Well, Obama day and the peak of the post-election drama is starting to die down here, but things are just as busy as ever. (Pictures of people from our group were in the national papers and there was a segment with all of us in on the national news though, which was pretty cool.)

Anyways, Friday was back to work, except I took a day off from Sarakasi to go to interview people at this organization called Kuona Trust (for this NGO paper I have to write). Kuona is similar to Sarakasi in terms of programs, except their focus is on the visual arts, so I got to meet a bunch of artists there, and see them working away in their studios. They were working on everything from cartoons and sculptures of things from recycled materials to charcoal drawings and paintings.

One guy I talked to, who made these huge charcoal and pastel images, was working on a series of pictures about the pre-post-election period, before all of the violence in Nairobi last winter. He did one image depicting politicians, one with the media, one of the religions intuitions, one of the international community, etc. He said he had originally named the works, “Who’s to Blame?” but said he didn’t want to judge anyone, but rather document what had happened, and let each group speak for themselves. I thought it was a very interesting perspective on something that happened so recently and was so disturbing to society.

It has been raining like crazy the past few days; I guess it’s probably officially rainy season. The thing is, when it rains in Kenya, it pours and everything becomes a huge muddy mess. And the other thing is, Nairobi has a serious infrastructure problem, especially in terms of the roads, and for some reason when it rains, traffic gets absolutely ridiculous. What might normally take fifteen or twenty minutes to drive can literally take hours when it rains. Luckily, this is only the short rainy season, and by the end of November we’re supposed to be heading into summer.

obama day...

As amazing as it would have been to be in DC during the election, I have to say, Nairobi definitely did not let us down! We got invited to the American Ambassador’s Residence to watch the votes coming in, so we all got up at like 4 this morning, and took cabs over there. We needed our invitations and passports to get in and there was quite a bit of security, but almost 1,000 people ended up coming, so we were glad we got there early. Apparently a lot of the big people from parliament made an appearance, and although we didn’t actually get to see her, Wangari Maathai was there too. (She’s famous for winning a Nobel Peace Prize and being the first women in Africa to get her doctorate, and she started the Green Belt Movement, which has helped women’s groups to plant billions of trees all over the continent.)

Anyways, we watched the votes coming in till about 7:00 in the morning, when they announced that Obama was officially the new president-elect. I cannot begin to explain the energy in compound then, and when McCain and Obama gave their speeches; the Kenyans were excited that their brother was going to be leading America and we were excited to actually have something to be proud of in our country for once. Everyone was laughing and crying and excited (and tired)—just generally a crazy time.

After that the Ambassador made a speech and some Kenyan high school girls who had won a essay-writing contest read letters they had written to Obama. And then, a representative from the Kenyan government spoke briefly said that Kibaki, the president, had announced that tomorrow is an official holiday, in honor of Obama!

It’s been crazy being in Kenya for the election, firstly because in the US, the nation is split between Obama and McCain, but in Kenya, literally everyone is a fan of Obama. And secondly, it’s crazy because we’re so much more important here. We would never get invited to the home of an important dignitary to watch the elections in the US, and even walking down the street today, people are all cheering and excited and wanting to shake our hands. I’m not sure all the Kenyans we’re interacting with fully understand that having Obama as president is not going to dramatically change US foreign policy towards Africa, but it still is cool for them that someone whose father is from Kenya is going to be president of the US.

It seems like there have been holidays left and right over the past couple of months: Kenyatta Day, Moi Day, Idd, the Indian holiday Duwali (which we’ve been hearing fireworks for, during the last week), Halloween, and the election (which I feel like will basically be a holiday here- with people probably going crazy either way. Halloween was pretty anti-climatic, because everyone was exhausted by Friday night, but the rest of the weekend was very relaxing.

On Saturday, I went to the Maasai Market with my roommate Justine, and then we went to Kibera, the slum where she works. It was perfect weather and it’s actually a really nice place to walk around, because there’s always so much going on and it feels much more like a community than the rest of the city.

Anyways, Justine has been working with a women’s group in Kibera, trying to help them get their accounts together, so I was going to go with her to meet them. (They have a merry-go-round system, where all the women put a little money in each week which goes to one person, as well as a doll-making business— but they’ve been running into some challenges with their book-keeping.) It turned out the women’s group wasn’t meeting that day, but there was a parents’ meeting at the school which we got to sit in on instead, which was also very cool, since we would never normally have any reason to go to something like that.

This school that we were at literally has holes in all the roofs, and struggles to pay a couple of dollars a day for firewood and food for the kids for lunch. There used to be school fees that covered all those expenses but they got rid of them altogether, because some kids who weren’t able to afford to pay anything weren’t going to school at all. So now, it’s this women’s group, and a share from their merry-go-round that is completely supporting the school.

Sunday morning, I went to this amazing modern art gallery called Ramoma, because I need set up an interview with someone there for my NGO paper. It’s in this very Indian neighborhood called Parklands, with tons of Sari shops and Indian food places everywhere. It’s kind of like India in the middle of Kenya and it’s very bizarre to walk around there because there are virtually no Kenyans anywhere. (There's a huge rift between Indians and Kenyans here, because the Indians supposedly own a lot of the businesses in Nairobi, and have a reputation for not treating their Kenyan workers very well.)

I don’t know what my problem is this week, but I have been so exhausted! There’s been a lot going on, but it’s just the usual crazy. Our organization reviews and grant proposal outlines for our internships are due this week, so we’ve all been rushing around, trying to find working computers and internet, and meeting with all the people we need to in our organizations. (My grant proposal is trying to get funding to have capacity-building workshops for the performers on a regular basis, on issues like personal finance, different forms of contraception, performers’ rights, etc.)

