Initial weeks at site

December 21, 2001

Made it to Nunguni fine but the hired matatu (van) we rented bottomed out on the soil-eroded "road" down to my house. We limped to the house and the van was fixed up and on its way soon after. I was second to last to get dropped off. Brian T was last, about 3 hours SE of me in Kativani. I'm fortunate in that I'm living in a furnished home. Just about all the other PCVs moved into empty homes or apartments. We all got the same amount of money to buy what we needed immediately. I spent the bulk of it on food. I'm so far from a major town that I wanted to take advantage of having my stuff brought right to my door in a vehicle, as vs. me carrying it on my back 2 hours, up and down the hillsides. Splurged on Skippy peanut butter, ragu pasta sauce and soy sauce. Got lots of the necessary staples too - flour, sugar, salt and rice. Also splurged on 2 non-stick pans to use on my 2-burner propane stove. Seeing as I have no sink and running water, I wash my dishes in a bucket either outside or inside my kitchen. No regrets on the non-stick - saves lots of scrubbing time.

There was also a bed and mattress here for me as well as an armoire for my clothes and a desk and end table for all my stuff in my room. Most everyone else has to have beds and other furniture made for them and sleep on the floor until it's finished. I still have an outdoor choo (hole in the ground) and this one comes with dozens of resident flies. Do me a favor and never take your lovely flush toilet for granted. If you'd like to be me for a day, try this. Don't use your faucets - go outside and fill buckets from your hose and use that for all your daily activities from cooking and cleaning to bathing and drinking (be sure to boil the water before drinking!). For complete authenticity, put some dirt and small bugs in the water and use it anyway. Next, don't use the refrigerator or any electrical appliances. Cook your food on a propane camp stove and shoo the flies away from your food if you've forgotten to cover everything as you don't have glass in your kitchen window. Have to go to the bathroom? Dig a big hole in your backyard and have at it. Run out of toilet paper? No problem, use old newspaper. Want to go to town? Spend 2 hours hiking up a small mountain (like Mt. Si). Don't stay too long as you have the same walk home, albeit mostly downhill. Go outside and brush your teeth and rinse with clean drinking water you previously boiled. Need to shower? Heat up some water and pour it into a plastic basin. Use your hands or a cup like I do and splash yourself clean in a small concrete room with a drain in the floor. Want to listen to the radio before going to bed? Hopefully you have enough batteries or else you can't. As it gets dark at 6:30 you're ready for bed by 9:00. Want to watch your favorite TV program? Too bad, no electricity or TV. You have solar power but the lighting is dim and there's no outlets to plug anything in to - you need special solar inverters for that and you don't have them. The solar panels aren't strong enough to power much more than a few lights anyway. Some rooms are wired up to a car battery for extra juice. That's a slice of my luxury-free life in Nunguni and I'm really enjoying it. Really. No, seriously.

I'm not doing much project-wise until January. We've been given December off to settle in and get to know our communities. I've already started learning how to weave a basket and will make my own soon. My mom gets the first one. I hope to eventually design a website for this women's group and others that JCI supports (the company I technically work for). We'll then sell our stuff to folks like you and your friends. Got a brother-in-law who is a buyer for a chain store? Perfect, I'll send samples out and we'll prepare ourselves for a flood of orders. As every other women's group (of which there are dozens in every village) also produces bags and baskets, coming up with unique designs is a must to differentiate yourself. If you have any design ideas or catalogs with ideas you want to send me, please do. My mailing address (for letters only) has changed. Sorry I don't have photos up yet. Will most likely need to designate someone in Seattle to do it for me once I mail pics home. Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

January 3, 2002

Happy New Year! Spent mine in Nairobi at a dance club called Florida 2000. It was very fun, and crowded, and sweaty - must have lost 5 lbs. just dancing. Clubs here are a bit different than in the States in that groups of guys will go out and dance together whereas back at home, women are the only ones who typically do that. The guys even dance dirty with each other which is odd seeing that homosexuality is against the law here and everyone is so homophobic. Guys will walk around holding hands if they are really good friends but it in no way signifies they are gay.

