Chapati time!

This Tuesday was the second time I went to the town of Turbo to spend the day at a hospice facility called "Living Room." (check out livingroominternational.org if you get the chance...) It's about an hour and a half drive from Eldoret, and I've been going with an awesome physical therapist, Chrissy.  The first week we went it was pretty difficult. Spending the day with individuals who are actively dying from AIDS or other life threatening illnesses really forces you to check your own reality. This place provides dignity and quality of life to the forgotten, abused, and neglected.  There are mainly older adults there, but currently two children who are 5 and 8 years old, and one teenage-ish girl.  All three of these young people were found abandoned in terrible, unspeakable conditions. One of the kidos has cerebral palsy, and both are cognitively impaired. I worked mostly with these youngsters the first week I was there, which was a challenge. The language barrier was prominent. I've been spoiled at Sally Test because most of the children there have had some english, and welcome me with open arms when I lead music interventions in english.  There is always some translating, but all in all Sally Test kids benefit from learning english songs and the like.  At Living Room though, swahili is the primary language, and especially since the children have some degree of developmental delay, I struggled to connect with them.  I also sang at the bedside with several adults, but again, I spoke little swahili, and they spoke little english.

This week I decided to ask if I could sing hymns in the common room. (THANK YOU, Mamabear, for making me throw in a binder of adult-ish music at the last minute!)  All the adults were up and in the common room when we arrived. I greeted people, gathered my courage, and said, "Nina itwa Kathleen. Ninatoka nchi ya America. Ninaimba?"  Roughly: "My name is Kathleen. I'm from the country of America. Can I sing?" So I sang hymns for probably 45 minutes or so.  People were responsive, some smiled, some closed their eyes. I'd pause after a couple and say, "Mzuri sana? Hapana? Ndiyo?" Meaning, "It's good? Yes, no, keep going? Shut the heck up?!" They always nodded, so I kept singing. I suppose that's progress. Javan was kind enough to take me into town today to a music store where we found a CD of swahili hymns. Some are traditional, and some are familiar tunes with translated words. So now I just need to learn to sing in swahili, no biggie.  I also worked with all three kids providing developmental support. I plopped them on my lap and sang counting songs and parts of the body songs, along with several general hello type ditties. Those 4 songs represent the whole of my knowledge of memorized swahili songs! But hey, I'd say I'm learning at least a song or two a week, so I'll continue to build repertoire. The staff at Living Room are incredible. They are so nurturing and supportive.  On the way home it started pouring rain, not an unlikely event. One of the staff members has been giving us a ride from the middle of the village back to our car which is parked off the main dirt road. Once you turn to go into the village, you're on the BUMPIEST dirt roads I've ever encountered. There are absolutely no street signs, and it's a complete maze of roads and fields that all look the same. I don't know what we'd do if we got lost. You don't call AAA. You probably can't call anyone, and I don't know what you'd say if you did, "I'm by a field...at the corner of two dirt roads...there's a goat..." That describes the corner of every two dirt roads. So anyway, they're wise to let Chrissy park the car and then take us the last 30 minutes or so into the village.  During the rainy season the dirt roads are ridiculous. I mean, pot holes galore, practically a river of flowing water that you try to straddle, it's a wild ride. As we were slipping and slidding all over the roads (a similar experience to losing control of your car on a patch of ice or snow...) Juli says, "This is why we don't have adventure parks in Kenya! It's enough adventure to drive on the dirt roads in the rain!"

Some of you know that I'm a stickler for time. There are few things that urke me more than people who are constantly late. I've always thought tardiness is rude, and frankly, a form of arrogance. When you make someone wait for you, you're implying that your time is more valuable than theirs, and whatever you've got going on is more important than them.  WELL, that mindset needs to fly right out the window. In Kenya things don't start on time. They don't start anywhere near to on time. Kenyans have a completely different sense of time than Americans (or at least this American). I mean holy cow, it's nutso!! In the three weeks that I've been here I've spent hoooooours waiting for people for various things: meeting someone for a morning run, waiting to get a tour of a facility, waiting to walk somewhere, etc. etc. I'm learning that when a Kenyan says they'll meet you at 7am, they mean 7-something. 7:35am, 7:45am, 7:59am....all fair game. I'm not the first to have gotten frustrated...the Americans just learn that time is incredibly flexible, and you should probably tack on at least 45 minutes to whatever the original time was. Ha.  I was joking with Michael, one of the guards about my experiences thus far and he said, "Ah yes....you mzungus keep good time. Good, good time. It is good to keep time. Africans don't keep time, you'll learn, my American daughter." This will be good for me.

This morning was one of my many waiting game days. I was supposed to meet Alice, a nice Kenyan woman I met last week, to run at 6:30am. I showed up to our meeting place at 6:25 (I can't help it...) and paced a bit. I started walking up and down the dirt road that she lives on, knowing that when she surfaced I'd see her. I waited until 7:05 with no sign of Alice. So I finally just ran by myself. She called me in the afternoon and apologized--the problem is she doesn't have an alarm clock, and today her body decided to wake her up at 7:30 instead of 6:30. Fair enough. So she invited me to stop by her place in the evening.  When I got there, she had fresh avocado, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions and cabbage. I asked if she'd teach me how to make chapati, my favorite food so far, and she said of course.  Chapati is flour, warm water, a pinch of salt, and vegetable oil mixed together, then rolled out into tortilla sized pieces. Then it's fried and delicious. She set me up outside on a tree stump over a small fire with her only frying pan and spoon for flipping.  We made each chapati one by one. I'd flip the one that was frying while she rolled out the next one and brought it to me.  Then we mixed together the sweet potatoes and avocado and spread that on the warm chapati. We mixed the cabbage, carrot and onion with sugar and vinegar and also had a salad.  Her home is only big enough for a bed, a cabinet, a chair and a make shift wooden bench. There's no running water or electricity, no bathroom, it's just one room. Actually, her entire home is the size of our upstairs bathroom at 7215 Steinmeier Drive. When it started getting dark she lit a kerosine lamp, and we laughed and sang songs and ate by far the best meal I've had in Kenya. What a great evening.  I'm so moved by friendly people who will share everything they have, no matter how much or little it is.