Thursday, June 28, 2007
Goodness time has really started to fly! Now that I’m 3 weeks behind on updates, I’ll see what I can do in the next few hours…
June 9th & 10th
My first real weekend in Nairobi was full of fun little trips as well as some quality time with Laura.
Maasai Markets: Touching Is Free
The rains had started in earnest in Nairobi. Were they late? Right on time? In classic Kenyan fashion, no one could ever agree, but in any case every day of my last week started hot and sunny, clouded over by 3 or 4, and then poured rain for an hour or two in the evening. That weekend was no exception, but fortunately I got to enjoy each day without the rain. Saturday I had brunch with Laura and her brother-in-law and niece (Harper is always the cutest 18 month-old in a 100 km radius, no question) and then headed down to the Maasai market in downtown Nairobi to start shopping for the 200 items my father had requested I bring back to fill the sadly neglected and empty house on Jocelyn St. Right…
My first time at the market was akin to walking into a smorgasbord or all-you-can-eat buffet at Holiday Inn or something. There was every possible variety of beaded or carved or printed object or bracelet or wall hanging or pair of salad tongs you ever could have imagined. As a SWF (or SMF, more precisely—Single Mzungu Female), I instantly attracted a coterie of suitors who started that chant that followed me around the entire market. “Hey seesta! Seesta! To look is free, eh? Looking is free? Here, touch! TOUCH!!! TOUCHING IS FREE!!!” Ruth started laughing so hard at the look on my face, which you could approximate by smacking yourself in the back of the head with a board (optional). I started cracking up too when it became so predictable. We would finally shake off one horde of persistent merchants, have 2 seconds of peace browsing, and then whatever sleepy salesperson was sitting on the mat of wares we happened to be looking at would do a double-take at me and the start in with the, “Touching is free!!! And the price is *almost* free!” Ruth liked asking why it wasn’t just free, if it was “almost” free. They tried the, “You name a price, eh? Any price, seesta!” and she would come right back with, “One Shilling!” After much moaning, and “Seesta, you are KEELING MEE!” we would finally take off, me still in fits of giggles. It was so much fun.
We finally agreed that I would just leave her with a list of things I wanted and she would come bargain for it herself in the absence of a SMF whose very presence tended to jack the prices by 200-300%. Another example of how very generous and kind Auntie is!
Once it started raining we retreated home to Hurlingham. Ruth indulged my snacky appetite with pancakes while we watched ‘Deal Or No Deal’ (I am 100% hooked now) and then made me some traditional seasoned, cooked banana dish, which was delicious. I don’t remember now if I mentioned that one of auntie's cousins/nephews was staying with us. He is about 14 and a sweet, studious young man. He helped me learn some key Kiswahili phrases during the week that he stayed with us (‘I smell chapattis!’ ‘No, it’s not ME that is smelling like chapattis!’ ‘Thank you, but I’m married’ and ‘May I please take your picture?’) and seemed delighted to spend a week away from the extremely strict boarding school where he works his little tail off. That Saturday night, he was doing still MORE HW (he had spent most of the days during the work doing HW for hours and hours) and being distracted by the soaps that Maggie and Ruth were watching. Finally, he looked at me with big brown eyes and asked me if I would help him with his Maths.
Now, significant figures and I have a long and storied history, so the problems in and of themselves were not troubling. It was fun to teach him the concept since he is so bright and picked it all up very quickly. What was troubling was the VOLUME of work he had to do. We’re talking 30+ HW problems of the EXACT same thing over and over: please write the number 68,139 using a) one significant figure, b) two SFs, c) three SFs, and d) four SFs. He was fretting that he wouldn’t finish all of it in time to go back to school the next day. What happens if you don’t finish, I asked? Either he would get suspended and sent home to do 40x as much work as before and receive a penalty on his exams, or…wait for it…he would have to dig up a tree stump. I don’t know, but I found this so distressing! Here was this sweet, smart, curious, hard-working kid who had been so intrigued by my laptop (it had a touchpad!! He had never seen one before) and taught himself ‘Chess’ on it as well as by my iPod (‘This Is Why I’m Hot’ is his favorite song so he listened to it over and over and over…and over again) who totally charmed me, and the thought of this puny, adorable kid having to dig up a tree stump because he had taken 2 hours to learn how knights move in chess rather than figuring out .00075612398914 to 7 ½ significant figures broke my heart.
Okay enough. That was Saturday.
I know what you’re thinking. At this rate, how will she ever fill in 3 whole weeks? No worries, folks. My activity level tapered off dramatically after about June 10th….
Safari Sevens
I spent most of Sunday at a rugby tournament with Laura called Tusker Safari Sevens. She and I had both thought it would be fun to go, and so it was. Any sport where they sell beer by the six-pack has gotta have some great fan action, and sevens rugby is so fast that especially if you’ve had a Tusker or two, time just flies! We picked our way through the muddy stands to the side where you could sit about a row or two off the field. The action was fantastic, and I basked in the sun with my friend, my beer, and my camera, diligently photographing the single hottest member of every rugby side with my digital zoom at full tilt. Good times. #3 from Morocco, #8 from Zimbabwe, and #5 from Wales: we should hook up.
Tennis
As many of you know, I am not only a tennis nut but a tennis nerd. I buy DVDs of tennis matches, babble to anyone who will listen about great players and great matches, and generally wear my tennis heart on my sleeve. So to everyone that had the misfortune of seeing me during those few days of June when Roland Garros was building up to its final days and I had NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON because no one in Kenya gives a rat’s ass about Kenya, I’m really sorry. I was admittedly frantic to find out what was going on. That Sunday night, as I tried to determine whether it was Federer or Nadal who won the French Open over the course of FOUR HOURS—count them, four—and then sulked when I found out that Fed had lost to that stupid punk kid again, I remembered the lengths I had gone to throughout the week to find out what had been happening in the tourney: I had texted people to make them look up results, stayed up till 2 to watch the ticker on CNN or Al Jazeera, checked the internet everywhere I could…pathetic. Ah well. As I write this we are on Day 5 of Wimbledon. Not only am I watching the ‘Live Scoreboard’ like any faithful tennis devotee thousands of miles from tennis’s greatest Grand Slam, I am trying to figure out somewhere with satellite sports TV to check myself into next weekend for Finals. W-O-W.
