One week closer to IST and pizza

As hard as it may be for most of you to believe this week was again, rather uneventful. I know, I know. I’m in Kenya. How could it possibly be as I say it is? Well to set the record straight, it’s never boring. It’s just that my CBO hasn’t made a work plan for me since I got here and that was only for the first two weeks. As I mentioned in my last post, all of the people at my CBO are under some pressure in trying to meet an August 25th deadline for about five different projects so I’ve been trying to stay out of their hair and just go where I’m told to for the time being.


On Monday of this week all of the groups came to my counterpart’s house to begin digging the beds for the greenhouse. As they were digging the two foot deep beds with large hoes and shovels and a tool that resembled a pick axe they continued to emphasize how hard they all work and how they were sure I had never seen anyone work this hard. I’ve attempted to explain multiple times, including this day, that people in the U.S. do do manual labor. But the majority of them still believe that everything in the U.S. is carried out by machines and no one ever puts in a hard days work. To make myself feel better I always try explaining this concept at least once before I just give in and laugh along with them. One of the men from the group asked me if I’d ever used one of these tools before and I told him I had used both at one time or another. He laughed and told me it wasn’t possible and that my arms would start bleeding if I tried to work like they do but they wanted to see me try so for their amusement, I showed the man how to work my camera, picked up one of the hoes, he snapped a picture, and then I brought it down on the ground in the same manner they were all doing...but it didn’t matter. I was still doing it wrong and it was incredibly entertaining for all of them. Job well done on my part.

As a side note, and I don’t know if I’ve previously mentioned this fact, but the large majority of clothes that Kenyans (especially those in rural villages) wear is secondhand picked up at markets. This leads to a considerable number of people wearing random t-shirts plastered with NFL and MLB teams, musical artists from Brittany Spears to Eminem, and pretty much anything else that’s ever came out of the U.S. It’s pretty exciting to see that one person wearing a Bears fleece or an Illini t-shirt but the unfortunate part is they have no idea who Forte is or where U of I is located, they just buy the clothes because they are in good condition and they probably like the colors. The reason I’m explaining this is because one of the men digging a bed in the greenhouse was wearing a fantastic ensemble that I must describe. It consisted of a straw cowboy hat, pink sweatpants that were cut-off to be mid shin length, and if that wasn’t good enough, he topped it off with a Depeche Mode t-shirt from their 1988 U.S. tour. While me attempting to use a garden hoe was entertaining for Kenyans, this man’s outfit absolutely made my day, if not my week. Also, if you’re wondering why in the hell he was wearing pink sweatpants it’s because there’s no such thing as gender-related colors here. When I first met my three-month old host brother he was dressed head to toe in a light pink fleece track suit covered in elephants.

I spent a large amount of Wednesday hand-washing my clothes again. I really need to start doing my laundry more often so I don’t have to spend three hours outside in the blistering heat and sun my clothes and more recently, the skin off my knuckles. I try to hide this fact from the people around me because they already think my hands are too delicate to do anything besides write with a pen or pencil.

Thursday was rather exciting in comparison to the rest of the week. Two consultants (still not sure what exactly they were consulting) and a representative from my CBO’s donor came to visit. I was under the impression the meeting was supposed to begin at 9 am but at about 8:45 I was told it wasn’t starting until 10 am. So at 10:!5, my counterpart came and picked me up at my house and we walked into town. We met with my supervisor, the project manager, and a couple other people from my CBO at the office and then they all began running around, cleaning the office, taking things here, bringing things there, all while I just sat and made a bracelet. At 11:30 I said to my supervisor, Wow, they are running late, huh?. She said, Oh no. They aren’t going to be here until 1. We are just preparing. Good to know. When one ‘o’clock finally arrived and our visitors still weren’t there, I was told we were going to go meet them in the field so the eight of us hopped on a matatu and headed out. We finally met up with them and then quickly visited a site where a youth group makes bricks, a tree nursery, one of the toilets that was built from the previously mentioned bricks, a sand dam, and finally a primary school where my CBO had donated two 6,000 liter water tanks. All of these shenanigans took about 3 hours all while the representative from our donor was rushing us from one place to the next. The consultants never even got to see the JIKO that was in the plans. Around 4 pm we all made our way back to the office to discuss the projects we had just seen, some challenges and future plans of the CBO...which was all supposed to be done at 9 am. After the donor’s rep rushed us through that discussion my supervisor twisted their arms into staying for an incredibly late lunch. But my Lord, what a feast they had prepared. Luckily I hadn’t eaten since 8 am (not counting the three cups of tea and bread I ate around noon) so I was able to eat two full plates of food, pleasing my appetite and everyone around me. There was chicken, potatoes, beans, fresh veggies, soup, some mystery meat (didn’t touch that), kale, and the traditional Kenyan dish, ugali. Now, ugali is just corn flour mixed with boiling water until it becomes somewhat of a solid, cake-like consistency. It is eaten with cabbage, meat, kale, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. It really has no flavor whatsoever but when eaten with the right thing, it’s actually not too bad and it sure does fill you up. Needless to say, I wasn’t all that hungry at dinner time but the mama on my compound made chapati, which is like a cross between pita bread, a tortilla, and a pancake, and I can never say no to chapati, so I ate again. When I finally rolled myself into bed I was pretty positive I would never eat again but I’m always surprising myself.

Today was a slow day. Not much to do and my counterpart disappeared bright and early to go do some odd jobs around town and his house. I washed a couple articles of clothing. Struggled through my bed sheets again. Washed my dishes and bathed all before 11 am. I finished my third book in four weeks. First I read, Life of Pi, then The Other Boston Busing Story, and just closed the cover on Everything is Illuminated. All of which were excellent books and I plan to start my fourth this evening. I’m in direct competition with my friend Porter who has already finished six and a half books since he got to site. Not sure how he did it but I’m trying to convince him to go outside and do get distracted by something so I can surpass his book count. It doesn’t seem to be working very well.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Machakos for the day to spend some time with Andrea and another girl, Julie. Haven’t seen Julie since we left Nairobi a month ago so it will be nice to spend time with her and hear all about her site. On top of that, I get to eat hot dogs and drink cold pop, which may not sound exciting to any of you but it’s like Christmas in August for me.

Also, I don't have enough credit on my modem to post pictures this time around. I know, I know. I promised I would try harder but I'll get more airtime tomorrow in Machakos and try to come back and edit this post with pictures. Thank you for your patience.