Week 3 update

Before I left many of you asked a lot of questions about food and water situation, so I'll try to answer them., then I'll go into the project and if there is time tell you about my weekend.

Food: Typical Kenyan (Swahili) Food 101

Chapati: Round fried dough, like a tortilla but thicker and only made from flour and water (no corn).  Commonly used to scoop up food.

Ugali: Flour and water mixed together.  After that explanation my first question was "is it glue?", apparently not.  It's a very bland mushy mashed potatoes like substance.  You tear a piece off, mush it into a ball, and pick up food on your plate.  It takes on the taste of whatever you are eating.

Maharagwe: Beans in sauce.  I wish I could explain how they are cooked better, but it's just yummy.

King Fish: Usually fried, whole.  Yes, that includes skin, scales, fins, face, eyes, etc...and no cutlery (see table manners below).

Giteri: Maharagwe and mais (large corn)

We also eat a lot of beef (cooked like a stew and it's usually very fatty and attached to the bone) and have chicken about once every 2 weeks (that's when they slaughter them). Meals usually consist of a small portion of protein with a lot of carbs.  We usually get some fruit (banans and magos) for dessert.

To eat the food you take a piece of ugali or chapati to pick it up.  It takes a lot of practice to maximize the scooping technique. Sometimes we get spaghetti instead and eat that with a fork.  To cook the noodles, they break them into 3 and they are ready once they've absorbed all the water.  

Breakfast

A typical breakfast at our homestay is bread, jam, blue band (margirine), a hard boiled egg and milk tea.  

Lunch

Pretty much the same as dinner (see Typical Kenyan (Swahili) Food 101 above).  We're not sure what we're supposed to do for days that we go touring around because no one eats sandwiches here. 

When we eat around Kwacha, it costs about 40-100 Ksh (~$0.50- $1.50) but in town it's about 250-400 Ksh ($3.00-$5.50), which I constantly remind myself is not actually expensive!

Table manners:

- Wash your hands at the table by pouring water over them (I use soap in the bathroom before I sit down or antibacterial stuff if not near a bathroom)

- Eat using your right hand only.  Using your left hand is only accepted to break up food, but not for putting it into your mouth.  Cutlery is available, but not commonly used by locals.

- Use only your right hand for taking food from serving dishes.

Tidbit: When getting take out from a restoraunt, they put it in a plastic bag...not in a container that goes into a plastic bag.  The food goes directly into the bag that you carry away.

Water: How much water is needed to live?

Showering  (Bucket shower): I use about 4-5 big yogurt containers. I've tried to time my showers with less sweaty times of the day so that I can actually feel clean for more than 3 min.

Flushing the toilet: This uses about 4 costco sized peanut butter containers to fill up the tank and pour a 5th into the bowl when flushing.  We have three large buckets of water (I think we get salt for the driveway in containers that size) in the bathroom.  About 2/3 of one of those are used up when flushing the toilet. 

Luandry: I've only done my laundry with someone else, so it's hard to tell if we used more or less water (we shared a rinsing bucket, but had our own washing basin).  I think we went through 2-3 of those large containers, like the ones in the bathroom.

Drinking: We have access to treated water at our homestay, and for the most part it tastes ok.  The issue is that without running water, I can't clean out my water bottle cause i can't get all the soap off, so my water bottle either tastes gross from soap or from dirt/mould.  I've been having to buy a lot of water.  Luckily, there is a place near Kwacha that sells frozen 1 L for 50 Ksh (aka shillings)- roughly $0.65.

Tidbit: The water we use for everything other than drinking/brushing teeth usually had feathers, random insects, worms and other gross stuff floating around that I try to fish out before using it.

If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Project information

This past week we helped with a project for the public transit sector...see previous blog.

Although I did not understand all that was going on, I was able to piece parts together based on what I already knew.  They also wrote the notes in English on the flip charts and would explain some things in English.  If there was someone available, I'd ask them to translate what was going on.  Because I sat in on the sessions, one of the facilitators/friend of mine, Georgina, asked if I wanted to lead an activity when they were talking about stigma towards people with HIV/AIDS.  I jumped on the opportunity.

I ran a excercise that was like the brown eye/blue eye experiement.  I seperated people based on the colour of their shirt (dark and light).  Given that Georgina was wearing a dark shirt and I was in a light one, I made the rule that women are better than men and it didn't matter what colour shirt we were wearing. I was very stricked and gave clear instructions to make the dark shirt people superior to the light shirt people.  I ran a review excercise where the "smart" dark shirt people were able to do a lot better than the "stupid" light shirt people.  We kept the exercise going through lunch and inforced punishments on one guy who did obey me.  The facilitators/staff/other volunteers were all a little concerned that I was being too stricked, but when they saw how the group made the connection to the stigma around HIV/AIDS, they understood what I was doing and commended me on the activity.

The next day was the day that we discussed aubstance abuse.  Georgina happened to be facilitating the parts that I was around for, so she also asked me if there was ever anything I wanted to add (she had been using some of my research for her presentation).  She also ran a role playing activity, where I went out with 4 participants and preped them to role play the impacts of drugs.  We had a lot of fun and it is clear that the participants took a lot of out the session.  

Later this week, we are co-facilitating (with local volunteers) a gender/leadership workshop.  I'll tell you more about that after the fact, but I think I'll be facilitating on self-esteem.

Weekend

I'm running out of time so just a quick tidbit about the weekend.

Saturday

Went to the northern coat to see the Gede Ruines (~2 hours outside Mombasa).  Not really worth the trip for the ruines itself (no special story, just an excovated town) but it was nice to get out of the city and had a fun adventure. 

On the way there, we passed a protest outside a police station in a town where a gay marriage had been stopped the day before (it's illegal in Kenya)- I'm not sure if that was the reason for the protest but people were there with baseball bats and golf clubs and the cops through out smoke bombs to clear them away.  As they ran, everyone seemed to be laughing and smiling.  Kenyan people smile alot, but it kind of surprised me that they were still smiling at that moment. 

On the way home, the matau driver was going so fast!  I don't think anyone passed us, but we passed many people.  I think we marrowly escaped some collisions!  Everyone else in the matatu was calm, except the three of us in the back.  

Sunday

We went snorkling off Wasaini Island (south coast, ~3 hours outside Mombasa).  I slept most of the way there (i saw many mudhuts the day before, so i didn't think I'd miss much).  We had been out til 3 am and left the house at 7am.  The fish were really pretty, but most of the coral was dead cause it was so shallow and all the guides tell you that it's ok to talk on it.  

We stopped at Wasini Island for lunch.  They had a set lunch for 1000 Ksh (~$13.00), between te 7 of us,  we shared 3 lunches.  There was fried fish, crab and a bunch of yummy sauces.  One was made from seaweed.  On part of the island, the water comes right up to the houses around the full moon, but when it retracts, it goes very far out.  They collect the seaweed, which looks like grass, and use it for food.  It was delicious!

After this busy weekend, I was so tired that I finally got a full night sleep and slept right through the mosque at 5:00 am :)