On Friday morning, Kristoffer, Kirsten, Hans and I left from Nairobi to embark on a true Kenyan safari to the Masai Mara in south western Kenya, on the border of Tanzania. The word Mara means “spotted” in the Masai language and this part of Kenya is called “the Mara” because the land is mostly open plains spotted by trees and animals. The land is also the native home of the Masai tribe – pastoralists who raise cows, goats, and sheep and live what we would consider to be a very primitive lifestyle (more on that to come). People from all over the world come to the Mara between July and October to see the “Great Migration” of around 1.3 million wildebeest (called “gnu” in both Swahili and Danish) and zebra across the Mara River from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya. We were a little too early for the migration, but we did see thousands and thousands of “resident” wildebeest and zebra for sure.
The drive from Nairobi takes about 5 ½ hours and, to be honest, is not entirely pleasant. We wanted to see new parts of Kenya and so we made the journey by car…but we totally get why most other people fly! Most of the trip is just horribly bumpy, pot-holed, rough terrain but we did hit a few strips of good tarmac. It was pretty cool to see how much the country changes between Nairobi and the Mara; there is a town called “Narok” which is a transportation hub as it is the last place for fuel (or pretty much anything else!) before getting to the Mara and I think Kirsten and Hans were really fascinated to see all of the activity in this small town.
We arrived at the Karen Blixen Camp (www.karenblixencamp.com) in time for lunch; the reason for staying at this camp went beyond just the usual Karen Blixen Danish connection. We actually know the young Danish couple who own and operate this luxury camp (which is about two years old). The camp is located at a narrow point on the Mara River and from the main reception/dining tent we had amazing, daily views of 46 resident hippos, two crocodiles, and frequent visitors to the river such as zebra, elephants, giraffe, gazelles, impala, and baboons. It was easy to sit on the beautiful lawn and overlook the wildlife activity for hours. Also, our tents were amazing (and were bigger than my last apartment in Brooklyn)! The 22 tents at the camp have thatched roofs and inside look like rustic, old-school hotel rooms, complete with outdoor showers (heaven!). At night time you aren’t allowed to walk from your tent to the main tent without being accompanied by Masai guards, because the camp gets visits from hippos, lions, and other friends at night. The food was quite good and we definitely felt spoiled to stay in such an amazing camp.
Friday afternoon after we got settled, we met our Masai guide, Peter. Most people who come to the camp don’t have their own cars, so they are going in land cruisers with guides from the camp and other safari agencies. Because we had our own car, Peter came with us on all of our game drives to take us to places where we would be more likely to see specific animals than if we were venturing out on our own. Just like the guide Kristoffer and I had when we went to Naivasha at Christmas, Peter was amazing. Throughout our three days of driving with him, we learned so much about Kenyan animals and life on the Mara, the Masai people, the relationship between the Masai and Kenya’s tourism industry, and the changes that are taking place in traditional Masai culture.
Our first game drive was not very lucky – we didn’t see too many new and exciting animals, but Kirsten and Hans did see their first giraffe as we headed back to the camp in a rain storm. The second day, however, was very exciting. In the morning we took a lovely, peaceful nature walk with Peter and learned a bit about trees, plants and flowers, birds and some animals (from their dung and footprints!). In the afternoon, we took a game drive to a different area and finally came across our very first Kenyan lions! They were three lionesses, actually, resting within some bushes shaded from the afternoon sun. Two of them stayed asleep the whole time we were up close watching them, but one of them looked at us a bit more, even sitting all the way up to check us out at one point. They were so beautiful that I was shaking! That afternoon we also saw a live kill – not by lions, though, but we saw two jackals (sort of like foxes) hunt and kill a young gazelle. Of course, we were tempted to feel really bad for the little gazelle…but that is nature! We also came across a large herd of elephants that afternoon and enjoyed watching them eat so up close. What a day!
As if our second game drive hadn’t been enough, our third game drive was an even greater adventure. We left the camp at 6:30 in the morning with a packed breakfast to eat later in the morning. Our plan was to drive a bit of distance to this mountain park where some white rhinos live, and on the way we hoped to see some animals in the early morning hours. Well our hopes certainly came true! We quickly saw two lionesses (possibly two of the ones we had seen the day before) hunting for food. We didn’t see them kill anything, but in the surrounding area we could sense that all of the other animals were VERY tense as we watched the lions stalk through the high grass. As we continued driving, Hans noticed that there were two males lions in the grass. Good spot, Hans! Not only were they lying there but they were also feasting on a zebra! We parked to watch these amazing creatures, when another male lion approached and walked right in front of our car. When he joined his brothers, one of them left the group and walked behind our car. We could also see another female lioness in the distance. It was incredible! We were so lucky!
As we continued towards the rhinos we saw many, many hyena (which are usually hard to find in the day but it was still early morning) and they were actually eating a wildebeest! Such scavengers! And the vultures were all around them waiting for leftovers. We kept thinking that our day could not get any better! We did eventually stop in a hyena/lion-free area to eat our breakfast, and we had a beautiful view of some giraffes as we did so. If you have never eaten a packed breakfast out in the middle of the African bush, you should really try it! It was a little windy but the car provided some relief and it was extremely refreshing. We did finally make it to those rhinos and, of the four that live in that area, we saw three of them: one female, one male, and one baby. We were actually outside of our car walking with a guide and came across them so closely! But these rhinos must be somewhat used to humans because they were extremely tame and didn’t seem to either notice or be bothered by us. The baby rhino, we learned, was born during the post-election crisis when Kofi Annan was in Kenya to mediate the political stalemate; as it turns out, the guides who work there call this baby rhino Kofi Annan.
Our morning was amazing, but before we headed back to camp we paid a visit to a local Masai village. The village we went to is made up of about 25 families. Physically, the village was a large circle constructed of thick tree branches. Just inside were 25 huts/houses made of cow-dung around the circle with a completely open and empty center full of cow/goat/sheep DUNG because that is where the animals sleep at night. The thick branches protect the people and animals from animal predators at night, and then the young boys take the cattle out to graze and eat for the entire day. In order to get into the village, visitors (aka white people/mzungu) have to pay a fee – this money is crucial to the Masai’s economic survival. Once Kristoffer negotiated our price, our guide Peter introduced us to a young man named Elliot, who lived in this village and would be our guide inside. We learned that Elliot, 16, is the only boy in the whole village to go to secondary school and that he has aspirations of becoming a teacher. It sounded to us like Elliot is very eager to get out of his village – he said that it not his hope to live there when he gets older. It sort of made us wonder how the other young men, who did not get good marks in primary school, feel about having to stay in their village for the rest of their lives now.
We were greeted in the village by all of the women singing us a “Welcome Mzungu” song (literally…they sang the word for welcome in Masai over and over again followed by the word mzungu). Then the young men came out and did a traditional Masai Warrior dance and chant (which involves a lot of jumping). We noticed that one of the young men was wearing the mane of a lion as a hat on his head and were told that he is the oldest son of the village’s chief and in that position had to kill a lion, whose mane he was wearing. Later, we saw the scars he had on his body from the attack and learned that he had been in the hospital for 2 months recovering from the fight with the lion (which he won! How crazy is that?). Then we were encouraged to join the whole group in some singing and “dancing” (more like holding hands and walking around the cow-dung circle) for a little while and the women put jewelry on me and Kirsten. Note that we did not meet any of the Masai men – only women, older boys/young men, and small children/babies were around. And let me tell you how cute these babies were…except that it was a little bit heartbreaking to see them with bugs and flies all over them (but when you live in cow dung… that’s what you get).
Now the thing about this whole Masai greeting is that they were definitely putting on this “show” for us because we paid to come into the village to look at their life, and that is totally fine. They do actually live in that village, their houses are actually made of cow dung, and by our Western standards this was extreme poverty – that is not fake! But we sort of knew that they were putting on this show in their traditional clothes and jewelry for our benefit only, so we were all just kind of playing along. Underneath their traditional red clothing (cloth and blankets tied in various ways), the boys were all wearing shorts and t-shirts. I think the women’s clothing was a bit more “every day”. After the show we got a tour of one of their houses….talk about small, dark, and crowded! There were several small rooms in the house: one for baby goats and sheep to sleep (yes in the hut), one for the eldest son to sleep, one for the parents to sleep, one for all other children to sleep, and a room for cooking. After this tour, the women set up their jewelry and other traditional Masai keepsakes for us to browse through and buy. Their prices were SOOOO much higher than the prices we pay for the same stuff at the Masai Market in Nairobi so we didn’t buy too much (which to their dismay).
It was really an interesting experience – their culture is just so far from anything we could really ever imagine living. We also learned a lot about the Masai from Peter throughout our days with him. Older Masai traditionally only eat the milk, blood, and meat of their cattle, but younger Masai are eating more and different things, such as maize and rice (courtesy of programs like school feeding). The Masai still largely practice arranged marriages, as well as female circumcision. Peter could not believe it when we told him that in our countries female circumcision is illegal! The villages don’t have electricity and when the men want to trade or sell their cattle (which they are not largely in the practice of doing…they use cattle for celebrations/sacrifices/and making deals such as marriage dowries), they have to walk close to 100 km to the town of Narok to do so. But Peter also told us of some change that is happening within the Masai. For example, because he is educated (after secondary school he went to school to become a guide), he is allowed to choose his own wife and he does not have the same ear piercings (large, large holes) that non-educated Masai men have. The diet of young Masai is changing, and technology is making an impact so that some Masai even have cell phones. On the other hand, however, girls are still rarely educated in this culture and are not valued in the same way as boys.
After three days of these experiences, we were ready to leave on Monday morning. We were so grateful for Peter and for all of the amazing things we saw, as well as for the lavish hospitality of the Karen Blixen Camp. Our plan was to drive north from Narok to the city of Nakuru and to stay over night in the park there on Lake Nakuru. However, we couldn’t find affordable lodging for the night so we just drove up and around the Lake before heading back to Nairobi on Monday night. The national park around Lake Nakuru is known for having a lot of buffalo, rhino, flamingoes, and pelicans! We saw all of these animals in abundance here. In addition, we also saw about 5 more lions sitting right by the side of the path (literally, we almost missed them!), some more hyenas and giraffe. All in all, I think we saw every possible animal except for leopards and cheetah, which are extremely difficult to spot.
What a trip! After twelve hours of driving on Monday we were definitely tired (especially Kristoffer, who did all of the actual driving). Our big activity yesterday was picking out and ordering curtains for our entire house (with very helpful input from Kirsten and Hans) and having our new sofa for our upstairs living room delivered. It turned out beautifully! We love it and eagerly showed it off to our neighbors last night!
Kirsten and Hans have been here for one week and have seen and done so much! It was a great holiday and on Sunday they will be going to the beach island of Lamu for a few days by themselves. Kristoffer and I will stay back in Nairobi and enjoy our new sofa.
LMW
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
July 10, 2008 - Visitors!
Kristoffer and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Sunday - thank you to many people for their best wishes. In our first year of marriage we have rented two apartments and one house, lived on two continents (the latter of which is a continent to which neither of us is native), started three different jobs between us (two for me, one for Kristoffer), bought our first car, become residents of a foreign country...and so much more. All in all, an amazing year that neither of us could have predicted.
Our anniversary was followed by the arrival of Kristoffer's mom, Kirsten, and her husband, Hans. Sadly for them, they had a HORRIBLE trip here. They were flying through London (Heathrow), which is often a nightmare in good weather but turned out particularly miserable because there was a storm. They weren't able to land because of the weather and had to go to another, smaller airport where they waited for hours to get their luggage and then had to take a bus to Heathrow. They arrived too late to make their connection (obviously!) and had a difficult time getting another flight to Nairobi. Who knew all the flights would be sold out - I guess people are starting to come back to Kenya now since the election. Anyway, they ended up getting on the flight 24 hours after their original connection so they arrived in Nairobi 24 hours late. They were in desperate need of sleep (no hotels room were available for them) and showers but were otherwise in good shape. On our end, we didn't get the message that they missed their flight on time, so we waited at the Nairobi airport for them for 3 hours before getting the information that would not be coming in as expected. It was the most disappointing airport trip ever - who goes to airport and leaves without the people they were supposed to pick up?! We were sad, but relieved that they were ok.
Since they arrived yesterday morning, we have given them a tour of the United Nations and taken them to one of our favorite restaurants. They visited the Karen Blixen Museum today on their own and they played tennis and swam at our gym. They seem to really like our house (which makes us feel great!) and we are just really enjoying having them with us. Last night we had "Christmas in July" because they brought us Christmas and birthday gifts from them and other family members - it was SOOOO fun! We were like little kids :) Tomorrow we leave for the Masai Mara where will go on a proper safari and stay in a nicely tented camp owned and run by some Danes we know here. It is actually called "the Karen Blixen Camp". I hope to report back with new pictures and stories - remember, something is always happening over here!
LMW
p.s. internet is being installed at our house this weekend - phew!
Our anniversary was followed by the arrival of Kristoffer's mom, Kirsten, and her husband, Hans. Sadly for them, they had a HORRIBLE trip here. They were flying through London (Heathrow), which is often a nightmare in good weather but turned out particularly miserable because there was a storm. They weren't able to land because of the weather and had to go to another, smaller airport where they waited for hours to get their luggage and then had to take a bus to Heathrow. They arrived too late to make their connection (obviously!) and had a difficult time getting another flight to Nairobi. Who knew all the flights would be sold out - I guess people are starting to come back to Kenya now since the election. Anyway, they ended up getting on the flight 24 hours after their original connection so they arrived in Nairobi 24 hours late. They were in desperate need of sleep (no hotels room were available for them) and showers but were otherwise in good shape. On our end, we didn't get the message that they missed their flight on time, so we waited at the Nairobi airport for them for 3 hours before getting the information that would not be coming in as expected. It was the most disappointing airport trip ever - who goes to airport and leaves without the people they were supposed to pick up?! We were sad, but relieved that they were ok.
Since they arrived yesterday morning, we have given them a tour of the United Nations and taken them to one of our favorite restaurants. They visited the Karen Blixen Museum today on their own and they played tennis and swam at our gym. They seem to really like our house (which makes us feel great!) and we are just really enjoying having them with us. Last night we had "Christmas in July" because they brought us Christmas and birthday gifts from them and other family members - it was SOOOO fun! We were like little kids :) Tomorrow we leave for the Masai Mara where will go on a proper safari and stay in a nicely tented camp owned and run by some Danes we know here. It is actually called "the Karen Blixen Camp". I hope to report back with new pictures and stories - remember, something is always happening over here!
