the Maasai community. Apparently uncircumcised girls are viewed as childlike and unmarriageable, so they seek out the procedure in order to be attractive to men. He told us how, in our present day and age, the communities elders determine who will live a traditional life to maintain the culture and who will go to school to become a “Clever Maasai.” Those who maintain the traditional lifestyle then go into the bush for three years to survive on their own, following circumcision at 15. They kill a lion, transition into manhood, and are welcomed as something akin to heroes upon their return. Zach, however, asserts that he wants only one wife and 3-5 kids, so that he can pay for them all to go to school. He was astounded that I have the freedom to reject a man’s advances. However, he’s also grown up in a society in which, when a man wants a girl, he goes and steals her, takes her home, announces his intention to marry her to her parents, and then begins negotiations. He also explained the Maasai tradition of hospitality: if a man comes to a manyatta and there’s another man his age, the visitor is welcomed into the host’s house to spend the night with his wife. They stick a spear in the ground in front of the door to let the host know the visitor is still inside: simple and to the point.

Friday we walked down into a valley and followed a river through a forest called the “Lost Daughter,” named after a girl who ventured in with her father and never returned, passing below black and white colobus monkeys and scattering a group of baboons. After departing the forest and climbing a gentle slope, we emerged at the edge of a set of escarpments from which we looked down around 2,000’ to grassy plateaus and a flat acacia desert that merged into ridges and hills far into the distance. To either direction, cliffs rippled and folded as they twisted and turned in their sheer drop to the land below. As we continued through the heat to the beginning of our descent, my seemingly-ADD self became somewhat distracted and left behind when I decided that playing with a two inch chameleon would be the best use of my time. Which wouldn’t have been an issue, except that then I was somewhat alone in the bush, and the next thing I saw as I walked down the path was a sizable, sleek black serpentine head appearing from the brush to the side of the trail about four meters in front of me. Which turned into a good eight or nine feet of slender, glinting, slate-shaded freaking BLACK MAMBA slithering across the trail.  To which my reaction was an decidedly intuitive, “Holy shit, that is a Giant Black Snake!” And then it anticlimactically meandered its way into the shrubbery and disappeared among the acacias. 

We set up camp beside a river running at the base of the escarpments, next to another tiny Maasai town called Ngumu. I think. We soon picked up an audience of a dozen gawking kids, who instantly determined that my meager Kiswahili promoted me to “most awesome mzungu ever.” I subsequently passed the afternoon by jumping off ledges into shallow water, learning to swim “Maasai style,” playing kids’ games that dredged up vague memories from my childhood (but substituted with Maasai words), trading stories and enduring somewhere in the neighborhood of ten pairs of hands assaulting my hair at once.

Saturday morning we walked into town to await our ride. I passed an hour sitting with some old women selling tobacco and salt and meticulously beading jewelry beneath a giant tree that had scattered tiny, sticky fruit all over the ground. I spoke a little Kiswahili, the women taught me a word (maybe two) of Maasai, they laughed at me (a lot), and two of them bestowed strings of beads upon me- to remember them by.

For some yet-to-be-determined reason, we ended up walking several kilometers across the scorching desert before meeting our van. On the way back to Nairobi we passed through Magadi Lake. I’m sure at one point it was stunning, surrounded by crazily formed eroded rocks, banks crusted with dazzling white minerals. Presently, however, the body of water has been divided and sectioned. Entire sectors consist of muddy sludge, sucked through pipes to a processing plant where soda and salt are withdrawn and sent off by the trainload to be processed for sale. It is the epitome of living death.

Sunday we attended Sylvia’s (my host mom’s) nephew’s wedding. We found ourselves accosted by a girl from a small town upcountry who gushed ceaselessly about how she dreamed every night about the chance to go to America, and that her one wish in the world was to raise her children there. We then had five awkward minutes in which she asked for my phone number, I told her I didn’t have a phone, she stared expectantly between us, and we pretended we didn’t know she wanted us to get her immigration paperwork. Then my mom asked, “Which state would you go to if you came to America?” “Columbia or Mexico!!!” Uh huh.

Gotta Love It.

Home Free

I spent my second (and last) week with Carolina for Kibera researching grants.

