Jerome, bacteria, and machine guns

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  Kakamega, Kenya
Saturday, September 23, 2006

for those of you who still remember with fond nostalgia the fast times and misadventures of my dear samoan friend and shower companion, freddy the grotesquely large, hairy spider, i have stellar news.

yes, i know - i, too, was beginning to get a bit lonesome as i reminisced about all the good times we had together - like how he'd tuck himself away, giggling, into the folds of the shower curtain, only to dash out as i stepped into the shower, scampering along the wall, and into the corner, where he'd remain looming faux-menacingly as i scrubbed off. ah, dear freddy. those were the good old days.

so you can imagine my delight this week to find that no longer would i, here in the depths of rural kenya, have to suffer through my morning bucket showers in solitude! one morning, as i reached for the plastic "tily pure white cooking fat (c)" tub that i use to dip into my bucket and douse myself off each morning, i discovered that on the scene has arrived a new and equally delightful bathroom buddy, who i have lovingly dubbed jerome the salamander. i say "salamander" for want of a better term...what exactly shall i call the 6-inch-long, thick-bodied, lizardlike creature that dwells up in the corner of the shower? he is charmingly slimy, a chic shade of black with 2 rather hip white racing stripes running down the length of his plump body, and makes telltale thumping noises as he squirms between the cracks where the corrugated metal meets the top of the mud shower wall. he tends to dash off into one of those holes whenever i enter, leaving only his wiggling tail in sight, but i know he's just being coy. it was a regular party this morning after i awoke at 6.09 a.m., as always, to the screaming of the cow (yes, i too was surprised to learn that they actually scream), with whom i share a bedroom wall, and trooped sleepily out to the shower closet, where i found awaiting me not only jerome, but also his old pal humphrey the black and neon green tree frog, smack in the middle of my bathing bucket! i've made a lot of new friends this week.

last saturday, peter and i left bright and early for kisumu, the nearest true city to where i am, which is daintily perched on the banks of the massive lake victoria. we started off from my house around 8 o'clock, making the 2-mile walk down the red clay road from shikokho to malinya, a small town where there are a few shops and a butcher's (a real urban center in comparison to shikokho). this is also the outpost for all the sweaty young drivers of the bodaboda (bicycle taxis), who swarm about the 2-dirt road intersection, circling like hawks, racing up with all haste to any passing pedestrian who looks as if they may remotely be considering needing a ride somewhere. Following a prolonged and complicated process whereby we selected two moderately capable-looking drivers from the mass, negotiated the ride, and i carefully balanced my ass upon the small, flat seat of one of their bikes (women are required to sit with their legs to one side, never with one on each side, as the men sit), we had just set off on the long (about 4 miles), bumpy road to sigalagala (the town on the main highway where we'd be catching the matatu to kisumu, another hour away). about 10 feet into the ride we had the incredibly good fortune of spotting peter's friend, antony. we spotted him because he was passing us in a car. private automobiles are an unbelievable and rare luxury here, him having one because he is, evidently, a bigshot in the tea business (an immense industry here in kenya). you can imagine how my heart leapt as i bounded into the backseat after we were offered a ride to kisumu. the bodaboda drivers looked on bitterly as their fares sped off down the dirt road in a motorized vehicle.

from the back window of this plush automobile, i was able to hugely enjoy the ride (now only 40 minutes since we were in a car and not a matatu, which makes regular stops) as we sped along at a steady clip, rolling up and down with the undulating countryside of this region, narrowly missing bodabodas, matatu, and pedestrians of every sort. as i have previously mentioned, the highway really only qualifies as one and a half lanes, and is perpetually flanked on either side by innumerable people, walking wherever they're going instead of spending the shillings on a matatu or bodaboda. young men in ripped t-shirts, old women with impossibly heavy loads balanced neatly on top of their heads, young women with sleeping infants swaddled in colorful cloths slung across their backs, old men pushing along sturdy carts made at home from sticks and branches, piled high with whatever merchandise they're hawking...fruits, vegetables, mutumba (second-hand clothing, from my understanding the only type anyone ever wears here), ancient pieces of machinery, severed cow heads...you know, whatever's on hand. each town in the region has its own market day (in maliyna, for example, it occurs every thursday), and many of these vendors skip from town to town every day, setting up wherever it's appropriate, splaying out their colorful wares on a blanket, a tarp, or the ground in front of them.

