First Volunteer Trip to Kenya, Summer 2009

What follows is from the daily personal journal I kept during my first trip to Kenya, in the summer of 2009. Some updates have been made.

I would like to enjoy the lovely and sweet fruits of education. I would like to bring light and hope to our family.

— Eunice, scholarship recipient

After months and months of preparation, I was ready (ready or not!) for my first trip to Kenya. I wanted to make sure I wrote down all the things that would be happening in my life during this trip. I felt as though I had been preparing for it my entire life.

Monday, July 27, 2009

At 4:45 p.m., the limo picked me up from my home in Naperville, Illinois. By 5:50 p.m. I was sitting at Gate C20 at O'Hare Airport after having gone through security. I've always been someone who likes to get to the airport extra early, but in this case I kind of went overboard: I still had three hours and twenty-five minutes until takeoff. I had seat 31B on United Airlines f light 938, and at 8:55 p.m., the plane left for London. I was nervous, excited, and filled with adrenaline as we took off. After thinking, dreaming, planning, and hoping for a trip to Africa for so many years, I was now on my way. I wondered what I had ahead of me, knowing that each and every minute of it would be a new and unique experience.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I arrived at Terminal 1 at London Heathrow at 11:15 a.m. I did a lot of walking, took a bus, and then did a lot more walking to Terminal 4. The terminal was under construction, so it was quite a mess. I ate some lunch at a place called Garfunkel's and then waited. In booking my trip, I tried to save as much money as possible, and I learned that in general, the longer the layover, the cheaper the price. I booked this trip with a nine-hour layover in London. The main thing I learned in doing this is to never again have a nine-hour layover. I walked and walked and tried to get some sleep by lying down on some seats. For me, falling asleep is never an easy thing, so I was not able to get any sleep in the airport. Finally I was back on a plane and headed to the capital of Kenya, Nairobi.

As I was sitting on the plane getting closer to Kenya, I was reading President Obama's book Dreams from My Father. A very special moment for me came as the pilot announced we were getting ready to land. I was at the part in the book where Mr. and Mrs. Obama were making their first trip to Kenya after their marriage. Mr. Obama had never been to Kenya before, and he wanted to visit the land of his father and his relatives. (His father had passed away many years earlier.) Just as I was reading about Mr. Obama preparing to land in Nairobi, I was preparing to do the same thing. I felt a certain kinship with Mr. Obama at that moment, and it put into perspective the reality of what I was getting into. I stepped off the plane excited and ready to explore.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

I arrived in Nairobi at 6:00 a.m. Getting through customs was much easier than I'd anticipated. I was carrying a yellow immunization card listing all the shots I had taken to make the trip, and I naively thought that customs would check it, but that was not the case. I wondered why they didn't, but moved on. I had carried on two bags and checked two suitcases. After an hour of waiting and finding only one of my two checked suitcases, I decided I needed to file a lost luggage report. I was told it would take twenty-four hours to get me my luggage. It was very frustrating not having one of my bags as I began my first trip to Kenya, but I knew I just needed to go with it and make the best of the situation.

The Nairobi airport (Jomo Kenyatta Airport, named after the first president of Kenya) was incredibly crowded and hot, and it was not the cleanest airport I had ever seen. The luggage area was way too small for the amount of people and luggage it had to serve. I felt like I was at the United Nations, as the airport was filled with people from all over the world. When I was in the customs area, I loved seeing all the different kinds of passports, and I was fascinated by the various styles of clothing I saw and the numerous languages I heard. My first trip to a bathroom — or water closet, as they called it, because Kenya was once a British colony — was not pleasant. It was old, small, and dirty. However, I later realized that it was one of the best bathrooms I would see for the next three weeks.

I was scheduled to spend the night at the home of Wendy, who worked with Village Volunteers and took in volunteers like me. She had a few extra bedrooms for that purpose. When my driver came to pick me up, I felt like I was in a movie: he held up a sign with my name on it and waited. I found him and was soon on my way to Wendy's home.

It was a very interesting drive that took about forty-five minutes. Kenyans drive on the left side of the street and the driver sits on the right side of the car — another hangover from the country's colonial days. It was morning, and the drive gave me a chance to see Nairobi starting its day. It is a city of about 3.1 million people.

The roads were in extremely poor condition and pitted with massive potholes. There were no curbs, garbage was strewn everywhere, and crowds of people were walking all over the place on both sides of the road. The road was packed with vehicles, mostly vans and buses. Driving in an actual lane did not seem to be important.