Moving on. Ambitiously, let’s try:
June 11th-14th
I spent much of this week catching up on emails, paying bills, and chatting with the few of you I found on GChat thanks the Laura’s laptop and the free wireless at a neighborhood coffee shop. I also visited another Maasai Market with Ruth to shop for the best prices and goods, had a few nice dinners out—one with Laura at a fantastic ex-pat Italian restaurant and one with some Canadians who I met randomly and with whom I spent an evening swapping dumb movie quotes and eating lasagna and salad…heavenly!—that I have since dreamed about, tried to avoid the locusts that swarmed Nairobi and penetrated even the movie theater where I went to see Ocean’s 13 (loved it by the way. But do you think it’s significant that one of the 10 plagues came to Nairobi while I was there? I personally think so…yuck those things are awful), visited some wildlife parks and just missed having a nice Kenyan husband. Here are some highlights.
‘Ur the kind of lady I dream. Ur fantastic.’
In one short day in Nairobi, I garnered three proposals. After that day, I learned how to say ‘Asante, nadhani nina mimba’, which means, ‘Thank you, but I think I’m pregnant.
The first two were at the Maasai Market, where one man told me he loved me and wanted to marry me while the other just showed me with his hand motions in the air what kind of women he liked and offered to let me come home with him. The third came in the form of a note that was slipped to me while I was sitting in a booth at the wireless coffee house. Part of the note is shown above, but it was also replete with two phone numbers, some doodles, and the aforementioned proposal. Never again will I claim that I am not a lucky girl. I don’t know how I managed to resist these tempting offers, but here I am, Mom and Babbo, toute seule.
Marilyn and Flic
Two days before I left Nairobi, I rendezvoused with Marilyn at her hotel. It was so lovely to see her!! For all who are wondering, Flic was improving rapidly last I heard, having been stepped down from the ICU and de-intubated. Marilyn herself seemed to be holding up very well. Strong as a rock as always, keeping her family posted, staying with Flic as much as possible, asking the medical team lots of questions and getting thorough answers, and staying positive yet patient. I felt right at home with her again when I saw her and was so pleased to here that things were progressing in a good direction. I believe they will be flying home to Melbourne at the beginning of July. I’m sorry I won’t be able to see them again before they go, but I am 100% sure that we will all meet again and under much happier circumstances. Seeing Marilyn again brought things full circle for me after my few weeks in Nairobi and left me feeling ready to move on to another phase of my trip. If she is reading this, I would again like to say how truly happy I am to have met and connected with her, and that I wish her and her family all the best, especially in the coming months of Flic’s recovery!
Ellies and Twiga
I spent all of the day before I left Nairobi at various Nairobi wildlife parks. I can’t even describe what it felt like to touch a baby elephant for the first time or get kissed by a giraffe so I think I will just post a few pictures. (I am running out of steam now after hours and hours in this internet café!) Suffice it to say that that was one of the happiest days of my trip so far. Since then, I have fallen back on animal ogling to buoy my spirits when I am feeling down. I really think that these are some of the most glorious and graceful creatures on the planet, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill or harm them in anyway. Now that I am officially a sucker/foster mother for the elephant orphans at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, I encourage everyone to be like me and fork over money to preserve the elephants and rhinos that are being preyed upon for their valuable body parts.
www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org
My orphan’s name is Lempaute. She is the littlest one and a total pistol. I am obsessed.
Okay I think I will stop here before I get into what happened when I left Nairobi. To sum it all up, I spent two lovely weeks with some really wonderful people who took great care of me and made me feel right at home. I can’t wait to go back and spend tome with all of them, though I threatened never to speak to any of them ever again if they didn’t come visit me in Voi. I finally felt more sure of myself and independent when I left, being better able to navigate the city and its suburbs but no less shocked by people’s (death-wish) driving style and the congestion of the city. There was much that I hadn’t gotten to see or experience in Nairobi, but by June 14th I was so fixated on how nervous I was to go to Voi and how little time Mkaya would have to chaperone me (only 4 days!) that I could only look forward.
On that cliffhanger, off I go for now.
Missing everyone but soaking it all in here like chicken curry on chapatis—
Miriam
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Catching up
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
Many of you have pointed out that after an initial prolific stint as a blogger, I deserted my fan-base to stuff myself with chapatis and chai until I was oily and milky in the face. I am sorry for the radio silence and the precipitous decline in my ability to respond to emails in the last two weeks. My laptop is (unsurprisingly) on the fritz right now—my power cord shorted out about a week after I got here—and as such I am trying to snatch bits of time here and there to write down everything that’s been happening. That being said, there’s nothing like productivity to beget productivity, so since today was my first really productive day in a long time, it seemed an appropriate time to start filling in the last two weeks.
