22 December 2009

The Christmas is at the door and I feel no stress. Well, not counting my little war with cockroaches that I haven´t won yet.

Preparation for Christmas started by the kids washing the cafeteria. The framework that the mice (rats) like to walk on was now fruited with children. There was water everywhere and a lot of feet. Every day the kids ask me to take them for a walk (all age categories) and this morning a 4-year-old Kamau looked at me with reproach that I told him yesterday that I would take him for a walk and I didn´t – I had no other choice. I wanted to take some 15 children with me but on the way to the gate other children were joining us and finally there were 40 of them. That is enough for one adult. I organized them in pairs and we walked up the road together.

I showed „A je to“ (Slovak animated series for children) and introduced Pat and Mat to them. I think they liked it because the next morning they started nagging me for more.

Yesterday there was a Talent Show and I performed too. Together with Exvilian we danced Kuku Dance whose choreography we prepared together very spontaneously an hour before. We got more than 80 points and won the good 2nd place (although some people were spreading rumours that it was the 5th).

I played adapted versions of other Slovak games with the kids such as Little geese, little geese, let´s go home! (Little goats, little goats, let´s go home – and they were chased by a hyena instead of a wolf) and Forks, spoons, knives (Uma, Kikijo, Kisu). Apart from that I keep washing dirty clothes, my greasy hair – very intellectual business. The children can´t understand that I don´t want to put a cream in my hair and that it really is not nice to have greasy hair.

Yesterday evening I watched a movie with the older girls. Two thirds fell asleep-

The Christmas here starts 25th December so I don´t know what I am going to do 24th, that is tomorrow. Maybe I will wash the children´s hair with a shampoo or make popcorn out of 4 kilos of corn that I bought.

Blessed Christmas.

Holiday in Children´s Garden

The journey to Nairobi was peaceful. No problems. I was skimming through the newspapers that we bought at a gas station in Kericho.  They were writing about (in)security before Christmas. The robbers lurk for people in order to provide better Christmas for themselves and their families. And the police shoot the robbers right away. The robbers do not kill if they get what they want. You cannot look into their faces and you have to give them everything they ask for, you should not oppose them or try to negotiate. The danger is strongest during the night. That is when all kids of gangs meet up and plan robberies, burglaries and kindappings.

I feel safe here in Children´s Garden. There are too many people around here. The robbers focus on abandoned places because that means less pontential witnesses. I live where I lived before but I haven´t seen cockroaches here before. So far I have only seen them in pictures in the card game Bug Bluff. At first I was horrified to learn that cockroaches can survive atomic bomb or even being microwaved and then yesterday I bought a great spray that made them all go belly up!
As soon as I arrived a herd of kids hung themselves on me! I don´t know if you can even imagine that. They asked me if I had brought fish from Kisumu for them. All of a sudden several kids started to ask me about Luo language and test me on how much I knew.  I didn´t know there were so many of them here! They spoke to me in Luo but I didn´t understand them at all.
Muhoroni spoilt me. The toilet pit is beautifully deep, I can´t see the gutter, there was a lot of water and mainly it was clean. Here I found a functionless non-flushing toilet, drain was out of order and the water in the shower couldn´t go away. And those cockroaches! Those were really waiting for me. One of them immediately walked up my bed and kept watching me hiding inside my purse. 
The first evening the Luo kids didn´t want to let me go. Then it got calmer.

They don´t have school now so there´s not really anything for them to do. It was raining and mud was everywhere.

Small kids were inside so I was drawing with them and I told them a fairy-tale. They are eager to receive any kind of attention or love.

Children´s Garden lies at the end of Kawangware and on the other side, behind a richer quarter Lavington you can find Nakumatt, a shopping mall. There is a good restaurant, café, drycleaner, flower shop, cinema, bookstore, pharmacy, tourist shops and many tourists. It is stuffed with white people. Taxi is quite expensive and matatu, public transportation, is not very safe, so I went by foot – of course, with a bodyguard. It took us an hour. I bought the most necessary things and then we went to the Kawangware market. There I bought a wash-basin and a mop. I was happy to come back and scrubbed everything properly.

