Flying toilets don't necessarily make it to the river

We went to Mathare twice this week. The first time was to join in a children's program with the library boys. The library is now run by three boys--the girl who used to run it is about to have a baby and has moved out of Mathare. Whenever we walk through Mathare, we are always accompanied by at least one of them and often all three. They keep anyone away from harassing us. Yesterday, someone approached Malachi but just before he could touch him, one of the library boys grabbed his outstretched arm and stopped him. Last year when I was here, I was always approached and asked for money or food. It hasn't happened once in Mathare this time. And these boys have such good intentions. They love helping the children with their homework in the library or helping an adult that is struggling with literacy.

Anyways, I digress. We walked through Mathare to a 'nursery' school. The building was...rustic. The floor was rough concrete. There were no lights on inside, so I am not sure if they have electricity. It was lit inside by a couple of "skylights" where the corrugated plastic roof wasn't layered and more daylight came through. It was pretty dark. There were about 80 children there sitting at little tables and desks. They all wore dark green uniforms and many also wore touques. (it was 26 degrees that day). We arrived at the start of lunchtime so they all filed past us to wash their hands at a little water dispenser. 

After lunch we accompanied them with one of their teachers to the park (the organization that I am working with built the park a few years ago--I wrote about it last time I was here).  The library boy brought a soccer ball, 2 badminton racquets, and a volleyball. He got Lizzie to teach some kids how to play badminton and Malachi to teach some how to play volleyball.

Can you see the boy with the unraveled sleeve?

These kids were about 4-5 years old, and hadn't yet learned English, so teaching them wasn't easy. They kept crowding in on Malachi. One of the kids sweater was unravelling, but he didn't seem to care. We taught them a janken game where the loser has to lengthen their step until one of them falls over. It was fun.

Afterwards, we walked them back to their school. The younger ones were napping with their heads on the table. The owner of the school came and talked to me. From what I gathered, this is a service she provides to the mothers in Mathare. The kids bring 10 shillings (11 cents) to school everyday and from that she makes their lunch (beans and rice). It seemed to me she does not collect a wage from this. But I never clarified.

I have been working on a report about Mathare so I have learned some of the alarming statistics. It is the 2nd largest informal settlement in Nairobi and one of the most densely populated places in the world. There are 70,000 people per square kilometre. Most people subsist on less than $2 a day which they earn through informal labour. 50 of the 55 participants in our study rated severely food insecure. It makes me feel sad. But it just makes me admire the people volunteering here even more. 

There are no private toilets in Mathare. Several families will share one toilet. It may be 200 metres away from their home and it costs 10 shillings every time they use it. In my research I read that some people instead, make use of  "flying toilets," which means they do their business in a bag, then step outside and throw it--anywhere. I didn't  believe it, so I asked one of the library boys and he confirmed that it happens (mostly at night).

Elizabeth has started a rigorous schedule of marvel movies for her and Malachi to watch before Avengers Endgame--Encore comes out so that Malachi will be caught up and understand everything that is happening. Unfortunately, she can only get Disney plus on her phone. This is how they got comfy->

Saturday we were invited to join in a tree planting event and to watch the Mathare river queens football match. When we arrived, our library boy escorts were waiting for us. They brought us down to the river where there was a big clean up happening. The asked us which side of the road we preferred to work on, and the organizer was about to encourage us to work on the side without trees, but Malachi was adamant he wanted to work on the side with trees (it was hot!) . He soon came to regret this decision when we discovered that we had to carefully watch our steps because they area has been "used as a toilet" by some people and there was all kinds of human feces in various states of decay. Ewww. The task was to move the garbage to the edge of the road into a big pile. We were given shovels to help out.

I don't think pictures can convey the scope or magnitude of how much garbage there was

Eventually people came and took over from us. The reds told me that the library boys kept saying "your mother is very tired"...maybe I was moving too slowly? Once the pile was near the road, they just lit it on fire. 

This fire was left to burn itself out

The people across the river are planting trees.

From there we went and sat in the gazebo which felt nice and cool. Although after sitting there for awhile, Malachi said "my butt keeps falling through the holes." The benches were made of wood slats that had one inch gaps between them.

Eventually the gazebo filled up with all the people that were working to clean up the area. It was very crowded. Some brave children gathered around Elizabeth and were touching her hair and stroking her braid. Some reached across her back to pet Malachi too. My hair was up so they mostly left me alone. We had a brief meeting all in Swahili where a bunch of different leaders were introduced. Lastly, I was asked to say a few words...what? So I just introduced myself. Then the food came out. Everybody was handed a loaf of bread and a bag of milk. We brought our own sandwiches so we were walked back to the office for lunch.

