Kenya Part 3

Hi All!

The rain is back. Just in time to save the maize and beans that Kizito planted last week. Everyone in the village had started to get a bit anxious about their recently planted crops after nine days without rain.

Without maize, there would be no ugali. No ugali? Unimaginable. Ugali is the Kenyan staple food, eaten at least twice a day. It is a polenta-ish mush that tastes kind of like mashed up corn tortillas. It actually tastes better than I’m making it sound. Saumu said that if you don’t feed a child ugali, no matter how much they have eaten that day, they will go to sleep complaining of being hungry.

My time here in Eregi is going by so quickly. I am comfortable with my Kenyan family, am super busy with the various projects that I'm working on, and love living in the village. The days are flying by.

This week I spent a day doing errands in Kakamega, the nearest town. This gave me the chance to get the hang of a few different types of transportation here. I took a "piki piki" (motorcycle taxi) to the main road. Then I took a bus to the next market area. Next, I took a "matatu" (vans that work like buses...very convenient because they are everywhere but they often don't leave until full) to Kakamega. I got around Kakamega by "bodaboda" (bicycle taxi). Getting to and from the town was a lot more fun than just driving a car.

I'm really excited about the solar start up business that I've taken the lead on. Solar technology has a lot of potential to sell well and be quite helpful in rural villages where there is no electricity. I’m partnered with two Kenyan guys my age, Mike and Philip. Working with them has been great. As part of this project, I have been testing out different products, setting up stands at local markets (next to ladies selling dried minnows and fresh avocados), collecting feedback from buyers and potential buyers, creating excel spreadsheets to track costs and profits, etc. This week we are launching a pilot program at a local secondary school that will enable students to pay for solar lights in installments without going into debt. The students will hopefully really benefit from the lights because they can use them to study at night. I knew next to nothing about business before coming to Kenya so this has been a very interesting, hands-on, learning experience for me.

One of the things I like most about living in Eregi is that there are so many incredibly cute, very friendly kids. Whenever I walk anywhere, random kids join me along the way. They never tire of shouting out “mzungu” (white person) and asking me how I am. Sometimes, the language barrier makes conversation impossible, so we walk together in silence for half an hour. Kizito's sister runs a nursery school that I help out at a couple days a week. There is also a group of kids from around the neighborhood (among them are Newton, Gryphon, and Titas...great names) who come around every evening for games. I think I’ve played enough monkey in the middle and crazy eight’s in the past few weeks to last a lifetime. I love it though.

I hope everything is going great with all of you.
Love, Emmiliese

Pictures:
1) Planting maize
2) Riding a pikipiki with Philip
3) Philip, Mike, and Accadius selling solar lights
4) With St. Peter's ECD (nursery school) kids
5) Cutie pies I met while walking to work
6) With girls from the neighborhood (Purity, Seline, and Skolvia) and my Kenyan brother

Kenya Part 2 (March 16, 2010)

Hi Everyone,

So I definitely jinxed the weather in my last update when I wrote that it rains every day. It has not rained at all this past week. The weather has been much hotter. Now that the rain has stopped, we have to carry all needed water up from the stream in jugs on top of our heads. Needless to say, I provide all the neighbors with plenty of entertainment around here. They could not stop laughing the first time I attempted to carry a jug on my head. I wound up spilling water all over myself.

Tasks that are every day chores for my Kenyan family are new cultural experiences for me. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to hand wash my clothing so that it is actually clean. I am so happy to be living with a Kenyan family here because I am getting a pretty in depth experience of a very different lifestyle.

I am quickly adjusting to life in Eregi. I know my way around now. Though this is a village, things are pretty spread out so I wind up walking for around two hours every day. I love walking from place to place because there is plenty to see and everyone is so friendly. I like the way everybody in Eregi greets each other (“Habari”, meaning “how is the day?” is always answered with “mzuri” which means “fine”). I am beginning to get to know many people in the village. I am also slowly learning some Swahili. I feel more at home here every day.

On Sunday, Kizito had one of his monthly men’s group meetings. I went along with him and spent the entire day in the kitchen, helping the host’s wife, Nancy, prepare an absolute feast. We prepared rice, chapatti, ugali, cabbage, greens, greens with groundnuts, potatoes, beef, chicken, soup, eggs, and more. Nancy was very patient teaching me how to cook Kenyan style. And all the men were impressed (surprised maybe?) that I had helped.

As far as volunteer work goes, my days are very busy. I’ve decided to focus on one project per update. Three days a week, I teach computers to interested teachers and a group of girls at a local high school. The teachers and students are all very excited to get a chance to learn some basic computer skills. They realize how important computer literacy is for many jobs around the world. My lessons are split into different categories, including introduction to computers, microsoft word, microsoft excel, and internet basics. It has been interesting for me to see just how foreign of a machine the computer is to most of the people I'm teaching. The teaching takes a lot of patience but is also quite rewarding.

I hope you are all well!
Keep updating me on your lives please,
Emmiliese

Pictures:
1) Diana is a pro at carrying water jugs on her head up from the river.
2) Learning how to cut Kale properly. I'm not very good at cutting it into small enough pieces, especially with no cutting board and a blunt knife.
3) Eregi's main market. The building is Sunray Supermarket. I think calling it a supermarket is a bit ambitious.
4) No feast is complete without cow intestines roasted on a stick.
5) Chapati, rice, potatoes, beef, chicken, cabbage, greens 1, greens 2 (I'm never quite sure what the greens are...), beef, and chicken. The food is definitely not bad. But the food in India was a lot better.
6) Teacher computer training

Kenya Part 1 (March 8, 2010)

Hey Everyone!

I hope you have all been well since my last update!

Now I am in Kenya! I arrived last Friday and will be here for a total of six weeks. I am living with a family in Eregi, a really small village in Western Kenya. Eregi is close to the Kakamega rainforest. It rains every day so everything is lush and green. It is really beautiful.

My host parents, Kizito and Saumu are both teachers. They have a son at boarding school (who I have not met) along with two foster children, Diana (age 12) and Moachi (age 8). Everyone has been extremely friendly and welcoming. Kizito and Saumu are already calling me their daughter and treating me like a member of the family.

So far, I love living here. Our whole neighborhood has no electricity or running water. Food is cooked in pots balanced on three stones over a fire. There are no cars and we walk everywhere. There are two cows, some chickens, and some ducks living out back. My hosts find it very amusing that in the US, I do not go out looking for firewood on a regular basis and that I often drink milk from a cow that I have never seen.

A Stanford graduate, Lyndsay, who lives outside of Eregi, has helped get me started on a number of interesting volunteer projects. I teach math, computers, sports, and leadership to a group of 14 girls in a pilot program called I AM an Entrepreneur at a boarding school in Eregi. I am teaching the teachers how to use computers at the same boarding school. My goal is for all 31 teachers at the high school to be computer literate by the time I leave. I am also working on a start up solar business. I’ll send a little more information about these projects in the updates that follow.

Thanks for reading.
Love,
Emmiliese

Pictures:
1) The road leading up to my house
2) Our cow. I actually thought they had used a lawn mower to cut the grass when I first arrived.
3) Diana lighting a fire to cook dinner on
4) My bedroom! The mosquito net is a must. Though I think there are also bed bugs bugging me. I wake up covered in bites.
5) The kids are starting to get the hang of using my camera. Moachi is the one in the front.