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East Africa

POA SANA

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

IMG_20150725_132540Every night after dinner we take tea. One cup, two cups, four cups, seven cups. “Assist me with more tea,” my host mother says. It is not customary to ask someone to do something for you. If you need something, you command it, if the commanded individual can’t satisfy the need, then they just don’t do it. There’s no wasted filler words like “please if you wouldn’t mind and it’s not too much of a hassle would you be able to…” Likewise, an affirmative answer to a yes or no question usually consists of eyebrows quickly jerked upward in a brief widening of the eyes or a low decibel “mmm”. A happy customer at a Kenyan restaurant is not one who expounds their satisfaction with the meal and expresses thanks upon every filling of the glasses and removing of empty platters. Rather the customer is just contentedly silent. However, and very much on the contrary, descriptions of organizational methods, governmental systems, or structures of order require verbose explication, abundant examples, a pen and paper, a full stomach, and well working eyebrows and/or grunts. Because of this the half hour left for tea time often become a full hour, or even three. When discussing the need for governmental order to be strictly observed, the structure of the school day is sometimes loosened.

Evening tea is more of a relaxed tea time though. The English version of the news comes on at 9pm after the Swahili version at 7pm. By 9pm my host sisters are usually sleeping or headed that way, my father has gone to bed as he arises at 4am every morning, and my mother and I sit and watch the news or chat for a bit about new and old developments. My mother likes to inquire of the food I had eaten at school that day, the well-being of the other interns and their host families, or discuss the work she had accomplished at the shop repairing or selling cell phones, what bible literature she had downloaded to read on her tablet, the well-being of her own friends, or her budget for her many work investments. When my two months was up, my mother sent me home to the US with enough tea leaves to last a whole year at least – at which point she expects that I will return for a visit, or a betrothal.

20150726_041723Some unidentifiable element about travel is inherently good. Just getting on a plane and arriving in another place alive is worthy of blogs and Instagram posts and getting together with friends upon your return just to share what happened while you were gone. Is it the hours you cheat and get to relive as you travel across time zones in the plane? Is it the contradictory solitude of being the only of your “type” in the midst of a congregation of eager onlookers? Is it because you learn without even trying to? The fact that I’ve been to Kenya continues to thrill me just thinking about it. The kind of thrill where if you don’t record it you will forget it because its saturation is too great to be saved in the limited storage space of the mind. The kind that leaves you craving more.

20150527_184208But for now the day is over. I will continue to learn from it as new experiences draw me back to some feature I didn’t even recognize I had recognized while there. These are the best sort of discoveries – the ones you’ve known without knowing you knew them.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, FSD, Kenya

KARIBU KARIBU

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

20150725_074521It takes a village to host an intern. Or such is the generous custom of the people in Bukura. Even in the last weeks I have not gotten used to my being received as such an honorable guest. People still hop up to offer me their chairs whenever I walk into a room, give me extra treats at tea time, and make sure that I always travel places safely and am never ever alone. In the evenings after school when I would go to my host mother’s cell phone shop I would meet many of her friends and people who worked in the neighboring market shops. On our walk home from the shop we would pass by many of the same people each day and greet them. In the mornings when I was walking to school alone they would recognize me and say hi. Or sometimes, in a fantastically uninhibited manner I would hear “Mzungu, greet me!” as I walked past.

Some of the female teachers at school began to call me their little sister. By the third of my eight weeks of work at the school one of the teachers offered to have a dress tailor made for me. So on our walk from school to my mother’s shop after school that day, we stopped by the tailor and she had me choose the fabric. They made it in the traditional Eastern African kitenge style. In the last week when it was completed and I wore it to school, my students told me I looked smart.

