Attack of the small viscous animals, new friends, and a heartbreaking sight. A rose between 2 thorns.

Week of September 23rd – 29th
I continued with my resource library on Wednesday. CREADIS hired a new staff member named Anthony on Tuesday, and this morning he brought something to my attention: I have been withdrawing myself from other staff members. Of course he did not say this outright, his comment was more along the lines of, “You spend a lot of time working on the computer”. My justification for this was two-part. First, I cannot understand most Swahili unless they explain the words I do not know, so I often do not want to but into their conversations and ask them what they are talking about. Secondly, my work up until this point has involved a heavy dependence on the computer because that is where the resources were coming from. However, he made me realize that I should not just put my nose to the grindstone for the whole workday because I will seem antisocial and uninterested in other people.
I have really slacked off in the last two weeks with learning Swahili due to the reasons mentioned above. Anthony explained that it would be a good thing for me to learn as much Swahili as possible (agreeing with my theory from my first entry). Jerry joined in and told me that most interns also give up on Swahili (FYI Swahili and Kiswahili are interchangeable) and revert back to their laptops. This was my resumed my earlier motivation to become comfortable with the language by December, because my lack of conversation with coworkers will greatly limit my changes for experiential learning in the field and at the office. Also, Swahili is a sexy language and I will love to be able to say I can speak it. I spent the tea-break (everybody stops working around 10:30AM to drink tea and chat) learning new words and getting more involved in their conversations—which is hard because it is their instinct to speak in Swahili, even if they are talking to (or about) me. This made me feel better, so mission accomplished I suppose.
Then I went back to the computer to continue my work on the resource library (I never learn it seems) and found great resources. Instead of focusing on staff education, I tried looking for toolkits that could help during workshops, discussion forums, etc.
I have learned at CREADIS that it is common for a person in one project to switch over and help out on another project. Once I realized this, I stopped my favoritism towards HIV/AIDS/OVCs resources and started looking for items in other projects, namely: women’s rights, agriculture, good governance, and micro-financing. This helped me immensely because I would rather know a little of everything than a lot about one thing—it is all involved in the same system anyways. For example, you cannot fully explain AIDS if you do not explain how gender inequality causes women to become more affected due to a lack of land rights (government) and thus having a smaller crop yield (agriculture), forcing them back into risky behaviors such as prostitution. Poverty is a multi-faceted problem which requires multi-faceted work.
After work, I met with a Kenyan-born person named John who lives Berlin. From our conversation outside Marill (my village) he seemed very knowledgeable in worldly matters (his master’s thesis was on the psychology of the Hutu mind during the Rwandan genocide of 1994) so I was very interested in grabbing a beer and learning more about him. Jerry and I went to our favorite local bar (The Ark) and met John there. He is a very lively (and rich) person so we had a great time just listening to his stories. He invited Jerry and I to go partying in Nairobi that weekend, which would be great, but it seemed like we should be flying by the seat of our pants—2 day’s travel for 1 day’s drinking—but we told him it would be nice. When we received our bills for food and beer, all of them were completely wrong. John cursed the lady but I merely corrected her and asked for the new bill. When she came back, it was still wrong because she told us we drank more beer than we did. John attributed this to me being a muzungu and started verbally attacking the waitress. I sunk low in my chair; but he was right in his argument. She brought back a third bill (which was correct) but tried to say the beer Jerry was drinking was not paid for; however, he paid for it at the bar. John verbally insulted her again. If you have not read Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, I will explain. He was a man that sold his soul to the devil, and it was from this play that came the idea of a tiny angel on one shoulder with a tiny devil on your other shoulder, each pulling you different ways. I was Dr. Faustus, Jerry was the tiny good person, and John was the tiny evil person; and I did not know which was to let myself be pulled. However, Dr. Faustus followed the devil’s temptations and eventually was sent to spend eternity in hell (spoiler alert? Oops, too late), so I decided to follow Jerry and leave peacefully.