LMW
p.s. internet is being installed at our house this weekend - phew!
Friday, July 4, 2008
July 4, 2008 - Happy 4th of July!
While it is not Independence Day here in Kenya (that holiday is in December) it is certainly on my mind that my friends and family at home will be attending BBQs and watching fireworks today! It was just a normal working day here. I went to a meeting this morning and walked for an hour on the treadmill at the gym this afternoon. In 2 more weeks I can start exercising for real and I am very much looking forward to that. I fear that I have started to become a bit of a blob in the last two months!
On Wednesday, our cleaning woman, Catherine, started her work with us. When she came to the house, she and I then went to store to buy all of the supplies she would need, along with a uniform for her. Catherine was very happy with all of this, but I will admit that it was a very strange experience for me. She then proceeded to give our big house a good scrub which it really needed! As her frequency increases (by the fall she will be coming 3 times a week) and she can help with hanging up laundry (I cannot reach our clothes lines without a chair) and ironing I will be even more grateful. I think this was a good solution for us instead of having a full time person living with us.
We have also made progress towards getting internet at our house. We have found a good deal through the UN with a corporate internet service provider that is just starting to provide residential internet access. It is signficantly cheaper than the company we were using before so we are really happy about it; now we are just waiting for the appointment date and time.
Tonight we're having dinner at our neighbor's house (an American guy whose wife and kids are in the US for the summer) with our other neighbors and friends, Mike and Caroline (I worked with Mike at UNICEF in February and March), which we hope to be a very fun time. Making friends is good for us!
Happy 4th of July and have a great weekend :)
LMW
On Wednesday, our cleaning woman, Catherine, started her work with us. When she came to the house, she and I then went to store to buy all of the supplies she would need, along with a uniform for her. Catherine was very happy with all of this, but I will admit that it was a very strange experience for me. She then proceeded to give our big house a good scrub which it really needed! As her frequency increases (by the fall she will be coming 3 times a week) and she can help with hanging up laundry (I cannot reach our clothes lines without a chair) and ironing I will be even more grateful. I think this was a good solution for us instead of having a full time person living with us.
We have also made progress towards getting internet at our house. We have found a good deal through the UN with a corporate internet service provider that is just starting to provide residential internet access. It is signficantly cheaper than the company we were using before so we are really happy about it; now we are just waiting for the appointment date and time.
Tonight we're having dinner at our neighbor's house (an American guy whose wife and kids are in the US for the summer) with our other neighbors and friends, Mike and Caroline (I worked with Mike at UNICEF in February and March), which we hope to be a very fun time. Making friends is good for us!
Happy 4th of July and have a great weekend :)
LMW
Monday, June 30, 2008
June 30, 2008 - Couches, camels, and crashes! (actually only one crash)
Kristoffer and I are never short on adventure here in Nairobi. This weekend we had the goal of falling in love with some furniture...but as you can imagine, it is very difficult to plan falling in love! Our Saturday started with the door-to-door paying of some bills and led us to our hunt for the perfect couch (sofa) for our upstairs living room where we have our television. One couch that we liked a lot turned out to be too large for the space and the only other couch that we liked had been sold to someone else during the week. No! I was very frustrated, but Kristoffer kept hope alive even though we had already gone to every place we knew of that sells furniture. Luckily, there was an advertisement posted on a bulletin board at one of our malls with pictures of nice looking furniture. When he called the number, Kristoffer talked to a guy named Michael, who planned to meet with us about making some high quality furniture (as opposed to the furniture we bought when we were first lived here which is very poor quality).
Before meeting him though, he directed us to an up-scale interior design store to which he supplies the furniture they sell. At the store, we really did love several couches and other pieces of furniture, which had all been made by his company. They were simple, modern, comfortable, attractive, and not tacky (the biggest problem with most furniture here!) but at the store the price tags were very high. When we met with Michael later in the day we were able to custom design the couch for our living room and cut the price tag nearly in half by dealing with him directly instead of ordering from the store. How great! They started making the couch today - a large off-white sectional sofa that will fit beautifully in our cozy room (sorry to my friend Marcie who does not approve of sectional couches) - and it should be done in about 3 weeks. Once we get that and are happy with it, we will proceed to design more furniture with him for our downstairs living room and maybe some other spaces too. It started off as a frustrating day but turned out to be better than we even expected!
As we were driving around Nairobi hunting for couches, we came across the strangest sight. If only we had a camera with us (we keep saying we should keep one in the car at all times, but then we forget!) we would post the picture of 3 camels walking around Nairobi. Camels! Now Kristoffer has seen camels in eastern Kenya on the border of Somalia where they are very common and necessary to the way of life there, but here in the city?! It was totally bizarre, and they were definitely causing traffic!
Speaking of traffic...Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, is known for horrible traffic and a very high number of RTAs...random traffic accidents. Well last night, we were in our first traffic accident here, and actually Kristoffer's first accident ever. Don't get worried, we are totally fine and our car is fine too - it was just a very crazy incident. We were driving home from the mall in the late afternoon and we were on the main road where we had the right of way. We approached a T-stop intersection where we were turning right. Kristoffer had signaled and slowed down as he should have, but there was a car at the intersection turning right onto the main road and he basically didn't wait for us to complete our turn before he advanced through the intersection. The reason it was so bizarre is because he was there waiting, waiting, and waiting to turn as we approached but he just didn't wait long enough and ended up hitting us! Because our car is so big and high up, he just hit our back right tire and there was no damage to our vehicle, but the front left side of his car was mildly crunched. At that intersection there are all of these guys who wear bright yellow vests and sit by the side of the road and we always wonder what they are doing there. Well it turns out they sit there to observe the traffic and witness accidents - or at least that was their function last night. They immediately came over to us when our accident stopped traffic and spoke to Kristoffer as well as the Kenyan driver. It was obviously the other guy's fault which they said repeatedly; the guy didn't want to call any authorities because either he didn't have a license (which is very common here) or he didn't want the accident to count against his license, as it definitely would have. So Kristoffer agreed that our car was fine and this guy agreed that it was his fault, and we both went on our way. The whole ride home we were like, "Did that just happen?! He waited and waited until we were right there and THEN he pulled out?!" We were reminded that even when you are doing everything right here, you can't really trust other people to do the right thing because people seem to follow their own rules. It was just so bizarre. But now we have survived an RTA in Kenya and we hope there are no more to come, or at least that future accidents are as minimal as that one.
Yesterday was also the day that we interviewed Mary to be our housekeeper and cook. The interview wasn't horrible, but it didn't go that well. I think basically we didn't do enough research or talk to enough people about how these things usually go, so she had a little too much control over the situation. I am sure she would be a good cook and would keep our house very clean and orderly, but she wanted to live with us along with her 3 year old daughter and a girl who would live there to take care of the daughter while Mary was doing the housework. We are not quite ready to have 3 people living with us at this stage, and she wanted more money than we expected given that we would pay for all of her food and provide her with mattresses, uniforms, and a stove to cook on (apparently domestic staff would not cook their own food in our kitchen). So instead of hiring Mary, we are trying to hire a different woman who has worked for a Danish friend for a long time. The friend is getting ready to move back to Denmark though, so we are basically trying to hijack his help before someone else snaps her up! If it works out, she will come once a week until September, and then will come 3 days a week to clean, do laundry and ironing, and cook dinner on those days. She doesn't want to live with us, which is okay by us. We are really hoping this works out and think it is a good way to see how we like having staff first before ramping up to hire someone full time in the future. There are only two of us, after all, and we aren't THAT messy!
The only other interesting, although sad, news is that a Danish woman we know who is in Kristoffer's program with the World Health Organization was the victim of domestic violence last week. She had been living with her boyfriend, a Ugandan-born Kenyan resident who played basketball at the University of Notre Dame in the US during his college years. We aren't sure of the timeline, but essentially she broke up with him and afterwards he attacked her and tried to strangle her to death. She fought back, apparently biting his finger until he let go of her, and managed to escape. As horrible as this is, the worst part is that before she had a chance to report this to the police, he went and bribed the local and diplomatic police officers and pressed charges against her for biting him. So the police, to date, won't help her because the guy paid them off and in fact they are threatening her with jail time because she bit him. It is a horribly screwed up system! The Danish Embassy, much to Kristoffer's dismay, was not very helpful and did not really want to get involved. Luckily, our Danish friends who are close to her have gotten her legal help within the UN system and they should get everything sorted out soon, but needless to say it was an extremely sad and scary incident. We heard today that her sister came from Denmark to be with her through this ordeal and she is staying with our friends indefinitely.
As I started with, there is always something bizarre happening here! On Thursday I will start working on and off for the next month and will then be full time in August. Even though my contract at UNICEF won't be official for a few more weeks, my boss said I could start counting my days now for which I will be paid retroactively. I still have a crazy sleeping problem but last night I drank almost a whole bottle of wine before bed and yes, I did sleep very well for the first time in a long time. I don't think I should make that too much of a habit...but we'll see. Otherwise, I am feeling well and am eager to have things to do both for work and with Kristoffer's mom when she visits. It is a beautiful, sunny, warm winter's afternoon (it is at least 75 F) here in Nairobi and so I think I will go for a walk at the gym.
LMW
Before meeting him though, he directed us to an up-scale interior design store to which he supplies the furniture they sell. At the store, we really did love several couches and other pieces of furniture, which had all been made by his company. They were simple, modern, comfortable, attractive, and not tacky (the biggest problem with most furniture here!) but at the store the price tags were very high. When we met with Michael later in the day we were able to custom design the couch for our living room and cut the price tag nearly in half by dealing with him directly instead of ordering from the store. How great! They started making the couch today - a large off-white sectional sofa that will fit beautifully in our cozy room (sorry to my friend Marcie who does not approve of sectional couches) - and it should be done in about 3 weeks. Once we get that and are happy with it, we will proceed to design more furniture with him for our downstairs living room and maybe some other spaces too. It started off as a frustrating day but turned out to be better than we even expected!
As we were driving around Nairobi hunting for couches, we came across the strangest sight. If only we had a camera with us (we keep saying we should keep one in the car at all times, but then we forget!) we would post the picture of 3 camels walking around Nairobi. Camels! Now Kristoffer has seen camels in eastern Kenya on the border of Somalia where they are very common and necessary to the way of life there, but here in the city?! It was totally bizarre, and they were definitely causing traffic!
Speaking of traffic...Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, is known for horrible traffic and a very high number of RTAs...random traffic accidents. Well last night, we were in our first traffic accident here, and actually Kristoffer's first accident ever. Don't get worried, we are totally fine and our car is fine too - it was just a very crazy incident. We were driving home from the mall in the late afternoon and we were on the main road where we had the right of way. We approached a T-stop intersection where we were turning right. Kristoffer had signaled and slowed down as he should have, but there was a car at the intersection turning right onto the main road and he basically didn't wait for us to complete our turn before he advanced through the intersection. The reason it was so bizarre is because he was there waiting, waiting, and waiting to turn as we approached but he just didn't wait long enough and ended up hitting us! Because our car is so big and high up, he just hit our back right tire and there was no damage to our vehicle, but the front left side of his car was mildly crunched. At that intersection there are all of these guys who wear bright yellow vests and sit by the side of the road and we always wonder what they are doing there. Well it turns out they sit there to observe the traffic and witness accidents - or at least that was their function last night. They immediately came over to us when our accident stopped traffic and spoke to Kristoffer as well as the Kenyan driver. It was obviously the other guy's fault which they said repeatedly; the guy didn't want to call any authorities because either he didn't have a license (which is very common here) or he didn't want the accident to count against his license, as it definitely would have. So Kristoffer agreed that our car was fine and this guy agreed that it was his fault, and we both went on our way. The whole ride home we were like, "Did that just happen?! He waited and waited until we were right there and THEN he pulled out?!" We were reminded that even when you are doing everything right here, you can't really trust other people to do the right thing because people seem to follow their own rules. It was just so bizarre. But now we have survived an RTA in Kenya and we hope there are no more to come, or at least that future accidents are as minimal as that one.
Yesterday was also the day that we interviewed Mary to be our housekeeper and cook. The interview wasn't horrible, but it didn't go that well. I think basically we didn't do enough research or talk to enough people about how these things usually go, so she had a little too much control over the situation. I am sure she would be a good cook and would keep our house very clean and orderly, but she wanted to live with us along with her 3 year old daughter and a girl who would live there to take care of the daughter while Mary was doing the housework. We are not quite ready to have 3 people living with us at this stage, and she wanted more money than we expected given that we would pay for all of her food and provide her with mattresses, uniforms, and a stove to cook on (apparently domestic staff would not cook their own food in our kitchen). So instead of hiring Mary, we are trying to hire a different woman who has worked for a Danish friend for a long time. The friend is getting ready to move back to Denmark though, so we are basically trying to hijack his help before someone else snaps her up! If it works out, she will come once a week until September, and then will come 3 days a week to clean, do laundry and ironing, and cook dinner on those days. She doesn't want to live with us, which is okay by us. We are really hoping this works out and think it is a good way to see how we like having staff first before ramping up to hire someone full time in the future. There are only two of us, after all, and we aren't THAT messy!
The only other interesting, although sad, news is that a Danish woman we know who is in Kristoffer's program with the World Health Organization was the victim of domestic violence last week. She had been living with her boyfriend, a Ugandan-born Kenyan resident who played basketball at the University of Notre Dame in the US during his college years. We aren't sure of the timeline, but essentially she broke up with him and afterwards he attacked her and tried to strangle her to death. She fought back, apparently biting his finger until he let go of her, and managed to escape. As horrible as this is, the worst part is that before she had a chance to report this to the police, he went and bribed the local and diplomatic police officers and pressed charges against her for biting him. So the police, to date, won't help her because the guy paid them off and in fact they are threatening her with jail time because she bit him. It is a horribly screwed up system! The Danish Embassy, much to Kristoffer's dismay, was not very helpful and did not really want to get involved. Luckily, our Danish friends who are close to her have gotten her legal help within the UN system and they should get everything sorted out soon, but needless to say it was an extremely sad and scary incident. We heard today that her sister came from Denmark to be with her through this ordeal and she is staying with our friends indefinitely.
