Hey hey party peoples. How’s the first world? Developed? Yeah, thought so. Anyway, I’m all settled into my humble abode for the foreseeable future. I am living with Pastor Regina and her family somewhere on the outskirts of Nairobi, and I can definitely say that I’m experiencing the “real” Nairobi. Our house is actually quite nice; it makes me feel a bit guilty if I’m being honest. I say that because walking down the road (which I do a few times a day) is an experience not to be forgotten, and I still haven’t gotten used to it at all. Firstly, it smells like shit. Literally, it smells like human waste. There are ridiculously dirty streams running down the sides of the road and I can only imagine what sorts of fun little surprises lie below the murky water. There is a layer of garbage probably two inches thick caking the entire road; wear sandals at your own risk. It really is quite a trip being face-to-face with this sort of lifestyle, with families of five or more living in a shack smaller than my bathroom and surrounded by garbage and all sorts of disgusting stuff. It’s not exactly a negative experience though. It’s just quite shocking to see conditions like this coming from where I come from. Oh yeah and I’m heading to the infamous “garbage slum” this weekend so I imagine it only gets worse.
I am living here with only two other volunteers currently, but that’s just temporary. There is room for about sixteen people here and I’m told that it gets pretty busy sometimes. I’ve made friends with a guy named Patrick (Paddy) from England and he’s a really cool guy. He is here doing sports development so we’re kind of combining on both that and my music program. It makes it easier having two of us responsible for getting stuff done instead of just me because come on, you guys know me; that would be a disaster.
Thursday was the orientation day where I got to meet a bunch of other volunteers and learn a little bit more about my program. We were taught what to do and what not to do in Kenya and learned a little bit of history behind IVHQ (International Volunteer Headquarters, the company that runs the whole operation). Thursday was nice, it was fun to meet the other volunteers and exchange stories. They took us to the nearby mall (yeah, a fully Western style mall in the middle of a bunch of slums and poverty, awesome) to get water and whatnot. It’s called “Junction” and it’s become our meeting place seeing as we’re so close and it’s the only really safe place anywhere near. That’s where I go to get wi-fi .
The first day that I actually went to my placement was on Friday and I’m not going to sugar-coat it: it was fucking terrible. I got stuck in a class with very young children, probably about five years old, and was trying to help them with some math. That was fine but the thing is, the teacher was brutal. I mean, it would have been naïve of me to have not expected some physical abuse but this woman got off on it. It’s one thing to smack a kid upside the head when he’s being a pain but the teacher in this class was slap happy. She “disciplined” kids for seemingly no reason. It was pretty disturbing, trying to teach little kids how to count while three or four of them are cowering in the corner, fear burning in their eyes. She also put all the “dumb kids” at one table (her words, not mine) which is the worst teaching technique ever. She has pretty much given up on them, and they’re the ones who get beaten the most often. I mean, I can’t understand Swahili but it seems like she beats them just for not knowing the answers. Long-story short, I don’t think she’ll be winning any teaching awards in the near future. Maybe this is just me being too touchy or whatever, but it was really disturbing. Not pleasant at all. So yeah, day 1: no music, just simple math and physical abuse. Yay!
The second half of the day was much better though. Under our suggestion, we took the kids to a big field to kick a ball around. They were very excited because they only get a chance to do this about once a month seeing as the school gets charged for using the field. It’s not like a nice mowed field with nets or anything, it’s just a big stretch of dusty grass, not exactly ideal for playing soccer. But of course, there’s always someone there to take advantage and collect money. So the kids don’t get to go there very often because the orphanage doesn’t exactly have wads of cash to throw around. Paddy and I paid 150 Ksh each ($1.50) and got some soccer going. Now, I saw this coming because I am in the worst shape of my life, but I was wiped after about five minutes. It was pretty embarrassing, getting schooled by little seven-year olds because I was too tired to chase after them, but if I exerted myself anymore I would have hurled, and that would have been much worse. We played for an hour or so and, not counting my supreme lack of physical conditioning, it was quite enjoyable. I stuck myself in goal for the last half or so and got to rest a bit. And I absolutely stoned this one kid from about two feet. Eat your heart out Iker Casillas. No but seriously it was a pretty good save.
Oh and another thing on the negative side, just to end day 1 on a sour note. I’m ok with it being a Christian run orphanage, that’s the only way they’ll get any support at all, but their motto has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. No offence meant to any of my god-fearing friends out there. Maybe you can explain to me how this isn’t the stupidest thing ever put into words. The motto of their school, stitched in the back of their school jackets is “To Fear God Is Wisdom.” I’m struggling to understand how being afraid of god translates into any sort of wisdom at all, it sounds like the complete opposite to me. I’m not about to shit all over their philosophy or anything, I knew what I was getting into when I signed up to volunteer in Kenya, but I mean come on. That’s just all sorts of stupid.