It easier for me to talk with the boys. The girls are trampled down by the culture, they are tongue-tied, not very bold and they don´t speak up. The boys, on the other hand, are curious, they ask questions. It has changed a little as the girls have been getting used to me and they speak up more. I try to give them more attention, too. And all of a sudden Moses suggested that I read a book about sex with the girls, and maybe ask some of their questions. Glove thrown down.

In the evening, after the supper (about 9pm) about 20 older girls gathered in one room, they were reading, asking questions, opening this „forbidden“ topic. The age range was 13 – 17. We are going to meet like this every evening. I think that this is one of the topics that they have no one to talk to about.
And today I am trying to rest a bit – after all it´s my holiday!

Friday in Kericho

Wednesday and Thursday were very busy. I would come home when it was already dark. I was taking care of my malnutritioned boy who was left unnoticed in his hospital bed – abandoned, hungry, peed all over. Then I also needed to finish something in the centre before leaving for Nairobi.

My head was full of ideas about what we could be doing during education seminars with the Mums and about how we could organize visits in families in order to make them as efficient as possible for the children and their Mums.

I was consumed by work and I didn´t even have time to wash my clothes or the dishes (it´s not possible after it gets dark).

I wanted to slow down on Friday to gain energy. That didn´t happen.

Lost in translation I was first sitting in a car that was heading for Kericho and I had no clue why we were going there. I thought that whatever reason Sister Vincent has for going there, Kericho is beautiful and worth seeing. There are the classical tea plantations which are amazing especially if you view them from above.

Kericho is placed a little higher than Muhoroni (about 2000 metres above the sea level) but the cold air meant a pleasant change. When I found out that we were going to a mass for Father Jerry who was killed that morning, it felt as if Kericho fell under a spell in front of my eyes. I was not fascinated by it anymore, not even interested in it. Before we went to the church we stopped to have some tea. The Sister kept receiving phonecalls from her aquaintances and family, there were text messages coming from their common friends, they were asking her to come back home. Father Jerry was Irish and that may explain why they understood each other well. I met other Irish missionaries while having tea. All of them knew one another and they kept talking about what happened that morning. And about what an extraordinary man he was.

I was overwhelmed by the graveness of the moment. I felt that they lost a very precious friend.

Slowly the church filled with people. The church was his mission. He came there to build and church and start a new parish...

After the mass one of the domestic believers stood in the front and described what he saw – the bed, the blood, mangled body – pierced, tied up, the throat cut, bars on the window broken.

Afterwards we went to Father Jerry´s house. I don´t know why but I went inside with the rest of the people. Everything looked as if someone lived there but he didn´t anymore. Coffee. Opened bottle of wine, Bible on a little table, paper stuffed in the fireplace. I suppose I went there to caml myself down, to ensure myself that I was safe. But that didn´t work out. In the church his death was real but at his house it felt even more real.
On the way home we laughed a lot to subdue dark thoughts. But when I came home I broke down. It started to rain heavily (in the same way as during the night before) and I didn´t hear anything but its hammering on the roof. My nerves came loose and so did th tears. All of a sudden I realized what had happened. The safest place  - my bed – was the most vulnerable. I moved from one place to another, all of the lights and candles turned on. It was the first time that I closed all of the windows carefully and I tried not to be afraid. But the fear didn´t leave me.

I survived the most critical time (estimated hour of the burglary) half awake, half asleep. I finally fell asleep for real in the morning when the neighbours started to get up. The following night I decided to use sleeping pills.

The day before this happened I had been reading a text of one of the first Christian martyrs in the daily reading.

God´s protection for us is different from what I imagine. In the same way as his love. And life is so fragile. Unpredictable. Whatever happens with my life I am in His hands.

These past few days I have seen life. Life on dirt pressed down to make a floor. Acrid smoke in a hut that irritated my eyes and my lungs. Poverty under a straw roof. Brutality of people and Father Jerry´s death and unpredictability of our paths as well as those of God´s.

I have heard a lot about these paths, I have read about them, seen it on TV. But when I see it live, that poverty of my Mums and their children and that ability of man to be controlled by evil – it emphasizes the reality. I have been living in such world. Straw and dirt reminded me of Christmas. Poverty and evil. Christmass came here. That is why God came to us.

