Right. So. Monday.
The fun advanture that happened was several very drunk men who tried to either make friends with me, or propose marriage. There was one guy who told me to go to Kansas and ask for his sister Lucy. I tried to tell him that the US was very big and I don’t know everyone there, especially not in Kansas, but he was too drunk to get it. He tried to get my phone number but I told him (truthfully) that I didn’t know my number (I have intentionally NOT memorized it) and that I don’t give it to people I don’t know. He said bye like 5 times but kept coming back to shake my hand and remind me to tell everyone at home that he met a Mkamba (tribe) named…I forget what his name was. So sorry Mr. Mkamba. :-P
Drunk guy numbers 2 and 3 just said hi and mumbled something in Swahili before walking on.
Drunk guy number 4 was an adventure. His name, I later found out, is Chacha. He began by telling me that he loved me. Asked him how he could love me if he just met me, and didn’t know me. He said “I saw you and I loved you”. He then told me he wanted to be in the Guinness book of World Records for being the first black man to marry a mzungu…I told him that had already been done. So he said he wanted to make history for his village. He told me he wanted to buy me and take me home…I told him in the US you don’t buy women. He kept forgetting my name and called me Caroline and a couple other names. The VCT counselors and I were all sitting around on stools outside the tent, just having a good time playing with his head. I told him that if he got sober and didn’t drink any alcohol for one year I would allow him to ask me to marry him, but I wouldn’t even consider it if he was drunk (mind you this was like 3pm). He wanted my phone number so he could send me a message, but I told him to just write his message in the dust and I would get it. None of this seemed off to him. :-P So June 6th, 2012, I highly doubt, but I guess there’s an infinitesimally small chance, that a sober Chacha will be waiting for me to ask me to marry him. Unfortunately for him, I have no plans to be in Kenya at that point. Especially because when he came by later smoking he said “but smoking is okay?” I said no. He got tested and hoped that a negative HIV test would convince me, but I stood my ground. Aren’t you proud of me Daddy? Besides…he didn’t ask your permission first. ;-)
So that was Monday. Tuesday I went with a woman named Costa who works with Zinduka’s savings and loans programs. They have a total of about 90 people in the program. They meet every 2 weeks in small groups and I think monthly as a whole group. They get mentored and counseled and they get food from the program. Costa facilitates their bi-monthly meetings in which they put a set amount of svings into the "pot" every 2 weeks. They then take out a loan from the pot, and pay it back a couple of weeks later with 10% interest. They’re paying interest to the r future self, because they take another loan from that pot, but it’s bigger because they’ve added to the pot. It basically forces them to be financially responsible, and save their money, and they have a buffer, because if anyone ever has an unexpected financial crisis the group can help them out (since they are meeting together and usually live close to each other, they are usually also good friends.)
I went to one at the church and one in the Mukuru slum. Mukuru was interesting to walk through, as slums always are. It’s always fascinating me to see what is going on on the side of the road. Every time I’m in a car or walking quickly I wish I could don a disguise of black skin and leisurely stroll down the street and see what people are doing, what they’re selling, and peep down side streets without causing a scene. Along the side of the road there was a channel that had not-that-dirty looking water flowing down amidst garbage. It flowed into a river that also didn’t look that dirty. But as we got deeper into the slum that water got thicker and darker until we got to the little alleyway we met in, and it was just lack sludge that wasn’t moving except that it was bubbling. You can imagine what that smelled like. We sat for a couple minutes in someone’s living room while we waited for all the group members to arrive. The living room area of the house (which was one room, divided into sleeping and sitting rooms by a curtain) was about 5ft long and 10ft wide. The whole house was probably 15x10ft. A family with children lived there…and all there was room for was a narrow 1.5ft wide coffee table. One light bulb hung from the ceiling in the middle.
We soon went outside and sat on a couple of benches around a table with the ladies, who settled their accounts and chatted for a little with Costa, who gave them tips for better keeping accounts and running their little pot, and some other stuff that I didn’t understand. Then we headed out. By that time the kids had gotten out of school so there was lots of shouting and pointing, of course.
