Blog 7 Kenya
Blog 7
Kenya
Jambo!
We hope you are well as we are here in Kenya. In just a bit under a month we will return to the USA to see many of you – it will be very nice after such a long absence.
We spent last weekend at Lake Nakuru National Park, in the Central Rift Valley, noted for it’s flamingos. Lake Nakuru is a shallow alkaline lake where hundreds of thousands, if not more, flamingos live. Because of the draught here the lake is quite low, and some flamingos have moved on to other lakes nearby and then they will be back.
We usually don’t stay in very fancy resorts, but this time we decided to pamper ourselves a little, and also since we wanted to stay inside the park so as to go out before dawn to photograph and see wildlife. There are only two places to stay in the park other than in tent sites, (and we don’t have a tent), and they are both pricey. Well, it was fancy and somewhat expensive with too much good food, especially desserts, but we probably won’t do it again anytime soon.
And speaking of tea, the area near Lake Nakuru is a big tea growing area, and quite beautiful with rolling hills and lots of beautiful acacia trees. If you have never seen tea, the green is very vibrant green, unlike most other greens that you find in nature. The only other that we have seen that resembles that color are rice paddy’s. The area goes on for miles and miles in all directions. Kenya produces a huge amount of tea which is exported around the world, and is quite good. Kenya also produces coffee, and in fact, there is a lot of tea and coffee throughout East Africa. You may know that coffee was first grown here in East Africa, we think in Ethiopia.
To contrast the beauty of the tea plantations, on the way home from the weekend we passed several IDP camps which were created as a result of the post election violence last year. Unfortunately many people have not returned home after those very bad days. Some because they may be afraid, and some because they may not have any homes to return to. Even though we were not here during that time, we hear about it often, and it certainly took a terrible toll. Here in Kisumu, there are still quite a few burned out buildings, and it is a frequent subject of discussion. For those of us/you who have not experienced this kind of thing, consider yourself lucky, and for those of you who have, we hope that it will never happen again, although humans seem to have a penchant for doing bad things to each other.
Our work is continuing to progress very well, although as the time for us here grows shorter, the work doesn’t diminish at all, and we both feel very committed to complete our responsibilities. Our bosses and colleagues keep on threatening to keep us here. Seriously, some very good work related things are happening: We have created several data bases, the most important of which is for the medical clinic to use to enter client data; we are trying to produce a CD of songs performed by the girls that our program works with; we did a very good report writing training and later this month we will do a slide show training; and created a patient registration and record keeping system. Once again, we try to increase the capacity of our staff colleagues and the organization. Our fundraising is going extremely well, and we designed and introduced the idea of wrist bands which we are now selling along with raffles to raise money for our new building, and getting money from businesses, etc. We are very happy being able to help, and if some people learn new things from us, then we will be satisfied. We will continue to help even after we return home.
After nearly 10 years of volunteering around this planet, and asking people to come and visit we just had and now have our first visitors: a family from Uganda who are very close friends spent a few days here, and an old and close friend from Seattle is here with us now.
One of the ideas that we had after crossing the border and seeing condom dispensers there, we thought it would be good to do a staff training about the use of condoms. Our Reproductive Health Specialist, a very bright, (and beautiful) young women did an excellent presentation with a staff colleague about how to use condoms, why they are important, etc., and at the end of the training, everyone, including us were given condoms to keep with us at all times, (in case of an emergency need). Anyway it was very good training, and also did a lot to help team building among the staff.
Have you ever heard singing frogs? We have lots of them right out our windows and they sing – not croak – from darkness to sometime in the early morning before dawn. Very interesting and noisy. They sound like crickets but they are in fact frogs.
Kenya just had their census, and we took part and were counted. It was very interesting to us. One of the questions asked about tribal affiliation, and many Kenyans were opposed to it in view of what has happened here before. We asked the census taker about the response she was getting and she told us that most people would not give their tribe and declared themselves Kenyan. When we were asked who the head of the family was, we both looked at each other and said, both of us. The census taker seemed a bit confused, and so asked who the oldest was, and it was Peter, so he was declared the head of the household. In fact as most of you know, it is Hinda who earns most of the money in our family. So, this is where cultural beliefs come into play. Anyway, we will be counted again in the US census nrxt year, and so when the world population is figured out, there will be two too many. Guess who?
