Tall tales

As my ninth month in Kenya draws to a close, I'm more cognizant than ever of the narratives told about Kenya, refugees, humanitarian crises, and African conflict. Though the reality of these contexts is often quite grim and though the answers to how to support those in crisis never come easily or from the right people, it's not all doom and gloom. Positive, uplifting narratives that genuinely represent the voices of those living in these context are hardly written about and rarely make a dent on the Facebook news-feed circuit. Does that mean there isn't happiness, joy, hope and positivity in conflict and crisis situations? Certainly not. It frustrates me that the most common, and almost only, happy image Westerners have of 'Africa' is of a bunch of dusty schoolchildren smiling in some aid worker's or volunteer's selfie. This, coupled with the constantly negative press and travel alerts, warnings, and cautions that I see daily, tells a static and one-dimensional narrative of what the day-to-day complexities are of such a diverse, complicated, and vibrant place as this. So, I first recommend reading this article about education and opportunity in Dadaab refugee complex, which is on the Somali border and is the largest refugee camp in the world. Second, if you're on Instagram follow Everyday Africa, which posts snapshots of daily life from around the continent. Last, check up on Think Africa Press, which hosts a variety of narratives, perspectives, critiques and thoughts to all things Africa. 

Ultimate road trip: safari edition

We had a four-day weekend for the Easter holiday, so Maggie, Sophia (PiAf fellow at Sanergy in Nairobi), and I packed into a rented car and headed south to Tsavo West National Park (see the crew at left!). We passed through small towns, careened over many a speed bump, and wove around the many, slow lorries headed for Mombasa. Roadside fruit and vegetable stands lined the road (we saw more onions in one town than I've seen in the whole of my life) and we drove past bizarrely bronchial baobab trees. The videos below are snapshots of the drive to and from the park (excuse the sing-a-longs in advance)! 

The DIY safari was far and away one of the coolest things I've done here. It exceeded all my expectations; we saw at least 12 huge elephants within an hour of being in the park, a lion, hippos, water buffalo, giraffes, zebra, a rare antelope called the lesser kudu, and tons more. We drove through these lava flows that we're 99.9% sure inspired the Shadowlands in The Lion King, and we explored a crocodile and hippo-infested river walk (that was eerily similar to the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland). We drove through a torrential rainstorm(see picture at right), caramelized onions over a campfire, ate 24 hot dogs between the three of us, and got bougie on Monday morning with coffee at the luxurious Serena lodge.Check out the pictures below for more from our trip!

Sophia and I having a Rafiki - Simba moment at left and at right, the view from the top of Roaring Rocks. We drove aimlessly for over an hour looking for the mountain, and once we did locate it, it was an underwhelming 10-minute hike to the top. 

A visit to Nyumbani Village

A couple weekends ago, I visited my good friend and fellow PiAf-er, Maggie, where she works in rural eastern Kenya in Nyumbani Village. Nyumbani means 'home' in kiswahili, and the minute I stepped off the bota into the village I could feel the home-ness of everything. Nyumbani is self-described as a "model bio-friendly, self-sustaining community serving orphans and elders who have been left behind by the 'lost generation' resulting from the HIV/AIDS pandemic." The village is comprised of clusters - a gathering of four or five homes, each with their own plot of land for gardening - that share a borehole, and it was designed to be home to 1,000 children and 100 grandparents. There's a livestock area, which provides fresh milk daily from cows (see picture above of Maggie and me milking!), eggs from chickens, and meat from goats. There's a lush greenhouse area that grows vegetables such as tomatoes, sakuma, passion fruit, and avocados for consumption and sale. The village is almost entirely supported by solar power, has three schools (early child education through secondary school), a medical clinic (where I took a malaria test), and a polytechnic institute that teaches skills in textile and metal work as well as installing and maintaining solar systems. There's sports pitches, a basketball court, and a common gathering hall that hosts church services and social gatherings. Walking around, I was touched by the kindness of everyone we met. The grandmothers were warm and welcoming as we visited the different clusters, offering wide smiles and firm handshakes as we stopped to chat (well, Maggie was chatting as I speak approximately zero kamba, the local dialect). The children reminded me of the many goofy and fun-loving kids I've babysat over the years, eager to play and joke around with us. Maggie has such a presence in the village; I've heard her talk about life there and the community so often, and visiting gave me the chance to see how integral she is to everything that goes on. She's keeping a blog of her fellowship, which can be accessed here.

