Some Things You May Not Know About Africa.

1. Kenyans do not use deodorant.
2. A retractable pen can keep a group of 10 kids entertained for an hour.
3. The food is amazing.

I can’t emphasize that last one enough; maybe a nice severe case of food poisoning will change things, but being a vegetarian seems to save me from long episodes with Mr. Loo.
For breakfast we generally have passionfruit, little African bananas, mangoes, or green oranges, along with toast and avocado with salt and pepper. The avocados here are – no exaggeration – the size of footballs, and cost 15 shillings (about 10 cents) at the market.! Lunch involves white rice with spicy vegetable curry or plain red beans, accompanied by chapatti, a naan-like flatbread (very yum). Dinner is usually at the compound and as all us interns rotate with cooking, we’ve had everything from lattyja (Finnish crepes) to fettuccini with bruschetta to Texan tacos to banana coconut pancakes.

Glue Boys

Last week we each chose what projects we want to be involved with for the next few months. One of the places I’ll be working is called Oasis, in downtown Kitale. It is a drop-in shelter for street kids, open 5 days a week, where they serve breakfast, have Math, Social Studies, English, and Swahili classes, then serve a big lunch before closing at 2pm. Glue is the drug of choice for almost all these kids, because it is cheap and accessible, curbs the appetite and keeps them warm at night, not to mention gives a lot of them enough of a high to forget the abusive or parentless households they’ve left. You can find them all over Kitale, usually begging for money to buy more glue, or getting kicked around by shop owners, who treat them so badly. The kids aren’t allowed to enter Oasis with glue, so it encourages many of them to stay off it for most of the day. If a child shows enough self-discipline and commitment towards school, the teachers work with them for a few months, getting them back up to their grade level, so they can transfer to a boarding school, or move into a foster home and start at a local school. A few will go back to the streets, but the majority of kids from the Oasis program stick with it.

There’s a recent movie I highly recommend called Glue Boys, filmed here in Kitale, about the street kids. Not only does it show the area I’m in, but a lot of the kids I’ll be working with. It also explains a lot about the vicious glue cycle; there is a huge corporation in the US deliberately producing glue without a very inexpensive nasal irritant in it, because they know their sales (to street kids) will drop significantly if they do. Who are these people with no moral compasses? How can some rich American businessman live with himself knowing his salary comes from starving orphans using his product for something it was never intended for, killing brain cells and burning up their lungs? It’s disgusting seeing people with so much being so greedy.

Anyway.

We are off to Shimo, the slum just down the road from the base, to speak with the teachers there about doing an after-school program with grades 6-8. Lots of doors opening up! Good stuff.

Love to everyone.
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