Journal # 1

We drove in from the airport, and it was like the pictures.  The slum community of Ongata Rongai.  I was having trouble staying awake. Images wafted in and out of my vision.  Shops the size of a cubicle constructed of tin and stick frames.  How can there be so many vegetable and greens grocers?  I can’t image that make much business.  However, soon the rode became extremely rugged and I was awake.  Again people everywhere.  People had to herd out of the way like sheep for our van imposing itself along rough dirt streets used for walking, close to no one has a car here.  There was a lot of life going on.  Even with the commotion, people still looked up and into the van at us.  I kept my head mostly forward with relaxed passive expression.  This was a façade that I hoped portrayed a young woman interested in where I was headed, but also not gawking in wonder at the people and commotion on either side of me.  I couldn’t help feeling like some sort of asshole driving through the slum community in our van.  A safari van muscling through a slum community full of privileged white kids-a vessel of comparatively wealthy foreigners taking a safari through the slum, checking out the white man’s burden.  I remembered the article, “Slumdog Tourism.”  What were the busy Kenyans thinking of me the other students as we rode by, interrupting their chatter and business transactions?

Everywhere you look in the community there are people struggling.  There is a plethora of things to be done here. Here and thousands of other places around the world.  There is a Kenyan child in right in front of me suffering but in many ways it is the same child suffering in India, the same child in Haiti, the same child in millions of towns and cities and slums spread across the globe. I only brought so much money, we only have so much money in our collective pot of donations.  Going on the house visits and regrouping to share the stories of the families is despairing.  Everyone cannot pay the rent, everyone does not have enough food, and most have other irrefutable problems—basic things such as education, medical treatment and domestic issues.   How did the power come into my hands and (on my heart and mind) to decide that this kid gets the money to go to the hospital or go to school and this other one doesn’t? Because I hold the money?  It is a disturbing thing to play god.  I try to remember that good will be done with the distribution of our money, but the faces of those neglected is haunting.  Looking at the results you see that good is done, the equation ends with lives improved. However, humans are not math.

I feel depression growing in me like a lump emerging from my belly, up to my heart, and up through my throat, until it rests in the back there, a stubborn reminder of my trying desperately to hold onto Africa.  Africa revived me. Yes, Kenya makes you realize that a lot of Americans waste water, food, and other resources.  But I noticed most how much we waste our time and minds, how much we preoccupy ourselves with frivolous things, activities and thoughts.

Journal #2

Stigma can be something universal. No matter what, it is a natural reaction in the back of one’s head to think twice about touching or being close with someone who is HIV+, or even view them differently in your head. Curiosity strikes everyone and it is so hard not to think, Why did they get it? Were they promiscuous? It is important to break down these walls as more and more support becomes prevalent for HIV positive men and women.

We did home visits with Maureen and Josephine. We went to Nancy who was HIV+ but had a very nice home (steel, stationary roof -- not the tin sheets) which was jarring. She has a son who is HIV+ and has pneumonia, which is her main concern. We did a lot of walking and it was extremely exhausting, Maureen even called it quits about half way through. The last home we went to was Veronica’s, who was probably the cutest older woman I have ever met. She was so happy to have visitors, she was dancing and really gave us the classic firm, three-fold handshake each. She was so happy and had a great aura about her. We asked her mainly of the area of Kware and how it has changed since she has been living here.

Tonight was literally like saying goodbye to my own family. I would argue I had more of a connection with many of the family here in Kenya than I do with some people in my own extended family in the United States, and this made it so incredibly hard to leave. Steve Snow constantly tells us to pick up on the fact how happy we were here, despite being literally in the middle of a slum in a country half way across the world. This is probably the most amazing conclusion and concrete feeling I have leaving Kenya...that I was just genuinely happy here. Of course we saw so many raw, real and sad circumstances, but we were so happy.

Journal #3

I need strength for tomorrow.  Today it rained, so we waited for it to clear up.  It didn’t. We got to Lenana and we watched as a local artist taught some kids how to paint and print make.  The children seemed to like it then we taught them a few songs and were just overwhelmed but what we had in front of us a hundred children from an African slum with dirty clothes, shoes with holes and dripping wet, running around like fools!

We met a younger man who said he grew up in the Lenana slum and now is going to be a teacher.  He said that without help from volunteer like Mick and I he would have never gotten as far and the opportunity to compete with kids that lived a privileged life.

  It’s all coming so quick.  You never know what’s going to happen.

Where did it all go wrong?  That Africans had to live in corrugated tin while others have solid houses?  That so many orphaned?  That people are so disorganized?  Why them?  The artist with a heart of gold that sells one painting a month.  What is this twisted logic capturing everyone’s minds?  Where did these people get the idea that this is the best they can do? 

Why do they have more love and fire in their hearts than anyone I’ve ever met?  Why do they keep smiling?  Maybe I’m the poor one corrupted and tormented by “civilized society.  We walked home with a volunteer who said he rarely gets to talk to white people because they are usually too busy.  He’s an artist and said when you’re an artist you think art, dream art and love it.  We’re all the same everywhere. He was surprised to hear about subways underneath the city and to hear that white people could possibly be poor.  He walked with us for nearly an hour just to chat.  He needs help just like everyone else.  It felt like a Friday.

