Mama Africa

I reached Busia Kenya at about 5:30pm. A 2 hour ride ended up taking me nearly 5 hours. That's Africa for you.

Mama Grace, Betty's mother, came to pick me up from Busia and we arrived in their village Harambe, near a place called Mumias which is famous for it's endless sugarcane plantations. Chewed up bits of sugarcane carpet the streets, and there are plantations as far as the eye can see. If it's not sugarcane it's maize. If not maize then cattle.

I think this family is the one wealthiest in the district. Compared to the standard mud hut, they have a brick house, with no running water, but with solar power! They have a lot of cattle, who's mooing songs I bathed to in the mornings, and a large chamba (farm) with lots of maize, sugarcane, kasava and other cool crops.

As an aside I've had so many interesting bathing experiences whilst I've been here. Showering to the sound of our resident Maasai singing songs at Upperhill, showering in an open shower looking out over the river Nile and Bujagali Falls, and bathing to the mooing of Mama Grace's cattle. Welcome to Africa!

(Ryan and Mguito, our resident Maasai)

To be honest, I'm not sure whether Mama Grace knew why I was there. Instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing - meeting the guy in charge of the Computer and Bee Keeping Projects - I was paraded around and put on a pedestal. It wasn't fun.

The day after I arrived, I was taken to all the schools in the area who are receiving school books from Adam and Betty in Adelaide. At each school, classes were disturbed, and an assembly was called cos a mzungu was there. I was expected to say some inspirational speech about education to these poor innocent children who had no idea that I a) had nothing to do with these books at all, b) I wasn't there to be parading around and making inspirational speeches, c) I totally don't believe in putting myself up on a pedestal cos I'm a mzungu and feeling good about myself cos I'm saving little black children by giving them a hand full of books that schools in Aus don't want. This all goes completely against my whole belief system. I'm not in Africa to parade around as a white person saving the black race. I'm not interested in public health and community development cos I think I'm so great I can save the world or that I want people to look up to me. I'm interested in this area because I can't not be. It's hard to explain.

Anyway, I was feeling more and more guilty about having to pretend that I had something to do with these books and accepting people's gratitude. The final straw was when suddenly I couldn't find my mobile in my bag. As I was looking around for it, one of the teachers who was parading around to all the schools with us goes "Are you looking for this?" with my phone in his hand. I thought it was weird that he had my mobile, and that he'd taken it out of my bag, but I tried not to think anything of it. He told me that he had to message his friend back to tell him he was busy but he didn't have any credit, so he asked if he could use my phone. I was tempted to say no, but gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him do so. The idiot didn't realise I can check my sent messages, and the message he had written went something like this: This is dr. snieha from austria. call this number, she can help you go abroad.

I was pissed off. The idiot lied to me. I then had to field off phone calls from random people telling them I had no idea how they could go to Austria or Australia or wherever, and that no, I didn't have enough money to help them buy a ticket. Not happy.

That wasn't it. Everyone I met over the few days I was there kept asking me for things. I'd meet a random Bishop and Mama would go "See, he has no furniture, you must send furniture for him from Australia" and then the guy would thank me profusely and say God will be my saviour and all this shit. That's not why I was there, and after days and days of people continuously asking you to send them things it gets a little frustrating. In all my time in Africa so far, I have never been treated like this. I didn't know how to deal with it.

I suspect that I probably sound selfish. But it wasn't like these people were asking me for money to buy food or water or whatever, I was asked for stuff like a keyboard for the choir in the church and a generator to run it, furniture for the Bishop's lounge room, and a van for the kids at one of the primary schools to go on excursions.

Anyway, I was miserable and lonely and eventually I spun a web of lies and came back to Nairobi.

I've met some Danish med students who are staying at Upperhill. They're doing a brief stint with an NGO called Provide Int through IFMSA. Provide has clinics all over Nairobi - primarily in the slums (there are many more other than Kibera). I went along with them to a clinic in a place called Korogocho and we ran an information session on family planning for single teenage mothers who have had kids out of wedlock adn have been ousted from their families and dumped by their boyfriends.

These people have some really strange ideas about contraception and sex. As well as the standard story that I have heard a few times that Joshua was telling me - if the woman takes the pill a lot, the medicine builds up in her body so when she has sex with the man, the medicine is transmitted to his body and he can no longer enjoy sex (or something along those lines) - they have many other strange ideas. One woman was saying when she has sex with ehr boyfriend and she has her period, after 2 days he gets lower abdominal pain. She thought that was her fault cos she had her period...

I'm not sure why they have these beliefs. There are no mens health groups, so all the information the men get is from their friends. And when no one really knows the truth it's easy to blame the woman for random symptoms.

I'm heading to Lake Bogoria and Lake Baringo next week with two of the Danes to check out the pink flamingoes and hot springs. Then heading to the Maasai Mara with Ryan for a few days. Should be fun!