As I started with, there is always something bizarre happening here! On Thursday I will start working on and off for the next month and will then be full time in August. Even though my contract at UNICEF won't be official for a few more weeks, my boss said I could start counting my days now for which I will be paid retroactively. I still have a crazy sleeping problem but last night I drank almost a whole bottle of wine before bed and yes, I did sleep very well for the first time in a long time. I don't think I should make that too much of a habit...but we'll see. Otherwise, I am feeling well and am eager to have things to do both for work and with Kristoffer's mom when she visits. It is a beautiful, sunny, warm winter's afternoon (it is at least 75 F) here in Nairobi and so I think I will go for a walk at the gym.
LMW
Sunday, June 29, 2008
June 29, 2008 - 5 Years!
So...Kristoffer and I met five years ago today. Maybe it is a silly anniversary to remember, except that we have changed so much since we met! Last night we played a game as we were falling asleep (well, Kristoffer was falling asleep and I was just getting ready for my night of resting but not sleeping) to list all of the things that are different about the other person since we met. Our lists were so long! When we met I hadn't moved to NYC or started teaching yet, Kristoffer hadn't finished his master's degrees, we were both eating meat, and both of us weighed more than we do now! Those are only small things of course, but it is fun to think back on the last 5 years and how we got to where we are in Nairobi, Kenya now. I can remember one of our first conversations when Kristoffer told me that he always hoped to someday live and work in Africa. He did a great job making that dream come true!
Just a quick stop at the UN today but now we are off to go interview our housekeeper. More stories on furniture and camels to follow in the next blog...
LMW
Just a quick stop at the UN today but now we are off to go interview our housekeeper. More stories on furniture and camels to follow in the next blog...
LMW
Thursday, June 26, 2008
June 26, 2008 - Expats
There are some really great things about living in our house. For me, I love that we can walk on our street. It is very quiet with compounds of houses only (no apartments) and so much security. Our security guards call Kristoffer "Mr. Kris" (which he can't decide if he likes or not) and they are more strict about letting people into the compound than at our old apartment (which is a good thing). Christine said that it was like "Fort Knox" getting in to our house the first time she came. The compound is very secluded and quiet. We have already gone on two nice long walks, and Kristoffer has even gone for a morning run! Another thing I love is that our compound has a generator because, even though we lose power just as often as we did in the apartment, the generator kicks in right away and power is restored immediately. It feels like a luxury here but I am loving it! I will not miss 8 hour power outages for sure!
Speaking of luxury...we are finally caving in to the pressures of living in a developing country and are going to hire "staff". Our house comes with "SQ" (or servant's quarters) for two people, but I think we will only hire one - and we haven't decided if that one will live with us or not (depends on the person we hire I think). We are interviewing a woman named Mary on Sunday to be our housekeeper and cook. Isn't that SO crazy?!?! If you had ever asked me when I could imagine myself hiring a housekeeper/cook before living in Kenya, I would have cooly answered, "Well...the year after never of course!" And now here I am, imagining how nice it will be not to spend half of every weekend cleaning our big house and food shopping, and half of every night cooking dinner and cleaning it up. Mary supposedly has a license from a catering school and knows several styles of cooking (we'll have to see if one of them is "vegetarian"). If not her, than we'll find someone else. In Kenya, hiring domestic help is a big part of the economy and there is no shortage of (inexpensive) labor. We've also found a driver, named Justice, to use consistently instead of a taxi because he is a little cheaper, and Kristoffer will occasionally employ the compound's gardener to help with our backyard (rent includes maintenance of the greens in the front of our house only). Did I mention that our house has rose bushes?! There are at least 5 of them, in all different colors, and I think they will be really beautiful once we learn how to take care of them. When Kirsten and Hans are here we plan to ask for their help - they are great gardeners!
This week we picked out a paint color and Kristoffer painted one of the walls in our upstairs living room the other night. It is a creamy/orangey/yellowy color - very warm and friendly. It looks great on one wall but might be too strong for much more than that so we will pick out one shade lighter and have some other rooms painted in that (rest of the living room, hallway and entryway, kitchen). I think it will take us awhile to furnish and decorate the house entirely, so right now we are just focusing on key rooms where we spend most of our time. This weekend our hunt for furniture will continue.
As for me, I have come in to the UN three times now. I have to "check out" as a volunteer before starting a consultant's contract; "checking out" means walking around to have all kinds of people who never even knew that I was a volunteer sign off on a piece of paper that I have returned everything I never borrowed from their department (technology stuff, finance stuff, etc.). It actually takes awhile to do this and most people are like "Who are you?" when I ask if they will clear me as a departing volunteer! Sometimes they will give me a little speech about how the UN needs good people and do I really want to check out? That is when I say that I am waiting for my consultant's contract to be processed so the UN isn't losing me, but that I am rather happy to expect a pay check in the near future.
But about that contract...it seems that it had been approved while I was away but that in the last few weeks there has been a salary adjustment, and I will now be getting paid at a higher rate. Because of the new salary, though, the contract has to go through the entire process of being approved again which will take between 2 and 3 more weeks. When it is finally approved, Kristoffer and I expect to be travelling a bit with his mom and Hans. Ideally, I will start working part time next week "off the books" and will then pick up full time "on the books" when Kirsten and Hans leave. It is sort of confusing, but hopefully will work out for the best. I am lucky that UNICEF has been very patient with me and that my boss is still giving me a contract. She is on leave for the next several weeks anyway and I will be working for an Italian woman who is in charge of the education emergency now; from what I understand I will mostly be organizing, analyzing and finding meaningful ways to report data that people have been collecting for months but haven't really done anything with.
Finally, today Kristoffer and I realized that we actually know a lot of people here! This is sort of a surprising revelation to me because I have been gone for awhile and because I still think of us as being new here. During lunch in the UN cafeteria though, a few women I know came over to say hello. Kristoffer had also seen a few people he knew and I found out later today that some of my UNICEF colleagues were watching us eat but I didn't notice them. Kristoffer and I are now sort of having a contest to see which one of us is more popular. As we were leaving we saw two of WFP Danish guys talking to one UNICEF American women and were like, "How do they know each other?!" We joined them briefly and then as we walked away from all of this Kristoffer said, "It is a really small world here, isn't it?" because eventually all expatriates (expats) know all of the other expats!
Before I sign off, I'll just add that I think it is great that Kristoffer has blogged a bit more. He has the great fortune with his job to be able to see parts of Kenya that average tourists and international business people do not see. His views of "real Kenya", as opposed to the happy little expat bubble we live in, are very valuable and I am always grateful when he shares these stories. I also hope to eventually acquire a few stories of my own when I am working more!
LMW
Speaking of luxury...we are finally caving in to the pressures of living in a developing country and are going to hire "staff". Our house comes with "SQ" (or servant's quarters) for two people, but I think we will only hire one - and we haven't decided if that one will live with us or not (depends on the person we hire I think). We are interviewing a woman named Mary on Sunday to be our housekeeper and cook. Isn't that SO crazy?!?! If you had ever asked me when I could imagine myself hiring a housekeeper/cook before living in Kenya, I would have cooly answered, "Well...the year after never of course!" And now here I am, imagining how nice it will be not to spend half of every weekend cleaning our big house and food shopping, and half of every night cooking dinner and cleaning it up. Mary supposedly has a license from a catering school and knows several styles of cooking (we'll have to see if one of them is "vegetarian"). If not her, than we'll find someone else. In Kenya, hiring domestic help is a big part of the economy and there is no shortage of (inexpensive) labor. We've also found a driver, named Justice, to use consistently instead of a taxi because he is a little cheaper, and Kristoffer will occasionally employ the compound's gardener to help with our backyard (rent includes maintenance of the greens in the front of our house only). Did I mention that our house has rose bushes?! There are at least 5 of them, in all different colors, and I think they will be really beautiful once we learn how to take care of them. When Kirsten and Hans are here we plan to ask for their help - they are great gardeners!
This week we picked out a paint color and Kristoffer painted one of the walls in our upstairs living room the other night. It is a creamy/orangey/yellowy color - very warm and friendly. It looks great on one wall but might be too strong for much more than that so we will pick out one shade lighter and have some other rooms painted in that (rest of the living room, hallway and entryway, kitchen). I think it will take us awhile to furnish and decorate the house entirely, so right now we are just focusing on key rooms where we spend most of our time. This weekend our hunt for furniture will continue.
As for me, I have come in to the UN three times now. I have to "check out" as a volunteer before starting a consultant's contract; "checking out" means walking around to have all kinds of people who never even knew that I was a volunteer sign off on a piece of paper that I have returned everything I never borrowed from their department (technology stuff, finance stuff, etc.). It actually takes awhile to do this and most people are like "Who are you?" when I ask if they will clear me as a departing volunteer! Sometimes they will give me a little speech about how the UN needs good people and do I really want to check out? That is when I say that I am waiting for my consultant's contract to be processed so the UN isn't losing me, but that I am rather happy to expect a pay check in the near future.
But about that contract...it seems that it had been approved while I was away but that in the last few weeks there has been a salary adjustment, and I will now be getting paid at a higher rate. Because of the new salary, though, the contract has to go through the entire process of being approved again which will take between 2 and 3 more weeks. When it is finally approved, Kristoffer and I expect to be travelling a bit with his mom and Hans. Ideally, I will start working part time next week "off the books" and will then pick up full time "on the books" when Kirsten and Hans leave. It is sort of confusing, but hopefully will work out for the best. I am lucky that UNICEF has been very patient with me and that my boss is still giving me a contract. She is on leave for the next several weeks anyway and I will be working for an Italian woman who is in charge of the education emergency now; from what I understand I will mostly be organizing, analyzing and finding meaningful ways to report data that people have been collecting for months but haven't really done anything with.
Finally, today Kristoffer and I realized that we actually know a lot of people here! This is sort of a surprising revelation to me because I have been gone for awhile and because I still think of us as being new here. During lunch in the UN cafeteria though, a few women I know came over to say hello. Kristoffer had also seen a few people he knew and I found out later today that some of my UNICEF colleagues were watching us eat but I didn't notice them. Kristoffer and I are now sort of having a contest to see which one of us is more popular. As we were leaving we saw two of WFP Danish guys talking to one UNICEF American women and were like, "How do they know each other?!" We joined them briefly and then as we walked away from all of this Kristoffer said, "It is a really small world here, isn't it?" because eventually all expatriates (expats) know all of the other expats!
Before I sign off, I'll just add that I think it is great that Kristoffer has blogged a bit more. He has the great fortune with his job to be able to see parts of Kenya that average tourists and international business people do not see. His views of "real Kenya", as opposed to the happy little expat bubble we live in, are very valuable and I am always grateful when he shares these stories. I also hope to eventually acquire a few stories of my own when I am working more!
LMW
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
25 June, 2008 - One Woman
Most of my responsibilities at work have been centred around the School Feeding Programme. However, WFP’s Kenya Country Program also supports people living with HIV/AIDS in the Western part of Kenya and in the slums of Nairobi.
Many of the people living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya receive free anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The medicine is given by the government and international donors to help HIV/AIDS-infected beneficiaries live longer. Research has still shown, however, that Kenyans on ARVs cannot fully sustain their livelihood as they are too weak to work. Their ability to farm or otherwise support their families depends on a high-nutrient diet and an overall food intake well above the recommended daily amount. Without proper food, ARVs are ineffective. This is where the WFP comes in. We provide take home rations for about 60,000 poor people living with HIV/AIDS. When given our food and their ARVs, a sick and bedridden AIDS-infected person will be able to recover his/her energy in three months; thereafter the person will be able to take on labour-intensive work. Because of the strong family traditions in Kenya, where everything is shared among family members, we feed the whole families of HIV/AIDS-infected people; if we didn’t, the sick person would only consume a small portion of what we give them and the rest of the food would be shared. Often the beneficiaries are too poor to be self-sufficient even after the three months; therefore, WFP, through our implementing partners, provides different kinds of training to the beneficiaries such as: food security, agriculture methods, bee-keeping, fruit tree planting, knitting, craft making, etc. which all can be combined with micro financing/lending. After 6-12 months the beneficiaries are supposed to graduate from the program and then they are on their own. Not everybody graduates though but our graduates tend to be successful.
Last week (after Lisa came home), I went on a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mission to the city of Kisumu and the town of Busia in Western Kenyan. I didn’t travel alone, but rather joined Hamai, our Japanese JPO (same contract as mine, just supported by the Japanese Government instead of the Danish), as well as our head of M&E, Grace, a Kenyan woman about whom I will write a blog another time. Kisumu is on Lake Victoria and Busia is right next to the Ugandan border. Kisumu may sound familiar from the news or Lisa’s past blogs because the post-election violence hit that area very hard. We flew to Kisumu in a nice jet-plane and landed almost on the water. The weather was just perfect: 27 degrees Celsius, much nicer than our “winter” weather (19C) in Nairobi. The next day we drove for just a few hours to stop at the non-profit REEP, one of our implementing partners that distributes WFP food. The REEP centre is in a small community not too far from Busia and does many things other than distribute food to people living with HIV/AIDS. They do gender awareness in schools and other community settings, and they help girls or boys who have been the victims of rape. In the tribe native to Busia and surrounding towns, men who don’t beat their wives are looked down upon, so abuse and rape are both quite common. Surprisingly, Kenya has very strict laws to protect women from such crimes, but in these rural settings women are often afraid to speak out and, if they do, the matter is often settled between families with some cows or bags of maize.
The head of the REEP centre is Mary. We were supposed to spend most of the short visit evaluating our partnership but the visit was not short because Mary insisted on telling us, the white men (yes, in Kenya they consider Asian people to be “white”), every detail about her centre. Even though she was longwinded, we learned so much from her.
About 75 girls and boys are raped every year in this small community; more than one per week. Mary has made it her mission in life to create awareness about this problem, to educate children (mainly female) about their rights, to enforce the rule of law by prosecuting the male perpetrators and to help people living with HIV/AIDS. The centre has many counselors, including male counsellors, who almost looked like strong police men (and I soon learned why).
