The Perfect Pieces

When I embarked on this journey, I knew that I would learn a great deal and I hoped that I would equally impart some knowledge, inspiration or motivation to someone somewhere. At the same time, I had no clue to what extent I would grow through this experience or in what ways it would inspire me. This entire adventure has led me through times of overwhelming frustration and disappointment, but more than anything it has given me times of incredible inspiration and realization. I have realized a more tangible vision of what I want to do with the rest of my life and in the meantime have seen so much of my life come together in different ways here.

Today was a day of a high point. The last week plagued me with the sound of the eternally ticking clock and I felt the pressure to make the most use of my time remaining here. I didn’t want to disappoint myself, the women I work with, my organization, or Duke by idling myself for the remaining time. I thought of extensively intricate and complicated plans with lofty goals of what I wanted to accomplish for these women. I thought of creating giant projects that would change their lives forever. When I realized the improbability of the success of these lofty projects, I also realized the understated importance of something I could do with these women. Immediately I understood perfectly the goals of FSD.

While I had wanted to create a market for the women of the sewing class to sell their products in, I realized who better to figure this out than the women themselves? These women have the skills to create various garments, however, they have no knowledge of what to do with these things or how to make a profit from them. The women spend hours a day creating skirts, dresses, and shirts. They have nowhere to sell them, so they inevitably give them to family members. This is when I realized that these women could really use an informational class to supplement their sewing skills.

But what could help these women to really put their skills to use? What type of information could do that? And what could I teach them that would be of any practical use in their life? Marketing. Economics. Globalization. Development. All of these concepts seemed to have some value to what I want these women to know. Immediately I began creating a course for the women that I think is best (and also most awkwardly) described as individual and community economic development. I began writing an instruction manual for this course to leave behind, once I leave in just over a week.

On Wednesday, the young mothers met for their normal discussion group. This time, however, the other volunteer at Project Africa and I described our plan to these women. I was so excited to tell them about how beneficial I thought this would be for them, and I even had a friend from Duke come for the session to talk to the women about the importance of supplementing their skills with knowledge of economics and marketing. The women were excited about this idea and proposed coming twice a week for an hour session in addition to their usual Wednesday meeting.

So now I find myself in the process of writing the already 10 single-spaced page long guide on various topics relating to economic development. In doing so, I realized I was using information I had learned back in ninth grade of high school. I surprised myself when my knowledge of the Demographic Transition Model from AP Human Geography came to me so clearly and so purposefully. All of the pieces from my life seemed to fit perfectly, ranging from what I had learned in that killer Economics 51 class about basic supply and demand to way back in high school. Lessons on globalization, developmental stages of countries, how to measure development, the “brain drain”, unemployment and overpopulation all reared their old heads at me and reminded me of their practical importance. As even more of a cosmic coincidence, I got an email from a professor of a course next semester suggesting we read “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs. After checking the book out of the FSD library, I laughed to myself about the irony of the situation- here I am sitting in Africa in the midst of teaching women about economic development and the theoretical ladder out of poverty while reading this book about just that. The pieces were just about all too perfectly relevant.

Today was the first day of our official group meeting. About ten women showed up and to my surprise, many of them brought with them pens and old notebooks. They furiously took notes as I explained the stages of development from the demographic transition model and they all gathered around my little laptop as I showed them a picture of the graph. It was as if I was telling them the formula to life. They had me repeat myself many times, just to ensure they were copying down what I was saying correctly. I brought candy and cookies for them to enjoy while I spoke (self-admittedly it may be a bit of bribery…but that never hurt anyone). When we were almost finished, I told them that we had only ten minutes left and we could start a new topic or we could continue next week. I was met with a resounding, “please continue.”

Although I know what I’m doing isn’t life shatteringly important or ground-breaking, I was shocked at the level of practicality all of my education claimed today. Not only did I teach the women things which I have been fortunate enough to learn, I also discovered a new part of myself. I realized how passionate I am about these issues and how strongly I believe in their ability to actually promote economic development (both as an individual and as a community, of course!).

The end of my time is quickly approaching, but with some new inspiration and new focus, I think I will be at peace with leaving. I leave for our safari this evening—I’ll take an overnight bus for 9 hours to Nairobi with two other students from Duke on my program. We’ll arrive in Nairobi and then take a bus into Masai Mara for our safari. We’ll be there all weekend and on Monday night we’ll board EasyCoach and head back to Kakamega for one final week. Now that I have a new sense of satisfaction with my work here, I think I will really be able to enjoy myself and the beauty that this country has to offer.

I Bless the Rains Down in Africa..and my Umbrella

Yesterday I realized two strange ways in which Kenyans and I differ. Over the weeks, I have become more accustomed to the Kenyan way of life and have gradually gained greater understanding of a Kenyan thought process. However long I stay here though, I feel that there are still two issues over which Kenyans and I will never see eye to eye: the cold and the rain.

The weather in Kenya is even more predictable than the coming of hurricanes to Florida in hurricane season. “Cold,” hot, then rain. Every morning when I leave the house it is freezing. And by freezing, I really mean 70 or 75 degrees Fahrenheit. And every morning without fail as I walk out in my tee-shirt and skirt, my mama asks me if I have “carried anything warm.” The family, in coordination with the rest of the town, has dressed for the morning with full on winter coats- northface fleeces or puffy furry coats. If I couldn’t actually feel the temperature for myself, I would think that I had landed somewhere in the Arctic instead of just adjacent to the equator in the heart of Africa. As I walk out still wearing my skirt and tee-shirt and go to meet my friend, in his equally warm light weight pants and tee-shirt, my family is baffled by our ability to bear the “cold.”

While I don’t freeze from the 70 degree chill, I also don’t melt from the rain. I realized this yesterday as I had one of my favorite walks home from work. What made the walk so refreshing was the rain. While I agree with Kenyans that I am not always a fan of being caught in the rain every day at 5pm walking home from work, yesterday I appreciated the rain. There are two things about Kakamega that made this walk particularly pleasurable—the first being the usual harassment (or perhaps I should say, friendly bombardment) of Kenyan boda boda drivers I encounter in my daily travels. The second is that Kenyans are afraid of the rain.

As I left work yesterday, I noticed that the sky had on its menacing face of looming rainclouds. I didn’t feel like waiting around impatiently for the rain to end and after weeks of enduring the rain, I knew better than to assume that the rain would stop in a timely manner. So prepared with my waterproof backpack, umbrella, and trusty Tevas, I braced myself for the onslaught of African rain. Soon I began to notice the comical image around me of every Kenyan standing under some sort of roof or shelter to protect them from this apparently poisonous rain. Tin roofs of the market, extended roofs from shops on street corner, and gas stations were all filled to capacity with people huddling from the rain hurling down at the incredible speed of…drizzling. One gas station in particular, SomKen, had probably over one hundred people huddled as tightly as possible avoiding every drop of rain. Seeing this, I continued walking and not surprisingly felt many questioning and obviously confused stares. What I loved most about this walk was the peace. The rain has scared off all of the bodaboda drivers (rain obviously melts bicycles) and all pedestrians. I was alone to walk in complete peace from any hassle. No cars whizzing by without a care for lowly pedestrians, no bodaboda drivers asking me to marry them (it’s happened), no pikipikis (motorcycles..equally, if not more, dangerous than bodabodas), no matatu drivers asking me if I’m going to Kisumu or Mumias and literally dragging me towards their “14 passenger” van packed with 22 people. Just me and the road and the rain. I walked in the middle of the road and enjoyed every second of the rain. This time around, I did bless the rains down here in Africa.