And then there were four!!

We have a new addition to the family. Baby Emmanuel was born on February 5th!! Congratulations to Shillah and Steven here in Bungoma, Kenya! There are children everywhere. Let me tell you about life here in my new home. I live in a compound with a rather large family. Gertrude and Ezikial aka 'Mamma' and 'Kuka' (grandfather) share the main house while their two sons Benson and Steven share a second with their wives Lillian and Shillah. These, of course, are not their African names. Benson and Lillian have three children - Joe who is 3, Wepoga who is 1.5 (and just started walking 2 days ago), and baby Chaz (short for Charles) who was born this past January 19th! Shillah and Steven have just welcomed their first... hense 'and then there were four'! Although the children don't speak English yet, the oldest child Joe has decided to call me 'Mamma Amanda'. Everyone calls Gertrude 'Mamma' so I guess it is normal to call the older women in the household by Mamma. The third house is for the volunteers. Currently there is a couple from Whales named Chaz (yes, baby Chaz was named after volunteer Chaz) and Celestria. Unfortunately they have to leave this Sunday but they have been here working hard for the past 4 months and we will be sad to see them go. I share a room with a German girl named Solveig who is just a few years younger than me. Now... let me explain what I mean when I say 'house'. You don't get a more African experience than this. The houses are made of frames using tree trunks and a tin roof. Normal enough. Then there are the walls, which are packed thick with mud. And don't get me started on the floor. Yes, a mixture of soft mud and cow dung. Now it's not as if I'm sinking up to my knees in the stuff because it has hardened but it is an interesting concept. Mamma frequently re-does the flooring. We have a toilet system that is a hole in the ground about 40 feet deep, again with mud walls for shelter... and another similar room beside it where we bucket bathe. I've forgotten about the kitchen. This is again a separate 'house' where food is cooked over hot coals as we have no electricity or running water. The first night I arrived Benson showed me around and it was already dark. I entered the kitchen and then jumped because I heard noise in the dark corner behind me. The kitchen is also the home to the chickens. At night they all perch on this wooden thing to sleep. There are a lot of animals here. We have a cow who is tied up outside my bedroom window, 2 kittens about 4 months old who I've named Squeak and Rizzla (and sleep with me every night!), about 20 chickens including a whole lot of baby chicks, and 2 dogs named Poppy and Simba. Simba just about gives me a heart attack every night. He gets tied during the day because he's too hyper and would knock over the kids but at night he gets to run loose. I'm always shining my flashlight at night trying to find where he is because he comes barrelling at me and jumps up out of nowhere. Daily life for me is fairly simple. We are well taken care of here and this is mostly because it is thought we cannot do anything for ourselves. I guess it is just a 'fact' that Mzungu's (Swahilli for white person) are just extremely intelligent but cannot take care of themselves... and of course we all have African maids back in Canada. It's a waste of time trying to explain that it's not like that to people here. I wake up in the morning at about 7am which is the time that 'Mamma' is bringing breakfast and Chai. This, of course, doesn't happen until after the Rooster has driven us all mad. Chai is an obsession here and we have it three times a day. It's just boiled water and milk poured over tea leaves into a thermos with far too much sugar. I've taken quite a liking to it though and have had to stop drinking it at night because then I get no sleep. For breakfast we often eat eggs (so many chickens!) but sometimes we have pancakes too. We always have bread in our house so we can have that whenever we want. After breakfast I walk for about 15 minutes to the highway where I flag down a Matatu (Swahilli for minibus) to head into Bungoma. We actually live 12 km outside of Bungoma in a region called Kabula, but I'll call it Bungoma for simplicity. The Matatu to town costs me 30 Kenyan Shillings which is equal to 50 cents. Then, depending on where I get left off as this varies each time I either walk or take a Boda-Boda to the internet cafe. A Boda-Boda is a bicycle with a seat over the back tire and a second pair of handlebars under the normal bike seat. There are tons of them here and they hang out in packs and fight over who will give you a ride. This costs about 10 Shillings. If I am home for lunch we are usually given Irish Potatoes or some other type of potatoe... I'm already sick of potatoes. I always have a 'bath' in the afternoon when it is hot and Mamma heats water for you if you want so bathing is really not at all unbarable. At 4pm we are again served Chai. I usually spend the late afternoon reading a book and playing with the kids. I've brought some balloons with me from Canada and the first time I blew one up Joe started crying because he was so happy. Crying in an uncontrolable way so that Mamma had to come and calm him before he could actually catch his breath to play with it. I'm scared to introduce anything else that may not have been seen before for fear of killing someone! Dinner is served really late... never before 8pm and sometimes as late as 10pm. Not ideal, but I'm sure I would starve if I was left to my own devices here. Last night we had chipate, which is like a homemade fried flat bread served with a mixter of beans. Sometimes we get beef or chicken too. Ugali is the staple dish of East Africa and it's made by boiling water and then slowly stirring in maize flour until it thickens to a consistency about 3 times as thick as mashed potatoes. It is also an obsession for the locals which I have not wrapped my head around because I really don't think it has much, if any, nutritional value and absolutely no taste. Anyways, I eat it without a complaint! Dinner time is great fun... the other three volunteers eat alone in the volunteer house but so far I've always joined with the family around a big table at Mamma and Kuka's. The stories we tell are more and more funny each time and I think I recall someone spitting their food