Chelsea in Kenya

The other day I was in downtown Kakamega walking home from work and spotted a familiar t-shirt on a little boy.  It was one of the boys from the Ambalemba drop-in center.  He had his requisite bicycle tire tube and stick that all young boys have here to play with.  I called out his name to get his attention and the look on his face knew he was caught.  The drop-in center is about a half hour walk from downtown and he’s one of our youngest boys, seven or eight.  Clearly he was not supposed to be wandering around downtown by himself.  I motioned for him to come along, which he quickly did for fear of punishment and we walked back to the drop-in center together.

His story is similar to many of our boy’s stories.  He’s from an area village and wandered into Kakamega because his home life was in shambles.  When home-tracing was completed it was found that his father runs an illegal brew distillery out of their home.  It’s not like moonshine of the olden days but more like the meth of the modern days.  Pretty much every chemical they can get their hands on is put in this stuff, including formaldehyde.  His mom is also alive but, as they say here, a drunkard.  Our social worker deemed it unsafe for him to be at home so he now stays at the drop-in center.

A lot of days I show up at work with no real idea of what I will be doing.  I’m along for the ride, always with a book for the long stretches of down time.  Today, one of my co-workers asked me if I could accompany her to an event to take her daughter’s picture.  I said sure because nothing else was planned.  We get there and it ends up being the opening of a children’s court in Kakamega, the third in Kenya.  Her daughter was chosen to present the Chief Supreme Court Justice of Kenya with flowers as he arrived for the ribbon cutting ceremony.  Randomly, an agriculture representative from the Netherlands embassy was there as well because the Netherlands co-funded the creation of Kenya’s children’s courts and he happened to be in the country.  A bunch of my co-workers ended up being there as well because they deal with the court system in regards to orphans and abused children.

It’s a great concept, to have a separate court to hear children’s cases.  Previously, the children would have to sit in the same court room as their assailants, making a very uncomfortable and intimidating situation for the child.  This courtroom is set up with a room with mirrored glass so the child doesn’t have to see the defendant.  There are also toys and games available for the children to play with and an area they can be housed.  Before, they would just have to stay at the prison because there was no place for them to go.

I have made it to Kakamega after an interesting day in Nairobi. I stopped at a bank to get some cash from an ATM and the machine ate my card. For a moment, I totally freaked out but luckily there were some American students behind me that helped me. One watched the machine and the other helped me argue with the bank guard to let us into the bank even though it was closed to get my card out of the machine. Her perseverance and arguing skills got me into the door and I got my card back thankfully. I decided not to risk any more adventures in Nairobi and joined them at a coffee shop instead until I had to catch my flight.

At the Nairobi airport I had to walk out onto the tarmac to get on the plane. The flight to Kisumu was very beautiful. The hills are densely covered with a patchwork of fields. It looks as though every piece of land it used for farming, lots of deforestation. I also saw a lot of fires burning, clearing the land for farming. Kisumu is situated on the banks of Lake Victoria so there was a nice view of it through the smoke. The Kisumu airport is just one runway and a tent for a waiting area. The FSD staff met us there and we took a ridiculously bumpy road to Kakamega.

We are staying in a guesthouse for a week of orientation before we join our host families. Throughout the week we’ve been having a bunch of sessions to better prepare us for life in Kakamega. We’ve also been taking Swahili lessons. I’ve noticed two main things that I think will take me awhile to get used to. First, it’s the massive amount of garbage that is everywhere. The ditches are filled with garbage; the roads are ingrained with it. It’s just everywhere because people liter here or they throw their garbage in a hole where it blows out or gets flooded out by the water. Also, the amount of people everywhere. Every road has tons of people walking on it. In town the main roads are lined with men on bicycles. There are just tons of people everywhere and I’m definitely not inconspicuous so everyone stares at me. I’ll definitely get over any crowd phobias I may have harbored or any self-consciousness I may have had!