We had a great time hanging on and walking around the village, despite my malarial state! We hung out in the volunteers' guest house, worked on puzzles, saw a goat slaughtered for a goodbye celebration for one of the volunteers (and later ate it), danced with the world's cutest toddler, and strolled around the village. I was sad to say goodbye and really hope I can make it out again while Maggie is still there!

The Garissa Attack

Last week's terrorist attack at Garissa College University has weighed heavily on our minds and hearts for the past number of days. On Thursday April 2nd, university students were asleep in their residence halls or just waking up when four armed men began Kenya's deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy. By the end of the day, one hundred and forty-seven Kenyans had died. Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, claimed responsibility for the attack and released a statement recently providing justification and petitioning the Kenyan public to stand up to the Kenyan government's military campaign in Somalia. Al-Shabaab was also responsible for the attacks in Mandera and Wajir last December  and for the September 2013 attack on Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, in which 67 people died. 

How to move on from something like this? Things in Nairobi have been pretty calm, if a little more tense than usual with the increased presence of military personnel at some shopping centres. A moving vigil ceremony was held in the centre of Nairobi last night to honor the victims. A social media remembrance campaign called #147notjustanumber aims to humanize the victims of the Garissa Attack. There's also a public forum where personal details about each of the victims can be added by those who knew them. So often the human lives get lost in the staggering numbers, and it's crucial that we remember those who died were individuals with ambitions and full lives. 

Malari-uh oh

Spoiler alert: I'm happy and healthy and well. That's the boring end to this story, but let's start at the beginning, ten days ago, at my cubicle under florescent lighting. March was a really busy month for grant reports, especially for our bigger donors and end-of-grants final reports. So here I was, mid-afternoon on a Friday hunch-backed over my Lenovo working away when I felt the familiar ache-in-the-teeth and down-the-spine chill that signal temperature increase. I finished out the day with a fever, thinking it was a physical manifestation of the long hours and weekend hours I'd put in in the past month. I went to bed early because I'd planned to visit my friend and fellow PiAf-er, Maggie, in Nyumbani Village (a post on that later!) for an extended weekend. I woke up feeling bright and fresh and distinctly un-feverish, so I hopped on a matatu for Kwa Vonza, then met Maggie for a bota (a taxi motorcycle) ride to the village.

Over the next three days, I experienced the same pattern: wake up feeling rested and normal, around midday start feeling weak, exhausted and achey, by 4 or 5PM am so feverish and stiff with aches and chills that I have to lie down and sleep for a few hours. The fever peaked around 103F and plateaued for about 4 or 5 hours. By the time I woke up again in the morning, I was normal temperature and fine, apart from feeling tired from the fever storm that'd swept through. By day three, I knew this wasn't a symptom of stress or being over-worked, so I went to the village clinic where I was tested (finger prick - ow!) and found negative for malaria. Confused, I resolved to go to Nairobi Hospital when I returned to the city. 

I set out early on the morning of my return with the intention and hope of getting home before the fever peaked. Nyumbani Village is nestled in the remote hills of eastern Kenya about 5 hours from Nairobi, and it's a direct matatu ride back to the city from the nearby town of Kwa Vonza. So I said goodbye to Maggie and hopped on a bota for the 30 minute ride to Kwa Vonza (see pictures at right). At this point in the day I was feeling pretty good, the fever was below 101F, and the weather was stunning. I had to wait an hour and a half in Kwa Vonza for a matatu, but I found some shade and a seat, though many of Kwa Vonza's shall we say colorful characters were keen to engage me in conversation. One of the things I love about traveling is meeting people, but on this day all I really wanted was to get home and for these randos to leave me alone. At long last the matatu came and I settled myself into the 'cozy' but least desirable seat in the 14-passenger van - back corner of the last row. Thirty minutes into the trip we got a puncture and had to exchange tires to continue our journey. I was actually impressed by how fast the tire was switched out, so we were back on the road within a half hour. The rest of our ride went smoothly, if slightly harrowing due to high-speed and overtaking lorries on a two-lane highway, until we hit Nairobi outskirts. We proceeded to spend three hours in Nairobi rush hour traffic and moved less than 5km. Wedged in the backseat, grimacing at the darkness falling outside, and totally clueless as to our location in the city, I started playing Which-Voice-In-My-Head-Is-Loudest. A fun travel game that lends itself to decision-making and state-of-mind. Should I get out and flag down a bota to take me home? Should I persuade the driver to drop me in my neighborhood instead of the seedy city centre? How far are we really from the last stop and is it stupid to walk? Is it worrying that I haven't used the bathroom or eaten or had water since leaving the village? I settled on: stay in the matatu and sit out the trip (smart, as it started to pour rain), don't drink more water because getting off to find a bathroom isn't an option for personal safety reasons, get off in the city centre and call a driver to pick you from there to go home. Decision made, I was faced with Part Two of the game, To Stress or Not To Stress. I chose not stress because it would've aggravated the fever, which at this stage was around 101/102F. So I sat. For three hours. We finally arrived at the final stop, a gas station, and I connected with my driver a few minutes later. The drive home was absurdly traffic-free and quick. So after 8.5 hours of traveling I collapsed into bed with a 103F fever and a steeled resolve to go to the hospital the next day. 

