WILL'S EMAIL UPDATE

(Note: If you would like to be on Will's mailing list for his periodic updates, send an email to willschmerge@yahoo.com requesting to be added)

Hello Everyone,
To those of you that have been expecting an update from us for some time, I apologize that it has taken so long to get this out… Our current location is the tiny village (if you can even call it that!) of Nyaoga on the Kenyan Shore of Lake Victoria. Figuring out connectivity, as you can imagine, has been no small feat! To those of you who haven’t heard from me since I left Central Kenya at the end of 2006, I’m happy to say that after three years, I’m back in E. Africa, this time working on a range of projects in Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda.... Getting emails and/or replies however small, is more encouraging than you can imagine, especially when they contain news from home... So here goes the first update of what will be (God-willing!) our 7 month tour of Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda…

Before I left, a few people who knew of my previous work here asked if I was excited to be returning to Kenya, presumably as opposed to a different corner of the world that I hadn’t yet experienced… I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond until the moment my feet reconnected with African soil. Although I grew quite familiar with life in central Kenya, and in many ways settled into life among the Kamba people, or perhaps precisely because of the vivid memories I have of living in E. Africa, the only expectation I carried with me through Immigration and Customs was to expect nothing! If there is one thing about life in E. Africa that I remember more than anything else, it is that even the most familiar routines can be turned upside-down in an instant. And given everything that has changed in Kenya since 2006, from the popularization of the toothbrush to the Chinese “neo-colonial” overhaul of the country’s infrastructure to the complete political unhinging that followed the 2007 presidential elections, I try to remind myself everyday that I am as much of a “newbie” in this place as I was when I first arrived nearly four years ago. Not to mention the fact that we will be on the opposite side of the country with a completely different type of project than I had in ’06. And that’s just considering how my surroundings have changed, the incredible amount of growth and change I have personally undergone since I was last here, not the least of which includes the beautiful, eager little blonde-headed muzungu traveling by my side…

We landed in Nairobi on Oct 23 at around 9pm. After buying our visas, we collected our bags, tipped our hats at the customs officers as we strolled past them out of the terminal and into the mess of safari guides collecting tourists and taxi drivers hawking fares amid the general chaos you’d find at any pick-up zone in any airport in the world. We were greeted curbside by two friends of mine, wakamba Catholic priests from the Nunguni area who are now running the parish in Athi River, which given it’s proximity to Nairobi, was a regular way-point for me in 2006 as I made bi-weekly travels between the city and the village of Nunguni. Fr. Ben and Fr. Josephat graciously hosted us in Athi River for the weekend as we recovered from jet lag, stocked up on supplies in Nairobi (Rachel tightly clinging to my arm with white knuckles and wide eyes as we navigated the city and its throngs of hawkers, beggars, shoppers, idlers, business people, matatus, mopeds, etc), and generally acclimated to hot, dry, thirsty, dusty Kenya. At night we’d return to Athi River just in time to be generously stuffed to the gills (as is the African way of treating guests) with all of the foods I had so dearly missed… As we ate dinner each night, the sounds of the Athi River choirs (there are three) would begin, quietly at first, to cut through the growing darkness, underscoring our happy conversations with each other and the kind priests. By the time we’d finish eating, the music had invariably burst forth into the glorious eruption of joy and harmony that is African choir music, and nightfall over Athi River found us stumbling down the path, following the sound through the darkness to the source of the music, where we’d sit, with full bellies, tapping feet, and enormous smiles, attempting to take it all in. It was while listening to the choir on Monday night, our third night in Kenya, that the reality of the fact that I am back in Africa finally settled into my heart, body, and soul. On Tuesday morning, we repacked our bags, loaded them into the car, and Frs. Ben and Josephat drove us into Nairobi where we boarded the bus that would take us west to Kisumu, and an entirely different face of E. Africa than the one I had known.

