Hi everyone,
This weekend has been rather uneventful, so I thought I would take the time to fill you in on my visit to the principal’s house last weekend. Thomas lives on the other side of this house during the week, but his family lives in his hometown about an hour and a half from Shikokho (in the direction of Uganda). We had a little trouble getting past Kakamega because only one of the handful of gas stations in town had any fuel. Gas shortages have become more of a problem recently in Africa. After waiting in line (or “queuing up,” as they say here) for about half an hour, we were on our way. Like on the trip from Nairobi, the road was paved the whole way and had some really pretty scenery. We drove through a peripheral section of the Kakamega Forest, which is a tiny, isolated section of the Guineo-Congolan rainforest—a massive belt of jungle that used to stretch from coast to coast across sub-Saharan Africa. Due to large-scale deforestation (mainly for the purposes of establishing tea plantations, grazing land, and collecting firewood), Kakamega Forest is now a solitary patch of around 230 square kilometers. According to the Rough Guide to Kenya, the forest is “famous among zoologists and botanists around the world as an example of how an isolated environment can survive cut off from its larger body.” I can’t wait to visit it for real!
Thomas’s home is in Bungoma, and luckily I did not find it “unremittingly dull,” as Rough Guide so affectionately puts it. I was greeted by Thomas’s wife, daughter, and about 100 different birds scattered about the yard—chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea fowl (normally wild), and a very unfriendly-looking turkey tom that Thomas was quick to warn me about. Thomas and his wife have four sons and three daughters; the sons are all college-aged or older, one of the daughters just finished secondary school, and two of the daughters are in primary school. At the house was Lillian, 18, and Paul, who I’m not sure about because we were never introduced. Lillian is at home for the next couple months waiting to find out if her exam scores are high enough to get into university (she wants to be a doctor) and was an excellent companion. We sat outside in the shade of the house all afternoon and chatted—mostly about the US and its comparisons to Kenya. We talked a lot about all their birds and how much I like eggs, so at one point she ran inside and scrambled some for me.
The family also recently adopted a young, mentally disabled girl named Purity. She was practically blind and deaf (and is still mute) before Thomas and his wife took her to a doctor, but now can see and hear, although poorly. Due to her condition, Purity's mother never let her outside of the house for the first 10 to 12 years of her life. When they discovered her situation, Thomas and his wife brought Purity to live with them, took her to a doctor, and put her in a special school for the disabled. She can now write her name, but not much else. Right now Thomas's family cannot afford her school fees, so she has to stay at home. She can handle all domestic chores and answers when called; later when I took a picture of her and Lillian, she looked at the screen and then pointed to Lillian and herself.
Thomas and I were served a late lunch of stewed beef and rice in the sitting room. It was an interesting situation: Lillian made herself scarce as soon as her father came back from town and the women remained in the back part of the house as we ate. Not long after the dishes had been cleared, Thomas, his wife, and I all headed out in Thomas’s car. I had no clue where we were going, but it turned out we were visiting their two youngest daughters at their boarding primary school. The area around Bungoma is completely surrounded by sugar cane fields, and we pulled off the main road and headed straight towards the Nzoia Sugar Factory. There, in the middle of the sugar cane fields, is a boarding primary school. The school is called Nzoia Sugar Primary School and is one of the best schools in the district. Oddly—compared to what we have in the US—it is also a public school (if a public, boarding, elementary school exists in the US, someone PLEASE let me know). The students perform so well because they are able to take an extra few hours of lessons in the evening after dinner.
While there, we sat down and chatted with a few of the teachers, one of whom had a lot of questions about the US—turns out, his father is Kenya’s foreign affairs minister. He asked a question I’ve been getting pretty often here: how many languages do Americans know besides English? Um, none. Why should schools bother to teach us a second or third language when, for instance, a little white girl from Georgia can up and move to Africa with only the slightest knowledge of Kiswahili (Jambo! Jina langu ni Emily. Habari gani? Nzuri sana, asante. Kwaheri!...Hello! My name is Emily. How are you? Very fine, thank you. Goodbye!) and have almost zero problems? We also had tea in the headmaster’s house. He commented on how he appreciated my slow speaking: “when I try to listen to CNN news anchors on TV, I have no CLUE what they are saying! I just look at the pictures.” Peter had said something similar earlier—“You are obviously not from New York, which is good.” Finally, speaking like a Southerner makes me popular!
We had fried chicken for dinner that night, which means I was served almost as much meat in one day as the family usually eats in one month. Lillian had told me that afternoon that they eat meat around three times per month. After a very awkward few minutes when I attempted to have a phone conversation with Thomas’s wife trailing me closely in the front yard (to be sure I was safe??) I slept in the same bedroom as Lillian. The family excused me from 7 am mass (thank goodness) and I then had a relaxing morning with Lillian when they returned. I had been dying to take pictures of all the animals but did not want to be creepy. Luckily, Lillian started playing with the camera on my cell phone and says, “let’s go take pictures outside!” Perfect.
Thomas and I drove back to Shikokho with two other teachers who live in Bungoma, Mr. Wesonga and Mr. Wangala. Had a long conversation with Mr. Wesonga (who teaches geography) about agriculture in the US. This is a popular topic with Kenyans (“what do they grow where you live?”), so several people here have already heard my views on the US food system—if you somehow find yourself out of this category, just know that I dislike it…to say the least. On our way back through the section of the Kakamega Forest we saw baboons in the road! I had seen a few baboons around the National Park in Nairobi, but there were many more this time and they were just chillin in the middle of the road. Thomas pulled over so I could take a few pictures.
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| Lillian and me in front of the house |
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| Living room where we ate. The house has electricity but no running water, and they cook over an open fire in a separate building |
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