Today is Wednesday. I spent the day with the Family Matters program. Family Matters apparently began in the US, but I’ve never heard about it until today. The instructors do this every day, two sessions each day, but each class meets once a day once a week for 5 weeks. At the end they get a certificate and the incentive to come is in this case chai and mandazi (worth it!) though sometimes they get free food or even cash for attending classes like this. Family Matters is a class for parents of 9-12 year old kids that teaches them how to talk to their kids about stuff, with a focus on sexual health, since sex is a really taboo topic in this culture (as in, even on the cable TV they mute the word “sex” and even the euphemism “sleeping with”). They target this age because stats say a significant number of kids are sexually active around the age of 13 so they want the parents to get to them before that. They also teach them how to in general improve their relationships with their kids in this very volatile time of life. So it’s a really great program. We were going to do 2 sessions but our second location is apparently currently being systematically torn down because the houses were built to close to the railway…so instead we just went to lunch. I had chicken but Linda and Joseph, the instructors, had whole tilapia. So after they finished eating we had a photo shoot with the fish’s head. See here for all those pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100111366766905.2535117.428882&l=0d217a8fa6
So that was today. Commuting to the church is interesting so let me tell you about that…
At 7:30 we leave the house. Lock the front door unlock the gate, lock the gate. Spend 5 minutes walking to the estate entrance past people giving me funny looks but at least not pointing and shouting. Then we cross a somewhat busy 2-lane road and walk for another 5 minutes to the main highway. At this point there are a million cars whizzing by, 3 lanes in each direction separated by a 20-ft wide median. There is no such thing as a traffic light or a crosswalk, so you just find a spot with a good view, and run across the highway whenever it looks like you’ll probably make it across alive. Then you take a minute to recover your heartbeat and do it across the other side. Then you wait a couple of minutes for a matatu that is going where you’re going. At this time of day basically all of them are going to the city center, and the church is on the way to the city center. So we hop on one where the far-collector guy isn’t being too eager (because it’s less likely that he’s drunk if you do that) and hop on…most of the time pushing other people out of the way so Cathy doesn’t get on a matatu that fills up before I get on..sometimes even after it starts moving. You hunch down and move into an empty seat, trying very hard not to touch the handrails because they’re so dirty and greasy they’re slippery. (yes I had to touch one to be able to tell you that…not that I touched it just for that purpose!) So you sit in a seat that’s probably torn and the foam is sticking out. If you’re unlucky you sit next to the door, and if they decided to let 14 people on the fare-collector/door-opener/passenger recruiter will squish you over and sit on the edge of your seat…or stand with his back to the door and just hover over you with a smirk on his face that says “ha. I’ve never been this close to a mzungu before” as you try to lean away….
Anyway. After a minute he goes around poking people on the shoulder and they hand him the fare. Depending on the matatu (it has nothing to do with where you’re going, and everything to do with what they feel like charging) It ranges from 10-50 shillings. If the guy doesn’t have change, you just don’t get any change. Tough luck. So when you get close to where you want to go you tell the door-opener and he bangs twice on the roof. This signals the driver to pull over, and you BOOK IT out of there because IF they come to a complete stop it will only be for a second or two so you’d better get out of there before he pulls away or you will go farther than you want. :-P
So we arrive basically right in front of the church. It’s about 8:05 on a light traffic day and as late as 8:30 if the traffic is bad. But it is always an adventure. Some of the matatus have been tricked out with black lights, new seats, interesting colored paint, or even sub woofers. Apparently this actually does succeed in attracting passengers. Aaaand that’s my commute!
I had a hamburger and the greasiest French fries ever for dinner tonight. It was wonderful. I have been craving fries for a while, and I haven’t had a burger in months. This one was actually pretty good…much better than the last one I had in…January. Bingo.
Tomorrow is “orphans and vulnerable children” day with Zinduka… apparently also Chacha came and asked for me yesterday, and he was sober. So…potentially one day down, who knows what he drank later in the day. :-P
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