Mary told us a lot about cases of rape: not just one case, not just five cases, not just 20 cases. She talked and talked and talked and, even though I did hope she would stop at some point, she kept talking! Generally, Mary is feared by the men in the community, which has lead to many death threats made against her. Girls from rich families who have been raped will come to her and she will help them, with the leaders of their families thanking her deeply. But when poor 13-year-old (or often much younger) orphan girls come to her because a professor or priest had taken advantage of them, the leaders will try to quiet everything down and settle the problem with a few cows. But Mary would go straight to the media and force the law to prosecute the men, which has sometimes resulted in jail sentences up to 40 years. The media would ask her: “Are you happy now, Mary?” to which she would reply: “I am not happy before he is hung!” When the family of an old man who just died in prison came to her to make her feel guilty for putting him in prison in the first place, she would say: “I’m sure the girls of the community will be much safer now”.
I can’t bring myself to write in this blog all that we learned about the crimes committed against the victims Mary helps, but I personally have never heard such cruelty as in the stories she told us. During our visit, quite suddenly the door opened and in came a 14-year-old girl with a baby on her arm. The girl’s parents were very good friends with a Kenyan professor; when her parents died the professor began raping her, got her pregnant, infected her with AIDS and made her too ashamed to even go to school. Mary introduced us to her and explained to us everything that happened to her while she was standing right in front of us. She told us that the girl has decided to come out with her story, is now employed by the centre and her case is being handled. She wasn’t the only child Mary wanted us to hear about and meet…but at 14 she was the oldest, if you can imagine. If I had a lot of extra money I would sponsor this girl and the centre. Mary wants a full-time lawyer, a rescue centre and money to build more awareness.
On another note, many Kenyan NGOs have tried to hike up the local salaries of their staff to benefit from large donations. Mary, on the other hand, hired four people for the one-person’s salary we provided her. Most of her staff are people living with HIV/ADIS. We bought some fresh honey from the centre, made by the beneficiaries of the programme I described earlier, and were about to leave when Mary came up to me, pointed to small pickup truck and said: “After you leave we will take the guy inside that car to the police station. He raped a girl last night…do you want to see him?” Trust me, I had no desire!
The rest of the trip went well. We saw a distribution site, one of our largest warehouses, and interviewed more implementing partners… but none of Mary’s calibre: she is one in a million! It’s amazing what one woman can do!
Since my trip last week, I have set up a meeting with some key people at the Danish Embassy for next week. This is my first attempt to use my citizenship to attract resources for WFP programs. I was lucky to get some help from a close friend of mine, but I am sure it will be a long process. I will keep you posted.
KW
Many of the people living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya receive free anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The medicine is given by the government and international donors to help HIV/AIDS-infected beneficiaries live longer. Research has still shown, however, that Kenyans on ARVs cannot fully sustain their livelihood as they are too weak to work. Their ability to farm or otherwise support their families depends on a high-nutrient diet and an overall food intake well above the recommended daily amount. Without proper food, ARVs are ineffective. This is where the WFP comes in. We provide take home rations for about 60,000 poor people living with HIV/AIDS. When given our food and their ARVs, a sick and bedridden AIDS-infected person will be able to recover his/her energy in three months; thereafter the person will be able to take on labour-intensive work. Because of the strong family traditions in Kenya, where everything is shared among family members, we feed the whole families of HIV/AIDS-infected people; if we didn’t, the sick person would only consume a small portion of what we give them and the rest of the food would be shared. Often the beneficiaries are too poor to be self-sufficient even after the three months; therefore, WFP, through our implementing partners, provides different kinds of training to the beneficiaries such as: food security, agriculture methods, bee-keeping, fruit tree planting, knitting, craft making, etc. which all can be combined with micro financing/lending. After 6-12 months the beneficiaries are supposed to graduate from the program and then they are on their own. Not everybody graduates though but our graduates tend to be successful.
Last week (after Lisa came home), I went on a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mission to the city of Kisumu and the town of Busia in Western Kenyan. I didn’t travel alone, but rather joined Hamai, our Japanese JPO (same contract as mine, just supported by the Japanese Government instead of the Danish), as well as our head of M&E, Grace, a Kenyan woman about whom I will write a blog another time. Kisumu is on Lake Victoria and Busia is right next to the Ugandan border. Kisumu may sound familiar from the news or Lisa’s past blogs because the post-election violence hit that area very hard. We flew to Kisumu in a nice jet-plane and landed almost on the water. The weather was just perfect: 27 degrees Celsius, much nicer than our “winter” weather (19C) in Nairobi. The next day we drove for just a few hours to stop at the non-profit REEP, one of our implementing partners that distributes WFP food. The REEP centre is in a small community not too far from Busia and does many things other than distribute food to people living with HIV/AIDS. They do gender awareness in schools and other community settings, and they help girls or boys who have been the victims of rape. In the tribe native to Busia and surrounding towns, men who don’t beat their wives are looked down upon, so abuse and rape are both quite common. Surprisingly, Kenya has very strict laws to protect women from such crimes, but in these rural settings women are often afraid to speak out and, if they do, the matter is often settled between families with some cows or bags of maize.
The head of the REEP centre is Mary. We were supposed to spend most of the short visit evaluating our partnership but the visit was not short because Mary insisted on telling us, the white men (yes, in Kenya they consider Asian people to be “white”), every detail about her centre. Even though she was longwinded, we learned so much from her.
About 75 girls and boys are raped every year in this small community; more than one per week. Mary has made it her mission in life to create awareness about this problem, to educate children (mainly female) about their rights, to enforce the rule of law by prosecuting the male perpetrators and to help people living with HIV/AIDS. The centre has many counselors, including male counsellors, who almost looked like strong police men (and I soon learned why).
Mary told us a lot about cases of rape: not just one case, not just five cases, not just 20 cases. She talked and talked and talked and, even though I did hope she would stop at some point, she kept talking! Generally, Mary is feared by the men in the community, which has lead to many death threats made against her. Girls from rich families who have been raped will come to her and she will help them, with the leaders of their families thanking her deeply. But when poor 13-year-old (or often much younger) orphan girls come to her because a professor or priest had taken advantage of them, the leaders will try to quiet everything down and settle the problem with a few cows. But Mary would go straight to the media and force the law to prosecute the men, which has sometimes resulted in jail sentences up to 40 years. The media would ask her: “Are you happy now, Mary?” to which she would reply: “I am not happy before he is hung!” When the family of an old man who just died in prison came to her to make her feel guilty for putting him in prison in the first place, she would say: “I’m sure the girls of the community will be much safer now”.
I can’t bring myself to write in this blog all that we learned about the crimes committed against the victims Mary helps, but I personally have never heard such cruelty as in the stories she told us. During our visit, quite suddenly the door opened and in came a 14-year-old girl with a baby on her arm. The girl’s parents were very good friends with a Kenyan professor; when her parents died the professor began raping her, got her pregnant, infected her with AIDS and made her too ashamed to even go to school. Mary introduced us to her and explained to us everything that happened to her while she was standing right in front of us. She told us that the girl has decided to come out with her story, is now employed by the centre and her case is being handled. She wasn’t the only child Mary wanted us to hear about and meet…but at 14 she was the oldest, if you can imagine. If I had a lot of extra money I would sponsor this girl and the centre. Mary wants a full-time lawyer, a rescue centre and money to build more awareness.
On another note, many Kenyan NGOs have tried to hike up the local salaries of their staff to benefit from large donations. Mary, on the other hand, hired four people for the one-person’s salary we provided her. Most of her staff are people living with HIV/ADIS. We bought some fresh honey from the centre, made by the beneficiaries of the programme I described earlier, and were about to leave when Mary came up to me, pointed to small pickup truck and said: “After you leave we will take the guy inside that car to the police station. He raped a girl last night…do you want to see him?” Trust me, I had no desire!
The rest of the trip went well. We saw a distribution site, one of our largest warehouses, and interviewed more implementing partners… but none of Mary’s calibre: she is one in a million! It’s amazing what one woman can do!
Since my trip last week, I have set up a meeting with some key people at the Danish Embassy for next week. This is my first attempt to use my citizenship to attract resources for WFP programs. I was lucky to get some help from a close friend of mine, but I am sure it will be a long process. I will keep you posted.
KW
Monday, June 23, 2008
23 June, 2008 - Kristoffer’s Carbon Credits Mission
Sometimes I feel it’s almost impossible for me to get a better job than working for WFP. However, I initially missed some linkages between my job and the environment. So when the WFP Kenya Country Office wanted a focal point for carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, my hand went straight up. In short, industrialized countries can purchase carbon credits to offset their pollution through investing in environmental improvements in less developed countries.
One month later WFP had three visitors from a company called EcoSecurities (UK). The company buys/seeks carbon credit-eligible projects in less developed countries. I was in charge of the visit and the four of us (excluding a driver and a field monitor) went to the slums of Nairobi to look at energy-saving stoves under the school feeding program. International Paper (a company) donated 68 energy saving stoves to schools under the school feeding program a few years ago. The stoves help schools save on firewood (up to 70%), which is a great cost that can be more than $150 per month, and help the environment, including deforestation. The mission (one American, one German and one South African) was excited about the stoves and saw great potential for carbon financing, and of course all the cute kids helped to make it a great day. Lorna (our field monitor and my friend) took us to some of our best schools and I saw with my own eyes how a poor school can be turned around when a proactive head-teacher and the community work together.
The next day we visited the Ministry of Environment and then we drove for 5 hours towards Mombasa, the country’s second largest city and the biggest port in East Africa. Security regulation does not allow the UN to travel at night in Kenya and we were caught by darkness so we stayed overnight in Kibwezi in quite primitive rooms. Kyle, the American, was excited to try some local food (the only option) and they all took it very well. The next day we drove to Taveta on the Tanzanian boarder and right next to Mt. Kilimanjaro (sadly, we couldn’t see the mountain which was covered in clouds all day L). In Taiveta we met the heads of the local school district and I had to get used to facilitating the visit, explaining why we where there to the heads of all the departments in Taiveta district. We saw a large irrigation project which was made possible by WFP’s Food for Asset (FFA) program. FFA is a program where the community identifies a project and then community members work 12 days a month and are paid in food by WFP. The work has to be labour intensive and WFP only funds projects in food-insecure areas to help the people become food secure. FFA projects are mostly funded through our emergency operations, unlike most of our programs which are free handouts. The irrigation project was impressive and, by collecting water from a mid-sized river, maize was growing high and the project earned food for thousands of people.
The sad part is that the irrigation system could easily be extended but WFP stopped funding the project and, for some reason, the community didn’t come together to make the last extension by themselves. I think the reason is what an economist would call “low social capital”. People don’t trust each other, even within the same community. And if I was not sure that my family would benefit from my hard labour maybe I would not do it….but come on… that maize was almost reaching the sky!
We drove back to a town called Voi; a few elephants blocked the road and we had to wait for them to pass. The elephants were huge and even our Kenyan driver felt a bit intimidated because they were quite upset and had a little baby elephant. Their ears where flapping as we passed them in the UN Toyota Land Cruiser and the driver showed me once again that you can drive 100 km per hour on a hard unpaved road. The country-side was beautiful.
Then we reached Voi, a tourist town without tourists - post-election crisis! We stayed overnight in a high-end lodge with nice rooms, big windows overlooking the savannah, and a pond with a hippo and where elephants (20) and other wild animal came for a drink. With two swimming pools and an excellent kitchen, we enjoyed the 150-bedroom lodge which we had all to ourselves. This lodge had a swim up savannah with the swimming pool 30 meters from the pond with all the animals; it was quite amazing and Kyle and Sabina (German woman) were ecstatic.
The next morning we slept in and left for Mombasa. The EU-sponsored road was great and we were there in no time at the beach hotel. But Mombasa was unseasonably cold and windy so my first time in the Indian Ocean was postponed. We watched some Euro Football and went to sleep.
We spent the next day in Kwale district, which was beautiful but many of its crops were failing because the long rains didn’t happen in parts of the district (in Kenya they say “the rains failed”). We saw a family running for their lives as we approached a village; later the field monitor told us that the children were afraid we were coming to vaccinate them.
Later I saw something that almost brought tears to my eyes. The school feeding program provides lunch to the primary school children in this area and fortified porridge for children under five (pre-school). We were driving and it was a little after 1pm. Children in their school uniforms (British system) were walking by the road. They were around 4-7 years old and they were all carrying a plate of WFP food from their school. Instead of eating the meal at the school they were carrying the plate home to share it with the rest of their family… just one plate. An important reminder of why my work is so vital in this country.
In Kwale we saw some great schools where the communities had come together to plant maize and trees on the school compounds. The schools in Kenya often have quite a bit of land, the biggest up to 10 acres. Unfortunately, the scale of the tree planting was too little to be feasible for carbon credits.
After that we went to a presentation site where World Vision (an international non-profit) is training mainly woman in drought-resistant agricultural methods. In many Kenyan tribes, after marriage the women do all the hard labor (good thing for Lisa she is not from a Kenyan tribe!)! World Vision had a great agricultural presentation site which I am sure will make a difference for these women and their families. Our field monitor translated as the 12 women wanted to talk to us. It was their first time having visitors and they were very happy. They thanked us for the program and then the oldest woman said: “We need water. We need water for our crops and for our households.” Then it was obvious that we were supposed to reply, it was so formal. We were standing under a tree in the middle of nowhere, but not too far from Mombasa road (the major highway from Nairobi). So I spoke to them, encouraged them to motivate their husbands to work. It was important for us to see the project but we couldn’t deal with their lack of water right away because water falls under UNICEF programming and WFP doesn’t have the mandate to fund boreholes. Depending on the depth, a borehole costs around 50,000 USD. After the talk the old woman came to me, took my hand with both of hers and said: “Remember me! Remember me!”
So now I feel I owe a $50,000 borehole to an old woman in Kwale. She surely needs it; the long rains (April-June) also failed in this part of the district.
We drove 100 km back to Mombasa to spend the night and it rained and rained. Driving back to Nairobi the next day I was eager to see how far inland the rain had reached. Normally it just rains 5-10 km inland. After an hour’s drive we passed the road to the old lady’s village. The soil by the road was darker and I saw a large pothole with water in it. The old lady had gotten rain that night.
We made it back to Nairobi in one piece. Our driver for the week, Francis, had been great and our visitors seemed happy with what they saw, although the energy-saving stove project was probably the only one with carbon credit potential. The rules under the Kyoto protocol are fairly complex but I learned so much and the mission told me about the Adaptation Fund which has a wider approach. All in all, it was a great, great week. To top it all off my beloved wife came home from her extended “vacation” in the US. I never thought I could miss her so much.