Quick overview: when last I wrote, I still had another week left in Nairobi while I was waiting for Mkaya to arrive and shepherd me down to Voi. I was considering going on a brief safari or something to fill up the time, but I ended up having to wait around in case I needed to be at any more meetings at the University of Nairobi (I didn’t) or if I would end up having a good enough time in Nairobi that I wouldn’t want to leave (I did!). I finally left Nairobi on a bus with Mkaya last Friday the 15th and arrived in Voi that afternoon, where we made a quick stop at the hospital to introduce ourselves around, and then spent the weekend visiting with different members of his family and generally taking it easy until Monday. When that important day came, we met with a few more key people, found me a place to live in Voi, and packed him off on the midnight train to Georgia/midnight bus to Nairobi. I sulked for the first day after he left, celebrated my birthday on the second day, and finally got to work on the third day, today, June 21st. Okay, now for the real, Miriam-ified verbose version…
Friday, June 8th
I don’t think I will ever forget this day because it was my first experience with a) matatus, b) Kenyatta National Hospital, and c) finally getting to check my email and post on my blog!
Matatus are every bit as smelly and deathtrap-resembling as you might think they are. As everyone always seems to say about everything in Nairobi, “You should have seen them 5 years ago!” Apparently the 14 passenger limit (everyone now HAS to have a seat equipped with a never-used seatbelt) changed everything. Just noticed that I don’t have a picture of one, or (what would be best) a video from the inside showing the absolutely BUMPING music that blares in your ear, something which I will have to remedy. These babies are so tricked out, frequent (one comes every 15 seconds or so almost anywhere you are), and CHEAP (a ride costs only 20-40 shillings depending on the time of day) that it’s not surprising how popular they are, despite problems with Mungiki, the drivers’ apparent death wishes, and the constant shifting and asses in your face as people get in and out. Anyway, in true mzungu style, I was mostly so petrified of getting my bag ripped off while alighting that I mostly avoided them except when I was with Ruth. I rode in 4 that day, and maybe one or two others over the course of the next week, and that was it for me and mats.
KNH, as the public hospital in Nairobi is called, is vaguely akin to Bellevue in size, patient population, and array of patient maladies seen every day, but having recently visited Bellevue when I was interviewing at NYU Med, I can safely say that that’s about all these two hospitals have in common. There’s no way to capture in words the sights and smells of KNH. Even two weeks later, there are so many images swimming in my head that I can’t make much sense of it. So many people warned me about the conditions there before I went that I didn’t react as strongly as I thought I might. Instead I was just in a kind of daze as the whole thing kind of washed over me. Bullet points might work best here:
- Burns ward where many of the patients had burns on >50% of their bodies, and most of those induced by spouses during arguments or when sleeping
- Orthopedics ward where patients were three to a bed or sitting/lying on the floor, and the doc I was with recognized a few of the guys as having been her patient when she rotated through that ward six months previously!
- Hydrocephalus: I’ve never seen it in the States, and in one ward on one of the 10 floors of the hospital, I saw at least 15 kids with hooorrible cases of hydrocephalus
- Hand-washing: I certainly never did it or had an opportunity to in the 2-3 hours I was there.
- Speaking of the 10th floor: I guess a lot of patients jump from there.
- 50-60% mortality rate at the hospital
- Babies: often when it’s busy there are 3 in a single incubator. Because appropriate temperatures have to be compromised, it’s not uncommon for one baby to die PER HOUR in the nursery.
- There are patients that have been in the hospital for YEARS. Mkaya told me about one guy in Neurology that had been there for 13 years. Residents would go to the ward just to see him. The doc I was shadowing told me about a baby she had helped deliver from a mom who was in a coma. That was 2 years ago. No one has ever come for Nancy (as the hospital staff named her) or her mother in that time.
I have lists of other stuff, but I think you all get the point. My head was swimming after I left and I have thought about it often since. A common theme that I have observed in lots of medical facilities here in Kenya and that the 5th year student I was shadowing at KNH mentioned to me is this: these medical professionals, every bit as well trained as doctors in the US--if not more so because of their vast and early experience--have the frustrating job of seeing these patients, recognizing their diseases for what they really are, and being unable to properly treat them. Whether because of time and workload constraints (everyone at KNH is beyond overwhelmed) or because their patients finally turn up too late to do anything or because of insufficient resources...whatever the reason, there is a disconnect between diagnosis and treatment. Both the doctors and the patients suffer as a result. While mostly we think of the patients as the sad victims of this "system", from the other side I think how disheartening that must be as a doctor! And yet they cope.
Back to the light stuff. That night we just made toasted sandwiches for dinner at the house (grilled cheese with the best tomatoes ever! What more could Miriam ask for??) and watched TV. I needed to unwind.
More soon…
Missing everyone and warily scratching at my potentially malaria-inducing mosquito bites,
M
Many of you have pointed out that after an initial prolific stint as a blogger, I deserted my fan-base to stuff myself with chapatis and chai until I was oily and milky in the face. I am sorry for the radio silence and the precipitous decline in my ability to respond to emails in the last two weeks. My laptop is (unsurprisingly) on the fritz right now—my power cord shorted out about a week after I got here—and as such I am trying to snatch bits of time here and there to write down everything that’s been happening. That being said, there’s nothing like productivity to beget productivity, so since today was my first really productive day in a long time, it seemed an appropriate time to start filling in the last two weeks.
Quick overview: when last I wrote, I still had another week left in Nairobi while I was waiting for Mkaya to arrive and shepherd me down to Voi. I was considering going on a brief safari or something to fill up the time, but I ended up having to wait around in case I needed to be at any more meetings at the University of Nairobi (I didn’t) or if I would end up having a good enough time in Nairobi that I wouldn’t want to leave (I did!). I finally left Nairobi on a bus with Mkaya last Friday the 15th and arrived in Voi that afternoon, where we made a quick stop at the hospital to introduce ourselves around, and then spent the weekend visiting with different members of his family and generally taking it easy until Monday. When that important day came, we met with a few more key people, found me a place to live in Voi, and packed him off on the midnight train to Georgia/midnight bus to Nairobi. I sulked for the first day after he left, celebrated my birthday on the second day, and finally got to work on the third day, today, June 21st. Okay, now for the real, Miriam-ified verbose version…
Friday, June 8th
I don’t think I will ever forget this day because it was my first experience with a) matatus, b) Kenyatta National Hospital, and c) finally getting to check my email and post on my blog!
