alidajoy jepkemboi

I was sitting at my computer on facebook when she died. only 100 metres away a labouring mother passed away in the operating room. she had tried to give birth at home, alone, but was not succeeding. so somehow she made her way to the hospital. the baby was breech and in distress. as they were prepping the mother for a c-section, she died. they did the c-section anyway and were able to deliver the baby. nurses resuscitated her for an hour and the baby survived. motherless, with no name. all the while i was tapping on a keyboard.

i learned of the little girl the next day and started visiting the nursery for feeds, hugs, cuddling, and some awful lullaby singing. she is the only one who would tolerate it. but she didn't have a choice. the mother came unprepared, likely did not plan to keep the baby. so little "no name" was wrapped in a torn sheet and crocheted hospital blankets. my colleague got some onesies from home, but she was still diaperless. with money from a well wisher, i decided to get her a good start fashion wise. i bought a dozen cloth nappies, more onesies, blankets, and some "sharp" outfits. i returned from town on saturday, looking forward to a happy reunion.

i greeted the staff in the delivery suite and was laughing about something when i noticed they were bagging a baby. my balloon burst. it was not our little orphan girl, but a new boy strangled by the very cord that had been giving him life for 9 months. they had been bagging (breathing for him with a bag hooked to oxygen) for more than an hour. his heart rate was strong but he stubbornly refused to breathe on his own and his pupils were fixed and dilated. the doctor instructed the nurses to stop bagging. my coping skills are to start doing "stuff." i removed the IV, cleaned and dressed the little boy. I wrapped him snuggly in a blanket and placed his lifeless body in the mothers arms. I asked my colleague to explain the importance of grieving and spending time with her child that she had nutured for 9 months. i don't yet know "grieving process" in swahili and felt inadequate to explain. instead i choked back my own emotions while washing my hands. i didn't have time to grieve. our orphaned girl needed to be fed.

i warmed the formula and sang "you are my sunshine" while slow dancing around the nursery with her in my arms. my lullaby repitoire is limited. she heard alot of twinkle twinkle little star and you are my sunshine. she ate hungrily, i wrapped her in a nappy far too big for her 2.7kg, dressed her in a new outfit and wrapped her in a new blanket. she looked like she knew she looked good. the extended family came to the hospital to get the mothers body for the funeral. the women cooed over her and the grandmother pronounced that she would be named after me. alida jepkemboi. they will return next week after the funeral to take her home, after they decide who will care for her.

i went back to the delivery room and found the 2 nurses swamped. another woman had just delivered a baby boy and the nurse was delivering the placenta. since i know nothing about delivering babies, it has become my job to clean and weigh the babies. i was delighted to hear him crying but i was not happy for the woman on the other side of the small room who had just lost her son. she had to lay and listen to the commotion. inbetween these two women, another had just rushed in, miscarrying and bleeding profusely on the floor. the second nurse was caring for her. three women experiencing very different emotions only feet apart from eachother. once i had the newborn wrapped and proudly shown to his mother i went to check the wards.

i found a labouring mother vomiting and helped her clean up, while trying to reassure her in my limited swahili. i see a clinical officer run by to the female ward. an elderly woman has just passed away and he must pronounce. i go to see if i can be of assistance but there is not much they can do. i return to ask the nurses and doctor what i should know about contractions because there is another woman in labour. i return and place my hand on her stomach for the next 15 minutes to time contractions. i hold her right hand with my left and she won't let go. i feel the babies feet kick my hand at the top of her stomach. amazing. like what you would imagine angel wings to feel like. her contractions are 4 minutes apart and i go to report to the doctor. the woman follows me and tries to hop into a bloody bed. i convince her to sit on a clean stool. there is nothing more i can do. i don't know how to deliver babies. but i do know how to feed them.

so i take our little orphan home for the night. i feed her, make funny faces, and feel the warm stream of pee she released all over my legs. she smiled after she did that. i swear.
i set up the cot on a chair beside my bed and drape the mosquito net around her. i set my alarm to go off in two hours, but i am not used to having a baby in the house so i check to make sure she is breathing every ten minutes. we make it through the night. i give her a bath with lavender baby wash in the morning and she loves the warm water. i returned her to the hospital at 1100 because i am afraid if i keep her longer i will want to keep her forever.

her uncle and his wife come on monday morning. they decided that they will raise her. they have three girls at home under the age of 10, so she will fit in well. the father has a good job and the mother stays at home with the children. they still have enough energy to take care of a baby. they take her lovingly and are receptive to instructions regarding how to cup or bottle feed her, mix cows milk for her(formula is prohibitively expensive) . they say they have been instructed to name her after me. i had protested with the staff and suggested that the well wisher also be honoured as he had a part also. the staff decide that joy will substitute for joe and that she will be alidajoy jepkemboi. i feel kind of embarrassed, but secretly i am truly honoured. the family and i promise to keep in touch.

alidajoy jepkemboi. i will miss her.

headlines

headlines are usually depressing.