so along the ride to kisumu i drank up the sight of all these comings and goings, the motion of a people, brightly set against the backdrop of this luscious place, green and vibrant and mountainous. and i was filled with an overpowering sense of admiration for these people, effortlessly elegant, completely unassuming, living out their simple lives like a dance that slips its way across a day, from sunrise to sunset and back again. i was only slightly distracted from this deep sense of wonder by my firm belief that at any second our recklessly speeding vehicle would go careening into one of these charming pedestrians, spewing his or her charming guts all over the highway. luckily, antony proved his skill as a (racecar) driver, and we arrived soundly at the main strip (2 blocks of shops) of kisumu, where we left our vehicular host and continued on foot with our errands, which were many that day (when you only get to use the internet and go into a store once a week, you'd be surprised at how much accumulates).

later in the afternoon, peter led me up a long road. it was devoid of storefronts or large buildings, instead thickly lined on either side with people, hundreds of people, each the vendor of some unique item...the goods i mentioned above; used books, yellowed with covers peeling back from age; combs and mirrors in various stages of prior use; second- (or third- or fourth-) hand bedsheets; a whole section of semi-dried fish, the smell of which stretched on for long afterwards and attracted a cloud of flies the likes of which could likely blot out the sun on a hot day; big, ripe avocados for 3 bob (3 shillings...about 5 US cents) apiece; whole cobs of corn roasted over little fires, a local favorite; and on and on and on, for as far as i could see. near the end of one road (the main one had by now branched out into a number of splinters, each completely filled with these vendors), we reached an immense, towering white gate, behind which stood a huge, particularly beautiful building. peter indicated it, saying, "that's the hospital you'll go to when you get malaria." gee, peter, thanks for the positive outlook...

a private hospital, once open only to muzungu (the colonial whites), it is one of the best in the country and its cost is comparable to that of an american hospital. i've already been warned against all clinics/hospitals any nearer to shikokho ("i was deathly ill with malaria, a kidney infection, and severe dehydration, and they didn't even give me an IV for water!" testified an american woman doing an FSD project in kakamega town, of the public hospital near to her). something i don't particularly care to think about, but clearly a valid concern as 6 of this summer's 10 interns, in 2 short months, came down with malaria - a disease which is transmitted through mosquitoes and does its damage (often fatal) by hiding in your red blood cells for a little while before rupturing them all and circulating freely in your system, during which time you suffer from dangerously high fevers, chills, severe joint pains, headache, and, most delightfully, extremely vivid hallucinations. so the hospital in kisumu might not be so bad to remember.

so generally speaking, this week has been a series of small victories and small disappointments. the main focus of my efforts in these seven days has been my work at the primary school, which left me ecstatic at times and crestfallen at others.

the computer training project is probably thus far the most successful. through some incredible miracle, peter actually managed to get the donated computer for shikokho primary repaired (after an unbelievably long series of mishaps) and installed in the school this week, about a month faster than i expected. i had already begun teaching the lessons on my own laptop on monday. although they came kicking and screaming, now that i've finally got all the teachers enrolled in the one-on-one afternoon classes they all seem to be enjoying it. i start each lesson with, "have you ever touched a computer before?" for which the answer is invariably "no." most of them have never even seen one before. it gives me an immense satisfaction to watch their usually stern, solid faces melting into childlike smiles in amazement of the motion of the arrow on the screen with the motion of their hand on the mouse, and when they first type their name onto a blank page. i'm thrilled that i'm able to help equip them with the tools they need to make their school a better, more effective learning institution...and i admit that another perk for me is that they seem to be a little friendlier with me now. as anywhere else, a complicated network of politics governs the behaviors of all at the primary school. and trust me, muzungus are low on the food chain.

i've also been working whenever i have spare time in the library, which is about the size of a large walk-in closet and furnished with a couple hundred donated books, many of which have already been severely damaged by rats. the first time i walked in there and looked up at the ceiling, i took a step back - the roof of wooden beams and corrugated metal is covered, completely, with wasp's nests. i sit in there with my laptop and input each book into an excel spreadsheet with all of its information - title, author, subjects 1, 2, and 3, reading level, and so forth...time consuming but i think it will be useful in the future. jerome's (see above) entire extended family resides in that library and they send little bits of the mud walls tumbling down as they scurry about near the roof, also dropping "friendly reminders" of their presence all over the books and anything else that happens to be near. the other day i was sitting there, sweating under the hot metal roof in the midday heat, stumped as to whether an english textbook featuring a story about a turtle and a stork who live in africa and speak kiswahili to each other while dining on millet cakes should be classified as subject "english," "africa," "kiswahili," "animals," "food," or all of the above, when suddenly an immense thump resounded from the floor just to the left of my foot. i looked down and saw one of those huge salamanders flopping about trying to get his bearings back, after evidently (i noticed as i looked up towards the ceiling) being throttled off his place on the wall by another giant salamander! who knew that african amphibians made a pastime of staging high-altitude death matches in primary school libraries?

