the tv guy, and what he taught us about Kenyan leadership, Kenyan hospitality, and unexpected conversations

At Jimmy's, singing the Kenyan national anthem. TV guy at the far left.

He was there to fix the TV, and he slipped in while most of us weren't even paying attention. Our team was at Jimmy's apartment for dinner, our last one before we left Kenya for home. Jimmy was another gracious, welcoming Kenyan partner and friend. His 2-bedroom apartment was in a huge complex of 8,000 units near the airport in Nairobi, with gates and guards and fruit stands and kids running around the maze of streets and cul-de-sacs. When we arrived at his apartment, we smelled food and chided Jimmy's wife, Faith, for cooking for us when we'd insisted she not go to the trouble. They had already been so generous with their time and help. But of course we were not-so-secretly pleased to eat a last home-cooked Kenyan meal.

I was feeling sad and a little withdrawn, like I usually am in the last hours of a trip I don't want to end. Maybe that's why I didn't give much attention to the friend who came shortly after we arrived to fix the TV. In some ways, he was hard to miss - at least six foot tall, and built like an American football player. He took up space, especially in the already crowded living room. But he stayed quiet, focusing his attention on Jimmy's new TV that sometimes played in black and white instead of color. The rest of us waited for the food to be ready: Shannon on the computer to check us in to our flights, her husband helping her, the rest of us enjoying the alcohol Jimmy served us and recalling our favorite parts of our trip.

Soon Faith announced that dinner was ready, and the TV repair man stopped his work to join our eager line to pile the rice, beef curry, cabbage, greens and chicken onto plates. It was then, when he sat down to eat with us, that I realized that the TV guy was not just a repairman, but a friend and neighbor -- a distinction that doesn't exist in Kenyan culture (or at least not as often as it does in the West).

With empty plates and full stomachs, we all sat together -- the Alabaster team, Jimmy and Faith and Faith's friend, some of our GCN hosts, and the TV guy. Sam played his violin, and soon we were singing national anthems from all the places any of us had once, in some way, called home. That led to questions about Kenya's president, which led several of our Kenyan friends to start debating the most recent elections and whose candidate should have won. Which quickly turned into a passionate discussion of how Kenya can help its poor and isolated people get the resources and justice they deserve.

A few minutes into this conversation, I pulled out my small black moleskine and pen, and Shannon looked over at me and laughed. We had already joked that the most valuable conversations on this trip hadn't happened when I'd prepared for them. From our very first day when we drove to rural Maasailand, the things I really wanted and needed to learn about came up at unexpected times, when I had to rely on my memory to absorb the most important points or pull out my notebook and start scribbling furiously. (I had purchased a microphone for my iphone and a savvy recording app prior to the trip, but these things take a few minutes to get ready -- minutes that would have been wasted in distraction. It was also more conspicuous, a fact I was still learning to navigate.)

The discussion turned into a powerful lesson in African and Kenyan leadership. No matter which presidential candidate or party they supported, each Kenyan there was convinced that what Kenya needed was talented and committed local leaders who advocated more for what their people needed. The TV guy was perhaps the most articulate, passionate and thoughtful in his ideas. He explained that Kenya is in the midst of de-centralizing its government, which is good and needed. But leaders who are appointed to posts should be familiar with their communities and a good manager of resources -- not the "for show" politicians that, according to these men, Kenyans are all too familiar with. "They show up at cultural dances and then go home, and people are still hungry," the TV guy said. They spoke of a laptop program in schools, initiated by the Ministry of Education. But because solar panels and electricity are still lacking in some areas, politicians have used this an excuse to funnel the money elsewhere, showing a lack of integrity and genuine concern for the education of Kenya's children. This anecdote was a stark contrast to the head teachers and principals our team had met in Maasailand and in the slums throughout our trip -- men who had made great sacrifices, financially and socially and otherwise, to educate children in their community.

We had to cut the conversation short because it was 8pm, time for our team to leave for the airport. I had written down (or at least had tried to) a few things that the TV guy said, and realized I still didn't know his name. As we said our goodbyes, I shook his hand and thanked him for sharing so openly and passionately. He was helping us to learn, I told him. He smiled shyly and I asked him his name.