The weekend was much better than the emotional trauma that was the angry, abusive teacher’s classroom. The two other volunteers living at my accommodation and I hopped on a bus to downtown Nairobi on Saturday to hit the Masai market. The market itself was awesome. There were tonnes of authentic Kenyan souvenirs: painting, sculptures, blankets etc. etc. etc. But here’s the problem: the locals would not leave us alone. We hadn’t even rounded the corner of the block that the market is on before we were approached by five, count ‘em, five Kenyans, all pretending to be friendly but really just pushy as hell. They acted as our unofficial tour-guides through the market and it didn’t matter how much we (politely) asked them to leave us alone, they weren’t leaving our sides until they drained us of all our sweet, sweet white-person cash. You know when you go into a clothing store or something and you get immediately approached by a pushy salesperson that will not leave you alone until they’ve closed the sale? Yeah, imagine that but about a hundred times worse. They feigned friendliness, tried to get some shallow small talk going, all the while I could see them licking their chops at the piles of money we were sure to be dropping. They led us around the market, pushing every single item on us relentlessly. My personal guide (Michael, or something I don’t remember) said “oh ok you see something that catch your eye you say ‘maybe’ and my friend here *points to pushy Kenyan #2* will carry them around for you. You say ‘yes maybe, maybe, maybe’ and if by the end you don’t want, no problem, my friend put them all back for you.” …. Yeah, sounds like bullshit, doesn’t it? Guess what!? It was bullshit! Who knew!? I had the foresight to see through this lie and not give them the satisfaction of saying I was interested in anything. It was too bad because there was actually tonnes of stuff that I would have liked to have maybe bought if I wasn’t being relentlessly hounded by money-grubbing Kenyans. My friend, Paddy, sort of caved a little bit to the pressure and picked out one thing for his “maybe” pile, a small painting to hang on the wall, probably 6 inches by 18. Well when the time came, he of course didn’t want it, he had just been being nice. But these guys turned mean very quickly and did not take it back to where it came from “no questions asked” (like they said). They said “oh ok well here’s what we charge Americans, we don’t like them” and wrote down 4500 ksh (about $45). You just know that if we were American instead of Canadian and British they would have said “oh here’s what we charge British people, we don’t like them.” Anyway, in the end, they were trying to charge him the equivalent of $25 for this little piece of crap when I would have paid at most $4, maybe $5 if I was being generous. He was surrounded by these pushy pricks, helplessly defending his decision to not buy the painting (I played the “I have no money” card, the wad of bills burning a hole in my pocket). He managed to get away from them by telling them that he planned on putting most of his money into the orphanage that we’re volunteering at, which was only half true. They said “oh, that’s a waste of time.” Um, excuse me? Are you serious? You’re telling us that it would be more worthwhile to overpay for some crappy painting than to donate money to hungry orphans? Yeah, they were really nice guys.
So, Paddy and I made up some excuse (they blocked the exit, wouldn’t let us out) and said we would be back in five minutes but we got the hell out of there and didn’t go back. I am going to go back eventually but I need to work up my nerves before I go in again. I’m not letting a pack of jackasses follow me around next time; I want to take the time that I want to look at what I want and haggle at my own discretion. We ended up wandering around central Nairobi for a bit while we waited for our friend Margaret to finish in the market. She’d been here for a couple months so was much better at shooing the pushy guys away and she was left (relatively) unhindered in the market. We sat on a ledge for a bit while we waited and this beggar woman approached us, shaking her cup of coins at us. Of course, you’re not meant to give any beggars money because then you just get hounded by them nonstop, so we said no. But she would not leave us alone; it was actually kind of disturbing. “Please papa, baby hungry” she would say, showing us her child strapped to her back. For probably ten minutes she stood there shaking her cup at us. We said no, we ignored her, pretended we had gotten a phone call, but nothing made her leave. We eventually had to get up and run (yes that’s right, run, she followed us) away from her.
So that was Saturday, welcome to Nairobi.