KW
One month later WFP had three visitors from a company called EcoSecurities (UK). The company buys/seeks carbon credit-eligible projects in less developed countries. I was in charge of the visit and the four of us (excluding a driver and a field monitor) went to the slums of Nairobi to look at energy-saving stoves under the school feeding program. International Paper (a company) donated 68 energy saving stoves to schools under the school feeding program a few years ago. The stoves help schools save on firewood (up to 70%), which is a great cost that can be more than $150 per month, and help the environment, including deforestation. The mission (one American, one German and one South African) was excited about the stoves and saw great potential for carbon financing, and of course all the cute kids helped to make it a great day. Lorna (our field monitor and my friend) took us to some of our best schools and I saw with my own eyes how a poor school can be turned around when a proactive head-teacher and the community work together.
The next day we visited the Ministry of Environment and then we drove for 5 hours towards Mombasa, the country’s second largest city and the biggest port in East Africa. Security regulation does not allow the UN to travel at night in Kenya and we were caught by darkness so we stayed overnight in Kibwezi in quite primitive rooms. Kyle, the American, was excited to try some local food (the only option) and they all took it very well. The next day we drove to Taveta on the Tanzanian boarder and right next to Mt. Kilimanjaro (sadly, we couldn’t see the mountain which was covered in clouds all day L). In Taiveta we met the heads of the local school district and I had to get used to facilitating the visit, explaining why we where there to the heads of all the departments in Taiveta district. We saw a large irrigation project which was made possible by WFP’s Food for Asset (FFA) program. FFA is a program where the community identifies a project and then community members work 12 days a month and are paid in food by WFP. The work has to be labour intensive and WFP only funds projects in food-insecure areas to help the people become food secure. FFA projects are mostly funded through our emergency operations, unlike most of our programs which are free handouts. The irrigation project was impressive and, by collecting water from a mid-sized river, maize was growing high and the project earned food for thousands of people.
The sad part is that the irrigation system could easily be extended but WFP stopped funding the project and, for some reason, the community didn’t come together to make the last extension by themselves. I think the reason is what an economist would call “low social capital”. People don’t trust each other, even within the same community. And if I was not sure that my family would benefit from my hard labour maybe I would not do it….but come on… that maize was almost reaching the sky!
We drove back to a town called Voi; a few elephants blocked the road and we had to wait for them to pass. The elephants were huge and even our Kenyan driver felt a bit intimidated because they were quite upset and had a little baby elephant. Their ears where flapping as we passed them in the UN Toyota Land Cruiser and the driver showed me once again that you can drive 100 km per hour on a hard unpaved road. The country-side was beautiful.
Then we reached Voi, a tourist town without tourists - post-election crisis! We stayed overnight in a high-end lodge with nice rooms, big windows overlooking the savannah, and a pond with a hippo and where elephants (20) and other wild animal came for a drink. With two swimming pools and an excellent kitchen, we enjoyed the 150-bedroom lodge which we had all to ourselves. This lodge had a swim up savannah with the swimming pool 30 meters from the pond with all the animals; it was quite amazing and Kyle and Sabina (German woman) were ecstatic.
The next morning we slept in and left for Mombasa. The EU-sponsored road was great and we were there in no time at the beach hotel. But Mombasa was unseasonably cold and windy so my first time in the Indian Ocean was postponed. We watched some Euro Football and went to sleep.
We spent the next day in Kwale district, which was beautiful but many of its crops were failing because the long rains didn’t happen in parts of the district (in Kenya they say “the rains failed”). We saw a family running for their lives as we approached a village; later the field monitor told us that the children were afraid we were coming to vaccinate them.
Later I saw something that almost brought tears to my eyes. The school feeding program provides lunch to the primary school children in this area and fortified porridge for children under five (pre-school). We were driving and it was a little after 1pm. Children in their school uniforms (British system) were walking by the road. They were around 4-7 years old and they were all carrying a plate of WFP food from their school. Instead of eating the meal at the school they were carrying the plate home to share it with the rest of their family… just one plate. An important reminder of why my work is so vital in this country.
In Kwale we saw some great schools where the communities had come together to plant maize and trees on the school compounds. The schools in Kenya often have quite a bit of land, the biggest up to 10 acres. Unfortunately, the scale of the tree planting was too little to be feasible for carbon credits.
After that we went to a presentation site where World Vision (an international non-profit) is training mainly woman in drought-resistant agricultural methods. In many Kenyan tribes, after marriage the women do all the hard labor (good thing for Lisa she is not from a Kenyan tribe!)! World Vision had a great agricultural presentation site which I am sure will make a difference for these women and their families. Our field monitor translated as the 12 women wanted to talk to us. It was their first time having visitors and they were very happy. They thanked us for the program and then the oldest woman said: “We need water. We need water for our crops and for our households.” Then it was obvious that we were supposed to reply, it was so formal. We were standing under a tree in the middle of nowhere, but not too far from Mombasa road (the major highway from Nairobi). So I spoke to them, encouraged them to motivate their husbands to work. It was important for us to see the project but we couldn’t deal with their lack of water right away because water falls under UNICEF programming and WFP doesn’t have the mandate to fund boreholes. Depending on the depth, a borehole costs around 50,000 USD. After the talk the old woman came to me, took my hand with both of hers and said: “Remember me! Remember me!”
So now I feel I owe a $50,000 borehole to an old woman in Kwale. She surely needs it; the long rains (April-June) also failed in this part of the district.
We drove 100 km back to Mombasa to spend the night and it rained and rained. Driving back to Nairobi the next day I was eager to see how far inland the rain had reached. Normally it just rains 5-10 km inland. After an hour’s drive we passed the road to the old lady’s village. The soil by the road was darker and I saw a large pothole with water in it. The old lady had gotten rain that night.
We made it back to Nairobi in one piece. Our driver for the week, Francis, had been great and our visitors seemed happy with what they saw, although the energy-saving stove project was probably the only one with carbon credit potential. The rules under the Kyoto protocol are fairly complex but I learned so much and the mission told me about the Adaptation Fund which has a wider approach. All in all, it was a great, great week. To top it all off my beloved wife came home from her extended “vacation” in the US. I never thought I could miss her so much.
KW
Saturday, June 21, 2008
June 21, 2008 - Still Jet Lagged! AH!
So...the night before I wrote on the blog last I had a good night's sleep. The two nights since then have not been so good, and so I am left absolutely exhausted all over again. My body cannot seem to figure out what it is supposed to do! Either I can't fall asleep for hours, and then only sleep a little bit before I should be getting up for the day OR I fall asleep quickly but only stay asleep briefly and am then awake awake awake. I just want to not feel tired!
The good news is that Kristoffer came home last night and we are happy to have the whole weekend together. It seems like forever since that was the case (or the last weekend we had together I was post-op and so it was not that fun). Christine and I had a nice day yesterday which involved her buying some Kenyan souvenirs and me buying Kristoffer a surprise for our upcoming wedding anniversary. When we were shopping we ran into Officer Kirimi, the Diplomatic Police Officer who was handling our stolen sim card case, and he was so happy to hear of T-Mobile's debt forgiveness. He was really nice and said we could come see him at any time; it is nice for us to feel that we have a law enforcement ally over here. Also, when we were shopping around the Masaai market (with local, Kenyan items) I realized that I have lived here awhile because many of the vendors know me (some even by name!)! I got Christine a great deal on some things she wanted because I knew the lady selling them.
The last bit of news is that The UN Environmental Program has expressed interest in hiring me for 6 months. While I don't think I will pursue the position because it doesn't have anything to do with education (and in fact it is in the HR department which is not really my interest), it was flattering to know that my resume, which they received from the spouse office, was of interest to them.
We are off to look for furniture and paint now...still no internet at home, but hoping, hoping, hoping it will come soon!
LMW
The good news is that Kristoffer came home last night and we are happy to have the whole weekend together. It seems like forever since that was the case (or the last weekend we had together I was post-op and so it was not that fun). Christine and I had a nice day yesterday which involved her buying some Kenyan souvenirs and me buying Kristoffer a surprise for our upcoming wedding anniversary. When we were shopping we ran into Officer Kirimi, the Diplomatic Police Officer who was handling our stolen sim card case, and he was so happy to hear of T-Mobile's debt forgiveness. He was really nice and said we could come see him at any time; it is nice for us to feel that we have a law enforcement ally over here. Also, when we were shopping around the Masaai market (with local, Kenyan items) I realized that I have lived here awhile because many of the vendors know me (some even by name!)! I got Christine a great deal on some things she wanted because I knew the lady selling them.
The last bit of news is that The UN Environmental Program has expressed interest in hiring me for 6 months. While I don't think I will pursue the position because it doesn't have anything to do with education (and in fact it is in the HR department which is not really my interest), it was flattering to know that my resume, which they received from the spouse office, was of interest to them.
We are off to look for furniture and paint now...still no internet at home, but hoping, hoping, hoping it will come soon!
LMW
Thursday, June 19, 2008
June 19, 2008 - Back in Nairobi
Jambo! Greetings from Kenya!
I arrived here on Saturday night. My trip was long and uncomfortable, to be honest. British Airways was not particularly accommodating (and, in fact, tried to charge me additional fare for having changed my plane ticket even though I was assured that a hospitalization relieved me of that expense) but I did make it here in one piece. Kristoffer picked me up at the airport and I can honestly say I have never been so happy to see anyone!
Our house is amazing. It is big and bright and well made, as opposed to our apartment which showed no quality craftsmanship whatsoever. We visited with our neighbors on Sunday, a guy who I worked with at UNICEF and his wife, and it is nice to know that we will have friends close by. All we need now is furniture! We are going to upgrade some of the things we had made already and will buy some new stuff too - we have a lot of rooms to furnish. Four bedrooms and two living rooms! Of course we don't actually need all of that space, but it is nice to be in a cozy home and we have plenty of room for visitors. The UN also subsidizes part of our rent, so it isn't costing us much more to live in this house as opposed to our apartment.
I haven't done much since I got back. Kristoffer is travelling for work and Christine is here until tomorrow. Today I am at the mall at an internet cafe because we don't have internet at our house yet; this is my biggest outing of the week. I don't have serious pain anymore, but I have had the worst jet lag ever and that has made my aches even more achey. I hadn't slept for 2 days before getting a really good night's sleep last night (after some wine and some tylenol PM). The good part of my insomnia is that I was wide awake to watch the last game of the NBA Finals (from 4 am to 6:30 am) and was overjoyed for the Celtics' win. I think my body was already screwed up from the surgeries/anesthesia/blood transfusion and that losing 7 hours just screwed it up even more. Hopefully after last night (and no more daytime napping) I will be back to a regular sleeping schedule.
I should be meeting with my boss and colleagues at UNICEF tomorrow to look at my new (paid!) contract and figure out what my work schedule will be. I think for a little while I will work part time, also because I want to spend time with Kristoffer's Mom and Hans when they are here for 3 weeks in July, and perhaps when (if!) we get internet at home I can work from there as well. UNICEF has been very supportive and patient so I am sure we will work something out that pleases all of us.
I will say that it is a big adjustment to be away from my parents, especially my mother who was with me everyday. We were almost inseparable for 6 weeks and now I really miss them! It is strange that even as a grown woman, my mother can bring me a sort of comfort and care that nobody else can. Kristoffer is pretty amazing, though, and I am certainly happy to be home with him again.
That's all for now; I will write again soon.
LMW
I arrived here on Saturday night. My trip was long and uncomfortable, to be honest. British Airways was not particularly accommodating (and, in fact, tried to charge me additional fare for having changed my plane ticket even though I was assured that a hospitalization relieved me of that expense) but I did make it here in one piece. Kristoffer picked me up at the airport and I can honestly say I have never been so happy to see anyone!
Our house is amazing. It is big and bright and well made, as opposed to our apartment which showed no quality craftsmanship whatsoever. We visited with our neighbors on Sunday, a guy who I worked with at UNICEF and his wife, and it is nice to know that we will have friends close by. All we need now is furniture! We are going to upgrade some of the things we had made already and will buy some new stuff too - we have a lot of rooms to furnish. Four bedrooms and two living rooms! Of course we don't actually need all of that space, but it is nice to be in a cozy home and we have plenty of room for visitors. The UN also subsidizes part of our rent, so it isn't costing us much more to live in this house as opposed to our apartment.
I haven't done much since I got back. Kristoffer is travelling for work and Christine is here until tomorrow. Today I am at the mall at an internet cafe because we don't have internet at our house yet; this is my biggest outing of the week. I don't have serious pain anymore, but I have had the worst jet lag ever and that has made my aches even more achey. I hadn't slept for 2 days before getting a really good night's sleep last night (after some wine and some tylenol PM). The good part of my insomnia is that I was wide awake to watch the last game of the NBA Finals (from 4 am to 6:30 am) and was overjoyed for the Celtics' win. I think my body was already screwed up from the surgeries/anesthesia/blood transfusion and that losing 7 hours just screwed it up even more. Hopefully after last night (and no more daytime napping) I will be back to a regular sleeping schedule.
I should be meeting with my boss and colleagues at UNICEF tomorrow to look at my new (paid!) contract and figure out what my work schedule will be. I think for a little while I will work part time, also because I want to spend time with Kristoffer's Mom and Hans when they are here for 3 weeks in July, and perhaps when (if!) we get internet at home I can work from there as well. UNICEF has been very supportive and patient so I am sure we will work something out that pleases all of us.
I will say that it is a big adjustment to be away from my parents, especially my mother who was with me everyday. We were almost inseparable for 6 weeks and now I really miss them! It is strange that even as a grown woman, my mother can bring me a sort of comfort and care that nobody else can. Kristoffer is pretty amazing, though, and I am certainly happy to be home with him again.
That's all for now; I will write again soon.
LMW
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
June 10, 2008 - I am not 80-years-old...
...but I did have a very good visit with my pacemaker surgeron yesterday. Dr. Grossi, who is the Chief of Cardiothorasic Surgery at NYU (which I was too out of it to appreciate a few weeks ago, but it is really no small title!), says that I am healing well and that my pacemaker is working perfectly. It has already prevented me from fainting 6 times, which is a good reminder that I really do need it! He said I am allowed to lift my arm up now, but still can't exercise for 6 more weeks. The best news of all is that I am allowed to travel back to Kenya!
