Greetings from Kisumu y’all! As of right now, I have been in
the city for a few days. We arrived Monday night to our homestays. The flights
were fine other than long. Though, if you are following international news (or
at least Kenya related news. I know some of the more worried readers are), you
may have seen that a building exploded in Nairobi. I saw it on the TV when we
walked off the plane. At the time, they were insisting it was not a terrorist
attack, but instead an electrical fault. I could see the smoke from the
building as we flew over Nairobi on the way to Kisumu. By the time we arrived
at our homestays, the stories had changed to be in more support of a terrorist
attack.
Welcome back.
Here, in Kisumu, there is far less of a chance of such an
attack, so don’t panic people. I already
like my homestay family. There’s my mom, Joy, an employee of KMET in the HIV
section. Her daughter, Wendy, is 12 and reminds me of a quieter version of
Stacey (see last trip's posts). Her son, Kim, is 8 and spent the first hour and
a half hiding from me. He emerged when I gave them the giant bag of Hershey
kisses as a gift. It was as much of a hit as last time, though instead of
hiding the bag, there paraded their neighbors through the house to get some
chocolate. I cannot remember the names of everyone I met, which is going to be
super awkward later.
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| Jamaa yangu |
The actual house is much smaller than my Nairobi home. There
is a small kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms, one of which is mine. It
has a window facing the narrow outdoor- corridor that leads to the front
door. I was asking the kids about the
room and why they are giving it up for me. I didn’t think that seemed fair,
even though Joy insisted. Wendy explained, however, that although it is
technically their room, they never sleep there. The window scares them. Slept there the last two nights and it seemed ok. I’ll let you know if the window starts
attacking though.
The house has no running water. The “shower” is a bucket in
a little outdoor shed. The bathroom is a pit latrine about a three
minutes walk from the house. I am not allowed to go there by myself at night
for safety reasons. I expected to not be allowed out at night, but I didn’t
take into account a situation like this. It’s quite the change from Nairobi,
where there was a hot water shower, sinks, and a toilet. Challenge accepted
though.
The family still won’t let me help cook or clean or do much
else for myself, as expected. I made my aunt (I think she is my homestay-aunt)
promise to let me cook tonight. But we’ll see. I can’t just casually start
doing the dishes like in Nairobi without running water, so sneaky helping-out
isn’t as easy.
During the day, my room is shared with Lydia, the maid’s
daughter. Lydia has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. Her mother lays a towel
down of the floor and rests her there for the day. Disability is handled a bit
differently here. Definitely more of an out of sight, out of mind
approach.
Today we got our orientation at KMET. The few staff who know
me keep introducing me as “Emily, the one who knows Swahili”, which is terrible
because now they expect me to actually know Swahili. I can mostly just apologize for not
understanding what they are saying. Apart from fudging their language, I’ll probably be working
with their nutrition program. More on that later once I start.
It feels like I never left this country. Kisumu is different
from Nairobi, but in many ways the same. It’s nice not to have the panic I
first felt in the fall.