Aid workers die in somali blast.
Man shot in front of Second Cup.
Gunmen hold Pakistani children hostage.
Gangs on rampage in western kenya.

tragedy occurring
every minute
of every day
in every country.

where is compassion? understanding? forgiveness? reason?
i am listening to the radio, listening for changes outside my small village of Plateau. a reporter in Eldoret was coming from the airport and witnessed a hacked up body on the side of the road. he was reportedly dragged out of a matatu for being of the "wrong" tribe and hacked to death by a gang of youth. this is but a minor fraction of the violence and hatred occurring just kilometres away.

no one seems to understand these radical changes in kenya. heads shake, hands wring, hearts cry. it was looking hopeful. kofi annan even got the feuding politicians to shake hands and smile in public. i returned to my village and downtown eldoret seemed pretty normal. people buying food, the market was packed, the glue boys asking me for money.

i don't know what will happen. but i am happy to be back in my village with friends and family. as difficult as this time is, i would choose to be nowhere else. i came to share burdens with my african brothers and sisters. i am doing nothing radical. i am just being with them. i am holding their babies. i am shaking their hands. i am speaking peace.
i look forward to some more hopeful headlines.
Peace prevails in Kenya.
Children stop dying of diarrhea.
Second Cup to give free lattes.

here's to hoping...

tanzania photos

here is the link to my picasa site where i have been posting selected photos. i can't possibly post all my photos because i take hundreds, but this should give you a taste...

http://picasaweb.google.com/alidafernhout/

i will also try to formulate some new blog posts, but i have to get my neurons to communicate in an organized fashion first...

mt. kili and other delights

greetings from tanzania. i arrived sunday evening and was welcomed by julia and meaghan, american girls who are working in and around arusha.

tanzania is so very different and so very the same as kenya. fortunately, they speak swahili, so i am practicing my poor language skills and learning more words everyday. their matatu's or "dala dala's" are actually fuller than ones in kenya. i have had to stand a few times. however, they don't have giant crater holes in the road, so swerving all over the road is not exsistant.

i have been fortunate enough to go visit villages with meaghan and see the work going on there. yesterday i went to the village of mwika in the foothills of mt. kiliminjaro. the scenery is stunning. however, this village has a 30% HIV rate and loads of orphans. i spent most of the day playing with 25 kids. half of them are also HIV+ and i could feel enlarged lymph nodes in most of their necks. one child is so anemic, i don't want to even know what his red blood cell count is. i would likely empty my blood into his body to help!

i also went on a home visit to see an elderly lady with a large facial tumor. they took me to see her as i am a nurse and it is reassuring to them to get a "professionals" opinion. Josephine is HIV+, and has a large facial tumor that has completely eroded all the tissue on the left side of her face, and has eaten away so much of her cheek that she now has a complete hole filled with dead tissue. she is in a lot of pain, but i can tell that they are trying hard to keep the wound clean. they had been referred to Dar es Salaam for further treatment. they can't even afford to go down into town to get a CD4 count. there was not much i could "consult", but i advised on how to clean it, control pain. I just tried to be encouraging, because that is about the only treatment she can get. perhaps i should get a prescription pad, that just says "hope" or "encourgament" on it.

the drive back to arusha was beautiful. we had gorgeous views of mt. meru and mt. kiliminjaro and we drove into the horizon of the setting sun. it was a blessing.

i still don't know when i can return to my village. the reports i get from co-workers is that it is calm and safe, but my return will be decided by the emergency response team. my hosts here in tanzania have been fantastic and have made me feel at home.

i do long to return to plateau to be with "my people" to be part of the healing process. i hope it will be soon.

thank you to everyone who has sent me emails to let me know that they are thinking and praying for me. please also do the same for the people in eldoret and plateau. i have also been praying for the hearts of the youth who have been perpetrating the horrific crimes. they need a radical transformation of mind and heart.



mt. kiliminjaro (taken from a car while moving 100km/hr)



"mt. kili" closer up



me with josephine - the lady with the facial tumor



sunset (again from a moving vehicle)

leaving on a jet plane

no, i am not being evacuated. but i am not returning to my village for an undetermined amount of time. i am going to visit a friend i met in a training this past summer. she lives just over the kenyan border in arusha, tanzania.



i have been in contact with my friends in eldoret and plateau. plateau is still "calm" and "safe", however all local roads are blocked. the small hospital that has seen little action for months is now handling gunshot wounds and machete slashes. the teaching hospital in eldoret has 200 more patients than beds and have been running out of guaze and basic supplies.



they have begun escorting people out of eldoret now on busses, but under heavy police escort. no one is going in. hence, i will not be returning to my village any time soon.



so, early next week i will be leaving on a "jet plane" (probably something much smaller) to arusha, tanzania. a positive outcome is that i can see a friend, see somewhere new, learn about her work with HIV/AIDS, and add a new country to my facebook map.

wazimu

one day in swahili class, my teacher asked me about canadian politics. i gasped, initially, because i thought he wanted me to discuss politics in swahili. i can talk about the weather and bargain in the market, but my swahili language capabilities are not that good! i was relieved when he said i could converse in english!

