Hurry Up and Wait: Kenya Part III

Saturday was the day of Gitonga's wedding, I woke up early to make sure that I would be ready on time. I had arranged to call his Canadian friends to share a ride to the location of the wedding at 10. At around 9:50 I got a text message saying they had just got up and were running late. Having been left waiting a couple of other times I decided to get a cab on my own so I called Elijah who at picked me up from the bus station. He said he would be there at 11 as I had requested which was the time the wedding was supposed to start but I was trying to account for "African time" by arriving a few minutes late.

At 11 I went to the gate and Elijah did not appear. After waiting for 10 minutes I called him and he told me he was stuck in traffic but that he would be there soon. After another 10 minutes I called again and he told me that he was just around the corner and that he would be there soon. 10 minutes later I got fed up and was considering taking another cab when he finally arrived. At this point I was quite distressed as, while I concluded that the wedding would start late I thought that getting there an hour late might be too late. Nevertheless I got in the car and told him that I was going to the Kenya Water Institute and he assured me he knew where it was. After driving for about 20 minutes I started to wonder if he knew where he was going so I asked if we were almost there he assured me he did and it was right around the corner. We went around the corner, and then another and another and so I asked again and he assured me it was just around the next corner. 10 minutes later we were at the far end of the district we were supposed to be in so I asked again and so I told him I thought he didn't know where he was going so he should stop and asked for directions. He returned to the car looking confused and said that no one seemed to know where it was. So for the fourth time during the trip I repeated that I was going to the Kenya Water Institute to which he responded "Oh, the Kenya WATER Institute? I thought you said the Kenya Institue. I know where that is, that's back the way we came" so we started driving again and I called Gitonga's friend to get better directions. In the end we had to stop and ask for directions again and by the time we made it to the Kenya Water Institute it was 12:30. I was beside myself, I thought that I had missed the wedding that I had travelled all the way from Kampala to attend. I informed the driver that in the future if he cannot pick someone up on time he should not say that he will and that he needed to ask for clarification if he didn't know where he was going and I gave him less money than our negotiated price.

As I walked into the location there was a splattering of people present but the seats weren't even half full and there seemed to be a lot of set up going on. I leaned into someone and asked whether this was Gitonga's wedding and it was, and I hadn't missed it they were running late.

So I sat down and waited. After 30 minutes someone spoke over the microphone and said there was no problem and that they were just setting up and that the wedding would start soon. After 45 minutes Gitonga's friend who I had met the night before came to explain to me that the company that was providing the tents for the wedding had not shown up and that was why they were behind. after another 30 minutes someone again assured the crowd that the wedding would be starting soon. After 2.5 hours the wedding finally started, you could see the strain on the faces of the bride and groom. Incidently my new Canadian friend arrived just a the wedding was starting. Good timing.

The wedding itself was very lovely. The site was decorated in red and black with elaborate flower boquets and the wedding party had 5 bridesmaids and grooms men. The ceremony was led by a pastor from Winnie and Gitonga's church which discussed the origins of marriage in the bible starting from the creation story, which was a bit long. The said their vows, signed their marriage llicense and briefly absconded for photos while the guests were arranged for the lunch which was served at about 4:30. The lunch was very nice and again there was no matooke. During the meal I went to put my present on the gift table and Gitonga called me over after talking for a little while I leaned in and said "this is going to be my first law suit" referring to the problems with the wedding company.

Following the meal there were some traditional ceremonies. First the parents of Winnie and Gitonga each gave them gifts. Winnie was given all of the things she would need to be a "good wife" including a basket for fetching things from the market and a cooking basket. She also received advice from her aunties about how to be a good wife. Gitonga's parents gave them what we understood to be 100 acres of land which they said he could either cultivate or sell, but either way that's a pretty spectacular gift. This was followed by a bed making ceremony which is traditional in many parts of Kenya. Basically the Bride's family buys furnishing for the couple's new home including a bed and set it up like a house. The bride is responsible for making the bed (although in this case she didn't because of time constraints) and then the couple sit on the bed as well as couches for the first time as a married couple. This was a really interesting tradition to watch unfold. Following this the cake was cut and shared and we were on our way.