Right before the new year, Elizabeth, myself and Edwin went on a 3-day safari to the Masai Mara. We got a great resident rate package that included all transportation, food and lodging in a tented camp just outside the park. We had comfy cots to sleep on with sheets and blankets and lanterns to carry around at night. The food was good but we're thinking one of the meals made us a little sick. We all weren't feeling up to par when we got back to Nairobi on the 31st. Oh well, you take the good with the bad I guess. It got us a free night's stay at a hotel last night in Nairobi as we checked in with Medical to explain our symptoms. I'm fine, just a little upset stomach.

Back to the safari. We had 4 game drives and saw tons of animals. We didn't see all 5 of the big 5 (leopard, rhino, elephant, lion, buffalo) but we saw 3 out of 5. Here's the list of animals we can remember seeing: black backed jackel, black eared fox, dik dik, buffalo, topi, tompson's gazelle, masai giraffe, hippo, crocodile, hyena, weasel, elephant, eland, hartabeast, vulture, cheetah, lion, baboon, zebra, impala, ostrich, black vulvut faced monkey, and many different types of birds. We were so close to many of the animals I didn't even have to use my zoom. We saw lions with a fresh kill one day (unfortunately it was a zebra, my favorite animal) and saw the cheetahs chasing impala. We also saw a herd of 26 elephants giving themselves a mud bath. En route to see the hippo and crocodiles in the Mara River, we took a quick jaunt into Tanzania! We weren't there for long but now I can say I've been to the Serengeti .

We actually got out and walked down to the river with an armed guard. Made me nervous as someone said they spotted a leopard in the trees just hours before. None of the guards or guides seemed to think it was a big deal as the leopard is such a shy animal. It's the hippo and water buffalo you really need to worry about. The woman that went on our safari with us (there were only 4 of us) told us that her host's son was just killed a couple of weeks ago by a hippo. He was bird hunting on the lake and the bird fell just outside his boat. He went to retrieve it and a hippo came out of the water and took him by the neck. They found his body soon after. Very sad.

Well, I'm off to Nunguni today after stopping by the Peace Corps office to pick up mail and packages (I'm told I have 2 waiting for me, yeah). Hope everyone is doing well and had a nice holiday. By the way, I have a cell phone but it doesn't work in Nunguni except in one spot most of the way up the mountain I climb to town. You can leave voice mail or a text message and I pick it up when I have the one window of coverage opportunity. To text message you have two options: www.sms.ac or www.mashada.com. My number if calling from the U.S. is 011 254 733 928840. I have Kencell as my provider and it only allows about 100 characters of text including spaces and punctuation. Both are free to use. Bye for now!

January 16, 2002

Just returned from my training review meeting in Naivasha. I was the sole representative from the Small Enterprise Development/Information Technology (SED/IT) sector which gave me mixed feelings. I was honored to have been chosen to speak for the other 24 SED/IT PCVs from my training group, but would have loved to have known ahead of time it was just going to be me so as to gather comments and suggestions from the group to share at the meeting. I winged it and together with the Technical Trainer and Assoc. PC Director (APCD) for SED/IT and others on the training staff, we reworked how training will look for the incoming group this August. I told them I’d like to come back and redo the training as it sounds like it’ll be great - I was more serious than kidding.

They probably will have me visit and speak to the incoming trainees as our group had several currently serving volunteers come and speak to us about various topics. That was my main suggestion, to increase the number of PCVs that come to the training center as it’s the best way to get practical info on what volunteers actually do once they’re out at site. Plus, it’s an American point of view, vs. a Kenyan point of view (all the trainers are Kenyan and most of the guest speakers who visit). Anyway, there is still more work to be done so I may be invited back in a few months to continue the process. There were 5 of us PCVs (3 from the group that swore in last August and 1 from my group (Deaf Ed)) staying at Malaika so it was very quiet and boring. The center has a VCR so we would go to Naivasha every day and rent movies to watch. It was so nice to just veg out in front of a TV, watching movies and eating junk food - .felt like I was back in America ; except for the fact that the power kept cutting out on us and dozens of mosquitoes were dive bombing us continuously.

