Merry Christmas and off to the Village

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

I was blessed with three different Christmases here. Christmas Eve I went to Atara'a parents house. They had a small gathering of people from church. Their house was decorated for Christmas so it was nice for it to "feel" like Christmas as I sat next the fire and admired the Christmas tree. Doug and Sue were so kind to have me stay over.

The next morning we attended a short out-door Christmas service put on my the Church. It was strange sitting outside in on a semi sunny day singing Christmas carols. I then went the house of Sandra and Jonathan, a South African couple from church. They had a few people over and we had an AMAZING lunch. Jonathan is an incredible cook.

Then I spent the afternoon enjoying a Kenyan Christmas with Nkita and her family and friends. Probably my favorite part of the day. We had so much food! I went to the market with her on the 23rd and we seriously brought so many vegetables and even a live chicken! (She was actually buying it as a gift for a friend, she already had like 10 frozen chickens in the freezer) I named it Alfred. Side note: So once you buy the chicken you have to transport it home so they tie it's legs and put the thing in a plastic bag, so your carry a live chicken just how you would carrying your other groceries. We put in the backseat of the car with some feed and it was content as could be...too bad it didn't know what was coming. Poor Alfred.
I had to hold a six week baby for like an hour on Christmas and I loved that. My Christmas was busy so that was good, I didn't have much time to think about home although i still did. I was really lucky and blessed with a wonderful Christmas.

I'm catching a ride to Kisumu tomorrow to go live in a village for five weeks. Pretty excited. I leaving earlier than first thought, because I was running into a lot of dead ends with everyone going to their villages it being on leave or it just being Christmas time so many of the people I needed to talk to for my research project are gone and will be gone until Jan. So I decided to copy them and go to the village as well. Instead of sitting around here waiting for people, I'm going to go get settled in the village and start my community life project. Then I'll come back to Nairobi the end of Jan. and have a month to finish everything before home.

I'm still alive

Sorry I know it seems I dropped off the planet. However, I’m assuming that most of you are quite busy partaking in Christmas time crazyness, finishing up school work, or just trying to survive the cold (I heard it was 18 degrees! Is there snow?! I even heard LA has been in the 30‘s yikes!) to really be overly concerned about what is going on here. By the way it’s been mostly sunny here, I’m guessing in the mid 70’s. There’s been some rain but mostly at night. The weirdest thing happened the other day, half of the sky was clear and was poring down rain. The sky was clear except for a little patch of sky.

Things here have been going well. I’ve been doing a lot of different things. I’m still working on my research project. I changed my topic slightly to the reintegration of children from the orphanage system in Kenya. This still includes how older youth are prepared to reintegrate but I’m also looking at adoption, and fostering, and the process of reintegrating young children back into their extended family. It’s really interesting learning about different programs being employed by different children‘s homes. From my understanding, which is still quite limited, the Kenyan government ultimately wants children’s homes to become short-term placements for children in which children are only committed for three years and during those three years permanent placement is found for them. This placement could range from adoption to finding extended family to take the child. Did you know that the majority of children in children’s homes/orphanages in this area have guardians/family outside of the children’s home who they visit several times a year?

Last week I took my younger host brother, Herzon (10 years old) to a movie (yes we saw New Moon!). I already moved out of there but I had to wait for him to be out of school and for a Monday. The movie theaters here have a special on Mondays called Monday Madness where a drink, pop corn, and hot dog are included free with your ticket all for 500 shillings, about $6.50. I ended up taking him and his cousin. Neither of them had been to a real movie theater and before the movie we walked around the “mall” which they had never been in and it was so fun to watch their faces. We even went to Nakumatt (think safeway) and they were amazed by all the food and different varieties. I gave them culture shock.

I decided this week that I need to work harder on Kiswahili. It’s so easy to get away with speaking English, because almost everyone I come in contact with does. I’m just not a language person. I struggled through Spanish in high school and Zulu in South Africa and now Swahili in Kenya. However, language is a really important aspect of culture and I need to honor this culture by learning more of the language. I just really wish I would have taken an intensive language course when I got here. I learn so much better in a structured classroom setting.

Christmas. So I know I’m 21 years old and this is only one Christmas and I will survive, but man I miss my Washington Christmas! Thinking about family and all that is going on there is so hard. Today we had a Christmas service in which all the kids dressed up and performed the Christmas story, it was super cute, but I couldn’t help but think about all the kids I know at home and the Christmas service at our church. I’m still figuring out what to do for Christmas but I think I’m going to spend Christmas eve with Atara’s parents. There is a Christmas day service, then I’m going to the house of a South African couple from church, then spending Christmas afternoon/evening with my Kenyan family. Christmas is celebrated in Kenya, but very minimally. Mostly people just prepare a lot of food and have family over. Which really when you think about it is pretty close to what we do without the excessive decorating and all the hype. It’s so strange to not be completely crazed and busy running around, buying gifts and wrapping presents.