Later in the evening I was invited to attend an after-party for the wedding. I was invited for 8 so I arrived at 9:15 and of course it was another hour before anyone else arrived. It was at a very nice bar called Caribana which offered western style drinks, I had a strawberry daquri which was a different interpretation of the original but still delicious and much less expensive than the mixed drinks in Kampala. Of course the best part of the evening was getting to spend time with Winnie and Gitonga. I hadn't met Winnie before so I learned a lot about her and it was lovely to get to have the time to catch up with Gitonga. I wasn't sure if I was really going to have time to interact with him at all because of the pomp and circumstance that surround weddings.

On the Sunday of my trip I met the four Canadians I had met for breakfast at the mall. I decided to take it easy, bought three loaves of bread and did some walking and visited the apartment where the Canadians were staying. On the way back to Hibiscus I passed some children playing in the shade. A few steps later I heard footsteps and one of the little boys was standing next to me and asked if I could spare any food. Knowing I had three loaves of bread I offered part of one loaf to he and his friends, he thanked me very much. It was nice to be able to do that since I feel like I cannot in Kampala where the children who beg are being exploited. There are most likely exploited children in Nairobi as well but the request seemed like a spontaneous one rather than a coerced one.

Before leaving for the bus I had Ethiopian food for dinner which was great so I left happy. On the way out one of the guards stopped the car and basically asked if I was going to tip him. I declined remembering that it was inappropriate to tip in Uganda. Unfortunately I was later informed by my driver that Kenyans pretty much tip for everything which I was very upset to learn since I hadn't thought to tip any of the staff, but it was too late.

On the bus on the way back to Nairobi one of the attendants proposed marriage to me which was less than appreciated and a bit more direct than most Ugandans. You win some you lose some.

The Second Act: Contrast in Kenya

I woke up at 7 a.m. on Friday morning which was a bit of a miracle considering I had barely slept the night before and didn't take a nap. While eating breakfast I was joined by Marcel, the Dutch man working with Sieraden 4 Life, the NGO funding five schools in Kenya and running the beading workshop I was about to visit and Megan, the Canadian I met the night before who would be joining me on the excurssion to Kibera.

I was surprised how close Kibera was to the neighbourhood that I was staying in, in fact it was only about a five minute drive away. When we reached the Sieraden 4 Life workshop it was apparent that we were not actually in Kibera but on the outskirts. Even though it was only 8:30 when we arrived at the beading workshop about 50 women were already there. Our arrival interrupted their morning prayer to start off their day.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post the Sieraden 4 Life beading workshop employs 12 women full time, and up to 60 on a casual basis. All of the women who work there live in the Kibera slum and many of them have children enrolled in the schools that the organization funds. The women are paid to do the beading work which is then sold in retail chains in the Netherlands and the profits are used to support the schools.

As the ladies began to work Marcel explained that the women were working on knotting the leather bands that would be used to string the beads for the 25,000 bracelets that needed to be sent to the Netherlands the following evening. It was clear that the women were following a pattern on some cardboard. We were then taken upstair to see the room where the beads were kept and we were introduced to several people including Abdul who runs the Kenya Girls Soccer Academy, one of the schools funded by Sieraden 4 life, as well as supervising the beading workshop and a social worker who works with the women who work there on a regular basis. Marcel also showed us some sample bracelets which were on display in the upper level and we were invited to purchase some of the extra bracelets they had available. Of course we jumped at the chance.

After finalizing our purchases we returned downstairs where we were shown more rooms full of women beading and arranged for a tour of the Kibera slum. While we waited for our guide to arrive we sat down with some women who had moved with their work onto the sunny proch of the workshop. I sat with a woman named Rose who tried to teach me how to knot the leather bands they were working on. I got it on the second try but I could see what they were doing was tough work. Through her work Rose has been able to support her family that lives in the slum. After some pleasant conversation and photography our guide arrived to take us to see inside Kibera.