I needed to meet with the director at Sarakasi to go over some of my ideas Wednesday, but she’s an incredibly busy woman who is literally in meetings and on the phone all day! So finally, after about the third time I had peeked in her office in the middle of a meeting, she just told me to come in and sit down while she finished the meeting, so she could talk to me after. And it turns out, the man she was meeting with coordinated the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sidney Olympics!

Wednesday night was my roommate Justine’s 21st birthday. I got home from work late, so I didn’t have time to go out with her and some of our other roommates, but we had some Halloween-themed brownies for the occasion (thanks to some candy corn from Heather!)

Thursday, we had class at USIU, but my friend Jessica and I decided to leave early so we could get in some extra work on our grants proposals before Swahili class. But on the bus on the way back, we pass by some markets in Ngara, where they have tons of stands of clothing for sale. (The market is actually right around the corner from where I work, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to stop yet.) So we were looking in different shops and got separated a little bit, when all of a sudden these masses of people start running down the street, and shoving us into the shops, and there is white smoke everywhere. It turns out the police had decided to tear-gas the street, which they do on a semi-regular basis in an effort to deter the hawkers on the street, who don’t have actual permits to be selling stuff. (Its' very in-effective though- because everyone's right back out at soon as it clears up.)

The tear-gas wasn’t actually too bad; it’s kind of the same reaction to cutting a really strong onion for your eyes, and it burns your nose and throat, but I think it was lucky that we happened to be right next to some shops. So they ushered us way into the back (which I had a brief panic moment about, because I couldn’t understand why they would put us all in a tiny room where there was no ventilation). But obviously, they knew what they were doing; there was a tiny court-yard out back where all the businesses keep their trash, so we all hung out there for a bit, until the streets cleared up.

So eventually Jessica and I met up again. We were actually pretty excited that we got tear-gassed because now we can say we’ve actually lived in Nairobi, and we decided we would take that any day over the ridiculousness of USIU.

So I have one more class this week, and I’m done for the weekend (and I have no major anything due at the begininng of next week) so life's looking good!

nyumbani village

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.

[I posted pictures of our rural weekend excursion on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/NyumbaniVillage ]

Soo- we're finally finished with mid-terms, which is a relief because we had no idea what the expect of USIU, but they seemed to be relatively fair.

Today I didn't have classes since it is still technically mid-term week, so I was able to get a lot of errands done. I also went to this place called Amani, where my friend Chrissy from our program works. It's a program that trains women coming out of rough life situations to make clothes and jewelry and all kinds of other stuff, so that they are able to support themselves. I definitely got a lot of Christmas shopping done, but they also have a cafe and a really pretty area to sit outside, that's very peaceful and removed from the city, so it was a very relaxing afternoon.

At Sarakasi, I'm trying to finish a survey on what kinds of things the performers would be interested in for different workshops, so I can hopefully get started on my grant proposal in the near future.

Next Monday is yet another holiday, (Kenyatta Day- this time) so we have the day off from USIU and our internships and all of us in the AU program are going to stay in a rural village called Kituii for four days. I'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing there, but it supposedly has several really successful development projects in the works, so it should be pretty cool to see, and also nice to get out of Nairobi for a bit.

So I guess that's pretty much all for now. My thoughts go out to the Nadeau family; I can't imagine what you must be going through right now.

More later...

I worked at Sarakasi today, and was starting to get really frustrated. I wasn’t there for almost a week and half (since I went to the hospital one day, was gone on Safari another day, and had the Muslim holiday Idd off.) And after coming back, even though I’d been working at Sarakasi for several weeks, I still didn’t know what I was actually supposed to be doing. (On Monday, for instance, I wrote addresses on envelopes for seven hour.)

So today I went to go to one of the training centers in what is supposedly a ghetto, on the East side of Nairobi. A group of kids form the local school meet with a trainer for a couple of hours each week, to practice their acrobatics in another old cinema. And this afternoon, I finally got to sit down with the director of Sarakasi, which was incredibly helpful and definitely what I needed to get re-excited about working there.

Aside from that, we’re kind of getting into the thick of things, in terms of school work. We have midterms at USIU next week, and we’re supposed to be starting to develop ideas for our organization grant proposals and NGO sector research papers. And for our photo class, we’re supposed to have fourteen prints done by next week, even though we haven’t started developing yet, and there is one enlarger for our class of 46 (…which is not even remotely close to possible!) Our photo class continues to be a joke, but we actually got to go into the darkroom for the first time Tuesday. The smell and the feeling of not knowing whether your eyes are closed or not because it’s so dark, was so great and reminded me why I actually like photography. That in itself almost makes the whole class worth it.

So I’m thinking this weekend will include quite a bit of actually trying to be productive. Last weekend, a bunch of us went to the Mr. and Miss Kibera pagent. (Kibera is one of the biggest slums in Nairboi- with I think about 800,000 people.) My roommate Justine works for ISAA, the organization that was sponsoring it, so we were all there for pretty much the entire day, but it was definitely a good time. And the majority of the weekend, we didn’t have power, so Sunday morning, we went to get breakfast at Java House (essentially, the most American restaurant around) I got the best avocado, cheddar and bacon omelet and apple muffin I think I’ve ever eaten!

So life’s good, busy, (and I’m about a week behind on my blog because I forgot which email address and password I used—hahah.) But I was able to post some picture online on Picasa http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/MaasaiMara#5253984173417790274. There’s a bunch of safari pictures for now and more to come?