What life is like for my children and their Mums

Finally I started to work. I have been thinking of domestic visits for a longer time but the social worker got sick and then he took a break. I decided to look at the most difficult cases that we have – children that haven´t put on weight for a long time.

Those were my first domestic visits. I first went to Biafra with Solo. Biafra is a part of Muhoroni that is about 10 minutes walking distance from us. There are small huts made of clay with straw roofs. I didn´t know the names of the parents, only the name of the boy. But if every woman has five children like that, it´s like looking for a needle in a haystack. This part is one of the poor ones. I dind´t see any trash between the little houses, the people were trying to help us with searching and the kids were so surprised that there was a Mzungu in their midst, that they didn´t even shout at me. Some of them even decided to hide away. 

Finally we found the mother of our boy. Their house was no different from other houses around. The kids were sitting in front of the house, inside I could see another baby. The Mum grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. When one comes from outside it is usually very dark. I couldn´t see anything at first. The windows were small, probably so that no one could get through them. The floor was made of pressed clay. It was about 2x3 metres. It was divided into two parts by a small parting. Various dishes and bowls for water and food were lying all around. In the even darker part there was a space for sleeping – no matress – and a small table cooker with a saucepan on it. There was coal or wood underneath. They were preparing some squash.

The second visit was in Mtwala – the journey was a bit longer. We went down a fieldpath, passing sugar cane, and Solo trying to scare me by talking about an enormous snake that they had killed over there. The snakes live in the sugar cane fields and that is why no one would dare go in the field unless it was burnt down.

Mtwala is another poor part of Muhoroni. It is behing the river whose colour looked quite normal (not too dirty at the first sight). We jumped over the river (the bridge was taken by a flood) and walked up the hill. Fortunately we knew the name of the family so our search didn´t last too long. When two children saw us they started to cry hysterically. I suppose I scared them. They looked quite old but their father had to comfort them. Then he took them away. Who knows, maybe they tell them that when they are bad, a white man will come and carry them away.

The house was a bit longer than the other one, there was a tin roof. The floor was again made of a pressed soil. Inside I could see all of the family treasures – different rags, bowls, bigger vessel for water that they were taking from a stream. In the corner there was a fireplace made of stones. Next to it there was space for sleeping – nothing but a mere ground and I hoped that they would at least put some rags on it so that they would not be sleeping on the groung alone. I don´t remember if there were any windows on the house. Only small peep-holes through which the smoke could get out when they were cooking.

The boy was sitting outside – only in his T-shirt. The grandmother was working in the field meanwhile. Other children were playing – one of the boys was playing in the dirt creating a highway and instead of a car he used a small boot. The girl was cooking something in the bottle lids.

The boy was half-orphan. His mother died, his father left for Mombasa in hope for a better life. He stayed with his grandma and aunt who already had enough of her own kids. It is hard to say why he is malnutritioned and her kids are not. Of course, we didn´t speak in English and the grandma couldn´t speak Swahili either so the whole discussion was interpreted by Solo. The aunt went to bring some wood so we had to communicate with the grandma. In a while the kids saw the Mum carrying a great piece of wood, about 2 metres long, on her head (the women are able to carry anything on their heads – even a drain pipe or big tubes). Information that I got from these two women separately were contradictory. Each of them claimed something different to be true and I wasn´t sure if it was due to the translation or if someone was lying. The boy gets a lot to eat. That was, of course, a positive answer. It was 12 o´clock and the boy ate last time at 8 o´clock. That was the less positive reality. They showed me how they were preparing a squash.

Supposedly he had a low appetite. He ate everything.

It was very difficult to recognize who and when was telling the truth. Sometimes they get tangled up in their own lies. Sometimes they do them wrong.  They come with various stories and it is important to have it confirmed from another side.

What I am concerned about with the boy is that he is very weak, without life. I am sure it is because of malnutrition. We forbade the grandma to give the boy drinks from a bitter herb when he cries. Solo tasted it himself and I took a sample to be tested in the hospital. They told me that there might be some medication inside. The herb might have been the reason for his sleepiness... Although at the beginning the boy was afraid of me, then I took him to my arms and at last he fell asleep. I told them a hundred times that they had to boil the water from the stream before they use it for drinking or cooking....

