Light

George is living in a small, one room house directly across from the clinic.  I met him Tuesday, and helped him see the sun for the first time in about two weeks. My entire hand fit around his bicep, as Silivia and I massaged his unused muscles.  We walked with him for about 15 feet, with each of us supporting one of his arms.  He has HIV and has refused to take ARVs. He looks frighteningly similar to pictures we’ve been shown of holocaust victims. I kneeled on the ground as he looked down towards me.  He kept telling me he was a victim – and I kept replying that he was only a victim if he allowed himself to be.  That he could fight, and live. He complained about the medications he had to swallow, and I challenged him that I had to inject myself every time I ate. The sky turned purple as we ate guavas and drank coke with him. He kept repeating thank you very much from his blistered and cracked lips. We left his house promising to come back the next day.  He was smiling and seemed lifted, and I walked home feeling hopeful and at peace.

Wednesday, we went back to see him before lunch time.  Silivia carried green oranges in a plastic, yellow tub.  He would not even turn over to see us when we entered.  Flies surrounded his face, as Silivia peeled an orange and handed it to him.  He told us that he was tired today, and wanted to go to Homa Bay District Hospital.  His oldest son came home from primary school and greeted him. George barely lifted his hand to meet his sons. I asked him if he wanted to sit outside for a while, to feel the sun and breeze on his face. He told me he was too tired as SIlivia hoisted his legs up onto a suitcase. I shook the remaining coke from the day before in a plastic cup, trying to get him to drink some.  The bubbles fizzed up and tickled my hand, while George just stared straight ahead.  He took the casing of the orange out of his mouth and placed it on the table – looking so similar to his own shriveled skin.  We walked out shortly after we had come.  A white curtain that was serving as the door billowed in the wind, and kept all problems and life trapped inside the house.

We returned to the school, and I sat on a blue, dilapidated bench on the stoop of the clinic while people tried to tell me that life is hard.  Apparently the anger that was burning holes into my stomach was presenting as sadness – but really I guess those two feelings are as connected and overlapping as the barbed wire that serves as fencing here.  You cannot make someone who wants to die live, no matter how full of food and drugs you pump them.  I’m angry that he feels like he has nothing to live for, that there’s nothing he wants to recover to see. His entire family has already decided he will die, and are now just waiting for the life to drain from this man, the way that water does from a plastic bag. 

I shared with SIlivia that I wanted to start visiting other people like George Wednesday night, and do home based care. Someone made a card before I left that says, ‘travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light,’ which I have laying on my desk here.  I get the most joy from spreading light to other people – from making someone an excessively decadent birthday cake, from taping 78 pennies to a card for my grandfather’s birthday, from helping a man that the community here is afraid to touch walk 100 steps. I like witnessing the light in places that society has deemed dark. For me those places are when I find the brightest lights of all. Maybe that’s what I came to Kenya to really find and tell people about – light.

I sat on a desk in one of the classrooms on Sunday as the sun went down.  The boarders were busy doing their homework and asking me if I knew how to draw graphs.  I lifted Chagos onto my shoulders as another kid told me that the man I had helped carry had died yesterday afternoon. He told me like he was telling me what color the sky was. I walked over to the edge of Abba and looked at the wooden door to his house that was closed. Chagos was laughing and kicking his small legs against my chest as he put his hands on my forehead. I was angry and sorry that the light from the rest of the World couldn’t keep this man’s illuminated – burning, and how normal and expected it was for someone’s light to be extinguished here.

Details and Rain

Friday

The old man that had his hand stitched up on Thursday stumbled back into Silivia’s clinic to have it re-bandaged.  He sang to us as Silivia ripped white tape with her teeth.  He wore the same clothes as the day before, and was as chipper as ever. I walked him to the door of the clinic and he told me he was ‘majestically walking to his home’ as he strutted away. His wheezing laughter trailed behind him.  I cackled as he left.