Thursday was a very traumatic day for me. I am fairly oriented with nature and wildlife, but most potentially dangerous animals in Canada are very visible—wolves, moose, and cats, for example. I was working away on the computer with the resource library, feeling as though the resource library was large enough to give to Janet. To reward myself, I decided to sneak out back and have a cigarette (disregarding the faulty idea of a negative reward after a positive task). As I turned the corner into the alleyway, I heard a lizard start to scamper up the wall but did not take much notice because they are very timid—at least I thought so. As I walked, I saw an animate object leap from the top of the 8-foot wall out of the corner of my eye. My instinct was to duck and bend down to avoid the thing hitting my head if that was what it was aiming for. It narrowly missed my head, but hit my back. For a split second I thought I had escaped the danger; but then I felt the weight of the foot-long chameleon clinging onto my upper back. I was gripped in terror and started slapping my back viciously. After about 3 seconds I felt the weight leave my back, and the claws scraped down the length of my arm as it desperately tried to avoid falling. However, it landed flat on its back, stunned long enough for me to get a good profile of the perpetrator. After a moment, it recovered and ran up to the top of the wall in front of me once again. The urge to smoke was much stronger now, but I had to walk down the narrow alley under the lizard once again—so I gave up on the idea. I went back to the office and told Anthony about my experience; to my surprise he simply laughed and said, “So you killed it?” Stepping on my first cockroach was horrific enough (the splatter coming out the sides of my sandal, so I could not imagine the feeling of crushing a life-form that had both musculoskeletal and circulatory systems.
As I waved my hands around for emphasis as I described the event, I saw that my hand some bloody abrasions, so I went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up. When I returned to ‘the cave’ to chat more with Anthony, a mouse came into the room and ran over my foot—hiding somewhere under my desk. I got up and went outside to smoke so I could calm down. Then I saw the lizard in the same place, peering down at me. I couldn’t go back to the cave, and I couldn’t smoke. I decided to sit in the lobby with my computer for the rest of the day and I completed the resource library. I later told Jerry about my experience, but he also brushed it off as normal. I suppose the situation may be reversed if they saw a man smoking a joint in public, for example, but I decided to take his advice and accept the fact that things like this happen and will likely happen again before December 11th. Lizards are foreign to me, and my instinct reaction was to use bug-spray on it to shoo it away—then I realized they were closer to small dinosaurs than to giant bugs. Instead, I used my opposable thumbs to pick up a stick and poke at it shyly from a distance so it would not peer down at me anymore. I believe I killed it, because it did not move no matter how hard I poked at it. The next day it was gone.
That night when Jerry and I were eating, we once again met John at Jumba’s—my parents know what is coming next—we had a few beer which were enjoyable, but made me feel very unproductive afterwards because this was 2 weekday evenings in a row. I like the fact that my wolf pack has grown to three wolves, but I will have to limit my wolf pack nights.
Friday! It was almost the weekend; all I had to do was hand my resource library to Janet via flash-drive and attend a workshop. She seemed very approving of the resources I gave her and she even brought in other staff to advise them about using some of the tools in future. We skimmed over many of the topics, but we agreed that reading through them all would take far too long. When I left her office, I felt very content with the work I did. Dissemination of information is very easy and sustainable because it exists when you don’t—as opposed to running workshops on safe sex.
Later that morning, Geoffrey and I walked to the Westgate Inn, located in a private field close to the rundown airstrip in Kanduyi. It was a hotel (which means restaurant in Kenya) and a place where people can spend a night in a nice room (which is not usually described as a hotel). I took the opportunity of waiting for others to arrive (African time was 90 minutes late this time) to make plans with Geoffrey as I stop in London waiting for the long flight home. I also gave him more advice on ‘muzungu culture’ such as how time issues are stricter—cannot show up half an hour late for a meeting. After Jerry showed up, I asked him some questions about Tanzania/Zanzibar safaris and transportation because that is where Kate, Court and I plan on going for our vacation. For a driver, he does not seem to travel much because he was not very knowledgeable about Tanzania—he does not seem to travel far away.
Also, while we were waiting, Geoffrey informed me that we had applicants for a new job at CREADIS, and Gladys wanted me and him to review the candidates. I have never been part of a hiring process, but I took it as a great sign of trust. The job to be filled was mainly for developing a website, but also to organize fundraising activities. Only one person (a man from Tanzania) had everything we were looking for: IT training, website development knowledge, and fundraising experience. Opened and shut case, I was sure of whom to suggest to Gladys.
