A Day In The Life- Rural Kenyan Style

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about Kenyan culture, poverty, and many other macro-topics. But you may be asking yourself, why does someone do on a daily basis when living in Lusui, Kenya and working in a rural secondary school? I hope the following blog assuages your curiosity.

Kenyan Daily Schedule

6:05 am- Early Wake Up Call

Not much to talk about here. Only difference is that here I have to tie up my malaria net and fold my sheets before leaving bed.

6:05am- 6:30am-Active Exercise

Something that I love in Kenya is that I actually have time to run and keep a solid exercise routine. Two or three times a week I go on a 20 minute run, and the rest of the days I do push-ups and sit-ups on the floor in my room. My runs are usually on the nearby highway. One direction is straight downhill for ten minutes, which is great and easy, and then struggle uphill to return home. It’s  terrible, but offers morning views of the sunrise (below). The other is a more balanced run, with bland scenery. Either way, it’s an active start to the day, and it leaves me feeling great.

This is the sunrise that greets me on the downhill/uphill run. Worth it. 

6:30-6:45am- Bucket Showers, Hygiene, and Laundry

After exercising I head into the shower room (pictured below) and mix boiled water with the cold water from our water tank. I bring my toothbrush to the bucket shower, and brush my teeth before starting the shower. Cupping my hands, I then splash water on myself from the basin/bucket, add some soap, and then rinse everything off. Sometimes this routine involves shaving, which is done with soap as shaving cream and without a mirror. It’s an adventure. Every other day I also wash my socks and underwear that I’ve used over the past two days by hand. It’s a very productive bucket shower.

Bucket Shower Room! It's missing the blue plastic washing basin, but other than that its the same every morning.

6:45-7:05 am – Breakfast & Chai

Best part of the morning. After dressing and getting the books I need for school, I head out to enjoy the breakfast that my host mother has prepared. This includes tea, toast, eggs, and sometimes peanuts, small cookies, or other various additions. It’s an amazing breakfast, and I always make sure to thank my mother for the meal.

Mmmm, just looking at this uploaded picture makes me grave my delicious morning breakfasts. 

7:05 am-7:25- Walk to School, Talk to People 5000 miles away.

Twice a week I add talking to my parents and Alissa to my daily walk to school, but the rest of the days is a quiet walk of greeting villagers and taking in the early morning-African experience.

(dirt road to school)

7:25am-8:00am Library, Lesson Preparations

Each morning I open up the small library that we’ve started at the school, meet with the student library prefect Lymmer (pronounced Lie-ma), and then give books out to the students that come to the library. If I have time, I also prepare my morning lessons.

It's not much, but its a start. It's only been open for a week and a half now, so we have time to improve. 

8:00-5:00pm Teaching, Tea, More Teaching, Lunch, and finally, Teaching

This part of the day actually goes by rather quickly, and I’ve already talked about it in other blogs. I teach about 4 or 5 classes a day, out of the eleven that occur. In between classes I plan lessons, help students with problems, and read. The day also consists of an early morning tea break (clutch), and the daily lunch of Ugali and Skumawiki  (fried lettuce),and nyama (beef). Lunch is the same every day, which gets a bit old. But its good food, and its free, so I’m not complaining.

5:00-6:30pm- Walking, Work Time, Reading

After school I walk home with my brother, and then take some personal time. This consists of reading, researching things on the internet or writing blogs, and working on things for the school or things for back in the US. So basically just some relaxing work/down time in my room.

6:30-8:00pm- Cattle, Conversation, and Cooking

Usually around 6:30pm I find my host brother and together we walk the cattle that have been feeding in our compound back to the shed/barn for the evening and tie them to the correct posts. Then together we make the dinner for the evening, which usually takes around an hour or more. I’m not really trusted with the important part of the meal (cooking Ugali or meat), but I usually help by frying Chapati, slicing fruit or vegetables, filtering water, and setting the table. We have general conversation about the day, Kenya, and I learn Kiswahili words for the foods that we are cooking. This is part of why I love my host family. I learn about Kenya, we have fun together, and then we eat delicious food.

This is my host brother, Shikoli, preparing the Chapati for frying. 