Even the students took it upon themselves to make me feel very welcome. One day in Class 5 after we had had some time to ask me questions about the US – during which they inquired of Albert Schwarzenegger, Tom and Jerry, and flying cars –  they offered me an orange, some pop corns they had packed from home, some biscuits also brought from home, some mango juice, and ground nuts. Apparently I wasn’t grading their homework harshly enough. Another time when we were at a musical competition, some Class 8 students offered to buy me a myriad of snacks from the vendors who had lined the walkways. Once when we visited the house of my mother’s friend and she found that I liked fish, she sent me home with some hard-to-come-by canned tuna. When early on I expressed a satisfaction with roasted sim sim (sesame seeds) and ground nuts (peanuts), they were almost never absent from the tea table. I am still marveling at the extent to which people supported my being there.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, hospitality, Kenya, mzungu, sustainability

TO WEAR A SKIRT OR NOT TO WEAR A SKIRT

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

20150617_191911After my mother and I had returned home from the shop around 6pm, I either work on reports that are due to the FSD site team, or help with some household chore. Since I can’t cut the cabbage small enough, or slice the tomatoes as daftly as my host sister without the use of a cutting board, and don’t yet know how to milk the cow or work the cooking fire, I prefer pumpingScreenshot_2015-06-24-22-59-02 and carrying water from the bow hole in the yard.  While I did that my sister would be cooking vegetables or rice in the top house on the gas cylinder, my mother would be in the house below assisting grandma at the fireplace to prepare lentils or fish whilst responding to cell phone repair needs and other business opportunities on her smart phone, and my mothers’ nieces would be helping cook or clean in the house below. My younger host sister would be enthusiastically screaming the poems and songs she learned from school to anyone or no one who would listen. If I am seated in one stationary place for any extended period of time she tries to braid my hair or rather twist it around itself. Once my host father returned home he will be cutting the grass or attending to some other part of the yard and then catching up with the latest news on the TV while simultaneously reading the newspaper with a flashlight as the fluorescent, uncovered lightbulbs on the ceiling didn’t lend themselves well to fine print. The sun sets by 7pm and everyone must be in by then.

20150616_205322Myself, I much preferred the light of the kerosene lanterns. In fact, my favorite evenings were when there were blackouts. This is probably a very insensitive thing to say seeing as electricity is generally a thing people want to have more of, especially in developing places. Also insensitively I like to beg my mother if I can walk barefoot in the mud on our way home from the shop, because my sandals are usually being pulled off and into the sticky slippery silt anyway. She reprimands me that that is something only children do. “But don’t you see, I am only a child?” Or when I refuse to wear a sweater to school in the mornings like the others always do. I just don’t find it cold.

Screenshot_2015-07-25-23-00-39Codes of decorum are loyally upheld when held up to question is the decorum of codes. As a “third world country”, there is a keenly felt desire to be “better,” to grow, to try new and different and more endeavors, to question and improve the codes of governance and living, to develop. But development is an undertaking which requires much risk and audacity to confront the lack of a certainly identifiable best path forward.  The certainty that is lacking in the realm of development is often compensated for in the realm of social expectations, no matter how limiting. When my mother saw a woman on the TV wearing a “mini skirt” (a skirt hanging just above the knees) she would chide “Aiii look how she is putting on! Here in Kenya that just can’t work.” And that was the end of that.  When Obama was preparing to arrive in Kenya for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the media coverage primarily comprised his position on gay rights and the strife that that was causing many socially conservative Kenyans, she wanted to bring that conversation to an even shorter end.

