ONLY IN AFRICA: Kenya Week 8...November 21-28

 

ONLY IN AFRICA...

o Do four Americans, five Italians, eight Kenyans, and one Tanzanian sit down together to share a Thanksgiving Dinner.

o Does someone taste stuffing, chicken gravy, and apple pie for the first time in their life and love them!!

o Is World AIDS Day the biggest event of the year.

o Do children’s nursery rhymes ask, “AIDS, AIDS, do you have no mercy?”

o Do World AIDS Day Weekend festivities include a football tournament, a net ball tournament, an eating contest, and hours upon hours of skits, songs and dances.

o Is the highlight of the World AIDS Day festivities a dance off for young boys.

o Does the winner of the dance off win $6 because he hip-thrusts and gyrates better than the other boys.

o Only in Africa will the answers to the question, “Why is HIV/AIDS such a problem in this community?” include Wife Inheritance, Polygamy, and Boredom.

o Is an eight year old girl HIV positive while her mother is HIV negative.

o Does a 60 year old woman get admitted to the hospital for Malaria when she actually has an ear infection.

o Does an 8 year old boy get sent home from the outpatient clinic with a broken femur.

o Does a woman’s dead body get carried home on a motorbike.

o Does one country have 42 different tribes with their separate languages, cultures, believes, and traditions.

o Does the man building your home not show up for three weeks to finish cementing the floors and walls.

o Do lake flies attack a hospital in such numbers that you can hardly see through the cloud on your way home from work.

o Does a white girl get proposed to at least once a week by hospital patients, motorbike drivers, shop owners and strangers on the street.

o Am I constantly mistaken as an Italian and a nurse because I’m white.

Home is where the Heart Is …Kenya Week 7: November 15-22

Sitting in my room at the St. Camillus Seminary in Nairobi, I caught myself off guard when the thought, “I want to go home!” popped into my head on Monday evening. But the “home” I imagined was not Lee’s Summit, Missouri or New Orleans, Louisiana. Suddenly “home” meant Karungu, Kenya. In seven short yet powerful weeks, my paradigm shifted once again: I live in Africa. I work at a hospital in the bush. My friends are Italian volunteers, Kenyan seminarians, and Luo nurses. For fun I play with my beautiful neighbor children, run on muddy cattle trails, write letters, and read books. And one week away from home was too much. I wanted to be back. I wanted to give vaccines to babies, to speak broken Duluo, to laugh with the seminarians and priests at dinner, to constantly scrape mud from my shoes, and to watch the sunset over the lake.

This unexpected Karungu-homesickness nestled down right next down to my America-homesickness. Undeniably, while in Africa I’ve yearned for the comforts and security of my America-home more than ever before. I miss the paved roads, warm showers, and the luxurious beauty of the developed world. I miss grocery shopping, cooking dinner for my family, going to the movies, and leaving the house after the sunset. I miss the Streetcar bumbling down St. Charles Ave in New Orleans and the parasite-free lakes in Kansas City. I miss the instant and reliable communication with my loved ones. I miss feeling safe enough to travel alone and I miss blending in.

Yet when I look around me, I realize most of the people in Karungu can barely fathom what it means to miss such extravagant homes. Gaston, Michael, and Mary were thrilled to return to their new jigger-free, concrete-slab, one-room home. Mary the Nurse Aid wishes her home had running water so she wouldn’t have to fetch it from the lake every morning. Emma the Cleaner wishes she had her own home so she and her children wouldn’t be at the mercy of her landlord when she can’t afford to pay the month’s rent. The children at Dala Kiye have a beautiful home, loving caretakers, three meals a day, and school fees so they can graduate high school. Although they’re HIV+ and orphaned, they may be the most blessed kids in all of Karungu. Meanwhile the other 5,000 orphans and vulnerable children around Karungu have no home to miss. Day in and day out they struggle to find a roof to sleep under, a decent meal to eat, and a relative to pay their school fees.

Back at home in Karungu, I still miss home. And since I miss Amanda while she’s at home in New York recovering from surgery, I wrote her a letter telling her to come home soon.

My home is Lee’s Summit, New Orleans, Karungu. My family and friends send me precious letters from California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Belgium, Swaziland, Chile, and Iraq. How blessed I am to have so many homes and so many loved ones. If “Home is where the Heart Is”, then my heart is scattered across the globe in countless pieces.

 

 

My beautiful neighbors back home in Karungu.

Literally, Sticks will break your bones!!... Kenya Week 6: November 8-November 14

Call it bad luck or just bad timing, but turns out that last week’s blog titled “Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones…” would have been a more appropriate title for this week’s blog. Let me tell you a little story…

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in rural Karungu Kenya. Men, women and children walked along the side of the road to and from the booming Sori Market to buy dried fish, corn, second hand clothes and an assortment of other Kenyan goods . Cars, buses and motorbikes sped up and down the dirt road, narrowly missing each other and those walking along the muddy roadside. Among those innocently heading to the market were three American volunteers named Kayla, Amanda, and Lauren. The lovely young ladies wanted to buy clothes and shoes for a poor family they are helping at the hospital.

Suddenly a motorbike driver with a large wooden door attached to the back of his tiny bike swerved dangerously close to the jolly group. The girls jumped to the side just in time, all except for poor Amanda’s left forearm. Perhaps unaware of how large his door actually was or perhaps simply just a bad driver, this young man rudely cut their good hearted trip short.