as we talked about the different styles of politics in canada versus kenya, my teacher taught me a new word. "wazimu" is how he described kenyan politics, and this was while it was peaceful. wazimu means "mad" as in "mental illness mad." it has become a new favourite word of mine.

wazimu is the state of kenya right now. truthfully, i am quite isolated from the riots, violence, demonstrations. the closest i see them is the same as you, on the internet. yet, i am close because i have spoken to several friends and colleagues in eldoret to keep abreast of the situation.

i felt a change in the air last saturday. the results had not yet been announced but there was anxiety as it was taking so long for results to get in. i walked to the local shopping mall and noticed that most shops on the street were closed. few people had ventured outside. however, as i approached the mall, i saw the longest line of cars trying to get into the parking lot. the majority of the license plates were from the UN or an embassy. i thought it strange that they should be holding a conference there (it has a conference area inside) on that day. when i arrived inside the mall, all but a few shops were open. i wondered where all these people were going. and then saw the lines in the grocery store. everyone was stocking up like it was the end of the milennium.

i was on a quest for a radio so that we could listen to election results, and had to go to another nearby shopping mall. as i wandered into the electronics section, two employees cornered me and tried starting a heated political debate with me. needless to say they were pro-kibaki, and were trying to get me to say the same. i maintained neutrality and explained i just wanted a cheap radio!! i did ask why all the expats seemed to be stocking up and they said things might get bad and i should stock up for 2 weeks. it sounded a little extreme to me. i bought the radio and left.

but walking back through the neighbourhood, the tension was palpable. i felt like i could push and pull the air and that it would spring back at me if i leaned too hard.

well, the air has split in western kenya. i live 15km outside of eldoret, a major area of violence and bloodshed. i have confirmed that my friends and colleagues are safe, but they have not left their houses, even out in the farming area. their food is limited and they have no access to airtime for phones. i have been sending airtime so that they can at least contact their families.

amidst the violence, i have experienced "everyday grace."

first, i had no desire to spend the christmas holidays in eldoret. as much as i love my kenyan family and friends there, i wanted to be with some other friends for my first christmas out of the country. i had also witnessed the level of passion that people exhibited when campaigning, and i didn't want to witness that passion go awry should their chosen leader lose. about a month ago, i witnessed a murder by beating of a petty thief. if people were willing to beat someone to death over a cell phone or a bunch of bananas, what would they do for their leader?

second, my friends and i that were spending christmas together almost booked a week in the city of kisumu. we were on the verge of booking when we recieved an email about a different option and we abandoned lake victoria for lake baringo. it turns out that kisumu was one of the first places to break out in violence. according to reports, every supermarket has been burned to the ground and thousands have fled the area for the ugandan border.

third, my friends and i were supposed to spend 5 days in lake baringo and paid for it in advance. now, we stretched out the activities as much as possible but were bored to tears after 4 days. despite that we are all poor, tight-wad mission workers, we decided to leave a day early. we drove the little station wagon through washed out roads and over rocks, past young children selling honey on the road. our cell phones had little to no signal for about 2 hours. less than 24 hours after we left, and during the time we had previously scheduled to be in the area, violence broke out in baringo the minute the election results were announced. had we clung to our money and stayed an extra day, we may have been on an almost deserted road with no communication while people went berserk around us.

but, my heart is still in a headlock. as i had written in a blog some time back, i came (or was called) to kenya to "run into the pain." i want to share and suffer alongside my kenyan friends. instead, i am sitting in a walled compound in an upscale area of nairobi in no immediate danger, while the people i have come to know and love are hunkered in their homes fearing for their lives. i feel helpless that all i can do is pray. because quite frankly, it feels like the prayers are bouncing off that wall of tension.

i know that God's hand is in my life. i was traumatized after witnessing that murder a little more than a month ago, and i don't think my heart could have taken what is happening in eldoret. but i still long to hold the hands and hug the women and children in my village. i feel as though i am abandoning them.

as for the next few days, our office held a security meeting today and we have made contingency plans to evacuate (the expats to begin with followed by the kenyan staff) if necessary. i hope and pray it does not come to that. but the next 48 hours are extremely critical and it rests in the decisions that the political leaders make. cling to pride, or bow to humility. different outcomes that will affect millions of lives.

pray that the wazimu will end.

safe

i just wanted to let everyone know that despite kenya experiencing turmoil and chaos, i am in a safe place.

i am in nairobi staying with a friend. she lives in a very safe place with walls, wires, and guards.

i had spent christmas in lake baringo (see photos on my picasa site) with friends which went very well and was very peaceful. by the grace of God, we left a day early due to boredom. i read in the paper today that violence erupted in the area less than 24 hours after we left (the exact time that we would have been on a road with little phone access).

eldoret, the town i live close to is completely chaotic, with the death toll at 25 and counting. the people in my village of plateau are safe, but have no access to getting phone credit or food. no one is leaving their house. again, "everyday grace" intervened. i would have had no transportation and little communication.

i am safe and do not feel in any danger. but please pray for peace and wisdom for kenya. it is imperative that people can move past this and reconcile and forgive.

