An interesting weekend, for sure

I know that last time I said I would talk more about KICK and my ISP, but I'm putting that on hold until next time so that I can share with you all my wonderful weekend...

I took a break from ISP and had one of the coolest experiences yet in Kenya. As some of you might know, Barack Obama is Kenyan. His father was born and raised here, in an area about an hour or 2 from Kisumu. His grandmother still lives in that village, and this weekend 3 others in the group and I got to meet her. Yes, you read that right. We met Obama's grandmother. It was so awesome. She is about 85 and still alive and kicking. She still does all the work in her farm, takes care of her household and is totally still there mentally. She speaks Duhluo (the Luo language) and Kiswahili, but no English. We showed up at her house completely unannounced, yet she still welcomed us in and spoke with us for about 2 hours. She talked to us about Obama’s father, about him and also asked us about ourselves. Our translators were SIT’s home-stay coordinator who lives a few villages away and a friend of his who is principal of a local school. We thought that they knew her and had worked it out, but this was actually not the case. And when we apologized to her for just showing up, she said that since we were the Senator’s guests, that we were welcome at any time. And since Obama and his father have the same name (which isn’t uncommon in Luo culture), he was always referred to as “the Senator”, which we all thought was kind of funny.

She told us about Barack (the father) and how he was always so smart and had such determination, and how Obama has the same characteristics. He wasn’t that close to his real father, who died in the late 70’s. Oh, I also saw his (the father’s) grave, along with the grandfather’s – they are buried on the family compound. But he is pretty close to the family. The first time he came to Kenya was for his father’s funeral and he has been back multiple times since. He also flew his grandmother to D.C. for his inauguration into the Senate. I was not aware that he had been so many times, and had kind of thought that his last trip was just a political ploy. But it was good to hear that this was not the case. The first time he was here was as an undergrad (I think), and he stayed for about a week. He is in pretty regular communication with a cousin here, who then gives the news to his grandmother and the rest of the family. He has visited pretty regularly since then, and even took his wife to meet them before they were married. The grandmother told us that before he makes and really important decisions, i.e. running for the senate or for the presidency, he consults them. From what she was saying, he sounds like a great guy with a good head on his shoulders. And yes, I know that this is how any grandparent would talk about their grandchild, but it seemed really genuine from her.

She had pictures of the whole family around the sitting room, and many included Obama. One of them was him on his first trip here helping her to carry her vegetables to the market. There were other more formal family pictures, as well as an “Obama for Senate” sign that he had signed for her. There were also other family members, his father, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The house itself was really nice – well built with electricity. The chairs and couches were really nice and there was even a TV. I got the impression that the family has always been relatively well off, by rural Kenyan standards at least. It seems like they are a family that has always been really hard workers and really determined to get what they want. Despite all this, it struck me how self-less this woman was. Apparently, she told Obama that he should do whatever he can to help the people of Kenya – not just her area. The main things that she kept talking about were development (I got the sense that she meant in terms of infrastructure – roads, communication, schools, etc) and medicine. The 4 of us are studying different things – mal-nutrition, medicine, politics and trade, and she told each of us that she wanted us to come back when we graduated to help the people in the area. She also wants me to come back and help her improve her business of selling vegetables. An offer I would have gladly taken her up on, but once again, school gets in the way. Oh well, maybe next year. By then maybe we’ll go from being the Senator’s guests to the President’s guests. One can only hope…

It was a pretty surreal experience. She told us that the US Ambassador was coming on Monday, and I couldn’t help but wonder what this woman’s life will be like if Obama does actually make it into the White House. Picturing her walking around the White House made us all laugh a little bit – an old African woman who has lived her whole life on her farm in Kenya getting waited on hand and foot by White House Staff. It would be pretty awesome, I think. I know the primaries are still a long way out, but after our talk with her, I think I have finally decided where my loyalties are this election…

The rest of the weekend was pretty good as well. We stayed for 2 days with home-stay coordinator, and it was an interesting experience to say the least. He has 2 women, about 20-ish years old, which is actually pretty typical here actually. I was a little upset at how they were treated – they were definitely treated as the hired help. And since they are women, they are treated a little worse. Nothing terrible, but their hard work was not appreciated at all, and they are definitely taken for granted. Unfortunately, that is also not uncommon here. Men are definitely superior, and that has been one of the hard things to get used to. Seeing the way they treated these women was just another reminder of that that I could have done with out. The house itself was also interesting. It was a very nice house, but there were some major design flaws. Like not having screens on the windows and having fluorescent lights. Oh, and just in case that didn’t let in enough bugs, they would also leave the front door wide open in the evening. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many bugs in one place in my life. And above the walls of the rooms, the ceilings were completely open throughout the house. So when the house help decided to turn the radio on (loudly) at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday, it might as well have been right next to my bed. Oh, and as if all that wasn’t enough, there were about 792 rats running around on the rafters above our heads. I was waiting for one to fall on us all weekend. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Staying in the house was definitely an interesting experience…

Despite all this, we did have fun. On Saturday night, our host arranged for a traditional Luo musician to come and perform for us. He played an instrument that is kind of like a guitar, but has 8 strings and is played in a sitting position, with the instrument on the ground. He sang mostly in Luo, but had a few songs in Kiswahili, with some English thrown in for good measure. He sang about Kisumu, Obama, women, and Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda who was a really great guy (ok, so sarcasm doesn’t really work in this medium – but speaking of him, you should all see The Last King of Scotland). Because of course, why wouldn’t you sing about an oppressive, tyrannical dictator who killed thousands of his own people? There were also a lot of friends and family in the room, and they all thought all of his songs were so funny. But the humor of Amin, getting a woman pregnant then leaving and getting drunk all the time was kind of lost on us 4 Americans. I don’t know, but Kenyan humor is something I still don’t fully understand. But other than his choice of topics, it was a pretty cool show and he was kind of (ok, really) drunk of Kenyan moonshine, so if nothing else, we could always laugh at him.

Like I said, there were about 20 other friends and family members in the room, and for some reason I had a really harsh realization during the performance. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these people were infected with HIV/AIDS. The area we were in has by far the highest HIV rate in Kenya. This is largely due to a highway that runs through the village that is the main route for transporting oil from the coast of Kenya to the inner African countries. As a result of all the truckers, prostitution in the area has skyrocketed, and with it the HIV rate. That coupled with the extreme poverty in the area (for a variety of reasons), and we were told that the rate in the area was 65%. I think that estimate is a little steep, but it’s probably around 40% or so. So with 20 people in the room, that means that anywhere from 5 to 10 people in that room probably had HIV. It was a sad thought, and I’m not really sure what brought it on. I obviously don’t know for sure if anyone in the room was infected at all, but just the possibility was enough to shock me and bring my mood down a little bit.

And on that note, I’ll wrap up. Sorry to leave on such a morbid note, but I promise, my next entry will be much happier!