Kenya

Our trip to Kenya was such a jam packed whirlwind I'm not even sure where to begin. We arrived in Nairobi at 6 am on August 27th. It was freezing out, cold and rainy just like Seattle. With all the Subaru Outbacks in the airport parking lot I thought for a second maybe somehow we'd been diverted to Seatac!We were met by Rose, the Village Net program director from Mwaani, a village just southeast of Nairobi. We piled into the van and headed into town to get some breakfast before the drive through the Great Rift Valley to the village of Suswa where the other TVN program is. We went to a coffee shop that looked like any modern coffee shop in the U.S. and having come from Ghana where the only coffee I ever saw came out of a Nescafe packet.....I have to admit I was extremely excited! Nairobi is a beautiful city and could be any European city with it's architecture and skyline.

As soon as we got back into the van I started to feel sick, and within minutes was violently ill. My first glimpse of the Great Rift Valley was out of the corner of my eye crouched over and throwing up. I spent the entire ride in the front seat of the van with my head practically in the poor van driver's (Jackston) lap with a high fever and delirium. When we finally arrived at the hotel in Narok, I really thought I might be dying. When it was suggested I go to a doctor I refused, all I could think about was laying down and sleeping. Luckily when I woke up several hours later I felt much better.

Suswa is in the Masai land, the great warrior tribe of Kenya. It was a fascinating experience meeting the women borrowers and hearing their stories. The program director Lois is an amazing woman who I have the utmost respect for. She is very dedicated to the program and is quite knowledgeable about micro-finance. She cares a lot about the women and is really on top of the program and making sure it is having a positive impact on the women and their community. We met a young woman named Elizabeth who is volunteering at the office and comes from Suswa. She recently completed a certificate in community development and is hoping to be able to help her community. She was a wealth of information on issues affecting the community and she had some very impressive thoughts on how to foster the development. All in all I am very impressed with the Suswa program. The women we met were all very nice and welcoming. When we went to their market day, they were all dressed in traditional Masai clothes.

On one of the nights we were in Narok (the town we stayed in that is near Suswa) Lois had us over to dinner. She has 4 children and her husband and a brother in law joined us as well. It was the best night that I had in Kenya, great food, great company, a fun time all around; it was very comforting to feel at home in someone's house.

We were able to go on a safari, and saw all kinds of animals including zebras, giraffes, water buffalo, warthogs, wildebeasts....and best of all....a lion!! She was just walking down the road in front of our van like it was nothing.

After Narok we went back to Nairobi for a couple of nights. We had some free time and were able to explore the city a bit. Our guide/van driver Jackton lives in Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. We asked if he would take us there and he was more than happy to. It may have been the most powerful experience of my life. The slum was huge, it went on and on as far as the eye could see. It was crowded with people and animals and the homes where the people live were no bigger than a small bedroom back home. Nothing I'd seen so far in Africa prepared me for this. Jackton had moved his family there (2 daughters and twin two year old boys along with his wife) a few years ago while he was going to bible college so that he could still afford to send his daughters to school. We went to his home and his wife graciously served us soda, even though it was probably a lot more than they could afford...it is part of the culture to give your guests whatever you have. Jackton was so proud of his family, of his wife being an entrepreneur herself (selling a okra like vegetable called spumaweeki)...and his daughters both being first in their classes. He is very hopeful that they will move in the next year and wants to get his own van to drive instead of working for a company. Their hospitality and happiness was humbling to say the very least.

After a few days it was time to part ways with Dave and Jenny, and I was really sad to have to say goodbye to Jenny. We had spent nearly every minute (waking and non....having to share a bed together in Ghana) of the past 6 weeks together and Africa just didn't (and still doesn't!) feel the same without her. The remaining few of us headed out to Mwaani, the other Village Net village in Kenya. Mwaani was a very small village and there was not a lot else to do after we finished our interviews each day. It was nice to have a chance to relax, the stars that came out into the vast Kenya sky at night were unreal, I'm not sure I've ever seen so many stars before. The women were very welcoming and we had a great time going to visit them at their businesses to do videos for the TVN fundraiser. The Mwaani program director, Rose, had us to her family's farm for lunch on Sunday. The food was very good and we had a really pleasant afternoon sitting with Rose and her sisters talking and looking at family photographs.

Monday we headed back to Nairobi as I had to catch my flight to Ghana very early Tuesday morning. We got to Nairobi just in time to go to the animal orphanage at the national park, where baby animals that are found abandoned in the wild are brought. Unfortunately we didn't get to see hippos and elephants and rhinos as we had wanted....turned out they were in another part of the park that was separate and a high entrance fee. We made up for it a bit by being able to hold a baby lion! He was pretty big for a baby...and not too happy to be held. He scratched and growled, but how often can you say you've been scratched by a lion?!

The 10 days went by very fast, and it was a very eye opening experience. There had recently been a 2 year drought in Kenya and it was very hard on the women and their families. Many of them had lost their businesses during the drought and had really struggled to survive. The living conditions in Kenya were much harsher than in Ghana and the poverty was more striking. Most villages don't have access to water or electricity and spend much of their day fetching water. Something we don't think twice of at home. This takes away from their work and greatly affects their income. We visited an organization called Heifer International which is doing some really interesting things with rain water catchment and agriculture to ease the constraints the climate brings.

I will always remember the amazing experiences I had in Kenya, and the great people that I shared them with.

Now for the last leg of my journey.......back home in Ghana.