The Good and Bad.

Linda was taken to the hospital Monday and tested positive for HIV. She also had severe malaria, pneumonia, malnutrition, and dehydration. The doctors predicted up to 2 weeks in hospital, but after 3 days of meds, IV, rest, good food, and TI staff taking turns spending the night with and entertaining her, Linda was ready and rearing to get out of there. (Her grandma refused to even visit.) We went to see her at HBF yesterday (where she’s staying temporarily) and she is a completely different girl – laughing and active and full of personality.

Linda will most likely have to go back to live with her grandma due to having HIV, because there is nowhere here that accepts orphans with AIDS. The closest is a home 2 hours away that only accepts toddlers under age 2, meaning there are really zero options for you if you are parentless and HIV positive. Which is ridiculous, since an orphan with HIV is obviously in even more urgent need of help than a healthy orphan. We’ve been talking a lot about this issue this week, and the possibility of TI opening a small home for kids in this situation. I’ve felt a lot of excitement about it.

Last year, TI did this for a few street girls, renting a small place in a quiet area nearby and calling it The Nema House (nema is ‘grace’ in Swahili). Every Tuesday, Lauren and I walk a few miles to visit the 6 ex-street girls – Sarah, Rebecca, Metrine, Lillian, Catherine, and Sharon -- the house Mum Janet, and teacher Nancy. The oldest girl is 15, the youngest is 12, and they come from varying degrees of poverty – Lillian is a total orphan and has spent her entire life on the streets; Catherine has family far away and was only on the streets for a bit before she came to Nema House.

The girls stay fairly sheltered in the home; the first few weeks they work to clean up, get off glue, and figure out what level they are at in school. Then they are given school supplies and uniforms and work with Nancy to get up to their appropriate grade. All the girls have been at Nema for 4 months and counting and have made great progress, in everything from study habits to cooking to how they act towards men. It is exciting to watch.

This last week – the same day Linda tested positive for HIV – Sharon ran away from Nema, which took everyone very much by surprise. The girls said she’d been talking about missing her boyfriend the night before. There is always a big risk when one girl runs that others may follow, but when Daniel spoke to them about it, each girl was sad about Sharon’s choice, saying they don’t know why she would go back to the streets when she had so much at Nema. Sharon was turned into child services a few days later and is staying at a local orphanage until she’s willing to open up to Daniel and Meredith about why she ran away.

In other news… tomorrow Nate, Andrew, the 2 Laurens, myself, and our friend Alex are making the trek down to Malindi, on the coast of Kenya, for a weeks’ stay. This involves 2 or 3 taxi rides, 7 hours on a matatu, killing 4 hours in Nairobi trying not to get mugged, another 8 hours on a bus, and 1 in a kangaroo van. Thanks to a friend of Daniel’s, once we get to Malindi, we have free lodging in a military resort condo near the beach, so as long as we get there in one piece (or 6 respective pieces) and can scrounge up some food each night, we’re good to go. Pretty stoked to finally see the Indian Ocean…

...particularly since the dry season has finally started in Kitale and we have been out of water for 2 days now. We are all trying to go without showers until we get to the beach condo early Tuesday morning. Should be a lovely smelling bus ride.

More from Malindi!

Some pictures from the week:


Nate walking back from an Oasis soccer game with
"Soldier" Dan and James.


Standing in some just-harvested corn
drying in the sun.


A Days Inn! In Kenya! Who knew..
Also, yes, that is a boda boda with 4 crates of soda
bottles tied onto the back...


More maiz being dried out on the side of the road.

This was a sign on the window of a matatu we took.

NO idea what it means, but that's definitely Obama below

it. (This one's for you, Corey.) Only in Kenya...

The lovely Metrine and Cathrine from Nema House, standing

near their garden, in dresses they made themselves.

Catherine & I at Nema.

Ina & Mere dancing with the girls and Mama Janet.

The Weekend.

This is me and Linda.

She is 7.

I met Linda on Saturday, when Ina and I went to spend the night again at the kids home. and Dan brought her and big sister Stella there after he found them living in bad conditions with their grandma. Both parents died a few years ago, and the grandma is very old and has no way to support the girls. Stella is happy and healthy and fit right in with the rest of the 26 kids; Linda is very quiet and does move around a lot, mainly due to this infected wound on her leg (not for the faint of heart):

Even when the bandage is touched, she flinches.

Along with this, Linda is very malnourished and withdrawn, tired, and fatigued. Although no one knows her parents cause of death, because they both died so quickly within such short time time, it was most likely AIDS. And because of that, there is a very good chance Linda is HIV positive. She goes in for the test today, and to have her leg treated.

If she tests positive, she cannot live at the kids home because of the risk of infecting others. She will most likely be given the ART medication and sent back to her grandma’s with food provisions.

