I know that I will never be able to fully describe the three weeks in Africa with the family, but its worth trying. The family all came out to surprise Perry on the last leg of his journey. We spent 9 days on a safari in Kenya... Kenya is a wonderful and scary place. Many stories for the books... our vehicle got stuck in the Sarengeti and the entire Masai Mara tribe came out to help us push it free (these are the very tall people with the wonderful earlobes down to their mid-neck). We happened upon a water buffalo kill from a lion pride. Their bellies were so full and it was so hot that they were trying to get shade by the carcass, but when we drove up they just ambled over and sat under our cars. Perry and I climbed Mt. Kenya together after the parents left. That was amazing. Nairobi is nicknamed Nairobbery for a reason I won't go into... and when it was all said and done the whole family parted and headed back to thier respective sides of the globe. Perry went to London. Parents back home, and I headed back to Thailand just before classes began (literally got off the plane and went to school).
Above you see a photo of my brother with some of the kids in Nanyuki town. We are at the hospital near town - really an open air building with some antibiotics on lonely counters. On the far right you see a boy, Timothy, who you might able to detect, has an absese in his right jaw from an infected tooth. His condition was serious and could have been fatal. Many infarctions in the atrial valves can occur with some of the plaque built up from a major absese infection. But just the pain of an infection like this would be almost impossible to overlook. My brother and I took him to the hospital, a few kilometers from town. His troop of buddies all came along. Timothy joins several others who pridefully resist the temptation of going to school, instead opting to beg off the streets (how we met Timothy). We entered the hospital with the intention of paying for his medical expenses to have the infection taken care of, but to our amazment there was no cost for the treatment. He received a shot at the doctors, and a percription to go to the dentist the next day. I was stunned and had to ask the nurse some questions. Apparently the services are not always regarded well in the community. She told us that sometimes they have to chase kids to treat them. The parents meanwhile seem to be a cause for this reluctance to use western medicine. They doubt, for example, if vaccines work at all because the still gte sick. This of course is to be expected. (Even some people might contract the disease the vaccine was hoping to prevent!) Without being given the full information about some medical service, it would be easy to lose faith. The tragedy is the impact it has on kids like Timothy. His smile was mugh brighter the next time we saw him.
Kibera. The largest slum in Kenya and second largest in Africa, resides centrally off the highway in Nairobi. The community of Kibera number 3 million and span every one of Kenya's 42 tribes, though most are from central Kenya. I spent some time in Kibera before my family arrived, visiting a school and walking the streets. I saw two children dying from AIDS. Made me cry. Making the request to visit Kibera was met with shock and fear from the pot-bellied, greedy safari agents of Nairobi. Why would a foreigner go there? Even my driver, Joshua the "cousin of Barack Obama," would not get out of the car for fear of getting mugged or something. But the people where more than peaceful. They were exceptionally warm and welcoming. At no point did I have reason to fear. My only fears were for the damn thieves of Nairobi who come in the form of "professionals" trying to scheme some way of snatching a couple bucks. I never felt fear in the midst of little kids like the ones I met at the Kibera school, but for some reason, I had so much fear in Nairobi. I am sad not to have had the chance to stay there longer and make some inner peace with the place. I believe it only takes time to come to trust a place, but Nairobi for me will always be a place where some impending threat looms around the next street corner or sidewalk shop.
And from the journey overland here is an entry from my journal:
Tuesday March 6, 2007
"Actually the day has been a beautiful expression of life, writ-small to find all its elements within the passing hours of an emotional experience through east-central Africa. Here, now, in this place, Lake Nukuru, my family and I find solace in the silence of a modest roadside hotel. All I hear in my mind is the chatter of children and the sounds of my family playing and chasing them around the area where our safari van broke down. Where one student came and initiated conversation, suddenly and magically there were 63 children! My family played every sort of game with the children: sang songs, had sunning races, taught them John Denver lyrics, face masks that only my mom knows how to make, magic tricks....it was all in good fun...!"
Having car troubles actually brought about the best cultural experiences for us. When we got stuck in the Masai we were just all smiles as we pushed and pushed to get the van out of the mud. Of course, the most useless person in the whole mix was our Nairobi driver who refused to get any mud on his shoes. So funny how people are...
We visited Lake Naivasha, Hell's Gate Canyon (1 night), Masai Mara (2 nights), Lake Nukuru (1 night), Samburu (2 nights), and Mt. Kenya. It was a good profile combination of everything Kenyan.
Above is a photo of Wangari Mathai's "Greenbelt Movement" in action. Last year she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Africa to plant trees. She actually came to Bowdoin once for a Sustainability Conference that Noah Long created and developed. Hers is an inspired story of continuation despite adversity. The other photo is of a stork on Lake Nakuru. Do you see the pink in the background? Yes, those are flamingos!
:)
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