I’m off to the village next month. In about three weeks! Yikes. I have a lot to finish up here school work wise but I’m excited for a change.

Phase One: Complete

I finished my internship and moved out of my homestay this weekend. I know your probably thinking, "but Julia you have like 3 months left in Kenya, what are you going to do?"

I call the last 3 months phase one. I did my internship and homestay the last 2 and half months. I have a 3o something page rough(very rough) draft for my family org course. Now I'm diving into my Global Research Project. Since my homestay was tied to my internship (i was living with that family because i was working at Sidai) I decided to move back to Nkita's, plus I don't have too long before I go to the village. I stayed with Nkita my first 3 weeks in Kenya. I love Nkita's and she's incredibly kind. Plus her house is amazing with running water, clean drinking water, a refrigerator; you know all the luxuries :) For the next three weeks I'm going to be staying there and researching orphanages. I'm researching how orphanages are preparing their youth for reintegration once they exit orphanage care. I'm excited to get out and visit different children's homes and orphanages. I loved my internship, but I really missed being out in the community.

I'm planning on traveling for Christmas. In hopes that I can distract myself from homesickness and all that. I'll either be in the Congo or in Nakuru visiting friends.

After Christmas I'm headed to the village! I'm going to be living with my Friend's family in a village near Kisumu (super close to lake victoria). I'll be doing my community life course there. After five weeks, I'm back to Nairobi for a week then home..it is going to go by so quick. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm falling in love with this place and two half months seems so short.

This friday was graduation at Sidai. It was more of a celebration for school ending. (in Kenya the school year/term ends in December) It was really funny...they dressed the kids up in graduation robes including caps and we had cake and biscuits and sweets. They slaughtered a sheep for lunch and there was so much food! It was neat, because it ended up being more of a community celebration. We held the first part of the party in the slum (sidai's original location) and got to show the community how well Sidai kids are doing. Then we moved the celebration back to Sidai later.

I hope you all had a very happy thanksgiving! It's so strange to be completely removed from all the holiday fun and crazyness.

Weekends!

My last couple of weekends have been so fun.

Last weekend I went to Nakuru with my Kiswahili teacher and good friend Margaret. We visited her family Saturday and Sunday and it so fun. We made chapattis and hung out and played with my camera, and just relaxed. It was peaceful too and beautiful. You walk outside the house and there are beautiful mountains and fields. They were such wonderful people. The kind of people you feel lucky to know. But the end of my visit they felt like family. If I don’t go to the Congo for Christmas, I’m going to spend Christmas with them.

This weekend I went to the home of one of my good friends here. She has three children and lives in a one bedroom apartment, about the size of my room at home. The room functions as their living room, kitchen, bedroom, and everything else. She is truly an amazing woman and I'm so lucky for her friendship. In african style I brought a bag full of gifts, mostly food and a few sweets for the kids. It was nice to just sit and talk and eat muffins, cookies, and tea.

I also met with my professor from APU this morning. He is in Kenya doing planning for a graduate program. It was good to see a familiar face and have someone to help process the last 2 and a half months.

In other news....

Life has been good. I feel all this pressure to write about exciting and exotic things, living in Africa and all, but really life is pretty low key most of the time. It’s just life in Africa, okay so its not just life in Africa, but not every day is super exciting….

Some days are like this:
I wake up, I drink chai tea, take my bucket bath, eat some left over ugali, go to Sidai, teach Baby class, talk with the ladies at my internship, drink more tea, leave Sidai, go to town, get peanuts for 5 bob and talk with my friend who sales them, go home, attempt to do homework, watch tyra banks, help with dinner, eat dinner(rice and beans), watch KTN(our only channel), talk with my family, drink more chai tea, and go to bed.


I love it.

more to come!

Sidai

I never properly introduced you to my internship.

For the past two months I’ve been working here…

Most of the kids living at Sidai are orphans. However, not all. Some children come from abusive homes, or homes where there parents were simply not able to care for them. A few children came to Sidai in 2007 as they uprooted from their homes in the post election violence.

Sidai houses about 30 children full time. Some of these children receive sponsorship to go to school. The rest attend school at Sidai and are joined daily by children from the Slum

During my first week at Sidai I spent a morning reading all the child files and their stories are heart breaking. I remember just crying that afternoon.