Matatus are every bit as smelly and deathtrap-resembling as you might think they are. As everyone always seems to say about everything in Nairobi, “You should have seen them 5 years ago!” Apparently the 14 passenger limit (everyone now HAS to have a seat equipped with a never-used seatbelt) changed everything. Just noticed that I don’t have a picture of one, or (what would be best) a video from the inside showing the absolutely BUMPING music that blares in your ear, something which I will have to remedy. These babies are so tricked out, frequent (one comes every 15 seconds or so almost anywhere you are), and CHEAP (a ride costs only 20-40 shillings depending on the time of day) that it’s not surprising how popular they are, despite problems with Mungiki, the drivers’ apparent death wishes, and the constant shifting and asses in your face as people get in and out. Anyway, in true mzungu style, I was mostly so petrified of getting my bag ripped off while alighting that I mostly avoided them except when I was with Ruth. I rode in 4 that day, and maybe one or two others over the course of the next week, and that was it for me and mats.
KNH, as the public hospital in Nairobi is called, is vaguely akin to Bellevue in size, patient population, and array of patient maladies seen every day, but having recently visited Bellevue when I was interviewing at NYU Med, I can safely say that that’s about all these two hospitals have in common. There’s no way to capture in words the sights and smells of KNH. Even two weeks later, there are so many images swimming in my head that I can’t make much sense of it. So many people warned me about the conditions there before I went that I didn’t react as strongly as I thought I might. Instead I was just in a kind of daze as the whole thing kind of washed over me. Bullet points might work best here:
- Burns ward where many of the patients had burns on >50% of their bodies, and most of those induced by spouses during arguments or when sleeping
- Orthopedics ward where patients were three to a bed or sitting/lying on the floor, and the doc I was with recognized a few of the guys as having been her patient when she rotated through that ward six months previously!
- Hydrocephalus: I’ve never seen it in the States, and in one ward on one of the 10 floors of the hospital, I saw at least 15 kids with hooorrible cases of hydrocephalus
- Hand-washing: I certainly never did it or had an opportunity to in the 2-3 hours I was there.
- Speaking of the 10th floor: I guess a lot of patients jump from there.
- 50-60% mortality rate at the hospital
- Babies: often when it’s busy there are 3 in a single incubator. Because appropriate temperatures have to be compromised, it’s not uncommon for one baby to die PER HOUR in the nursery.
- There are patients that have been in the hospital for YEARS. Mkaya told me about one guy in Neurology that had been there for 13 years. Residents would go to the ward just to see him. The doc I was shadowing told me about a baby she had helped deliver from a mom who was in a coma. That was 2 years ago. No one has ever come for Nancy (as the hospital staff named her) or her mother in that time.
I have lists of other stuff, but I think you all get the point. My head was swimming after I left and I have thought about it often since. A common theme that I have observed in lots of medical facilities here in Kenya and that the 5th year student I was shadowing at KNH mentioned to me is this: these medical professionals, every bit as well trained as doctors in the US--if not more so because of their vast and early experience--have the frustrating job of seeing these patients, recognizing their diseases for what they really are, and being unable to properly treat them. Whether because of time and workload constraints (everyone at KNH is beyond overwhelmed) or because their patients finally turn up too late to do anything or because of insufficient resources...whatever the reason, there is a disconnect between diagnosis and treatment. Both the doctors and the patients suffer as a result. While mostly we think of the patients as the sad victims of this "system", from the other side I think how disheartening that must be as a doctor! And yet they cope.
Back to the light stuff. That night we just made toasted sandwiches for dinner at the house (grilled cheese with the best tomatoes ever! What more could Miriam ask for??) and watched TV. I needed to unwind.
More soon…
Missing everyone and warily scratching at my potentially malaria-inducing mosquito bites,
M
Friday, June 8, 2007
Vitu vingi
Friday, June 8th, 2007
Random things I have jotted down in my notebook to blog about:
- Signs I’ve seen – faves so far are definitely:
• “Beware of Children and Warthogs” – at the Nairobi Safari Walk as you’re entering the parking lot.
• “Coffins for Sale” – the first thing you see when you drive onto the Life Sciences campus of the University of Nairobi is the mortuary, which while set down a bit off the road behind a copse of trees is literally circled by kites—the bird of prey, not the festive paper thing on a string—and adorned with signs like “Coffins for Sale” and “Cheap Coffins”. A step off from Tufts…
- Brands/advertising:
• “Biddy” margarine is advertised with a jingle to the tune of “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G. Really? Really. And I thought “It’s Crumb-believable!” was the worst jingle ever… “Biddy biddy biddy/ is trans fat free/ Good for you and the whole family”
• “Kobil” – Jamie Galen, this bud’s for you. Remember the “kala”? The Kenyan gala? Á la Mobil, welcome to the Kenyan petrol stations, “Kobil”.
- Food
• Avocadoes: they grow on trees in people’s yards here. There’s a tub of them in the pantry at Ruth’s house. People eat them for dessert, breakfast, anything. Fresh every day for pennies. Amy, I think you would die!
• Tea: everyone has it at least 4 times a day. 10 AM sharp is a definite. I hope I bring this tradition home with me.
• Chapatis: made fresh here at Ruth’s every day. Breakfast is white tea, a couple chapatis, fresh-squeezed OJ, and a banana. As in the US, it is my favorite meal.
• Samosas: also home-made. Whatever, EVERYTHING is home-made and very good.
• Boar Sausage Pizza: ordered it with Laura last weekend from Pizza Inn. Let’s just leave it at that.
