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| Me and Freshy from my Mabadiliko Youth group |
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
False start
Wake up
freezing cold and tired, but have a rush of nervous excitement about
the day ahead. It's ok, I've done all I can myself to prepare. Lauren
and I have designed our first lesson around getting to know you
activities, combined with the slightly more frivolous of educational
exercises proscribed by our curriculum, such as the spaghetti
challenge. I imagine on the one hand a modestly sized, happy bank of
receptive female faces ranged in front of us. Lauren distributing
our marshmallows round the class, whilst I scrawl islands
of assets and aspirations across a whiteboard, meticulously picked
out with palm trees and frolicking dolphins.
Then the
alternative rears it's nonplussed, utterly unimpressed head. An
intimidating posse of 20 surly old year old Kenyan business men
wondering what these faintly ridiculous mzungu kids are doing
prancing in incomprehensible and irritating circles in front of them.
I am suddenly very glad we decided not to include the 'let's all
create playdough alien's!' exercise at least before we've met each
group. All I can do is make like Lucy and trust to God rocking up at
the 11th hour, and giving us a receptive and
enthusiastic class.
It feels too early when I wake up. As I crawl out
of bed I become aware of the water pump roaring, as though for a
shower, only louder than usual. I cast around feebly for a victim to
hang my pissed-off hat on, but I know no one is really up and having
a shower at this time of night. An investigation of the hall and shower confirm what I already suspect. It's just the house doing what
it does best, royally screwing us over with precision-planned timing.
The sound of
rain is deafening, it seems to be inside the house. In and out of the
thunder I hear squealing. I prepare myself for the worst.
I return to my room and open the door to a scene from Jumanji. I seem to have rolled 'monsoon'
on the magic dice. The deluge is confined exclusively to the area
over my bed.
Lucky? To have
got out of bed in the nick of time. My midnight melodrama of mood
dwelled grimly on my narrow escape from certain death. To be fair,
the water tank had actually just exploded above my head.
Thank the lord
for my laptop being down stairs and not on the floor. Money,
hairdryer, straighteners, ipod, all in my suitcase which now looks
like a miniature ornamental pond with murderously floating electrical
devices, all plugged into the plug rank I bought for a mere 400
shillings.
Someone turns
the power off, and sorts the tank out. I lift not a finger but sit
downstairs unhelpfully weeping. Josh lends me his hoodie and I sleep
on a too short sofa under a couple of Amy's scarves, all very pretty
but not particularly distinguished for their thermal qualities. Amy's
bed is already soaked from the reservoir of water dripping down
through my mattress from the top bunk. We both get a little
hysterical, she is good at diverting a potential psychological
breakdown into a giggling fit. Tomorrow, or next week, maybe next
year, I might find it genuinely pretty funny. It's not even 2 am yet.
The nightly
canine cacophony strikes up on queue. It's finally quiet circa 3.24
am.
After about
five minutes peace, a tiny yap from what must be Satan's chihuahua.
Like the first nervous clap of a controversial applause, started by
someone who normally does not dare to initiate such things, there's a
wickedly expectant and self-satisfied pause before the barks begin to
roll round the neighbourhood once again.
Lucy
This morning I have tea
with lucy. I pass her every day at least a few times and I miss her
when for some reason she's not there. Every morning it's 'Jambo', a
wave, some fruit for 5 bob and/or a chat about something
inconsequential. I look forward to this exchange of friendly noises
in a way I would never do at home. At home I rush around hoping
against hope I don't bump into anyone I kinda know and am forced into
inane chat about the weather. I like Kenya Anna much better.
Today though she asks me
to stop. My tea cup gets filled from from her own cup and her
daughters as there isn't actually any left. Her daughter gets up to
offer me the only stool at Lucy's stall, and some fresh mdazi.
We talk of her morning and
laugh over shared and unshared vocabulary. She is generous with my
toying swahili and pretends to understand my often frustratingly
skitty and mumbling english, which even my mum often has difficulty
deciphering. Her morning involves going to the market and stocking up
on produce, I see that she has bought much much more than usual, due
to the mzungu presence down the road? She stays in a room in the
house opposite us, our regular avocado and tomato based lunches must
have meant a substantial boost in trade for her. I ask her about it,
brashly inured to asking such indelicate business questions from my
work so far on the program. She doesn't directly respond, I think due
to embarrassment this time rather than my enunciation. I wish I
hadn't asked, she is modest an shy with regards to our 'business'
relationship. I am her friend and guest and take an mdazi and another
cup of tea to make up for my insensitivity. The tea is typical Kenyan
tea, thick like cream with at least 5 sugars, builders eat your heart
out. Mdazi are kenyan donuts, their gilded caramel casing giving way
to a sweetly disintegrating eiderdown interior, when done well.