normal

i love hearing about normal things. i love hearing about how you carved 6 pumpkins for halloween. i love hearing about the cute guy you saw at safeway. i love hearing about the crafts you made with your kids, and the birthday cake for your church function. i love hearing about snow, and how many times you had to shovel it. i love hearing about trips to the shopping mall, or the bad haircut you just got.

and since i love hearing about your normal stuff, i will tell you about my normal stuff. i might live on a different continent than most of the readers, and granted a few details of my life are different, but i still do normal stuff.

i still press my snooze button at least 4 times before i get out of bed. i still make coffee in my french press for breakfast. i eat muesli or oatmeal for breakfast. i take a "shower" in the morning, with the only difference being that i have to heat my water with a coil and my shower head is my hand and a bowl.

i did laundry this morning. only this time, it took 2 hours to wash my underpants, one pair of jeans, two pairs of pajamas, a sheet and a towel. i hung them outside to dry before going to work.

i zap my lunch in a microwave and eat mr. noodles (ramen) because i am too lazy to cook. i check facebook after work to see what my friends are up to around the world. then i ironed all my clothes because i am scared of mango bugs laying their eggs in my clothes. i listened to emmylou harris while ironing.

when i am bored and/or need to procrastinate on the long list of things i have to do, i pop a dvd into my computer and watch ugly betty or scrubs. the nice thing is there are no commercials!

i bought some flashing christmas lights and strung them around my living room window. i bop around the house to boney m's version of "feliz navidad." i am too cheap to buy an ugly plastic tree, but i have an angel ornament made out of a piece of beer can (the irony!) and an ornament a friend sent me from canada. on my fireplace mantles are two "racing grannies" dressed up like myself and a friend. when i feel homesick, i wind them up and watch them hobble across the mantle with their walkers.

i don't have to shovel snow or mow the lawn for that matter. i have several built in lawnmowers and fertilizers. my neighbours sheep come over and do the job for me. my grass is nice and short and i haven't busted a sweat for it. when i start a garden i will have to put a fence around it to keep them out. but that is a small sacrifice for free lawn moving.

i live in a 3 bedroom house and i don't like cleaning it! nothing new there!! sometimes i don't have running water, but i have rain water outside that does the trick.

i have a sewing machine, and if i ever get around to it, i want to start quilting again.

i still have the notion that i should check my messages every time i walk in the front door even though i don't have a landline. i have finally figured out most of my cell phone although i still jump a mile when it vibrates.

i do normal stuff. i procrastinate, i go for walks, i go to supermarkets and shopping malls. i look at cute boys (well, once in awhile) and wonder if they look back. i do normal stuff. i will tell you my normal stuff if you tell me yours.

vehicular guardian angels

over the past year some good friends and colleagues have given me "guardian angel" pins and momentos, reminding me that i am being watched over. us dutch reformed people don't talk about guardian angels much, so i used to think of them more as a nice symbolic gesture.

i have become quite convinced as of late, that there really are guardian angels, and that i personally employ an entire fleet of them. i like to think of them as my vehicular guardian angels. in the past i have engaged myself in some activities that i thought were "risky" such as paragliding lessons, zip-lining in costa rica, and bombing down the sides of mountains on mountain bikes. i now think these activities are fairly tame compared to stepping foot on a road here in kenya.

i look back in astonishment and a bit of laughter at the "rides" i have experienced...

*hitched a ride in the back of a pickup, had to sit on bags of cement and wedge my legs between metal gates. i got a free ride for about 500 metres and several bloody scratches on my legs.
*hitched a ride in the back of a pickup into town. this time i got to sit all the way on the floor. good thing too, because the driver sped with a lead foot all the way to town.
*hitched a ride in the cab of a dump truck driving past my village. i sat between three men who all just sat and grinned at me. when i looked over at the steering wheel i noticed that in the place where the turn signal should be, uncoated wires were sticking out of the steering column. i grinned back and prayed the driver would not electrocute himself.
*rode on the trailer of my kenyan brothers tractor to the highway. i was a new colour on arrival as i was completely covered in red dust.
*caught a ride on the back of a pickup, but as it was a school bus with 30 children standing in the back, myself and the school bus attendant had to stand on the bumper and hang onto an overhead bar while flying through the countryside. i prayed to be knocked unconcious right away so i wouldn't feel the pain when i fell!
*hired a cab from town to the village although the car looked a little worse for wear. the driver assured me it ran well. while driving on the dirt road home, the keys actually fell out of the ignition while the car was moving! that was a new one. the car stalled twice, the driver had to get out and fiddle around with unknown car parts to get it started again.
*the vehicle for the community program is an 1986 isuzu trooper. it still runs... kind of. to get it out of the garage, i usually have to pop the hood and jiggle the battery connections. we used to have to turn it off to switch into first gear and reverse. while it was running we only had second and fourth gears. that part is now fixed, but i still have to jiggle the battery wires.
*the matatu ride i described when i first arrived was tame and safe by comparison to taking matatus up-country. due to lax (no) enforcement of laws, i am usually happy if the doors close. one conductor put so many people on that people's bums blocked the sliding door from shutting. last weekend, the conductor stuffed 25 people into a matatu. for reference, a matatu is roughly the size of large mini-van. i sternly asked him if he was wanting to be in the next days newspaper under the headline "25 people die in matatu crash." he laughed but i was not amused.