20150722_180618I still have yet to decide if when travelling in completely foreign places I should try to “fit in” out of respect for the surrounding culture, or be completely my own out of recognition of my own heritage. Both have their perks. Trying to dress in the style of a traditional African woman is fun and authentically demonstrates some sort of appreciation for their customs, especially to the older generations. At the same time it can look very awkward on a white girl. It even has the ability to attract some fantastic glares from girls closer your own age on the streets who are wearing the kind of western clothes you were told to leave at home. But dressing like I would in the states is a bit more comfortable and familiar, and makes me feel like I have better command of myself. 18781_1604047209847061_7935038464216843336_nThis is especially important in a place when your every action is being carefully watched and seemingly scrutinized, and confidence is key. Also, as much as it is a learning experience for me to be living amongst a different culture, it is likely a learning experience for them to have me living with them, purely because of the difference that I embody. So then, why shouldn’t I appear as I would in the states so they can experience as authentic a foreigner as I desire to experience an authentic Kenyan? Trivial as dressing may seem, it consumed enough of my thoughts to receive a paragraph of recognition.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, FSD, Kenya, mzungu

YES, TELL ME MORE!

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

Every morning, if it’s the first time you’ve seen each other, you shake hands. This is one thing I wish existed in the states. Instead of skirting around the terrible quandary of ‘have we seen each other?’ ‘did we just make eye contact or are you probably looking at the non-existent person behind me?’ – – you just walk up to them, say hello, good morning, I am fine, I’m glad you are too, and then continue with your morning in peace. It’s as simple as acknowledging the impact we have on one another. A few hours later at tea time, when some teachers have still not crossed paths that day, the mood is looser and the response to inquiries of wellbeing becomes a playful “I am not fine.” This was always a pleasure to see as it was probably the closest thing to sarcasm I ever witnessed. Something I missed.

However now that I’ve returned, I miss the humor of the dramatic, prolonged, and hyperbolized reenactments. They were performed in such a way where the actor seemed to not even realize how funny he was being. Yet his eyes would widen, his voice would be marvelously deep and well projected, and he would pause at key moments to wait for the desired reaction. It’s really a delightful thing that often came from unexpected people. Sometimes a person who had yet to contribute a word to the surrounding conversation would suddenly erupt in a hilarious and thoroughly illustrated explanation of something they found absurd, and then promptly retreat to their previous non-intrusive presence.

20150625_164353The people who I got to know taught me in a very sincere way that talking about yourself isn’t always – or even usually – conceited or foolish. Instead talking about some experience you’ve had shows that you respect the other person enough and think highly enough of your relationship to expect that they care about you! One of the most relaxing things for me was when somebody I had met only a couple times before started talking to me about their travel plans for the next week, their child, or they’re time in school, as if we were longtime friends. This is highly contradictory to many conversations I’ve had in the states, where there is more likely to be an underlying competition to see who can inquire the most things about the other person. Very tiringly, it’s as if the more you talk about the other person the more polite you are. But if you’re not trusting that they respect you enough to hear about you, are you really being other-minded?

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, Kenya

MZUNGU TIME

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

I can’t help but look forward to Saturdays when I get to take a motor bike taxi to one of the larger towns 40 minutes away from my home. Sometimes my host mother needs to go to the town too for a stop at the larger supermarket or to obtain a loan from the bank, so the motor bike driver, myself, and my mother all cram onto the seat of the motor bike and make our way in an oreo-like fashion over the bumpy dusty roads.

11412109_1602194433365672_4246046195139477806_nOn these Saturdays I meet with the FSD site team and fellow intern(s). Here amidst white people I can talk as fast as I want and be understood without repeating myself even once. Sometimes even without finishing my sentence. If you want to talk about taking things for granted – this ease of communication would be one. No doubt the teachers at my school feel the same way, as they often have to repeat themselves in different ways until we understood each other. During FSD workshops we discuss topics such as grant writing, creative facilitation, and monitoring and evaluation. We review our current progress and discuss possible ideas for further work. One of the hardest parts about this type of work is the fact that the work to be done is very much undefined. It requires much initial innovation and then much continuing implementation. Altogether this demands lots of devoted energy.

