A Cultural Learning Update ☺ (Part 1)

Happpppy St. Patricks Day to all! J Whew, it has been a while since I’ve written to you all and it’s high time for an update.

Well the biggest news, as most of you might know, is that Kenya had their elections on 4^th March. They voted for president, Member of Parliament (MP), governor, senator, women’s representative and county rep. It was their 4^th election for president and everyone was wary of how the results would be accepted. There was a fantastic voter turn-out and I believe there are comments on it being a world record now but I’m not positive about that. It does say a lot about the people here because they were willing to stand in the hot sun for hours and hours to vote. I don’t know how many Americans would be willing to stand for 6-8-10 hours in the sun just to vote. I believe there were around 14 million registered voters and around 12 million of them voted!!! There is one big difference in that in America once you register you’re good to go unless you move or leave the country but here they register a few months before the election to specifically vote this year. This promotes more voting because if you’re willing to spend the time to register then you’re much more likely to take the time to actually vote later on. Ok, I don’t want to comment too much on anything more election-related since this is an open blog but I will say the NY Times and some other newspapers are covering the election and results if you’re interested.

I can say that while the elections were happening I was bonding a lot with all the other Peace Corps Kenya volunteers! They had us all in the same place just as a precautionary measure and it was great to be able to meet the other volunteers and hear about their experiences while getting to know them. I also was able to meet some business and public health volunteers who are only 3-4 hours from me so now I have new people I can visit!

I am now back in the land of Sipili and it’s so good to be back here. I had missed my kids and it was extra hard because I knew they were all still at school without any activities to do or class to attend. Nation-wide, there was a week off of school so everyone could go to their homes to vote where they were registered. Most students I found out from other volunteers went home but mine did not for some reason. They just hung out and basically had recess 24/7. But now school has resumed and the learning is back in motion though we only have a month or so left before the first term ends.

This weekend was a very culture-filled weekend for me! I successfully mopped my cement-floor house Kenyan-style (with a bucket and a rag on my hands and knees) though I don’t know if I was actually successful because it looks very similar to how it did before I started….hmm.

I also went to explore the market for the first time on my own. There is a food market every day but on Saturdays in Sipili it is market day. This means you can buy clothing-1^st and 2^nd hand, pots & pans, shoes, a wider variety of food and other good stuff. I had been shown the 2^ndhand section back in January but had yet to venture there again until Saturday. I now have one section that is officially my favorite…the secondhand clothing section. Back in America I loved going to thrift stores and digging through bins or moving hanger after hanger to try and find that one ridiculous but awesome article of clothing and now, it’s like Goodwill moved next door to me and is open every single Saturday! Jackpot!!! But seriously, a lot of the clothing actually did come from Goodwill and similar stores and the market is a mere 5 minute walk from my house, how awesome is that?! I was mostly browsed (though I did snatch one cute dress-shoulder pads still intact) and I think in the future when I know how much I should pay for everything, I can find some first-rate classy stuff. I plan on leaving the majority of my clothes behind that I brought with me but if I can find some keepers and help the Kenyan economy a bit then by all means, bring on the Bill Cosby sweaters, the shoulder pads and the outrageously colored outfits!

In addition to that on Sunday I used my jiko stove for the first time. It is a small maybe 10-15 inches in diameter stove that sits a few inches off the ground and it lit with charcoal. I still have some things to learn with it because it took me 45 min or an hour to just light. I baked a loaf of banana bread-the first bread I’ve ever made myself-with green bananas in honor of St. Pattys Day. Sadly, the bottom half inch was burnt to a crisp. I followed that up with 4 small muffin type tins filled with homemade brownie mix…these also burned a lot on the bottom. They ended up tasting similar to a hard chocolate candy. But it was chocolatey so I was happy J All in all, I was sitting next to my jiko for about 3 hours just to cook bread and brownies! Thankfully I had a good book and the kids would come over and chat too. It ended up being a relaxing Sunday activity since I wasn’t in any rush and knew the outcome would be tasty!