Signs of extreme poverty were everywhere. I saw all kinds of little huts and small, broken-down homes, but most of the buildings were high-rises, with clothes hanging everywhere. They were in very poor condition — cracked, rusted, dirty, and in great need of repair — and reminded me of high-rise projects I'd seen in the United States. There were buildings with various shops, but those looked very old and broken-down too. There were big signs and billboards on both sides of the road, and there was lots of noise: people shouting, cars honking, and music blaring. It was definitely totally different than anything I had ever experienced. I was trying to absorb as much as possible, as this environment was slowly becoming my new reality.

Also, all around the airport were soldiers with AK-47s on their shoulders. My driver told me the increased security was because the president of Kenya was coming to the airport that morning. I later learned that this level of security was pretty normal. It made me feel safe ... I think!

We arrived at Wendy's home, where I met Cindy, who lived with Wendy and helped out with volunteers. We had driven through a lot of poverty-ridden areas to get to their subdivision, which in some ways looked like a middle-class neighborhood in the United States.

There was clearly much more security; the entire area was enclosed by a tall metal fence, and its one entry gate, which was solid metal, was monitored by a guard. The roads, again, were extremely poor, and I noticed that each home had its own tall metal fence around it with a locked door in the front. All the windows and doors were protected by metal bars. It was clear that security was important and incredibly tight.

Wendy worked her government job during the day (I learned that her work dealt with drug prevention), so it was Cindy's job to take care of things at home — keeping it clean, making meals, and so forth — while Wendy was at work. I was exhausted, as I had not had any sleep for about thirty-six hours, and so after a brief conversation, I took my stuff (minus my missing suitcase) and went upstairs to my bedroom. They had two extra bedrooms in the house for volunteers, each with two bunk beds. I lay down on my bunk and quickly fell asleep.

Upon waking from a three-hour nap, I met a couple from Australia who were leaving Kenya that night, having completed their volunteer work, and a college student named Samantha, who'd just arrived. Samantha was from California and had just finished her freshman year. I took what turned out to be a pretty nice shower; it was not quite like being at home, but it would be the only real shower I would have for almost three weeks. So I'd had my sleep and a shower, and it felt amazing. And, oh yes, I pinched myself and realized I was in Nairobi, Kenya. It was hard to believe, but I had started my journey in Africa.

The home was a typical middle-class Kenyan home. It had electricity and a nice kitchen with a gas stove, a refrigerator, a microwave, and most of the other amenities Americans would expect. However it was all much smaller than a typical American home. The lower level featured a small living room, dining room, and bedroom in addition to the kitchen. The living room had a f lat-screen TV and a DVD player. Upstairs was Wendy's bedroom, as well as the two bedrooms I previously mentioned. There was a bathroom both upstairs and downstairs. They were a bit primitive but functioned pretty much the way a bathroom back home would. There was no washing machine or dryer. There were lights in each room, but the amount of light was very limited. I was told that power in Nairobi was unreliable and went off quite often. I was also told there was a serious water shortage, which worried me a bit.

Cindy agreed to walk Samantha and me to some stores that were only a few blocks away. When we walked by a private primary school, I began to get an idea of how poor the conditions were in schools in Kenya. This was in a nicer area of Nairobi, yet the building had broken windows and its concrete walls were cracked. There were lots of children playing outside in their school uniforms, and that's when I learned that all schoolchildren in Kenya wear uniforms. I also learned that school ran pretty much year-round there. As a teacher, I found this very interesting, as I have always thought it's a real waste that in the United States we spend so much money on educational facilities that sit idle for about a fourth of the year.

In walking around, I could tell this was a heavily Christian area, as I passed by many different kinds of churches. In a little grocery store we visited, there were many religious items for sale, often with images of Jesus. Noticing an ATM near the store, I decided to see if my ATM card actually worked so I could get some Kenyan shillings. I inserted my card, and the words on the machine pretty quickly said, "Welcome Brett H. Weiss." Wow! I was excited and impressed.

Also, I'd had a very pleasant surprise when I woke up from my nap earlier that day: my luggage had actually arrived on my fight but was never brought to the baggage claim. By late afternoon, my luggage had arrived. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

I woke up at 4:45 a.m. Kenyan time (which is eight hours ahead of Illinois time), and by 5:30 I had taken a shower and was packed and ready to be picked up at 6:30 to begin the journey to Dago. I was told it would take about one and a half hours to drive to where we would meet Patrick, the volunteer coordinator; then I'd get on a bus for the trip to Dago, which was supposed to take about eight hours with some stops at various locations along the way.

One of the interesting things I'd learned the night before was that most of Nairobi, a city of more than three million people, had no street signs or addresses. Only the downtown area had them. Thus for someone to get to Wendy and Cindy's home, or most places in Nairobi, you either had to know exactly where you were going ahead of time or else had to get directions from someone who did (such as, "Make a left at the Shell gas station, take a right at the blue house," and so on). Mail was delivered through post office boxes.