yesterday i found myself in the same library (which else?) with another teacher, with whom i have had some difficulty from day one...she seems to think that my sole purpose on this continent is doing her bitchwork, a misunderstanding which i believe i have, over the course of many efforts, masterfully put to rest. in this particular instance, she told me that she needed some posters made, implying that i should hop-to, and i managed to work it out so that we did it together, demonstrating that i'm willing to help out with such projects with some effort on her part as well. it was going great, too, since i was able to ask her some questions about herself and her children as we colored (never hurts to polish the old apple a little).

as i spoke, she looked past me towards the "maths and sciences" corner of the room, and, pointing indifferently, observed, "there's a, um...", searching for the word in english. i turned in the direction of her eyes, noting with surprise and considerable horror that there was, indeed, "a, um..." slithering its way towards us with remarkable speed. in this case, "a, um..." is meant to intend a relatively small (two feet at most) but sufficiently bizarre-looking metallic silver snake, with the appearance more of a worm as both of its ends looked identical as it slipped across the concrete floor towards our feet. having been slightly mesmerized for a few seconds, we both jumped up at the same time, and she rushed out to call together a pack of school toughs, who materialized at the door and quickly produced a stick large enough to have whacked a beast five times the size of this one to smithereens. let it suffice to say that by the time they were through with it, i was beginning to feel a little sorry for the snake, who probably wasn't even all that venomous.

i've been thinking a lot in the past couple days about another pearl of wisdom that tanya had imparted upon me in preparation for my trip... "in africa, you'll regret ever examining anything too closely." she delivered this golden piece of advice as an adjunct to a story she was telling about a delicious vegetable curry she and her friends had enjoyed, three days in a row, while traveling through east africa, only to realize on the final day that all the little black pieces that had originally appeared to be spices were, in fact, little bugs.

i must say she made a very good point, in the "what you don't know won't hurt you" vein. i admit that i was a little remorseful of my first foray into the kitchen here at the house, where the barn animals (2 cows and a chicken) are running freely about, defecating at will, on the same mud floor where the plates of food are sitting, steaming, before being carried into the main house to be eaten. the first night i sat in there on a little wooden bench next to cynthia, her face partially obscured by the thick smoke coming off the fire as she churned the pot full of ugali, i saw more than one thing i wished i hadn't...like when she was transferring the huge thick clump of ugali from the pot to a bowl, a process which still fascinates me. these girls pluck a big aluminum pot, no handles, right off the fire, where it has been suspended between 3 big, heavy stones for the past 30 minutes cooking, with their bare hands, flipping the whole affair upside down into a bowl which appears to be about half as large as it should be to contain what's coming. generally the ugali lands as a neat dome in the bowl which requires some patting with a spoon to make a perfect semi-sphere, but i've seen it happen that one side tumps off onto the dirt floor, from which it gets scooped up and patted down with the rest of it just the same.

i've given some more thought to this concept at the school, where i eat lunch every day with the other teachers. here we've spent the entire morning teaching, being touched by literally hundreds of children, most of whom are sniffling and coughing and have various forms of mucous visible on their faces, marking all of their notebooks which have usually been dragged through the mud outside, after all of which we splash some water on our hands (if we're lucky and there's water somewhere; no soap) and sit down to a lunch of ugali, sukuma, and eggs (if you're me, since i don't eat meat), which we eat with our bare hands. i won't even go into the fact that everyone here is using pit latrines and there are no sinks to be found anywhere...here's where we get into the whole "choosing not to think of it" realm.

however, all of this is simply to illustrate a point, one that tanya failed to mention. that is to say, the incredible phenomenon of tolerance-building with which i believe all humans have been bestowed. as i write all of this, i'm pretending to sound horrified, but really, who cares? eating with my crusty bare hands at school and food of somewhat mysterious origin everyday means, most importantly, that i get to eat everyday. remember that i'm a 40-minute walk from the nearest store, which exclusively sells flour, salt, sugar, powdered milk, and tea.