We all prayed very hard for her this morning, that God would give her peace either way. I prayed for God to give me peace with this. As Dan says, a lot of things are easy to understand and make sense of here because of the corruption and lack of resources, but a 7-year old orphaned girl with AIDS is not one of them.

On a happier note, we had another great sleepover at the kids home. We decided to try a ‘grieving exercise’ by giving everyone crayons and a small blank book, and having them write what they remembered about their parents, other siblings, former house, etc. Because every child at HBF is an orphan, I expected this to be a bit emotional, but thanks to their great house parents - Ben and Virginia - who discuss it often with them, they were all very open and excited to draw their old homes and write down the names of their parents and family. After ugali and sukumowiki for dinner, we all sat around the candlelit table and Ben asked each child about their story. For nearly all the kids, they lived good lives with their families until their parents deaths, and then went to live with grandparents who were either abusive or neglectful, or simply lacked the resources to feed them and/or get them to school each day. Every child said they felt peaceful at HBF because they didn’t have to worry about food, and happy because they knew someone would take them to school every day. Just those 2 things alone give them a world of security.

Some pictures from the weekend:

The kids reading their stories before bed.

Valentine with baby Dan on her back,

and Simiyu, with the most stunning smile in the world.

Mama Virginia making sukumowiki
in the kitchen with Caro and Susan.


The luxurious bathroom facilities, called the 'cho'.


Oscar, Emily, Mwangi, Valley, Jackie, Loya and I,
goofing off before dinner.



Teddy and Stella doing dishes.


Patrick and I, eating lollies in the wheelbarrow.

With Mama Virginia and half of the crew before we left.

In other news, this week I got stung by one of these!

I was eating dinner and felt something cold and wet on my neck, and when I reached up to flick it off, a bunch of the his evil little hairs lodged themselves into the skin on my hands. Meredith got most of them out with a rag and kerosene; the rest of them itch like craaaaaaazy. Good times.

More Pictures.

Apologies these are a bit random chronologically and locationaly, but I hope they will give you a tiny idea what life is like here. More to come.



A typical side of the road shop in Kiminini.


Joseph and I at Showgrounds.


Hey, it's hard to find a bookstore where they not only
repair books, they also read them!


Patrick & Elvis from the Orphanage. Awesome boys.


Schoolkids in Nairobi. This picture is dedicated to Maren.


Ina, socializing in the Soweto slums.

Church and Other Corrupt Places.

Mainly out of curiosity, Ina and I have been trying a new church each Sunday we’ve been here. We have quite a few options, with over 100 churches in Kitale...

The first church we went to had a congregation of 20 Kenyans, so us being the only mzungus was kind of a big deal, and everyone made a concerted effort to sit as close to us as possible. After some deafening music, the pastor excitedly asked us to stand and introduce ourselves; he apparently meant ‘give a sermon’ because he was visibly disappointed when we sat down after saying our names. After 2 hours of loud Swahili from the pastor, we still weren’t sure he’d even started his message yet, so we left (as inconspicuously as possible).

Another Sunday we went to a church in a school, with different church services going on in almost every classroom. The congregation was around 10, so us being there was quite the event. Again we were asked to come up and introduce ourselves, then 40 minutes were spent laying hands on and giving thanks for the new keyboard, which had just come in from Nairobi thanks to a members' generous donation. I narrowly escaped this ordeal by getting the pastor’s baby to fall asleep in my lap. After a 2-hour Swahinglish sermon, the pastor gave an eloquent speech about tithing, and everyone came to the front to put their money in the fancy basket, while we slipped out the back.

Last Sunday we went to a church where we were 2 of 5 mzungus in the congregation. The whole service was in English, led by Kenyans, which apparently means singing “If You’re Happy & You Know It” as a worship song. Yet again we were hauled up to the front for introductions. A Ugandan 20-year old ex-street boy gave the message, in classic fire and brimstone form, about repentance; how we need to repent for ourselves, and the sins of our tribes and families, and for when we get circumcised and our tribal elders give us strong drugs and booze to curb the pain. (I found that one debatable, and I’m not even a guy.) Just as Ina and I were about to sneak out the back door, he asked us to come to the front and repent for the sins of our respective countries. Oh boy.

Personally, I find churches here disappointingly more westernized than expected; the only fun part is singing songs like “Jesus is the Winner” with a bunch of amazingly musical Africans clapping their hands and dancing with you.

Pastors have very mixed reputations here; a select few (usually the skinny ones) actually help their communities and genuinely care about their congregations, regardless of how small they may be. Most of the pastors (typically overweight) are renown for manipulating and lying to their congregations, using all the money from their churches for nice houses and fancy cars, and sending their kids to private schools. They rival the police and government here as the most corrupt and dishonest people in leadership positions.