"Felix," he said.

the joy that comes from dirty feet

muddy shoes, in the clinic line in Kangemi

I packed an old pair of running shoes to wear for clinic days in Kenya. For our first five days, camping out in rural Maasailand, they were on my feet the entire time except for when we slept. The night we arrived there, the dust started settling into the mesh and seems. By the next day, it had seeped inside and coated my socks. After our hike at Lake Natron, I found dirt in between my toes. At night, I used baby wipes to clean my feet -- balancing on one foot while wiping the other. But then I looked down and realized that the only place to put by now semi-clean foot was right back in my dirty, smelly shoe.

After a few days of no running water and the baby-wipe cleaning system, my feet were a mess. And they smelled. Even though nights stayed warm, and our tent could get stuffy, I slept with my feet tucked into my sleeping bag out of respect for my teammates. Albert, one of our Kenyan hosts, kept telling us that we would stop to wade in an alkaline hot springs on our drive back to Nairobi. "All skin diseases gone!" was how he advertised the detour. As soon as we pulled up, I was untying my shoe laces and peeling off my socks. Walking through the steamy water was better than a pedicure. I hesitated to put my smelly, dirty sneakers back on, but that was all I'd packed.

My sneakers went back on my feet for our next clinic at in Kangemi slum in Nairobi. As we drove, the cloudy sky let rain drops fall, and by the time we arrived at Kangemi the soft ground had turned to thick mud. Our van pulled as close to the school where we'd hold our clinic as it could, but buildings are packed tight in slums. Walking a distance was unavoidable. I rolled up my scrub pants and did what this trip was teaching me best: to embrace being dirty.

But even more than embracing dirt, this trip was teaching me to embrace joy. As we got closer to the school, we heard children talking, playing, laughing. I smiled in my heart. Relating to and caring for kids - no matter how dirty my feet were going to get - was just about the best way I could imagine spending my day. I walked around outside the classrooms, through the mud, to take photos of children, who smiled and giggled when I showed them what I'd captured. And I learned the names of the youth in classes 7 and 8 who had helped us carry our supplies from the van. Wilberforce, the founder and principal of the school, shared with me about his determination to help kids who didn't have the means for education, how the school has grown from 2 to nearly 400 pupils in just five years, and how he named the school Light Rays because of the way that educated children can illuminate dark places.

When I went back inside, my sneakers carried a thick layer of mud underneath that I had to scrape of on the cement step. I sat down next to Shannon. She was the last "station" of the clinic that day. As children came to her, Shannon read aloud each child's name from their registration cards as she handed each one a bright orange Alabaster bracelet and a piece of candy. The gifts coaxed a smile from most of them. The litany of names reminded us, again, of the joy of knowing and remembering people who have been forgotten by most of the world, their government, sometimes their own families.

At the end of our trip, I decided to leave my sneakers in the trash at our hotel. Part of me was compelled to keep them for the sake of remembering where I had walked in them and what it was like to get dirty. But I knew that what I really needed to carry with me was the joy that came from it, which I have in my photos, in these stories, and in my heart.

they filled our cups

in Meru

"Coffee?"

That was Albert's greeting to me every morning during our stay in Masai land. To others he offered tea, but he quickly learned that I preferred coffee in the morning. I would grab a tin mug, pour in a few scoops of instant coffee and wait for Albert to bring me heated water or milk. He filled it to the brim, gave him my thanks, and sipped while watching the morning fire or predicting if the clouds would hang all day in the sky.

Albert always knew when to come back with hot water or milk to fill up my cup again, and I gladly accepted more.

***

During the second half of our stay, our team stayed for two nights at the up-country home of Mercy, the leader of Girl Child Network (our nonprofit partner). Her home in Meru was set back on a bumpy dirt road, with a view out the back of hills filled with banana trees and a baby goat trying to eat scraps of leaves on the ground. We had a clean tile floor and latrines and showers and home-cooked meals. After nearly 10 days of camping and then staying in a hotel, it was good to be in a home.

On our first night there, after one of our busiest clinic days, we ate dinner with some of the GCN staff. After dinner, we gathered in the living room, and eventually two of our Alabster teammates performed a piece they'd been practicing for the group, Sam on his violin and Jeff singing along. The GCN women returned the favor and sang us a few songs in their rich, bright voices, as beautiful as if they'd rehearsed for us. Then we all sang a few songs together, ones that were familiar to most of us. And then Mercy, our host, decided, "It's time for tea."

