Kenya 2009: Final Days

Danny:

Yesterday, John and I traveled back to the states. After flights of 7, 9, and 2 hours, we were happy to be back in Kansas City after our 4 weeks in Kenya. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers during our time there.

I'm now realizing that it's been a full week since our last post. Our extremely slow mobile internet at the orphanage finally went out completely for the last week, so we were unable to give updates. I'll try to summarize our last week in Kenya here. I also promised a summary of the health care, education, and political situations in Kenya that I never got to, so I'll hopefully do those over the next few days.

Right after our return from Maasai Mara, we got back in the routine at the orphanage for just the next couple days. This involved finishing the swingset, working on the new animal structure, and playing with the kids. The new animal structure will be quite impressive. It houses the cows, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. Zach, the staff person in charge of animals, showed us the final plans, and you learn so much about animal husbandry from just the design. There are so many details that I never would have thought of - like making the cow stalls only 3 feet wide so the cows can't turn around (and poop in the same place to make it easier to shovel into the biogas refuge), allowing for gates in the pig sty (so that the mother can be separate from her piglets because a hungry mother will eat them), and that rabbits don't need a water tray (they get all they need from the greens they eat). That project should be complete in the next month. John and I also made a trip to Don Bosco for our math lessons.

Soon after a few days at the orphanage, we left for a one day trip to Mt. Kenya. Mt. Kenya is the largest mountain in Kenya and the second largest in Africa, behind Kilimanjaro. We took a 3 hour matato ride to Nanyuki, a larger town near the mountain with 2 friends David (UK) and Sabrina (Canada). The mountain takes 4 or 5 days to summit and is a pretty treacherous (and cold) climb, so we opted not to do that. Instead we stayed at a cheap hotel in town (I'm talking $3 each) and went on a camel ride around the area. The area is much more arid than Makuyu (thus the camels). We rode for 4 hours with the mountain in the background and seeing a couple Maasai villages. I wouldn't recommend camels as a comfortable method of transportation. My butt still hurts. We fortunately got a shower at that hotel (number 3 or 4 of the trip!), though mine was cold but somehow John's was hot.

Then for the last week at the orphanage here are a few notes:

- I devoted a lot of my time to an "organizational assessment" of the orphanage. When Ann and Devin, the couple from Oregon managing the project, found out that I was a management consultant previously, they asked me to do an assessment of the organization. So, I interviewed the staff and some volunteers, and I'm now summarizing some findings around ways to improve the organization. For example, I'm suggesting a better homework program at night. Right now, it's easy for the kids to avoid homework or reading at night, so we think it'd be good to match up volunteers to kids to help them through their work.

- On Sunday, we attended the kid run church again - again adorable. Afterwards, we took a few of our favorites to town for a nice lunch. Granted, a nice lunch in Makuyu is chipoti (like a tortilla, that we have as a treat at the orphanage on Fridays) and beans and peas, though it tastes a lot better than it does at the orphanage. We took Daniel, Virginia (13, and the older girl assigned to look after Daniel), James and Julius (who are brothers). Then we went to get Cokes and Fantas and then to the Sunday market. We splurged and bought Virginia earrings and James a pair of sunglasses. Despite the crappy quality on our standards, they were so excited and we enjoyed taking them out for a special treat. It was Julius and Daniel's first times to a restaurant, so it was funny to watch their faces when all the food came out. It was a bit different than the fight for food at the orphanage.

- John and I visited Don Bosco for the last few times for our after school math lessons. We both really enjoyed the teaching, and found the progress the kids made over few weeks to be rewarding. A new volunteer (from Atlanta actually) came with us the last time and will continue the sessions. It's nice to know that we started that relationship with the school.

- Sure enough, on the second to last day in Kenya, we started to feel sick. John had stomach pains and I had a really bad headache that kept me up most of the night. Our first thought was it was malaria, which is the first assumption in the area. We're both on antimalarial drugs, but you can still get some of the symptoms if the parasite is in your blood. Figuring that a doctor in KC wouldn't have a clue about malaria, we decided to march on down to the local clinic for a test on our last day. After finally figuring out which of the many lines of patients we qualified for, we paid 40 shillings (about 60 cents) for the test. However, after seeing the line and waiting for about 30 minutes, we gave up and decided our health concerns weren't that grave. We both felt pretty crumby our our travel day yesterday but are feeling better now (malaria unconfirmed).

- We visited a neighbor of the orphanage for a goodbye tea. The neighbor, Michael, is about 70 years old and lives on a farm down the road. He is of Indian origin, so he sticks out about as much as us in the area, except he speaks Kikuyu and calls the area home. The man has quite the life story. His family emigrated to Kenya a couple generations before him in the time of British colonization. His father was a banker and Michael emerged into a successful business man. At one point, he owned a successful safari company, one of the nicest hotels in Nairobi, and we're told had a very lucrative drug trafficking operation. Eventually the law and his debts caught up with him and he know lives a quiet life in this Kenyan village. He married a Kenyan woman and lives with her extended family, where we visited. It wasn't much nicer than the typical poor Kenyan home, except he had TV with CNN. His son is a very prominent artist, also and we bought a small painting from him.

- There was a bit of drama at the orphanage the last week. Donna, the staff member in charge of the routine of the kids called the "social worker", was caught caning a girl. Caning = using a cane to punish someone by slapping their hands with it. This is a very common practice in Kenyan homes and somewhat common at schools. However, it is forbidden at the orphanage. Evidently, this isn't the first time she has done this. Ann and Devin have said that they will leave the orphanage if Donna isn't fired, but the director is still deciding what to do. I think it's a tough issue because the practice is so common culturally here.

Beyond that, it was really just saying our goodbyes, which of course was tough. We woke up at 6:30 the last morning to say goodbye to the kids before school. Luckily, we didn't have to leave until after the kids got back, so we got some more time with them. Goodbyes were tough because there wasn't much to say. Many asked when we were coming back and it broke our hearts to not really have an answer. Little Daniel broke into tears twice that afternoon while we were playing. Then we were really touched by our goodbyes with the staff. They really appreciated the work we had done and what we had left behind (especially the swingset), saying that "the brothers" - our collective nickname - would be missed. Finally, as Zach prepared the van for our departure, we said our goodbyes to the other volunteers and larger kids and then got into the van - to find about 10 of the younger ones waiting for us there. As is a tradition when volunteers leave, they all rode with us to the end of the first road and we waved goodbye to Watoto Wa Baraka and all of the great experiences we had there.

Walking home one day from Don Bosco. We'd always get an entourage following

Nightly feet washing. This night the kids washed mine also....and my hair (I guess I was getting a little grubby)

Julius swinging

The swingset has come to double as a sort of jungle jim. However, the little ones are too short to reach, so there was constantly calls of, "Daniel, you lift me now, do me". Here is Daniel, Baby Joyce, and Lucy.