Thursday, February 22, 2007
Now just a quick update on the good stuff! Teaching has been amazing the kids are sooo cute they all want to touch me and they love my hair, they will happily sit there and pet me like a dog for hours, most of them have never seen a Mzungo (white person) and anything i say they giggle and they make soo much fun of me wheni try to spaek Maasai. Home life is great we were all dancing up a starm last night was mama was making dinner over the fire. Yesterday i went to this guys Dominics hout with Adrian he is oo lovely he is training to run marathons and he runs45K a day!! it is kinda sad though coz i don't think he will ever have the money to race in the places where he will be seen. He lives in a traditional maasai boma, just sticks and cow poo very dark with lots of flies and a fire inside so it is incredibly smoky, his sister dressed me up in traditional maasai i look soo rediculous i will post the pics asap so you can all laugh at me! Anywh i am heading out on Safari so i must go, please don't worry about me i am incredibly happy and having the time of my life , even though it was a bad start i would still do it all again as it makes me appreciate everything so much more, talk to you all soon xx
Trying to leave!
On my home from school i called Michelle ( the GVN rep here working with VICDA) and told her i wasn't happy, the school didn't need me and a little about all the corruption that was going on and i asked to be moved. She said she would call the vicda lady Irene (also Kukuyu) and try and sort it out and get back to me that evening. i didn't hear back but that night mama Nasshipaes phone kept ringing and all the village elders and lots of other peple start coming by the house to see what is going on, as they hear there is someone complaing about the village and someone said they was fighting. I can honestly say it was the most uncomforable night of my life, they all knew it was me and they were asking me what i knew and what was happening and mama was translating for me, knowing full well it was me who had called!!1AAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhh at this point i was so over it i just wanted to leave and be done with it. Then my phone rings and it is Irene calling ( it turns out her and mama Nasshipae are freinds) and i cannot move as the money had already been given to the family, unless i pay another 15 000 shillings! to live else where. As you can tell the whole thing is corrupt as are many things here and it was a nightmare, i went to bed that night and thought about just leaving the whole thing i was so angrey and upset. However this is Africa and a lot can change in 24 hours. The next morning i woke up a woman on a mission i decided enough was enough and i went to school and we all had a two hour meeting, it turns out they really do need me, they were just thrown off wheni arrived, as soon as we started talking about the corruption and how much we all hate VICDA openly it was like the biggest weight off my shoulders and by the end we were all laughing and i had a full timetable of teaching and they are just the nicest gruop of people. So theni go home and i decide the same needs to be done, so we talk, but not as freely (obviously as they are recieving all the money and in on the whole thing) but still it is amazing jsut sitting down and communcating has changed everything. The whole village is happy now and it is just the most beautiful place.
So i know a lot of you probably didn't want or need to know any of that but there you go, i know mum wanted to know what had been going on.
So i know a lot of you probably didn't want or need to know any of that but there you go, i know mum wanted to know what had been going on.
Shaky start
So for those of you not being updated daily from mama p i have a lot of explaining to do. First and foremost i am having an amazing time i love Kenya it it sooo beautiful and the people are the most welcoming nicest people i have ever met in my travels. Okay so now that that is said let me tell you about the nightmare that unfolded when i got to my placement!
The drive out was beautful there were two other volunteers in the van but they were going to another town called Oolayshaboor, which is where i was going to go but decided to go to Saikeri instead as they really needed a teacher, but as it was a new placement and they hadn't had volunteers b4 i asked if i could b moved to Oolayshaboor if it didn't work out (more about this later). I was told yes no problem, i can move if need be.
The family came out to greet us and everyone was sooo nice my maasai papa is one of the most respected men in the village, he has killed a lion!!! and my maasai mama, mama Nasshipae was lovely too they have three children, Joeseph (sick with maleria right now) who is never at home as he is a teenager, Julliette (Nasshipae) 13, and Pheobe (Shen) 7 who is incredibly cute. Everyone has christian names and Maasai names and within about two minutes of being there one of the old maasai mamas came over to name me, and now i can only answer to Namunyak it means blessing. It took me a few days to get used to being called something completley different! and people thought it was hilarious that i didn't respond to my name.
