School is school almost for free

Class, are you happy? Yes! Maria is going to teach you. Are you happy? Yes! She told me she wants to be your friend. Are you happy? Yes! She will take you to Slovakia. Are you happy? Yes!

Well, a happy class of happy children indeed...

The children at the elementary school in Muhoroni are not as rude as the Slovak ones but they can be. They imitate my voice, my accent, repeat sentences after me or shout at me. I can see there are some rascals too.

Almost as if in Slovak nationalist´s dream: on Friday morning at eight o´clock we start by hanging up the flag and singing the anthem. Kenyan anthem is beautiful. In the context of the country that is fragmentated into tribes it does not give the impression of nationalism as much as of unity.

Kenya has had free education for 7 years now. Recently Britain has stopped its support because 100 million shillings disappeared just like that. 

„Your parents are untidy. Tell your parents that if you don´t come to school in your uniforms on Monday, you can turn around and walk back home.“
„Your parents just don´t care!“
„Where are your socks?“
„This is not the colour of our uniform!“
„If you come in these shoes again you will have to take them off at the gate and walk barefoot for the rest of the day.“

There are several elementary schools in Muhoroni. This one has 840 children. There are 30 to 60 children in each class. Three or four share one desk. The school has 18 teachers. 19 with me.

35-minute lesson. 40 children. 5 classbooks. That is some challenge.

Some children walk to school for about an hour. Sometime after six o´clock in the evening you can see them walking back home to Koguta or Menara Village.

They don´t give lunch at school. The children have an hour and 20 minutes to get home. A neighbour´s girl is going to cook lunch together with her sister. Another one goes to the neighbour´s because Menara is too far away.
A 4-year-old girl is walking down the street. Her brother who is about 2 years older than her walks 10 meters ahead of her. I walked with her because we had the same way. Then I notified the boy that he had a sister there. A boy that is not even of school age needs to take responsibility. There is a nice road to school, right next to our hospital. It is a shortcut through the field. No one shouts at me and I can be alone for a while.
„Did you come through the shortcut to school? We try to teach the children that they should walk through the gate.“
I understand. An inner sigh. No more shortcuts.

They call me „sister“. They think I am a nun. I don´t mind. It works as a self-defence course.

In the afternoon the children were practising some dancing. They will dance and play drama about Mao Forest. It is a reservation where people started to live, they cut out the trees and now after years they started to move them out and they are planting trees. It is a big political case.

There is a poster on the wall saying „no sexual harrasment at school“. Unfortunately, it should hang in every classroom. A teacher went to a training about sexual abuse of children at schools. 15-year old girls get pregnant because they carry their teacher´s books home. I haven´t seen a student that would dare disobey the teacher. He has great authority. In every area, it seems.

I teach two lessons of religion a week. Eastern and western 6th grade. That is instead of 6A and 6B.
Apart from that I teach a 15-year-old girl to read. She is repeating the 3rd grade. And I also teach an 8-year-old boy to read from the very beginning. Those are simple yet miraculous things. To learn how to riddle the bugs we put in words and books.

Luos don´t kill. Blackberries grow on trees

Mtwala is classics. A hill that is covered with various types of huts, gardens divided by green fences. Many trees.
A shortcut leads through the river. As it have been raining a lot in the past days we decided for a longer route. We typically look for families using the name of the father or the information about how far they are from the source of water – the river.

We inspect the first house that we come across.  A cabin made of clay with a tin roof. The earthen floor is decorated in an interesting way – as if you rake the sand on a playground. There are different  pictures hanging on the walls and an old man is just closing his Bible.
People know each other in Mtwala. This is not Shauri yako. The way of life is more traditional here.  
A youngster from the first house became our guide. He finished the primary school, sent out letters for high schools, got his results from the national final exam and is waiting to see if he gets a response. He managed to earn 340 out of 400 points. A very good result. He has a chance to enter the best high schools in Kenya. He dreams about a school in Nairobi. Slumdog millionaire?
We are walking up, passing the green fences. After my last experience in Shauri yako Solo draws my attention to the improvements. Muddy pathways were very reasonably covered with leaves. When you know that, you can read the country. Without words. The house that is directed at the gate is the house of the father. The house to the right hand is the house of his first son. I also saw a one-year-old Lina sitting under the tree – alone. Her mother was far away in the field. 11-year-old Otieno is the boss now making tea for his younger siblings. There were cows inside the fencing. They will go grazinh when the frogs leave. Those can be deadly for a cow.
In two years Otieno will probably have to leave the house. He can´t sleep in one room with his mother. And there is usually only one room in each house.

