pictures III

1. this is how we roll in kenya

2. i can't even tell you how ridiculous the names of shops were. my favourites were a shop called Plan B Consulting and a church called Gospel Explosion

3. seriously, this is how much kenyan children eat in one sitting

(some of the pics i'm posting are worth double-clicking on to get a better look)

pictures II

1. in the chicken coop

2. eating sugar cane at the roadside

3. anna with joseph, the boda driver

4. a snack before carting more water

5. village life

pictures

1. at the school for children with hearing impairment

2. a dolly made with plastic bags and string

3. faith and eunice - orphaned during the clashes - these girls are mustard!

4. joseph and i walking home along the train tracks

5. laundry drying

more pictures to come!

hope

one thing i saw in kenya is how far money can go.

a canadian woman dreamed up an idea for widows. she bought a sewing machine, a serger, and material. she got a pattern so that the women could make cloth menstrual pads. (ok...let's set aside how rad microfinancing is and just say that a product like that is one that makes me stand up and say, Yeah!).

5 women are now employed. they make the pads and sell them for less than a dollar each (and they're going like hot cakes). they do mending for people in the community and they do serging for other tailors. the whole business is self-sufficient.

total cost to set up the project: $250.

doesn't that make you say, Yeah. ?

clashes

when i was young and idealistic, i had a stance on everything. i knew what side of the israeli-palestinian conflict i was on. i knew what should be done with pinochet and milosevic. the world was black and white to me.


then we lived in belfast, northern ireland for a year and my world got turned on its head. in many ways i have never recovered from that year, and certainly my ideas of civil conflict have never been the same. i saw exactly how complex war is. i saw how deep hatred can run. i saw that there was no black and white answer to solving conflict and this really disturbed me.


kenya experienced what they call 'the clashes' a year ago after a corrupt election. the stories i heard and the images painted for me were heartbreaking as i saw how far-reaching the violence was.

i met two sisters under the age of 10 who had witnessed their father murdered in such a brutal way that i couldn't even think of repeating it here. they were left orphans (and are now living with a kenyan family and being sponsored by friends of mine.)

i spoke at length with a mother who has taken in orphans and who lives in the countryside. she had to flee into the forest with her 30 odd children while people stole their livestock and raided their huts. they lived for 2 weeks in a church and were without food. when i asked what that was like she talked of how hungry the children were and how weak they were by the time they finally got food.

different people ReACT has given microloans to had to use up their repayment just to live during the weeks of the clashes.

it goes on and on.........i wrote earlier about being shocked by how many orphans there were in kenya, but i was probably more shocked by the number of children orphaned during the clashes.

i just can't imagine how people can turn on their neighbours just because they're from a different tribe. similarly, in northern ireland i can't believe that people murder each other because they're from a different denomination. same for so many countries in the world.

i'd like to believe that i'm above all that...that if i had a gun to my head or if my children were in danger i would never even strike another human being.

the truth is, it's never as black and white as all that, is it...

water

i like water. i drink a lot of it every day. i like swimming in lakes and i like washing my hands. i'm pretty thankful for water. (i have a friend who thanks God for water whenever she's in the shower.)

there are things that upset me about water. i'm upset that our actions are causing the ice caps to melt. i'm upset when i see some joker pouring toxic slop down the storm drains in toronto. i'm upset that we're bottling up our water and selling it for $3 a pop.

here are some completely unrelated experiences i've had with water in kenya:

when we arrived in nairobi after being on airplanes and in airports for almost 24 hours, i didn't have any local currency. it was midnight and we had to get to sleep and be up at 4:30am to get back on an airplane. i didn't have any water. my children went to sleep thirsty and woke up thirsty and there was nothing i could do since we couldn't drink from the tap. i admit that i felt actual desperation. the difference was that my desperation was shortlived because i was able to obtain both money and water. it was only for a few hours, but i experienced a snapshot of what many parents in the two-thirds world live with.....trying to explain to their children the fact that they are empty-handed.

i've only had one moment of feeling real, visceral anger here. we were passing a slum area and i saw a woman carrying water. it was in a large, yellow, plastic container. a rope was tied to the top of it and slung over her shoulder. she gripped the rope with her two hands and she was bent over as she struggled along the side of the road back to her family.

we visited a village area where people women were washing their laundry in a stream that fed into a river where men were washing themselves. as i looked at the mirky, grey water flowing from both those places, i had to wonder what the impact on the water system was.

there was a water shortage at the place where we were staying and so i became conscious of every drop of water i used. my children were bathed in next to nothing every day and i tried to wash our clothes in as little as possible. when you have to boil all your drinking water it's interesting to see how much you drink in a day. i became very thankful for our seemingly endless supply in canada.

the people

i call my children ‘the people’. the first time i did so to manon she laughed so hard that i decided it would make a good name for the blog.

it’s been interesting having the people here in kenya with me. my approach has been to let them observe what they observe and not overload them with explanations of things they see. i’ve been happy at their response. no-one has really commented on the poverty or the injustice we have seen. no-one has really seemed to notice the difference between themselves and the children they’ve been playing with. this makes me happy. don’t get me wrong….i want my children to recognize injustice when they see it and i want them to grow up believing they can do something about it, but also want them to feel that on some level we are all the same.

anna and joseph have spent many of their days here playing in the dirt with small children who speak little english, who play with toys they have made themselves out of garbage, who are dressed in ragged, dirty clothes, who live in rudimentary housing, and of course, who are tremendously happy.

not until today did i catch a glimpse of what i expected has been happening….that they are thinking and processing on a different level and likely won’t communicate it until we are long home in canada.

me: would you like to go to town today?
joseph (who’s 3): yes.
me: what would you like to do in town?
joseph: i would like to buy a kenyan child i can look after.
(i then asked him a few questions about this idea….)
joseph: maybe when i grow up i can have a child to look after.

yes, joseph, maybe you can.