Amanda bravely held back tears and while grasping her arm informed the merry group that the Sori Market would have to wait; she needed to head back to St. Camillus. Now Lauren conveniently happened to be the St. Camillus X-ray technician, so the girls went straight to the X-ray room. Sadly, X-rays don’t lie: Amanda’s arm had a minimally displaced mid-shaft radial fracture. In other words, her left radius was broken in two. The moral of the story: My mom was right…sticks really do break bones. THE END

After Dr. Jimmy splinted Amanda’s arm and she got some pain killers, everyone decided the best option would be for Amanda to come to Nairobi so an orthopedic surgeon could set the bone and properly cast it. We contacted all the necessary folks back in the States (Mom and Dad Ailleo, Richard from CMMB, etc.) and Fr. Emilio made some calls to find the best orthopedic in Nairobi. We decided I would travel to Nairobi with Amanda to continue playing the role of roommate, friend, nurse, and surrogate mother. So on Tuesday morning Father Julius, Amanda, and I made the eight hour trek to the capital.

Unfortunately after taking one look at the X-ray, Dr. Krishnan told Amanda that if it was his arm, he’d opt for surgery. Casting her arm won’t guarantee that the bone will realign and heal properly because of the location and type of break. It will heal much better and much faster with a plate and screws holding the bones in place. So instead of getting a cast and returning to Nairobi like we originally hoped, Amanda boarded a plane back to New York for surgery.

 

While poor Amanda is back home awaiting surgery, I’ve been relaxing at the St. Camillus Seminary and exploring Nairobi with Fr. Julius. Instead of playing nurse and roommate, I’ve had a unplanned vacation!! In the morning I read, drink coffee, and fully appreciate the excellent internet by uploading photos onto Facebook. In the afternoons Father and I run errands throughout Nairobi with wonderful side trips to see some of the city’s highlights. The Catholic University of East Africa, the Bomas of Kenya (a park and cultural center), the beautiful Benedictine Monastery, Togoni District Hospital, the August 7th Memorial Park (for the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombing) the Kenyatta International Conference Center (with an rooftop view of Nairobi), the Westlands Market, and many of the neighborhoods in and around the city (the Kibiera Slums, Langatta, Westlands, Parklands, City Center…). I pass the hours stuck in traffic practicing Kiswahili and listening to Father Julius’s funny priesthood stories.

 

 

It’s been an unexpected yet pleasant vacation, sadly at the expense of Amanda’s arm (for those of you from the Gulf Coast, the closest thing I can compare this to is a Hurrication!!). But after five days in the city, I’m more than ready to return to the bush of Karungu!! I need to get back to work (that’s why I’m in Kenya after all!) and I miss the clean air and beautiful sunsets over the lake. Till then, I’ll continue enjoying the bustling city life of Nairobi!

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones…Kenya Week 5: November 1-November 7

I remember being a little girl and crying to my mother after being teased by my sisters or neighborhood friend. Attempting to comfort me, she taught me the age old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”. After five weeks in Kenya, I’m sad to say that for once, my mother was wrong. Turns out that “Sticks and stones (and motor bikes and machetes and alcohol and all sorts of dangerous objects) can break your bones, but words can actually kill you”.

Being from a country where everyone speaks the same language and little patience is awarded those who don’t, the language barrier faced by Kenyans within their own country seems particularly debilitating. The cycle of poverty and illiteracy perpetuates itself as young girls drop out of school because they can’t pay their fees and suddenly find themselves married with 4 children.

I’ve seen it over and over. Kenyans grow up speaking their Mother tongue, be it Duluo, Kisii, Kimeru, Kiswahili, or any of the 42 tribal languages in Kenya. Children only learn English (the Official Language of Kenya) and Kiswahili (the National Language of Kenya) in school. That is, if they go to school: with a national average High School enrollment of only 25% in the best regions, very few Kenyans actually speak English or Kiswahili. When almost all official documents, reports, etc. are written in English, working as anything other than a substance farmer or fisherman becomes nearly impossible. People are limited to working and living among their own tribe which limits their ability to trade goods, travel, or improve their quality of life.

Accessing quality medical care falls into the exact same category. The Maternal and Child Health Clinic’s walls are plastered with colorful and informational posters on everything from protecting your child from Malaria, to knowing your HIV status, to proper nutrition for infants. Unfortunately all the posters are in English or Kiswahili which means few of our clients can actually read them. The handy little Immunization Cards and Tuberculosis Medication Charts given to each client serve as little more than reminders of when to return to the clinic. At least the clients understand the dates written in the “To Come Again” column.

As I learn the Duluo language Mus Mus (slowly by slowly), I am again reminded of the difficulties and depth of a language barrier. As a mzungu (a white foreigner), I at least given the benefit of the doubt and endless patience as I attempt to communicate. But for those Kenyans who were not fortunate to learn English or Kiswahili (like my beloved Jiggers Family), I simply pray for their safety and comfort. In a world where knowledge is power and the pen is mightier than the sword, the beautiful Luo Tribe on the shores of Lake Victoria fight everyday to improve their lot. What a blessing to be a small part of their battle.