There are many words in Kiswahili that are very similar and sometimes the same as both Arabic and Hebrew. A lot of Kiswahili is based on Arabic and there are many Arabic and Hebrew words that are the same. To make it even more interesting, some words are English with something tacked on the end such as “weekend”. One of the most interesting words is “tsedaka” which is something like charity in Hebrew, and also exactly the same in Swahili, and also in Arabic. In Hebrew there is the greeting shalom, in Arabic it is saalam, and in Kiswahili, it is salama. Night in Hebrew is layla, and in Swahili, lala, and in Arabic, it is quite similar.
As some of you may know, the Chinese are doing a lot of development in Africa. When we were volunteering in Ghana a few years ago, the Chinese were working on a lot of public projects, and here in Kenya, we saw Chinese contractors building roads this past weekend. We think that there is a lot of Chinese infrastructure building on this continent.
We will end with this funny observation: Next to the little airport here in Kisumu, there is a golf course, and as we were driving by the other night, we noticed that there were headstones and graves right in the middle of the golf course. The golf course must have been a cemetery at one time, or at least people were buried in that area before it was a golf course.
Well, almost the end. The graves stones on the golf course remind us of the “night runners” that live here. What are night runners? Well they are kind of like ghosts who come to your house at night and bang on the outside of your house. When they finally wake you, they are happy and they run away. By the way, they are naked. I guess we are heavy sleepers, since we haven’t been awakened yet.
Ok dear friends and family. Watch out for the night runners.
Love,
Mzee Peter and Mama Hinda
Kenya
Jambo!
We hope you are well as we are here in Kenya. In just a bit under a month we will return to the USA to see many of you – it will be very nice after such a long absence.
We spent last weekend at Lake Nakuru National Park, in the Central Rift Valley, noted for it’s flamingos. Lake Nakuru is a shallow alkaline lake where hundreds of thousands, if not more, flamingos live. Because of the draught here the lake is quite low, and some flamingos have moved on to other lakes nearby and then they will be back.
We usually don’t stay in very fancy resorts, but this time we decided to pamper ourselves a little, and also since we wanted to stay inside the park so as to go out before dawn to photograph and see wildlife. There are only two places to stay in the park other than in tent sites, (and we don’t have a tent), and they are both pricey. Well, it was fancy and somewhat expensive with too much good food, especially desserts, but we probably won’t do it again anytime soon.
And speaking of tea, the area near Lake Nakuru is a big tea growing area, and quite beautiful with rolling hills and lots of beautiful acacia trees. If you have never seen tea, the green is very vibrant green, unlike most other greens that you find in nature. The only other that we have seen that resembles that color are rice paddy’s. The area goes on for miles and miles in all directions. Kenya produces a huge amount of tea which is exported around the world, and is quite good. Kenya also produces coffee, and in fact, there is a lot of tea and coffee throughout East Africa. You may know that coffee was first grown here in East Africa, we think in Ethiopia.
To contrast the beauty of the tea plantations, on the way home from the weekend we passed several IDP camps which were created as a result of the post election violence last year. Unfortunately many people have not returned home after those very bad days. Some because they may be afraid, and some because they may not have any homes to return to. Even though we were not here during that time, we hear about it often, and it certainly took a terrible toll. Here in Kisumu, there are still quite a few burned out buildings, and it is a frequent subject of discussion. For those of us/you who have not experienced this kind of thing, consider yourself lucky, and for those of you who have, we hope that it will never happen again, although humans seem to have a penchant for doing bad things to each other.
