"Things That Go!"

Buses. Matatus. Motorcycles. Let me share my experiences with you about three of Kenyas most popular forms of transportation.
There is nothing in America that can compare to a stick shift charter bus barreling down a rocky dirt road. Recently I spent 14 hours on one of these monsters to get from my village to Nairobi. The bus left Sori at 4:30pm. On the roof top were bins of omena (sardines) on their way to the markets in Nairobi. The bus stops about every 400 meters dropping off and picking up people. With each stop a new scent permeates the bus. Smells range from fish to body odor to over powering cologne. Fours hours into the trip we make it to the town of Kisii which is really only two hours away. Then it begins to rain. Water seeps through the cracks of my closed window. With each bump and turn water pours onto my lap. I cover myself with a plastic bag to prevent my jeans from becoming more soaked. At midnight we take a 30 minute stop at a roadside café, just as I’m falling asleep we arrive there. I head to the bathroom. There are no toilets, just stalls with a hole in the ground, a common finding in Kenya. I’m fully awakened by the putrid smell coming from the hole. Back on the bus I doze off again enjoying the smooth paved roads for the rest of the journey. I toss and turn trying to get comfortable but really there is no point in trying to sleep because the old women in front of me is singing to herself. In a screeching, off-key voice she sings Duhluo hymns, and “I love Jesus.” That’s great you love Jesus, I do too! But for the love of Jesus its 2am! Please stop singing! At 3:30am we roll into the desolate streets of Nairobi. We pull into the bus station and nobody gets off, everyone sits there until the sun comes up when it is safe to get off. I finally get some sleep because the singing grandma has also fallen asleep. But at 5:45am just as the sun is starting to rise I’m poked by the bus driver, “Muzungu, twende.” (White man, let’s go) Half asleep I start my day in Nairobi. Suddenly, Greyhound is looking like first class!
Matatus. Imagine a 14 passenger minivan stuffed with 20 adults, add some massive speakers, and a huge decal of Brittney Spears, Obama, or Jesus on the back window and you have yourself a typical Kenyan matatu. Personal space is nonsexist in these crammed vans driven by lunatic drivers. It is a competition to see how many people can cram in. Arm pits are in people’s faces, half of your butt cheek is in your neighbor’s lap, and elbows are jabbed into your side with every bump. Here are a few of my most memorable matatu moments. A passenger in the front seat becomes sick, and starts puking out the window. The driver doesn’t want puke smeared down the side of the van so they decide to move him to the very back seat right next to me. So I am sitting next to this man with his head out the window barfing going 50mph. Another time I sat next to a man carrying a live chicken with him. He kept in on the floor between his feet. I smelled something and realize the chicken has pooped on the floor. Yuck! A few minutes later I feel something on my ankle. It is the chicken, apparently my white skin looks like chicken feed. How do I politely tell this man, “Um, your cock is pecking my ankle!”
Motorcycles are the most common transport around the hospital. It works like a taxi service taking people to other nearby villages. However, some of these motorcycles think they are moving trucks. They carry 3 passengers at one time. I’ve seen everything from beds, chairs, lumber, and suitcases carried on these things. These reckless drivers keep the x-ray department busy. I’ve seen way too many fractured arms, legs, and skulls because of them. Walking along the road isn’t much safer either. Pedestrians don’t have the right a way, and these drivers have no fear. Yesterday we had a woman who was hit my a motorcycle while walking along the road. She arrived at the hospital in her makeshift brace of twigs and twine with a compound fracture. The tibia and tendons were hanging out covered in dirt. Of course the man who hit her didn’t stop. Not because for fear of the cops, but fearing mob violence.
My favorite form of transportation? Walking….far, far, away from the road.

Mzungu = White Person

By: Christy Stutsman
March 10, 2009

“Mzungu! Mzungu” you yell out to me,
your eyes brightly shining, your face lit with glee.

“Ciao! Ciao!” the toddlers chorus,
a greeting of the missioners who came here before us.

“America! America!” Lauren and I shout in reply,
we’re not European, we say “hi” or “good-bye.”

Warm greetings are common, a nod or a wave,
more often a handshake, it’s their absolute fave.