More soon! Hooray for working internet!!!
M
Random things I have jotted down in my notebook to blog about:
- Signs I’ve seen – faves so far are definitely:
• “Beware of Children and Warthogs” – at the Nairobi Safari Walk as you’re entering the parking lot.
• “Coffins for Sale” – the first thing you see when you drive onto the Life Sciences campus of the University of Nairobi is the mortuary, which while set down a bit off the road behind a copse of trees is literally circled by kites—the bird of prey, not the festive paper thing on a string—and adorned with signs like “Coffins for Sale” and “Cheap Coffins”. A step off from Tufts…
- Brands/advertising:
• “Biddy” margarine is advertised with a jingle to the tune of “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G. Really? Really. And I thought “It’s Crumb-believable!” was the worst jingle ever… “Biddy biddy biddy/ is trans fat free/ Good for you and the whole family”
• “Kobil” – Jamie Galen, this bud’s for you. Remember the “kala”? The Kenyan gala? Á la Mobil, welcome to the Kenyan petrol stations, “Kobil”.
- Food
• Avocadoes: they grow on trees in people’s yards here. There’s a tub of them in the pantry at Ruth’s house. People eat them for dessert, breakfast, anything. Fresh every day for pennies. Amy, I think you would die!
• Tea: everyone has it at least 4 times a day. 10 AM sharp is a definite. I hope I bring this tradition home with me.
• Chapatis: made fresh here at Ruth’s every day. Breakfast is white tea, a couple chapatis, fresh-squeezed OJ, and a banana. As in the US, it is my favorite meal.
• Samosas: also home-made. Whatever, EVERYTHING is home-made and very good.
• Boar Sausage Pizza: ordered it with Laura last weekend from Pizza Inn. Let’s just leave it at that.
More soon! Hooray for working internet!!!
M
What's Going On (aka Mother, Mother...)
Thursday, June 7th, 2007
Now’s probably a good time to at least say what my situation is right now. I’m staying in the home of Ruth Mwashimba, Mkaya’s aunt. For those who don’t know, Mkaya Mwamburi is my faculty sponsor from Tufts University School of Medicine. He was the professor for my Biostatistics class this spring, a course I took as part of my Masters in Public Health degree program. Mkaya has been extremely generous and kind in connecting me with different members of his family, as well as in 1) dragging my ass through all the paperwork I’ve had to do to get my research fellowship and the human subjects research approval, 2) making sure I did fine in Biostats so I didn’t embarrass myself or him, and 3) finding me rides, meals, places to stay, and people to trust.
Anyway, Ruth lives with her daughter Maggie and lets out rooms to students. There are other people around the house at all times too – Maggie’s boyfriend, Ruth’s other daughter, Florence, cousins young and old, friends, and Isaac, Obed, and Margaret who take care of the house and cook food for Ruth’s small shop in town.
One great part of staying here is being able to eat here—the food is delicious and varied, a far cry from the midnight meals of Spaghettios I buy at the 24-hour CVS at home. But the people are absolutely the best part. For one thing, I feel like part of the family already. Ruth and I have a lot of fun together during the days, kidding each other and going on walks and making plans to go exploring. This weekend we will go to the Maasai markets, and to the gym “for a steam”.. She and Maggie are always calling and texting people to help me find safaris to book or to be able to visit the different hospitals and so on. She says she will come down to visit me when I am in Voi so she can take me to her family home nearby
Everyone here that I’ve met is just so nice. They are hospitable, generous of their time, and eager to have you love it here as much as they do. I’ve not spent much time here yet, but I’m sure this is what I will remember most from this summer.
Probably the most time we all spend together is watching TV (we are watching The Apprentice even as I type this). Aside from The West Wing and Six Feet Under, which I watch every night before I go to bed, I have to say the TV is a mixture of the mediocre and the very, very bad. Every canceled sitcom and every TV movie Howie Long ever made are primetime television here. More than anything, the soaps are popular, especially the dubbed ones from Mexico and the Philippines.
I started watching the news to find out what was going on in the region and to try to get results from the French Open (hopeless, by the way. If you want to know anything about any black athlete in the world, no problem, even if they play baseball or cricket or are in the NBA. But tennis is not on the radar screen. Bummer). Unfortunately, what is more prominent on the news is 1) the terrible weather here (I feel guilty because I have known that I am a weather jinx ever since I moved to “sunny” San Francisco and froze my ass off for 2 years)—the coast is plagued with out-of-season rains right now, and floods and food shortages are major problems, and 2) the Mungiki.
The top news story that I’ve seen on CNN for 3 days now has been the Republican presidential debate (riveting stuff), but the violence of the Mungiki is all that has been on local news here. The Mungiki (mungiki means “oneness” or “togetherness”, I think) are a gang/sect that has been around for some years, mainly comprised of Kikuyu. They have grown dramatically in size and support just recently; some speculate it is because of the elections coming up in a few months. Without scaring anyone, let alone my family, suffice it to say that the Mungiki-related violence has escalated quite a bit over the last few weeks.
Every day it seems as if there are beheadings and mob lynchings, people beaten and shown crying and holding babies. It’s quite frightening because I don’t know the history of the situation or where it’s all happening, and because the news stories are quite graphic and gory—they will show you just about anything. Many people are quick to assure you that everything is happening in the slums on the other side of town (the city’s largest slum houses over 1 million people), but since the Mungiki, like the mob, control the matatus (small vans that are an alternative to city buses) by forcing the drivers to pay fees or else suffer their vans getting burned up or they themselves beaten/beheaded, it’s hard not to feel that maybe they are everywhere. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this isn’t making news back home, but if you want to read more about it, I think you can on the BBC.