overall, i am so fortunate and grateful that i am still in one piece and have not suffered any major harm. i did recently enroll in the "flying doctors" service however! i am entitled to one flight evacuation per year!

january will bring motorcycle lessons so that i can get my kenyan license. i look forward to the ability to control my own mode of transportation! i am also getting a decent mountain bike that i hope will serve me well in this back country terrain. but i will try not to test the fleet of angels any further than necessary:-) they are already working overtime!

glue boys & child soldiers

Ishmael Beah is a former child solider from Sierra Leone. He wrote a powerful book called "a long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier" which I bought and read in one day this past summer. Amazing and disturbing book. I recommend it.

It has helped me to have more empathy for all the glue sniffing boys that roam the streets of any city here in Kenya. They are boys, who through no fault of their own, have become drug addicts as early as age five. They steal, harass, and sing songs off-pitch when they are high - but they are boys, they are someone's son, they are desperate, they are hungry and they are alone. I don't know how they got to where they are, but most 7 year olds don't go looking to do drugs, or to become soldiers.

I just found out from a friend's facebook wall that Ishmael Beah will speaking at one of my alma mater's (Calvin College) in January during the "January Series". January 11, 2008 to be specific. If you live in Grand Rapids or anywhere near it (to me "near" is about a 5 hour driving distance), I highly recommend you go see this guy speak. It is free, but I imagine you will have to line up for this one!
So, if you can, I highly recommend going to see Ishmael speak. I doubt you would regret it.

http://www.calvin.edu/january/2008/

heart in a headlock

i've been addicted to imogen heap lately - listening to her music again and again. the title track from one of her albums is "heart in a headlock" and while jogging down a dusty dirt road near my house, i realized this a perfect diagnosis for my internal chest pain.

many days, as i meet people in the village and listen to their stories, a tight, suffocating sensation develops in my chest. a single mother with 4 children, ostracized from the family, without food, water, firewood, or even a toilet, sits coughing on the ground describing her desperate living situation. headlock tightens. but i learn her name is grace, and then she smiles and laughs at a joke. the headlock loosens.

a grandmother, close to 75 years old, finds herself raising 10 grandchildren. some are as young as 2 years old. all of her children have died. she should be resting, her children caring for her. but she has no choice, she must now clothe and feed hungry mouths. headlock tightens. she shows me around her farm full of corn, bananas, passion fruit, and maize. she is able to earn enough money to send her grandchildren to school. the headlock loosens.

i meet a man named Joseph at the World AIDS day planning meeting. he tells me that less than five years ago he laid in a hospital bed weighing 23kg (just over 50 lbs) with a CD4 count of 7 (normal is in the thousands). he was nearly dead. headlock tightens. he was started on ARV's, now weighs 50kg and has a CD4 count of 700. he became a community health educator and started his own beadwork business that now employs 10 other people, all of whom are HIV+. the headlock loosens.

while waiting for a friend downtown one day, i witness an incredible act of violence against another person. headlock tightens, this time near strangulation. i ask my friends to pray. they do and share their own struggles. i feel connected even though we are far away. the headlock loosens.

injustice and violence tighten the grip, grace and love loosen the grip.

my heart is in a headlock.

Crumbs from our table

On the streets of Nairobi, Eldoret, and Plateau, I see people wearing clothes from North America, sometimes even from my hometown. Last week in Nairobi, I saw a woman wearing an Oilers jersey, on an Eldoret Avenue, a “Cassie Campbell Street Hockey Tournament” t-shirt, on a dirt road to the farm a young boy with a Toronto Maple Leaf jacket. Initially, one might think, “that is so cool!” Years ago, during my first trip to Nigeria, I thought it was kind of cool. Now, I have reason to pause when I see this.

The amount of used clothing here first struck me as I went on a search for Kenyan fabric that I might quilt with. My experience in Nigeria had been that there was beautiful Nigerian cloth everywhere – in markets, in stores, on the street corners. Women took great pride in their outfits (and Nigerians even have a reputation here for being well-dressed). I had made the incorrect assumption that this would be the case in Kenya. There is the red Maasai cloth and some bright cottons called kikoy, but even these can be difficult to locate. I started observing what people were wearing, and where they were getting it. And something started to bother me.