Being able to visit Sieraden 4 Life was a wonderful experience. It gave me a real sense of how a small NGO can sustain itself and support the community at the same time. Of course its practices are not perfect. The beadwork which is undertaken at the beading workshop is done based on designs produced by a Dutch woman in Nairobi. From a business perspective this makes sense, perhaps the designs developed by the Kenyan women would not appeal to consumers in the Netherlands. However from a women's empowerment and community development perspective, allowing the women to occassionally design necklaces or bracelets would give them an additional skill which they could then use to promote their own livelihoods. I was also distressed to learn that the workshop does not provide lunch for their employees. While I understand that the women are being paid, living in a slum as all of them do, implies that they may be spending their money in other manners such as feeding their children or buying clothing. Yet, despite those short comings I think the organization is having a very positive impact on the community. I saw Marcel again before I left and I asked him what happened to the women who were not able to bead as quickly as some of the others and he explained that there were many different levels of skill in the beading workshop but as long as the women wanted to be there they were happy to have them.

So we headed further into Kibera to see the slum. The Kibera slum is one of the largest slums in the World and is home to approximately 2 million people. In the slum there is no electricity and no sanitation which means there are streams of raw sewage which run down the sides of the road. Mountains of garbage are piled on either side of the train tracks which cut through the middle of the slum and we learned about many of the dangers which affect the inhabitants of the slum, where the average life span is only 30. That being said, being in the slum on a sunny Friday morning, most of the people we saw were going about their daily routines, walking along the train tracks, selling things either int he open sun or in the markets.

During our walk we stopped at the top of a hill with our guide Byrons who showed us a number of things in Kibera including the Doctor's Without Border's Clinic, the public washrooms which you had to pay to use and a stream where he used to play as a child but was now contaminated due to poor sanitation. He said that the sanitation situation had many impacts including giving rise to outbreaks of cholera, which if not kept under control can lead to excessive mortality rates.

We then continued our journey to the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy which is supported by Sieraden 4 Life where Byrons works as a teacher. Despite the fact that the school had closed for the holidays there were about 20 girls who were studying chemistry and physics. One girl told me how happy she was to study. Byrons explained that the girls continue to come to the school because it is often safer for them than remaining at home.The girls who attend the school are selected based on financial need, academic ability and in 10% of cases an interest and ability in playing soccer. Having recently returned from my trip to Kasese I asked Byrons about the issue of child-motherhood at the school. He explained that initially when the school started about 10% of the girls became pregnant within the first three months. Realizing that this would mean that the school would lose a large percentage of its students every year the staff did some research as to what was causing the girls to have sex. One of the key factors was for the girls to gain access to basic materials in exchange for sex, such as sanitary napkins and food. In response the school has made sanitary napkins available free of charge and they have a lunch program and are looking at starting a breakfast program. They are also looking into building a dormatory so that the girls who want to can stay by the school so they don't have to face the dangers of the slum on their way to and from school. I was also pleased to learn that some of the girls have an opportunity to go to University. Being in the slum, where only 8% of children get to go to school really raised the question for me of how much un-recognized potential there must be not only in Kibera but throughout the world, where even if a child is lucky enough to go to school that they may not have the resources, be their financial or personal, to progress beyond primary education. How many great scientists, peace-builders, artists and teacher must there be living in these slums while at home back in Canada we are concerned about the price of lattes and designer electronic devices. Enough said.

Now for the contrast. Upon leaving the Kibera slum we headed directly for the David Sheldrake Wildlife trust where we saw 7 orphaned baby elephants eat their lunch. The elephants were 18 to 27 months old and certainly had a lot of personality. One of the keepers described how they did a llot to keep the elephants happy including playing soccer and hide and seek with them.

After seeing the elephants we moved on to a Giraffe Sanctuary where we were able to feed Giraffes. Megan opted to feed one pelet to a giraffe from her mouth so that she could get a kiss but the saliva on my hand was enough for me. We fed quite a friendly giraffe whose name was Laura. There were two other giraffes close by who would head-butt you if you didn't feed them.