I will leave this Friday night and arrive Saturday night to see Kristoffer and our new house, as well as my sister Christine who is once again in Kenya for work. I may not start working full time right away, but at least I can get back to my life. My parents have been so amazing the last few weeks, but when my father commented that I was living the life of a 63-year-old more than of a 27-year-old my eagerness to get back to Nairobi only grew!
I will leave this Friday night and arrive Saturday night to see Kristoffer and our new house, as well as my sister Christine who is once again in Kenya for work. I may not start working full time right away, but at least I can get back to my life. My parents have been so amazing the last few weeks, but when my father commented that I was living the life of a 63-year-old more than of a 27-year-old my eagerness to get back to Nairobi only grew!
You know how web-based email providers like yahoo, gmail, and hotmail scan emails for key words to provide targeted advertising? Well, for the last two weeks gmail has scanned words such as "pacemaker" and "surgery" pretty frequently in my emails so that all of my advertising is for senior citizen life insurance, AARP membership and discounts, and assisted living facilities! So annoying! I look forward to emailing from Nairobi where I get ads for safaris and African merchandise - they are a little bit more my speed!
I hope to quickly get back to providing details and insight on unexpected events in Nairobi and the differences I notice living there. Maybe I will even post pictures of our new house! As soon as Kristoffer gets the internet up and running I will be sure to let you know :)
LMW
Monday, June 2, 2008
June 2, 2008 - Recovering + 10 Flights of Stairs
Well I haven't written a blog in a really long time, but I promise I have good reason. My last post announced that I would be having surgery to get a new pacemaker, and what an ordeal that turned out to be.
Kristoffer, my mom and I headed down to NYC for my surgery, scheduled for Tuesday, May 20th. The doctors planned to extract my pacemaker and the two leads (or wires that plug the device into my heart) and then implant a whole new system. When all went well, it was expected that I would be out of the hospital on the 21st.
Sadly, that was not exactly the way it all went down. My surgery took place in the cardiac catherization lab at NYU Medical Center with 3 doctors and several nurses, which is common for non-open-heart cardiac procedures. There were two problems, however. First, because I was only 19 when I got my pacemaker, doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston buried it deep in my pectoral muscle so that I wouldn't have a bump sticking out of my chest like a 90-year-old (no offense to any 90-year-olds reading this). When the NYC doctors went to remove the pacemaker I lost a significant amount of blood because the pacemaker was so deep. Problem number two was that the leads were very close to one of my veins and if the doctors had nicked the vein in trying to remove the leads, that would have lead to further bleeding that they could not have controlled because they were not in an operating room. I was told that proceeding at that point could have actually been fatal.
So, after getting the pacemaker out the doctors closed me up to recover a bit and then they scheduled a second surgery for the next day with a specialized cardiovascular surgical team. My new surgeon had done about 4,000 lead extractions before, which are much riskier and less common than pacemaker implantations or battery replacements; we were very happy to have an old pro on the job. None of us (us = me, my family, or my cardiologist) realized how tricky this process was going to be and we are very grateful that they stopped the first surgery when they realized they were in over their heads. After the first surgery didn't go too well, my father joined my mom and Kristoffer in NYC. They were all an amazing support to me, but it is clear to me now how scary it must have been for them when the doctor explained what went wrong.
Day 2 brought surgery #2, in the operating room, with a lot of doctors and nurses supporting my primary surgeon. For the first surgery I was heavily sedated and knocked out for the whole thing, but for the second surgery I was under general anesthesia and was not breathing on my own (that means I was on a ventilator) so that the surgeon had ultimate control over what was happening. When they began the procedure, they realized that I had lost too much blood the first time around for them to continue and so first they gave me a blood transfusion. Then they successfully removed the old leads without nicking my vein, and implanted two new leads and a new pacemaker. The new leads are positioned differently than the old ones to avoid some of the problems I had with them, and the pacemaker is not buried as deeply in my muscle as the first one was. This means that the next time I need a new battery (8-10 years, give or take a few) the procedure should not be as complicated. It also means that I do have a slight bump on my chest - so while I don't exactly look 90 the site is not as flat as it has been the last 8 years. The surgeon was not sure that he was going to be able to keep the pacemaker on the left side of my body and there was a chance he would have had to open my right side and implant the new pacemaker there, which would have made my recovery much more difficult. The very good news is that he was able to keep the new one on the left side and I am extremely grateful to not have symmetrical incisions.
Once the surgery was done, it took two more days for me to have the strength to be discharged. The first time I got out of bed to try and walk around I quickly fainted - not because of my heart but because I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink in over 48 hours! I also had significant pain and my blood count was kind of funny so they had to make sure I wasn't bleeding internally before they discharged me. Finally, on the evening of Friday, May 23rd at 5:30pm they dismissed me to "enjoy" my Memorial Day Weekend. My parents, Kristoffer, and I took a taxi uptown to my friend Jean's, our "home base" in NYC, for the night and when we arrived we encountered a new problem. For the first time in 5 years, all 3 of the elevators in her building were broken. No joke. All of them. Broken.
We went to a diner for dinner, stocked up on some post-op supplies at the nearest drug store and hoped that the elevators would be fixed quickly...but our hopes were to no avail. I was tired, in severe pain, and wanted to go back to the hospital where there was a wheelchair! After debating about getting a hotel (where? how much? what a hassle!) or leaving instantly to drive back to Massachusetts (in Memorial Day Weekend Friday night traffic?! no thanks!), the only practical option we had was to walk up 10 flights of stairs to Jean's apartment. After 2 heart surgeries, 1 blood transfusion, and 2 hours out of the hospital, that is exactly what I did. Kristoffer sort of held me from behind so that I didn't fall and we just took it very slow, but we did climb up those damn stairs.
At 5:45 in the morning we woke up to drive back to my parents' house in Plymouth and, sure enough, the elevators were still not working! So we had to walk back down the freakin' stairs! I kid you not. My mom and I decided that even an author or screenwriter wouldn't be so mean as to write such a story! Once we got down the stairs, though, we had an easy ride home and I have since been recovering. Kristoffer was able to stay two more days before heading back to Nairobi and my parents have been seriously pampering since he left.
Currently, I am no longer medicating. The doctors really wanted me to deal with my pain and not rely on drugs so much - so I weaned down to only taking pills before bed and now to not taking them at all. The only times I have serious pain now are at night when I am really tired - it is mostly aches and constant soreness. I have increased mobility but can't lift my left arm for about 4 more weeks. I don't sleep through the night, but wake up a lot to try and get comfortable, and I do get tired very easily so I take a lot of small naps. I am eating well though and my parents walk me and their dog regularly for exercise. I will see my surgeon and cardiologist next Monday and will hope for the "all clear" to travel back to Kenya.
Kristoffer and I had been looking to move out of our apartment for a little while and before my surgeries he had found both a house and an apartment for me to check out when I got back. Well, needless to say I haven't gotten back yet and Kristoffer had to make a decision without me. He chose the house and moved into it this weekend. He brought me a video of the house and it looks perfect for us - only a few years old, clean, bright, and pretty big. It is on a compound with 9 other houses in the very best and most desired neighborhood among UN staff, and we even know a couple who live there already. So, including my consultancy at UNICEF, I have a lot to look forward to when I get back to Nairobi!
Hopefully when I get back to my real life and my husband, I will get back to updating the blog on a weekly basis at least. Thank you to everyone who has corresponded with me, sent flowers, visited, emailed and kept me in their thoughts and prayers. Believe me when I say that every little bit helps!
Happy June,
LMW
Monday, May 19, 2008
May 18, 2008 - The Heart of the Matter
Well, this blog announces another surprise from me!
Before I planned to head back to Nairobi last week, I made an appointment to see my cardiologist; especially because my pacemaker gave me some trouble in January in Kenya I really wanted her to check me out. As it turns out, in addition to my battery getting lower, both of my leads (which are essentially the plugs that go into my heart from the pacemaker to keep it beating properly) are not working the way they are supposed to be working. After consultation and serious deliberation, Kristoffer and I decided that I should have the surgery to almost entirely replace my pacemaker sooner rather later. We could have waited until December, but for the next 6 months we would probably be worried about what might happen with a not-fully-functioning-pacemaker and my activities between now and then would also be somewhat limited.
So, my surgery is actually this Tuesday morning at NYU Medical Center. Kristoffer flew in from Nairobi yesterday (thank God!) and will stay for the next week. We are not yet sure when I will travel back to Kenya, but hopefully it won't be too much longer. The surgery is a bit more involved this time around than when I got the pacemaker 8 years ago, but I have great confidence in the cardiac medical team at NYU. My recovery will be the same as or a little harder than the first time, with at least 6 weeks of limited movement of my left arm. If the surgery goes smoothly and I am doing okay post-op, we will be drive back to my parents' house in Plymouth on Thursday (my mom is coming to NYC with us tomorrow).
If you read this before then, please just keep us in your thoughts and prayers on Tuesday morning. A lot of good energy coming my way certainly can't hurt us! Hopefully, I will soon be back to reporting the news from Nairobi.
LMW
Before I planned to head back to Nairobi last week, I made an appointment to see my cardiologist; especially because my pacemaker gave me some trouble in January in Kenya I really wanted her to check me out. As it turns out, in addition to my battery getting lower, both of my leads (which are essentially the plugs that go into my heart from the pacemaker to keep it beating properly) are not working the way they are supposed to be working. After consultation and serious deliberation, Kristoffer and I decided that I should have the surgery to almost entirely replace my pacemaker sooner rather later. We could have waited until December, but for the next 6 months we would probably be worried about what might happen with a not-fully-functioning-pacemaker and my activities between now and then would also be somewhat limited.
So, my surgery is actually this Tuesday morning at NYU Medical Center. Kristoffer flew in from Nairobi yesterday (thank God!) and will stay for the next week. We are not yet sure when I will travel back to Kenya, but hopefully it won't be too much longer. The surgery is a bit more involved this time around than when I got the pacemaker 8 years ago, but I have great confidence in the cardiac medical team at NYU. My recovery will be the same as or a little harder than the first time, with at least 6 weeks of limited movement of my left arm. If the surgery goes smoothly and I am doing okay post-op, we will be drive back to my parents' house in Plymouth on Thursday (my mom is coming to NYC with us tomorrow).
If you read this before then, please just keep us in your thoughts and prayers on Tuesday morning. A lot of good energy coming my way certainly can't hurt us! Hopefully, I will soon be back to reporting the news from Nairobi.
LMW
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
May 7, 2008 - Remember me?
I am still in the US and having a great time with my family. This week I am also visiting some of my friends and will spend two quick days in NYC next week before I head back home to Nairobi. I know it sounds funny for me to call Nairobi "home", but since getting married I really do feel that home is where my husband is, and this is the longest we have been apart since we got married. We used to be so used to be separated but now it is much more difficult! So even though next week when I leave I will sad to say goodbye to my family and friends again, I will be very happy to see him!
I have done A LOT of shopping while I've been home. Clothes, shoes, books, DVDs, etc. are much more expensive in Kenya and after this trip we won't need to shop for anything but food for another year! I have certainly done my part (and maybe a few other people's parts) to stimulate the American economy. I know that Kristoffer has been working extremely hard; the rising food prices and humanitarian crisis in Kenya have presented many challenges for the programs he works on. I have also read and heard from him that many IDPs in Kenya have begun to be resettled to new homes by the government; I am sure the situation is still horrible for thousands and thousands of people, but hopefully the government is starting to make better decisions for its people.
LMW
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
April 29, 2008 - SURPRISE!
SURPRISE - I am home in America! I didn't tell my parents that I was coming home and when I showed up at their front door yesterday afternoon (after travelling for 25 hours or so) they could not have been more (happily) surprised. A special, special thank you to my friend Kate for picking me up at the airport in Boston and driving me to Plymouth.
I basically came home for this visit on our tax rebate (thank you, George W. Bush...wow, never said that before) and because I have a few weeks of nothing to do in between my volunteer contract at UNICEF and my paid contract which is scheduled to start on May 19th. I think I win for best early mother's day and father's day gifts! I will spend the next 2 weeks visiting my family and friends in Boston and New York. I'm quite sorry that I won't be able to travel more and see everyone I know and love in the US, but hopefully I can at least talk to many people on a much cheaper phone call. My trip was very smooth - from Nairobi to London, a 6 hour layover in London, and then from London to Boston. On my second flight I was upgraded to Business Class which was SUCH a treat! Let's hope that happens again :) Kristoffer is also really, really busy at work so, while we will miss each other, he was extremely encouraging and supportive of this trip (he even talked me into it!).
The other amazing news I can very happily report is that yesterday I recieved a final judgement from T-Mobile regarding the phone bill for $7,000 that I have been protesting because my sim card was stolen in Nairobi. T-Mobile agreed to absorb the entire bill!!! The battle is over, thanks to many, many people in NYC who were petitioning T-Mobile on my behalf, and I have never been more relieved in my life. It was a hard lesson to learn, but believe me when I say that we are a lot more cautious in Nairobi since that happened.
Kristoffer is back in Kenya working hard and I am on a very happy vacation here. If you want me to call you, please email me your phone number because I lost all of my numbers when my sim card was stolen. You can also call me at my parents' house if you have that number, or email me and I will send it to you!
LMW
Sunday, April 27, 2008
April 27, 2008 - American Religion
The weather in Kenya has become sort of interesting. It is raining more than it was before and not only at night, so that usually it is cold and rainy in the morning, sunny and warm/hot in the afternoon, and then cold at night with rain again. You sort of need to be prepared with layers and rain gear at all times.
Kristoffer and I are feeling better this weekend. I seemed to recover much more quickly than he did, and he actually had to see a doctor to get some antibiotics for his infection. Our week was not a normal week because of getting sick - we didn't go to the gym or eat too much, and we were both pretty tired at work. For me, I finished up a big project I had been working on for my boss at UNICEF. I am happy because even though I am a volunteer, my name is going on the project as the editor (and partial writer, to be honest). I am told that is a big deal and will help me secure future work there. My new paid contract - after all this time - was sort of stuck and not going anywhere, and last week my boss started the process again and I am told it will go through in the next few weeks. For Kristoffer, rising global food prices are making his job very difficult these days.
