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.