The End

Alright, so I've been here for two months now and I'm leaving tomorrow night at 10 P.M. I'm not really sure what exactly to say about this whole experience. To people who've been reading my blog while I've been here, I hope you enjoyed it and for anyone who is reading this for the first time, check out a random post and you'll learn a lot about what it's like here in Nairobi. I've experienced so much here and have gained so much. I'll miss Kenya, a lot, there's no denying that but I feel like it's finally time to go back to the states.

I was asked by a professor at Drake what "home" means to me. The rest of the students all said where they were from or their family, etc. I think that these things are important but they are not home to me. I believe that where I go, that becomes my home. I never leave home because home is what is buried deep inside of my heart and mind. It sounds a little cheesy but the world is home to me, it is for everyone, people just don't realize it at times. So for the past two months, Nairobi, Kenya has been my home; it's been where I've eaten, slept, worked, lived, and built many new friendships and more. I love Kenya, I love Nairobi, and I've fallen in love with Ngong Road Childrens Association and its people.

I've grown more here than I thought imaginable and I feel like I've seen parts of this Earth that everybody needs to see for themselves. I don't feel blessed or fortunate or anything like that, I just feel...good.

Goodbye Kenya, I am looking forward to when I can see you again.

Is This Right?

I read in the newspaper (The Daily Nation) that a Matatu driver killed 3 people in Nairobi the other day. He was trying to pass some cars on the curb and hit a woman with a child and a young man. He went to court and they sentenced him to five years of prison for each person. That means he will go to prison for 15 years, but, he is allowed to serve the three sentences at the same time. This only leaves him with five years of prison time. However, in Kenya, a day and a night are counted as two days. This cuts down his time spent in prison to only two and a half years for killing three people. The Matatu drivers are the most dangerous drivers on these roads and many people are killed every year in crashes or by being hit but there is never any true justice. I understand that the Matatu driver didn't intentionally kill the three people but manslaughter of three individuals in the states would be 25 years or more, never two and a half. I can't imagine what the families are thinking.

Happy Birthday

So yesterday was my birthday. Tom came early yester-morning and spoke with all the staff about the camp next week. I worked on the net a little bit and worked with some case workers on the bios as well. Then we had the party...

Jackson roasted a goat and everyone was talking and drinking and limbo-ing, etc. All my host families stopped by too which was cool; so did Collin and Jeni (two Mzungu ministers who've been hanging out with us here at Ngong Road Children Association lately). Once the music came out, everyone started dancing with each other. At first, I didn't join in but then I felt the need to dance. So once I joined, I was put into the center of the circle where Tom dumped the FIRST bucket of water on me. I was soaked but I decided to keep dancing anyway. Everyone continued to dance and talk and drink until it was time for me to cut the cake. There wasn't a knife because it was used to cut the goat, so I was joking around acting like I was going to cut the cake with my hand. But then, a second bombardment of H2O was thrown on top of me so I felt that it was time to cut the cake, with my hands. This was a mistake; Jackie, Nixon, and a couple others starting grabbing the cake and covering my face with it. I then took some cake and got Jackie and Nixon back; when I turned around, everyone was grabbing cake and chasing each other around. Once everyone's faces were covered with cake, the cake fight died down. Then people started to wash off and head home.

Paul and I got to the office first this morning and we were frankly not very surprised at what we saw. Anyone who went to college knows that a good night is followed by a rough morning. There was dirt, cake, and goat everywhere. Paul and I began sweeping, mopping, wiping cake off of walls and doors and doing the dishes before the case workers and Tom got back to the office.

Overall, I'd say the birthday was a success (so much better than Paul's, no big deal).

Last Weeks

Yesterday, I went out with Naomi to the Ngando area and took pictures of people working and living in the slums. We didn't want to approach people we didn't know because they may have charged us money so we only took photos of people who's children are in our program. I think I got some pretty decent ones that will be used either on the website or in Peter's presentation when he visits the states. Recently, I've been trying the food in the slums, like the french fries and the corn that they roast over an open flame. It's actually not that bad, I'm just not eating anything that isn't hot or cooked in one way or another. Also, I only have nine more children left for headshots out of 226 which is awesome. Keith and I, I think, have finally figured out this whole Dropbox thing so if you are reading this and have a child in the program, you'll be able to access updated pictures of them online whenever you want; at least that's the plan.

Paul hasn't quite had as much luck with his job here though. None of the places he went kept stats that he was looking for. Either they were too old, not about children, or didn't exsist at all. Paul and I have both noticed that Kenyans don't like to dissapoint you so they kept sending him to other places even though they didn't have the stats he was looking for either (or they would offer him their own views on the children in Kenya).

