Living Luhya

Less than two days after arriving in Nairobi, I hopped on a plane and flew all of half an hour to Kisumu, a town in the west of Kenya on the shores of Lake Victoria.  I was initially nervous to leave again so soon, but I really, really like western Kenya.   A car took us about 1 ½ hours away to the county of Kakamega, pretty close to the Ugandan border.   This is the home of the Luhya people, among other indigenous groups.  They are closely related to the Luo people, which you might recognize because President Obama’s dad in Luo.  His family is actually from Nyang’oma Kogelo, which is about a 40 minute drive from where I will be staying (near Shibale, though the closest town that will show on a map is likely Mumias).  

We went straight to the Munanga School, a rural K-8 school a few miles outside of town where I will be working.  Just to clarify, I will not be teaching here, which is good, because I am not qualified to teach in Kenya nor do I speak any of the ~5 Oluwanga dialects that most of these kids speak.  Few know any English, and most don’t even speak fluent Kiswahili.  I am qualified, however, to do some capacity building with the teachers, help with IT, and gather information on project deliverables for my host organization (HO) (I won’t name the HO in my blog because I want to feel free to really express myself here and not have the blog pop up if someone were to google the org.  You can easily learn about the org from my facebook page that you probably used to link to this blog! ).  Sound boring?  Luckily it isn’t for me!  

Before we got to the school, however, our car got hopelessly stuck in the mud.  I’m talking a big 4WD truck here.  Rainy season is getting started, and the mud was thick clay.  We walked the rest of the way, which was mildly hilarious because I had been planning on changing in the hotel first and was wearing a floor (mud)-length dress and sandals.  We walked past many small farms where families were growing sugarcane and maize and I continued my new deep relationship with goats.  Everyone has a goat it seems.   Most of the homes were small and round packed mud houses with thatched roofs and neat lawns kept closely cropped by the friendly goats and cattle.  

The school itself seems impossibly small for the ~500 students but has a huge lawn and courtyard, and I bet that classes gather outside as well.  I met several instructors, including Humphreys and Willis, who were a huge help to me on that first day.  I could tell the teachers were tense because Dorcas was also here to hold a focus group, and they have been falling a little behind on their outcomes for the HO due to some issues with IT and a lack of internet connectivity.   Humphreys and Willis were loose and happy though, and they interacted with Dorcas like old pals.  They spoke in English a lot, but did some codeswitching to Kiswahili, so I didn’t know everything that was going on.  

After a tour we had a really amazing lunch that I could tell was prepared especially to welcome us.  We had kuku (chicken) stew, which is chicken with a red broth, rice, sautéed kale, chapati (sort of like thinner naan), and ugali, a maize dough.   They brought in water to wash our hands, because they were going to be our utensils.  I was pretty down with using my hands to soak the ugali in the tasty broth, but I nearly burned my finger tips off when I dug into the hot chicken.  Lesson learned: patience. Soon I was super full and sleepy.  A few of the teachers left with Dorcas to take care of some business and left me with Willis.  He joked about being the first black person I must have ever seen and told me that his people are secretly ruling the US through Obama.  An older man came in and spoke with him in Oluwanga, and he introduced me as his little sister.  In short, Willis is hilarious.  He was also hard at work finding me a place to stay for the next 16 nights in town, and was feeling very protective of me.  After a little negotiating, HO increased my budget a little so I could stay at the guesthouse Willis had his heart set on, because he said it was much safer.  When he suggested the other guesthouses closer to the road wouldn’t be safe, it was hard for anyone to say no. 

 

Ducha Lorenzetti, my old friend (hot shower!)

The car had gotten out of the mud and driven back to town, so Humphreys, Dorcas and I walked back to the nearby town of Eshiakula (like French chocolat), followed by a horde of school children who had just gotten out of class.  The walk was filled with the soundtrack of mzungu, mzungu! (white person).  We got to the car and drove right into Mumias Sugar, the huge sugar plantation and factory in town.  I would be staying in the guesthouse, which was not only safe but boasted a golf course, pool, sports facility, and perfectly groomed boulevards.  There is a little grocery store on the property a little less than a mile from my room, which is nice because I can’t afford to eat all my meals in the guesthouse kitchen.  After that long day I fell asleep at 7 pm, safely tucked under my mosquito net.