Thanks to the fact that the Chinese recently repaved the road from Nairobi to Nakuru, the first three hours of the trip were smooth and comfortable. When we reached Nakuru, we were told we’d have 20 minutes to get lunch while the bus refueled. The rest of the passengers flooded the small, cardboard patched, rusty corrugated tin restaurants surrounding the fuel station on the edge of town. Our instinct was to try to find something quick; maybe even something we could carry-out and eat on the bus, but as you can imagine, the outskirts of Nakuru are hardly “McWorld”, and we were about as likely to find fast-food, or anything fast at all, as we were to blend in with the other customers waiting for their meals on the mud floors of the semi-permanent, somewhat ramshackle structures between which we had to choose. After settling on a relatively inviting “diner” on the first floor of a two-storey concrete building around the corner from the bus stop, we ordered and ate as quickly as we could, and headed back to the bus. All told, we were gone for about 15 minutes of the supposed 20 minute stop. Had anyone assured us that an E. African bus would have left on time, I would have been hard pressed to believe them. So when we returned to the fuel station and found that the bus had left without us, I was outright astounded. Our first thought was that the driver might have left us intentionally, perhaps so he could have a go at pulling the valuables out of our now unguarded luggage, or even make us pay a bribe to recover our bags in Kisumu. Or maybe he had worked a deal with one of the fifty or so taxi drivers that happened to have their cars idling in the exact spot the bus had been, and were now descending upon us like vultures with a confidence that betrayed the fact that they were aware of our predicament even before we were as they eagerly offered to drive us behind the bus the remaining 5 hours to Kisumu. As the bus had left only moments before, we thought about using a taxi to and overtake it, but the station agent for the bus company was now on the scene, and insisted that the bus wouldn’t stop to let us back on. When the agent assured us (for what it’s worth) that our luggage would be waiting for us safe, intact, and free-of-charge in Kisumu, we hesitatingly agreed to wait two hours for the next bus traveling from Nairobi to stop for its “20-minute lunch break”. As it turns out, in typical African fashion, the next bus showed up 45 minutes late, and its version of 20 minutes was about an hour and fifteen minutes, after which, we were back on our way to Kisumu. Rachel suggested that when we head back to Nairobi at Christmas time, we pack our lunches so we can just eat on the bus. I think that’s a good idea.

On the other side of Nakuru, we were diverted onto a dirt road, and we watched through the window as a handful of Chinese foremen led a crew of African laborers with bulldozers. Concrete trucks, and steam rollers. When we returned to the road to continue our upward crawl into the white, tea growing highlands of Kericho, it was as potholed, bumpy, and miserable as the roads of Africa that I remembered. Our driver handled the bumps in the road well, at least for himself and the other passengers at the very front of the bus. As he neared a pothole, he would jam on the brakes, bringing the bus to a screeching halt before gently guiding the front tires back onto smooth ground, and gunning the engine back to cruising speed, allowing those of us at the back of the bus could admire the ceiling as the pothole violently threw us into it. As we made our way into Kericho, I called Fr. Peter Mwanzīa, who was one of my best friends in Kenya to let him know we were only 1 ½ hours away from Kisumu. Fr. Peter and I had spent many an hour working together in the Mathare Valley slums of Nairobi, and nearly as many nights staying up late in deep discussion, digesting what we had seen during the day alongside a few cold ones… Fr. Peter was sent to Kisumu a year and a half ago, following the post election violence to try to reach the youth of the area, many of whom perpetrated some of the most heinous attacks against Kikuyus in the area. We had planned to spend some time with Fr. Peter before heading to our village, and he would be picking us up at the bus station when we finally reached Kisumu.
Not long after passing Kericho, the bus began to lurch and halt as it made its way down the crumbling, pothole ridden switchbacks, every once in a while pulling off the road completely while speeding motorbikes, hurling matatus, and reckless truck drivers with their payloads of everything from chicken to petroleum whizzed by us on the disintegrating roads, just as likely to reach their ends in fiery collision as to reach their destinations… Fifteen minutes or so into the descent, we were distracted from our fear, pain, and growing motion sickness as Kisumu, “the great Luo city”, came into view with the vast glow of Lake Victoria in the moonlight sprawling westward behind. Somewhere in the dark hills to the south of the city was the village of Nyaoga, which would be our home and headquarters for the next seven months, and the sparkling bustle twinkling across the plain below would be our city…