We had both boys tested in the hospital. If malnutritioned children do not put on weight for a long time, they can be HIV positive or have TBC. Fortunately, both of the boys are „OK“. Now they are in the hospital and being monitored.

Monitored...? The first day I found one of the boys in bed, peed all over, sitting in his bed completely abandoned. The Mum went to take care of her two-month baby and the two-year-old was left in the hospital and the staff didn´t really notice.

I noticed he had low appetite and refused to drink milk. I came fo see him at 6pm. The other Mum told me that he had his last food at 1pm. I understood that his Mum didn´t have a choice because she had another, smaller baby at home. But I couldn´t understand that there was another Mum sitting in the same room and she knew when he ate the last time and she didn´t give him anything, she didn´t tell anyone. I didn´t understand that there wasn´t a nurse that would pay some attention to the boy. Is it what it is like in Kenya? Or is it just an exception to the rule?

I think I came to understand one thing. The nurses in the hospital used to leave their own kids at home alone and so they probably wouldn´t be very concerned about another Mum leaving her child.

One woman told me that when her kids were small she would leave them home alone, go to work and come back only to breastfeed them. She worked nearby so she heard them crying. I can hardly find words to say anything in a situation that I can´t even imagine... Two months after the delivery the mothers return back to work (if they have any). The more privileged ones have their Mums or sisters, or and older daughter (7 years old or more) or another woman that takes care of the children. The less privileged ones don´t have jobs but then it might be better for the kids. I miss compassion and empathy here. I don´t know why I can barely find it here. Maybe because the suffering is so common that it became normal for people?

How I installed a christmas tree

I was persuaded to buy a christmas tree for 90 shillings (1euro). So I have bought this artificial stick.

Atfer a while I have changed its shape.

Then I have added lights!

And then when I tried to put the plug to socket something very weird happened.

Fortunately I bought two packets of lights.

Cable is short, the tree is kitschy, the tree had to land on TV.

The lights were flashing so the tree was higly irritating.

29 November 2009

„Imagine walking into a darkened room. We put our hands in front of us, afraid we are going to bump into a piece of furniture or slip on a rug. We walk very slowly. This is very much what God calls us to on the journey of faith. It is not easy because we would wish the road in front of us to be lit. We want to know where we are heading and why. Faith, however, is our certitude in incertitude. Our trust in God does not lie in our cleverness. It is not about our wit, our planning, our personality, position, money.“ So I was hit by this text by Richard Rohr (Richard Rohr: Radical Grace) when I came here. It made me stop and it encouraged me at the same time. I feel that I am walking very slowly here but I am learning how to put my hands in front of me and walk slower than I would like to. Rohr accompanies me and many things he says seem to be written exactly for me. So I am learning to accept incertitude and not to be too clever (only a little clever).
One of the first sentences that Sister Vincent told me was: „Just don’t expect too much.“ and I am trying to remember that.
There is not a lot going on in Muhoroni. It is a classical peaceful village environment, by the way, with two factories (Sugar Factory and Agro Chemical & Food Company) and a football club (the last position in Kenya Premiere League). Muhoroni gives an impression of a rural area but it is larger and has more inhabitants because it includes the surroundings, too. There is a post office, market, several shops, pub, train station, schools, kindergarten and – as one might expect – there is some kind of a church at every corner. The hospital I work in is called St. Vincent De Paul Mission Hospital.
Morgue is part of the hospital and as it is the only one in the neighbourhood there are often funerals going on in here. They sing a lot of different songs, then they put the coffin on the truck, people hop on (as many as possible) and still singing they leave to bury the dead in their garden.
There are also a lot of deliveries in the maternity ward. The mothers typically stay in the hospital for a day, sometimes they wait only till the morning (if they gave birth during the night). Women of my age are usually experienced gravidas and they have experienced several deliveries.
I am in charge of antimalnutrition centre now. Mothers with children come, they are scaled, measured, fed. The mothers are different. Some communite more, some less. I try to speak with them in Swahili but sometimes it is hard to find out if they understand me... The children in the program are mostly too small to talk to. This Thursday they had a wee-wee day and so several of them weed on the scale, on the table, on the floor. Some don´t like scaling and measuring and so they cry a lot. After these procedures there is the education of mothers. They are obliged to participate in it. I also wanted to go in the terrain this week for some visits. There are some mothers whose children haven´t put on weight for several months so I would like to see them. But the social worker, that was supposed to go with me, got sick...
Many people here are HIV positive. I know about some that got it thanks to their life style, some because of the life style of their partners, some were born with it. We have children in the centre whose mothers are HIV positive but they are not and because of that they cannot be breastfed. And then we have some special cases and I don´t know if they have been scientifically researched. There is a patient in the hospital who is not HIV positive but his wife is. Although officially he is not HIV positive, his body reacts as if he was. In reality it means that he will probably die of AIDS although he will never be HIV positive. While his mother can take medication against HIV he cannot because he doesn´t have it... I don´t understand it really. They say there are a few couples like this in the area... or was.
Several days ago a 7-year-old girl, that was raped by one of her relatives, came to the hospital. She was here only for two days. Beautiful little girl. However, there is no system that would protect her... Supposedly she doesn´t live with the parents but with other relatives who are expecting a baby and she is destined to take care of it. It is not unusual here but who knows what it is really like. She told me she has 10 siblings and she is the youngest and she lives far away. And then she was drawing. I felt sorry that I couldn´t do more for her... All of these stories, life, death... I am here for three weeks now and I have heard so many unhappy stories from all sides that I am not able to perceive them. And when I write about them I realize how horrible they are. People probably have to have a different view of life and death from the one we have.
Yesterday I spent some time with a few HIV positive children. Sister Vincent is trying to organize some kind of playful Saturdays for them. I think it can be an opportunity for me too. In the morning two sisters were waiting for me and Sister Vincent only managed to whisper to me that they had just lost their mother. We played end-ball for a while. Then other three children joined us and so we moved to one room and continued playing there.