They can afford building a little house of clay for him. That does not have to be possible in the city. Slums around Nairobi don´t have the space capacity for such traditions. Boys can easily end up on the street.

Luo names for boys usually start with O (Otieno, Onyango, Omondi, Ouma), girls´ names with A (Atieno, Anyango, Amondi, Akinyi). They also decide for the names according to the time of the delivery.

Atieno means night. I adopted this Luo name. 

The next visit leads to Atieno. His mother Marion lives with her mother, sister and daughter. So the positioning of the houses is different. There is a big tree in front of the house and it bears fruit that tastes similar to our blackberries.

While I am watching the mother preparing milk for her child in the kitchen, the boys outside discuss the differences in their languages. Not every Luo is the same. „Yen“ in common Luo means a tree, and „yat“ means medicine. In the other Luo it´s quite the contrary – „yen“ is medicine and „yat“ is a tree. I remarked that „yen“ is „strom“ in Slovak, just to keep the conversation. Or „yat“?

The last family was not Luo but Maragoli. It is a small tribe that lives at the Maragoli hill in the west of Kenya. They were talking in Swahili. While shaking hands I noticed that they were supporting their right hand with the left one. We were welcomed by the grandfather. Our mother introduced herself as a „co-wife“. Solo spoke most of the time and I let him. I understood intuitively that the man needs to speak to the man and the woman is silent. Then I joined the mother walking to the house. She showed me all of her things, the dishes. Older siblings were following us with curiousity. Little Chrispus looked as if he was afraid that I might kidnap him.
The family earns money by making wicker baskets that are placed upside down to make shelter for little chicks.

Supporting your right hand with the left one while greeting someone is a sign of respect to the other person – not a sign of exhaustion or problems with the hand as I thought first. It is a Luo tradition that this family adopted.

Luos do not kill, they burn. I found it out on the way home. They are afraid to shed the blood because the believe that their whole family could be cursed because of that. Instead they burn the things that they consider important for their enemies – their matatu, field, house, garden.

During tribal fights in 2007 when Luos and Kukuyu were fighting each other Luos were burning whatever came to their hands. But they have friends among the tribe of Kalenjin that get out of control and do not mind killing people. Maybe Luos do not kill in this area but I don´t know about the area around Eldoret...

On the way we encountered three Muhoroni policemen with automatic guns. When I greeted one of them with Luo greeting, he despised me. They were standing by the main road stopping the cars. The policemen are modern beggars. They stand by the road and the drivers throw the money at their feet. A matatu drove by. A head stuck out, then a hand. The car slowed down and the head looked at the policemen. The car was gone. In a while the policeman picked something from the ground. This is „bribery live“. If the policemen were not fed by the appropriate sum their further journey might not be very smooth. They would find a problem even in a flawless matatu. (Not mentioning the fact that there is no flawless matatu...)

The journey back lasted four hours on foot and I was rewarded by a burnt neck.

Yesterday I prepared Slovak potato griddlecakes for my Irish visitors. They were happy to find out that they would have Irish traditional food for dinner. It seems that we have more in common with the Irish than we think.

Back to Muhoroni

In Muhoroni I was welcomed by the warm supper from Sister Vincent. And my empty house. My fear of spider invasion during my two-week absence did not prove legitimate. They have probably understood what they should expect there. It took me a while till I realized that there was no one else coming out of the next door to greet me.

I was surprised to see that the clothes pegs were still hanging on the string and other things that I left outside were also untouched. (In Nairobi whatever I left outside was taken – from a plastic bag to a mop.)

And so I settled in again. Today I was painting the names of the hospital wards.  Yesterday I was visiting houses in Shauri Yako. Literally it means „your problem“. Supposedly because of the high criminality that made this quarter notorious in the past. I don´t know if it was just me but it seemed that these people don´t know their neighbours very much. Maybe everyone deals with their problems, not „yours“. We went from house to house asking about my families but no one knew them. Of course, „your problem“ is a big one so we did not solve it. My guide has a good and rare character trait – he does not give up. So we were walking around Shauri Yako for two and a half hours. At last, thanks to all of the advice, we managed to get to another quarter where the neighbours knew our mother under her nickname, not her real name. It turned out that she had left a month ago because she had had an argument with her husband. That might explain why we haven´t seen the boy for so long.

