Civil Rights and the White Tax

Refugee In America
There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings
All day everyday.
There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew
You would know why.
~Langston Hughes

My cousin, Colleen, was working on this poem in the early hours of the morning as I had already started my day today. It reminded me of some of the events of yesterday, Orthodox Easter, if you didn't know. Yesterday morning I listened to Francis Chan's Easter sermon on i-tunes (podcasts are downloadable for free). He talked about the largeness of Jesus Christ. Chan began the sermon asking the crowd to raise their hand if they thought they could beat him up if given the opportunity. Some people were hesitant, while others, even young ladies in the front row, raised their hands. Then Chan went into how powerful Jesus Christ truly is. I am not going to go into all the details of the sermon, but you can listen to it if you have i-tunes on your computer and look up Cornerstone Sili Valley Church. Two things I'll mention about it are: one, the said beating up of the Pastor; and two, a quote that was referenced from J. Vernon McGee, "This is God's universe and he does things his way. You may have a way, but you don't have a universe."

I greatly enjoyed that quote as it is so bold, yet clear, and possibly offensive to some of you. One thing Francis Chan covered in the sermon was that Jesus did not come to cart around sheep and baby bunnies. He came to show us how to live and to save our rotten, stinkin lives. And that, sometimes, was/is offensive to people.

All that said, the second quote was worth mentioning, but had nothing to do with today's post. After listening to the sermon yesterday morning and spending some prayer time on the back porch, the boys and I went to Kisii to get supplies at the beloved Nakumat. To get there we walk up a monstrous dirt path to the road, where we then catch a matatu (van or station wagon form of public transport). We waited at the road for some time before anyone stopped. Within minutes of a matatu stopping, a man emerged from the vehicle shouting at the driver in kiswahili, and in English said "I can pay anything you want! Just because you see the color of their skin and the color of mine!" He continued yelling and we realized that what was happening is that the driver was kicking the man out so that he could try to get more money from us by charging us the "white tax" (hyperinflated price given to mzungus). So the man, who was well-dressed and probably has a middle class job, was offended (and from my counseling stance, probably hurt) that he was kicked out by probably someone of his own tribe, and definitely by someone of his own race and nationality.
Upon realizing the situation, unanimously, we refused to get in the car with that driver. Then, of course, the driver asked the man to get back in, and good enough, the man refused. When the driver pulled away, the man pulled himself together, but was still angry (understandably-- I think that would rock my entire day). We offered our apologies and told the man that we also felt the driver's act was unjust. The next matatu that pulled up had only room for 1, so off he went.

We quietly waited for another matatu to come-- I think all of us might have been digesting that event (at least I was). Several minutes later, we piled into a matatu and headed towards Kisii. Along the way, we saw a large crowd stopped on the side of the road, watching something from over the guard rail, down in the valley. So, of course, the driver pulled over and asked what was going on; and it was a thief being beaten to death for his crime. Here, and it seems, all over East Africa, thieves are beaten on-the-spot by an angry mob (is possible); and if the thief was sneaky enough to get away undetected, then he is tracked down by the angry mob and then beaten. So, on this Orthodox Easter Sunday, on the way to Kisii, a thief was being beaten for his crimes while EVERYONE watched, including everyone in the matatu, who quickly filed out to watch. I stayed behind in the car because, even if just, I don't enjoy watching people being beaten. I'll keep my thoughts on that to myself.

When people had had their fill and/or the beating was over (I'm not sure which), people piled back into the car and off we went. I'm not really sure what to say about those two events, but rather I'll let those stories tell themselves. Something didn't sit right with me about either story in light of the big picture of the universe that was painted for me in the Francis Chan sermon earlier.

What are your comments on the stories? You can leave a comment without signing in or leaving your name if you choose not to. For me, From the first story of the man being thrown out of the matatu for being black, was enough to remind me that we still have a ways to go in civil rights; and that as whites, we have the power to reject those injustices by not giving in to the certain "comforts" given to us by our color.

