Road Trip, Saving Politics for Later

After leaving my unfinished last post for two days and returning to it this morning, I have decided that I don't have enough information to make a really thorough post on the local politics. I'm also not quite sure how to present the information in a readable and interesting way. So I'm going to put that on hold. However, the electoral commission will announce the dates of the upcoming elections this afternoon, and I'm sure that will lead to a whole new round of interesting news stories and gossip. I'll take notes.

So I met another Mzungu in the small farming community where my host family lives. I attended Church with my host parents last Sunday (I think they've been worried about my soul ever since I told them that I don't belong to any organized religious institutions). By chance, we ended up sitting right behind the only other white person in the town, who I had a chance to speak with afterwards. Her name is Beverly, and she is a 50-something Mainer who works for a Church-based NGO in the states. She comes to Mangu (the small farming community) for several months a year, living at the sustainable-development themed orphanage that she helped to found. I was pretty thrilled to hear a New England accent, as well as to have a chance to visit such an intriguing organization, so I gladly accepted her invitation and we walked the mile or so back up the recently paved road to the village center.

The Orphanage combines a number of really interesting concepts to provide a very comfortable, self-sustaining home for 15 AIDS-orphans ranging from ages five to sixteen. They use solar power for all of their electrical needs, solar-heated water, and grow much of their own food in gardens that will soon be fertilized from a self-composting outhouse that is under construction. They also collect clean rainwater for drinking and cooking, and have planted watering-intensive banana trees behind the sheds and outhouses, where the sloping roofs ensure that every drop of rain makes it to the plants. There are a great number of savvy innovations in every facet of the compound, and they also pride themselves on spreading their ideas and philosophy to the local community, regularly hosting their neighbors to pass along money-saving and quality-of-life improving tips. It's a great institution.

Anyway, I talked with Bev for a while, and was even more surprised when another Mzungu from Maine showed up for a late lunch. His name is Carrington, and he is here as a volunteer for two months, having heard about Bev's project from a family member who attends the same church. He's traveled extensively, and is often involved with community service projects. Having once through-hiked the Appalachian trail, he now maintains a stretch near his home in Maine. He will be working at the Go Green Fair in Chicago in April and will be doing reconstruction work in New Orleans in February. He's a good guy.

Our conversations led us to make two sets of travel plans. One is for Carrington and I to travel extensively around the region during my one-week down time between Nakuru and Nairobi. More on that later.

More immediately, I was invited to accompany the two of them and the two Kenyan administrators of the orphanage on a trip around the local region to buy art from local elderly, handicapped, or otherwise disadvantaged artisans for sale in the US. I couldn't say no. Unfortunately, they had planned for three days, and I had immovable plans on Tuesday, so I would have to catch up to them on my own in nearby Kisumu on Wednesday morning. Easy enough, I figured.

Wednesday morning my host mother and I went to the Matatu stand (for inner-city travel the vehicles can be met on almost any street corner, but there is one major parking lot/hub for expeditions out of town) and found a Kisumu-bound bus that was nearly empty, allowing me to take a (somewhat) more spacious front seat, with promises from the driver that we'd be on our way in less than twenty minutes. Yeah, right. It was a full two hours before we filled the vehicle and departed (there are no schedules on these lines - you wait until the van is full and the driver can fully maximize his profit.) And matatu stands are full of "hawkers," people selling everything from newspapers to neckties to knives to chickens. People waiting for their matatu to leave can eat breakfast, buy small livestock, and dress themselves in traditional garb all from the luxury of their undersized seats. And as an mzungu, every single one of these hawkers assumes you have tons of money to spare. Between telling them off in English and Swahili, and convincing the street children that you won't give them any money because they should be in school, you have almost no opportunity to breathe. It was a long two hours. I was so grateful when we finally set off, hoping that I could finally find some peace. Ha.

The large man on my left was an ethnic Kikuyu. So was the large driver on my right. Four hours of MISERABLE roads, no food for several hours, and a raucous conversation (that I know concerned me on at least a few occasions - apparently mzungu is the same in any language) taking place in each ear in a language I don't understand. Not my favorite way to travel. By the time we passed through the endless miles of East-Asian looking tea fields, I was feeling tempted to jump out of the car and join the thousands of (heavily exploited) workers who could be seen picking leaves by hand.

When we reached the shores of Lake Victoria four hours later, I was exhausted. Kisumu is a fishing town, and as I walked along the small market immediately adjacent to the matatu stand (where I gratefully disembarked) I saw dried, fried, and freshly caught fish of every shape and size. A short Boda-Boda ride (a bicycle with an extra seat attached on the back - perfect for terrifying but convenient door-to-door transportation) brought me to the restaurant where Bev, Carrington, Mwangi, and Sammy were waiting. We had a somewhat lavish three-dollar lunch, piled into their rented car (a matatu - damnit), and were off for Kakamega, where we would be spending the night. Aside from 40 miles of gorgeous boulder fields and small ridges and outcroppings that I swore to return to, the ride was pretty uneventful. We stopped at a small institution for disabled women, and purchased a great number of hand-made banana-and-palm-front handbags, placemats, and coasters for sale in the US. I'll bring a few to Ken to see if he likes them. The woman who made them, who didn't understand a word of English, was enormously grateful, and I had the distinct pleasure of being able to translate her gratitude to Bev and Carrington.

We arrived in Kakamega around 8 PM and settled into our aging but nice hotel-huts. They were designed ages ago for western tourists but are sadly not receiving much business these days. It's too bad, since the entire night cost about 15 dollars with dinner, and included hot showers, flushing toilets, and electricity. Needless to say, after a slow start to the day, it ended up being pretty outstanding.

I have to go do some actual work right now, but I hope to return this afternoon to describe day two of the trip. If I don't make it back, I'm not sure that I'll be at a computer again until Monday. Blair is coming up from Nairobi for the weekend, so I'll be busy excitedly showing her all of my new favorite places around town.

Good luck to the Red Sox this weekend (someone had better text me the scores after every game), and I hope all is well with everyone.

Thanks for reading,
Chris