Apart from stepping in an unidentified piece of shit („your problem“) in Shauri Yako it was a strong experience. Some children were running away from me, others started crying heart-rendingly and they didn´t stop until I was behind the corner. I noticed that the children who came to me out of curiosity did not ask for anything. I think that the children that I meet at the main road must have been taught to beg for sweets by some white person who started giving them things. They already have a list of things that they want from me and that I should bring them.
The children in Shauri Yako either didn´t have time to start begging or it didn´t come to their minds. A group of children wished me safe journey home – something like „chop ma ber“ and that really got me. Although we didn´t find the other two moms I managed to find my way in the area and I also realized that I would have to improve the locating system for our families.
The last visit in the family – a hut made of clay, a fireplace, water from the stream convinced me that the food itself is not the solution of malnutrition. The families could use vacuum flasks where they could store the drinking water prepared for the milk powder or milk squash and feed the child more often.
I am considering the idea of creating a space where the mums could play with their children. I realize that many of them barely communicate with their children while visiting our centre. Some of the children are afraid of me, some are afraid of being measured. I try to speak with them but I am not good at speaking Luo and the mothers are silent. The other day I asked one of the fathers to tell his 2-year-old son to open his mouth and the father started to open the boy´s mouth by force without saying a word. I tried in vain to convince him to speak to the boy in his language.
Next week I am going to see what the school looks like. I should teach a few religion lessons, maybe social studies. I have already seen the teachers sitting in one room while the kids were in their classrooms and so I asked if it was the break time. It wasn´t. Well, that happens. I am curious to see what awaits for me there. Today I made a child cry because I handed him over to his mum. He wanted to stay with me. Well, at least one time the child cry for a different reason than the usual one.

The first homeless Christmas

It was different. Nothing around me reminded me that the Christmas was coming close. No Christmas decorations in the slums, no Christmas carols, no Christmas markets.  And no snow. Every day people criticise the consumerism of the Christmas time, the decorated Tesco, tiring carols in the middle of October. Suddenly I found myself sitting in my room desiring a bit of the decorated Tesco, Christmas balls, the smell of ginger bread. I don´t know if it is good or bad but my culture is part of me – together with all of the traditions and customs. And so I missed our culture. I didn´t miss the pre-Christmas stress and long queues in front of the shops. That is what I enjoyed a lot about the Christmas in Kenya.

They do not celebrate Christmas Eve in Kenya. Finally I spent it with a plate of French fries and a bottle of Coca-Cola. It cost me 50 cents. I know it sounds disgusting but it made me happy because it was a pleasant change. I sang some carols in the room just for myself, I listened to a part of Christmas sermon from 2008 and opened my 4 Christmas presents. I had a strange feeling opening my gifts alone during Christmas when we are supposed to share gifts with other people...

On the next day all of the children got new clothes so I dressed up in my last clean clothes and pretended that it was new. They have a nice tradition to wear new clothes 25th December. It is like a new life. New beginning. New clothes. I don´t know if this was the symbolics but I decided to take it that way.

We ate delicious food – including goat meat chewing gum (I had to spit the meat out secretly behind the toilets because I couldn´t swallow it) but the taste was persistent... didn´t want to disappear. Two girls were celebrating their birthdays during Christmas so their were watered properly as it is usual.

On 26th December I prepared the promised popcorn. Four kilos of corn was not enough for 140 children. If course I burnt myself using the big pot but fortunately, only once. That was my farewell party with Children´s Garden and Nairobi too because on Sunday I set off on my journey back to Muhoroni. The journey was incredibly long. Two years ago they built an asphalt road from Nairobi to Kisumu. Unfortunately, only one, and a very narrow one. One accident – and the road is useless. And so we were stuck in a . The time was passing by and I came to Kisumu some time before 6pm. I found a matatu (public transportation vehicle, 14-seat Nissan microbus) to Muhoroni. I was waiting for almost half an hour till it got full. „Full“ doesn´t mean that all of the seats were occupied but that there was no place to move. I couldn´t turn myself and it was clear that there was more than 14 people in this matatu. It made strange sounds and it was interesting especially when we were starting. From time to time they poured in some strange liquid. Don´t ask me why. It was getting dark and I realized I would not get home in the light. We took a route I didn´t know. At last the matatu spit me out at the crossroads leading to the hospital at half past seven. So I stepped into the dark. I jumped over a well-known puddle in front of the hospital and thanked God that nothing had happened to me. That was my first (and hopefully the last) „scary walk“ in Africa. 

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.