This is getting quite long now so I’ll just finish up with what I’ve been doing and the most important lesson I’ve learned in my short time here. After I arrived last Friday, I spent that day sleeping and nibbling on tea and “pancakes” (delicious little crepe-like things that Maggie made for me). The next two days I spent with Laura Hooper at her sister’s house, which is just a few minutes away. We went out on Saturday with Mkaya’s older brother Joe/Mtalaki, his son Mwambanga, and his niece and nephew Amina and Rick. We went to the Nairobi Safari Walk, a kind of zoo that you navigate by walking along a circuitous boardwalk. We saw a cheetah, lots of baboons, lions, rhinos, ostriches, zebras, and a pygmy hippo among other things. It was a beautiful spot, and Laura and I enjoyed being out and about and getting to know some other members of Mkaya’s family. Sunday we spent having brunch at a lovely ex-pat spot, shopping, and lazing around watching TV until Laura’s sister Bonnie and Bonnie’s peanut of a daughter Harper (18 months got home). I also spent much of the weekend loving up Bonnie’s dog Mara, a GORGEOUS 3 year-old Ridgeback, and tossing and turning—it’s taken me several days to get over my “wide awake at 3-6 AM” jetlag. Laura will be traveling most of the time she is here, so I won’t get to see as much of her as I would like.
The rest of this week has been…slow. After weeks and months of studying my butt off for exams, sleeping 4 hours a night, and constantly carting around my 14 page checklist of things to do, this enforced lethargy is the most difficult adjustment. The truth is that I thrive on being busy. I like always having something to do; it’s why I love school (yes yes, to reiterate, me = nerd). Every day now I spend a lot of time reading books, watching TV or the DVDs I brought with me, napping, and waiting. I spent two days in all-day meetings with faculty at the University of Nairobi, the only result of which was to schedule the next meeting several days from. I am trying to do some work for another faculty member from Tufts, Jeff Griffiths, but everything just takes 8 times longer than I thought it would. I can’t go on safari while I am in Nairobi because I am waiting for still MORE meetings next week, but maybe later for my birthday. Nonetheless, I’ve met great people and am hoping next week will be better. I am learning to be patient and to relax (don’t laugh, I’m serious!).
Hope this keeps everyone busy reading until I have internet access again. If anyone has Skype and wants to call, I’d love to hear from you! My number is 001 (for international calls) 254 (for Kenya) 729 690 970. You can also SMS if you feel like it—it’s the major form of communication down here. Miss you all a lot! So so much.
Love love,
M
Now’s probably a good time to at least say what my situation is right now. I’m staying in the home of Ruth Mwashimba, Mkaya’s aunt. For those who don’t know, Mkaya Mwamburi is my faculty sponsor from Tufts University School of Medicine. He was the professor for my Biostatistics class this spring, a course I took as part of my Masters in Public Health degree program. Mkaya has been extremely generous and kind in connecting me with different members of his family, as well as in 1) dragging my ass through all the paperwork I’ve had to do to get my research fellowship and the human subjects research approval, 2) making sure I did fine in Biostats so I didn’t embarrass myself or him, and 3) finding me rides, meals, places to stay, and people to trust.
Anyway, Ruth lives with her daughter Maggie and lets out rooms to students. There are other people around the house at all times too – Maggie’s boyfriend, Ruth’s other daughter, Florence, cousins young and old, friends, and Isaac, Obed, and Margaret who take care of the house and cook food for Ruth’s small shop in town.
One great part of staying here is being able to eat here—the food is delicious and varied, a far cry from the midnight meals of Spaghettios I buy at the 24-hour CVS at home. But the people are absolutely the best part. For one thing, I feel like part of the family already. Ruth and I have a lot of fun together during the days, kidding each other and going on walks and making plans to go exploring. This weekend we will go to the Maasai markets, and to the gym “for a steam”.. She and Maggie are always calling and texting people to help me find safaris to book or to be able to visit the different hospitals and so on. She says she will come down to visit me when I am in Voi so she can take me to her family home nearby
Everyone here that I’ve met is just so nice. They are hospitable, generous of their time, and eager to have you love it here as much as they do. I’ve not spent much time here yet, but I’m sure this is what I will remember most from this summer.
Probably the most time we all spend together is watching TV (we are watching The Apprentice even as I type this). Aside from The West Wing and Six Feet Under, which I watch every night before I go to bed, I have to say the TV is a mixture of the mediocre and the very, very bad. Every canceled sitcom and every TV movie Howie Long ever made are primetime television here. More than anything, the soaps are popular, especially the dubbed ones from Mexico and the Philippines.
I started watching the news to find out what was going on in the region and to try to get results from the French Open (hopeless, by the way. If you want to know anything about any black athlete in the world, no problem, even if they play baseball or cricket or are in the NBA. But tennis is not on the radar screen. Bummer). Unfortunately, what is more prominent on the news is 1) the terrible weather here (I feel guilty because I have known that I am a weather jinx ever since I moved to “sunny” San Francisco and froze my ass off for 2 years)—the coast is plagued with out-of-season rains right now, and floods and food shortages are major problems, and 2) the Mungiki.
The top news story that I’ve seen on CNN for 3 days now has been the Republican presidential debate (riveting stuff), but the violence of the Mungiki is all that has been on local news here. The Mungiki (mungiki means “oneness” or “togetherness”, I think) are a gang/sect that has been around for some years, mainly comprised of Kikuyu. They have grown dramatically in size and support just recently; some speculate it is because of the elections coming up in a few months. Without scaring anyone, let alone my family, suffice it to say that the Mungiki-related violence has escalated quite a bit over the last few weeks.