Easter in Kijabe (Pasaka toka Kijabe)

This Easter I stayed at the Rift Valley Academy in Kijabe, Kenya. Erica was off in the US getting her wedding plans finalized and so my friend Sarah and I (whom you might remember from my ABO blogs last July) kept the house warm for the weekend. Two other friends came in from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Juli and Kate, who teach at HOPAC, an international school. We had a great weekend laughing and telling stories as we celebrated the resurrection of our savior. Here is a pictoral narrative of the weekend:


This is the view from the airstrip and walking to the cliff that overlooks the Great Rift Valley:
















Easter morning we went to the neighbor, Lori's house for breakfast after the sunrise service held at the football field:














The view from the football field at sunset:









Hanging out with Sarah, Juli, and Kate at the Jander's House at the lower station:




Ok, so the layout is really off in this posting. I was experimenting with having pics on the left and text on the right. I'm not changing it, so bare with me. Thanks and Happy Easter!

Potatoes, Reading Competitions, and Headdresses.

For the past couple of weeks I've been fighting against the schools closing for their tri-annual break. My proposed deadline for the baseline data for education is May 16th, so together with my Kenyan colleague Francis, we've been data collecting machines. We have been to all 9 schools in the Nyametaburo/Nyangiti area, which include: Nyametaburo primary and secondary, Nyangiti Primary, Siore Simba primary, Taragwiti primary, Gukipimi community primary, St.Joseph's private primary, St.Paul's private primary, and Imani (Faith) private pre-school. The data collection includes meeting with the whole staff of teachers from each school, meeting with the headmasters individually to collect enrollment and exam records, and meeting with the students to ask them about their home-life, school-life and various obstacles involved in going to school.

I really enjoyed sitting with the students to ask them about their experiences. As the children, Francis, and I sat in a circle, it reminded me of being a guidance counselor again. In those days, as prescribed by my Guru of Guidance, Jan, I would have a group of students over in the office for "lunch bunch" in which they would spend the opening part of lunch sharing on who lives at their home, what's their favorite sport, etc. I also felt like that popular female journalist from the 80's, who every now and then, would have a show on Nickelodeon in which she would sit in a circle with some kids and talk about current world issues.
Anyway, all that said, not only did it allow me to know what factors are involved in their learning (or lack there of), but it gave each student a chance to be heard-- possibly for the first time. Let me take a minute to set the stage for you folks: I didn't choose all the students in the school, but instead selected the top and bottom 3 students from each class. I also kicked out all the teachers and staff so that the students would feel as free as possible to share everything.

Here are some answers from the students:
In response to "Do you enjoy learning," almost all the students in each school said yes. Here is why: because education is the key to success, to make my future life better, to have knowledge on how to lead my future life, learning enhances good adult behavior, and education allows us to later help our community (one little 1st grader raised her baby hand and said "so we can learn to read!").
"What is life like at home?" Not enough time to study because of fetching water, cooking, washing, taking care of the younger siblings, working in the farms,etc. One girl, by the time she finishes all of her household chores, begins studying at 9pm and continues until 12am (but that's only if the kerosene in her lamp lasts long enough). She also shared that she wished she had her own room so that she could concentrate on her studies. Almost all of the children raised their hands in saying that they'd come to school in the evening hours if the school had electricity so that they could study their notes at night.
One thing that surprised the high schoolers when I told them was that when I tell American kids that there are African students who would love to go to school in America, and the American student's response is "give em my seat." The students here just cannot imagine, with all that the American students are provided with at school (i.e.- electricity, breakfast and lunch, textbooks, notebooks, pens, etc) that they would turn down the opportunity.
Out of 32 total students surveyed at Nyametaburo Primary school, 19 students eat dinner every night and 10 eat breakfast because there isn't enough food to go around. And when I say "ate" it's a relative term because some of the little ones said that they eat a small potato for dinner-- not a stuffed baked potato from Outback Steakhouse, but a plain potato, possibly uncooked. Some of the children just have a cup of chai (boiled milk mixed with water and some tea and sugar).
Another notable moment from the survey is that all of the students push themselves to go to school. Most of them, their parents sort of care if they go or not, but for the children of farmers, their parents would prefer if they'd stay home and help with the farming, which is an enormous pressure on the students-- if your parents says to stay home and weed today, you stay home and weed-- no refuting.
From all the schools surveyed, every student loves reading and if given a library and enough kerosene for their lamp, would read all the time. (that one's for you Celeste, if you're reading this).