Wet hands, sticky hands, hands dripping nasal goo,
oh yes, what a pleasure, it’s nice to see you too.

We part and move on, striding down a dirt path,
by the lake there are children enjoying a bath.

No matter where we go, the landscape doesn’t change,
deep brown to vivid green spans the full color range.

Cows, donkeys, goats, dogs, and pigs,
a multitude of creatures wandering about on four legs.

African animals are harder to spot,
well…except for the hippo that Lauren just fought!

Both knees are gashed, left arm is achy,
but I’m the one who knows her story’s a fakey.

She was running with me when she tripped on a rock,
the blood began to drip in a jagged line to her sock.

Kenyans had to gawk, on Doc Balient’s door we did knock,
he gave a tetanus booster so her jaw would not lock.

We joked about ways to get out of here,
we were doubting survival in Karungu for a year.


But, our perspective is now brightening,
it no longer seems as frightening,

we’ll make it in this place
with just a little bit of grace.

"So much to be thankful for..."

What I’m thankful for..
1.My mom
2. Supportive friends and family
3. Food to eat
4. Roof over my head
5. Access to quality healthcare
6. Clean drinking water
7. Education
8. Non corrupt government
9. Thanksgiving traditions.. .my uncle John’s grilled turkey, my
aunt's stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie,
and of course Skyline Chili dip, and a competitive game of
Scattergories with my cousins that follows dinner.
Kristen, we’re going shopping at 5am tomorrow morning, right? I’ll
meet you in Eastgate.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dirt Poor

You’re about 16 years old. Not really sure what year you were born in. Your father died when you were an infant. You have never attended a day of school in your life. You cannot read or write- not even your name. You mix up the numbers counting to ten in Duhluo, your native language. Jiggers(pinhole sized bugs) burrow into your skin because you sleep on the dirt floor of your hut. Your brother is mentally handicap and doesn’t speak. Your mother is too weak to gather firewood to sell at the market. The straw roof of your house is falling apart so every time it rains you get soaked. You have no consistent food supply. In recent months your food supply has been the washed up omena (like sardines) dried up on the shore of the lake. This is the life of Gaston Omundi.

Two weeks ago Gaston and his family were brought to St. Camillus by a community health worker and fellow CMMB volunteer, Kayla. The first few days Mary, Gaston, and Michael just laid in bed so worn out by their living situation. Being admitted to the hospital was like checking into a five star hotel. They each had a bed, 3 meals a day, running water, electricity, didn’t have to worry about the impending afternoon thunderstorm and most importantly access to healthcare. We spent a week excising jiggers from their hands, feet, and butts. All the result of months of sleeping on a infested dirt floor. (Like bed bugs but more painful.) Hours were spent soaking and digging out the jiggers. Puss, blood, and larvae flowed out of the sores we opened. A painful process, but very much needed. I’ve seen lots of unpleasant things working in hospitals but this may be at the top of this list.

While all this was going on at the hospital, a new home was being constructed for the family. The old house needed to be burned down to prevent the spread of the bugs. Its kind of like Extreme Home Makeover..Kenya Edition. Instead of Ty Pennington flying you to Disney World, the white people take you to the hospital. To this family the hospital was Disney World!

Gaston and I became friends. He’d drop by x-ray always in a cheerful mood. I didn’t know weather to feel happiness or disgust that this child was so happy. He was always singing, dancing, and laughing which is great. At the same time, my four year old niece is more educated then this 16 year old. What does his future hold? He cant even become a fisherman or a farmer because he doesn’t know how to count. He’ll be cheated every time he tries to sell his goods. What is going to happen to him? It became my goal to teach him how to count to ten in Duhluo. Every morning he’d be waiting for me to arrive at work and we would count over and over and over. “Achiel, areiyo, adeick,…” He’d mix up 4 and 6 a lot and he’d just start laughing as I wanted to pull out my hair. How can I get this into his mind?! I have incredible respect for teachers! By the end of his stay he was almost counting to ten consistently. “Teach maber, Gaston!” (Good work!)

On Friday I had the privilege of taking them back home. They lit up as they saw their new house. With full bellies and no jiggers they started a new chapter in life. A social worker will continue to work with them to make sure they stay that way.