I stepped outside as Silivia told me it was about to rain very hard.  I looked up at the sky to find a central patch of very dark, grey clouds directly above the grandies house. I have always loved big storms, and it is no different for me here, although life tends to slow down to a halt when the rain stumbles in.  I decided not to grab my jacket and walked over to Abba.  The rain started to fall as soon as we reached the clinic, and it came down in sheets.  I stood in the doorway of the clinic, bracing myself with both of my hands and looked out into walls of water.  The rain made bullet holes in the ground where it fell from the roof.

Saturday

I stood on the veranda of the guest house and watched a storm blow in.  The rain started as a slight drizzle, but quickly moved to a full on downpour.  The chickens hid under the stoop of the house.  A purple Nissan van went sloshing quickly down the road, looking like the back would flip over the front because it was moving so quickly over slick mud. Flashbacks of Jurassic Park rides at Disneyland where you’re driven into a dark tunnel and sprayed with water and sound filled my head as the rain droned on the iron sheet roof.

Sunday

We (Paul, Berend, Ursula and I) walked to the Lake from Abba for a boat ride.  The rain from the night before had left more water than land.  At first, we tried to pick our way from dry spot to dry spot, but quickly gave this up.  The water was warm from the sun, and my shoes made sucking sounds in the mud. We made it to the edge of the lake, to find many people seated on the grass.  The ground was sparkly from fish scales that women were removing, as whole fish lay out drying from the sun before being fried.  Lake Victoria is a murky brown color, and you cannot see anything below the surface, except for the green water hyacinth that crowds around the edges.

Monday

I took a seat in an unbalanced metal chair that was situated beneath the trees, and waited for other parents to join me. The chairs in front of me had OMSS painted in blue paint that had dripped before it was dry. It was prayer day for Form 4 pupils (high school seniors) that were taking the Kenya Secondary School Exams. The students that were seated behind me started singing gospel music that made the hairs on my arms stand up.  Two children ran up the hill chasing tires as big as they were and calling, ‘Rachel, how are you.’ The students and their parents crowded in circles around the pastor as he prayed for them to perform well on the exam.  Sun patches crept through the trees and warmed my feet.

Silivia took me to visit a man with diabetes tonight.  We entered into his house, and he was laying on the couch, and could barely sit up to greet us.  A white bandage wrapped from the back of his neck to his front, and his wife handed me cloudy insulin that was wet from the water it was being kept in.  I walked quickly home to get a spare meter, and returned to find him sitting up.  His whole body slumped downwards and the meter read 543 after he tested.  My mouth fell open.  His brother told me he had been on insulin since 1995, and I bit my lip as they explained that he was now on kidney dialysis. Location, privilege, and a bit of luck plagued my brain as I stumbled home in darkness.  An ocean and many miles of land separated me from being in this man’s shoes.

Tuesday

I sat on the stoop of the clinic in a green, plastic chair and let my feelings envelope my entire being. Nightmares from the previous night clutched my brain and wouldn’t let go.  I felt like I had swallowed glass and that it was cutting patterns into my stomach lining.  A lady passed and I smiled at her, feeling momentary relief.  I moved to sit on the bench in the warm sun with Che.  Her breathing became routine and her neck bounced as she fell asleep in my lap. I closed my eyes momentarily as Matron was counting how many tins of beans there were in a sack from another school.  She was bent parallel to the ground, and the sound of beans hitting plastic made the same sound as those rain makers we used to make in elementary school. 

Silivia and I visited an old man tonight.  We crept up behind him while he was closing the door to his house.  He nearly dropped his cane when he turned around and saw us, throwing his hands forward onto his knees as he laughed with a deep cackle.  He was missing most of his top teeth, and was wearing a baseball hat cocked to one side and resting high on his head.  He reminded me so much of my grandfather I had to restrain myself from consuming him in a giant bear hug.  The sky turned from yellow to purple to black with every color in between as the sun went down.  We promised to visit him again soon, and we walked to the edge of his compound with laughter that consumed all of us.