Every day it seems as if there are beheadings and mob lynchings, people beaten and shown crying and holding babies. It’s quite frightening because I don’t know the history of the situation or where it’s all happening, and because the news stories are quite graphic and gory—they will show you just about anything. Many people are quick to assure you that everything is happening in the slums on the other side of town (the city’s largest slum houses over 1 million people), but since the Mungiki, like the mob, control the matatus (small vans that are an alternative to city buses) by forcing the drivers to pay fees or else suffer their vans getting burned up or they themselves beaten/beheaded, it’s hard not to feel that maybe they are everywhere. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this isn’t making news back home, but if you want to read more about it, I think you can on the BBC.
This is getting quite long now so I’ll just finish up with what I’ve been doing and the most important lesson I’ve learned in my short time here. After I arrived last Friday, I spent that day sleeping and nibbling on tea and “pancakes” (delicious little crepe-like things that Maggie made for me). The next two days I spent with Laura Hooper at her sister’s house, which is just a few minutes away. We went out on Saturday with Mkaya’s older brother Joe/Mtalaki, his son Mwambanga, and his niece and nephew Amina and Rick. We went to the Nairobi Safari Walk, a kind of zoo that you navigate by walking along a circuitous boardwalk. We saw a cheetah, lots of baboons, lions, rhinos, ostriches, zebras, and a pygmy hippo among other things. It was a beautiful spot, and Laura and I enjoyed being out and about and getting to know some other members of Mkaya’s family. Sunday we spent having brunch at a lovely ex-pat spot, shopping, and lazing around watching TV until Laura’s sister Bonnie and Bonnie’s peanut of a daughter Harper (18 months got home). I also spent much of the weekend loving up Bonnie’s dog Mara, a GORGEOUS 3 year-old Ridgeback, and tossing and turning—it’s taken me several days to get over my “wide awake at 3-6 AM” jetlag. Laura will be traveling most of the time she is here, so I won’t get to see as much of her as I would like.
The rest of this week has been…slow. After weeks and months of studying my butt off for exams, sleeping 4 hours a night, and constantly carting around my 14 page checklist of things to do, this enforced lethargy is the most difficult adjustment. The truth is that I thrive on being busy. I like always having something to do; it’s why I love school (yes yes, to reiterate, me = nerd). Every day now I spend a lot of time reading books, watching TV or the DVDs I brought with me, napping, and waiting. I spent two days in all-day meetings with faculty at the University of Nairobi, the only result of which was to schedule the next meeting several days from. I am trying to do some work for another faculty member from Tufts, Jeff Griffiths, but everything just takes 8 times longer than I thought it would. I can’t go on safari while I am in Nairobi because I am waiting for still MORE meetings next week, but maybe later for my birthday. Nonetheless, I’ve met great people and am hoping next week will be better. I am learning to be patient and to relax (don’t laugh, I’m serious!).
Hope this keeps everyone busy reading until I have internet access again. If anyone has Skype and wants to call, I’d love to hear from you! My number is 001 (for international calls) 254 (for Kenya) 729 690 970. You can also SMS if you feel like it—it’s the major form of communication down here. Miss you all a lot! So so much.
Love love,
M
Traveling to Kenya
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
It will have been a week tomorrow since I left the fair, internet-friendly shores of the glorious US of A, and hopefully I will be able to put this on the “internets”. I have made three disgustingly unsuccessful attempts to check my email since the free internet kiosks in the Dubai airport, and I only have 6 less hours of my life and 19 more grey hairs to show for it. Apologies to my family in case they thought I actually did fall off the face of the earth, but I am learning the hard way how slowly everything moves in Africa, especially the internet. Let me see if I can recap what’s been going on for the last week.
Much like my first trip of the summer to Israel last year (remember when the Hadassa lady told me I wasn’t actually Jewish as soon as I sat down on the plane? Yeah.), this one seemed destined to be interesting from the first second of my journey. Having been ladened with yet another thing to carry with me to JFK (no, not Jeff Griffiths-induced emotional baggage, rather a scanner that he asked me to purchase for the medical school in Nairobi), I was encouraged by my generous NYC hostess Catharine ‘Squatchface’ Sotzing to take a cab to the airport. We hail one and say our goodbyes, and then I’m off with my Nigerian cab driver. Sounds okay, right? Flash forward 30 minutes to haggling with said-cabbie who has tried to cheat me out of an extra 20 bucks. Ugly faces, pointing, yelling…is this what I have to look forward to this summer as one of the naïve-looking wazungu? That’s white people, folks.
Anyway, the rest of those two days of travel were something of a blur. Twelve straight hours of TV and movies on my flight to Dubai (looove that Emirates has 200 movies PLUS episodes of The Office) helped me survive being smack in the middle of a row, wedged between sleepy, leg-room hogging, non-deodorant-wearing businessmen. Free internet + randomly running into Mina Fung helped brighten the sleepy hours in Dubai, and then it was onto the next flight.
Before I left, I emailed my sister Julie and my parents copies of my passport and health info lest anything awful happen. It felt totally paranoid as I did it, but it also felt like the right thing to do. As I talked with the woman next to me on my next flight, I KNEW it had been the right thing to do.
Marilyn, a lovely Irish lady who had transplanted to Melbourne when she met her husband-to-be in a bar there 30 years before, seemed somewhat anxious as she plopped down in the seat next to me, and we started chatting away. It felt as if I was in Interviewing class all over again as I tried to get to know her a bit and figure out what was going on. Turned out that she was duly upset and a bit frazzled because she had jumped on the first available flight out of Melbourne when she got a call telling her that her 23-year-old daughter, Felicity (aka Flick), who had been cycling from Egypt down through Africa, had been involved in a hit and run in Burundi. Flick had been left for dead on the side of the road (the driver didn’t even stop—all her money and possessions were still in the two panniers that comprised all she was traveling with), and was spotted by an aid-worker some hours later. He immediately recognized the seriousness of her condition and took her to the capital, Bujumbura. This is where she was, in a “hospital” with no sheets, until someone took it upon themselves to look through her things, find her passport, and contact the embassy, who contacted her parents, who contacted Flick's travel insurance company, who contacted officials in Burundi and got her air-lifted to a private hospital in Nairobi, where she underwent neurosurgery almost immediately to relieve the swelling from the bleed in her brain. (Apologies to Marilyn if any of this is incorrect or difficult to read!)