On Thursday, I went to a reading competition held at St. Paul's Primary, which consists of grades nursery to 5. I loved witnessing even the babiest of students reading letters in English. The first up to bat was the nursery kids, who read their vowels in front of the whole school + 2 visitors. One of my fav little ones, Mary Robi, who is the tiniest thing with the biggest smile, and always carries around a little black purse across her chest, steps up to the front, and with her loudest voice unashamedly reads her vowels and and then the entire alphabet, and comes back to sit down next to me. The whole school claps for each student as they walk back to their seats. From grades 1-5, students would come up and read an excerpt from an early reader book in English, and then another book in Kiswahili. When the competition was finished the teams (Red House and Blue House) were tallied to see the winner (points are deducted for each word not read from each student on a team).
Afterwards, Brahmwell, the headmaster, asked if any of the students wanted to recite any poems for us; and so some of them did so. It was cute because they would get up in front of the school and while reciting, they had full body motions to go with it!
One had to do with a squiggly worm in the earth under a tree. My little Mary Robi got up with 4 other classmates to recite her poem with motions. Some of the students also recited Bible verses, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles Creed (Pastor Gann would LOVE that one). When they were through, I couldn't help but teach them the hippopotamus song that I learned (of all places) when I used to volunteer at H.S. church retreats in college. We sang, danced, and sang and danced again to the lyrics and motions of the hippo song that was loved by all.


I'm sorry that I didn't get any pictures of these events. I don't bring my camera along very often-- for one, because I carry the smallest backpack ever for convenience; and for two, because my charger for the camera's battery is gone and so I need to possibly find a new one in Nairobi or worse- buy a new camera with my non-monies. HOWEVER, I did manage to get some snaps of yesterday's lunch at our Chairman, Philip Mahochi's house. I picked up my outfits that I had made at the tailors in TZ for a total of <$30; and wore one of them to lunch-- headdress and all. The ladies were all over it, ha!

Seriously though, if you want to make a donation to the Education program or hold a fundraiser for it, I wouldn't mind. If you want to do it for anything specific, just let me know, otherwise it'll go into the general Education Program account, which keeps this program going-- not to sound like a PBS special or anything.

Prayer Requests:
~to collect all the information for the baseline evaluation
~to not be overwhelmed while doing it.
~to be given wisdom in how to go about analyzing the info, as it is not my strong-suit
~for health of the team, including the CDC staff. (I've been feeling really tired and nauseous lately)
~for funding for all the programs
~for a successful Bh2o+ event coming up in a week across American campuses.

Pictures are mostly from the lunch at the Mahochi's. Mama ChaCha (Philip's wife) and their son Gilbert came into town from Nairobi for a long weekend and so Mama Chacha's mom and sister came in from the surrounding area too. Mama Chacha's mom is the one with the long ear lobes, which is a dying practice. Philip's mom is the other grandma-type. Mama Chacha is the extremely light one. The woman to the right of me in the top picture is Clara, whom I befriended last Thursday. Her and her husband own a successful hotel in town. She invited me to her house on Thursday, which is a HUGE western-style house across the valley from ours, chock-full of banana trees, pumpkins, a large chicken coup, an exercise bike in her sunroom, and a victorian-like red velvet lounger couch in the living room. <== This random grandpa was at a wedding we went to a couple weeks ago. I've never seen a man carry a baby like this before. The men here seem to generally be very loving with their children, which is something that didn't happen in Sudan-- or most of Africa, from what I know. *oh and you can click on the pictures to view them at full size. Also, to view more pics, go to www.nuruinternational.org

Be Hope To Her (B H2o+)

Be Hope to Her is a Nuru sponsored event that will cover several campuses across the country. College girls who sign up for the event will carry buckets on their head to a water source and then fill their bucket and carry it back, on their head, to where they started. For example, at WVU the girls will carry their buckets from the Mountainlair (student center) all the way down to the Mon River and back up a steep incline. The college boys, who will not be carrying water, will be alongside the route to give information to the onlookers of the event.