I wish the hotels in Nairobi had TVs ; I’m sure the expensive ones do but that’s not an option. The weirdest thing about Kenyan hotels, and Kenya in general, is that there are no mirrors in the bathrooms! Most Kenyan homes I’ve been in don’t have mirrors either (granted they are mostly rural homes). I go for days sometimes without seeing my reflection. You kind of scare yourself when you do come upon a mirror - it takes a couple seconds to realize you're looking at you! More interesting quirks of Kenya: pregnancy isn’t discussed or even acknowledged much. You would NEVER touch another woman’s belly or even comment on her impending birth. You’re not considered late for a meeting that was to start at 2:00pm as long as you show up before 3:00pm. If you’re within that hour, you’re not late. Of course, many Kenyans don’t show up for meetings at all and think nothing of it too. They all consider rain to be a blessing from God, seeing as most rural folks are subsistence farmers. The folks in Nunguni tell me I’m a blessing as it always seems to rain the day I return from being away. Movie theaters have assigned seats, much like the British, I’m told.

Speaking of movies, I saw the Harry Potter movie on New Year’s Day. I really liked it. I hope to come into Nairobi when The Lord of the Rings comes to town. Might even try to catch a movie today while I'm in town. I'm going to hit the Sarit Center, which is a western-style shopping mall, complete with awesome food court (pizza, pasta, chinese) email, movie theater and supermarket. This supermarket has all, well not all, of what you would ever hope to get including Heinz ketchup, Oreos, Skippy peanut butter, just to name a few. Granted, these items are incredibly expensive but nice to splurge on every once in a while. Most Indian shops have great selections of American goods too. There is a large population of Indians in Kenya, concentrated mostly in Nairobi and the coast. The Kenyans don’t like the Indians as they say they are money hungry and pay slave-wages. The Indians here are very motivated workers and therefore have done quite well for themselves. Not to say Kenyans aren’t motivated, but certainly less so than the Indians are.

In Nairobi you can see a fair amount of westerners, especially in the rich suburbs, like Westlands (where the PC office and the Sarit Center are). It’s when you get out into the rural areas (i.e. most of Kenya) that you find you’re the only white person around for miles and miles. I still get stared at a lot, especially from kids, and I get really bothered by it some times and not at all at others. Depends on my mood and stress level. I was really bothered by it the other day and just stared back at the kids and made faces at them until they got embarrassed and turned away. I usually have a pack of kids walking with me when I’m at site. I’m surprised they don’t trip and kill themselves as they will get in front of me to get a better look and turn and stare while still walking forward. I like to vary my pace and make sudden stops just to mess with them. This works especially well when they’re following close behind me. I tell myself they’re just kids, but when you’re stared at 24/7 EVERY day it starts to wear on you. I consider myself lucky that that is my biggest gripe so far. Oh wait, I have another.

I have a new pet. It hangs out in my kitchen and likes to get into my food. It hunts at night and brings it’s catch back to the house and leaves me insect body parts to find. What is it? None other than a cute little pink-nosed bat. Yep, a bat lives in the unfinished ceiling of my kitchen. It comes and goes through the kitchen window - the one without any glass in it. One of my tasks for today is to buy some netting for a screen for the window.

Work is going well ; been very busy actually. Got a meeting tonight with JCI to discuss Marketing issues. Got another meeting in Nunguni on Thursday and then another on Friday. Friday’s meeting will take place at an abandoned coffee factory near my house. I’m trying to get the company to give my group one of the gutted-out buildings for free. Initial indications look good but we’ll see. I hope to use it as a production facility ; once we have things to produce, that is. I also hope to secure a $10,000 USAID grant in the next few months. Keep your fingers crossed and the prayers coming! Gotta go get some food - maybe Chinese today. Bye for now.