So we just got back from Kitui, which was quite the little excursion. We left Friday morning and took a bus from Nairobi to this little town in the middle of nowhere! It was an incredibly bumpy ride, but it was really pretty out there; lots of rocks and really red dirt- kind of Arizona-like. From there we rode in the back of a pick-up truck to Nyumbani Village, where we were staying.
So this village is made up entirely of kids who have been orphaned because their parents had HIV or AIDS, and about 30 grandparents (mostly grandmothers). The village consists of a school, a social hall, a goat and cattle farm, and the about 20 houses, and each grandparent has about 10 grand-kids (some of their own, and some others) living with them. They grow and raise a majority of their food in the village, as they're trying to be as sustainable as possible. Although families live, work and go to school there, the village is not intended to be a place where you would permanently reside, as families and kids will eventually go back to where ever they came from. They're also slowly expanding the village, so that hopefully, at some point, it will have almost 1,000 kids.
So we went on a tour of the village and the sand dam there, went to Environmental Day at the school where we helped clean up trash and plant trees, and then just hung out with the kids and the grandmas. (It was a much slower paced weekend than we're used to!) And we got to feel like we were roughing it a little since we had pit toilets which made our entire house smell rather like a latrine, and basically ate rice, beans and corn for four days.
It was a whole other time schedule too because it started getting dark everyday around 6:30, and since there was no electricity and we didn't have many flash lights, we were usually in bed by like nine (except for the last night when it was my friend Jessica's 21st birthday.) Then, however, going back to your house after dark was quite the experience, trying to avoid scorpions, mambas and cobras.
So we survived our weekend and enjoyed the calm of rural life, although I'm not sure how the three volunteers we met there could handle that for months! Not just the life style but they're completely isolated and there is literally no one in the village between like 19 and 55.
So this village is made up entirely of kids who have been orphaned because their parents had HIV or AIDS, and about 30 grandparents (mostly grandmothers). The village consists of a school, a social hall, a goat and cattle farm, and the about 20 houses, and each grandparent has about 10 grand-kids (some of their own, and some others) living with them. They grow and raise a majority of their food in the village, as they're trying to be as sustainable as possible. Although families live, work and go to school there, the village is not intended to be a place where you would permanently reside, as families and kids will eventually go back to where ever they came from. They're also slowly expanding the village, so that hopefully, at some point, it will have almost 1,000 kids.
So we went on a tour of the village and the sand dam there, went to Environmental Day at the school where we helped clean up trash and plant trees, and then just hung out with the kids and the grandmas. (It was a much slower paced weekend than we're used to!) And we got to feel like we were roughing it a little since we had pit toilets which made our entire house smell rather like a latrine, and basically ate rice, beans and corn for four days.
It was a whole other time schedule too because it started getting dark everyday around 6:30, and since there was no electricity and we didn't have many flash lights, we were usually in bed by like nine (except for the last night when it was my friend Jessica's 21st birthday.) Then, however, going back to your house after dark was quite the experience, trying to avoid scorpions, mambas and cobras.
So we survived our weekend and enjoyed the calm of rural life, although I'm not sure how the three volunteers we met there could handle that for months! Not just the life style but they're completely isolated and there is literally no one in the village between like 19 and 55.
[I posted pictures of our rural weekend excursion on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/NyumbaniVillage ]
1 comment:
love the pictures denise! what an amazing adventure!
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