Finally it was time to feed ourselves so we headed back to the Artscafe where we had eaten the night before. The mall is truly remarkable. Unlike in Kampala where shopping centers are basically glorified, multi-level strip malls, Junction is a mall with all of the fixings. It has shoe stores, designer clothing stores, electronic and souvenir shops and even a starbucks style coffee shop. I have to say that not only was the mall a bit of a shock in contrast to Kibera but it was also a contrast to life in Kampala. Made me think that I might have a touch of trouble readjusting when I go home.

To end the day we attended the International Jurist of the Year Award at the International Justice Commission where Josh and Gitonga work. It was a very lavish affair with several high profile guests. The award recipient was a judge who has been presiding over the trials of the individuals involved in the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007. I have to say the food at the dinner really made my day. Beyond its superb quality, I discovered that Kenyans do not eat Matooke which is what has really turned me off from Ugandan food. Although it is by no means the only or primary option, Kenyans instead eat this mash of potatoes, green vegetables, corn and beef which is absolutely delicious.

So there you have the full spectrum of Nairobi one of the world's largest slums just blocks away from living the high life.

In tomorrow's post I will reflect on the wedding and my last day in Kenya. (I warned you that I had a lot to say.

Kenya: A three part Harmony. Part I

I had a fantastic time in Kenya and I experienced a lot in my 4 days there. I've decided in order to make my blog posts more readable and shorten the amount of time it takes me to write them, I am going to write about Kenya over three blog posts, and then I'm going to write a post complaining about the Canadian government. You've been warned.

It all started two years ago in a little town called Pretoria South Africa. I was a fresh faced graduate student and Gitonga was an intern when we met at the Institute for Security Studies and we developed a friendship that we would try to continue over facebook. Never would I have imagined that I would be in East Africa at the time of his wedding, no less be invited. But there I was on December 7th heading to Nairobi.

On the way to Nairobi I took the overnight bus from Kampala. Queen's Coach is a luxury bus line which means they have hairconditioning and seats that recline (no washrooms though). They also feed you snacks of highly fatty cookies, orange pop and coffee which seems questionable in the middle of the night. I was relieved when I had no problems at the border.

I arrived in Nairobi at 9 in the morning and headed straight for the Hibiscus guest house where I had booke a room. It was close by to a place Gitonga had reccommended although $15 less per night and actually had better reviews. I have to say it really did live up to its reputation. The staff were very friendly, the rooms were clean, it had beautiful gardens and mattresses on the bed that actually had springs (this is not common in East Africa).

After settling in I decided that it was time for an adventure and so I called the cab driver who dropped me off and asked him to take me to the Kenyan National Museum. The National Museum is on hilly grounds surrounded by trees and statues. It contains a detailed history of Kenya, a hall of mamals and art exhibits. I think the highlight of the of the museum were the skulls of early hominids on display behind some glass doors which I had seen pictures of in my 2nd African History Course at Carleton. After walking through the museum for about 2 hours I sat down and had a coffee and a chicken pie. Black coffee is a bit less expensive in Kenya than in Uganda and of a somewhat higher quality. I was happy.

After walking through the gardens around the museum and checking out Nature Kenya I decided to walk to downtown Nairobi. When I asked the security guard at the gate directions he responded "No, no it's too far it will take you too long" and I asked how far it was and he said "It would take YOU 2 hours." So I asked him how long it would take him and he said "1 hour" in the end it took me 30 minutes including a stop at the Masai Market. When I visited the Masai market I didn't fully have my bearings as I was quite over tired and also trying to ajust to the prices (one Kenyan shilling is 28 Uganda shillings which is 1.1 dollars) and so I was ripped of on the first item I bought and then bought a similar item from a different stall for a sixth of the cost. Oh well you win some you lose some.

