Week Four

January 21, 2008

My new classes started today and I am pretty pleased with them, though one makes me feel like I fell back into Sacred Heart Academy for reasons I will explain later.

My African International Relations is dull, but doable. The professor doesn’t seem entirely qualified…meaning I feel more equipped to teach the course than she might be. However, she is passionate about what she does and that is a start. At least I like the material we will be covering. Granted an hour and forty minutes it a long time to sit there and take notes twice a week this class seems bearable and I am okay with having switched into it. After all, it isn’t like I was expecting Harvard levels of education here.

HIV/AIDS Testing & Counseling is interesting, to say the very least. It makes me feel like I am right back in Peer Connection during high school (you can take that as a personal shout out to PC). We sat in a circle of desks rather than rows and the professor spent the first 15 minutes of the class talking about how we are all equals and no one is better than the other. I couldn’t help but think that this must be what group therapy is like… So the first part of class was kind of strange and then we started talking about STIs which is when it got even weirder. The professor talked about Freud and the id and the ego to which I thought….are we seriously learning Freud here? I guess it is one think to discuss his theories, which I know is important to the development of psychology as a field, but this was discussed in class as the real deal which I found strange. By far the strangest part of the class was when the professor claimed that HIV/AIDS was actually engineered by the United States of America in order to be used as biological warfare and to control population in Africa. I guess everyone is entitled to his or her own theories, but I couldn’t help but to exchange a few looks with Amanda when this part of the lecture was occurring. I am not entirely sure what I will be learning in this class, but lets just say I am fairly certain I will be entertained.

On the way home it hit me how difficult is it not to be allowed to give money to street children/families here. I understand why Kelly Jo says it isn’t a good idea…we could end up feeding into drug addictions, specifically to glue. Allegedly a lot of people here sniff glue because the high takes away the feeling of being hungry. At the USIU bus stop this morning there was a young girl who couldn’t have been older than 11 or 12 sniffing glue from the bottle and it was such a gut-wrenching site. The girl was so disheveled and skinny and she just sat there alone on the sidewalk inhaling from her bottle.

Amanda and I got off the bus downtown today and as we waited for our taxi driver, Francis, a young mother and her barefoot toddler came up to us asking for any little money we could give. But for fear of KJ finding out (and she always finds out) we couldn’t do it and I absolutely hated it. I know some people use it for glue and other drugs but this was just a teenage mother and her baby! Maybe I am being naïve, but I am going to believe that any money we could have given them would have been put to decent use.

When Francis picked us up we talked politics. I get all of my news and information from taxi drivers because, I swear to you, they know more than most newspapers. Francis is probably the most well-informed Kenyan out there. Alright, so anyway, Amanda had to stop at Sarit Center to pick up Rachel’s birthday cake so I sat up front with Francis and talked. My window was down and a little boy kept running away from his mother on the corner to ask me for “besa” which is Kikuyu for “money.” Again, I couldn’t give him any. Then his mother came up to the window to start begging as well, but by that point we were pulling away to head home.

Now you can go ahead and call me a crazed liberal with a bleeding heart, but I genuinely HATE not being able to give people here even a little bit of my spare change. I am so used to being able to do that without any issues in DC and New Haven, but here it is so taboo and I feel like it doesn’t have to be. I understand that by giving people on the streets money I could potentially be feeding into a drug problem, but I refuse to believe that 100% of the people who have nothing use the little generosity they receive solely for drugs. Some kids who approach people on the street might genuinely need money for school fees, and some mother with her baby might genuinely need that money for a day’s worth of food. It’s a bit frustrating not to know the difference between those people, but I wish we were at least allowed to take a chance on people.

January 22, 2008

I learned this afternoon that we have 2 pets in our apartment; 2 geckos named Fred and Eddy. It’s not quite a dog, but I guess it’s better than nothing....maybe? We discovered Fred last night when he was just hanging out in the kitchen. Kim (who lived here last semester) said that both have lived here for several months.

Clearly, I am thrilled. I’ve never been a huge fan of reptiles….at least my reaction was less severe that Diana’s who wanted to “cut their heads off.” She is a bit extreme and I love her.

January 25, 2008

Today was pretty much the best day of my life…or at least one of the days.

We went to this remote little village just outside of Nairobi called Kitengela which was really gorgeous. Way up on top of the hill is the glass factory called Kitengela Glass, which uses 100% recycled materials to blow glass. Some of the things were so intricate and the entire compound was littered in beautiful glass patterns. Even the walkways in between the buildings and the furniture were all handmade and used mostly glass. There were also some of the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life. From the top of the hill I could see the Nairobi skyline, which was miles away from where we were located. The compound was started in the 1970s by what I swear to you is a seriously insane half German, half American family and now they have not only a gorgeous glass compound, but also a guest home for tourists, the coolest pool I will ever see in my life, and an intense amount of dogs, donkeys, cows, and camels.

Speaking of camels, I RODE ONE! His name was Ramadan and he is probably the least friendly camel on the face of the planet. I didn’t get on his back fast enough so he jumped up extremely quickly as I hung off his hump, clinging for dear life (these animals are seriously huge..I was surprised). With the help of one of the Kenyan workers I was able to situate myself and off we went. I came away with some battle wounds because the camel took me through some thorny trees. Then something startled Ramadan and he started jumping up on his hind legs and I could see my life flash before my eyes. I’m pretty impressed with my lack of screaming, but I was pretty nervous. However, I did fulfill my life goal of riding a camel (which has actually only been a goal of mine for about three weeks) so I am really excited I sprung 500 bob (about 6 American dollars) to go on this little adventure. Carrie wanted to ride Ramadan as well, but he wouldn’t even let anyone near him after I got off.

Before riding the camel we took an adventure across a very small, very rickety, very scary wire bridge, which was at least several hundred feet over a bunch of jagged rocks and a river. Not everyone was comfortable making the walk across the rift so I put people in charge of my camera and there are some awesome pictures I will be showing you all once I am back in the states. It was really fun, but I can’t lie. I thought I was going to die when the wind started blowing and the entire bridge moved back and forth.

We also found out where we will be interning today! I GOT SHANGALIA MTOTO AFRICA AND I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED! So every Tuesday and Thursday I will be in Kangeme, which is a slum just a few kilometers away from my apartment complex, where I will act as a teacher and social worker for former street children. I will let you know all about it after my first day.

Sadly, one thing did go wrong today. We were told that it is too dangerous in Kenya right now to climb Mount Kenya this semester. The actual act of climbing the mountain isn’t dangerous, but we would have to have taken a 5 or 6 hour drive on a very violent road, so KJ has decided not to take us there. I am really disappointed, but Carrie and I are going to plan a week of hiking the Appalachian Trail this summer and Katie Gag and I are already planning on climbing Mount Kilimanjaro the summer after we graduate, so I think my fabulous new hiking boots will eventually be put to some excellent use and I will be able to get my fill of adventure.

January 26, 2008

Today was a pretty chill day. We went to Wapi, which is a festival that stands for “words and pictures” and is an awesome venue for artists in Kenya, but it was crowded and hot so we headed out sooner than I had originally anticipated. We went to City Market, which is now by far my favorite market. It is the same as Massai Market, just in a different location and on a different day. To explain it better, there is really only one Massai Market, but it moves around so that it is at a different place on Sunday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. So City Market was today and it is right in downtown Nairobi where you can get lower prices once you start bargaining because it isn’t a tourist area.

Tomorrow is our welcoming party at the office, which is located on a gorgeous compound just a few kilometers down the road. And then later this week our internships start!