When the trays of warm tea and milk, and the cups and drinking chocolate and sugar was all brought to the table, our teammate Veena offered to serve everyone. She quickly poured into the first mug, only about half-way, and handed it to the person next to her.

Mercy laughed her deep, melodious laugh. "Oh, you have to fill it up all the way!"

Veena, always bold and direct, laughed along and answered that she was being cautious to be sure there was enough. I don't remember the words that Mercy used, but her short lesson in Kenyan hospitality taught us that, in Kenya, cups are always filled.

***

My cup overflows with blessings...

                                                   - Psalm 23:5

surprises in Kenya: meeting Salaash

Salaash treating a Masai patient at our Shompole clinic

One of the many wonderful things about Africa is that it is full of surprises. We received our most valuable one on our first day on our drive to Masai land. About 10 miles from the school at Endonyo-olasho, our destination, we stopped at a dispensary in Oloika. Some of my teammates knew about this small village from a stop there last year, necessitated by a flat tire. But they hadn't seen the dispensary, and they hadn't met Salaash.

For maybe the tenth time that day, our team climbed out of the van to get a sense for what kind of services this dispensary is able to offer to patients, and to meet Salaash, who would be helping us at clinic the next day. After showing us his small two-room clinic and telling us a few details of his work, we all piled back into the van. It was getting dark, and we still had to set up our tent and make and eat dinner. We knew we had a long day of clinic ahead of us.

Early the next morning our team slowly emerged from our tent, wiped down with baby wipes, put on our scrubs. We walked the 200 meters or so to the fire pit to drink coffee and eat our breakfast of bread, peanut butter and nutella. There were no patients in sight yet, just the brown horizon against the still, cloudy sky. After breakfast we walked back to the school to set up, and Shannon assured us that patients would start appearing out of nowhere. And she was right: as we pulled desks out of classrooms and hung clinic-station signs on them, children and their parents appeared in the distance, first as small red or blue dots moving closer and closer to us. We pulled a few desks from the classrooms for our first patients to sit on as they waited, and hoped the clouds would stay to keep us all cool.

As we started to see patients, I hopped around from station to station, trying to observe how clinic worked and understand how I might gather information today. At one point I saw Shannon assessing a patient. She turned to Salaash and asked, "what would you do?" It was at that moment that I began to understand that Salaash wasn't there just to interpret medical terms for patients. He was a necessary partner in caring for patients in a way that honors and understands their cultural context.

Our whole team also began to understand that our presence there was meaningful to Salaash. Because his clinical training was paid for by the Kenyan government, he was stationed by the government at the clinic in Oloika. While he seemed to receive joy and fulfillment in serving his tribe (Salaash is also Masai, though from a different area of Kenya), it was clear that he also experienced the loneliness and fatigue that come from serving in an isolated community. We were able to provide him companionship and the opportunity to learn from colleagues - a common and integral part of the Western health system, but rare in Kenya, where the provider to patient ratio is something like one doctor per 10,000 residents.

Salaash stayed with us, for a vaccination at a nearby homestead the next morning, and the whole next day, too, for another clinic in a nearby village. Some of the Masai who came to this clinic insisted they be seen by Salaash, showing us how trusted he is in his community. He is tall and extremely lean, like most Masai, and with a soft voice that might belie his intelligence and conviction. As each patient came and sat in front of him, and he asked them why they had come to clinic, Salaash leaned forward, occasionally touched them on their shoulders, held children who were sick or would be vaccinated.

By the end of the day, we were all tired. Shannon asked Salaash about skin lesions on a child's head, which she thought might indicate something fungal. Salaash looked at Shannon with a smile in his eyes and said, "No, it's just dirt. Shannon, are you tired?" They laughed together. "Are you making fun of me, Salaash?"