I had a funny experience at work this week. One of the women in our office, a program administrator, was singing at her desk, apparently a Christian song. I must have been bopping my head along to her music or something and she said, "I like to sing Christian songs; they make me feel very calm," and I said, "That's really nice." Then she said, "Oh! Are you a Christian? Do you go to church?" and I said, "Yes, I am Catholic and I do go to church," and then she said, "Oh. I thought all Americans were Jewish. I didn't know any of them went to church." Isn't that so funny? She didn't think in a country of 300 million people, that there were any Christians? I think she forgot that we were colonized by the same people.
Sorry there isn't too much else to report. Hopefully next week we will have more to say now that we are feeling well again.
LMW
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
April 22, 2008 - Misery Loves Company
I have recently realized how little I have posted on the blog this month. The thing is, once you have lived somewhere for awhile and are into a life/work routine, it seems a lot less interesting to write about! Do people really want to hear about the mundane details of our life?!
Things in Kenya are pretty calm these days – the political agreement has been all sorted out and now the government needs to get working to help all of the displaced Kenyans living in horrible camp conditions. Otherwise, we are really enjoying our recreation center membership – the pool is really nice and relaxing! We are watching a lot less TV because of the time we spend there (except for American Idol on Tuesday and Thursday nights for sure). I am sure you know that a Kenyan won the Boston Marathon yesterday – no surprise there! There is one particular tribe that Kenyan marathoners usually come from, called Kalenjin, and they are amazingly fast!!!
The only other news I have to report is that Kristoffer and I have both been home today with a stomach bug. It is hard to tell whether it is something we ate or if one of us picked up a bug and gave it to the other. The reality, though, is that we have only moved from the bed to the couch back to the bed back to the couch (with a lot of complaining involved) and both still feel pretty crappy at the end of the day. We’re hoping that it is only a 24 hour bug and that we are okay tomorrow. Today is the first day we have been really bummed that we haven’t hired a housekeeper – it would be really nice to have someone take care of us since we have never been sick at the same time before!
Kristoffer says:
Things in Kenya are pretty calm these days – the political agreement has been all sorted out and now the government needs to get working to help all of the displaced Kenyans living in horrible camp conditions. Otherwise, we are really enjoying our recreation center membership – the pool is really nice and relaxing! We are watching a lot less TV because of the time we spend there (except for American Idol on Tuesday and Thursday nights for sure). I am sure you know that a Kenyan won the Boston Marathon yesterday – no surprise there! There is one particular tribe that Kenyan marathoners usually come from, called Kalenjin, and they are amazingly fast!!!
The only other news I have to report is that Kristoffer and I have both been home today with a stomach bug. It is hard to tell whether it is something we ate or if one of us picked up a bug and gave it to the other. The reality, though, is that we have only moved from the bed to the couch back to the bed back to the couch (with a lot of complaining involved) and both still feel pretty crappy at the end of the day. We’re hoping that it is only a 24 hour bug and that we are okay tomorrow. Today is the first day we have been really bummed that we haven’t hired a housekeeper – it would be really nice to have someone take care of us since we have never been sick at the same time before!
Kristoffer says:
Since we have nothing new to report, let me tell you about my driving experience on Saturday. Saturday morning I left the house at 9:30 and went to the UN to meet up with 2 drivers who were taking a World Food Programme Toyota Land Cruiser to the WFP’s mechanic on the other side of Nairobi. I wanted to use that mechanic because I am tired of dealing with sketchy characters and I thought this would be a guy I could trust if the WFP uses him. I was supposed to follow them and they were taking a shortcut through some dodgy neighborhoods of Nairobi so they specifically reminded me to lock my doors and roll up all of my windows, which we always do anyway. I thought it would be a piece of cake following the Land Cruiser because it was quite old – but boy! Those Toyotas can really move! The female driver drove like she was competing in Formula One! The 45-minute drive really pushed my driving skills to the limit. I didn’t want to be lost in the middle of some sketchy slums so I drove cow-catcher to cow-catcher (that is a joke for the Danes), which means I drove bumper to bumper no matter what it took. I cut off a thousand other cars and didn’t lose sight of the Toyota. When we finally arrived, the Kenyan driver stepped out of the car and said, “Wow, Kristoffer! You can really drive! You drive like a matatu! I am very impressed. The Mzungu [white person] can drive!” That is when you know you’ve been in Kenya too long – when you start to drive like the insane mini-buses! It was a milestone for me having always stood in the shadow of my brother, who can master driving any vehicle known to man. It was also probably a good thing that Lisa wasn’t in the car with me clutching the dashboard and gasping with every turn.
Also, Lisa and I have officially come up with a system for categorizing the ever-growing potholes around us on the streets of Nairobi.
Also, Lisa and I have officially come up with a system for categorizing the ever-growing potholes around us on the streets of Nairobi.
1. Pot hole – not deeper than 1 foot and can be passed by a skilled driver without any major damage to the car and/or passengers in the car.
2. Ditch – not deeper than 1 foot but very wide and takes up the entire lane; cannot be passed, the driver must drive through it. The ditch will always get a huge gasp out of Lisa when we are in it.
3. Crater – unlimited depth and extreme width; it takes up most of both lines and however the driver chooses to handle the crater will be at extreme risk to vehicle, passengers, pedestrians, and other vehicles as well.
Good thing I am such a good driver! –KW
Ok, so that’s all the news from Nairobi. Writing this blog is officially the most activity we have had all day in our stomach-flu state. I think we need to take an evening nap now.
LMW
Ok, so that’s all the news from Nairobi. Writing this blog is officially the most activity we have had all day in our stomach-flu state. I think we need to take an evening nap now.
LMW
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
April 16, 2008 - Belated Easter Weekend Pictures
I have been trying to post these pictures for a few weeks now, but the internet always ruins my intentions. Today, however, the internet at the UN is fast enough to upload them - so here are belated pictures of our Easter weekend. Sorry there aren't more pictures of us, but we don't really look any different than we used to and it is more interesting to take pictures of animals than of each other! Hopefully the formatting posts correctly - sometimes blogspot gets a little crazy. Enjoy :) LMW
All around the Mt. Kenya region you can find signs like this telling you that you are on the Equator. I think it is very cool to be directly standing on that imaginary line!
This is a beautiful view of Mt. Kenya from our room at the first lodge we stayed at over Easter weekend. It doesn't look like an easy climb, does it?
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Horseback riding in the forest - believe it or not the pictures from this angle came out better than from our other side!
This is an eland, the largest antelope, which I fed at the animal orphanage we visited. I forget how long he had been at the orphanage; most animals are reintroduced into the wild but he has a bad leg and, therefore, will remain at the orphanage. There is a lot of space there and he is well cared for.
This is a Mountain Bongo - the most endangered antelope found in the central region of Kenya. They are known for their enormous, twisted horns and their white stripes. In person, this animal is quite striking.
Obviously, I am riding an enormous turtle here. I tell you, it was more comfortable than you'd think! He didn't seem to notice I was even on him because he was after the corn-on-the-cob that the guide was feeding him. Not only was he the oldest turtle (approx. 150 years) I've ever riden, but also the fastest (approx 1/2 mph - just kidding)!
These chimpanzees live in an enormous conservancy after being rescued from Burundi and Rwanda; they are not native to Kenya and this is the only place in the country to see them. They are fascinating!
This chimp looks like he is just waiting for someone to bring him a drink before settling in to watch football or something! We laughed so hard when he assumed this position; we were betting as to whether he would put his hands behind his head, but he never did. Following his rest, he start grooming a friend.
Here are two rhino we saw grazing. They are such huge animals...you really don't want to get in their way! When we were in Naivasha in December we learned that rhinos have no perifory vision - so they can only charge in a straight line. If they are coming at you, step aside and run in a different direction!
Our Easter Elephants! Our camera died while we were watching them so we don't have too many pictures, but believe me when I tell you that they were so, so beautiful. You can see part of a baby elephant behind the big one on the right.
All around the Mt. Kenya region you can find signs like this telling you that you are on the Equator. I think it is very cool to be directly standing on that imaginary line!
This is a beautiful view of Mt. Kenya from our room at the first lodge we stayed at over Easter weekend. It doesn't look like an easy climb, does it?
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Horseback riding in the forest - believe it or not the pictures from this angle came out better than from our other side!
Kristoffer was a little bit better at horseback riding than I was, but neither of us are yearning to do it again any time soon.
This is an eland, the largest antelope, which I fed at the animal orphanage we visited. I forget how long he had been at the orphanage; most animals are reintroduced into the wild but he has a bad leg and, therefore, will remain at the orphanage. There is a lot of space there and he is well cared for.
This is a Mountain Bongo - the most endangered antelope found in the central region of Kenya. They are known for their enormous, twisted horns and their white stripes. In person, this animal is quite striking.
Obviously, I am riding an enormous turtle here. I tell you, it was more comfortable than you'd think! He didn't seem to notice I was even on him because he was after the corn-on-the-cob that the guide was feeding him. Not only was he the oldest turtle (approx. 150 years) I've ever riden, but also the fastest (approx 1/2 mph - just kidding)!
These chimpanzees live in an enormous conservancy after being rescued from Burundi and Rwanda; they are not native to Kenya and this is the only place in the country to see them. They are fascinating!
This chimp looks like he is just waiting for someone to bring him a drink before settling in to watch football or something! We laughed so hard when he assumed this position; we were betting as to whether he would put his hands behind his head, but he never did. Following his rest, he start grooming a friend.
Here are two rhino we saw grazing. They are such huge animals...you really don't want to get in their way! When we were in Naivasha in December we learned that rhinos have no perifory vision - so they can only charge in a straight line. If they are coming at you, step aside and run in a different direction!
Our Easter Elephants! Our camera died while we were watching them so we don't have too many pictures, but believe me when I tell you that they were so, so beautiful. You can see part of a baby elephant behind the big one on the right.
We are so happy that we finally saw them. Now all we need to do is see some lions and we will have covered "the Big Five". I think we both felt that these elephants are the most amazing animals we have seen.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
April 15, 2008 - Action!
So there has been a lot of action in Kenya in the last week. First, Kristoffer and I have taken action at the gym! Other than the mistake we made of sitting by the pool for 15 minutes without sunblock (can you say Lobster #1 and Lobster #2? - we forgot that we are nearly on the equator!) our experience at the gym is going well. I am enjoying aerobics classes and Kristoffer really likes to swim. We are sort of in training because before this year is over we intend to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (and I, for one, definitely need to be in better shape to do that!). It is nice to have a routine of going to the gym after work.
We also took action to be more social! We are pretty much home-bodies over here, but that is doing nothing for our social life. On Saturday night we went to a really fun party thrown by a Danish guy Kristoffer knows (it was actually a birthday party for his wife, but we didn't know that). There were a lot of Danes there - I think they are taking over Kenya! And when you meet new people in the expatriate community you ask them their story (why they are here, what agency they work for, etc) and then you tell yours, so the time flew by as we exchanged stories a few times and learned about other people's experiences here. And the party was so fun that I spent most of Sunday recovering from it :)
On Sunday, the government finally took action and came to an agreement on a Cabinet of 40 ministers (plus the President, plus the Prime Minister). It is good news that they agreed to something, but it is not good news that the Cabinet is so bloated and that the government seriously increased its own paycheck. People have mixed emotions and I think there is a lot of distrust between the government and the people now. Only time will tell if this arrangement will work.
Yesterday we woke up in the morning to hear of violence in the city; we first thought it was in reaction to the new Cabinet, but in fact it was not. There is a large gang in Kenya called the Mungiki; they are essentially the Kenyan mafia, are known for doing the government's dirty work, and are loyal to the largest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu. Their leader is in prison and last week his wife was unexpectedly and brutally murdered. They claim she was killed by the police and so they launched violent protests yesterday in certain areas of Nairobi and elsewhere (although nowhere near the UN so we are safe). They blocked roads, killed a random driver on the road, burned tires, shot at and stoned cars, etc. The police killed 11 of them yesterday and so far two of them today. They are not only protesting the wife's death but are also hoping to force the release of their leader from prison. They are an extremely dangerous group here in Kenya and some people with whom we work were actually unable to get to work yesterday because of the trouble they caused; people are afraid of the Mungiki to the degree that one of my colleagues is not staying at her home anymore because she lives in an area with a lot of Mungiki activity and she doesn't think she is safe. They don't seem to be targeting anyone in particular, they are just angry at everyone in general. Now, I am not writing this to scare anyone - please don't be worried about our safety, we take every precaution we can - but rather to show that life in Kenya is action-packed and changes constantly. Every day there is something new to observe or learn!
My job is going well and, while it is taking longer than hoped (no surprise there), some progress is being made towards processing a consultant's contract for me at UNICEF. Kristoffer's job is also really good these days; it is hard for us to believe that we have been here for over 4 months! We are very happy that we get American Idol on Tuesday and Thursday nights, although we are weeks and weeks behind the live version in the US (and, of course, I love it a bit more than he does), but yesterday was a true highlight when we flipped on ESPN after work to find the last 2 innings of Sunday's Yankees/Red Sox game! It didn't matter that it wasn't live, it just felt so good to watch the Red Sox play, especially because they won - it was almost like being at home!
We also took action to be more social! We are pretty much home-bodies over here, but that is doing nothing for our social life. On Saturday night we went to a really fun party thrown by a Danish guy Kristoffer knows (it was actually a birthday party for his wife, but we didn't know that). There were a lot of Danes there - I think they are taking over Kenya! And when you meet new people in the expatriate community you ask them their story (why they are here, what agency they work for, etc) and then you tell yours, so the time flew by as we exchanged stories a few times and learned about other people's experiences here. And the party was so fun that I spent most of Sunday recovering from it :)
On Sunday, the government finally took action and came to an agreement on a Cabinet of 40 ministers (plus the President, plus the Prime Minister). It is good news that they agreed to something, but it is not good news that the Cabinet is so bloated and that the government seriously increased its own paycheck. People have mixed emotions and I think there is a lot of distrust between the government and the people now. Only time will tell if this arrangement will work.