Once we have discussed our progress and ideas to date, we return to our respective work places for another week of sustainable behind-the-scenes facilitation. Often times this means talking with people more than anything else. Talking with teachers about the progress of their school compared to the surrounding schools, discussing with them the structure of Kenyan authorities, and listening to commentary on the varying aptitude of American presidents. Then with regard to the computer instruction I am trying to initiate, I organize teachers for computer learning so that they might in turn be able to instruct the pupils, and type and compile a computer manual for community members who come to learn computers. Also there is the meeting with students individually who requested extra help with a homework assignment, marking of fifth grade homework and class work books, continually observing the environment for its strengths and areas needing improvement, assisting with the class mark lists using either rulers and red pens or if there’s power Excel, and of course taking tea.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, East Africa Initiative, FSD, Kenya, mzungu, workshops

CHRISTIANITY: A LANGUAGE

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

20150726_195108No I was not on a missions trip. The work of FSD is quite explicitly void of attachment to “missions” in the strictly religious interpretation of the word. This was important to me in my working with an international organization. It’s not that I don’t believe religiously based organizations can impact communities in beneficial ways, but I did not want my own travels to be underscored by the message accompanying many missions trips that what I have to offer is somehow better than what already exists.

Ivan Illich’s “To Hell With Good Intentions” powerfully criticizes the presence of foreigners in developing communities, especially those whose travel is religiously-motivated. I find myself agreeing more than I would like to with Illich’s assertion that kids from developed nations travelling to less developed nations will inevitably do more harm than good because the mindset of a first world college student is inherently unable to support the needs of a developing community.

Sometimes I begin to fear my presence in this distant community is so poorly motivated or purposeless that when I passed people on the streets and we didn’t smile at one another it seemed as if they was screaming “What the hell are you doing here?! Go back where you came from!” Because what good reason do I really have for being there? Mostly I would like to say to learn. But even learning can be argued to be a selfish personally enriching endeavor.

The best way I can find to argue with this is to improve my linguistic literacy. Only then can a non-harmful and hopefully even beneficial cultural exchange be had for the visitor and visited alike. Never had I realized before that linguistic literacy applies as much to the language you’re speaking as it does to the religion you’re speaking.

By the end of my time in Bukura I was waving hello with “Habari yako?” (Swahili: How are you?). Likewise, by the end of my time there, I was beginning to sign my emails with God Bless, something I wouldn’t have done beforehand nor continue to do now if I thought about it hard.

But is not “May God bless you” equivalent to “I wish you the very best”? Is not to be ‘Born Again’ the same as saying “I am committing myself to be my best self?” Is not a religion just a language? Language is often defined as “the system of communication used by a particular community to express thoughts and feelings.” Is that not precisely the purpose of a religion? Certain people typically subscribe to certain religions because of its applicability to their environment or life experience, so that they might better understand and be able to express their purpose in the world, or lack thereof.

20150726_025200To refuse to respect a Swahili speaker or even silently regard your pronunciation better than his would only be hurting yourself. Likewise it would be counterproductive for a Swahili speaker to expect or even hope that everyone would speak Swahili. As a language, no one religion can be completely discredited or singly credited. Religions, or spiritualties, or relational attachment to some omnipresent entity, or atheisms, or what have you, are structures for sharing thoughts based on different places, different concepts, and different people.

List of languages I need to learn/improve: Swahili, Spanish, Buddhism, Ruby, Arabic, Christianity, Python, Islamism, and musical notation. Yes, I am from Portland.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, East Africa Initiative, Kenya, religion

HOW TO FACILITATE ETERNALLY SELF-PERPETUATING ‘DEVELOPMENT’

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

After my hour long 730 class period is over, a day of self-directed activities begins. Before coming to work in this sustainable development internship position, I thought that I liked to make up my own structure and define my own modes of operation. Now however, I sometimes just wish I would be told exactly what to do. Probably this springs more from a desire to please in this foreign place more than anything else. If I knew what I was doing was something which was commanded of me, I could act with less hesitation in knowing with certainty that what I was doing was what was desired. Then I would be able to return the favor of the incredible hospitality shown to me.

foundsustain-logoBut if I knew exactly what needed to be done this would not be sustainable development. For there is rarely rarely rarely a single identifiable thing that must be done in development work. Before arriving I had no idea how to explain to people what I would be doing here beyond an “internship with the Foundation for Sustainable Development” What is sustainable development? Beats me…recite the foundation’s mission statement.  Now I can provide a slightly more thoughtful answer: it’s the art of encouraging self-perpetuating “improvement” without doing it yourself.

