We’re now in Zanzibar! Our last couple of weeks were pretty busy, but here is a recap of the main events. To start off with we had a lovely dose of food poisoning. Naveed and Oti had the worst of it after eating some real bad beef, but of course since Olivia and I snagged a few pieces of beef off of Naveed's plate, we got a small dose of poisoning as well. We were at the hotel in Usenge watching a football game and eating dinner there, when Naveed got up and left. That should have been our first clue. Naveed never leaves during a football game, but he came back ten minutes later and didn’t say anything so we didn’t think anything much of it. Then when we were about to leave he ran to the bathroom and when he came back he told us he had just thrown up again. He said he felt fine, and he did look okay, so we just went home and left it at that. Then sometime in the early hours of the morning (I really should have remembered to bring a watch) I woke up to the lovely sound of Naveed tossing his cookies. If you’ve never awoken to that sound, then count yourself lucky. I managed to fall back asleep eventually, but then was woken up yet again to the same disturbing sound in the morning. By that time my stomach was a little upset, but nothing too terrible. Olivia told me that Naveed was very sick, I said I know, I think all of Usenge knows. She told me I didn’t know the half of it. Apparently last night Naveed came back to their room and said I think my back might be bleeding, she said that he had somehow managed to gauge a chunk of his back out by standing up and scraping his back on the faucet after he finished emptying his stomach. The funny part about that was that I found the missing chunk of his back stuck to the faucet in the morning. What a pleasant surprise! Anyways, that whole day Naveed stayed in bed not feeling very well. He turned out to be a very entertaining invalid, though, as he would randomly burst into song to entertain himself. We heard favorites from the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and almost every Disney movie imaginable. Interspaced with all the serenading we received, Naveed would call out random diseases that he thought he had, the list included malaria, dengue fever, and the plague. Our favorite quote from that day was Naveed saying, “Death take me… I surrender.” Olivia and I were feeling better by the end of the day, and by the next both Oti and Naveed were almost back to their usual selves. Needless to say we learned a valuable lesson about food poisoning and eating dubiously prepared beef chunks. We tried not to go back to the hotel to eat again, but apparently they felt terrible that Naveed got sick, so we did return eventually, and no further food poisoning resulted.
We did three more house screenings in our remaining time. They all went well for the most part. We did notice that the permanent structures were easier to screen and looked as if they would better prevent mosquitoes from entering the house. The mud brick houses had some gaps that we just weren’t able to do anything about. We did suggest that the gaps be filled in with more mud to make the screening more effective. The pictures we recently posted show some of the houses we screened. We did follow up interviews asking questions to see whether the screening was being received well, and we got positive responses for all the houses we screened. Everyone said since we screened their house, they hadn’t seen a single mosquito inside. Our exciting story from house screening was when we found a poisonous spider in the eaves of one of the houses we were screening. Thankfully it was noticed before it crawled on Naveed’s head, and after Oti knocked it to the ground Naveed went after it with a staple gun. However, instead of squishing it like any good Garfield comic would have, Naveed takes the staple gun and shoots it at the spider. Four shots and a funny video later, the spider met its tragic end. We were told it was poisonous and so our morbid curiosity made us look it up later. We think it might belong to the black widow family, but we’re not entirely sure.
One more entertaining poisonous creature story involved another snake. Apparently Naveed’s desire to see poisonous snakes spread throughout the town, so one morning someone knocks on our door extremely early. I heard a bit of a commotion and some picture taking going on and decided to investigate what caused the early wake up call. It turned out to be one of the neighbor kids from down the street with a dead (thankfully) snake to show Naveed. This snake was about a meter long and turned out to be a puff adder (and yes we researched that one too). After some pictures were taken (see above) the snake went to its final resting place down an outhouse (not our own, because Oti was scared it would come back to life and slither out to bite him). Olivia and I asked that no more snakes were brought to our house for show and tell, or at least not at six in the morning!
One day Oti hired our neighbor friend Steve to cut our grass (with a machete!) We thought it was odd that Steve was there in the middle of the day, so we asked Oti why he wasn’t in school. Oti answered by telling us that it was Education Day in Kenya. We were a bit puzzled by this answer, and asked why kids weren’t in school on Education Day, as we assumed the idea was to promote learning and education and attendance at school. We never got a good answer for that question, make of it as you will.
We made a lot of progress with the HIV/AIDS Peer Education program. We finished training Oti and Amos and we started meeting with the group of youth Amos had found. There were sixteen youth with an even mix of male and female, ranging in ages from 14-20 years old. They were all very busy with school so we could only meet once a week on Sunday, but we managed to meet with them three times before we left Usenge. They were very intelligent and enthusiastic and seemed to enjoy the lessons. They asked pretty tough questions too and even stumped us a few times. We have pretty high hopes for the program and are glad that Leah and Elizabeth will be there continue the training.
During our last week in Usenge we had a new addition to GYEC Kenya. Our friend Mona from Kisumu is planning to spend at least two months volunteering with GYEC and came during our last week for a trial period. She was amazing and was extremely helpful at the ECDs and at the Peer Educators. It was great to have her with us to help translate things into Luo and we had a lot of fun spending our last week with her.
On Monday we took a bus from Usenge to Nairobi. It was nice to see the countryside of Kenya and the trip went smoothly for the most part, until one incident near the end. We had just passed Nakuru and were approaching Nairobi when the bus pulled off the highway to an empty field where several police officers and other vehicles were parked. We were told to get off the bus, which we did, and a few police officers boarded it. We were then surprised and a tad bit horrified to watch our bus drive away. We stood around waiting for fifteen minutes, after being told that the bus was being taken for a “speed check”. Finally our bus returned and we continued on our way, with a pretty good idea of what a “speed check” actually entailed. We arrived in Nairobi and were picked up by Sam, our favorite driver, (if anyone is planning on going on a safari in Kenya, we’d highly recommend hiring Sam, because he’s awesome! (and a very experienced and knowledgeable safari guide)) We picked up Leah and Elizabeth from the airport that night and spent the next few days briefing them on what we’ve been doing for the past three months and what to expect in Usenge. If anyone is interested in staying up-to-date on GYEC’s work in Kenya you can check out Leah and Elizabeth’s blog at http://kijindovu.tumblr.com/
Now we’re in Zanzibar for a week as a mini holiday on our way home. More about our time here and pictures coming soon.
Love,
The Wandering Three