Our work is continuing to progress very well, although as the time for us here grows shorter, the work doesn’t diminish at all, and we both feel very committed to complete our responsibilities. Our bosses and colleagues keep on threatening to keep us here. Seriously, some very good work related things are happening: We have created several data bases, the most important of which is for the medical clinic to use to enter client data; we are trying to produce a CD of songs performed by the girls that our program works with; we did a very good report writing training and later this month we will do a slide show training; and created a patient registration and record keeping system. Once again, we try to increase the capacity of our staff colleagues and the organization. Our fundraising is going extremely well, and we designed and introduced the idea of wrist bands which we are now selling along with raffles to raise money for our new building, and getting money from businesses, etc. We are very happy being able to help, and if some people learn new things from us, then we will be satisfied. We will continue to help even after we return home.
After nearly 10 years of volunteering around this planet, and asking people to come and visit we just had and now have our first visitors: a family from Uganda who are very close friends spent a few days here, and an old and close friend from Seattle is here with us now.
One of the ideas that we had after crossing the border and seeing condom dispensers there, we thought it would be good to do a staff training about the use of condoms. Our Reproductive Health Specialist, a very bright, (and beautiful) young women did an excellent presentation with a staff colleague about how to use condoms, why they are important, etc., and at the end of the training, everyone, including us were given condoms to keep with us at all times, (in case of an emergency need). Anyway it was very good training, and also did a lot to help team building among the staff.
Have you ever heard singing frogs? We have lots of them right out our windows and they sing – not croak – from darkness to sometime in the early morning before dawn. Very interesting and noisy. They sound like crickets but they are in fact frogs.
Kenya just had their census, and we took part and were counted. It was very interesting to us. One of the questions asked about tribal affiliation, and many Kenyans were opposed to it in view of what has happened here before. We asked the census taker about the response she was getting and she told us that most people would not give their tribe and declared themselves Kenyan. When we were asked who the head of the family was, we both looked at each other and said, both of us. The census taker seemed a bit confused, and so asked who the oldest was, and it was Peter, so he was declared the head of the household. In fact as most of you know, it is Hinda who earns most of the money in our family. So, this is where cultural beliefs come into play. Anyway, we will be counted again in the US census nrxt year, and so when the world population is figured out, there will be two too many. Guess who?
There are many words in Kiswahili that are very similar and sometimes the same as both Arabic and Hebrew. A lot of Kiswahili is based on Arabic and there are many Arabic and Hebrew words that are the same. To make it even more interesting, some words are English with something tacked on the end such as “weekend”. One of the most interesting words is “tsedaka” which is something like charity in Hebrew, and also exactly the same in Swahili, and also in Arabic. In Hebrew there is the greeting shalom, in Arabic it is saalam, and in Kiswahili, it is salama. Night in Hebrew is layla, and in Swahili, lala, and in Arabic, it is quite similar.
As some of you may know, the Chinese are doing a lot of development in Africa. When we were volunteering in Ghana a few years ago, the Chinese were working on a lot of public projects, and here in Kenya, we saw Chinese contractors building roads this past weekend. We think that there is a lot of Chinese infrastructure building on this continent.
We will end with this funny observation: Next to the little airport here in Kisumu, there is a golf course, and as we were driving by the other night, we noticed that there were headstones and graves right in the middle of the golf course. The golf course must have been a cemetery at one time, or at least people were buried in that area before it was a golf course.
Well, almost the end. The graves stones on the golf course remind us of the “night runners” that live here. What are night runners? Well they are kind of like ghosts who come to your house at night and bang on the outside of your house. When they finally wake you, they are happy and they run away. By the way, they are naked. I guess we are heavy sleepers, since we haven’t been awakened yet.
Ok dear friends and family. Watch out for the night runners.
Love,
Mzee Peter and Mama Hinda
posted by Peter and Hinda Schnurman at 11:20 AM
1 Comments:
I think I must go to Kenya for no other reason than to have naked ghosts come and tap on my window. They sound a whole lot more interesting than American ghosts or even Jewish ghosts - although I think the dybbuk is also a mischievous spirit. What can I say that I haven't aready said? The postings get better and better and the photographs make me want to grab my camera and hop on a plane. Stay well, both of you. We send our love.
Carlito
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