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Charlotte's Travels
What I would like to do is describe my average day. the problem is, there is no average day here. Everyday things shift and change, i learn something new, I'm back to square one and being the beginner mzungu once more, or I master something and step out of the usual boundaries of my world.
The closest thing to normal day during the week begins around 7.30am. I get up and eat breakfast cooked by my house mama, surrogate mother and friend, Charity. I don't know what she puts inthe eggs she makes (maybe it's all the oil), but I'm in love with them. Them and the mandatory Kenyan staple, Chai tea, are the best incentives to get up in the mornings. I leave the house at 8.30am for the half hour walk along the red earthed path that bordered by the main road with matatus hurltling along it on one side and rolling greenery on the other. An example of how nothing goes to plan: tuesday morning there was a huge dead otter in the middle of the path. It was still there on Friday and probably will be for a while. How a dead otter got onto a subruban Nairobi street is something I'm still trying to figure out.
Jessie, Katie (an American and Candian I work with) and I try to get to the children's home by 9am. We're usually greeted by a pile of jumping children just finishing their morning porridge. Sometimes they stop being a pile and start being a mob and jump and climb all over us. But those are the bad days, some mornings their greetings are the sweetest in the world. If we are lucky we help in class from around 9.20 until 10.30. The classes are basic and little learning is actually achieved but they give the children some kind of activity and the singing and the prayers at the beginning are worth it alone to watch the kids say the Lord's Prayer in misguidely pronounced English (I don't remember the 'holy spit' being taught in my childhood). Unfortunately Esther, the local volunteer teacher, is often sick or it is just too wet for her to come (Kenyans can't function in rain) and there's no class. Of course there's Freddy, the teacher who is actually paid to teach, but I would be waiting a long time if I waited every morning for him to start class. He prefers to shave the children's heads. I shouldn't complain too loudly. He did help me and Katie run games outside the other morning and it was alot of fun. Teaching all 40 of them, all impatient, to play tag, should have ended in chaos but apart from the fact that Faith and Adija, the taggers, didn't understand that 'tag' does not entail tackling to the ground, it went really well.
This, combined with the Thursday morning when Katie and I managed to run our own class, gives me hope. It completely shocked us that we were able to do it, but we were desperate. It was raining so the kids were stuck inside and Esther wasn't there and there's only so much screaming and being jumped on our ears and back can take. I still don't know how we did it, given the kids are misbehaved in the best of classes let alone with two teachers who don't speak swahili and won't hit them if they disobey our jumbled swahili commands. But after shouting in swahili 'go to class', 'sit down', 'don't hit', 'get down' 'colour' and 'good work' enough times we had 40 pictures of paka (cats), gari (cars) and tunda (fruit), and 40 happy children.
10.30am, Kenyan time so 11am, is tea time. There are sometimes snacks to give out if someone has donated them. This is nice for the kids and nice for me, it gives me a clear cut, relatively quiet job to do making 85 sandwiches or doling out 85 cups of popcorn.
After tea is, according to the schedule in the office, 'stuctured play time' which equates to 75 children (the other ten are babies who sit crying in their cots) running wild and unsupervised. I usually spend half this time changing babies and the other half making vitimin water for the kids for lunch. A previous volunteer sensibly donated money for this and the kids really need it, given about all the eat is beans and rice. The nurse however is convinced we are poisining them because the vitamins are an unfortunate shade of radioactive green.
After they've drunkt their radioactive poison with their beans and rice, I run around cleaning all the cups and feeding the children who can't feed themselves with spoons twice the size of their mouths (the rule here - if you can hold your own spoon, you're feeiding yourself, too bad you're nine months old and don't have a mother). Once the kids have finished Jessie, Katie and I eat our own lunch under a tree in the front yard.
Afternoons can be hard. Sometimes there is another class at 2pm, but usually there isn't. Instead there is sleep ('lala', my favourite swahili word) for the younger ones and more 'structured playtime' for the older children. My 'structure' goes something like this - running in and out of the office trying to confirm with management whatever information I've been trying to get out of them for the past week; stopping fights while being jumped on, comforting a crying child and trying to give the one good child patiently waiting next to me a hug; playing with balls, which often equals taking balls of screaming children throwinf them at me; blowing bubbles and watching 20 kids run after each one trying to be the lucky one to pop it before the ground does; and, my favourite, giving out cuddles while singing songs I can't understand and listening to chatter I can't understand while my hair is braided, usually by at leat four children at any one time. This is a favourite among the kids and I brave the dirty hands, tangled hair, pain (these kids braid the propoer Kenyan way, not French plaits here) and territory fights over my head because it gives them something quiet (relatively) and claim (mostly) to do.
Around 4pm we unlock our bags from the cupboard and peel children off ourselves and the cupboard before giving alot of hugs and shouting alot of 'kesho's ('tomorrow') as we leave for the walk back home.
Along the way back everyone greets us with 'fine, fine' (there's no word for hello in swahili so you just ask how people are) and school children, who see us everyday but are still not over our mzungu-ness, giggle and shake our hands. When I get home I am disgustingly dirty and try to shower but invariably the water of heater or both aren't working so I often have to skip it. Some days I go into Westlands by matatu (crazy bus-taxi-vans) and use the internet, drink milkshakes and sometimes watch movies. Those days, I feel I'm living such a dual life.
Charity makes us dinner, which usually consists of alot of carbs, all Kenyans really eat and I read, write, and talk with the other volunteers until I'm too tired to stay awake.
I hope this gives anyone interested more insight into my life here. I'll tell you about a few of my less normal days (most of them) in my next blog post. Kwaheri.
- comments
Sharon Fisher Well - our phone conversations didn't give me such a good picture of your days. You must be sooo tired at the end of each day. Bloody good work though! Sharon.
michelle Loved the description of your day Charlotte - sounds VERY exhausting. xx oo mm
gia hey charlotte, this is a wonderful post, thanks for writing it. i know that when you are traveling or living in new places it's really difficult to get yourself to really chronicle the events that happen. it all sounds really overwhelming and intense but also like a tremendous and changing and impactful experience. i'm sure it has and will continue to change you a lot. i found it wonderful to imagine what you are doing and everything you see, and can't wait for whenever the next time is that our paths cross and i can hear the inflection in your voice and the bright in your eyes as you recount these wonderful stories. it all must be very surreal and braving. stay strong and healthy :) with much love gia