Anywho i had a really good first few days and i drank about a million cups of chai at different peoples shacks to be welcomed into the community while i waited the three days to start at the school.
So this is where things start to go a bit funny, the more i talk to the locals and they start to trust ne a bit i start hearing stories about corruption and allsorts and i have a feeling it is to do with me (no-matter the language you always know when people are talking about you) and i started to listen to what people were saying, and as it turned out i wasn't actually staying in the right house. Then agency i am out here with VICDA came out the week before to check out where i would be staying and they looked at this lady Maggies house, she is a really lovely lady and a nurse at the clinic she is also Maasai (this becomes important later), when they were looking at her house the headmaster at the school sent someone to speak to them to see if they wanted to meet with him, they said no, so he assumed it was a HIV volunteer coming. Now i know this is complicated but try to follow, one month earlier a volunteer called Adrian had arrived and she was supposed to stay at maggies house also as she is a HIV volunteer, but the driver of the VICDA van that day was a Kukuyu (differnt tribe) and he had friends in Saikeri, which was ,you guessed it, the house that i was dropped off at, now mama Nasshipae is also a Kukuyu and was friens with this guy, so when Adrien stepped out and the VICDA coordinator handed over the money for her two month stay no-one (except the driver) knew it was the wrong house so they left her there. As you can imagine the people involved were very angry and VICDA promised that the next volunteer would go to Maggies house, cut to one month later when i roll up at the same house you can imagine the anger of the people in Saikeri. The host family is paid 500 shillings a day per volunteer, about $20 can so that is a lot of money to them. So imagine the outrage that not only is all that money going to one family but the wrong one aswell.
Then it turned into a whole Maasai/Kukuyu thing and it was awfull, i just didn't want any part of it so i just tried to ignore it and was looking forward to teaching. Now bear in mind that everyone is still being really nice and they are not making the volunteers feel bad it was just awkward.
So monday morning arrives and i decide depending on how the day goes i am going to decide weather to stay or transfer to Oolaysharboor. Well the fact that they had no idea i was coming started my day off on a downward slope! It was ridiculous VICDA hadn't contacted them so they had no idea what to do with me and were angry about the living situation aswell!! Oh my, at this point i just wanted to leave, but i sat and marked books for two hours while everyone yelled and tried to figure out what to do with me, uncomfortable is an understatment! In the end i taught one 30 min class which was really good but left wnodering what the hell was i doing here!
The drive out was beautful there were two other volunteers in the van but they were going to another town called Oolayshaboor, which is where i was going to go but decided to go to Saikeri instead as they really needed a teacher, but as it was a new placement and they hadn't had volunteers b4 i asked if i could b moved to Oolayshaboor if it didn't work out (more about this later). I was told yes no problem, i can move if need be.
The family came out to greet us and everyone was sooo nice my maasai papa is one of the most respected men in the village, he has killed a lion!!! and my maasai mama, mama Nasshipae was lovely too they have three children, Joeseph (sick with maleria right now) who is never at home as he is a teenager, Julliette (Nasshipae) 13, and Pheobe (Shen) 7 who is incredibly cute. Everyone has christian names and Maasai names and within about two minutes of being there one of the old maasai mamas came over to name me, and now i can only answer to Namunyak it means blessing. It took me a few days to get used to being called something completley different! and people thought it was hilarious that i didn't respond to my name.
Anywho i had a really good first few days and i drank about a million cups of chai at different peoples shacks to be welcomed into the community while i waited the three days to start at the school.