I slept pretty well, surprisingly. Windows that had bars protecting them were generally left open to let a breeze come through, and you could hear the sound of dogs barking throughout the night. Then as morning approached, the roosters started doing their thing. It seemed as though many people, even in the city, had roosters and chickens, which were a major part of the Kenyan diet. Clearly I was "not in Kansas anymore"!

Speaking of food, dinner the previous night had been excellent. We had noodles, a hamburger mix with various spices, and mixed veggies. There was also a plate of cut-up avocados and mangos. Wendy and Cindy were magnificent and very gracious hosts.

Cindy was up to prepare breakfast for us before we left for Dago. The night before, I'd heard many stories about Dago from some other volunteers before they left for the airport. The stories about the children and adults who worked there made me even more excited about getting there and experiencing Dago for myself.

At 7:45, we arrived at the center of the city and were dropped off at a gas station that also ran a big business taking people to and from various places in vans. The drive ended up taking about fifteen minutes less than I'd been told; then again, we only went about ten miles. The traffic was the worst I had ever experienced, and I grew up in Chicago. The roads were in very poor condition and were filled with cars, buses, and vans. I learned the word matatu, which is the Kiswahili word for "bus." The street was very crowded, with very little respect paid to lanes. There were many rotaries or roundabouts, since the roads had been designed by the British when Kenya was a colony.

We waited for Patrick, who showed up at 8:30 a.m. I had already begun to learn about "Kenyan time": however long you think something is going to take, you might as well double it. Patrick went to get some cash and did not come back until 9:50, but then Samantha and I hit the road in a Toyota van with Patrick and our driver. I noticed that the vast majority of vehicles in Kenya were Toyotas, although I saw a variety of other Japanese and European vehicles too. When I asked if there were many US-made vehicles there, Patrick told me that they were very expensive in Kenya and that only some rich people had them. (By the end of the trip I had not seen any US-made cars except for a few old clunkers.)

The sights and sounds of Nairobi in the morning were amazing — and different and nerve-racking for me. There were the sounds of cars and buses driving and honking, lots of loud music, and people talking as they went to work. There was an incredible amount of traffic (until we left Nairobi), with people walking everywhere. Most people couldn't afford a car or even a bus ride, so they walked to work. The distance between walkers and vehicles was very narrow and dangerous. There were no sidewalks, so people were just walking on the edge or sides of the roads. Many people were well dressed, and others were dressed very casually as they headed to work. I could see many inf luences of the West in their clothing, such as Nike apparel, Levis, and Cubs, Sox, Yankees, and Mets baseball caps. Later I learned that these clothes either came to Kenya as donations from charities or were bought used on the street for a very small amount of money. There were peddlers everywhere, selling about anything you could imagine.

About a year later, Patrick's now-wife, Susan, who is from Evansville, Indiana, told me a story about the first time he came to the United States. She picked him up at O'Hare, and as they were driving out of the airport, he asked her where all the people were. He was expecting to see lots and lots of people walking alongside the road, as I had seen in Kenya. He was astonished to see no one walking. Susan told him that most people in the United States owned a car, and that those who did not took public transportation. This was a real eye-opener for Patrick on his first day in the United States.

The stores we passed on our journey tended to be very colorfully painted, with bright green, yellow, pink, and orange fronts. During the drive, I tried to use my BlackBerry. Voice was working, but the Internet, e-mail, and texts were not. I could not figure out why, so Wendy got on the phone with Sararicom, the local cell phone provider in Kenya. My cell service stayed this way until Thursday of the next week, when all of a sudden my e-mail worked fine, I could get on the Internet, I could receive texts but not send them, and I could see that I had voice mails but could not check them. In my "normal" world, I would have been greatly bothered by all of this, but in Kenya I just knew it was part the journey, and I had to accept whatever happened. Also, some part of me realized that it would not kill me to get away from the world of having access to instant communication each and every second of every day.

When we finally left the center of the city to make our way to Dago, Patrick said it would take about six hours to reach our destination. At 11:00 a.m. we stopped to visit the Chujia Water Filter Company. They made ceramic water filters, and Patrick bought a number of them to bring to Dago. The owner, who was a retired science teacher, gave us a tour of the facility. He'd started this business after he retired, and it was quite impressive what he was doing. I'd begun to understand that the lack of clean water was a major problem in sub-Saharan Africa, so it looked to me like this business would be very successful. He told us that 60 percent of the deaths in villages like Dago were the result of people drinking bad water, and most of them were children, because when children are thirsty, they do not ask if the water is safe — they just drink it.