Welcome home, jigger family!

Frustration

It doesn’t matter how long I have been here. There are some days that I am just dumbfounded by what I hear and see. Times that I find myself asking, “Why is this happening?!” Times when I just want to bang my head against the wall because it doesn’t make any sense. Let me share with you some of those frustrations.
-20 year old comes in for an obstetric ultrasound. This is her fourth pregnancy. She only has one living child, the other two dies as infants.
-A man is told he has cancer but we don’t have the drugs or resources to treat cancer at our hospital. He needs to travel to Nairobi, 8 hours away, to get proper treatment but he doesn’t have the money to travel there.
-A sick woman needs to be admitted to the hospital for further treatment but she doesn’t have the $12 for the admission fee. So she goes home and asks family and friends to borrow some money. Once she has collected enough money (which can take days or weeks) she then returns to the hospital. By this point she’s very weak. Shortly after arriving at the hospital she passes away. (Its not unusual to hear about patients dying on their way to the hospital or at our front door.)
-A man has a spiral fracture of his tibia. An hour after x-raying him I see him standing outside washing his clothes.-A teen finally gets tested for HIV. It comes back positive and he’s started on ARVs. After a few months he stops taking them because he can no longer afford to travel to the hospital to get the weekly/monthly supply of medication. (ARVs are completely free thanks to Catholic Relief Services)
-An HIV positive mother continues to breastfeed her baby beyond the recommended first 6 months and risks transmitting HIV because she has nothing else to feed him/her. The child ends up testing HIV positive by age 2.
-Students becoming pregnant is common, sometimes it is the result of teacher/student relationships.
-X-raying a toddler and an hour or two later I see the child being rolled away to the morgue.- A woman fractured her arm. She was beaten by a neighbor. The neighbor’s cow was on her property and eating her crops so she whipped it trying to get it to leave. The owner saw this and didn’t approve so he beat the woman.
-A newly admitted patient has never seen a toilet before today. All of her life she has squatted over a hole. She doesn’t know which way to sit on it, and she doesn’t know how to flush. Hand washing is a foreign concept. (Cholera outbreaks are a problem. No running water in the region=no flush toilets and little hand washing)
-Life expectancy is decreasing. Its now 47 years old, compared to 52 a few years ago. Anyone over 50 is considered elderly.
-Most of the community does not have health insurance. They cannot afford to pay 160 Shillings a month to cover their entire family. ($2 USD)
-HIV positive mother doesn’t want her newborn to be put on a HIV prophylaxis because then her husband will know that the wife is positive. Which means the woman has been unfaithful, or the husband is also positive and they aren’t revealing their status to each other.
-A woman doesn’t want oxygen placed on her ill husband because she had another sick relative who was given oxygen and he shortly died after that.
-Teen pregnancy is common. Oftentimes these girls are orphans and can barley support themselves. How are they going to support another life?
-Parents die of AIDS leaving the children to be looked after by the grandmother. The elderly grandmother can’t do it so the oldest child drops out of school to care for the siblings and the ailing grandparent.
-Single moms turn to prostitution in order to put food on the table for their children. They then get infected, die, and the children become orphans.