Yesterday we woke up in the morning to hear of violence in the city; we first thought it was in reaction to the new Cabinet, but in fact it was not. There is a large gang in Kenya called the Mungiki; they are essentially the Kenyan mafia, are known for doing the government's dirty work, and are loyal to the largest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu. Their leader is in prison and last week his wife was unexpectedly and brutally murdered. They claim she was killed by the police and so they launched violent protests yesterday in certain areas of Nairobi and elsewhere (although nowhere near the UN so we are safe). They blocked roads, killed a random driver on the road, burned tires, shot at and stoned cars, etc. The police killed 11 of them yesterday and so far two of them today. They are not only protesting the wife's death but are also hoping to force the release of their leader from prison. They are an extremely dangerous group here in Kenya and some people with whom we work were actually unable to get to work yesterday because of the trouble they caused; people are afraid of the Mungiki to the degree that one of my colleagues is not staying at her home anymore because she lives in an area with a lot of Mungiki activity and she doesn't think she is safe. They don't seem to be targeting anyone in particular, they are just angry at everyone in general. Now, I am not writing this to scare anyone - please don't be worried about our safety, we take every precaution we can - but rather to show that life in Kenya is action-packed and changes constantly. Every day there is something new to observe or learn!
My job is going well and, while it is taking longer than hoped (no surprise there), some progress is being made towards processing a consultant's contract for me at UNICEF. Kristoffer's job is also really good these days; it is hard for us to believe that we have been here for over 4 months! We are very happy that we get American Idol on Tuesday and Thursday nights, although we are weeks and weeks behind the live version in the US (and, of course, I love it a bit more than he does), but yesterday was a true highlight when we flipped on ESPN after work to find the last 2 innings of Sunday's Yankees/Red Sox game! It didn't matter that it wasn't live, it just felt so good to watch the Red Sox play, especially because they won - it was almost like being at home!
The rains have started again, now later at night and throughout the early morning, but our afternoons are quite lovely. We hope this blog finds you well and that spring is beginning wherever you are.
LMW
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
April 8, 2008 - Political News
You may have heard in the news today that protests and demonstrations took place in Nairobi. I just wanted to assure you that they took place in Nairobi's slums and we were not close to them at all, and also that we have not heard any reports of fatalities. The situation is getting more tense, though, and the country is fearful of what a continued political deadlock will mean for the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who want to return home, and for possibly renewed violence.
The issue at hand is this: Kofi Annan brokered an agreement between the government (PNU) and the opposition (ODM) at the end of February, and the agreement implied that there would be equal power-sharing between the two parties. There has been significant difficulty, however, getting both sides to agree to the make up of the Cabinet. Already, President Kibaki had the largest Cabinet in Kenya's history at 34 ministries (with 34 ministers, 34 deputy ministers, 34 permanent secretaries, and 34 of many other positions). In order to reach an agreement last week, a "bloated" Cabinet of 40 ministries (et al) was agreed to. The public has been very upset about this because taxes will need to be raised in order to pay the salaries of all of these new people, and because it makes Kibaki and Odinga (the Prime Minister designee) look like they are just fighting to give all of their friends important jobs (which they are). So everyone thought that they had this agreement of 40 ministers in the Cabinet who would be announced two days ago, but then everything fell apart when both sides started accusing each other of changing the composition of the Cabinet and changing their public stance, etc. At this point, ODM has refused to continue talks with the government until they meet some demands (firing the 17 ministers appointed in January and starting the Cabinet negotiations fresh) and the government is bad-mouthing ODM all over the place.
So here we are: deadlocked once again.
We are watching the situation closely, and are otherwise doing well. Kristoffer returned on Saturday night from his week in Rome, when he finally got to see the Sistine Chapel, and bearing appropriate gifts for his wife who was left to fend for herself all week. And fend well I did! This week we have joined the United Nations Recreation Center (gym/health club) because the stationary nature of life for us here is driving us crazy! I have never been one for the gym, but I really feel the need to move so I will give it a try and, lucky for me, I have a very enthusiastic partner. The center has a gorgeous pool, nice equipment, and a variety of classes - hopefully it will become part of our routine here and maybe we will make friends there too (friends? what a concept!).
LMW
Thursday, April 3, 2008
April 3, 2008 - Working (for free) and Paying Bills
Happy April and Happy 7th Birthday to my nephew, Michael. I called him for his birthday and he asked me if I was coming home for his party. When I choked back tears to tell him that I was too far away to come to his party, he was like "Ok. Bye." Clearly 7-year olds have bigger fish to fry than aunties who live in Africa!
Since my last blog some interesting things have happened. First of all, it hasn’t rained once in Nairobi since I wrote the all about the “long rains”, mutant-sized pot holes and my rain bug enemies. So weird! The weather has been alternately cold and hot this week so I almost feel like I am in New England! Other parts of the country, though, are having serious floods which are really bad.
Yesterday my boss brought me with her to a really important meeting; in fact, I would say it is one of two supremely important meetings for education in the country. It is a three-day budget workshop for Kenya’s public education system (K-university) for 2008-2009, attended by government officials, development partners (such as UN agencies, USAID and the development organizations of other countries like England, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan), and other education stakeholders like the teacher’s union. There were close to 200 people there, not including the press, and the Minister of Education opened with a lengthy speech about Kenya’s achievements in recent years, such as increasing the number of children enrolled in primary school, as well as its upcoming challenges, such as the fact that there are 1 million Kenyan children who do not attend school at all. All Kenyan speeches are lengthy, by the way. I learned a lot about the system and the fiscal policies supporting it here. Specifically, the country faces the challenge of quickly rebuilding 38 schools that were burned to the ground during the recent violence, 65 schools that were completely looted/devastatingly vandalized, and over 40 educational offices that were looted! That is in addition to the fact that over 100,000 children and 1,350 are displaced, living in camps, and in desperate need of support. By the end of the conference tomorrow, the budget will be tightened up and expanded to meet these needs.
I met some really interesting people and got some political “gossip” during my lunch with a UNICEF colleauge and two people from the Ministry of Education. They were discussing the stalemate over Cabinet positions for the Coaltion and which members of government funded the post-election violence. The Cabinet dilemma was subsequently resolved today after Kofi Annan - “Kenya’s Daddy” – lectured the President and Prime Minister to make decisions like adults. I was interested to learn that my colleague, who is Somalian-Kenyan, is married to a Harvard-educated lawyer (also Somalian-Kenyan) who was just elected to Parliament for the first time in this past election – a very interesting time to be a newcomer! It was a little bit hard to follow the conversation in a noisy cafeteria because Kenyans talk so softly and have very thick accents to which I am still tuning my ears, but I did my best and found myself understanding some of what they were talking about. After my political orientation at lunch, the conference was broken down into groups. Unbeknownst to me, my boss had signed me up to keep minutes and produce a final document for one of the them. This would have been fine if she had told me that she signed me up for this job…but she didn’t! So, I didn’t know that I was supposed to be doing anything for the group and this led to a very awkward misunderstanding between me (lowly UNICEF volunteer) and a high ranking government official from the Ministry of Education. Whoops! While I appreciate that she has a lot of confidence in me and trusts me, I did ask my boss not to secretly sign me up for anything again! The conference continued today but I had work to do for her back at the office so I did not attend. I did really appreciate the opportunity she gave me though; it was both a professional and a cultural experience for me.
As for today, before going to work I had to pay our bills. This may sound strange to you, but here in Kenya we don’t get a bill in the mail and then send a check back to the company or have the funds electronically taken out of our account. Oh no, the country is not quite there yet. Some people go to the post office and pay there where they have an electronic way of transferring funds to different companies. But since we all know how I feel about the post office, Kristoffer and I usually go door-to-door to the electric company, water company, and cable company to pay our bills (luckily, the internet company will come to us to receive payment) as most Kenyans do. Even though Kristoffer is away this week the bills are still due! So I called a taxi this morning and went door-to-door paying bills for 90 minutes before going to work. I even paid for next month in advance just to save us a Saturday morning of sitting in traffic to pay bills! It is so annoying!
Because I use the same taxi company all the time, all of the drivers know be my name. Every time I call for a cab the guy answers the phone with “Good Morning Lisa! How are you?” This morning there was some kind a mix up and 3 taxis showed up at our apartment at the same time to pick me up! It was really funny and I have no idea how they figured out which driver “got me” because they were speaking in very fast Kiswahili. Anyway, I thought it was really funny that my driver really likes Kenny Rogers and we listened to a Kenny Rogers tape as we drove around paying my bills before going to the UN. He rewound the tape three times to listen to the song “Lucille”, which I didn’t realize was such a popular hit over here in Kenya (considering I have never heard in the US!). He didn't seem to like "The Gambler", my personal favorite, that much.
I had a really busy morning and attended my second meeting for UN Spouses (aka “the wives club”). I tried to recruit more people for Book Club and everyone seemed to just love the idea, but we’ll see how many of them actually read the next book! Then the meeting sort of took a dive for me because the topic was MENOPAUSE, which is not something I can really identify with just yet. They even brought in a nurse to make a presentation and some of the women shared their menopause stories. I am sure this was useful to many 40+ year-olds in the large group of 26 women, but I was also relieved that there were more non-menopausal faces in the crowd than at the last meeting and they also seemed at odds with the presentation.
I am really happy that tomorrow is Friday! I am attending a different meeting on behalf of my boss where I will give a brief report on the state of post-election violence education in the country. I will be supported by two colleagues from Save the Children (United Kingdom) who will report on their activities in the field. Should be interesting! I am trying to make myself indispensable to my boss, so as to secure my future at UNICEF for as long as I want one. At least I hope that is what I am doing!
The best news is that Kristoffer comes home from his amazing week in Rome on Saturday night. I can’t even remember the last time we went an entire week without talking on the phone, but this week we did it. Thank God for email! And I am sorry that we’re still having problems uploading picture but someday you will see our Easter Elephants – I promise!
LMW
Yesterday my boss brought me with her to a really important meeting; in fact, I would say it is one of two supremely important meetings for education in the country. It is a three-day budget workshop for Kenya’s public education system (K-university) for 2008-2009, attended by government officials, development partners (such as UN agencies, USAID and the development organizations of other countries like England, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan), and other education stakeholders like the teacher’s union. There were close to 200 people there, not including the press, and the Minister of Education opened with a lengthy speech about Kenya’s achievements in recent years, such as increasing the number of children enrolled in primary school, as well as its upcoming challenges, such as the fact that there are 1 million Kenyan children who do not attend school at all. All Kenyan speeches are lengthy, by the way. I learned a lot about the system and the fiscal policies supporting it here. Specifically, the country faces the challenge of quickly rebuilding 38 schools that were burned to the ground during the recent violence, 65 schools that were completely looted/devastatingly vandalized, and over 40 educational offices that were looted! That is in addition to the fact that over 100,000 children and 1,350 are displaced, living in camps, and in desperate need of support. By the end of the conference tomorrow, the budget will be tightened up and expanded to meet these needs.
I met some really interesting people and got some political “gossip” during my lunch with a UNICEF colleauge and two people from the Ministry of Education. They were discussing the stalemate over Cabinet positions for the Coaltion and which members of government funded the post-election violence. The Cabinet dilemma was subsequently resolved today after Kofi Annan - “Kenya’s Daddy” – lectured the President and Prime Minister to make decisions like adults. I was interested to learn that my colleague, who is Somalian-Kenyan, is married to a Harvard-educated lawyer (also Somalian-Kenyan) who was just elected to Parliament for the first time in this past election – a very interesting time to be a newcomer! It was a little bit hard to follow the conversation in a noisy cafeteria because Kenyans talk so softly and have very thick accents to which I am still tuning my ears, but I did my best and found myself understanding some of what they were talking about. After my political orientation at lunch, the conference was broken down into groups. Unbeknownst to me, my boss had signed me up to keep minutes and produce a final document for one of the them. This would have been fine if she had told me that she signed me up for this job…but she didn’t! So, I didn’t know that I was supposed to be doing anything for the group and this led to a very awkward misunderstanding between me (lowly UNICEF volunteer) and a high ranking government official from the Ministry of Education. Whoops! While I appreciate that she has a lot of confidence in me and trusts me, I did ask my boss not to secretly sign me up for anything again! The conference continued today but I had work to do for her back at the office so I did not attend. I did really appreciate the opportunity she gave me though; it was both a professional and a cultural experience for me.
As for today, before going to work I had to pay our bills. This may sound strange to you, but here in Kenya we don’t get a bill in the mail and then send a check back to the company or have the funds electronically taken out of our account. Oh no, the country is not quite there yet. Some people go to the post office and pay there where they have an electronic way of transferring funds to different companies. But since we all know how I feel about the post office, Kristoffer and I usually go door-to-door to the electric company, water company, and cable company to pay our bills (luckily, the internet company will come to us to receive payment) as most Kenyans do. Even though Kristoffer is away this week the bills are still due! So I called a taxi this morning and went door-to-door paying bills for 90 minutes before going to work. I even paid for next month in advance just to save us a Saturday morning of sitting in traffic to pay bills! It is so annoying!
Because I use the same taxi company all the time, all of the drivers know be my name. Every time I call for a cab the guy answers the phone with “Good Morning Lisa! How are you?” This morning there was some kind a mix up and 3 taxis showed up at our apartment at the same time to pick me up! It was really funny and I have no idea how they figured out which driver “got me” because they were speaking in very fast Kiswahili. Anyway, I thought it was really funny that my driver really likes Kenny Rogers and we listened to a Kenny Rogers tape as we drove around paying my bills before going to the UN. He rewound the tape three times to listen to the song “Lucille”, which I didn’t realize was such a popular hit over here in Kenya (considering I have never heard in the US!). He didn't seem to like "The Gambler", my personal favorite, that much.
I had a really busy morning and attended my second meeting for UN Spouses (aka “the wives club”). I tried to recruit more people for Book Club and everyone seemed to just love the idea, but we’ll see how many of them actually read the next book! Then the meeting sort of took a dive for me because the topic was MENOPAUSE, which is not something I can really identify with just yet. They even brought in a nurse to make a presentation and some of the women shared their menopause stories. I am sure this was useful to many 40+ year-olds in the large group of 26 women, but I was also relieved that there were more non-menopausal faces in the crowd than at the last meeting and they also seemed at odds with the presentation.
I am really happy that tomorrow is Friday! I am attending a different meeting on behalf of my boss where I will give a brief report on the state of post-election violence education in the country. I will be supported by two colleagues from Save the Children (United Kingdom) who will report on their activities in the field. Should be interesting! I am trying to make myself indispensable to my boss, so as to secure my future at UNICEF for as long as I want one. At least I hope that is what I am doing!
The best news is that Kristoffer comes home from his amazing week in Rome on Saturday night. I can’t even remember the last time we went an entire week without talking on the phone, but this week we did it. Thank God for email! And I am sorry that we’re still having problems uploading picture but someday you will see our Easter Elephants – I promise!
LMW
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