We finally reached Kisumu by 8:30 or so, and amazingly found our bags, as promised, intact and safely waiting for us in the station. Fr. Peter was also there, and before long, we were catching up over a plate of nyama choma (barbequed goat’s meat– Rachel had kuku choma, which is the same thing, but chicken). As it turns out, one of the actor’s I had worked with from Fr. Peter’s youth group had become famous shortly after the Nunguni Social Theater Festival that we organized in ’06 when Mwala, the celebrity emcee liked his performance enough to add him to his sketch comedy group. Despite the hawk-sized mosquitoes of the Lake region, we stayed in the open air restaurant until well after midnight, when to Fr. Peter’s fun-loving dismay, Rachel and I declined his invitation to go out dancing(!) in favor of retiring to his place, where within minutes, we were asleep.

Fr. Peter was incredibly busy during the week we stayed with him. Most days, when we woke up around 8am, he was already gone for the day, and we found ourselves exploring the area near his house by ourselves. Ahero, the place where Fr. Peter lives and works is, like Athi River to Nairobi, something of a working class “suburb” just outside the city of Kisumu. After eating breakfast by ourselves, Rachel and I might wander into the nearby market, but given the incredibly hot, humid heaviness of the air on the Kano plain, we’d often retreat to our room to read, write in our journals, or nap as a means of escaping the early afternoon heat. Around sunset on the first day, as the air began to cool for the evening, we were just getting ready to wander out into the cool of the evening when we began to notice a strange, high-pitched whirring sound coming through the window. “What on earth is that sound?” I asked Rachel as I wandered toward the window to see if I could make out its source. I had barely finished speaking when a mosquito floated through the window toward my face and around my head, flying just close enough to my ear that I could hear the sound of its wings as it passed. As I swatted at it, I realized that the high-pitched whir coming through the window was the exact same sound as that of the mosquito flying around my head, only times a million. At the same moment, Rachel swatted at another mosquito that had landed on her arm, and before I could say anything, she had the same realization… “Mosquitoes!” we shouted, almost in unison, as we dove into the sanctuary of the net hanging over our bed. We spent the next twenty minutes or so huddled silently under our mosquito net, listening in silent disgust as what must have been billions of mosquitoes swarmed in the cooling evening. I have been in fairly mosquito ridden areas before, but I have never seen, or heard, anything like this… And it happens every evening. “If Nyaoga is like this,” I told Rachel as we ran for cover on the second night, “I don’t think I’ll be able to do it…”

