The rainy season is here. Thank goodness for the rain to settle all of the dry dust. The mornings are beautiful with clear skies, maybe 75º or so, and then in the afternoon it rains. Not a hard rain, not itty, bitty, stinging rain, not big ol’ fat rain, not rain that jumps up at you from below…(anyone catching my Forrest Gump reference here?) but just consistent, cold rain for several hours. A friend and I were coming back from a run the other day just before the rains were coming. All of the sudden we noticed these flying critters everywhere! Each one looked like a dragonfly with the body of an ant, and an absurd amount of wings. I’ve since learned that they’re flying termites, and many Kenyans eat them. Once they get rid of their wings they’re just normal crawling termites, so people collect them, fry them, and eat them by the handful with ugali. Ugali is one of the staple foods here-a starchy, thick, tasteless carb that’s usually paired with a vegetable or meat, in this case, fried termites. I’ve yet to try this, so I won’t knock it. But let’s just say I won’t be seeking out opportunities to try this dish.
A few weeks ago I went to visit an American friend in a village a couple of hours away from Eldoret, where I live. My friend, Laura, graduated from Duke Divinity School and is now volunteering with Global Interfaith Partnerships, a coalition of congregations based out of the US. She’s living with host Kenyan families in the village of Chulaimbo and working at schools in the area. I was excited to go and see what she is doing with the project, hopefully do some music with the kids she’s working with, and take a break from Eldoret in general.
When I got to Chulaimbo, I immediately noticed the heat. Holy camole, the heat. I don’t even know how to describe it properly. It was a dry, humid, make-your-clothes-stick-to-you, heat. You know how most Americans assume that the entire continent of Africa is 105º in the shade? That kind of heat. It made me so thankful that Eldoret is elevated so that we don’t get the hottest of the equatorial rays. The first day that I was there, we visited one of her friend’s mothers in a village about an hours walk away. This Kenyan mama is HIV positive, and has had numerous secondary health troubles. We sat in her stick and mud hut and shared conversation and laughter. She was so thankful that we had taken the time to trek out to see her and spend an afternoon together. Times like that remind me there is true value in the gift of presence.
Laura had planned a couple of touristy things for us to do as well, one of them being a visit to President Obama’s Grandma. Obama’s G-mama! Rolls off the tongue nicely, I think. In order to meet her, you have to know a friend who knows a friend who knows a friend with a connection. Luckily, Laura just so happened to know someone. We made an “appointment,” what a strange concept in Kenya. Kenyans don’t “keep time,” as they say. We debated about what to bring her as a gift. We decided on banana bread, since there’s an abundance of bananas in the Chulaimbo area, and Obama’s G-mama most likely hadn’t had American banana bread. When we arrived to her village, we had to show our passports at a gate with security guards, (fancy!) and were told specifically that we were not permitted to take pictures without her permission first. Obama’s G-mama is of the Luhya tribe, so she spoke only her mother tongue while another person translated. When we asked her how her life had changed since her grandson has been famous, she said simply that the roads to her home have gotten much better (paved, even!) and that she has many visitors now-a-days. She thanked us for the banana bread (more like a banana cake since we didn’t have the usual tin). We also saw the graves in her yard where Present Obama’s father and grandfather were buried. It was a fun and humbling afternoon. It was also, just to reiterate, to leave no doubt, to accentuate the point, HOT. Swelteringly so. Taking a cold bucket bath at the end of the day felt soooo good, except for the fact that you just started sweating again the moment you dried off. I think the heat made me sick, actually, or maybe I had a stomach bug. I’ll spare you the details, but I definitely had a 24-hour period involving gastric explosions, a pit latrine, and many a cockroach. Let's just call that character building, shall we? Props for living there and not melting to a puddle, Laura. Mad props.
My work at the hospital has taken a bit of a different turn over the past month or so. I was recently given an iPad for use with the children at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. Many Child Life workers in US hospitals use iPads for therapeutic purposes, and I’ve been teaching the Kenyan CL workers about these benefits. I was first exposed to this idea during my Music Therapy Internship at Riley Hospital for Children in Indy, which has an outstanding Child Life and Creative Arts Therapies Program. Sharing these ideas and methods with the CL workers here has been a learning experience on both sides. I utilize the iPad to distract kids from IV pokes, dressing changes or other painful procedures when there are often no anesthetics available. The Kenyan CL workers have been very receptive to the idea of using the iPad, and have caught on to it quickly. The kids LOVE it, most of them have never seen a computer or anything of that sort, so it is just absolutely magical to them. I’ll start at the bedside of one patient, then pretty soon I have 5 or 6 kids huddled around playing all sorts of games. I love getting family members involved as well. Nothing makes a child collapse into a fit of giggles like seeing a parent try to fling an angry bird at a pile of snorting pigs on the iPad.
I’ve also been looking into some grant writing lately. Trying to navigate the complex world of grant writing is a new and overwhelming task in and of itself, but I would love to get funding to provide numerous iPads in the hospital for use with the kids. I’ve been collaborating with one of the neonatologists at Riley back home in Indy, so we’ll see. Cross your fingers, pray, rub somebody’s belly for luck, do whatever you do, but send us good grant-receiving vibes. We submitted the grant March 15th, and should hear by mid-April whether or not we will receive funding.
Think that’s all for now. Our internet has been super unreliable and intermittent recently. Apparently it has something to do with a ship crossing the Indian Ocean dropping its anchor in the wrong place and damaging the fiber optic cable that runs under the ocean and provides internet to all of Kenya, and several other countries. Uhh, what? This just blows my mind. How did they get that cable all the way down under there? And where does it actually go? I bet it would need to be so big to carry all the bits of internet information back and forth. And what about the fishies, do they ever want to bite into it? I just don’t really get it. Good thing I do music.
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