Then we went to watch the football match. It was way on the other end of Mathare. While we were walking, a young boy starting talking to Elizabeth. I thought he was about 9 or 10 years old. As it turned out, 'he' was a 16 year old she--that was on the team. To be fair, I only saw her from behind. The soccer game was played on a red dirt field. It was so hot. Our team lost, but at least they scored a goal--that's always exciting. 

Today was stake conference. The building was so full. My highlight was the choir. Usually  on Sundays it feels like Lizzie and I are doing a duet. We can't hear anyone else. This choir sounded like what I expected the singing to be like in Africa. I loved it. It was a good Sunday.

Click here to listen to a snippet of the Nairobi East Stake choir recording

(It is after the conference is over, so it is a bit noisy)

Malachi gets licked again (okay, so do I)

This week we took an uber out to the giraffe centre with another UFV student. On our way we stopped at the mission home. Last year the mission home was in the building where we go to church, but now it moved far away and we needed to drop off a package for a missionary from Chilliwack that we brought. Luckily, it was on the way to the giraffe centre. The missionaries in the office seemed excited to see us and called the elder for us to talk to him...thing is, I don't actually know him. This call was the first time that I had ever spoken to him. There were some senior missionaries there that were talking to the reds about things to do in Nairobi. The big takeaway for us was that there is a place near Nairobi where you can go to ride ostriches. Really. So stay tuned for future entries because we definitely  have to try this out.

The giraffe centre was fun. A tour bus arrived the same time as us, so it was a little crowded at first, but eventually the group dispersed and we got plenty of access to the giraffes. The giraffes have very long tongues that they stick out for you to place food on. If you are not careful, you will get slimed.

We tended to be too careful and dropped plenty of the food off their tongues. Some of the other tourists were unphased and stuck their fingers right into their mouths. One giraffe refused to take any food from us--I think it is because we missed too many. 

How many giraffes can you spot?

When we were done there, we went to lunch at a cafe that seems to only feed older wazungu women. I never saw any Africans or men there. Afterwards we took the long drive back to Mathare. On our way, we got stuck at a light for a long time. A huge group of motorcycles rode up on the other side of the road honking their horns, blowing whistles and revving their engines. I was a little worried that we had come upon a protest--there had been one the day before--but it turned out to be pretty tame other than blocking traffic.

At Mathare I conducted a focus group discussion for the project I am working on. This was my first time doing something like this. I thought my professor would conduct this discussion, but she left Kenya without getting it done, so it fell on me. We only had 4 participants and mostly only one girl spoke, but I learned so much from it. One thing that you might find interesting is that Mathare has its own kind of street food that you wouldn't find anywhere else. I asked for an example and she told me about moshiogi which is a stuffed chicken head. They stretch the neck out and fill it with potatoes and then boil it. Apparently it is quite good. I'll take their word for it.

After the focus group they took us to see the school that we will be helping out at. The reds were not impressed. They wanted to go home. But I thought seeing the programs they do at the school was really cool. They have a cooker there that they call taka taka zero. Taka is Swahili for garbage. This cooker operates on non-recyclable waste. They cook bread in it which they sell to raise funds for school programs. They also have a little farm there that they showed me. Right now it is only growing managu--some kind of leafy nightshade that they eat a lot of here. Apparently I will be working with them and helping to scale this program for other schools. It seems like the list of things I will be doing is getting longer.

This week I have been working on an application for a competition for innovative ideas that strengthen flood resilience. The applicant is supposed to be a youth and the project is supposed to be locally led...I don't fit either of those categories. I expected to at least be given the ideas they wanted to use, but no. I wasn't. My professor pointed out that this is one of the problems of development. I was asked to do the application because they are all too busy. It is competitive and difficult to get funding--especially for small grassroots organizations like the one I am working with. (In my focus group discussion I discovered they all work 13ish hour days 6 days a week!)

So how am I, a student of development, supposed to know what to do to improve a river corridor to make it less likely to harm the people that live near it in the event of a flood?! I had to do a lot of research, and talk with other UFV students that have been involved in river projects and also get some geo-tech ideas from Brent. I sent 4 possibilities to my supervisor from the organization and he said to do 3 of the ideas. I spent a couple days figuring out how to flesh those ideas out and what would be appropriate for this location and be representative of this organization. There has been some back and forth with my supervisor and professor trying to get it right and the way they want it. It has been tiring--I don't want to think about the Mathare river at all for a few weeks. I put all this effort into one application, and although they suit the requirements and focus very well, it is global and only 2 winners. Here's to hoping we are one of them. 🤞

Birthday in Kenya: Week 2

 This week I went to Mathare where I participated in the farewell lunch for the UFV students that were all going home. Besides me, there were 7 here this summer. In another week it will be just me. The lunch was held at their new community hub that they are building.