In the evenings I go to sit behind the church. It offers a beautiful sunset view. I also got to know children of a catechist that lives behind the church. I promised that I would come and visit them Saturday afternoon when they would dance. On the way I stopped at our neighbour´s (families of the hospital´s employees) and took two of their children with me. As three boys were playing football in the place where about 20 girls wanted to play end-ball and no one wanted to give way we played both sports on one ground. The result was that there was a football cage in the middle of end-ball playground. I found it very funny because there was enough of grass to play on elsewhere. On the other hand it was admirable that they were able to stay there and they didn´t get nervous about hindering each other. Especially the boys managed to be very calm about it. I have to think about more fairy-tales to tell because the ones about Little Red Riding Hood and Seven Little Goats are known to almost all of the children they I meet here now.
At half past four I came home and had some tea. I try to prepare different types of tea because I found out that I don´t like the taste of the rain water very much... (For the lovers of Masala Chai – they have a great Masala Chai for 50 cents here, and also the spice that can be added to black tea!)
I glimpsed about 5 minutes of some American TV show and I realized that I missed mzungu faces so I made some popocorn and watched one episode of The Office. I had a good laugh. It was the first time I watched something. I felt like having a bit of a different culture for a while.
Today is the first Advent Sunday and I couldn´t wait because I have one breviary and then thoughts for each day and both books start with the first Advent Sunday. The church starts at 7am and I decided that I would go there at 8am because I can´t understand anything and the service lasts till half past nine. In the morning I heard the ticking sound of the clock and it reminded me of grandma´s clock at Stara Tura. So I made myself Sunday breakfast that we used to eat when we were at her house – boiled egg and cocoa. When I think about what to do with the plastic trash that keeps gathering here I think of my great grandmother who would keep storing the youghurt containers and then use them for something else later.
In the morning when I woke up I was forced to kill yet another spider. I felt shiver down my spine when I imagined that there would be a whole family living here! He died by a very intelligent death – first choked by the spray against mosquitoes and then squashed by a shoe covered in a plastic bag (Oooh how fast he could run! Brrrr!).