***

The next morning, it was time for us to drive back to Nairobi, and for Salaash to return to his clinic in Oloika. He rode in the pick-up truck with our luggage, while our team rode in the van. We drove through the village in Oloika, past men standing in front of their small shops and a child waving frantically, joyfully with both hands as if the harder he waved the more we might remember him. Our van pulled up next to the truck, then turned around and drove through the village again. And it dawned on us that we were leaving Oloika, and that we hadn't gotten to say goodbye to Salaash. We made Chris turn the van around and drive back through the village, past the men at their shops and the child waving with both hands. We piled out of the van and ran in to meet and hug Salaash, who was already seeing patients who had been waiting for him during his three-day absence.  

Salaash photo bomb

somewhere in the middle of nowhere

on the drive out to Masai land

"You drive out to the middle of nowhere, and then end up somewhere."

- Jeff, Alabaster teammate, reflecting on what it felt like to be in Masai land

I wish you could have made the trip with us.

From Nairobi it was a six hour van drive, they said. So when we agreed to leave at 10am, I figured we'd make it there by 4pm, or maybe 5 to account for a lunch or potty stop. Though we'd just arrived in Kenya, I'd already heard some of my teammates who'd been on this trip before use the phrase "TIA" (this is Africa) to explain the unexpected and out of the ordinary that seemed to be very expected and ordinary here. But I wasn't yet applying it like I should have. Meaning, I ought to have known a 6 hour van ride was not a 6 hour van ride.

Before we left Nairobi, we all got out of the van and crammed into the tiny chemist (pharmicist) to pick up and repack more vaccines for the Masai clinics. Next we stopped at the Girl Child Network (GCN) office. This is the nonprofit we partnered with on the ground. All out of the van again and standing around in a circle, we met a few more of the staff, including the deputy director, which led to the first of many spontaneous conversations I wished I'd been ready to record (more on that later). Then back into the van and to the mall to pick up some food and snacks.

It was about 1pm, and finally we were on our way out of Nairobi.

At first the road was smooth, though there was traffic to navigate and the smell of exhaust to bear with. We all happily dug into our lunch and snacks, Shannon passing out freshly-fried samosas we'd bought at the mall. I opened a bag of chips and a coke, not realizing this would be my last cold drink for a few days (and not realizing that I would care). About an hour into the drive, the rode turned more narrow, more curvy and, eventually, filled with potholes. Chris, our driver from GCN, swerved all over the road and off the road to avoid them, but bumps and jerks were unavoidable. It reminded me of the drive to Hana when I was in Maui last summer, and the landscape, quickly transitioning from green hills to flatter arid land, was similar, too. This was part adventure, and part understanding: this is the way to the people who are in need.

Another hour or two, and we were in Magadi. This small town was built around a salt lake that an Indian soda company now owned. Buildings that looked like dorms were clustered together, and I assumed that's where the workers lived. We pulled up next to a canteen with a swimming pool and all got out of the van for our first potty break (read: the first of many holes I peed in). When we left, two Masai men jumped on top of our luggage that was piled into the back of a truck to make the rest of the journey with us. I don't remember if they were with us at clinic or if they just needed a ride, my mind so full of new ideas and details by that point in the day.

The next leg of the journey turned from potholed roads to off-roading. Evenutally what lie ahead and behind and to both sides all looked the same: brown dusty ground pocked by low, brown trees or bushes. No roads or paths or distinguishing features. I couldn't be sure how Chris knew the way, but I trusted he did. We looked eagerly out the windows for animals: a heard of zebras ran off in the distance, and we scared a pair of ostriches from behind and saw them run off in different directions.

Another stop in Kiserian to pick up a teacher for our clinic. Then another in Oloika, where we learned there was a dispensary. The clinic worker was coming with us, we also learned. Our team wanted to see the clinic, so out of the van again, and again another conversation - about government funding for the clinic and what kinds of needs they're able to meet - that I wish I could have recorded.

By now it was getting dark, which meant it was probably close to 7pm. We had added four people to our traveling group. Only about 30 more minutes of driving out in the middle of nowhere until we arrived. I felt lost with no road signs telling me how many km until the town we were headed for and no other markers to suggest any kind of life besides the animals we'd seen.

Like most things in the bush, eventually it just appeared: there was the small school building where we'd hold our first clinic the next day. Now it was dark, and we were tired from the 6 hour van ride that had turned into a full-day adventure. New solar panels on the school provided light for us to set up our tent, and a little while later Albert and Chris called us to the fire pit for our first dinner of rice with cabbage and carrots. Afterwards Veena and I peed into the dirt by the light of our headlamps, then wiped down with baby wipes and changed for bed. Even after such a full day, once we settled into our tent I couldn't fall asleep. Jetlag, excitement, disorientation kept me awake most of the night.