Wednesday

I visited Kisumu to extend my visa for three months.  The return trip home was in a large magenta matatu, with the man in charge wearing matching shades of maroon.  There is a ladder that goes to the roof, where they strap everything imaginable to the top.  The man in maroon swung from the ladder to the open door of the vehicle, with his shirt billowing in the wind and his flat top hair style unmoving. We zoomed past three ladies walking together, wearing differing shades of pink, and matching the red earth. I wondered if they had planned that.  We quickly caught up to the rain clouds gathering over the hills.  Ladies covered their hair with plastic bags as the conductor shoved them down the steps into the rain.  An entire wooden living room set was unloaded from the roof and placed on the wet tarmac, waiting patiently for visitors to sit and take tea.

It rained the hardest and longest it has since I’ve been here while we ate dinner. We couldn’t hear each other unless we yelled.  Silivia told me people would probably migrate from their houses towards dry land.  I pulled on gum boots (rain boots) that were two sizes too small for me and stepped into water that nearly reached my knee.  Silivia and I laughed the entire trip to Abba, as we stepped in holes and slipped over rocks that were covered with water. I could not tell where the road started or ended. The whole Abba compound was a swamp.  We tried saving squawking chickens, as I cried with laughter.  Silivia shined her flashlight into the water and asked me if I saw things moving. Snakes. We had a slumber party in the house with a couple whose home was filled with rain water.  I felt like a kid at summer camp as I crawled into the top bunk and tried not to move too much as I fell asleep to the sound of rain.

3 months

Yesterday marked three months that I have been in Kochia, and I have no idea where the time has flown to. The maize that was planted about the time that I came stands above my head, and makes rustling sounds when the wind blows through it from the Lake. In my original proposal, I had pitched that I would stay in three different places for about three months each, but I can tell you now that I have no solid plans of leaving Kochia any time soon.  The longer I stay here, the more I learn about people, myself, and life, and packing and leaving could not be further from my mind at this point.

I have always found long car rides the best for reflection and insight, and my last trip to Kisumu on Saturday was no different. I’m not sure what is so soothing to me about journeys, but here, it’s one of the only places that I am that I can escape for hours into my own thoughts without being disturbed by other people. The scenery for this drive is my favorite in all of Kenya – the trees are massive and the Lake is close.  As I sat with my legs jammed against the heater with an elderly man who couldn’t see resting on one of my thighs, I couldn’t help smiling and having one of those – I cannot believe that I’m actually here, now, in Kenya epiphanies. Gratitude rushed through my entire body, making the hairs on my arm stand on end as I thought about the Grant, and the journey I had taken that landed me in that whizzing Matatu. I had an intense comfort that everything would work out, and that despite my endless and constant questioning about what I’m doing here – I was exactly where I needed to be.

There was a big irrigation meeting here on Monday and Tuesday.  Silivia brought me some actors she knew that were helping do awareness campaigns at the meeting, and we told them that we would come.  She led me about five minutes from the house, to the shade of a large tree, where close to fifty people were seated in blue and white plastic chairs.  The wind blew gently, dropping small yellow seeds on everyone’s head. Silivia translated the meeting for me, while I people watched in the lapses.  Little kids entertained themselves on or near their mother’s laps, with one girl drawing on her mother’s face in blue ballpoint pen, and another girl shaking her sandals in a plastic bag she had found.  They spoke about irrigation as if the heavens were opening up.  It would be an end to poverty, and lift everyone who participated to richness and wealth.  We drank warm soda and ate white bread for lunch. I caught many people dozing after. The meeting lasted until almost five, when we returned back to Abba to see what the kids were up to.

It was interesting discussing the meeting afterwards with Silivia and Emmanuel.  They told me about another irrigation project that had killed many of the people living in the community.  It brought in extra money - and with that came HIV, water borne illnesses, and many accidents.  THe community still curses the people that brought it.  We all wondered and dreamt what this project would bring to Kochia.