And I did; Nairobi National Hospital in Upper Hill is a great facility. The staff were friendly, helpful, efficient; I was seen by a doctor who ordered a host of lab tests. The blood draw was quick, and for the first time in nine years I didn't faint during the process. They too found me negative for malaria, which was underwhelming, but decided to treat me for it as I presented as definitely malarial. This, apparently, is pretty rare - to test negative but still have the virus - but I wasn't feverish when I was tested, which may have skewed the results. I picked up the treatment at the pharmacy and three days later was feeling 100% again. (side-note, I was also diagnosed with severe food poisoning at the same time and received treatment that has me feeling 100% there as well). 

So in all, things have ended well. Malaria's a tricky illness because on the off-cycle hours (no fever) I felt almost fully fine and functional, and on the on-cycle hours I had the worst fever I've had in years, maybe ever. I took all preventative measures I could have done: taking anti-malarial medication, using high-DEET bug spray, and sleeping under a bed net. I could've picked it up anywhere in my outside-Nairobi travels, so the 'how' is beside the point. I am acutely aware of how privileged I am to have access to quality and timely medical care; so many in this country don't and lose their lives to the virus. The treat-ability of it and the minimal recovery time have left me outraged by the fact that malaria takes the lives of so many, even when the cure is known and available. And, of course, I'm relieved to be whole and healthy again, and I look at each experience for the value of what it has to teach my about my being here, my context, and myself.

Mid-year Princeton in Africa retreat

What do you get when you collect 47 young professionals from the corners of the African continent (and one who was there in spirit but is currently in California), 4 spirited PiAf alumni, 2 enthusiastic PiAf staff, and 1 founder and board member? The Princeton in Africa mid-year retreat, of course! Last week, PiAf spent 5 glorious days basking in good company and Nile-side sunshine in Jinja, Uganda. We shared the good stories and the bad, the frustrating and the uplifting. Though we'd only ever all been together at our orientation in early June, it felt like an instant homecoming seeing familiar faces and relaxing into the only 46 other people that can truly understand what this fellowship year has been for me. This year's fellows are placed in over a dozen countries and working on issues ranging from shea and cashew production in Ghana to food distribution with the World Food Programme in Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda, and Malawi to teaching students in Botswana to administering care to patients in Tanzania, Lesotho, and Botswana. Fellows deal in Excel sheets, video equipment, poop, and high-level meetings. I am in awe of these men and women, their strength, compassion and constant desire to deliver their absolute best, no matter the circumstance or challenge. The retreat was the rest I didn't know I needed and the step back that's allowed me to step into these last 6 months with a gusto. 

The picture above shows (starting top left, clockwise):a bus-full of fellows heading to Lake Victoria for the day; me and Christina being goofy seat buddies on our way in from the airport; a 'Rolex', a Ugandan specialty with egg, onion, and tomato wrapped in a chapati (Rebecca and I brought this delicacy back to Denis the Menace); a busload of fellows on their way to Jinja from the airport; and Lake Victoria, in all its splendid, watery glory. 

See for yourself

Take Part World recently collaborated with the International Rescue Committee to profile the progams the IRC runs at Kakuma camp, and it gives a great visual for the IRC's work there and the staff who implement our programs. Please! Take time to watch this video and see for yourself the powerful and impactful work of the IRC!