In other news, my parents flew in Friday evening. My aunt was also supposed to arrive, but a combination of weather clusterfucks in Seattle and Paris set her back a day. Saturday, we visited the Sehldrick Trust, an organization in Nairobi National Park that take in orphaned elephants and nurses them for two to three years before they’re moved to centers for further rehabilitation in preparation for reintroduction to the wild. The elephants were awesome. After beelining for their keepers (who bottle-feed them every three hours and sleep together in their stalls) and guzzling milk, they proceeded to converge in a watery mud pit. Chaos ensued, involving splashing, fighting, full submersion, and failed attempts to return to dry land. Except for the smallest, a 1.5-month-old found down a well, who hid next to her keeper in the shade of the umbrella he held over her until she made her way along the rope line and we all reached down to pet her grizzly back.

We also glimpsed a blind rhino, taken in as a baby and unable to return to the wild, as he ambled around the back of his enclosure. And we were graced by lots of opportunistic warthogs.

Before returning home, we stopped by the giraffe center and found ourselves on the receiving end of lots of giant, dry kisses.

As of 15 minutes ago: Papers are turned in, finals are completed and seminars suffered through. And I, Thank You Very Much, am OUTTA HERE.

Trash is Cash

Kibera is Africa’s largest slum, located in the middle of Nairobi, with a population estimated between 300,000 and 1,000,000. You know how, when you see photos of slums, you think everything is made of corrugated metal? Yeah, that’s an illusion. The vast majority of buildings are constructed of mud-on-stick. Corrugated metal is erected on top of the main structure, if possible. If peope can afford it, concrete is applied to the outside of the mud, so passers-by don’t actually realize that’s what it’s made of and decide it’s easy pickings. There are perhaps one or two paved streets. Everything else is dirt, which in the rainy season turns into somewhat of a muddy clusterfuck covered in a layer of trash. Not that there’s any organization to the roads and paths that wind between buildings in the first place. Chickens, goats, and rangy dogs wander the streets, always underfoot.

I feel like, for some reason, media never imparts how industrious slums actually are. There are shops everywhere, selling anything from medicinal plants to fruit to phone credit to traditional wrap-cloths to bootlegged music to omnipresent hair extentions. Occasional pubs pop out between ramshackle buildings. There is a huge informal sector: streets are lined with food vendors, people welding metal gates, and men with hammers laid out on sheets. People wander the streets, arms laden with baskets and washing implements. Everybody is busy.

However, for all that goes on in Kibera, the government flatly refuses to recognize it as a settlement. Which means, among other effects: no real water supply, no sewage system, no trash pick up and no police service. Trash is piled absolutely everywhere: burning alongside the roads, in the gutters, along the train tracks and in huge mountains that stretch, at times, as far as you can see. Speaking of train tracks. They run straight through the middle of the slum. They’re relatively clean; people are paid to come through and remove trash with regularity so that trains don’t jump the track. Which has been known to happen.

Lack of trash, a straight path, and central proximity all contribute to the train tracks’ utilization as a popular walking route in Kibera. Unfortunately, people don’t always hear the train coming. Sometimes it whistles. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people are simply distracted. So, Tuesday afternoon, as a coworker and I made our way through Kibera, we found people gathered on either side of the tracks. “What’s going on?” “The train hit someone.” Forty minutes later, when we returned, the crowd was still there. “They haven’t brought him out yet?” “No, look. That’s the head, over there by that green plastic bag.” Because, you see, in order for the head to be removed, someone would have to call the police. But the police are corrupt and untrusted, and they don’t really venture into Kibera in the first place. Not that there’s any real way to get a cop car down to the tracks even if they did decide to do something about it. And so the head still sits by the tracks, like a movie prop, and no one knows where the rest of him has ended up.

I’m in another internship, with a program called Carolina for Kibera, one of the largest and most-respected NGOs in the slum. It’s community-based; about a quarter of the employees live in Kibera. CFK runs several main programs:
• A sports program, which runs soccer tournaments, in which all teams are required to have members from multiple tribes.
• A community-based medical clinic and VCT (voluntary counsellng and testing center).
• A reproductive health and womens’ rights cemter.
• Taka ni Pato, an environmental program, which is where I’m placed.