20150725_223812In many ways it is like raising a child. The parent himself has already conquered the throws of the terrible twos and the temperamental teens, and now is supposed to relive the experience with his child as some sort of moral guide, patient director, careful cultivator. But the parent mustn’t be too distant or too near lest the child develop an overly secure or underly secure attachment. The parent also mustn’t impose the boundaries of the lesser utilities available to them in their childhood, lest the child be unable to keep up with the inevitably changing environment around them. I.e. it would be a struggle to convince the child to use an old Walkman when she can see her parent has an IPod and Spotify account.

In describing development there is still the problem of defining improvement. Since improvement is not objective, the agent of development must be incredibly careful to get to know the community deeply so that they might work together in achieving a common goal. This goal must be useful, enduring, self- perpetuating, and driven from within. There is some talk of the “mzungu project,” whereby a mzungu (foreigner) comes in and takes on some project in the homeland of another community that simply dissipates once the mzungu has left. This is exactly what I must be sure not to do. In this manner my work here is even better defined by what it is not. It is not building a car with expensive foreign parts that can only be replaced with expensive foreign parts. It is not writing complicated code that is a headache for anyone else to modify. It is not bringing your child’s lunch to her every time she forgets it so that she cannot eat unless you provide for her. It’s a bit of tough love.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: development, East Africa, East Africa Initiative, FSD, Kenya, sustainability

MADAM ALEXA- TEACH ME PAGE 93 AT LUNCH?

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

Monday through Friday I work 730 to 430 at a private elementary school. Right away when I arrive at school I have a class to teach- Grade 5 Maths. This is probably one of the highlights of most days as the class and I have become fairly comfortable with each other. That did not happen overnight. At first it was a great struggle for most to understand my American accent which would really be better described as an East-coast-born-Nashville-raised-Japanese-schooled-West-coast-grown amalgamation of inaudible slurs. Or as my fellow teachers like to demonstrate for me, some sort of high-pitched, nasally, European dialect.

20150725_223602Now that we are more familiar with each other’s misplaced stressed syllables, communication is somewhat easier. At the very least I rely on the chalk board to convey the necessary information visually. I have begun to put a problem on the board, have them work it out in groups, and then together as a class we go through it after I have had a chance to go around the class room and evaluate progress individually. I didn’t realize it consciously at first, but I began to recreate my own experience in my most recent math class from the teacher’s point of view. I have a new found appreciation for my math teachers, and a better understanding of exactly what makes a good teacher. It requires immense amounts of energy, an ability to know how to check for and recognize real understanding, and the ability to remember how you learned the things you now consider to be obvious truths – all in front of a room ranging from gaping mouths and blank stares to attentive ears and concentrated eyes.

I wait while the pupils work through the problem I have given on the board, perusing their work from behind their healthily chore-toned postures. The pupils in their navy-blue collared, violet-bodied uniforms huddle around their wooden desks – not unlike the benches you would kneel in front of for communion in a Catholic church. In the mornings they are still wearing their sweaters and sweatshirts. Or sometimes heavy winter coats, knit pull overs, or a Hot Chocolate 15K Race day sweatshirt from California. Meanwhile I in my rural Kenyan teacher attire of ankle length skirts and blouses am always warm yet unendingly cajoled by fellow teachers to just put on a jacket. To just have a seat. To just eat more. To just be free with them. They have the best of intentions.