Also, we're celebrating my birthday tomorrow which should be fun. They throw water on whoever is having the birthday for some reason (nobody actually knows why, they just do) so I'm bracing myself for that.

What's Happening

Paul and I only have two weeks left here in Nairobi, one of which is the August camp which will either go by really fast or really slow. I'm still really enjoying what I'm doing and I'm constantly making new videos and taking new photos.
We had omena for the second time yesterday, that's the little fish (minnows) that stare at you while eating them. In the photo above, you can see omena, ugali (the "white blob"), and sukumawiki (the "green stuff"). We also went to Carnivore last night, they didn't serve any game meat but I got to try some ostirich meatballs which were decent. We did a little drinking, a little dancing, a little eating, it was a good time.
I'm going to have a pretty busy week next week as well. I'm still figuring out what to do with Dropbox with Keith, I'll be editing all the videos, and making sure all the pictures get into the right place too. Paul and I are also moving back to Rose's from Andrew's. Andrew is very kind and a great host but the commute from his house to the office is about an hour and twenty minutes one way and he works late. Paul and I spent more time in his car with him than being awake in his house, it took away from any quality time that could've been spent with him. So, Rose is happy to take us back in and we'll be moving back to her house monday.
Finally, every I travel, I buy an art piece for myself that is unique to the country I'm visiting. I bought two ebony wood, hand-carved sculptures today at the Maasai market for the price of one, the power of having a Kenyan woman with you while purchasing goods. That's about it for now, I'll keep you all updated.

Witches and Demons

So this week, Keith and I have been working together to try to find a way for the sponsors to access updated pictures of their sponsored child whenever they want. We are using a website called Dropbox to do this. It's a free file-sharing software that we can store up to two gigs of date onto (that's a good amount of free data). We are attempting to find a way to maintain the privacy of the child while maintaining the fluidity of mass email alerts and quick photo uploading. I'm running into some issues with this though; we may need to create an account for each child that the sponsor can check in to whenever they want (I feel like that may be the best way to keep upmost privacy for the child and sponsor) or we could just keep a folder of every child in one large folder and have the sponsor scroll down to their sponsored child and view the photos (this would be easiest for us but would take away some of the privacy aspect). We're still figuring it all out but I think this will be a really great system.
I have also been working on the "Voices of Ngong Road" videos this week and will be getting five more children today to answer the three questions.

An interesting thing Paul and I have run into when discussing religion with the case workers was the fact that they believe in witches, witchcraft, and demons. There has actually been witch hunts in Kenya while I've been here and I've seen women who were killed on the news because they were accused of being witches. This was a huge throw back to old American history with that whole Salem witch trial phase we went through. Men and Women accused of witchcraft have actually been burned alive on stakes here, I never thought I'd be alive when something like that could happen. The case workers were trying to give me reasons why they believed they were witches, they kept talking about how they ran around naked at night and scared people in their homes. I told them that that was called "streaking" and that a lot of people have done it, that doesn't mean they're witches. I respect Kenyans and how almost all of them are Christian, I think it's great that religion can bring millions of people together like it does here. The only problem is that sometimes, paranoia caused by these religious leaders and beliefs cause the death of many innocent people. This isn't just happening here with Christianity but it happens everywhere with all different religious sects. That's my little humanity issue rant for the day, thanks for reading.

Cold Milk

So last night, Paul and I moved to Andrew's house. It's a decent sized house but it's a step down from how we were living at Rose's. It's about an hours drive each morning to work which is a pain, they don't quite serve the same westernized food we were eating at Rose's, and the shower gives you a little electric shock if you touch the handle wrong (I'm still learning). But despite all this, I was extremley happy this morning to find that they had cold milk. I'm not talking about luke-warm or cool milk, I'm talking the real deal; ice cold, delicious milk. This is the kind of milk that dreams are made of. Other than drinking water out of a tap, eating fruit without having to worry about dieing, seeing more white women, and driving on the right side of the road; cold milk was the one thing I was craving here in Kenya.
I was also suprised to learn from Andrew that during the "cold" season here (which is July), children have to avoid eating or drinking cold items because it can sometimes cause a cold or even tonsillitis. I thought Peter was joking around when he was telling us he couldn't drink cold beer because it gave him the flu but I guess there's some truth behind it.

I've been working on some things that Paula has asked me to do lately. Along with taking more and more pictures, I'm making short one minute or less clips of children answering three questions:

What do you like best about Ngong Road Children Association?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What message would you like to give to your sponsors?

I worked with five children today (three of which said they wanted to be a pilot when they grew up) and will be getting the other ten later this week. Then I'll just have to edit the clips together for each child to make a watchable clip.