BIRTH CONTROL = LIFE FREEDOM

I watched a movie in my Women's Bodies in Health and Disease class today. It was about the history of the birth control pill. It forced me to think (even more than I already do) about what life was and still is like without access to something as simple as The Pill. I have always had access to birth control, always used it to the fullest extent, never had to live with the constant fear of an unwanted pregnancy. I've always had supportive partners, some who even helped me with the financial burden that BC often comes with. I recently got an IUD and won't have to worry about BC at all for the next 10 years. What a comfortable life I have! If only it were so simple for others. If only I could help make it simpler.

Such a simple solution comes with such complex problems.

Longing

I've been back in America for almost 8 months now...nearly as long as I was in Kenya! In re-reading my entries, I realize how jaded I got by the end of my time there. Everybody needs a break from the unfamiliar sometimes, but us year-long students never got that break, so we all just built up an excess of resentment. I can honestly say that, for the past several months, all I have thought about has been Kenya and all of my actions and future planning have been in preparation to go back as soon as I can...but with a more clearly defined vision this time. Study abroad is all well and good, but it had some serious limitations.

I recently discovered that both Tulane and BU have programs where you can spend a year on the campus, studying for your MPH, and then finish your degree as a Peace Corps volunteer doing field work and actually applying the concepts you've learned for 2 whole years! It's like a dream come true to discover such a program, and I have started reading a blog by one such student from BU who is currently serving her Peace Corps time in Botswana. Maybe it's partially due to sleep deprivation because it's finals week here in Madison, but several entries have made me cry because they remind me of Kenya so much. I think back to all the wonderful things I got just a taste of last year, and I realize how much I still have left to see and do and live through. Hopefully, just a couple short years from this moment, I will find myself back in East Africa for the long haul.

I will return to my 2000 word essay about public opinion and foreign policy during the Vietnam War and 9/11 in a moment, but I just want to bask in this wonderful reminiscing for a little bit longer. I know it's important for me to understand American foreign policy...but I can't help thinking that reading Jess' blog about Botswana is teaching me more than this political science class has.

So, just a little shout out to Kenya. I know I took you for granted those last couple of months, but I do love you and truly miss you. And my longing grows stronger every day. XOXOXO, Nimadi

stay tuned, it's not over yet :)

So, I'm leaving Kenya in 6 days now. It's been an amazing year. I am so ready to go home though. Everyone is leaving...including my darling Ashley who jumped ship last Sunday. I'm enjoying my last few days though; spending time with the boys of the house, last minute shopping, etc. My wardrobe is now so full of African prints it could give someone a seizure just looking at all the colors!! Haha :)

I went to Kibera slum for the first time today with Sara so she could buy some kangas for dresses/skirts. I was surprised at how different it was from Mathare slum. It actually is just like most of the small towns that we drive through on the way to Kisumu or Mombasa. Run down, but not horrible. At least in the area we were visiting. That being said, it's still not a good place to live. But I've definitely seen worse. There were some really cute kids following us around, so when Sara was buying kangas, I bought all the kids some bananas. I hope they enjoyed them :) It felt nice to give them a little something.

Tomorrow I think me & Sara are going to a rap concert or something. She knows this famous Kenyan rapper cause of her job at the radio station and is interviewing him (I think). So that should be cool. We're also going out dancing on Saturday night, which is always enjoyable! Then Sunday will be for recovery, Monday for dropping off clothing and other donations at the office, Tuesday I pick up the rest of the clothes I had made at Kenyatta Market, and Wednesday it's time to pack! Oh lordy!!!!

Me, I am a businessman

Just had a traumatic experience with Ashley. She was having an allergic reaction and nobody had any benadryl, so we grabbed a taxi to go up the street to the nearby 24-hour chemist. My bro and Ken arranged the price with the guy before we left, and we headed off. Keep in mind, it's 1am right now and we're taking this taxi for safety purposes because he was recommended by someone we know.

We get to the chemist and they don't have benadryl, so we walked to the supermarket across the parking lot to see if they had any. Again, no luck. So back to the chemist we go to beg for any kind of allergy medicine they might have. They give us something I haven't heard of before, so I wanted to check with my parents about the active ingredients before letting Ashley take it. I tried to call them for maybe 5 minutes, but they weren't picking their phones, so we were just about to buy the stuff anyway (it was probably fine anyway, we just wanted to check) when the taxi comes up to us and the "fun" started.