Do you understand now? Have I been able to tell you what it was like to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere? I'm still not sure I understand myself.

their names inscribed in my notebook

 "... I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands..."  -Is. 49:15-16

School was on break, but still nearly 40 children and a few parents came to hear our health training presentation. They crowded into the dim classroom whose windows weren't allowed much sun. The clouds and tightly packed buildings - if you can call them that - made sure of it. Outside, along the muddy paths that dilineated the villages of Kibera - one of the largest and poorest informal settlements (euphemism for slum) in the world - people busily rolled chapatis and fried samosas and stood solemnly at their little market booths. I wondered how many thought today could be different from the day before. Garbage lined every path and sewage stream, more abundant than the flowers in the average American town. A mix of feces, sour garbage and exhaust filled the air.

Inside the flimsy walls of the Urishika Children's Centre, it wasn't so easy to remember what I'd seen oustide. Here, the paved path had little trash on it, and the accosting smell wasn't so strong. A new structure was being constructed - a latrine, library, and kitchen, designed in such a way that the biogas from the latrine would power the kitchen - which hinted at the capacity for change, and for hope. I saw the same hints in the eyes of the children who showed up for our training, and in their raised hands and quickness to "repeat after me."

After a little while, we split the girls and the boys for a short sex education talk. We had about 10 girls and a few adults walk with us to another classroom, where we talked briefly about what happens to women's bodies during puberty, and how to say no to a boy who wants something you don't want to give. The girls were mostly quiet but attentive and polite. As I looked around at each one of them, I was struck my how much beauty and joy I saw in these young girls who had spent their lives in one of the poorest, least secure, and probably most dangerous places in the world. I wanted to remember these girls.

Evelyne sat right in front of me. I had remembered her from our large session, when she volunteered to do the timed wall sit. She was a small, ten year old girl with large beautiful eyes framed with thick curled lashes, in stark contrast to the camouflage sweatshirt that she wore with the hood up. On another girl, this might have been a sign of intended toughness, but on her it simply indicated need, resourcefulness. At the end of our session, when we handed out pens with the slogan of our organization, I asked her to read aloud what it said. 

"You will not be forgotten," she read in a quiet, clear voice. Then she looked up and smiled at me.

"Here, write your name in my notebook," I said to her. I flipped to the next page and handed it to her. She wrote in methodical script, her first name, then her last. A few of the other girls were sitting nearby and crowded to see her write, and so the notebook got passed to each girl, and each one wrote her name with their new pens.

My first instinct was to have Evelyne write her name because I couldn't be sure that she had ever used a pen like this before. And more than that, I suppose I wanted to show the girls that the marks they make - their words, their names - matter. I wanted them to know that they are not forgotten.

When we said goodbye, I gave Evelyne and a few of the other girls a hug. I had a strange feeling that my connection with these girls wasn't over. My urge was to stay, to see how they might grow in the next months or years. Back at our hotel later that afternoon, I opened my notebook and saw the girls' names in their own handwriting and felt that I'd unknowingly gathered a treasure from them. I have their names written down permanently, and in their own handwriting, a kind of souvenir of themselves. They will not be forgotten.

after Kenya

map of Kenya painted on Light Rays School in Kingemi slum, with pupil

instant coffee, roasted goatmeat, Albert's tomato rice, soft ripe papaya

breakfast and dinner around the fire in the bush

communicating through smiles instead of words

shy giggles and hand-covered mouths of Masai children

learning from amazing, committed, intelligent Kenyan clinicians, community workers, and advocates

doing things together

green hillsides filled with banana trees, dirt red as fire, flat arid land that stretches open and empty and still hides so much life

asking questions, and learning how to ask the right ones, in the right way

the most meaningful conversations when you least expect them

improving my squat and aim (yes, I'm talking about peeing)

joy forceful enough to overcome days of dirty feet, hair filled with the dirt of the bush, growing up in the slum, generations of poverty

the beats, the dancing, the singing, the voices

many plates and cups and a heart filled to overflowing

being left wanting more