The purpose of the event is to raise awareness on the subject of water. Water, for everyone is necessary to sustain life, whether you live in the United States or Kenya. However, for Kenyans (and most of the developing world) using that necessity is quite laborious. Girls can spend up to 10 hours a day just getting water-- this doesn't include getting firewood or cooking, or--not to mention--going to SCHOOL! These girls and women, ages ranging from 4-64, walk for miles to get this life-sustaining necessity.

Ok, well I'm not going to talk much more on the subject because you have all heard it before..and the more I talk about it, the more these girls that I know become a general "that's too bad for them." So, instead, I challenge you to spend 5 minutes watching the BH2o+ video and maybe even check out the website further. This problem of water directly affects the problem of girls going to school, so it's intertwined with my work.

Here's the link. You won't regret watching it-- it's an amazingly crafted video, from an art perspective.

www.bhope2her.org

If you feel like you want to get to know these people more, go to www.nuruinternational.org and watch the video, Portraits of Kuria, which is another amazing,short film.

just a small note...

The kitchen





The living room


My room (Janine's old room)


Hey everyone!

The other day I added some new pics of the old house and, as of today, we moved into the new house next door Pictures above). The reason for the move was that Foundation Team One left for the States today (4 a.m.). Early this morning, FT2 awoke to send off FT1 and in the same token, they officially passed the hat to us. Nicole and Doug are off to fight Extreme Poverty in Africa from the States until Nuru heads to Malawi next year (which is the normal rotation); and Janine and Jake are home until June and then return to the field with FT2.

We made the move because the house that FT2 was staying in is not yet finished and so the Fundis (workmen) can finally finish the house. Then, when Janine and Jake return, they will stay in our old house. As you can see from the pictures from earlier in the week, the old house wasn't that bad off (although some referred to it as a jail cell)-- mainly just some painting and final touches.

The nice thing about both houses is that the shower head is hooked to the electricity so that we get hot water straight from the shower head. Our only current challenge is with the pump, so as of late, we have no running water, but that should be fixed again by tomorrow. When we don't have running water, there is a spring very close to the house for fetching "clean" water. Actually, the spring water is probably clean, it's the jerry cans we use that are questionable. So we filter our drinking water and boil it for coffee and tea, but its clean enough for bathing and washing without assistance.

On to the schools:
Thanks to everyone who prayed for me in finding a CDC Chairman for Education. In the last blog I posted a picture of Francis Magige. He's a retired teacher of 30 yrs and offers much wise counsel. I think he's going to make a great chairperson for Nuru.
We've been going around to the 8 different schools the past 2 weeks and already he has added so much to the meetings. Such as his ability to speak in-and-out of English, Kiswahili, and Kikuria, to name one attribute. He also offered advice to one of the headmasters to start keeping records of those who drop out of school and those who stay-- yes, they really didn't have those.
Another thing to mention is that Francis is ALWAYS on time, if not early!! That is a rarity here in Africa. As they say in Swahili "haraka, haraka, hiena, baraka" (hurry, hurry brings no blessing). My Kiswahili teacher had a rebuttal to that statement when I repeated it to him: "pole pole huumiza matumbo" (slowly slowly brings pain to the belly).

Well, I'd love to update more, but it's getting about that time for dinner prep, as I can smell from my room...

I'd like to let you all know that I changed my settings for the COMMENTS section of my blog so that ANYONE can enter a comment without having to register an account. Just click "anonymous." Also, I added a "wish list" to the right-hand column; and the links to my fellows teammates' blogs. Lastly, Please check out the Be Hope To Her website and watch the video. It's great!! The link is: www.bhope2her.org

kwaheri!!

Isibania...

Introducing Francis Magige, my newly hired CDC Chairman for Education:


Here is the other team's house, soon to be our house. The one we are staying in now is just to the left.