20150708_162806Outside the shuttered windows the damp morning field awaits the games of football and jump rope and singing and variations of hopscotch that take place during the 1 o’clock lunch hour. To either side of the fifth grade classroom stretch the other classrooms divided by thin vertical wooden sheets. You can hear every word of the lessons taking place next door. Like a portable in its frugal use of space and a storehouse in its simple use of materials, the stretch of classrooms lines one side of the long end of the field. As pupils graduate to the higher level each year, their home base classroom moves easterly up the field, away from the main road entrance, and towards the Indian Ocean. (Which I’m sure this is exactly what they’re thinking as they move from one classroom to the next.)

Once enough students have completed the given problem, I begin to work through the process for the problem on the board. The students obediently pay attention and respond to my prompts of 7×9 is…the first step to adding a fraction is…- sometimes even in a collective monotone for the very well-memorized terms such as GCF, LCM, etc. After I have finally etched the correct answer on the wobbly chalkboard, there is a cheer from those that have gotten it correct like that of spectators who have just confirmed after a breathless moment of anticipation that the ball just barely made it in the net. Likely these periodic little uproars disturb the 4th graders and the 7th graders on either side of the wooden separators, but at least we are enthusiastic about math. So I erase that problem with a crumpled up piece of notebook paper and move on to the next.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International, Uncategorized Tagged With: East Africa, East Africa Initiative, FSD, Kenya, sustainability

Jambo Kenya

August 15, 2015 By Alexa Carr Leave a Comment

Nimefika salama – I have arrived safely – the message my host mother wanted me to text her every morning when I arrived at work. I insisted on taking the short cut path beside tall maize fields and through the homesteads, where her daughter had once been bitten by a dog. The risk was worth it though – these 14 minutes every morning were the closest thing I had to “freedom” every day – something I have too little of in Kakamega and too much of in Portland. Though there may be were bigger security risks than a stray dog when I flew out of Nairobi during Obama’s weekend visit there which prompted a travel warning, this was still the message I texted my host mother upon my arrival in the states.


Overview: What I missed most this time abroad: sarcasm, ice, and long runs. The most resounding lesson I’m taking home: Talk with the trust that your listener cares. The foods I most enjoyed: chapati (tortilla/naan hybrid), fresh mangos, and roasted maize. The most unfamiliar thing I tasted: fried flying ants. Whether I fell in love with an African: I had to turn down only three proposals. If this was a missions trip: No. The best Kenyan custom I experienced: always shake hands in greeting, not just meeting. What I was doing there: great question! Whether I will be going back: I certainly hope so.


 

For now, I am back in the country where my president – “the world’s most powerful man” – has provided uninterrupted Wi-Fi across the entire land so that the lazy rich white people don’t have to worry about the megabytes it takes to use Instagram while driving their Lamborghinis. Stereotypes at least serve some instructive purpose, as a prerequisite for revelation and amazement.

KENYA

I’ve heard many people travel to “Africa” and return saying that people there are much happier and will always say hello to each other in passing. Are you sure they always say hello to each other or just to you – the foreigner – who kind of stands out – a lot – with your inevitably failed attempt to walk and talk like the locals? For myself anyway, by my fifth week at work, my coworkers were telling me that my skirts were very ugly. I took it as a good sign they felt comfortable enough with me to say so…it only took more than half of my time being there.

Being an outsider is definitely an experience in itself. The preschoolers at the organization I was working enjoyed shaking my hand and then staring at my hand while still holding on to me, verifying that the uncanny see-through whiteness which cloaked by body was just some version of the skin that they too possessed.  Adults do the same thing in a different way. Instead of grasping me as I walk (actually they’ve done that too), they stare as I pass, or keep talking with me while I’m in the room. Travelling and meeting different people is unique in its ability to bring you closer to discovering what it is that everyone shares. Or at least speculating about it.

Filed Under: East Africa Internship, International Tagged With: East Africa, FSD, Kenya, sustainability

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