8:00pm-9:15pm- Eating Food, Soy Tu Duena, News, and Nighttime Goodbyes

After a prayer, dinner commences. This is about a 20 minute meal, where taking heaping loads of seconds is all but required. The food is usually delicious though, and supremely satisfying. During the meal we watch the drama of Mexican Soap Opera Soy Tu Duena unfold on the television screen, followed by Kenya news. This routine is broken when we lose power during dinner, which happens a couple of time a week. At about 9 or 9:15, my Mama says “Joseph, as for me, I shall go to rest.” Two things. First, I’m called Joseph mostly because Kurt is difficult to pronounce. And second, I love the way that she says goodnight. It’s Yoda-esque, and I’ve started to copy it if I go to bed first.

9:15pm-10:00pm- Reading, Internet,  Lala (Sleep)

After saying goodnight I go in my room to read, journal, listen to music on my headphone, and then sleep. I’m usually in bed by ten. Before sleep I make sure to secure my mosquito net and set my morning alarm.

Room sweet room. The blue mosquito net is nice, although I've had to tie a few holes with dental floss. 

All in all it’s a healthy, consistent existence. I think that’s an important point to make. Before leaving for Africa many people warned me of violence, rape, and expressed concerns for my safety. In reality, life in Africa is relatively safe and normal. I think sometimes we try to distance ourselves from places like Africa by thinking that it is very different, foreign, removed from our own lives. But if you read the above day, I’m a normal person, living a normal life in a place that is all too often labeled as a haven of violence and poverty. There is a need to replace the image of Africa in our minds as a giant continent of suffering and poverty, with the image of normal people living their lives and trying to make the best of their situation.

So, I wanted to talk about the Safari’s that I’ve been going on, but I’ll save that for a later blog. Basically it’s a 3 weekend series of increasingly awesome places. Last weekend we spent 2 days at Lake Nakuru National Park, this weekend we are on midterm retreat at Hells Gate National Park, and next weekend we have a 3-day safari in the Masaai Mara National Reserve. I’ll give a broad update on these in a later blog entry.

So what’s coming up in this blog during my last five weeks in Kenya? Well, fundraising for electricity for the school where I’m working (don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I get the go-ahead. I’m going to try and raise about $1200 in a week. We can do it.) And part 2 of Hope for the Disillusioned World Changer, as well as a report on Kenyan Safaris. Should be an adventure.

Much love from Kenya,

Kurt

Kenya Culture Part 3, The Staples

Kenya Culture Part 3, The Staples

After a serious discussion in the last blog, I’ve decided to lighten up a bit and talk about some of the things that make Kenya, Kenya. I think one of my favorite things about Kenya is that it seems to be relatively homogenous in some large categories. That’s a large generalization, but Kenya is a more homogenous country than America, and that fact lends itself to a greater amount of shared habits and practices.

Cultural Bedrocks

I’m sure this list will include a couple of things that you wouldn’t expect, and be missing a couple of things that you might consider “Kenyan”. For instance, running is nowhere near a staple in Kenya. I’d saying running is about as Kenyan as apple pie (which they don’t have). Of course, they know that their athletes are good at running, but it doesn’t touch the life of a normal Kenya. I would estimate that well over 99% of Kenyans don’t run regularly, and those that run competitively are tiny sliver of the population.

So if running isn’t Kenya, what is? Well…

Ugali (Ooo-Gah-Lee)

Kenya=Ugali. Ugali is the staple food of Kenya. By that I mean that most Kenyans eat Ugali once or twice a day, every day of the year. Some Kenyans say that if you haven’t eaten Ugali during the day, you simply haven’t eaten. So what is this uber-popular food that has ensnared the hearts and stomachs of Kenya? 

My cousin Jack, struggling to stir the thick Ugali

It’s flour. Corn (Maize) flour. Mixed with boiling water. The resulting texture is like a thickened mixture of cornbread and mashed potatoes. And best of all, it’s meant to be eaten with your hands. It’s a thick enough mixture to where you can mold it a bit like play-do, but it gets a bit messy. It’s a new experience to eat the same food as a main course 1 or 2 times every day, but I’m learning to enjoy it.  

Chai (Tea)

Looking for residues of colonial influence? Looks no further than chai, or what Kenyans call tea. Kenyan tea is almost always served with milk. You can’t visit a home in Kenya without being offered tea (and turning it down is impolite). Naturally I’ve come to love my morning tea. And my tea break at work. And and I guess sometimes we also take tea after eating dinner.

Mug, Bowl for Sugar, and Vacuum Packaged Flask. Classic Kenya. 