The third day that we were in Ahero, Fr. Peter took us with him to a convent in the hills on the Northwest side of the city where he was giving a retreat to some young women who were in the process of becoming nuns. When we arrived, the nuns graciously welcomed us, and before lunch gave us a tour of the convent and the nearby hospital in which some of them worked. At lunch, we were served what the sisters proudly explained were the staple foods of the Luo tribe, and would most likely be the regular fare in our village. Much of it I knew, ugali, sukuma-wiki, cabbage… But when they uncovered the two dishes at the center of the table, I almost lost it. The first contained three gigantic, black, scaly fish cooked whole (heads, fins, and all) limply lying in a red broth, two of which seemed to be staring at me, daring me to eat them. The other was a serving dish full of hundreds tiny silver minnows, also cooked whole, and reeking a smell so fishy I almost lost it. I have been a big fan of fish to begin with, and when I say that, I mean filleted fish like flounder, salmon, or mahi-mahi… I was given the head of the only black one that, thankfully, was not staring at me, and Rachel was put to work on its lower half. Fortunately as the fish had a lot of bones, I was able to minimize the amount I actually had to swallow by making a slightly bigger mess pulling out the bones than might have been necessary. But as for the “guppies”, there was no way around it… They were to be eaten whole, by the fork-full; crunched, swallowed, and if possible, kept down. It was quite possibly the most difficult meal I have ever eaten, and keep in mind, I have eaten goat brains, cow intestines, and live termites, all in similar situations… The next day, when Fr. Peter had to go back to the convent and invited us to join, we graciously declined, choosing instead to check our email in Kisumu. Between the mosquitoes and the fish, I really wasn’t sure at that point how I was going to survive W. Kenya.
At the end of the week, on Sunday, Fr. Peter drove us to the village of Nyaoga, where we have been living and working. Our fears of mosquitoes and fish were quickly put to rest; while there are mosquitoes in Nyaoga, they’re nothing like they are on the swampy lowlands of the Kano plain. And Sally Atieno, our hostess and the woman who runs the clinic in our compound is an amazing cook; for the most part, the only fish that as been set in front of us has been well cleaned and filleted, cut into tiny pieces, and fried before being served to us; the only guppies we’ve seen since have been in the market, or in the occasional matatu, in bowls on the laps of old women taking them to sell. Our accommodations are more than comfortable, and the view we have of Lake Victoria rivals the one I had of Kilimanjaro in 2006. Elijah Emolo, Sally’s husband and the co-founder of Give Us Wings (the organization for whom we’re working) is absolutely brilliant, and has been showing us around the community and all they have accomplished in the village since GUW began ten years ago. From the old women’s group that built the clinic to the young women’s group putting themselves through primary school to the PLWHAs (Persons Living With HIV/AIDS) learning to grow immune boosting indigenous herbs organically in their shambas, to the school children we’ve taught in the school house built by GUW (many of whom are also sponsored by GUW) to the Water Project that is nearing completion.

The only minor complaint I might have had about Nyaoga might have been the dogs barking at night… Every night, about two or three hours after we go to sleep, the dogs in the village begin barking, and keep it up pretty much all night. Sometimes it’s the dogs on the other side of the village, in which case, we’re not really bothered. But other nights, like a night or two ago, it’s the dogs in and around our compound, barking non-stop… After laying awake, listening to it for about two hours, I looked out the window to find the dog in our compound sitting about ten feet away from the house, staring at our window as if it wanted to come inside, barking incessantly. We couldn’t figure out why the watchmen weren’t doing anything about it, and finally, when I couldn’t take it any more, I got dressed, went outside, and threw rocks at the dog (or rather near the dog) to give it the clear message that it should go bark somewhere else. The next morning, when I asked about it, (Mom, you may not want to read this…) Sally said that it was probably barking because it was scared of the hyenas… Evidently, every night the hyenas come down from the mountain behind the village to try to kill and eat livestock. It scares the dogs, making them bark, and the barking, in turn, keeps the hyenas from coming too close. So actually, we’re not sure we mind the barking afterall…

Overall, we’ve very excited to be working in Nyaoga and have settled in here quite well, unfortunately just in time to be leaving for a while. Tomorrow we’ll head to Tororo, Uganda for two weeks to see the Project site we have over there, and then we may or may not come back o Nyaoga before we head back to Nairobi for some meetings we have in December, and then to spend Christmas with my friends and “African family” in Nunguni. Otherwise, we will come back to Nyaoga just after the New Year to begin implementing some strategies to develop the project reporting structures, increase visibility of the work being done on the ground, and to generally help the projects reach their goals. Perhaps as something of a “farewell dinner”, Sally prepared quite a spread tonight, and poor, sweet, vegetarian Rachel was somewhat enjoying a dish (I disagree -Rachel) she thought was mushrooms, or perhaps eggplant… When it seemed too chewy to be either of these, she finally asked, “What is this dish?” Elijah answered without missing a beat in his slightly African accent: “That is the intestines of a cow. Do you like it?” I hadn’t realized what it was either, and it hadn’t occurred to either of us that we haven’t mentioned, or had reason to mention, that Rachel doesn’t eat red meat… If it doesn’t make her too sick tonight, we’ll definitely be laughing about it tomorrow…

I hope you all are well, and I apologize that it took me so long to write… Usually I try to let a little less time pass before checking in so that it doesn’t take such an “epic” email to cover what has happened. As always, please feel free to reply and let us know how you’re doing! We love and miss you all! Until next time,

Peace, Will