Update at Tumaini!

Habari asubuhi!  This is one of the ways to say good morning in Swahili.  Things are very busy and moving fast here at Tumaini.  I feel like I am going to blink my eyes and it’s going to be time for me to go home.  So here is an update on my Kenyan life!

My 6^th graders have been working very hard this week writing pen pal letters to AMS 6^th graders (thanks to the help of Mrs. Elizabeth Mills!) asking questions about the U.S. and telling about life in Kenya.  While revising the letters I found some of the things the children said quite entertaining.  For example, “We have corruption in Kenya.  Do you have corruption in America?”  Children in Kenya have been taught over and over that polygamy is wrong in hopes that it will prevent it from happening in the future.  So some children proudly wrote, “I live with my mom and dad.  We have a monogamous family.”  I kindly ask them to include a different fact instead, so that Mrs. Mills is not stuck explaining polygamy and monogamy to American 12 year olds.  Another fact that some kids mentioned was if they have a permanent roof on their home (instead of grass).  They are very proud of this, and it will show kids at home how nice they have it.  A very bright boy named Kevin informed his pen pal about the famine and told how there was a hotline, “Kenyans for Kenya” and if they wanted to help all they had to do was text 111111 on their phones!

Eline and I have started painting the classrooms and as with everything I do in life I am very slow and would bet I will be painting until the day I fly home.  I am also still waiting to help build the cowshed out of mud (it takes a while for things to happen in Kenya), but I will let you know when that happens!

On Thursday Eline and I travelled to Kisumu because we had to renew our visas.  Kisumu is located on Lake Victoria and is known for their very tasty tilapia.  After leaving the immigration office we walked down to the lake where everyone is hustling you to sit at their “restaurant.”  We chose one and then were told to pick out our fish.  Literally there is just a bunch of different size dead fish sitting on a slab of wood.  After picking you sit down and wait for your fish to be cooked.  When it comes out it looks the exact same.  Head, fins, bones, and all!  Not only did I eat it, but it was delicious!

There is an orphan living in our community who graduated high school in 2007 but hasn’t had enough money to pay her tuition and can’t receive her diploma.  Rose said the fact that four years later she is still trying and hasn’t gotten pregnant (that’s what girls do if they don’t have goals or money) means she is a very determined, good girl.  The community had a fundraiser for her and was able to raise enough to pay her tuition and get her started in college!

Eline leaves in 2 weeks and I am going to be lost.  Aside from when I teach English which is around an hour a day, we spend every moment of everyday together.  We sleep in the same room and even shower at the same time and can talk between our stalls.  Both of us are in complete shock that after all this time not only have we not strangled each other, but we actually still like each other!  We even have plans to do future projects together!

Rose and I are trying to update the website, which is comical.  Rose is still learning how to do things on the computer and I am the American who wishes I lived in the time before computers existed.  So far we have mostly just been staring at it deciding what needs to change.  Rose has asked a man from town to come help us, so we should be making progress soon!

All is going well with the feeding program.  I think I am getting muscles in my arms from transferring the maize into the small bags.  We had a young boy who travelled to us from a different community looking for food for him and his grandmother.  We were happy to help him.  I want to thank everybody again for all your contributions, it has really meant a lot to these people.

Miles of Smiles at Tumaini

Habari yako?  This is Swahili for “How are you?”  Then, you would reply, “Mzuri sana!”  This means very good!  It’s actually quite pitiful how much Swahili I have NOT picked up on.  The only words I know really well are the ones that are repeated to the toddlers over and over again.  And I am sad to say that I am not fluent in Dutch either.

After the Americans left Tumaini, my Canadian friend Dylan and I traveled to meet the Dutch girls in Mombasa, a beach city on the East Coast of Africa.  It was a wonderful break to have halfway through my trip.  Watching camels walk the beaches of the Indian Ocean made the 16 hour bus ride well worth it!  Evidently I am a magnet for Dutch people.  We were staying at a campsite called Stilts, where we met a lot of fun people, the majority of whom were from the Netherlands, and then we met a nice Belgium couple – who of course spoke Dutch.  Finally while sitting on the beach I saw a man with a Georgia Bulldogs cap on, so I asked him excitedly if he was from Georgia.  He laughed and said, “No, I collect caps.  I am from the Netherlands.”  Eline was dying laughing and all I could say was, “Oh, of course you are!”

I was also attacked by monkey on our trip.  We were staying in these cute little tree houses a little bit into the woods (kind of).  Femke and Eline left to go to the beach, but I stayed to sleep a little longer.  I woke up to the sound of plastic rustling around and thought, “Oh the monkeys must be on the porch…”  (They had been stealing everything we left outside the whole trip.)  As I was falling back asleep I heard the rustling sound again and realized how close it was.  I popped up in the bed screaming bloody murder!  Sitting on my bed was a monkey staring straight at me and three more looking through our trash and bags!  They looked at me with an annoyed expression as if to say, “Well thanks for ruining our fun.”  Then they sauntered out.  Although they weren’t causing me physical harm yet, I know they were plotting…

Femke got really sick at the end of the trip and the night before she was to fly back to the Netherlands we ended up having to take her to the hospital in Nairobi.  Luckily it was just a bacterial infection and she was feeling better by morning.  It’s weird not having her back at Tumaini, especially when it’s time to do the dishes!  Now Eline is forced to always speak English and that makes Rose and me very happy!

I was glad to get back to Western Kenya to see all the children and our Tumaini family.  While I was gone there was a nice American who left some Velveeta Shells and Cheese and brought me a bag of sunflower seeds.  These were very nice surprises to come home to!  Since we have been back I have been extremely busy.  I am still teaching English and Arts and Crafts in the morning and after lunch we have been helping Violet do a lot of cleaning and organizing at the orphanage.  The children go on break from school next week so we are going to paint all the classrooms.  We are also going to take advantage of the orphanage kids being out of school and do some fun crafts and games with them.

The feeding program has kept us very busy as well.  Originally the plan was to give maize to about 80 families once a week for as long as we can.  But we have realized that there are more who are in severe need of food so we have increased to 120 families a week.  We give the bags of maize every Wednesday, but people have been coming all this week and just wait outside the orphanage hoping if they sit there long enough we will be able to give them something.  This is really hard to see, but luckily Rose knows which of these people are in need the most and we give to them.  Our main goal is to be able to provide for all the elderly widows that are taking care of a lot of children because they physically cannot work and have mouths to feed.  While I hope that my English teaching skills are changing lives, I know now that if my only purpose being here was to make others aware and concerned about the food shortage then it has been completely worth it.  Thanks to all of you that have been donating so that my students aren’t going to bed hungry.  Everything that goes on at Tumaini makes me realize how much impact one person can have.  Three years ago Rose was sleeping on a floor with a few orphans, and now she is helping to feed an entire community.