Taka Ni Pato (Trash is Cash) has got some really cool stuff going on. In a place where the population survives on less than $2 a day, people aren’t going to be interested in picking up trash for the sake of picking up trash. So, CFK guides people in utilizing trash to make a profit. Some of the groups I’ve met are:

A mens’ group, who makes jewelry and other items from cow bones that would otherwise end up as trash on the streets. After bones are collected (retrieved from the butcher?) they’re shaped, dyed, and polished before being sold to visitors or at the market.

A womens’ group which makes a lot of different items, including greeting cards. You know how in elementary school you made paper by spreading a pulp across a screen and then flipping it over onto a surface to dry? That’s exactly what these women do, but they make the pulp by breaking down paper that would otherwise have gone to waste. After letting it dry and folding it, they embellish the cards with hand-drawn designs. In addition, the woman who appears to be the leader of the group has put together a school for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. She takes them in, feeds them, puts them up and schools them until they’re old enough to return to relatives or care for themselves.

Another womens’ group, who crochets and sews handbags, hats, and earrings from plastic bags and tape that have been recovered from trash in the area. After collecting the material they clean it and cut it into strips before beginning to craft a final product.

Several youth groups who go door-to-door, collecting trash. From there, they separate out food waste, plastics, and true trash. Food waste is taken to be turned into compost, which will later be sold or used in a garden plot of their own. Plastics are taken to a recycling center, where an industrial shredder is used to turn them into material that can be resold for a profit.

Taka Ni Pato also has a large program in place in primary schools, running environment clubs. Environment clubs in Kibera, however, differ somewhat drastically from those in the states. Instead of focusing on tree hugging and conservation, they focus on the basics: Installing sanitary toilets in the schools. Making sure waste from toilets doesn’t find its way above ground, into the gutters surrounding the schools. Installing a tap next to the toilets. Educating students about food storage, waste disposal, hygiene, sanitation and hand-washing: making hand-washing mandatory after using the toilet and before meals. Because in an area with as many issues as Kibera, saving the rhinos is probably last on anyone’s to-do list.

For all the good that Taka Ni Pato is doing, there are definitely also some issues that have yet to be resolved. Youth groups remove recyclable plastics and food waste from trash. However, true trash is still left behind to be burned. Which continues to contribute to atmospheric degredation and health problems in the area, just like the trash being piled up and burned all over the rest of the slum. This progam does nothing to address the removal of actual trash. Even if there were a way to collect it all in a main area and dispose of it, it probably wouldn’t happen: people have been tossing trash onto the nearest pile as they walk past since they were born. What’s going to make them change their habits now?

The plastic shredding program is good in theory. Unfortunately, it’s based around an industrial shredder. Which takes a lot of power to run, and electricity is expensive. In order for the program to be worth running, a lot more plastic needs to be collected than is currently achieved. So, CFK indefinitely subsidizes the cost of running the shredder so that youth groups are able to make a profit. But really, net total, is anything actually being achieved? I doubt it.

Also, you can educate as many school kids as you want about hygiene, and washing your hands, and using sanitary toilets. But no matter how much knowledge you impart, that won’t change the fact that there’s likely no access to clean water, and more often than not two toilets serve a school of perhaps 600 kids. Without resources, there’s no way to convert knowledge into habit.

In other news, I found frisbee. Well actually, the onmiscient Facebook found it prudent to inform a Beloit alum, who happens to be in Peace Corps Kenya, that I was in the area. Nik, said Beloit alum, is one of the founders of BUFF (Beloit Ultimate Frisbee Family). After some conversation, we also realized we had a class together three years ago. Anyway, he introduced me to Nairobi Ultimate– a ton of expats who get together and play pick-up two times a week on the nicest fields you’ll find in the country (which isn’t saying much). And it pretty much made my month. And then, yesterday, this guy named Matt showed up to play, took one look at my shirt and said, “You go to Beloit?” “Yep.” “I graduated in 2004!” Crazy small world. Where Ultimate connects us all.

Also, one of Nik’s friends got slightly delayed coming into Nairobi. Something about her matatu trying to ford a river… and failing. Gotta love it.

Harry Potter came out on Friday. I bought tickets six hours early. There were five people in the theatre. Go figure.

Also, I’m suburned.