It just doesn’t seem fair. These children are no less important or special than those I care take of in the states. Yet these children were born into poverty and a system of injustice in which they remain. They had no control over where they were born or what families they were born to. They are innocent. Why is it that the most vulnerable must suffer the most?
Despite all these children have been through they are amazing. They are beautiful, their smiles and playful nature light up my life.

I have a theory about African children, that are some of the strongest most resilient children in the world for all they must endure.

Sidai doesn’t have a consistent source of donations so they struggle month to month and most months they don’t make their budget. Compared to the other childrens homes in the area, Sidai has a long way to go in their development. Currently affording food each month is a struggle.

During my time at Sidai I’ve taught baby class. (I still smile when I hear the phase "baby class" because these kids are like 3).

I’ve also been working on the compute stuff quite a bit. Trying to update child files and the computer database. I’m also hoping to go on home visit’s the next two weeks to get information for the kids that are not currently living at Sidai.

Basically I have fallen in love with the kids here. They are great, but Sidai really struggles. Not only with money, but with management and development in general. They are currently working on develop projects that would enable them to become more self sufficient, but they have a lot of work ahead of them.

Check out the website: www.sidaichildren.org

Be sure to look at the newly created newsletter and brochure :)

Looking Up

[disclaimer: I hate my camera. It takes horrible pictures in Kenya and I every time I play with the settings it makes it worse. In this case it really is true that the pictures don’t do the real thing justice, not even close]

As you know I live on a big hill. So most days I walk up this….all the way to the top

Sometimes when I’m coming from town I take an alternate route up the other side of the hill. There’s path that goes along the hill and eventually comes out at my house.

This is not an ideal path. It’s rough, uphill, uneven, dirty, and has lots of protruding thorn bushes. Before the rainy season the ground was incredibly dusty and loose and now after the rain its incredibly muddy and sticky.


So much so that this is what happens to your shoes when you attempt to walk it in the rain.

Before the rains came, a few weeks ago, I was walking this path. I was having a hard day, drowning in loneliness, homesickness, self doubt, and my inadequacy at changing anything. The dirt was so loose and dusty and I struggled with every step as it sunk beneath my feet. I had to focus on the ground and the path as not to make a wrong step. However, eventually I loss my balance and I fell down hard. As I stood up I started crying and through my tears and frustration I asked God, “Is this really what you had for me?” As I looked up and out I got my answer…

It was beautiful. It was as if God was saying, “yes this is exactly what I had for you.” Sometimes I get so stuck in the difficulty of it all that I forget to look up and see the bigger picture.

Yes this is hard, yes I’m lonely, yes I feel powerless. Yet there is also so much beauty in this experience. There is beauty in the faces of the children I encounter everyday. There is beauty in the independence and strength I’m gaining. Beauty in realizing my powerlessness, that I can not “fix” everything. There is of course beauty in drinking chai tea at all hours of the day with wonderful Kenyans :-]

This life is beautiful…I just forget to look up and see it.

It’s true of this country as well. It’s so easy to just focus on the muddiness. Yes there is a lot of corruption, yes there is a lot of poverty, yes there is a lot tragedy. But there is also so much beauty to be found. I don’t say this to make light or lessen Kenya’s problems, but to remember that there is more to Kenya, more to Africa. Much, much more.

So I encourage whenever you are to remember to look up…

The truth

The truth is i'm not always honest on here.

The truth is I cry a lot in Kenya. Sometimes I cry because i feel like I'm failing at GLT, sometimes I cry because I feel helpless to do anything about the poverty and injustice I see around me, sometimes I cry for the children at Sidai, sometimes I cry because I'm just overwhelmed, sometimes I cry because the inequality of it all, and sometimes I cry out of frustration.

The truth is I'm not sure I'm cut out for this life. And that's a hard pill to swallow when this has been my dream since forever. What happens when you realize your not cut out for your dreams?

The truth is I'm still struggling to find peace here. Peace with this place, peace with myself, and peace with God.

The truth is I'm learning a lot.

The truth is I do enjoy and love being here, it's just harder than i thought it would be.

The truth is I feel myself growing, becoming a stronger person day by day.

The truth is God has been so gracious.

The truth is despite how hard it is i'm so thankful for this opportunity.

I'm learning to find joy and peace in the small things, smiles on the kids' faces, a beautiful sun set, the beautiful african trees, sitting in the dark talking with my family during a power cut, drinking chai tea....

so that's the truth.