We (and I am included) in the “First world” or “Northern Hemisphere” apparently send our leftovers to less developed countries. And it is not always the nicest clothes that get sent. I saw a small child with a “Miami mice” t-shirt on. That has got to be at least two decades ago!
I think of the story of Lazarus the beggar in Luke 16 eating the crumbs off the rich mans table. “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table.” The rich man ended up in hell while Lazarus was seated in heaven and the rich man was begging for Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Like it or not, we are the rich man and the majority of the world is Lazarus. What are we called to do? What are we going to do? I, myself, am so supremely challenged by this. Do I wear my linen and give my leftovers? Do we just give away our old and unwanted clothing, the crumbs from our table after the feast?
And it is not just the “developing countries” that get the leftovers. A friend who volunteered in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina said they had to spend money getting rid of horrendous clothes donated by generous people. He said, and I read in various articles, that people had donated prom dresses and 1980’s one-piece silk jumpsuits. Now, imagine you live in the Superdome with 10,000 other people and you don’t even have a toilet. Are you going to want to put on someone’s old prom dress?
I think about some of the things I have donated in the past, and I am embarrassed that I expected someone else “less fortunate” to wear it. I thought, “well, they should appreciate having clothes at all!” What a poor attitude on my part. Why should someone, anyone, get my old leftovers. Are they not deserving of something new, just like I would buy for myself?

Something else that began to bother me was the lack of a local, indigenous clothing market or industry. Now, I don’t expect people to dress in their traditional clothes from 50 or 100 years ago, but it has been hard to find anything that has been made in Kenya other than school uniforms. I started to ask questions of my host family, friends, and colleagues. I have been told that four textile factories in the Eldoret area alone have closed in recent past, resulting not only in a loss of locally produced clothing, but a major loss in jobs. One colleague commented, “the used clothes are very cheap and so it makes us very happy to get such cheap clothes, but many local factories have closed down now because of it.” National Geographic, in the Africa issue last year, also reported that the influx of used clothing is essentially destroying the African textile industry.
This was reinforced by an article in the Daily Nation, a popular Kenyan newspaper, titled “Man sees hand of God in recall to garment firm.” The story is that William Odumbe had a well paying job in a garment factory which was shut down seven years ago. Unable to find a new job and forced to rely on his brother for help to buy food for his children, Mr. Odumbe said, “that was the time I wanted to look for a rope and hang myself, but something inside me told me to carry on.” Now, seven years later, another firm has decided to re-invest in the factory, update the equipment, and Mr. Odumbe was the first man they hired back. His joy and restored dignity practically leaps off the newsprint.

Now, you may be wondering how your skirt or dress shirt went from your closet to the market stalls in Eldoret? Well, used clothing establishments get an excessive amount of goods donated to them. Rather than throw away the excess, they sell it in large bundles to people here in Africa, and it takes a nice holiday cruise over the Atlantic. Once the bundles arrive, entrepreneurs buy a whole or part of a bundle in bulk and head to the market to make a buck. Some people just buy a stack and sell each piece for about 50 cents. Others are selective and find the best quality pieces to hawk on the street. It is common in downtown Eldoret to see a man wearing 10 suit jackets. At first I thought they were like the homeless in downtown Calgary, wearing every layer of clothing they had ever owned. Then I realized that they were selling the men’s suit jackets but they were their own walking stalls. Some of the clothes are actually still in good condition, others are years old, or have rips and stains (and are then sold much cheaper).

I am not sure that there is a surefire solution to these issues. I am certainly not against donating used clothing to the various outlets that accept them. After all, I grew up on second hand clothing, and have frequently donated my clothes that no longer fit or are flowing out of my closet. So, I don’t want to say, “Stop donating clothes” as there are people who will genuinely get a second or third use out of it. Recycling clothes also keeps them out of landfills.

When we do donate clothes, perhaps we should consider why we are giving it away. Is it filled with stains? Consider cutting it up into rags and use it to dust or clean your toilet. Is it way out of fashion? There are programs in high schools that accept old prom and bridesmaid dresses and re-fashion them into dashing new ball gowns for low income girls. (Cinderella project in Calgary, at least three of my bridesmaid dresses went there) Think about why you want to get rid of something and imagine a person on a downtown street in Calgary or Nairobi wearing it. Are you giving linens or crumbs?

photo link

i have started to upload photos to picasa, as i can work offline with it and it is connected to my gmail and blog. if the connection was every fast enough i could probably make nice slideshows. but at the moment i have 5 minutes of battery time on the computer left, so I will post the link to my public gallery here...
http://picasaweb.google.com/alidafernhout

i hope it works... i hope to upload some more photos soon.

out of necessity

In the past month I have lost count of the number of professional athletes I have met in my town and village. I have a cousin (I have been adopted by a family here) who runs for the country of Qatar and was inbetween trips to Korea and Switzerland. Some teenage boys walking home with me told me that their older brothers are in Venezuela on running scholarships. A friend who owns an internet café was a hurdler for the University of Arkansas. A man on the dirt road near my house, stopped and said “my name is Vincent Limo. I am a marathon runner and run all over the world. Do you know me?” I met an Olympic gold medalist the other day, and accidentally assumed he was the mechanic there to fix the car. Olympic runners seem to come a dime a dozen here. I am sure that every third person here is a professional runner of some sort.