Currently Mathare Roots or Mto Wangu, (the organization that I am working with) rents the rooms they use and when they don't have funding, the leader has to pay for it out of his own pocket. I know it has to be a hardship for him. So the UFV students that were already here started a go fund me to raise $10, 000 to buy and build a new building for them. Those few students have managed to raise almost half the money already.

They proudly took me to the place where they are building. They already have the basement dug out (which they did by hand) and the walls erected. We had lunch on the floor above which is still partially open. They had recently poured the concrete beams and were waiting for it to cure. There is a lot of excitement about this building and how they will be able to have all their different operations under one roof.

The part of the story I didn't yet tell was that they were supposed to meet with me before the lunch, but showed up too late for that. Kind of classic. So our meeting got changed to a zoom meeting later in the week.

In that meeting, they told me all the things that I could be involved with to support them during my time here. If everything goes according to plan, I will be:

•  submitting their innovative flood resilience plan for a contest
• supporting their girls soccer team in PR and to get sponsorship
• doing a campaign to help community members prepare for flooding which is supposed to be particularly bad this next spring
• doing some kind of community dialogue thing with the British Institute of East Africa that involves something around the history of flooding of the Mathare river

On top of all this, I am supposed to be writing an academic paper on an evaluation we did with them. I have been analysing the data this week on it. Most of our findings aren't surprising, but it still feels sad to have it confirmed that this is the way life is form most of the people there.

Anyways, I was asked to make up a work plan and present to them in person in a meeting on Friday. Problem was, nobody showed up. I waited there for  a long time, the boys that run the children's program and the library took me all around the community to show me around. I met both their moms and sisters. They were very nice and took care of me. 

I was pretty discouraged when I left though. I know it is a culture thing and that I was experiencing culture shock, but that didn't make it any easier. It felt like such a waste of my time when I am really under the gun to get things done. A talk with my professor helped me to get perspective and to not take anything personally.

Yesterday, I took a break for most of the day and we went to village market--a mall near the UN buildings that is quite high end with lots of wazungu (white people) there. It was my birthday, but I had been so busy working this last week, that I didn't have time to prepare a bigger activity to do. 

But the reds were happy. They like going to this mall because we always get shawarmas when we are there. In their nostalgic minds, they are one of their favourite foods we ate here. For my birthday Elizabeth treated us to gelato. I got passion fruit. It was delish! 

Elizabeth was very sweet and had secretly ordered me a bunch of sweets and snacks which she actually started giving to me the day before because I had had such frustrating day. It was a pretty low key birthday, but I got to spend it with some of my favourite people, so it was pretty good.

Back in Kenya

These make long flights endurable!

We have been here for four days so far and are just starting to emerge from the mind numbing brain fog of jet lag. I don't know why, but coming here I get really bad jet lag. I had a couple nights where I just lay in my bed awake until the sun came up at which point I would give up and get up. But then by 10 am (midnight back home), I can't keep my eyes open. The struggle to function with such overpowering drowsiness was real. 

Saturday felt like a true victory because I managed to get through a whole day without needing a nap. So far we have been just getting organized for our life here--buying groceries, getting sim cards and setting up meetings for my internship. We are back to the same 3 or 4 meals with Elizabeth making grilled cheese sandwiches late at night because she is still hungry. I have a hard time knowing what to make for dinner here, so if you have any suggestions of things I can make with simple ingredients, please give me some suggestions in the comments. For now we eat pasta, Thai curry, tacos, and stir fry. 

 The reds have been very nostalgic about everything we see here. They were happy to see Margaret, the street vendor that we buy vegies from. When we walk to the store Malachi points out so many little things asking if we remembered them ie: "remember this is where we saw the monkeys!" Things that bugged them before are charming and nostalgic like the elevator that plays Fur Elise. I'm glad they like it. The traffic is jarring all over again. I thought I had gotten used to it, but I guess not. Yesterday we went to Karura Forest and got smoothies, took silly panoramic photos, watched the monkeys and went for a long walk.

In case you didn't notice, there are monkeys on the picnic table

Today we went to church. Our uber driver couldn't seem to find it. I could clearly hear his navigation telling him to turn left and then he would turn right, but eventually we made it. 

 The highlight was a third hour meeting of "musical experience." After sacrament meeting the bishop asked Elizabeth if she would perform something, so she reluctantly performed her recital piece (Nuvoli Bianchi), which was beautiful even though she had to play it on a keyboard that she wasn't accustomed to. Nobody in the ward plays the piano, so most of the performances were a cappella. One guy gripped the top of the mike as he walked back and forth on the stand and sang. Some songs were sung multiple times. The best part for me was when that same young man started singing "There is a Green Hill Far Away" and it suddenly switched to a rap. The bishop cut that one short. Lol. When all the performances were done, it was opened up to anyone else that felt moved upon to do so. Surprisingly, there were 3 or 4 more performances. I just can't even imagine that happening back home. It was a good day.