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.