It’s Saturday and I have found myself too busy this week to do a daily blog, so I’ll try to encapsulate some of the week’s activities and observations today.
Monday morning found us all boarding a matatu in Kakamega for the half-hour trip to Kasavai. Sandy met with Rose and Alice to organize materials and plan for pre-school play classes later in the week. Rose is a widow and Alice is a high school graduate waiting to hear how she did on her KCSE (exams) at the end of the term. We hope that one or both can continue as “teachers” in the sessions after we have returned home.
A few kids were hanging around, so they got to look at a few of the books we brought and write on the concrete floor of the porch with colored chalk.
Of course, the widows made a lot of food for lunch for us – too much by far: ugali, green veggies something like spinach (cow peas I think), chicken, beef, chapati, and so on. We ate a bit and they shared the left overs, which were intentionally copious. They love it when we come because they get lots to eat quite often.
I worked on generally boring administrative matters with Victor the CLOUT representative who sees the widows daily year round.
On Tuesday morning we walked to Connie’s house in the village. On the way, we stopped and observed two classes (grades 1 and 3) at a school that has recently been established near Connie’s house. The classes are being held in a church building until the school building is finished. It’s coming along nicely and should be ready soon.
Maureen got the full tour of the grounds at Connie’s while Sandy and I tagged along. Chris and Connie now have 5 cows that remain under a shelter full time, never getting to graze in the fields. Their manure is used to produce “biogas” in a three tank process in German supplied demonstration production unit. They use this rather than wood or charcoal for cooking. Victor isseen lighting a small stove in the kitchen. Electricity is produced by solar panels but soon there will be electrical power delivered by wire from the power company.
Around noon, we headed back to the CLOUT/Watafutaji sewing center where we had a light lunch (the ladies ate too). The highlight of the day was that Leonida Isoyi arrived on a piki piki driven by her son. She broke her right leg a few months ago and has a couple more months to go before the heavy cast is removed.
Wednesday morning came and the pilot play school got off the ground (again). It had languished since our departure last year. Perhaps with two “teachers” receiving modest pay (Rose and Alice) the program will catch on better than it did with only a volunteer teacher.
While Sandy was training the teachers and working with the kids, Maureen and I accompanied Connie on a visit to her mother who lives some 10 miles or so from Kasavai. Just after we arrived at the house, Connie was forced (by custom) to cover her hair (with a table cloth) because a friend and visitor of her mom was offended by it, calling it sinful and saying that she could not greet Connie as long as it was uncovered. Actually, Connie had gone to great lengths to fix it that day and that way for her mom. But, the table cloth that was on a small end table was quickly put on Connie’s head to calm the visitor.
Connie’s mom is a widow of 30 years and is a strong matriarch in a patriarchal society, although poor health (arthritis and high blood pressure) has plagued her for the last few years.
On Thursday morning, Maureen was feeling a bit under the weather so only Sandy and I got back on a matatu in Kakamega and took the uneventful half-hour ride to the village. Before getting on the matatu we performed a morning ritual which had become almost second nature – we bought 10 boiled eggs from two vendors in the park near the matatu stand. At the end of each day, Sandy would give five eggs to each of her teacher trainees (Rose and Alice) to take home. No pay during the training period, but a small token of appreciation.
While Sandy worked with the kids and teacher trainees, I headed back to Kakamega where I met Maureen at the hotel before we went to see Pape Sembi (Lion) at 2:00 PM to seek his help in distributing the 225 or so donated pairs of prescription eyeglasses we had brought with us from the US. As usual, he was very helpful. He immediately put us in touch by phone with the new director of the Sabatia Eye Hospital, Samuel Tsimbwela. We arranged a meeting with Samuel for Friday at noon at the eye hospital.
Sandy took a matatu back from Kasavai early so that we could both meet with folks from Vumilia, an organization that runs a girls orphanage, a small health and AIDS counseling clinic, and other programs benefitting women and children just north of Kakamega. Maureen could not go with us because she was still a bit queezy, but Sandy and I got to meet the new manager of Vumilia (another Maureen) and see what is happening at the orphanage and clinic. The clinic has two beds and a counseling room. The orphanage is located on a plot of about 8 acres with 6.5 acres of crops and a tilapia pond (about1500 fish). There is major new construction underway. When completed, there will be a new administrative building with a second floor providing housing for additional orphans. The current count is 20, almost all of whom have unspeakable histories of abuse behind them.
Of course, we got to deliver the 44 soccer jerseys and 4 soccer balls to the girls at the orphanage. These were donated by the youth soccer leagues in Maplewood and South Orange, New Jersey. They were a big and immediate hit with the girls.
Thursday night – bia mbili (tow beers) at the Golf.
On Friday we all took the usual morning trip via matatu (with eggs in hand) to the sewing center in Kasavai. This time though we also had the 225 pairs of glasses with us, ready for a noon meeting at the eye hospital. After Sandy got the teachers started, the three of us hopped in a matatu to Chavakali junction where we transferred to another which was headed east toward and past Sabatia. The transfer at the junction is always an experience because the matatu drivers and conductors are very aggressive in their attempts to get you to get on their matatu instead of another. Nonetheless, we got on one safely and arrived at the eye hospital exactly on time at noon.
Our meeting with the director, Samuel, was pleasant and informative. We got a full tour of the buildings and grounds, with the highlight being the new optical lab being built at a cost of about $200,000. We also gave Samuel the donated glasses, took photos all around, and had a good lunch with him. During lunch, I got a photo of another bird for Don Mullen. Don, it was mostly yellow - I identified it as a Yellow Wagtail.
On the way back to Kakamega, we skipped our stop and went straight back to the hotel. Later in the evening, Samuel’s wife and children showed up at the hotel and had dinner with us while we waited for Samuel to join us after work. This experience gave a very personal touch to our interaction with the hospital. In fact, Samuel stopped by at the Golf hotel again today to give us some fabric to take to a woman from Boston and who helped put him through the university.
Speaking of today, Saturday, I am finally up to date with this blog. In the morning we had a goodbye celebration with the widows. We provided ice cream cones for all by hiring a Kakamega ice cream vendor to come with us on the matatu and serve ice cream cones to all the widows and whoever else was around. It started slowly, but everybody got at least one cone and most if not all got two or three. We also distributed reading glasses to those widows who needed them.
The parting gifts to us were pineapples, eggs, ground nuts, amaranth/molasses balls, and a Watafutaji 2012 calendar. The party’s over, at least for this year.
That was the week that was.
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