So this is where things start to go a bit funny, the more i talk to the locals and they start to trust ne a bit i start hearing stories about corruption and allsorts and i have a feeling it is to do with me (no-matter the language you always know when people are talking about you) and i started to listen to what people were saying, and as it turned out i wasn't actually staying in the right house. Then agency i am out here with VICDA came out the week before to check out where i would be staying and they looked at this lady Maggies house, she is a really lovely lady and a nurse at the clinic she is also Maasai (this becomes important later), when they were looking at her house the headmaster at the school sent someone to speak to them to see if they wanted to meet with him, they said no, so he assumed it was a HIV volunteer coming. Now i know this is complicated but try to follow, one month earlier a volunteer called Adrian had arrived and she was supposed to stay at maggies house also as she is a HIV volunteer, but the driver of the VICDA van that day was a Kukuyu (differnt tribe) and he had friends in Saikeri, which was ,you guessed it, the house that i was dropped off at, now mama Nasshipae is also a Kukuyu and was friens with this guy, so when Adrien stepped out and the VICDA coordinator handed over the money for her two month stay no-one (except the driver) knew it was the wrong house so they left her there. As you can imagine the people involved were very angry and VICDA promised that the next volunteer would go to Maggies house, cut to one month later when i roll up at the same house you can imagine the anger of the people in Saikeri. The host family is paid 500 shillings a day per volunteer, about $20 can so that is a lot of money to them. So imagine the outrage that not only is all that money going to one family but the wrong one aswell.
Then it turned into a whole Maasai/Kukuyu thing and it was awfull, i just didn't want any part of it so i just tried to ignore it and was looking forward to teaching. Now bear in mind that everyone is still being really nice and they are not making the volunteers feel bad it was just awkward.
So monday morning arrives and i decide depending on how the day goes i am going to decide weather to stay or transfer to Oolaysharboor. Well the fact that they had no idea i was coming started my day off on a downward slope! It was ridiculous VICDA hadn't contacted them so they had no idea what to do with me and were angry about the living situation aswell!! Oh my, at this point i just wanted to leave, but i sat and marked books for two hours while everyone yelled and tried to figure out what to do with me, uncomfortable is an understatment! In the end i taught one 30 min class which was really good but left wnodering what the hell was i doing here!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Maasailand here i come
So yesterday we got to pick our placements and i am going to a place called Saikeri it is deep in the maasai land , i will be living with a Maasai family and teaching at a school that is about an hours walk from where i will be living. I am the only volunteer going and it is a new placment so they have never had volunteers out there, and i don't know if any of them has ever left so i may be one of the first white person some of them have seen.
I am really excited, i am hoping to get into Nairobi on the weekend to e-mail but feel free to call me untill then. I am going on a four day safari through the maasai mara national park, ooo and today i got to pet a cheetah!!!!!! very cool, any way love to you all and i hope to write soon. By the way mum i have been told it is the safest place in Kenya as there are no people out there but i have to watch out for the monkeys and apparantly the girraffes are everywhere
I am really excited, i am hoping to get into Nairobi on the weekend to e-mail but feel free to call me untill then. I am going on a four day safari through the maasai mara national park, ooo and today i got to pet a cheetah!!!!!! very cool, any way love to you all and i hope to write soon. By the way mum i have been told it is the safest place in Kenya as there are no people out there but i have to watch out for the monkeys and apparantly the girraffes are everywhere
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Phone Number
Hello i have got a phone over here, the number is 254 (kenya code) 0728 509 595 sometimes you drop the 0 @ the front, i am 8hrs ahead of england and 11hrs ahead of Canada, feel free to text or call anythime, it wouls be greatly appreciated xoxo
Kibera
Where to begin, Kibera is one of the largest slums/shanty towns in the world. It has over a million people living in tin shacks, some as small as a few feet square and all with dirt floors. Imagine over a million people living in a fairly small area with no electricity, running water, sewage system, basically everything that you and i would consider the basics of life. If you want to see it in a movie The Constant Gardener is filmed there. It is like nothing you can imagine untill you see it, it was so foreign to me in every possible way, i have never been anywhere that can compare to it in any of my travels.
We walked the 30 mins or so in along the train tracks and all of a sudden you are just in kibera there is no fence or entrace it is just there and you go from lush greenery to mud and tin, like that! I was overwhelmed by everything, thank god catherine knew where she was going as it is a maze of allys, dirt roads and shantys. We walked about 20 mins into Kibera itself, you get the feeling that it could go on miles, and at one point when we were on a hill of sorts you could look out and all you could see were tins roofs for forever, all i could say was wow, i was lost for words.
