It will happen in Kenya time....
Week 4
The week began with strange sensations of dizziness and nausea and I was forced to visit the doctor at the hospital. Turns out I had tonsillitis which had spread into my left sinus and caused an ear infection. Surprisingly, I didn’t even have a sore throat but the ear infection explained the light-headedness. After a course of antibiotics I now feel much better but am still baffled as to how I am immune to the rampant Kenyan stomach bug (especially with three more volunteers being admitted to hospital this week!)
The project work at Muhaka this week involved constructing sports courts for the school children to play soccer, netball and volleyball. Basically, this entailed drawing lines in the sand with wet chalk which was washed away by a light shower 15 minutes later! Adjusting to a life with neither resources nor professionals at hand can be extremely frustrating. We all keep on saying ‘It will happen in Kenya time’. The underlying reason for the need to build sports courts in the first place is to encourage the school children to be active. Apparently, the number of girls aged 14-18 falling pregnant in the community is skyrocketing because they have nothing to do in the afternoon when school ends and one thing leads to another. Being a Muslim community, it is taboo to be educated about sex and therefore they feel the need to keep the students preoccupied by playing sports.
On Friday we said an emotional farewell to two volunteers, one of which had become a very good friend of mine and I didn’t want to say goodbye to! It was a rollercoaster of a day, with 10 new volunteers from the UK arriving minutes later and being welcomed by us all teary-eyed and miserable. Our spirits lifted quickly as we befriended the ‘newbies’ and found ourselves amoung an awesome group of people!
Week 5
I can honestly say that this week was the most rewarding and stimulating week so far. Along with 6 other volunteers (5 new, 1 old) I spent the week helping out at an orphanage. Our 5 days there were a mixture of hard physical labour (clearing a forest to allow foundations to be laid for a new classroom), playing Kenyan games with the orphans, learning to cook African food and teaching the children the alphabet and subtraction. The orphans live with their grandparents but attend the orphanage for free during the day. Most of their grandparents cannot afford to give them any food until dinner, which even then is not always guaranteed. They range in age from 2 to 12 and are all taught in the same classroom, by the same teacher. They absolutely adored us ‘mzungus’ (white people) and bombarded us all day, every day. It was wonderful to be able to help them expand the orphanage, while falling in love with the children and being exposed to African culture. We cooked ugali, which is a way of preparing maize meal, chapattis and beans, chai tea, coffee, roasted cashew nuts and coconut milk. Everything was made as if we were living off the land by the traditional recipes, and it tasted phenomenal too! Mama Uji, the lady who runs the show, paid for all the ingredients out of her own pocket so that she could teach us how to cook like the African women. I was enthusiastic to go there every morning and saddened to leave each afternoon!
On Friday night I also had to say goodbye indefinitely to 6 more of the original volunteers as 3 are climbing Mt. Kenya and 3 are climbing Kilimanjaro. It’s surreal to think that I will have left Kenya by the time they reach the summit.
Tonight there is a massive party at one of the beach bars in celebration of Valentine’s Day, which will hopefully be an awesome way to spend my last weekend in Kenya.
I know I leave for Johannesburg on Wednesday but I just cannot imagine being anywhere else but Muhaka. I feel as though this is life as it always has been and always will be!
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