He said, "can you hurry it up? I have another ride to pick up." I got pissed when I heard him say that and turned and said, "you know what? MY FRIEND IS SICK. WE ARE BUYING MEDICINE AND WE WILL TAKE AS LONG AS WE NEED TO GET THAT MEDICINE. If you don't want to wait, that's fine. You can go." And then I turned my back on him. We assumed he left, but as we walked out of the chemist a minute later he was still waiting, so we hopped in for the 3 minute ride home. And then he started railing on us! He kept saying how we needed to pay him more money for "wait time" and that we were trying to cheat him. I couldn't stand him anymore, so I was yelling right back at him telling him he was incompetent and if he didn't want to wait for us, he didn't have to. No way in hell were we going to pay him extra for being an asshole. I finally had to stop talking at all because NOTHING got through to this guy. We even yelled at him to stop the car and let us out so we could get a new driver, and he just kept going!!! He was JUST like the drunk boda-boda driver who wouldn't let Steph off the bike!! ARRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH I HATE THIS SHIT!!!! Anyway, he was starting to drive erratically, so me and Ash and called Ken and Toti to come meet us at the gate because we were feeling scared and threatened. And thankfully the boys and the two guards at our gate took care of things. I escorted Ash inside to take her medicine and then went back out to confirm our story and make sure we didn't overpay him.

Score 800000000000000 points for America. At least we live in a culture with SOME concept of customer service. Fucking insane. If he had approached the situation from the beginning with any sense of compassion to our situation, instead of DEMANDING we hurry up and then pay more, I may have been willing to increase his fee a bit. People here can be SO DAMN UNREASONABLE.

Sorry, I'm heated right now. Just had to rant. I still love Kenya. I just hate its industries and businesses and the people who think they can take advantage of two white girls late at night.

Over and out.

just 3 weeks left

It has come down to this. I have under 3 weeks left in Kenya, and surprisingly, I'm not too unhappy about it! I thought I would be devastated when I had to leave, but I'm very excited to get back home and see how my life has changed. I'm getting that antsy feeling again, the one I almost always get when things have become too predictable and I need a change.

How can things be predictable in Kenya, you may wonder? Well, after 8 months here, even the unpredictable is still expected. I mean, come on. I saw the burned, charred body of a robber in a field with hundreds of people standing around watching, and I wasn't phased. I saw petrol tankers overturned on the side of the highway, and people waiting around with jerry cans to cipher the petrol, and I wasn't phased. I get marriage proposals or sexual harassment on a daily basis, and though the harassment annoys me, I'm still not phased. These are things I can stand to be without for a while.

What I will miss is the easy-paced lifestyle here. I've always had anxiety issues, and America apparently perpetuates them to the extreme. But since being here, very few things stress me out. It's a calm world, despite all the bad things, and it's a friendly world. It's like the mid-west on crack, actually. Everyone says hi to you all the time and genuinely wants to know about you. It will be a shock to get back to the stick-up-the-ass mentality of the northeast. I will miss all the amazing people I've met since coming here. I will also really miss the honesty and openness. Readjusting to being "politically correct" will be hard! I like that here, things that are obvious are not necessarily shameful. I get called "hello white lady!" all the time, and you know what? I respond with "hello black man!", and everyone LOVES it! I mean, whats the big freakin' deal about noticing that our skin colors are different? That's all we're saying. It has nothing to do with our personality, there's no judgement (except when people assume I'm super-rich and drive a Mercedes and have thousands of dollars to just hand out all time). But really, what has political correctness really gotten us Americans? It has done nothing to defeat racism. It just makes things tense and uncomfortable whenever you try to talk about the issues. Let's be real. I'm white. Other people are black. Others are mixed. Who CARES? So yes, being able to say "hello black man" has been the most liberating of my experiences here. Because I've realized there is nothing wrong with it. It's simply a response, not a judgement.

On a more personal level, I will really miss my host siblings and parents when I leave. I may have real siblings at home, but they are so much older that at times it can seem more like they are my aunts/uncles. Toti, my Nairobi brother, will be sorely missed. He treats me like an actual sister and I finally know what it would have felt like to have a twin. We get along SO well, and since we're the same age, we're at the same places in our lives. My Kisumu mom and dad, as you know, are very high in my esteem. I'm very close to my real parents and I've missed them while being here, and I was glad to have a mother figure for the past few weeks. I also loved my Mombasa mom and siblings. I miss them everyday and hope that someday, I'll be able to see them again. I just cannot visit because of their stupid, sexist, molester father. He ruined everything for me on the coast. And my darling Ashley has been like a sister to me as well. She's not Kenyan, she's from Arizona and is on the program with me. But we've been through it all together. We live in the same compound in Nairobi, she's ALWAYS at my house here, and I was ALWAYS at her house in Kisumu. I've slept next to her regularly and we share our secrets and stories and woes like sisters. I couldn't have made it through everything without her by my side. And she leaves in a week!!!! I may start crying right now actually. There are just too many hard goodbyes to make.

I've been so blessed by this year, this experience. It has changed me to my core. I see things so much differently now, but in a good way. I appreciate all I have more, I appreciate my lifestyle at home, I appreciate everything I've gained here. I love more easily, am more free with my emotions, and can laugh more easily. I also am better at empathy now, I think. When you've walked in other people's shoes, it's so much easier to understand. I'm so excited for the future and how this time will affect my life.