Kenyans love eating and drinking things at very hot temperatures, and chai is no exception. Kenyans have a strong distaste for cold food, and this applies to beverages. If it’s burning your mouth to take a sip, then the temperature is perfect (if not a bit cold).

Frying Things (Cooking Oil)

I never knew how much Kenya and KFC had in common before arriving in Kakamega. Lettuce? Fry it. Cabbage? Cook it in oil, of course! Rice? Have you put the oil in the bowl yet? It’s seems that frying vegetables, meat, and adding oil to just about everything is as Kenyan as Ugali .

Golden Fry Cooking Oil. 2 liters will last us maybe 2 weeks. Maybe. 

My high school students were repulsed to hear that in the US I ate a salad of raw Spinach, tomatoes, onions, cold beans, and cabbage as a meal. To be fair, a common dish here is tomatoes, cilantro, and onions, served cold. But 97% of the time, those troublesome veggies get what was coming to them.

Salt

I'm pretty sure we finished this bag in the month I've been with the family.

Think a 2 kilogram (4.4 pound) bag of salt is ridiculous? Well, you have never been to Kenya. It’s not the use of salt that secures its spot on this list, but the quantity to which it is applied to food. In Kenya, a pinch of salt means filling the palm of your hand with salt, and then tossing it into whatever dish you are cooking/frying.  I apologize if I’m not making Kenyan food sound healthy (but it isn’t).

Cell Phones & Safaricom

Think of Africa. Then think of cell phones. I’m sure the two don’t cross your mind in the same sentence during the normal course of a day. But cell phones are everywhere here! Poor, rich, desperately poor, it doesn’t seem to matter, everyone has a cell phone. Cell phones also stand out a bit more here because of the contrast between Kenya’s adoptance rate of other technology (computer, internet, a well mainained road network) is much, much slower.

Ninoka Safaricom

Can you here me now? Well, in fact yes, and probably better than I could if we were talking on iPhones in America. Safaricom, the dominant cell phone provider, provides crystal clear service, offers calls to the US for 3 cents a minute, and has a reliable internet modem through which I’m current accessing the internet to post this blog.

Blue Band

I didn’t realize how much unhealthy food makes this list, but I can’t write a post about Kenyan staples without mentioning this hydrogenated wonder. Who knew that a specific brand of margarine could have a household name, and that marketers could get away with claiming its numerous health benefits?

The perfect golden devlish creation of marketing and health claims. 

On some of their many commercials Blue Band claims to help your children grow (fat provides energy), and it claims to be part of the main food group (fats and carbohydrates), but that you should also eat proteins as the second most important, and vitamins and minerals as the last food group (with pictures of vegetables in the background).  

Working Damn Hard

Africans in general have a reputation for not really caring about time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to do tedious, physical labor. There is no shortage of labor intensive jobs in Kenya. Especially is rural Kenya, and lot of life is hard, hard work. Each day a cattle farmer comes to the school where I work cuts grass for his cattle. By hand, with a machete.

Here is me trying to cut crass by hand with a local tool.

Mind you, this grass is about two or three inches long, so he has to bend over for 2-3 hours to cut the grass, and then stuff it into a bag to bring home to feed the cattle. They also have a tool here called a jembe, which is basically a hoe/shovel combination for working in the fields. I’ve seen people tilling fields of us to half an acre, by hand. (Definitely more than 1 days work). It’s astounding. People in Kenya know how to work, and work damn hard.

A Family’s Best Friend

In Kenya, cattle are signs of wealth and prosperity. You wouldn’t believe the disbelieving faces I receive when I tell people that in America, very, very few people own cattle. Said one Kenyan, “but I though everyone was rich in America.” That’s a good example of the thinking in Kenya. If you don’t have cattle, you are a poor man.

Our cattle. The one on the right is a stubborn bull. Getting him in the shed at night is always a hassle. 

My family has about 6 head of cattle, which grazes around our family’s compound. Each morning we tie them outside, and provide them with either a fresh patch of grass, or a piles of freshly cut grass from the garden (again, labor intensive).

Feel like you know Kenya a bit better? Well, there are 42 tribal groups in Kenya, all varied in their practices and cultures. So although these things can be overall staples, it does change greatly by region. I’ll write next time about my typical day in Lusui, as well as fundraising that the school and I will be doing to get electricity installed.

Peace from Kenya,

Kurt