A Sad New Experience (Part 2)

On Friday and Saturday I experienced a new cultural event that I wish I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience. One of my fellow colleague’s first-born sons died last Friday. He was shot in Nyahururu while coming back from Nairobi to be at home. He was only a 2^nd year University student-21 years old. He died a week ago but because he was farther away from home the arrangements took a bit longer which is why he wasn’t buried until a week later. Usually the church service and burial are on the same day but the priest wasn’t able to be there on Saturday and the body couldn’t be brought to Sipili until Saturday morning and so it was 2-day event.

Friday morning around 11am one of the staff asked me if I would like to go to the ceremony at 12. I was unsure of the unknown but I wanted to be supportive and so we headed off at noon for their house. He came from a Catholic family-as most families are in Sipili-and so they had a Catholic Mass on Friday. We all went to my colleague’s house, only a 10 minute walk from the school, and waited for the priest to arrive. The teacher I walked with over with had said the priest was coming at 2 or earlier…that was the first time I’d heard a time that was followed by ‘or earlier’. Though strangely enough, the priest showed up later than expected but early by most Kenyan standards. At 2:30 he arrived and at 2:45 the service began. We all sat under a medium sized tent (you could probably fit 8 of our market tents underneath) and then they also had benches lined in the back.

This was all set up in their front yard. Their compound has 2 parts-the gate opens and to the right you have their garden with maybe 5 rows perpendicular to the gate at about 20 feet each. Then the garden and the house have a hedge between them.

The service was 2 hours long and all in Kikuyu/Kiswahili. The tent was full of people and maybe 1-2 out of the 6-7 benches in the back were full. There were no hymnbooks or service handouts but plenty of words were spoken and songs were sung. It was neat to listen to the songs and some of the long phrases that were said I felt like I knew from the rhythm and hearing the same sort of rhythm every Sunday at church. I may not be Catholic but Lutherans are close in some ways. The other cool thing was how many teachers were at the service. I mean in some ways it wasn’t cool because that meant all of those classes had no teacher in the afternoon-like the one I was supposed to be teaching. However, the fact that there is such a strong community in general and between all of the teachers is awesome.

Saturday morning I was uneasy again about going to the burial because the teachers said it would start between 10 and 11 and so I had no idea when to head over because I didn’t want to miss it. They said it would just be a few short prayers and then the body would be buried since the mass was done the day before. I don’t know why I believed any of that. I was very happy when I walked out of my house at 10:30 and saw all of the older kids (Class 5 and up) waiting together. I found out they were waiting for the gate key so they could all go to the burial-I don’t know how all of the teachers forgot to mention the students were going-but either way I had the gate key and company to go with and with that we were off. We arrived and there were people waiting inside but the family hadn’t come from Nyahururu yet. They had had a caravan of people leave Sipili at 6am for Nyahururu to pick up the body and drive it back. After only 10 minutes, 4 matatus rolled up followed by a hearse then a regular car that had the family inside. The hearse looked like a matatu (a 14 passenger van) but with a higher top, lights on top, HEARSE written on the back and inside there were only the 1^st two rows and then empty space for the coffin.

A lot more people came on Saturday and it was hot. The service lasted 2 hours –all in Kikuyu so once again I don’t know what was said. Six people stood up to talk, hymns were sung and then someone gave a sermon to end the service. At the end everyone stood up and moved to the garden. In the far back corner of their garden, their son was being buried. I was told that some people without the land are buried in cemeteries but most everyone in Sipili, a land of farming, was buried at their home. Up until then it didn’t really feel like a funeral. No more people than usual were wearing fancy or dark clothing, no one was weeping that I could see, I couldn’t understand what they were saying and on Saturday when the coffin was there, I seated on bench further back so I couldn’t really see it either.

The heart wrenching part came at the end. Everyone moved to the garden where a hole had been dug. I was standing near the back and couldn’t see the actual burial happen but I saw the boy’s mother, my fellow teacher, at the end. The whole burial process was very speedy; it was over in about 7 minutes. Everyone walked over, a song was sung and the casket was placed in the ground and covered. Then all of a sudden we all heard his mother crying. Eight women were carrying her out horizontally as she sobbed and wept for her boy. It made it all very real, very fast.