across the table because they were laughing so hard one night! That is my day in a nutshell. Oh, and we also handwash our clothing which I've proven to be terrible at according to Mamma, Lillian and Shilla so I give the neighbour 50 Shillings to do it for me... who is also a wife of one of Ezikials many other sons. I know that 50 Shillings sounds terribly cheap of me since it is less than one dollar, but if I were to pay a lot more than the family would be very use to getting this money and would start to change the way they do things... and when I left this could definetely turn into a large problem. So, 50 Shillings (on the advice of Shillah) it is! Since I've gotten here I've been doing mostly administrative work. The organization is very new and have not been doing a proper job of keeping records. I've input all of the costs for building the school compounds into excel and they are now up to date. I've also been putting slide shows together about the projects in order to do some fundraising... as well as doing some research for the health and hygiene project that I am in charge of initiating. However, I did go to visit the school one day so far. The school is located in an area called Shibanzee which is the opposite direction from 'home' that Bungoma. Again I take a matatu and then a boda-boda to get there.... once Chaz and Celestria leave I'll be taking over one of the bycicles that they bought and doing the 10km ride each way every weekday. When I got there I didn't know what to expect. So far there are just two classrooms and a kitchen. One of the classrooms does not have any walls yet. In both cases the kids sit on the floor on grass mats and each have half of a notebook and one pencil. The last Canadian volunteer fundraised enough money to buy each of the 92 children a school uniform so at least they look like a group! The kids are in Class A and Class B, which here in Kenya are the two stages of nursery school. Class A has kids between 2 and 4 years while Class B has kids between 4 and 8. I definetely interrupted the lesson because as soon as the kids spotted me they all started whispering "mzungu, mzungu" and then all got big smiles on their faces and repeatedly said "HOW ARE YOU?". This is what they all say. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Whoever taught them this is evil because it has gotten quite annoying already. You can't walk anywhere without armies of children running towards you yelling "HOW ARE YOU". If I'm quick enough I will say it to them before they can say it to me and the reaction is quite funny!! So, I snuck past Class A and went to the enclosed Class B. Of course, the classrooms and kitchen are also made of mud walls! I sat at the front of the room and learned that they were working on math. The teacher told them they could get up and show me their work and within seconds I had about 50 short little shaved headed African children surrounding me with big smiles and notebooks in their hands. I can't explain that experience - amazing. I shook each one of their hands and looked at their books. At that point all I knew how to say in Swahilli was "poa" or "Siki" which mean "cool" and "great". I could also ask them their names - "Jina lacko nane". They all told me their names although I couldn't hear what any of them were saying because they were so quiet. I stayed until the end of their break time and played some soccer, or football I should say, with the boys and then listened to the girls practice singing. They love song and dance here and the girls have made up all of these little skits on their own.... I could have watched them for hours. It's the only time they use 'big' voices...! Tomorrow I will be going to the school again because we are having a going away party for Chaz and Celestria. I'm going to be brave and take my big bag of balloons with me to celebrate. I'll also be talking to the 'parents' (with Ezikial translating) about the health and hygiene program. As of Monday I'll be showing up with a toothrbush and plastic cup for each child as well as handwashing basins. Currently nothing like this is being done and as a result there is a lot of illness being passed around. It's sad to see how sick looking some of the kids are but you wouldn't believe how happy they are to be able to go to school. They are all HIV/AIDS orphans so their parents, or at least one parent, has died from this horrendous disease. They live with relatives or friends... and some are taking care of themselves but still manage to make it to school each day. It's not a chore, it's something they greatly look forward to. Before I end I have to remember to tell you what happened yesterday. I was around during the day longer than normal helping by taking care of baby Chaz while Lillian helpmed Mamma. I was just wondering when I got to the back of the house and saw Mamma killing a chicken. This was terrible for me and I nearly passed out. I knew I wasn't going to like it the first time I saw this happen but I didn't expect to nearly fall over. I made such a big fuss about it that I had everyone laughing at me hysterically. This only got worse when I suggested that we have a funeral for it. Needless to say I was eating it an hour later while trying to think happy thoughts and sneaking most of it to the cats under the table. I don't think they will ever get over it because apparently they've told everyone in the area about my fear of chicken killing and I have not heard the end of it!!! At least they have found me entertaining. I am sure I will have some more very exciting things to tell within a couple of weeks as I'll be biking everyday and interracting with the kids a lot more. I hope my Swahilli improves quickly because I want to get the most out of this experience! So.... that, my friends is what is going on over here in Africa for me. Although I can try to put this experience into words... the words truly cannot do it justice. If anybody is at all thinking of volunteering I would highly recommend this program and don't hesitate for a second to ask me about joining! You can come for a week, two weeks, a month, a year - whatever you want! You just pay 200 CAD each month which gives you three meals a day, a safe place to sleep, a wonderful new family, and the most incredible experience you might ever have in your entire life! Take care and you will all hear from me again soon :)