The workshop was meant to refuse the organization’s policy manual and financing reporting procedures. Very dry stuff, but I believe it is important to review these things yearly with all staff to ensure all procedures are clear and still relevant—but that does not make it any easier to enjoy, because cleaning a toilet is also well and often. By the time the financial reporting procedures were finished, I could see that I was not the only person struggling to stay attentive.
Afterwards, Gladys asked Geoffrey and me what we thought about the candidates. We informed her of who we advised, and she replied, “Oh. The man? I was thinking the woman?” It seemed to me that affirmative action was in place, because I could not understand why anybody would choose the woman (not because she’s a woman, because she was not as qualified). I may be mistaken by the subtly of her comment, and I apologize to her if this is so, because subtlety in a foreign culture can be tricky; however, if I am correct in my theory, she was also not displaying gender equality by showing favoritism to a woman due to her biological disposition. Rather than dwell on the comment, I will simply take a note of it and avoid letting it change my opinion of the person unless it recurs in another situation. This is an uncomfortable idea for me, as a male, to speak about but I will never learn if I ignore the idea.
The day concluded and we all said our farewells to Geoffrey. Then I returned back to the apartment to do a little house work before going down to Jumba’s with Jerry (we decided to avoid Nairobi). At Jumba’s, we saw Joshua (coworker in HIV/AIDS projects) on a bodaboda, so we decided to invite him for a beer. It was nice to be hanging out with people other than Jerry and John, so we had a fun time at the outdoor bar before the three of us went into Good Friends disco for some dancing and music. I believe Joshua was a lightweight because after coming back from the toilet an hour into GFs, he was very weak and his breath smelled of vomit. I felt bad for bringing him to the disco because he previously stated he was tired, but I don’t believe he blamed me and Jerry. Joshua left at around 11, just as Jerry and I were getting enough liquid courage to go dancing.
When I went outside to have a puff, I saw a prostitute that came on to me earlier in the night with 2 men. One man was standing away, while the other had the woman by the wrist. He was trying to force her to come home with him (or them). She refused but the man did not stand for it, he grabbed her wrist tighter and I felt a minor rage build in my chest—but I ignored it and stayed calm, thankfully. After a few back-and-forth rounds, the woman ripped her arm loose (clearly having a bad temper) and stormed back into the bar, the men realized they had failed and finally left peacefully. Afterwards, a man named Erick approached me and started talking about things like peace, NGOs, poverty reduction, and other pop topics among rich Kenyans. I say this because I could clearly tell he was only speaking to me in this way because he had ulterior motives. For example, he told me he was trying very hard to reduce poverty, but could tell me how he was doing so. Then his true motives were shown, “So can you find me a Canadian girl?” I told him I did not even know any Canadians in Bungoma, and he immediately cut the conversation and went back inside. Erick progressively got more intoxicated and started to cling onto me; when I danced with a girl, he would try to take the girl away for himself—whatever Erick, just don’t grab her wrist.
I gave up on the dance floor and sat down by myself in the back of the disco. What comes next was undoubtably the hardest things I have ever witnessed, and after returning to the house later that night, I cried like a baby for an hour straight until I fell asleep—to prove my seriousness, I have never done that. Infact, it is very rare for me to even get fazed by a traumatic sight for more than 5 minutes, my life until this point has made it hard to be dramatic at things.
I wish I never witnessed what happened, and I doubt I can explain it in a way that will make people understand, but here it goes anyways. I am in Kenya partly so I can tell the raw truth of good and bad experiences to Canadians.
The woman was a beautiful young woman of about 17 years. She had an innocent smile that reminded me of when I first let the compound kids play the Pinball computer game. She was sitting by herself; and I only half-noticed her at first. Then a large, overweight man of about 45 years came and sat with her to talk. Innocent enough until her started yelling and grabbing her until I thought he was going to hit her. My attention was now focused and I felt the rage in my chest building once again. I took deep breaths and watched them closely incase he became violent. When she became visibly scared of the man, the man got angrier and threw her arm away, disgusted, and walked away.