My cousin, who runs 5km in 13 minutes (I can barely tie my shoes up in that time) commented to me that “you north Americans run for exercise; we run out of necessity.” I asked him to explain. He said that as a child, he had to walk or run 7km to school, each way. If it was raining, they ran the whole way. If they had to herd the cows, they had to run after wild cows or the predators out to get them. One colleague often recounts his childhood encounters with wild animals (i.e. giraffes, elephants, leopards). There are not nice smooth city paths here or indoor tracks and gyms. One has to dodge potholes, jump over fallen trees, and find their way down paths in the forest. They don’t run for exercise, they run out of necessity. Watch out for that leopard!

the gods must be crazy

I thought I was in a film last night. I had arrived at the hospital compound from Nairobi at 5:30pm last night just as it was getting dark and it was raining heavily. Elizabeth, the nursing matron, went to arrange a ride home for me.

I am standing under the awning with some other staff when I see some headlights flicker on. Some smoke comes belching out of this small truck and I see someone looking under the hood and playing with some wires. After 10 minutes of revving the engine, flicking the lights, the truck suddenly comes lurching down the hill as if it has no brakes. The transistion was not smooth and it was jumping around like a frog about to be stepped on.
“Alida, that’s your ride,” someone says.
All I could do was laugh. I load my bags in the back and gingerly open the door. I am expecting it to fall off. Thankfully, it doesn’t and we set on our way. The truck is still jumping as if the driver is still learning to drive a stick shift. He laughs and says, “the battery is not very strong!”
Less than 50 metres down the road, Isaiah is sticking his head under the steering wheel to remove his shoes. Is there some special test I will have to pass to drive with my head under the steering wheel with no shoes on?
He explains, “there is very much water coming in from somewhere and it is making my shoes wet. I have to remove them so I can keep them dry.”
Again, all I could do was laugh. We slip and slide our way to my house, nearing taking out numerous pedestrians and fenceposts. We “stopped” to pick up one rider, although Isaiah had to simultaneously brake and step on the gas to keep the truck going.

We arrive at my house to a barbed wire gate which I have to take down so that Isaiah can turn the truck around. He manages to leave without getting stuck and I struggle not to rip my skin to shreds trying to put the barbed wires sticks back in place in the dark. I jump over my barbed wire shortcut with my suitcase and backpack to a warm, dry welcome at home.

Now, if you have never seen the movie “the gods must be crazy” you probably won’t think this is funny as I do. So, go rent the movie and you will understand my vehicular experience!

(addendum: my kenyan colleagues were laughing so hard at the scene that they told me to journal about it. they also have all seen "the gods must be crazy" and agreed it was similar.)

new photos

i updated some photos, check out the links on the side.
i will write some new blogs this week, i have been very deliquent about that...

facebookisms

Alida is….
*Learning to be a good farm girl in the Rift Valley.
*Building arm muscles stirring ugali (corn flour & water), shucking corn, and hauling water from a well for a bath.
*Getting her butt kicked racing school kids down the road, and their shoes are completely falling apart.
*Is hoping she gets nice legs and bum walking 5-10 km a day.
*Is absolutely itching to buy a bike so she can stop walking 5-10km a day.
*Really, really wanting to buy a 100cc Yamaha motorbike so she can ride on the dirt roads during rainy season and do the 40km round trek to town without dying on a matatu.
*Is wondering why there are 4 Bata shoe stores in the span of 2 blocks in downtown Eldoret.
*Shaking her head as a billionaire is flying overhead in his helicopter while 8 year old homeless kids are sniffing glue on the street.
*Having her skin touched, hands held, and hair tousled by curious children on the road.
*Being stared at most of the day by people who have not seen white people before.
*Going through a coffee withdrawal and looks forward to getting her bodum and fresh coffee from her bag in Nairobi.
*going to have broken hand rehabilitation by milking a cow very soon.
*has eaten 2 omelets in one week, after eating less than 5 eggs in 30 years.
*is drinking fresh cows milk every day.
*eating beans and potatoes for breakfast everyday
*the only person in the whole town who wears sunglasses.
*happy to be living 20 minutes down the road from and old college friend and his wife! (small world).
*learning a lot about very interesting beliefs about procreation….
*trying to avoid getting set up with a kenyan man and may start wearing her “stay single” tshirt.
*a cell phone owner even though she doesn’t hear it ring most of the time.
*a bit surprised that she has seen personal ads looking for a “God fearing, very fertile, intelligent, second wife” (again, that stay single tshirt)

farm girl

As a young girl, I resembled Laura Ingalls from the TV show so much that I was asked for my autograph on a couple of occasions. Even watching the show now, I feel like I am looking in a mirror. I had the two long braids, big buck teeth, but lacked the bloomers and bonnet. Well, I now understand the advantage of bloomers. When it is less than 10 degrees Celsius and you have just bathed in a wooden shelter out of a bucket and now must put on a skirt, bloomers would probably be nice and warm!