The Kitchen:



The living room:



My African and American Kanga that serves as a curtain in my room:

The Retired Teachers Council

Yesterday I met with the 5 retired teachers in the area to discuss the history of the schools and what can come of the future of education for Nyametaburo and Nyangiti. The meeting went awesome and I learned a lot about the school system here and about the history of schooling in this area. For example, in 1938 an Italian priest established a primary school in Isibania. Isibania (where I live) is an hour and a half's walk from Nyametaburo; and so any student from the surrounding area would have to walk that distance to school everyday in addition to their chores at home (farming,etc). It wasn't until 1960 that a primary school was opened in Nyametaburo, and 1993 was when the first school in Nyangiti was established. There are 6 prominant schools in total: 1 secondary and 5 primary. The remaining schools are as follows: Taragwiti, 1985; Siori Simba, 1990s; Isibania secondary school, 1968 (so children all over had to walk there for secondary ed); and Nyametaburo Secondary was opened in the past 5 years.

One of the retired teachers told me that they walked that 1 1/2 hours to and from school everyday in order to finish high school. He said that at one point he became discouraged and wanted to quit, but then Philip Mahochi's dad (Nuru's CDC Chairaman's dad) convinced him that he should keep pressing on so that he can be a role model for the other kids in his area and go onto University. So that is what he did. As we listened to his story, the other retired teachers echoed it with their own. From these experiences you can see the importance of having quality school in each area.

The RTC (retired teachers council) discussed with me the reason that many of the boys are dropping out of school. Around here dried maize and other grains are popular for growing and selling. The young boys see that they can earn some cash loading sacks of grain onto the trucks; and they also see that the boys who have graduated high school are doing the same, so they drop out of school and sit around until there is a truck to be loaded.

In stating this, the RTC stressed the need for a model school that can be seen by the community and surrounding communities as a school of prestige. Additionally, I had mentioned to them that I am thinking about a vocational center, and they too agreed that a vocational center would be key for those boys who graduated and doing basically nothing. One key point that they made was to offer classes in the morning and the evening so that the vocational students can go to work during the day and not be tempted to drop out. As far as the students who are at a normal high school, they will see how that there is additional training offered after high school, which will give them incentive to finish school.

** I would just like to add that all these are just ideas for now and nothing is set in place just yet. For the next 2 months I will be doing research and collecting data from the area to see what the basic needs are and establish a baseline of what a zero is equivalent to here (eg: zero= 1 secondary school with no desks or school supplies; and 10= 2 fully functional Secondary schools). So for now, I'm discussing these ideas with the RTC, but keeping my eyes and ears open to everything, and from there will decide my first move. **

The other thing we discussed was teacher training. One of my goals within the next 2 months is to visit the surrounding teacher colleges and get to know their curricula. Secondly, I'd like to convince them that they want to send a professor, at a reduced cost, once a month to the Nyametaburo area to teach a course and/or seminar so that slowly, slowly the teachers can receive certification.

Yesterday I also met with the entire staff of the secondary school and they echoed that they'd like to have training whilst maintaining their jobs at the school.

Today, I am in hot pursuit of finding a CDC officer for education (Community Development Committee). My deadline is next week. Please pray that I find a person of character who also knows a lot about the education system here. After lunch I am meeting with one of the retired teachers, Bramwell, to walk around to some of the mud and stick primary schools. He doesn't know that he's a candidate for CDC Officer. By walking around with him today, I will see if he is good for the position. Throughout rest of this week, I'm meeting with the different members of the RTC to pick the very best one. Just so you know, the reason I'm going for a retired teacher is because if there is actually a good teacher in a school, I surely do NOT want to pull them away from their duties. A good teacher, who is a person of noble character is a gold mine!

BTW, I took pictures of the house, but I still need to download them. But for now, here some pics I took using the photo booth application on my Mac. Here's a picture of my house, of the compound gate and our beautiful view, and of the day guard, Peter and I.

Oh, and also, the name: RTC, I just made it up yesterday. There is no official Retired Teacher's Council, but I would love for them to meet with me semi-regularly for wise council.