Today was really very hard.  Life doesn’t get much harder than what these people stay in.  Tin, swamp, dirt, absolute hell.  Margaret, the pastor who owns the land the slum is on, said that the morale of the place used to be terrible but people came in with religion, non-denominational, and the morale is slowly getting better.

Saying goodbye to these kids, what do you say? Goodbye forever?  It was nice knowing you; I hope you have a good time in the slum?  Good luck with the HIV, Malaria, TB…don’t die?  Steven, Brian, Phineas, John, Amos, all the small ones with their beautiful smiles.  They’ll haunt me.  I can’t breathe knowing I’m leaving them all.  I hope they find love and hope for life.  I hope we made some sort of difference.

Hundreds of children just want to hold your hand. The only difference between them and us are where we were born.

Journal # 3

The next day Snow called Sabrina’s cell and asked if we wanted to go to a home visit with him.  We jumped at the chance to get our feet wet and do something.  He said we would be meeting his friend Nancy and we would be going to a area called Eastlands.  Because it was unsafe we are going to be accompanied by a man from named Jason. Ten minutes away from or original destination we were in a destitute part of town.  People picking through mounds of garbage, the familiar rows of shops, salons, celltell, safaricom, and boutiques.  My stomach was feeling a little queasy.  The warning: “hold on to you bag and be friendly.” We parked on the side of the road, on our right were piles of burning garbage and within 25 feet were wooden fruit stands.  If you looked ahead you just saw rows that made up what appeared to be a shanty town.  We started walking, I clenched my bag and looked ahead to my protectorates, Snow and Jason.  We walked into the slums characterized by childhood for like homes, made from aluminum, cardboard and wood.  Children looked up at me with dirty hands and faces, their clothes filthy, tattered and no shoes.  There is no place but the streets to defecate, there is no sanitation or sewage system. 

People’s faces seemed more unfriendly than I had encountered in all of my travels this past week.  To get into Stephen’s home we had to duck, immediate reactions: stifling, no ventilation, it is smaller then a bathroom at my house, odors and I can see an emaciated figure laying on the cot before me.  I went to him, I didn’t bring a stethoscope, why?  His breath sounds would have been great for me to hear to practice.  I felt him, he was burning up, I felt his radial pulse and then went for his pedal pulses. His pedal pulse was irregular and his radial was slow.  He felt warm even on his low extremities.  He was clearly dehydrated he had poor skin turgor, it was tenting his capillary refill was x > 3 seconds, his eyes sunken. I palpated his abdomen, his ribs were protruding, I was helpless what could I do for him, except hold his hand and get fluids in him.  He probably had next to none gag reflex but if we were going to give him anything he needed to be in high fallers and not laying down.

Snow held his hand and Sabrina went to him we had him drink sips of water but he needed a hospital or at least to be out of the horrible environment.  It was an unreal day and if I go home tomorrow this trip would have been worth it.  I felt ashamed walking out of the car and back into the hotel, I was staying with the privileged Kenyan tourists who had no fucking idea what it was to be without anything or be in the company of people who has less then them.  Here they are staying in Africa and their family excursion is to be on a private safari and eat at expensive restaurants.  I want to bring my kids all over the world and I want them to experience poverty before they are 21, I want them to see it when they are maturing and not an adult not that I am by any means but this is life and it will make the harder for injustices. I think people here are so resilient.  I am not implying they should be looked at only to evoke feelings of sympathy, but rather empathy, and it should evoke a need to change yourself for the better-- because you know what you have. I will look to this day as my source of strength.

Journal # 4

This women Mary is incredible.  It’s amazing what she does.  Before she started this she fasted and prayed for 2 weeks to get her husbands support.  When I first got there we sat in on interviews for possible new admits to the school.  She accepts orphans and vulnerable children.  She does house checks to see if people’s stories are true.  First she listens to the parents or guardians.  Then she would send them out and bring the kid in.  She would give the kids candy and ask them all questions to see if the parents or guardians were telling the truth.  She does this because she doesn’t want to fill a spot that someone desperately needs with someone who doesn’t need it.  It was extraordinary how she acted and presented herself.  She would lean over to us to translate and be in tears.  Then she would turn back to the people and be stern & honest.

We all went back to the center.  We played with the kids. Evans was there.  One boy was crying because he busted his lip.  Andrea and I cleaned it up.  But afterwards it was still bleeding so Evans and I walked him to the clinic.  When I got there I had to by an exercise book for 5 shillings to write his treatment in.  They gave him a liquid to rub on his lip, an ointment for the fungal infection on his head and ear, and an antibiotic for the infections.  The doctor also gave him another pill at the clinic.  This is the clinic where the other Wagner kids worked.  I was surprised that they didn’t charge me for seeing him.  He held my hand the whole way back.  He was only 5 and very small for his age.  When I got back Evans and I gave him the meds and cream. One interesting thing about the clinic, they had Evans bring his own bottle for one of the treatments.  I gave him a ball to play with afterwards, he was so happy.  After that I just played with the kids.  They love to hang on you and feel your skin, your arm, hair and other people’s longer lighter hair.  This has been an amazing experience.  I feel like I’ve grown stronger as a person, learned more, become stronger in my faith and my relationship with God, and have experienced something I never thought imaginable.  I can’t believe my dream came true.