Kenya Report - Part IV

So what did I do while the ‘teachers’ were in the classroom? Made ‘house calls’ with Lillian the Orphan Overseer - that role is actually a combination, Social Worker/Public Health Nurse/Counselor all rolled into one. Lillian is a lovely young woman almost 38 and with wisdom beyond her years. After we got to know each other, she shyly shared with me that there was a slight concern about how much ‘walking’ etc. I would be able to do [guess she figured out any woman with two grown children and all those grandchildren, well I wasn't as young as she. And this is where I also believe prayers were answered, as I had no trouble keeping up with her and as a result, we were able to make many days of home visits.

The average Kenyan lives in a rural environment. The picture above is of a family in front of their traditional house. The houses are in most cases coated with a mud wall and the roof thatched with grass where the family cannot afford iron sheet roofing. The houses are basically three roomed with one partition being the main sitting room, a bedroom for the parents and a separate bedroom for all the children. The kitchens and bathrooms are usually separate tiny buildings and the mode of cooking is firewood. Most of the families grow food in farms for their daily survival and strive to produce a surplus which they can sell in local markets to supplement their other basic needs.

"Home" is in the eyes of the beholder as I saw everything from a home that most of you would be okay with to the picture above - mud huts with thatched or tin roofs. No indoor plumbing of any sort and none outside either. So the water had to be hauled up every day from Lake Victoria or other distribution points either by the children or adults. For the most part, I found the homes were neat and what continually amazed me was how the women not only had very clean clothing, but well pressed! Remember they did their washing by hand - no washing machine and the women used what many of our grandmothers or for some of you 'great-grandmothers' used the 'hot iron box' for ironing. They didn't have much but what they did own was neat. Most had some sort of small garden growing 'maze' and chicken's for laying eggs. In several homes these hens were sitting on their eggs, in the house! For some reason the chickens acted more like house 'pets' - the cows, donkeys and goats roam pretty freely - especially the goats. It was a common site to see the women in the morning walking down the road with various items on their heads, and I’m not talking light loads. Definitely a 'skill' taught young. A couple of our teachers tried to be helpful for their hostess on the Sunday visit by going down to the lake to help fetch water - much to their dismay, some of the local children came to their rescue and carried the water back for them on their heads. [the children]

June 26 & 27, the Tuesday and Wednesday of our second week I had the opportunity to share with the parents/caregivers of the children at the school - Tuesday’s group included ages 3 yrs and up - majority were women, but about a dozen men attended as well. Considering it was planned for 9 to noon, it was good that any men attended. Amazingly enough, parents in the small fishing village of Mbita deal with many of the same issues as parents around the world - the context is different but the issues the same. Children are children and do childish things and of course, they do grow and still do some childish things - so it was helpful to explain to them as many of you have learned, providing the ‘moral reason why’ is critical. Of course, it was necessary to deal with the example being set etc. Wednesday’s group were 3 and under. Although a count wasn’t taken [to my knowledge] there looked to be about 75-100 people both days. Lillian was very pleased. I could go on and on but won’t bore you with the details. A fun comment made by the U.S. teachers who got to sit in on some of the teaching time was that they felt it was the first PTA meeting being held in Mbita! After the meetings which extended way beyond the noon hour the parents were told that they would receive a ‘mattress, blanket and mosquito net’ for each of the students they had attending the school! That was met by cheers - they were not aware this was happening. Talk about a site - as those ladies left, some with 4 mattresses tied up in a roll and carried on their head, walking down the hill from the school to the main road! [Remember what I said about the roads]

One cute story to share - just as an example about some of the ‘tricks’ older siblings like to play on younger, again only the context is different. There was an adorable 3 year old who came with her Mama on Wednesday and arrived a bit early, so we had a chance to ‘chat’ although neither of really understood the other except for the smiles and hugs she eventually allowed me to give her. She held back any hugs until she was sure that I was not in the habit of ‘eating little children’ - yes you read that right! Her Momma who spoke enough English said her little one wanted to know if I ate little children. Evidently the older children in the family or neighborhood like to scare the little ones by telling them the ‘white people’ eat little children as the older like to see the little ones cry etc. when they see a white person [not many] walking down the street or waving at them. Once she was sure I was okay, we became friends. Thank you for indulging me on that one.

Kenya Report - Part V