on a daily basis, things that i may previously have found appalling have already become commonplace. i smash at least one big spider on the wall in my room every day with my flip-flop...i ignore the big, black, hairy caterpillars which crawl about on the floor and don't look too closely in the corners of the pit latrine at night, where the spiders reside...i put foods in my mouth in almost complete darkness, not knowing what it is i'm eating...i shake hands with everyone i meet during the day (which is absolute protocol here, at times difficult, given, for example, the unsavory habit of the primary school's headmaster to go around all day with his finger buried halfway up his nose). building new tolerances. i am discovering that i am a member of an incredibly adaptable species.
after thus far having completely avoided any ill-effects on my health (most notably intense diarrhea, which most people experience first coming to africa...not eating the meat, which is usually seen covered in flies pre-cooking, probably has helped with that), i concede that this week i experienced my first brush with a health issue. it began mildly, as a vague pain in my abdomen, and escalated throughout the week, still with no sign of any digestion problems, until yesterday my entire stomach was consumed in debilitating cramps and i was forced to leave a 2nd grade lesson to go to the clinic nearby. i had just been there the day before with peter, dropping off several bags of medical donations i had brought with me (which were financed, in part, with the RESPECT yard sale's proceeds, and for those of you who were involved, THANK YOU). i met with a nurse (there are no doctors) in a dirty lab coat who first offered to give me some of the antacids that i myself had donated the day prior; when i insisted that indigestion was not the problem, she looked at me and asked, "when was your last, ah...," she paused, looking at me expectantly, as if to say, "for the sake of good taste, i'll stop here and depend on you to finish the thought mentally." i stared back at her, incredulous. "menstrual cycle?" i finished deliberately, amazed that here, in the privacy of a clinic examination room, speaking alone with a (possibly) trained female nurse, it could be taboo to say these words aloud. she looked embarrassed and nodded. now losing my patience, i assured her that i was not experiencing cramps, but most likely a bacteria which was transmitted through the consumption of some raw food (a salad i ate in kisumu last weekend, not the best decision) which was now dwelling and multiplying in my poor gastric chamber, causing an overproduction of acids and leaving me doubled over in pain after 6 days. she accepted my theory and gave me some antibiotics, which she gingerly plucked with her bare hands from a big bottle and deposited in a little paper bag. she wrote "2X3" on the outside to indicate i was to take 2 pills, 3 times a day. let's hope that settles that, and i've lived through my first rural clinic experience. although last night, as i lay in bed with anna karenina, struggling to hear myself think over the deafening roar of the downpour on the tin roof, the pain surged back up and i fell into a fitful sleep which involved the strangest dreams, including one in which i was at the airport before leaving for africa, with 30 bags full of stuff that had to be consolidated down to 3 to get on the plane, 45 minutes remaining before the plane took off, and with emily smith and brittany o'connor as my assistants in completing this formidable task. i awoke at 4:30 soaked in sweat. weird times.

so this morning we left particularly early for kakamega (i wrote most of this blog during the week, on my laptop in bed at night), armed in our gumboots (galoshes, for braving the mud, since it poured down rain all night), peter in his sweater, i in my ankle-length skirt and t-shirt (rare luxury...during the week i wear collared oxfords to look more presentable at the school). during the walk i received the usual calls of "muzungu" and "owahYOU?!," which are slowly but surely fading into the background for me. at the sigalagala intersection i noted with amusement, as peter chatted away with a local friend, that, self-contentedly positioned next door to the large "sigalagala relax bar," is the "new splendid cosmets saloon and beauty therapy," a small concrete-and-corrugated metal (what else?) building with the words painted across the front in a lively red. a flood of images rushed into my head at this title, the most entertaining of which was a vision of a flock of cowboy-hat-clad and spur-booted cosmets, fresh from outer space, sauntering into the place through the wooden swing-doors to receive their daily therapy of mud masks and pedicures. i chuckled.
as we hopped into the next passing matatu, peter motioned for me to buckle the "seatbelt," which was a loose-flopping piece of cloth that most likely couldn't have saved a feather from flying through the windshield in case of a high-impact collision. "peter, what's the point?" i asked, smiling as i clicked it into place. "oh, it's just for the police," he answered with a wave of the hand. sure enough, 10 miles down the road going towards kakamega, our matatu was stopped by a threatening-looking group of kenyan military policemen, complete in their helmets with plexiglass masks (where's the riot?), who tried to look tough as they stuck their heads in the van and carefully eyed all 14 of us (it wasn't too crowded today). peter later told me that there's an important political rally for one of kenya's most influental parties (the ODM, orange democratic movement), and the security is extra tight today. indeed, as i type this last adjunct to the blog, i can see out the window huge military trucks, loaded full of infantrymen toting machine guns, cruising cooly down the potholed road. what a place.

i could go on and on...the bush just lends itself to the creation of strange new stories. but this blog is practically the bible already (i mean in terms of importance to mankind, not length), so i should wrap it up. cheers to you all, especially those of you who actually read to this point! and thanks for all of your well-wishes and encouraging comments...i love getting them. until next time, vulhai...

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