finally we reached this big pile of rubbish and Cathrine said that was where the kids go to the toilet just in the middle of the road and the school was just behind it. The school is communtiy run and this lady Mary runs it if she wasn't there i don't know if these kids would be in school at all. it is a big tin Shack about 15ft by 40ft and there are about 40 students all under 7. Threre are four classes but it is all one room so it is very noisey with 4 teachers trying to keep control of their students. The kids were soooo cute when we arrived they all were saying hi hi ow r u, very cute. Everything is very basic, chalk and a blackboard, Mary had taken old sacks and sewn the alphabet/colours/numbers into them with wool and used them to decorate the walls. I can't really describe it very well so you will just have to wait till i can upload pics to da any of it justice. Anywho i went in the next day aswell to teach and it was amazing the kids are so happy to see you and at playtime they are all over you, as soon as you spin one of them around they all start shouting teacher, teacher, me, me after 10 mins i was exausted but i couldn't stop as you just can't say no. In that moment when i was playing with the kids i was so happy to be there and realized i had absolutly done the right thing in coming here, it was so amzing and bear in mind i was playing in a garbage pile covered with flys and rats!! so that is saying somthing. I am already falling in love with africa.
We walked the 30 mins or so in along the train tracks and all of a sudden you are just in kibera there is no fence or entrace it is just there and you go from lush greenery to mud and tin, like that! I was overwhelmed by everything, thank god catherine knew where she was going as it is a maze of allys, dirt roads and shantys. We walked about 20 mins into Kibera itself, you get the feeling that it could go on miles, and at one point when we were on a hill of sorts you could look out and all you could see were tins roofs for forever, all i could say was wow, i was lost for words.
finally we reached this big pile of rubbish and Cathrine said that was where the kids go to the toilet just in the middle of the road and the school was just behind it. The school is communtiy run and this lady Mary runs it if she wasn't there i don't know if these kids would be in school at all. it is a big tin Shack about 15ft by 40ft and there are about 40 students all under 7. Threre are four classes but it is all one room so it is very noisey with 4 teachers trying to keep control of their students. The kids were soooo cute when we arrived they all were saying hi hi ow r u, very cute. Everything is very basic, chalk and a blackboard, Mary had taken old sacks and sewn the alphabet/colours/numbers into them with wool and used them to decorate the walls. I can't really describe it very well so you will just have to wait till i can upload pics to da any of it justice. Anywho i went in the next day aswell to teach and it was amazing the kids are so happy to see you and at playtime they are all over you, as soon as you spin one of them around they all start shouting teacher, teacher, me, me after 10 mins i was exausted but i couldn't stop as you just can't say no. In that moment when i was playing with the kids i was so happy to be there and realized i had absolutly done the right thing in coming here, it was so amzing and bear in mind i was playing in a garbage pile covered with flys and rats!! so that is saying somthing. I am already falling in love with africa.
creature comforts
sorry about how fragmented this has been but i am on a laptop that is battery powered and it keeps dying. Anywho after buying my phone card from the tin shed i ran back to the hostel feeling rather chuffed with my self for being so brave only to find out that the hotel phone was actually out of order. Thank god for the receptionist wendy, she took pity on me and we went on a mega mission to find a phone, i found out later that another volunteer had been robbed where we were walking around looking for a phone so i am very glad she came with me as it was a maze of allys and big iron gates and not only woud i have probably been robbed but i would have been very lost.
After talking to irene, she came and met me at the hotel and whisked me away to her appartment, a mere three blocks (ish as there are nno blocks)away, again i didn't know what to expect so magine my srprise when she opened the door and i see a beautiful appartment just as nice as any western one, hardwood floors, tv, two bathrooms!!! i couldn't belive it. One thing i have already realized in my few days here, is Kenya is a country of contrast.
Not long after i met another volunteer, Cathrine from Australia, who has been amazing these last few days, she has definatly helped ease me into the whole experience, her and another six girls live here on and off ans she is teaching in a school in Kibera and asked me if i wanted to go in with her and i jumped at the chance.
After talking to irene, she came and met me at the hotel and whisked me away to her appartment, a mere three blocks (ish as there are nno blocks)away, again i didn't know what to expect so magine my srprise when she opened the door and i see a beautiful appartment just as nice as any western one, hardwood floors, tv, two bathrooms!!! i couldn't belive it. One thing i have already realized in my few days here, is Kenya is a country of contrast.