I keep teaching the children from Muhoroni my name so that they would stop shouting „White“ at me when I pass by. There´s no point asking them to come closer when they call from afar so I shout back: „Africa!“ Last time about 20 children gathered around me and they wanted money, candies, whatever. I told them to ask for money from their parents and then I started to give out imaginary candies. Some children were not satisfied with one and wanted five. The great advantage of these candies is that I can give them out forever and I will still have enough. So I kept giving them out. Although they are demaning and beg a lot they can be satisfied by some game, too. And the game with candies showed me that they can play and they do not lack imagination. „Three Little Piggies“ was a good idea too. I don´t think that I will give them real candies because that way they would start learning that they should go to the white with hands stretched out waiting for whatever would fall in.
Well, let me close with another story from the world of insects. Yesterday I was successful in a battle with a mosquito that had been bothering me for two nights in a row in my room. It seems to me that mosquitoes are more cunning than cown – I don´t know if I can say smarter but they definitely are better at lying and hiding. I wish you a peaceful and disturbing Advent time.

Life in Muhoroni comes and goes...

I am sitting in a Roman-Catholic church in the morning and all of a suddent everybody is standing up and moving to the front. I am not Catholic but the nun encouraged me to go too, so I can see what is going on there. There were several lines moving forward. When I saw only a few people in front of me I understood what was happening. People went to the front to put some money to the money collection box. But my pockets were completely empty! I had two choices: either I simply turn back when I´d get to the box or I would pretend that I had some money to contribute. I decided for the second option. I found it really funny that I had to share it with you.
Another hot day today. Right now three calves invaded the space in front of my door (I speak only in Slovak with the animals.)
The church started at 7 am. It was full. I left after two hours. The choir sang nicely but the common visitors didn´t sing a lot. There was a crucifix and instead of a European Christ with blonde hair and blue eyes I saw a black guy. (I have two pictures from Jesus´ life in my room and all of the disciples are black too.)
As the mass was in Swahili I could understand the phrases such as „God is the King“ or „Let us stand“ or „Let us pray“. But I was sad because I couldn´t understand more.
After the mass I dropped in the hospital to see how two pregnant women were doing. Still nothing although they told me how wide they were open. I also went there because I knew I would meet and talk to someone. There are 4 patients in the hospital at the moment. Yesterday evening one older woman, who I visited once, died. Life comes and goes almost every day here.
The hospital is really beautiful but empty. The employees are neat. I keep learning their names. There are only nurses here. I don´t know why they don´t have more patients...
Apart from the hospital there is also a hospice but it is empty too, and there is also a malnutrition centre for children. I will be in charge of that. Moms with the children come here once a week. On Thursday I went to see the center for the first time – I saw a 7-month old child with the weight of a newborn...
The moms get some food for the baby and they have to stay for education where they talk about various topics that are related to taking care of a child. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I will spend time working with people – that much I know. I would like to add to these activities by visiting communities where these children live.
In the neighbourhood there is a school that was started by Sister Agnes. I would like to go and see it but the 6-week holiday is starting so I will have to wait with teaching till January. The only children I meet are on the streets. They look at me as if I were a ghost. The twins from our neighbour´s house start crying when they see a white face. I have to say I miss children a lot.
Swahili can prove useful but I live in a region where most people are from the tribe of Luo and as one Luo told me today they are one of the few tribes that do not speak Swahili. So I am learning the language, Dholuo. Not everyone is Luo but even those that are not can speak Dholuo – they adapted to the situation.
Some expressions are easier to learn than others – for example „oriti“ (sounds similar to Slovak variation of „Go to hell“) – meaning „good-bye. We have a similar expression but we use it to send people away at some special occassions...
I spend a lot of time alone or in the hospital. I went for a walk through the village several times – to buy the vegetable at the market. I try to be outside as much as I can before it gets dark but it is not possible to be outside till three because of the heat.
Yesterday we were in Kisumu. The journey takes something more than an hour. The country is beautiful on the way there – lots of hills and fields. In Kisumu we stopped at the restaurant next to Lake Victoria and we enjoyed some roasted fish, of course, we ate using our hands. People use the lake literally for everything. While we were eating people were passing by wrapped in different things – watches, cars, toys, batteries, locks – that they were trying to sell.
The hardest time comes in the evenings when I am alone. I keep asking myself what I am doing here. I have a hope that one day I will find out... It might be too soon for that yet.