A pastor near the Shimo slums where we teach lives in a luxurious 2-story home. A few weeks ago he came to take pictures of the school and some of the kids. Only later did the teachers discover he put the pictures on a website, claiming he financially supports the school and all the students. He then uses any money sent to him by unsuspecting donors for personal things, with not a shilling being sent to the school. This pastor also had a very publicized affair last year… and yet still, somehow, has a congregation.

That said, every morning on the compound, all the interns hang out in the livingroom and eat breakfast, sing, wake up, read the Bible, talk about life, pray about problems. Sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes two or three, and it’s the most I've ever enjoyed anything so church-like before.

Sometimes church is not where you think it is, or it turns up where you least expect it.

Barrack On.

Regardless of how you feel about America’s 44^th president, I hope we can all agree how significant and great it is that our country has finally gotten over itself enough to put an African American into office. This gives me hope.

Needless to say, Kenya is quite happy about Tuesday’s outcome. When the results came out early Wednesday, the president declared November 6^th a public holiday so he could congratulate Barrack “Son of Kenya” Obama himself. 10 babies born in Kenya on Tuesday were all named Barrack Obama.

Currently playing on the radio is a song entitled -- no joke -- “Obama Be Thy Name”.

The R Word.

On Tuesday, our after-school talk at Shimo was about rape. About 60% of the question cards we got from the students the first day mentioned this topic, so we knew it must be prevalent. Meredith went with us to tell her story of being raped at 13, and all the kids were stunned that things like this actually happen in North America, to white people. Afterwards we split up the guys and the girls and had separate talks with each group.

Nate and Andrew spent most of the time trying to explain that within our culture and religion, men and women are equal. The boys could not wrap their heads around this, and kept referencing the Bible verse that says a husband has authority over his wife. (Of course the verses that follow, about the husband loving the wife as he does his own body, are not relevant to them.)

The girls asked us so many sobering questions. One agreed that abortion was wrong, but asked what you should do if a man rapes you, you get pregnant, have the baby, and every time you look at it you remember the man who raped you?

One girl asked if rape committed by family members, to very young children, was as common in the US as in Kenya.

Another girl asked what you could do to try and forgive a man who raped you and infected you with AIDS.

We showed them a few escape/self-defense tactics, and then had a girl ask if they are still as useful if there are lots of men (gang rape).

It became increasingly obvious that there were very few girls in the room who had not been raped.

Maybe most disturbing was the end of the class, when the principal (a sweet older woman in her 60’s) came up and told the girls to try and avoid being in the classrooms alone with any of the male teachers, because there were apparently some rape cases taking place within the school.

As Mere sadly explained on the walk home, unless a teacher is caught in the act, or a girl reports it with bodily evidence, the police will do nothing.

On one hand, Kenyan culture is incredibly upright and conservative. The kids can quote you major Bible passages; abortion is considered murder, practicing homosexuality is illegal; if you steal something (often as small as a mobile phone)and are unlucky enough to be caught, you are either stoned to death or have a tire put around you and are set on fire.

And yet... by the time she is 15, an 8^th grade girl can be raped, pregnant, infected with AIDS, and attending a school where she is at risk of being raped again by her very own teacher.

Life is hard.

Barrack On.

Regardless of how you feel about America’s 44^th president, I hope we can all agree how significant and great it is that our country has finally gotten over itself enough to put an African American into office. This gives me hope.

Needless to say, Kenya is quite happy about Tuesday’s outcome. When the results came out early Wednesday, the president declared November 6^th a public holiday so he could congratulate Barrack “Son of Kenya” Obama himself. 10 babies born in Kenya yesterday were named Barrack Obama.

Currently playing on the radio is a song entitled -- no joke -- “Obama Be Thy Name”.

The R Word.

On Tuesday, our after-school talk at Shimo was about rape. About 60% of the question cards we got from the students the first day mentioned this topic, so we knew it must be prevalent. Meredith went with us to tell her story of being raped at 13, and all the kids were stunned that things like this actually happen in North America, to white people. Afterwards we split up the guys and the girls and had separate talks with each group.

Nate and Andrew spent most of the time trying to explain that within our culture and religion, men and women are equal. The boys could not wrap their heads around this, and kept referencing the Bible verse that says a husband has authority over his wife. (Of course the verses that follow, about the husband loving the wife as he does his own body, are not relevant to them.)

The girls asked us so many sobering questions. One agreed that abortion was wrong, but asked what you should do if a man rapes you, you get pregnant, have the baby, and every time you look at it, you remember the man who raped you?

One girl asked if rape committed by family members, to very young children, was as common in the US as in Kenya.

Another girl asked what you could do to try and forgive a man who raped you and infected you with AIDS.