Not long after i met another volunteer, Cathrine from Australia, who has been amazing these last few days, she has definatly helped ease me into the whole experience, her and another six girls live here on and off ans she is teaching in a school in Kibera and asked me if i wanted to go in with her and i jumped at the chance.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
sorry just wanted to check it would post b4 writing too much. Anywho i was told i could use the phone at the hotel if i went and got a calling card, didn't seem like to big a deal she gave me directions, now bear in mind i arrived in the pitch black ( there are no street lights) so i went to the front of the hotel and was faced with a sheer wall of metal, wrapped around the hotel and 20ft high. Ok i thought they are saftey consious thats not a bad thing, then the guard came out of his box to unlock the mini door hidden within the wall, i told him i would be back soon so he would let me back in, i stepped outside and had one of the biggest culture shocks you can imagine, the sound of the door being locked behind me was absolutly terrifying, i suddenly started thinking the the hell am i doing! I have never wanted to go home b4 untill tht moment, i would have paid everylast penny i owned to be at home on my sofa with my mum, but being the optomistic traveller i am(or stupid) i decided i needed to buck up and stop being such a fraidy cat.
It is hard to describe what is was like, frist i should tell you i wasn't in the city at all couldn't even see it from there. there was no road outside but a dirt track, there were lush patches of greenery surrounded by derelict buildings and shanty tin sheds however in the green parts were shells of old cars that had been set on fire, the odd dead dog and people just sitting around staring at me, there is rubbish everywhere there are no toilets so everyone goes otside and well, you can imagine the smell!
I kept my head down tried not to look at anyone and eventually found a tin shack selling cards, oh the battery is about to run out, hang on
It is hard to describe what is was like, frist i should tell you i wasn't in the city at all couldn't even see it from there. there was no road outside but a dirt track, there were lush patches of greenery surrounded by derelict buildings and shanty tin sheds however in the green parts were shells of old cars that had been set on fire, the odd dead dog and people just sitting around staring at me, there is rubbish everywhere there are no toilets so everyone goes otside and well, you can imagine the smell!
I kept my head down tried not to look at anyone and eventually found a tin shack selling cards, oh the battery is about to run out, hang on
Three days in Africa
i don't even know where to begin, to sum up the last few days in writing seems impossible. even images that you recognize from the news or world vision commercials or movies seeing them in real life and stading right there in the middle of it with the smells and the view past what the cmaera picks up is totally surreal.
My first day here was interesting to say the least, there was no one to meet me @ the arport and flying in @ 11pm to Nairobi wasn't exactly fun, especially when withing the first 10 mins of me being on African soil i was ripped off, some guy claiming to help use the phone snatched my money out of my hand and run off!!! I felt like a prize idiot, robbed withing minutes of being there, oh well what can you do!!
Needless to say i didn't sleep at all the first night, after waitng at the airpot till after midnight for some random dude to come and get me, getting in his car and the first thing i hear is Jo Jo"get out right now it's the end of you and me" so loud i had to ask him to turn it down. they love their rap and RnB here.
In he morning at the hotel i decided i needed to find a phone ASAP to figure out what the hell was going on, i hadn't seen a single representative of VICDA (GVN partner org) since arriving, let alone another white face!
My first day here was interesting to say the least, there was no one to meet me @ the arport and flying in @ 11pm to Nairobi wasn't exactly fun, especially when withing the first 10 mins of me being on African soil i was ripped off, some guy claiming to help use the phone snatched my money out of my hand and run off!!! I felt like a prize idiot, robbed withing minutes of being there, oh well what can you do!!
Needless to say i didn't sleep at all the first night, after waitng at the airpot till after midnight for some random dude to come and get me, getting in his car and the first thing i hear is Jo Jo"get out right now it's the end of you and me" so loud i had to ask him to turn it down. they love their rap and RnB here.
In he morning at the hotel i decided i needed to find a phone ASAP to figure out what the hell was going on, i hadn't seen a single representative of VICDA (GVN partner org) since arriving, let alone another white face!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Sunday, February 4, 2007
still superbowl sunday
So in three days i am going to africa for three months. It is my first time in Africa so i have no idea what to expect. I will be in Kenya & Tanzania most of the time working with children so it is not exactly a holiday more of an eye opener!
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