On the way to the center of town I met a young woman coming from the University of Nairobi who helped me cross the street. There are more traffic lights in Nairobi but its harder to get across the road because there are more lanes of traffic. After explaining that she was a highschool English Literature teacher she told me she was doing a Masters in International Studies. When I asked why she said she wanted to be an ambassador, but not one working for the government. She told me she was a poet and that she wanted to travel around the world and tell people about life in Kenya and talk about its richness in contrast with its poverty (no pun intended) and everything in between. This was the first of quite a few inspiring conversations I had in Kenya, and to be honest I needed the inspiration. She then delivered me to my bus, which of course got stuck in a traffic jam, some things are the same everywhere in Africa.

When I got back to the hotel I read and used the internet in the guest house's sitting room. While I was there a middle aged Dutch man named Marcel came in. We spoke about what each of us was doing in Nairobi and as it turned out Marcel was helping to run a development project in the Kibera slum which was helping to fund five schools and was employing 12 women on a regular basis (and 60 on a casual basis) to make jewellery which they were selling in the Netherlands (at major chains such as Hema where I bought a set of bright orange plastic dishes 5 years ago which are with me in Kampala) and other department stores. They were working on an order for a shipment of 75,000 bracelets and under a lot of time pressure because the beads had not yet arrived and the order was due two days later. After asking some pointed questions about the nature of his work I decided to go out on a limb and asked if I could visit the project the next day, and to my surprise he said yes! We agreed to meet the next morning.

Later that evening I had the opportunity to meet with 3 more CIDA interns for dinner. They were all lawyers, two were working in Nairobi (Josh was working with Gitonga which is how we met) and one was working in Tanzania. We had dinner at a place called artscafe which was somewhat surreal. It was located in a large, western style mall. It boasted three kinds of sugar (okay one of them was sweet and low) and a very modern interior, and jazz music played over the speakers, quite a change from Kampala. During the conversation the visitor from Tanzania indicated that she wanted to go to an elephant orphanage where we could see baby elephants eat their lunch. I asked her if I could come too and she said yes. She then went on to talk about the other adventures she was interested in having in Nairobi and talked about wanting to visit the Kibera slum, and so I told her about my plans the next day and invited her to come along too.

My first impression of Kenya was that it is much more developed than Uganda. There are more paved roads with fewer potholes. There were apparent, strong anti-corruption laws which were highlighted throughout the city. There were much larger buildings and the city was bigger as a whole. No one warned me when I packed for Kenya that it was going to be cold and although the weather was sunny and the perfect temperature during the day time I found myself quite chilled at night. The other thing that I found quite remarkable was that there was a lot less dust in Nairobi, in fact unlike in Uganda I was actually able to get my feet fully clean when I washed them.

That's the end of the first chapter. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next!

The Long Awaited Kasese Post

So there's been a lot going on in my life recently, some of it good, some of it bad, most of it making it hard to find time to Blog. Obviously when I travel I spend a lot of time away from my computer so that doesn't help but there are some other things too. Work has been a bit hectic with a few deadlines coming up and mounting stress about how I am going to get it all done when I leave in April, if I leave in April. On the side I have been preparing applications for a PhD program in Canada that I'm interested in as well as the Parliamentary Internship Program. In addition, things have been rocky on the friendship front; two of my friends are leaving for home permanently this week and last week one of my friends was in a very bad accident in Ottawa which has certainly been preoccupying and that's all on top of my normal stuff.

Anyway here I am now writing to you about Kasese
.

I traveled to Kasese on November 27th with two staff members of the Center for Conflict Resolution with whom I have been working on conflict-sensitivity training courses with the UCA. It is a long drive from Kampala to Kasese, about 6 hours through winding hills. Two things surprised me during the drive. The first was that several of the hills were covered with Evergreen trees. I was informed that these were of course not native to the area but the government had decided that it was a "good idea to plant them there". The second thing that surprised me was that while going through the Kabale forest we came upon 6 Baboons on the road. These were the first monkeys that I saw since arriving in Uganda and I ended up being even more surprised when we found one on the road again on our way back.

