back from obama land

i'm back a few days early from my village trip due to a nationwide teacher's strike in all public primary schools. consequently we were unable to go on the school mission as planned. but no worries, i did enjoy the week that i was gone. it went something like this:

we left late monday night, frantically running across town with heavy bags only to almost miss the bus. fortunately everything runs late around here. upon arriving in chavakali (the district of popo's village) on tuesday morning, we were dropped on the side of the road at 5:30 a.m. with about 8 bags. the sun had yet to rise and as i was wearing a black fleece hoodie, my mzungu identity was easily hidden. victor ordered me to put up my hood and turn away from the drivers of the piki pikis (motorcycles) so that a fair price could be negotiated for transporting us to the village. everytime headlights approached, i turned my face in the opposite direction. no one suspected my skin color. there was something comforting in all this...a sense of belonging, a sense of being an average normal person. negotiations reached, we piled onto the motorcycles...popo and i on one with the driver and 2 large bags, victor and jane on another, and a third for the remainder of our stuff. we set off down a dusty dirt road, full of bumps and rocks, and gigantic holes. 3 people on a bike is pressing your luck a bit i thought, and i rode in fear that we would tip at any moment. my one comfort was that the rough terrain forced us to travel slowly. but even the turtle speed could not prevent the fall that soon followed. the bike hit a rought spot and we preceeded to tip to the left, falling along with all the luggage. popo's first reaction upon my hesitation at getting up, was that i had broken my leg. fortunately, i was fine and crawled out from under the bike unscathed. but at this point the sun had begun to rise, quickly, as is typical of kenyan sunrises, and my mzunguness was revealed the moment the driver turned to help me up. i'm sure he was a bit surprised to see me.

we napped after arriving at the village and later traveled to kogelo. i was about ready to slap popo as he encouraged the driver of this piki piki to race and pass victor and jane. i thought i would die. some of you watched the youtube video of me being interviewed on KTN. you can check it out at http://www.eastandard.net/ then type in kogelo in the search box. then click on the video on the page. i haven't actually listened to the sound, so i don't know what i'm saying. but i was super excited to be picked for an interview. BBC and ABC news were there too, and although i didn't get an interview there, i was still happy. there was lots of dancing everywhere, food, and crazy signs reading (our son, our hope) or kenya, the 51st state. we took sometime to go see the grandmother's house. i got really close to the windows to take a picture of her obama stickers. there are police tents camped out all over there. men were putting in sewage and water lines. the compound was now fenced in with barbed wire. and i spoke to one of her neighbors or relatives who spoke no english.

the rest of the week was spent doing lessons and activities with kids. we made art projects, did skits, and taught them Bible stories. it worked out well b/c none of them had anything to do since schools are on strike. they loved the parachute too. the place where we stayed was very nice. my initial impression of the village is that it is much cleaner than nairobi. very tidy. the people had never had a mzungu in the village before. the bed was more comfortable than the one at peter's. the main family (popo's uncle i think) had a cement house with a tin roof. ours was made of mud and sticks but still nice, and the roof was also tin. the only creatures crawling around were geichos on the walls and a large cockroach, but nothing really bothered me. everything about the village seemed better to me than nairobi. clean, pure goodness. no electricity, but no distractions from what really matters in life. one man was always reading his Bible whenever i saw him. i knew however, lurking under this goodness of growing plants and well meaning hardworking people, that there were hardships. popo's cousin was widowed after someone poisoned her husband with rat poisoning.

we were overly well fed the whole week...chicken, beef, ugali. i managed to eat a third helping of ugali one day...the ugali tastes better and different there. we had to ask popo to tell them not to treat me or victor or anyone else differently when it came to food. the first night they served us generous helpings of meat and everyone else less. (i didn't really know what to do b/c sometimes if you say something they're offended. plus they kept saying i wasn't eating enough.) i ate ugali everyday all week. we had eggs for breakfast (a huge treat) a million cups of tea. popo's uncle invited popo's dad over one night. this was so wierd. popo hadn't seen the man in 9 years. they barely spoke to each other at dinner and when they did it was the father asking popo to give him something. seriously...the man disappeared from popo's life for nearly a decade and now wants something???!!! messed up. alex came over on thursday. he hadn't been there since he was about 9. on his last visit, he got used as a scape goat when him and some cousins sold some of the families cows and were all planning to run away with the money. only the kids left alex with around $1 to go buy bread, and they ditched him. alex knew he couldn't go back to the village or he would be arrested. so this incident forced him to live on the streets of kisumu for a few years. wow. i think this was a good way of making amends for alex now. people at the village seem to understand that he's now a christian and a changed person.

we made some home visits while there, giving away food to widows with large families. one of the houses we went to the man there was scared to death to see us. said he was about to get his weapon and it got worse when he saw me. then realized we were there on good terms. on later that night did we realize we had gone to the wrong house and given food to some random people. oh well. i liked the visit anyway b/c the celing was decorated with all these cut up workbooks from the kids, hanging by strips from wires across the celing.

tara came saturday afternoon from uganda. we enjoyed filling each other in on what we've been doing the past 3 months. sunday popo insisted that i "preach" at church, as he called it. i like to call it a talk, b/c i'm not a preacher. but in any case it went really now. definitely must have been God's favor. b/c when i got up there to talk suddenly i was not nervous at all and so at peace. i spoke about trust, and i think it went pretty well.

victor took us on sunday night to his rural home in siaya, not really his family but people that took him in when he was an orphan. we stayed there, and the next day he walked us all over the place visiting people's huts. i felt like this was the part of africa that most people invision. the huts, the tattered clothing, the harvesting of crops. his "grandma" was blind and came crawling out from another room to greet us. her skin was shriveled, she looked nearly 100 and in a lot of pain. yet she came out singing songs of rejoicing at seeing victor. he hadn't been back there for 4 years. all the kids and people, despite their poverty were all smiles to see us. it occurred to me that i had more possessions in my backpack than they had in their entire house. but i thought about what tara said about poverty being relative. that if people have food and clotehs are they really poor? or are they blessed not to be bogged down by all the material possessions like we had? i would say these people were really poor. but i'd say the people in popo's village weren't really. they just lived simply.

monday we went to kisumu and saw lake victoria..also infested with water hyacinths like lake naivasha. i was less than impressed by the town. everything was dirty, including the lake. and much smaller but similar to nairobi. i arrived back in nairobi this morning at 4 a.m. and was on the bus until 6 when i could get off and catch a matatu home. popo put me on the wrong one (which i tried to tell him before i left), and so i ended up walking a long way in the rain with 2 very heavy bags. TIA