Marilyn adopted me as a surrogate daughter almost immediately, asking me all about my life and pointing out similarities between myself and Flick (Felicity too has played the cello since she was 5, loves tennis and traveling, is tall, independent, good with names, and 23). When I finally passed out drooling on the tray table in front of me, Marilyn covered me with a blanket and warded off the Emirates flight attendants, who are driven by a grim determination to feed you every two hours (quelle change from domestic flights, eh?). Needless to say, we guided each other through the visa/luggage collecting/customs/money changing process before we split up. I’ve since been texting with her while I’m in Nairobi—she tells me Flick has come off sedation and is doing much better. I hope to have tea with Marilyn next week. In any case, I’m sure I’ll get to know the two of them better when I go to live with them in Melbourne and go the Australian Open, as I’ve been invited to do. As you know, I am truly my father’s daughter and as such really cherished this interaction, and I would like to think that her getting to take care of me made Marilyn feel a bit better as well while she itched to get to Flick.
Break for dinner. Long-winded as ever, aren’t I?
M
It will have been a week tomorrow since I left the fair, internet-friendly shores of the glorious US of A, and hopefully I will be able to put this on the “internets”. I have made three disgustingly unsuccessful attempts to check my email since the free internet kiosks in the Dubai airport, and I only have 6 less hours of my life and 19 more grey hairs to show for it. Apologies to my family in case they thought I actually did fall off the face of the earth, but I am learning the hard way how slowly everything moves in Africa, especially the internet. Let me see if I can recap what’s been going on for the last week.
Much like my first trip of the summer to Israel last year (remember when the Hadassa lady told me I wasn’t actually Jewish as soon as I sat down on the plane? Yeah.), this one seemed destined to be interesting from the first second of my journey. Having been ladened with yet another thing to carry with me to JFK (no, not Jeff Griffiths-induced emotional baggage, rather a scanner that he asked me to purchase for the medical school in Nairobi), I was encouraged by my generous NYC hostess Catharine ‘Squatchface’ Sotzing to take a cab to the airport. We hail one and say our goodbyes, and then I’m off with my Nigerian cab driver. Sounds okay, right? Flash forward 30 minutes to haggling with said-cabbie who has tried to cheat me out of an extra 20 bucks. Ugly faces, pointing, yelling…is this what I have to look forward to this summer as one of the naïve-looking wazungu? That’s white people, folks.
Anyway, the rest of those two days of travel were something of a blur. Twelve straight hours of TV and movies on my flight to Dubai (looove that Emirates has 200 movies PLUS episodes of The Office) helped me survive being smack in the middle of a row, wedged between sleepy, leg-room hogging, non-deodorant-wearing businessmen. Free internet + randomly running into Mina Fung helped brighten the sleepy hours in Dubai, and then it was onto the next flight.
Before I left, I emailed my sister Julie and my parents copies of my passport and health info lest anything awful happen. It felt totally paranoid as I did it, but it also felt like the right thing to do. As I talked with the woman next to me on my next flight, I KNEW it had been the right thing to do.
Marilyn, a lovely Irish lady who had transplanted to Melbourne when she met her husband-to-be in a bar there 30 years before, seemed somewhat anxious as she plopped down in the seat next to me, and we started chatting away. It felt as if I was in Interviewing class all over again as I tried to get to know her a bit and figure out what was going on. Turned out that she was duly upset and a bit frazzled because she had jumped on the first available flight out of Melbourne when she got a call telling her that her 23-year-old daughter, Felicity (aka Flick), who had been cycling from Egypt down through Africa, had been involved in a hit and run in Burundi. Flick had been left for dead on the side of the road (the driver didn’t even stop—all her money and possessions were still in the two panniers that comprised all she was traveling with), and was spotted by an aid-worker some hours later. He immediately recognized the seriousness of her condition and took her to the capital, Bujumbura. This is where she was, in a “hospital” with no sheets, until someone took it upon themselves to look through her things, find her passport, and contact the embassy, who contacted her parents, who contacted Flick's travel insurance company, who contacted officials in Burundi and got her air-lifted to a private hospital in Nairobi, where she underwent neurosurgery almost immediately to relieve the swelling from the bleed in her brain. (Apologies to Marilyn if any of this is incorrect or difficult to read!)
Marilyn adopted me as a surrogate daughter almost immediately, asking me all about my life and pointing out similarities between myself and Flick (Felicity too has played the cello since she was 5, loves tennis and traveling, is tall, independent, good with names, and 23). When I finally passed out drooling on the tray table in front of me, Marilyn covered me with a blanket and warded off the Emirates flight attendants, who are driven by a grim determination to feed you every two hours (quelle change from domestic flights, eh?). Needless to say, we guided each other through the visa/luggage collecting/customs/money changing process before we split up. I’ve since been texting with her while I’m in Nairobi—she tells me Flick has come off sedation and is doing much better. I hope to have tea with Marilyn next week. In any case, I’m sure I’ll get to know the two of them better when I go to live with them in Melbourne and go the Australian Open, as I’ve been invited to do. As you know, I am truly my father’s daughter and as such really cherished this interaction, and I would like to think that her getting to take care of me made Marilyn feel a bit better as well while she itched to get to Flick.
Break for dinner. Long-winded as ever, aren’t I?
M
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