I watched the Matron butcher a chicken with a blunt knife for dinner.  She placed the entire bird in boiling hot water as I sat on the stoop of the kitchen watching.  We removed the feathers from the whole chicken, which came out surprisingly easy, and she began to cut it into pieces.  She instructed me to hold one side, as she sawed through bone and fat with her knife.  The intestines and other organs were removed and placed in water. I said a silent prayer that I wouldn’t have to eat any of the intestines later as she squeezed their contents out onto the ground for the dogs to eat.  Silivia then fried each piece in grease and made kuku choma (fried chicken).  We ate it with salted tomatoes and ugali – one of the most delicious meals I have had here, and happily no intestines!

Today, an old man carrying a paddle hobbled through the side gate calling, ‘Omerra’ (equivalent of dude or brother)  to Silivia while she was washing clothes.  He came closer to us and held out his hand, which had a huge gash between his finger and thumb.  His pants were rolled up almost to his knees, and his feet looked swollen from work.  The beard on his chin was white and scraggily, and he wore a dirty brown cab driving hat.  He smiled a toothless grin at me, explaining he had cut his hand while grabbing on to an iron sheet after stumbling.  I watched Silivia weave nine blue stiches into his worked and calloused hand.  Silivia placed a bandaid with cartoon characters over it, and sent him on his way.  He left explaining to me that he had a canoe at the lake, and that he would bring me Okoko (fish) soon. 

My days here are punctuated by  incredible conversations and moments.  I'm not sure if it's that I am in no hurry to get to places, or that I don't have anything that I actually need to get done that is allowing me to fully witness these moments - but I'm quite happy with whatever it is. I find myself wishing that I had taken more time in my past 21 years of life to enjoy who and what was happening around me - but I guess it's good that it's happening now instead of never.  What moments do you enjoy the most during your day?

Moving

Yesterday, we (meaning about 30 or 40 people) helped a neighbor migrate her entire house to a different plot.  I woke up around 7:30 (it was so nice sleeping in!), and they had already begun placing posts in the ground at the site of her new house.  Wood and other materials were being carried on heads from one place to another.  Silivia and I went to see what was happening around 9:30, and posts were up with a string level tied to the top.  The women were seated on the ground preparing uji (porridge from maize, millet, and sorghum) and tea for the men.  They gave me a seat on a couch and I watched a women cut mudfish the size of my arm.  She hacked the vertebrate with a large knife as it twitched in her hands. 

I helped carry some furniture and other belongings with the other ladies.  They place everything they carry on the top of their heads.  I tried doing this with a small suitcase, failed miserably, and carried the rest on my shoulder or with my hands.  There was a lot of laughter from everyone during this process. The men took the iron sheets that made up the roof off of the old house, and carried them over to the new house. 

When most of the belongings had been transferred, I watched the building process on a couch in the shade.  The wind blew and children ran up to me to greet me, and then ran away giggling.  I watched as small branches were tied laterally around the house with twine.  Silivia explained that the men had to build the frame, and the ladies would then smear it with mud and cow dung when they were finished.  They were busy cooking and washing while they waited for their turn. 

I helped (or attempted to help) smear.  They use cows to plow up dirt, and then pour water over it so it makes mud.  They then use wheelbarrows to dump it at various points around the house.  You take the mud in both hands, and roll it into a long barrel, then push the sides in to form a brick.  They make this process look so easy, but my bricks were round in shape and crumbling in comparison.  You then take the brick you’ve just made, and jam it between the frame of the house.  All this is happening while the roof is being nailed on.  I said silent prayers that it wouldn’t come crashing down on my head – obviously it did not! After they finish packing the house with mud, they then smear it twice with other layers.  The final layer is cow dung, and it is smoothed out and then dries hard. I left before they got to this part, because there was no water to continue the smearing, and people were breaking for lunch.

Silivia and I left around 3 to wash up and come back to the house.  There was a football match that we were going to around 4, and we were both very tired.  I walked to the match, and watched in amazement as boys that just built this house played an entire 90 minute game.  My arms felt as heavy as lead as I watched them run up and down the field.  I returned home when it became dark.