Finally back to civilisation! We got back to Nairobi yesterday after a 10-day-trip to the west of Kenya. That was a really different and exciting experience! What was very striking: It rains. A lot and quite often. All those stories in the news about the drought and famine in Kenya seem to be really far off when you are in western Kenya. During my ten days it rained at least once every day, usually at night, short and strong. Everything is really green, there are a lot of trees and the people have a more food than they can eat. The contrast to the starving north of the country could hardly be starker. All those organisations try desperately to import enough food to supply the people in the north, although there is so much food in the southwest that a lot of it is spoiled because they cannot sell it. Theoretically the government “just” has to take the spare food from the west and transport it to the north. Unfortunately, that would be difficult to organize and does not happen…
We stayed in Nambacha, a really small village in the district of Kakamega two hours north of Kisumu. There I finally had the real culture shock! It was really hard to see how people live there, they really have almost nothing, only the really basic necessities. Cows and goats are running around freely everywhere and power goes off about 10 times a day if there was power at all. That was not the case in all the schools and “buildings”. That was real rural life!
First we visited all the different schools we were supposed to work for during the project. We went there by motocycle, which was really fun but also a little scary as the roads are very bad and we had no helmets or any protective clothing. And in Germany the streets could easily pass as extreme Motorcross-rallye-track, thats how bad they were ; ) In addition, the drivers were a little crazy sometimes, they liked to race and we were three people on each bike. Great experience and a lot of fun, if you dont think about the dangers ; )
At the weekend we went to Kisumu to buy some supplies. Kisumu is one of the biggest cities in Kenya and is located right at Lake Victoria. The lake is really huge, you would think you are looking at an ocean if you didn’t know. There we went on a little tour in a boat and saw some wild hippos, quite impressive. We also had some very tasty fish there and saw tons of white people! You can really tell that this is a rather touristy place, I have never seen so many white people in one place in Kenya before. ; )
Working in the schools didn’t quite go as expected. As we were the first volunteers ever to visit that area, the schools did not actually expect us to show up, so as a consequence, they had nothing to do for us when we got there. After a while the situation improved and we started to give some computerlessons and teach the students and the teachers the basics. A lot of the teachers never touched a computer in their life, so we had to start with things like “Press this button to turn the computer on” etc. The students were rather quick with that, but the teachers really struggled. However, they were very interested and we showed them how they can create documents and work sheets and print them. I think this was quite a big step for them, and if just a few of them use a computer in the future we actually had a positive impact there, and that feels very good : )
The work in the rural area was a huge challange, as it was a boys highschool, 99% of the teachers were male and some of the students were even older than us. So you can imagine, that when two white girls, the first white people ever, show up and tell them they want to teach computer lessons, they did not take that seriously at all! But by the end of our stay there, they had realised, that they can really use our help and wanted us to stay longer. Anyway, we were quite glad to go back to Nairobi, as the boys in the school never really talked to us, they just stared at us like we were some kind of attraction in a zoo or something, which didnt feel very comfortable.
The way to school and back was quite interesting, too. Every single person we met approached us, greeted us and stared at us. Some of the kids even followed us home every day just to watch us : D They just had never seen a white person before in their life and after only a few days everyone in the village knew what we do, where we live etc. And we had to say “Im fine” about 100 times a day : )
We definitely got an impression about the living conditions of the majority of Kenyas inhabitants. That was really interesting and memorable, but I am still happy to be back in Nairobi. In comparison to the rural Kenya, we do live in luxury here!
Now I only wrote about a few of the impressions. The whole culture shock in that region was so strong, I don’t think I have words to describe it. The first night, we all just sat there, nobody talked, we just needed time to come to terms with the new situation. Only after about two days or so I slowly got used to the circumstances there. That really was an extraordinary experience and I am happy that I went there!
we went there to finally get some GOOD coffee again and the place was crowded with europeans who all miss their coffee, too ; )