We showed them a few escape/self-defense tactics, and then had a girl ask if they are still as useful if there are lots of men (gang rape).

It became increasingly obvious that there were very few girls in the room who had not been raped.

Maybe most disturbing was the end of the class, when the principal (a sweet older woman in her 60’s) came up and told the girls to try and avoid being in the classrooms alone with any of the male teachers, because there were apparently some rape cases taking place within the school.

As Mere sadly explained on the walk home, unless a teacher is caught in the act, or a girl reports it with bodily evidence, the police will do nothing about a rape accusation.

On one hand, Kenyan culture is incredibly upright and conservative. The kids can quote you major Bible passages; abortion is considered murder, practicing homosexuality is illegal; if you steal something (often as small as a mobile phone)and are unlucky enough to be caught, you are either stoned to death or have a tire put around you and are set on fire.

And yet... by the time she is 16, an 8^th grade girl can be raped, pregnant, infected with AIDS, and attending a school where she is at risk of being raped again by her very own teacher.

Life is hard.

At Long Last.

Apparently resizing pictures can help a lot when uploading them on a dial-up connection. Nice to know. Thanks for your patience.

With my Oasis buddies Joseph and Lazarus at Showgrounds.


All the kids from Oasis, getting ready to go to Showgrounds!


I think the fact that there's a man in the
tank technically makes the water unclean.


Sharing a whole fish with Ina in Nairobi.


Yes, that is a monkey doing a vertical leap off of me.
Luke had put a banana on my shoulder .352 seconds earlier.


Andrew with some friends.


Lauren S, looking glamorous even with monkeys all over her.


Lauren R with a girl in the slums.

Nate at Soweto, one of the largest slums in Nairobi.


Downtown Kitale. Totally beautiful and chaotic.


Meredith & Baby Zeke at Hope Bright Future Home.
Dan's in the back.


With Elvis, Johnston, Martin, and Shirro at HBF.
Can't get much whiter than that..

picture bonanza

American Paradise?

I think Obama's face has been on the front of every newspaper here for the last 2 weeks, regardless of whether or not there's any relevant "news" on him.

In an effort to be somewhat patriotic in light of the looming election, I thought I’d share some interesting assumptions the middle schoolers at Shimo Primary had about America.

Probably the most interesting one was that all Americans are Christians.
What else would you think when every American who has ever come to your community is a missionary? They were so surprised to find out there are other religions within the states.

The kids believed all Americans were wealthy, and that problems like alcoholism, rape, AIDS, and street kids were non-existent in the U.S. Surely only a country as poor and unlucky as Kenya would deal with things like that.

We tried to spend a good portion of that class emphasizing how beautiful Kenya is to us and that we actually enjoy the food, the landscape, the people. These are kids who have lived in the same small, issue-ridden communities all their lives and can only assume America, with it’s advanced technology, health care, and nice Christian citizens is as good as it gets.

The black/white issue is very relevant here; white is beautiful, black is not. Outside the largest grocery store in Kitale, there is a huge ad for “Fairness Beauty Cream”, that promises to lighten dark skin. And people actually use this! Kenyans that have darker skin than others are often made fun of; last week at the girls house, one of the darkest (and incidentally, prettiest) girls was getting teased that if she were sitting at a coal stand and someone came to buy coal, they would accidentally buy her, that’s how black she was. (Is it racism when said by another black person? I don’t even know.. )

Maybe this is some insight into the mind of Michael Jackson.

Anyway, as disturbing as it is, it means that we as Americans/white people get a lot of respect from the kids at Shimo. This has been a blessing in disguise since we are talking about things like AIDS and sex, and encouraging the kids to wait until they are finished with school and with a committed partner to have sex; they hear it often from most of their teachers, but coming from us it somehow means more.

"Greatest Show on Earth"

Every year during harvest time, there is a big weekend fair put on in the showgrounds near Kitale. This took place last weekend. The closest thing to compare it to would be the county fair at home with African undertones, which mostly means thumping reggaeton music until 5am, starting again at 9am. It features the World’s Smallest Man, the "Mermaid from Mombasa”, all sorts of displays and markets and food stands and games.

On Friday, Nate, Ina, and I got to go to the fair with all 50 kids from Oasis.

This was such a blast. We got our faces painted, walked through all the agricultural displays and the kids told us the names of each plant; had bread and Coca-Cola for lunch, and went to the grandstand to watch the marching band and the Kitale soccer and rugby teams play. The cool part was that at least 20 other schools were there that day, with all the wealthier kids in their expensive uniforms arriving on their posh school buses. The Oasis kids had to walk to the fairgrounds, in all their mismatched, tattered uniforms, but they were the ones who got to walk around with the mzungus, which made all the difference.