But by the time I am finished living in rural Kenya, Laura Ingalls is going to have some stiff competition. I have already honed my drawing-water-from-a-well skills in Indonesia and Nigeria and can do it so well that even African women are impressed with my knack for hauling H20.
I am currently learning how to properly stir ugali to a perfect paste in an “African kitchen” over a wood burning mud stove. And I can tell you, it looks easier than it is. Try mixing cement in a steel pot over a fire with smoke in your eyes. Mama said I am almost ready for independence and I will soon be preparing it on my own without any flour clumps in it.
Baba has threatened that I will be milking the cows as soon as my hand is healed, or did he say it would be good therapy to heal my hand?
I stopped using the headlamp to go to the outhouse because I could see how many spider webs were gracing the wooden throne. I am now probably one of the fastest bathers in the world as the warm water quickly evaporates off my cold skin in the bathing shelter in the cool of the Kenyan morning. Living at an elevation of 8,000 feet has its benefits in keeping the weather cool and it is never so evident to me at bath time. Alas, I do bathe with warm water which I truly appreciate!
You know how your parents had to walk 5 miles to school in the snow uphill both ways? I almost have them beat with walking 2 km each way through muddy roads and farmland to work although I don’t have to go uphill. This morning I had 5 pounds of mud on each shoe despite following Mama down the railroad half the way to the hospital. I am quickly becoming an expert in avoiding stepping in cow poo without even looking down at the road.
Although they do not have covered wagons here, I am sure that hopping in the back of a pickup truck and bouncing down a Kenyan dirt road is just as challenging. On Saturday I wedged myself between metal gates and bags of cement in the back of a little Isuzu and tried to precariously hang onto the sides while it bumped through 2 foot potholes. (I think I need to make friends with the local billionaire who just flies his helicopter to avoid road traffic – no lie, it was flying over me on Sunday on my way home from church).
I am fortunate enough to do my Swahili homework by electric lights and not kerosene lamps. But we have some just in case as the power goes out at least once a day.
All of these rural experiences are molding me into a more versatile and grateful person. I love the family who is sharing their home and life with me. I am learning how to be flexible in a challenging environment. And I am practicing my audition in case they ever decide to do a “Little House on the Prairie 2: Alida vs. Laura.”

mzungu

Gringo, bature, mzungu – they are some of the words that identify me as a person in a culture that is not my own. White person – two words that can at times make me cringe. I have never been very sure if these words are simply a description or are said in a context that carries some spite, anger or discontent.

One of my Swahili teachers provided one plausible explanation for the history of the word mzungu that does not bring with it a derogatory feeling.

The coastal people of Kenya used a bluff overlooking the water to watch for sinister weather but one day saw something else that was even stranger than a bad storm. Over the whitecaps, they saw a strange moving thing with large flapping sheets. As it drew nearer, they became frightened by this enormous thing moving on the water. But even more disturbing was what was on the boat. They saw creatures with very light skin, long hair and even wild hair on their faces. The coastal people had never seen anything like these creatures and decided it would be best to escape before the creatures landed. They ran for over a month and arrived in what is was known as Zanzibar. They told the local people they had run from strange creatures arriving on the coast of their homeland. They couldn’t be sure what they were or what their intentions were, but they thought it best to stay away from them. They had been settled there for little more than a month, when again they spotted these large vessels with the strange creatures approaching Zanzibar. They exclaimed that these creatures have “been coming around” as they went from their homeland and now were “coming around” to Zanzibar. The verb for “coming around” in Swahili is “zunguka” and to “be surrounded” is “zungukwa.” Thus, they created the word, “mzungu” for these strange creatures that were coming around.

Whether or not this explanation is exactly true, I do not know, but I know that I am stuck with the name mzungu regardless. My host mother explained to me today that some of the children out here in the Rift Valley have never seen a white person before; they only know the word to describe what they see. Some of the children think that my name is actually mzungu, hence they believe they are calling me by name as I pass by their farm. So, I no longer cringe when I hear mzungu whispered by a 3 year old in downtown Nairobi or yelled across a field in the Rift Valley, for they are greeting me by name. And I am coming around to greet them.

incognito

Even in the best of times I am not a very subtle person. Among friends and family I am known to be opinionated, loud at times, laugh loudly when it is quiet, and people generally know when I am around. I made a “disturbing” speech about HIV & AIDS from the pulpit of my childhood church shortly before I left for Kenya. I said the word sex several times and if people didn’t know who I was before, they certainly are not likely to forget now. I am not very incognito.

Now, imagine this loud, outspoken girl in Kenya where her skin colour speaks volumes before she even opens her mouth. Incognito, I think not. In addition to my light skin colour, I arrived with a broken hand which was bandaged and drew many stares by itself. When I didn’t want to explain extreme mountain biking to people, I joked that I had punched someone and broke my hand (I usually told this to tall men with guns, not grandmas or children). I again realized I was not incognito when after my cast was removed, I walked through a government building area in Nairobi and a guard that I didn’t recognize, but had apparently conversed with, yelled jokingly after me, “Don’t hit any more people!” I garnered a few stares from passerby’s and smiled very gently at them.

Now, I am living in the Kenyan countryside in an area that few white people frequent. As I make my six kilometer trek from the main road to the farm, children and adults alike run from their homes, abandon their cows, and stop their work to stare as I pass by. I greet each and every one with a “habari yako” or “what’s the news” to which they give the standard reply of “nzuri” or “fine” but stand with a look of astonishment. School children run after me in groups, and when I greet them they literally somersault on the ground in peels of laughter. I have barely opened my mouth in public in a week, but my physical presence is speaking volumes. Incognito, I think not.