Upon arriving in Kasese we checked into our guesthouse called "The White House" it was a clean place with standard African rooms (a bed with a mosquito net, a chair and a table) and a restaurant which was reasonable serving African food. The first night I was in town I met a fellow Canadian at the guest house who invited me to join her for dinner. We had chicken curry which I must say was surprisingly spicy for African food. Sadly I went to bed that night with a pounding headache.

Monday I woke up feeling much refreshed. I was a bit
anxious as the women from CECORE turned in the opposite direction of the Peace Expo which was the purpose of my trip and started heading to local offices to try to drop off my reports. I was particularly anxious because the day was starting with a peace march which I did not want to miss. Fortunately, African time saved the day and despite arriving an hour late we still made it in plenty of time for the march.

Near the beginning of the expo an official announced that the tents to the left of the stage were reserved for child-mothers (mothers under the age of 18). I stared in disbelief there were at least two hundred young women with their children there and they were all from Kasese. Later in the event we would learn that there were over 3000 child-mothers in Kasese alone. The main reasons for this trend were listed as poverty, conflict, cultural practices and gender based violence. Further we learned about many of the challenges facing the mothers including early marriage, abandonment by their families, difficulties finishing high school and accessing medical treatment and a lack of livelihood options.

The Peace Expo was focused on eliminating sexual and gender based violence throughout Uganda as well as reducing the number of Child Mothers in Kasese. At the beginning of the expo we all received bright pink shirts with messages like "Be the Change you want to see in the World, stop child marriages" which everyone put on so when we set off on our peace march we were surrounded by a sea of pink. I was surprised to see many of the local people in Kasese came out to watch the march although none chose to join the group and attend the expo which was free. My greatest concern about the expo was the fact that the majority of participants were either working for a peacebuilding organization or members of local government. There were very few community members and almost no men who of course would also be important recipients for the topics we were discussing.

Nevertheless, the Peace Expo was very informative. The first day speeches were given by the organizers as well as the members of local government in attendance and the second day we heard from several child mothers as well individuals with expert knowledge of sexual and gender based violence. The speeches were interspersed with cultural performance by elementary and high schools related to Gender Based Violence.

I also enjoyed the different craft tables that were set up by various community peacebuilding organizations which gave me the opportunity to meet with women from many different communities. I was able to make contact with some organizations working in the communities I will be visiting. I also had a particularly meaningful conversation with a group of women from Kitgum in the far North who were part of a group of women living with HIV (or living positively as the the Ugandans put it. Two of the women described how they became infected, one from her husband in whom the disease is dormant and the other who contracted the virus when her husband took a second wife because she had produced six girl children and no boys.

On Tuesday, the second day of the Expo, something rather remarkable happened. Three organizations including the Center for Conflict Resolution launched reports which were affirmed by the deputy-Prime Minister of the Rwenzori Kingdom, as part of her speech she invited all of the foreign delegates attending the conference to join her on stage including, much to my surprise, me! All of the people who were on the stage were asked to take an oath that they would help to reduce Gender Based Violence in their home communities and were given a copy of one of the reports by a local government representative. Mine was delivered by the Mayor of Lira which was neat because that is one of the districts that I will be conducting my fieldwork in early next year.

On the side I also enjoyed interacting with the local people who I met. One of the staff members at the White House was intrigued to see me writing post cards to people, it seemed she had never seen one before. Further, I found the people of Kasese a bit less aggressive than those in Kampala so I heard a lot less "Muzungu How are you?" I also was not hit on for the entire trip which was something of a relief.

We left Wednesday morning although the expo ran until the end of the day Thursday. On the way back we stopped several times again to drop off reports. This time I took the opportunity to get out and walk around. In one small district during my walk from a distance I saw a family with several small children so I decided to approach. As I got close the three smallest children started screaming and ran for their mothers. Apparently they had never seen a muzungu before. The older children and father greeted me with curiosity, they spoke not English.

On the way back we stopped at several vegetable markets and I purchased the best sweet bananas I've had since arriving.

Anyway Off to Nairobi tonight, expect more updates soon! Enjoy the pictures!