Usually they tend to be slightly yellowing and flabby with grease.
Lucy's are the best I've had.
She talks to me about her
brother's sons who want her to move out of the house she stays in but
which is technically theirs. Patriarchal inheritance laws. She cooks
and cleans and gives them her money, she cant save anything for
herself. Where will she live with her daughters? As she confides her
hardship her talk shrinks to a whisper, I have to strain with all my
auricular and mental faculties to piece together what she's saying.
It's a painful while before I perfect a method of responding in a way
which prioritises expression of sympathy, whilst temporarily
deferring full understanding, and thus prompts repetition. I begin to
be able to replace the frequent 'loom's' I hear with 'room's', etc
until the articulating bones of her story animate themselves in my
imagination.
Why is shy confiding this
to me? She is generous to me with her secrets and troubles as well as
her hospitality. That disagreeable and decidedly western sensibility
I felt stir its ugly head inside me from time to time in Lalwet, is
suspicious that she wants something from me. Is that the only reason
she is treating me like this? How selfish of me to think so. What do
I want her to want from me? I want her to like me for 'myself'? What
on earth does that mean?! Nothing but western egocentricity, mixed
with equal parts of MEDCentricity (more economically developed
country).
What is this ambivalence I
sometimes felt in Lalwet, feeling pressure and sadness that I
couldn't respond to their exorbitant hospitality with a guarantee of
a scholarship to an english university that they so covet. The
painfully uncomfortable awkwardness I felt in the market when the
woman I bought my plimsoles from aggressively insisted I become her
friend and take her back to england with me goes some way towards
both understanding and excusing it, but you can't generalise like
that.
What is it exactly that
makes me uneasy and suspicious? Do I think I am being put under
obligation by her kindness? Why should I think this? It is an
unpleasant sensibility which does not exist in other societies, in
ancient Greece and Rome such ties of 'obligation' underpinned
interpersonal relationships, strengthened the fabric of society and
did not necessarily diminish one iota the 'authentic' ties of love
and affection between friends. It is different with Lucy. I find
myself thinking of the bible just as she would, 'do unto others
as...' I am very suggestible, not a great quality usually, but on
this occasion at least I am am grateful for the empathy it affords
me.
Perhaps she thinks I might
be put here to help her, I know that it would be within my power to so.
To do much more than she might even hope for, not that I should of
course. I could help any number of individual Kenyans. I struggle to
hold in my rational mind that this is an inherently flawed approach.
This entrepreneurship course is specifically designed to help in a
sustainable and still meaningful way. But what about Lucy? She 'only'
needs the one off 5000 deposit on top of the first months rent for a
new room, (she can keep up her rent easily after that if it weren’t
for the advance).
I have to move the
conversation into less fretfully treacherous waters. Shy, generous
woman, I try to explain my new found taste for roasted maize, she
misconstrues and thinks I mean gidethi which is a dish of maize and
beans boiled to within an inch of their lives, and boiled again till
they finally submit their bullet carapaces to being chewed. My heart
sinks a little as she says that it's her speciality and she would like to make me some, I tell her that's a really nice offer, and think no
more about it.
Lauren and I are working
together on our first session with a Kenyan group. We spend the rest
of the day drawing up a pretty comprehensive lesson plan. Josh comes
through the door with ingredients for our dinner and informs me that
Lucy has made a pot of what transpires to be more like a vat of beans
and maize. I feel terrible. I decide that I'm going to bloody well
eat them, and bloody well like it, but does she want me to pay? I
wish I understood Kenyan etiquette better. It could either be
terribly rude to offer, or terribly rude to not. Dougie and Lauren come
with me for moral support which is lovely. Doug also shoulders
responsibility for untangling the question of payment. I'm so, so
grateful.
She wont let me pay, 'I am
her friend'. She won't meet any of our eyes when she says this and I
go a little bit crumbly. Caleb, our Kenyan in residence adds potato
and tomato to the mix and it actually tastes fucking fantastic.
Lauren and I finish
planning our sessions for tomorrow. Absolutely terrified. Two lessons
of 2 hours with 2 groups, one at 10 and one at 2.
Go to bed.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
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