In the meantime, I am finishing papers, saying goodbyes, and preparing myself for reverse culture shock. I may be a bit of a hermit when I first get home, but I'm determined to use these changes in my soul to make positive changes in my life when I get home. I'm ready to tackle Boston and Madison with a new outlook. So get ready for me America! I'm coming home.

Mama

So I wanted to write a quick post about how cool my host-mom here in Kisumu is. This is my last week, I wish I'd had more of an opportunity to hang out with her and be at the rural home in general. I've had to be in and out of Kisumu so much, and then out in the field for work, it's been hard to spend any time at home! But when I am home, she is one of the most amazing ladies I've ever met.

She always told me she was born in 1958, but yesterday we figured out (based on old family photos and other things) that she was probably born closer to 1954. Can you imagine not knowing your own age?? When I told her she couldn't possibly have been born in '58, she wasn't even phased! She was like, oh? Really? Okay! And that was that. So she's approximately 54 years old. She got married when she was either 15 or 16, she doesn't actually know. Can you believe, she never even finished high school! I saw some old photos of her when she was 22 and already had 3 kids...and she was so so beautiful!

Anyway, she ended up having 7 kids. Yes, SEVEN. Can anybody reading this imagine having so many?? I sure can't. But even more incredible is that SHE comes from a family of 9! And she's the first born. So it's unofficially her responsibility to take care of her elderly parents. So she takes care of them, and her entire family. I think that's pretty amazing, considering she never finished high school. Her and her husband (who we all call mzee) did very well for themselves, and they were never lacking for money.

She is incredibly giving and caring. People are constantly coming to our house asking for favors or help with things, and she's always willing to be that person to help. She takes care of her niece and nephew because their parents both died. She also is a leading member of the local church, which normally wouldn't impress me, except that she is so so dedicated to it, and she has never ridiculed me for not being religious. I appreciate her openness and willingness to learn and understand new things.

She always appreciates it when I cook dinner for the family and makes an effort to try everything I make, even if she obviously doesn't like it too much. And she's so happy and jolly all the time, always laughing and smiling! I couldn't have asked for a better host-mom. My host-dad is harder to get to know, but he's also very nice and intelligent and, best of all, he is respectful towards me. Unlike my Mombasa host-dad. It's such a good change from my experience there. I never feel uncomfortable around him.

Anyway, I'm going to stop now, but I just had to share that info with everyone, because yesterday I was looking at those family pictures with my mom and it made everything about her seem so much more real; to see her at 16 getting married to mzee, and to see her in her early 20s with three kids already. I respect her so much as a person.

Kinda wish I'd gotten that rabies vaccine

Scary story time! I was back at my rural home, having just finished a delicious dinner of rice with chickpeas that I learned how to make in Egypt (thanks Sami!). I have been trying to cook as much as possible lately for my parents here because I’m leaving soon and I want to give them special meals before I do. Anyway, I was tinkering around in my bedroom for a minute when I heard one of our dogs, Soupy, begin a fight with some unknown creature just outside my window. We are used to hearing him fight little animals off, but this sounded really vicious, so my mom and I ran outside to see what he was fighting, hoping to maybe scare the thing away. I was just behind her at the door, trying to see what was there, when she yelled “IT’S A MAD DOG!” and slammed the door shut as something came flying towards us. My heart JUMPED out of my chest as I saw that it was another dog, similar to ours, and definitely crazy. It was attacking poor Soupy relentlessly! And just as we shut the door on it, the lights in our compound went out and we were plunged into darkness.

Talk about setting the mood.

We ran to get big flashlights and then my mom went out with a big, pointy stick to try and beat the mad dog so it would run away. It was really aggressive and wasn’t being deterred by anything, so I came to the conclusion that it probably has rabies. How scary is that?? I was cowering by the door, ready to slam it shut if the dog came near the house again. Finally, mom was able to chase it away, and we had a few tense minutes in the living room waiting to hear if it would come back. But then we heard other dogs from farther away howling, so we knew it had gone elsewhere for a while. I called Ken slightly panicked and he calmed me down, and then I went outside to check Soupy for any bite marks or scratches, because that would’ve been tragic. Soupy is such a good dog. Luckily he was clean, so he lives to defend us another day.

Anyway, some neighbors who came over to help told us the stray has been wandering around the villages recently. We can only hope that it dies soon of the rabies or someone kills it, because it is a menace! I will definitely never walk around the rural area at night again. I was comfortable enough to do that recently because people here know me now and I feel safe in the security of the watchful village eyes, but there’s no telling what kind of animals you might meet out here, and I’m glad I was reminded of that lesson before anything bad actually happened to me.

So that is my exciting story for the week. Hopefully I don’t ever have to pee at night again, cause I am too scared to go outside right now and our latrine is at the edge of the compound!!!