The Neighborhood

“Obama! Obama!” The chorus of small children yell this as they run to me wrapping themselves around my legs and begging to be picked up. I grab a few of the lightest ones and toss them into the air and spin them around. This is a frequent occurrence considering every time I walk to or from my house I’m bombarded by the neighborhood kids. Really, I just passed you 10 minutes ago you don’t need to attack me again!
There is never a dull moment thanks to the kids in the neighborhood. Living in the hospital staff compound I’m surrounded by about 50 children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, of my coworkers. These kids are fascinated by the muzungs living next to them. The first few weeks of living here I felt like an animal at the zoo. Children would stand at our windows and gawk all day long. They’d pound on the door chanting, “Muzungu, give me sweets!” No! Parents warned us never to give the kids food or else they would always come back asking for more.
My house has become a play room. Our toys consist of a Where’s Waldo book, and a few bouncy balls. But most of all the kids are interested in just watching me do everyday things. They watch me brush my teeth, comb my hair, do my dishes, sweep the floor. Sometimes they assist in helping hand wash my clothes. Freddy, it really isn’t necessary for you to be washing my underwear! But everything is more interesting when a white person does it.
You never know what “toys” the kids are going to bring a long with them. Zedi once brought in his little truck with a dead bird in the back of it. Allen comes in holding a rusty saw blade. Samuel is chewing on some pills- go figure his dad is a doctor. Olga is trying to scare me with a goat skull (probably the remnants of a recent slaughter). Baby usually comes over without shorts or underwear and likes to sit on our furniture. You can’t turn your back on them or else they’re scouring our food bin looking for a snack , or they’re running away with our belongings. Hey, come back here with my hairbrush! I’ll be walking home from work and I see a 1 ½ year old dragging my running shoes across the compound. One afternoon I watched a group of preschoolers chase cows away by throwing rocks at their behinds. Cheap entertainment! Who needs a swing set and sidewalk chalk when you have cows and rocks!?
Not all of the children enjoy us. Some of the tiny ones are afraid of the big white monsters living near them. One little guy, Bradley, screams and bolts home if I am within 20 yards of him. The older kids know how afraid he is and they’ve made a game out of it. They carry him to our front step (unbeknown to him that it is my house) knock, and leave him stranded. So when we answer the door he’s alone, face-to-face with the white girls. The horror-stricken boy bolts home at lightening speed. The first few months were tough for Bradley but he’s finally get use to me.
It’s great having the kids around. I’ve improved my Swahili learning phrases like “Don’t touch that.” “Take off your shoes.” “Go home, return tomorrow!” They are overall well behaved, cute kids. I’d compare it to having 50 nieces and nephews, they are fun to play with but when you get tired of them you can send them back home to mom and dad!

Sundays in Sori

Sundays have become my favorite day of the week because its market day. The open air market is bustling with people, produce, and poultry. Goats meander through the market, and the smell of dried omena (like sardines) is potent. Mounds of tomatoes line the isle way. Villagers come from their homes, miles away, carrying their tomatoes, onions, maize, beans, and fish to sell at the weekly market.
Armed with my plastic shopping bags and 350 Kenyan Shillings (about $4) I trek to the market in Sori 2.5 miles down the road. This past weeks shopping list included onions, cabbage, sugar, and papaya. Bargaining is essential. No price tags, and no ads telling you what the weekly specials are. Being white usually causes the price to double. When I was a market rookie I inquired about fair prices on items from friends before I went to the market. I want to pay the “mafrika price” (black man), and not the “muzungu price” (white man). When people see me their eyes turn into dollar signs. Being a veteran market goer I now know what the fair prices are and I fight for them. If their was a Price is Right Karungu, I would definitely win. I hate being over charged, even if it is just a few shillings. Usually, ‘mano maan yen’ (that’s too much!), putting down the item, and slowly starting to walk away is a good tactic. Most of the time the seller will agree to my price.
My favorite part of the market is the second hand clothing piles imported form the US and Europe. I love rummaging though the heaps of Goodwill leftovers. Some of my best purchases have been: a Xavier U. t-shirt, American Eagle tank top, and Aeropastle pants that fit perfectly. They have spruced up my wardrobe of ten shirts that I have been wearing the past eight months. A shirt is about 50 cents and pants are $1.50. Not bad considering that they sometimes still have the $6.99 Goodwill price tag on them.
The first few trips to the market I was a spectacle. I think the entire market stopped what they were doing to look at me. Seeing white people in the market was unchartered territory. Usually visitors come just to take pictures then leave, but I was actually there to make some purchases. At one point, I looked up from rummaging through a pile to fine 4 women lined up in front of me just staring at me in amazement. Yes, I am a white girl and I’m looking to buy some second hand clothes. Small children also liked to follow me around and to observe the purchases I am making.

What’s the cost of living? (74 cents=100 shillings)
Bread 35 shillings
4 Tomatoes 20 shillings
Cabbage 30 shillings
Sugar (1kg) 110 shillings
Pineapple 40 shillings

A Sunday afternoon of haggling at the market…..priceless!
For everything else there is Mastercard