I watched the woman without drawing too much attention to the fact, and noticed she was crying hard, but hiding it well enough for me to barely notice it. Her friend (who was a prostitute) came over and comforted her, but she shooed the woman away. It was then that I realized the woman (she wasn’t a woman, but still a child to me) was also a prostitute. I was very scared for the girl’s safety and I tried to signal her to come over to my table. My plan was to pay her double what she usually gets; she can come home with me, eat and drink tea, then sleep peacefully in my bed while I was on the coach. However, she didn’t notice me, and within seconds the angry fat man returned for a second, then signaled her to go home with him. I would have been able to handle the situation, but as she got up to leave with the fat man, she looked at me and smiled innocently through her tears, then waved to me as if to signal, ‘don’t worry, I will be fine’. This struck me harder than anything else, and I was stunned for 7 seconds at most. Then I realized I could not have this on my conscience if I didn’t try to stop her from going with him.
I ran out to the dance floor, then out to the alleyway, but she was already long gone. I found her friend (the prostitute) and sat her down with me. She could not speak English so I struggled to ask her for the girl’s number. If I could reach her, I could take her away from that man. She did not understand and after 20 minutes of trying, I let her go. She then went to Jerry and asked her to translate what I was saying to her. I still had hope of saving the girl because I finally got the number. I called many times, but the phone operator said it was an invalid number. I gave up, there was nothing more I could do; but that was exactly why my heart had the sinking feeling. I could have stopped it, but didn’t; so now she is likely getting raped by an old man for money. Her desperation gave me great pity for those that are given no other option but to sell themselves at such a young age. That is what I learned.
How can I understand it? I can’t, at least not yet. I have found no understanding of what I saw that night which can make me think anything but a murderous rage for the fat man’s evil. I seem very violent on this Friday, but it will be tamed as I slowly forget the vividness of the images.
On Saturday I slept until 3PM. I had no will to seize the morning after what I saw. Hunger finally drove me awake after Jerry called me from Generations saying he ordered a lot of ugali and goat meat for us. Ice cream can make most people feel people, but rare steak has always worked best for me. After a few hours at Generations, we once again ate some meat (kuku or chicken this time) at The Ark—I could not get enough of my comfort food it seems.
That night I lay in bed watching movies again, even though my community map for the Coady was past due, because I think a day of deep thought was what I needed most. The deep thought once again did not seem to help the sadness from Friday, but at least now I am sad and not murderous.
Saturday was a day of reflection, but Sunday was my recovery day. I woke up around 10AM and did my weekend routine of cleaning and etc. Afterwards, I made my way into town to pick up some bread and drinking water (boiling water 1litre at a time isn’t working well on my little burner) at the supermarket. I was slightly uneasy because that day I received an email from the Embassy telling me to watch out for radical Islamic Somalians because they were abducting Western people in Kenya as retaliation for the US assassination of a leading Al Shabaab member. But what can I do, run from everybody that worships Allah, I think not. I met my friend who works in the supermarket, named Abby. He is very nice and seems like a caring individual. He even tried to set me up with the woman that works in cosmetics one aisle away. FYI My last 2 major girlfriends have also worked in cosmetics at a supermarket. Confucius say: no such thing as coincidence. Abby spoke to me of the importance of praying, stating, and “If you don’t pray before bed you have nightmares from the devil”. To each their own as I say, but as I told my father many times, let me figure out my own spiritual beliefs. He asked me what my religion was and I said, “Fallen Catholic”. He then said, “I am a Muslim from Somalia”. This caught me off guard, especially because of the recent email. I don’t think I was being stereotypical; I was just surprised because of my recent letter from the embassy. The surprise passed by unnoticed and he went on telling me about himself until he asked me for ‘a great favor’. He said, “I am a married man, but can you bring me a nice white woman, I would like that very much”. I laughed, but realized he was serious, so I humored him by saying I will look into it. So if anybody reading this is looking for a nice, married, Somalian muslim with three kids, you know where to find him. When I came home, I completed the assignment for the Coady Institute then relaxed to some reading. Later in the night, I used Skype with my girlfriend for the first time, but it was very poor due to connection problems. However, it was a great relief to see another Canadian face.
Even though I had my rough patch this weekend, that stressful situation did not force me to relax. Instead, I am trying to use it as fuel for the growing fire of my work and experiences which will be essential if I am to continue riding this wave back in Canada. This has been a long blog, so I will post this one for 5 days as opposed to a full week. Also, it will be easier for you readers to understand my dates if I start on a Monday, I think.