A Kiefer in Kenya: The Adventures of Lola the Quaker

Always an adventure. Always. An. Adventure.

I wish I possessed the capacity to convey everything I witnessed and everything I learned during my week long excursion, but I am sure the lessons I have learned will be conveyed in later posts.

Last week was rural week – meaning, we are assigned a host family in rural, western Kenya and we stayed with them for three days.

Our journey began at 4:30 in the morning when we loaded into taxis and began our trek to the Muchakos bus station. As I am sure many of you know, there were two grenade attacks last week – one of which was at a matatu stop (not a full on bus station), so we had extra security – one guard punched a man for trying to talk to Crista! We followed our fearless leader, Victor, through the maze of buses (we resembled 20+ year old baby ducks). Then began our 5+ hour bus ride.

It was hot, we got sweaty, we sort of slept and we were hungry (such is life). Katie, Steven and I thought it would be a good idea to shove the three tallest people in a row of seats, twas a tight fit. But, we survived (as always) and eventually alighted (got off the bus) and made our way to our villages.

You never come empty handed in Kenya. For our host families, we brought sugar, ugali, soap, a giant bowl, chapati flour, rice and a chicken – kuku, if you will. And we had to carry the chicken – our host families enjoyed watching us awkwardly clutch the chickens that we were presenting to them.

I stayed with Ebby, a mother of 6 and a guardian of 2 of her brothers children. She greeted me with hugs and kisses and praises – it was overwhelming, but I could tell that I was going to enjoy my time with her and her family. Most of her children were staying in town so I had a place to sleep, she has 5 daughters and a son. I meet most of them. The oldest was Sofia and she was 23 with a 2 year old son, Isaiah. She had daughters Timoni and Magazine (yes, magazine), the other two I did not meet, and a son, Felix. Her brothers children were named Elvis and Evon and they were 4.

As we wandered down a winding valley to her home – I was taken aback by the beauty of the small village. It was neatly tucked into a valley with a stream running through. Cows, chickens and goats supplied a chorus as we passed by each clay and mud home and neighbors would yell out “Mazungu!” (white person) and would run to greet me with long introductions.

Thank god I brough some pin pops (lolli pops) with me. A sea of 15 or so children demanded “sweets” as soon as I put my bags down, and they were relentless.

In Kenya, you always treat your guest to the largest quantity of food, even if their guest is a white girl who has never gone hungry in her life. Throughout the week, I found myself sneaking Evon and Elvis pieces of banana, pieces of chicken and avocado – I could always feel them watching me while I ate. I didn’t need the food like they did – yet there I was, trying to finish the majority of it so I did not disrespect Ebby.

Every day was Mazungu! Mazungu! How are you! How are you! Mazungu. And though my patience level was exceptional (shocking, I know), I found my frustration growing with the constant demand for acknowledgment by children, yet when I would try to speak with them, they merely erupted into giggles or asked me for things.

a-ha – life lessons and cultural differences. The core purpose of this rural excursion. For me, the hardest part was not the absence of electricity or the day labor that included milking cows, doing dishes and hanging up laundry. The hardest part wasn’t having to use a squat toilet (and I wasn’t allowed to use the toilet past 6:30 at night, we all began to ration our liquids quickly). It was the constant requests for gifts and money, because how do you say no to people who don’t have anything while I am sitting on a rock, petting a cow and reading my kindle?

I found myself asking, what is poverty? Ebby and the people in her village subsist on an incredibly sustainable method of living. They grow and/or raise what they eat, the don’t have water/electricity bills to pay, they can sell what they do not grow and then use those earnings to purchase what they cannot produce themselves. However, because of rampant unemployment – it has become impossible to survive solely by these methods. Ebby told me about her neighbor, who I met on a number of occasions as she did Ebby’s laundry and dishes, that this woman had lost two children in the last month to disease (most likely stemming from dehydration and diarrhea as a result of malnourishment). Both she and her husband were unemployed and it was not yet time to harvest their crops. They still had five mouths to feed and they were starving. Despite the absence of income for Ebby, she still employed her neighbor to do some tasks around her home and would pay her in flour and ugali.

These people have next to nothing – yet they take better care of their neighbors than most of us do.

The presence of religion is astounding. I quickly became Lola (bc laura is hard to say) the Quaker – because Lutheran sounds like new friends. I just went with it.

At one point, I climbed a mountain, in the rain to praise the Lord. It was cold and dark and muddy.

It rained the majority of the time – so being constantly wet and incredibly muddy was an adventure and often uncomfortable.

We eventually traveled to Kisumu, upon the conclusion of our homestay and toured Lake Victoria and sampled some local fish.

Then came the train ride from hell.

For some reason, our program director decided that it would be fun to take a 12-hour train ride, over night, from Kisumu to Nairobi. Since it was over night, we’d sleep most of the time anyway, right? Wrong.

The engine ended up being broken, so upon boarding our sleeper cars, we were told that we would have to wait roughly 6 hours for a new engine to arrive from Nakuru. This was around 7pm. When I woke up at 7am, we were pulling out of the station. The situation began to quickly resemble Sartre’s No Exit and Lord of the Flies. It was hot, it was cold, there was little food, we were running low on toilet paper, we were dirty, we were thirsty, we were getting motion sickness, we were cranky etc. etc.

All in all – we arrived in Nairobi at 11pm. A roughly 28 hour train ride.

It stopped being an adventure 15 hours in.

Yet, I survived. This is what I signed up for.