Sunday was much, much better. Paddy and I are both quite into football (soccer, you ingrates) and Sunday was a great day for games in the British Premier League. We went to a sports bar to watch Manchester United play Chelsea (two of the best, if not the two best teams in England, a huge match). First we watched Tottenheim absolutely destroy Liverpool 4-0. Just a little aside here: Luis Suarez is a little bitch and if I ever see him in real life I’m going to kick him in the fleshy patch where his balls used to be. It was a very entertaining game what with Liverpool losing their cool and getting two red cards and having their defence torn apart by the Tottenheim attack. But onto the marquee match, and my oh my, what a match it was. Maybe some of you watched it or saw the headlines later but for those who didn’t let me just say it was one of the most entertaining games I’ve ever seen. The bar was packed with locals, there was actually quite a nice atmosphere going. I could have sworn I was in a Manchester pub. Most were Manchester United supporters (word) but there were a fair share of Chelsea fans as well. After all, Didier Drogba plays for Chelsea (although he’s currently out with an injury or something) and he’s form the Ivory Coast so all of Africa is in love with him. He’s on billboards everywhere and there’s this hilarious TV spot where he’s whoring himself out for a Samsung fridge of all products. But anyway, on to the game. The first half was incredibly fast-paced and saw Manchester jump out to a 3-0 lead. Chelsea actually played better for most of the half but failed to capitalize on their chances whereas Manchester had their crosshairs locked on the back of the net. Chelsea scored about thirty seconds into the second half from the foot of Fernando Torres (his first goal in something like 23 games. For those who don’t know soccer well, trust me, that’s shit, especially when you’re a starting striker that gets paid hundreds of thousands of pounds every week). Wayne Rooney had an embarrassing miss on a penalty kick and the entire bar groaned. He had potted a hat trick in both their previous two games and if he had gotten a third he would have been only the second player ever to record three hat tricks in three consecutive games in the BPL. That would have been his second of the game but I guess it just wasn’t to be. But man oh man, the simultaneous highlight/lowlight of the match happened with about ten minutes to go. Fernando Torres got sent in all alone with only the keeper to beat. He cleverly stepped around the last man leaving him two yards in front of a wide open net. And then, one of the most embarrassing things I have ever witnessed happened. Torres, Spanish superstar and key striker for London’s premier football club, fucking booted it wide. It was absolutely horrible. The ball wasn’t jumping around or anything, it was nice and settled, he just booted it wide, well wide. He fell to the ground clutching his face and I’m sure he won’t be living it down anytime soon. It reminded me of this one time when I was about fourteen. We were playing Campbell River I think, and I rushed for the far post from the left wing, the ball coming down the right with the other winger. I got sent a perfect cross, right to my feet, and I was literally six inches from the post. But instead of settling it and scoring the easiest goal of my life, I one-touched it off my toe, wide of the net. I never lived it down with my teammates, they were pissed (rightly so, it was a beautiful build-up completely squandered). If I was Fernando Torres right now I’d be scared to leave my house. That goal would have put them within striking distance of salvaging a result from the game. Oh man it makes me sick just thinking about it, and I wanted Chelsea to lose. The game ended in a 3-1 victory for Manchester United, keeping their perfect start to the season intact. This year seems destined to come down to a showdown between United and Manchester City. Those lucky jackasses in Manchester have such good football teams this year. It makes me hope that one day the Whitecaps don’t suck major ass. (Worst team in the worst professional league in the world! Worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd. Still, go Whitecaps.)
On Monday and Tuesday I had full days at the orphanage. For the first half of Monday I was in a classroom (not the same one as Friday, thank based god) helping kids with their work. At one point I was asked to mark their theology homework. It was pretty funny because I didn’t have any of that growing up and the teacher just kind of took it for granted that I would know all the answers. Now I’m not an idiot, I could fill in the blank for this question: “Moses saw a burning _______” but most of them were completely over my head. Abraham’s son? Um, I dunno. The blind man that Jesus cured? Yeah, ditto. I had to get the answer key from the teacher’s desk and I don’t think she was very impressed. I was laughing to myself though. Adrian teaching theology hahaha, just typing that makes me laugh. Black is white! Up is down! Adrian is religious!
We finally got around to doing some music in the afternoon. The school has about six guitars, only three of which are actually usable. So attempting to teach something like thirty kids how to play an E chord with only three guitars was damn near impossible. There were only two of us (Paddy and I) and there were way too many kids to handle. I think I will have a word with the headmaster about reducing the class sizes for the music education. It was alright, I taught them how to play an E and an A and I hope to teach them the rest of the open-chords in the key of G pretty soon so I can get them started on a simple song. I’m hoping that in time only the kids who actually give a shit will show up, because most of them were nightmares. They were running around, not listening, hitting each other, etc. It was mayhem.
Teaching music was alright, but I was left to my own devices entirely. The reason I came to Kenya of all the places I had to pick from was because I thought I was going to be doing some real musical education, not just a couple of hours with a crappy guitar every once every couple of days. It’s still early but I’m not impressed with my placement at all. I’m signed up to do this for three months but there is no way I’m staying for longer than six weeks or so. Changing placements is apparently pretty easy so I think I will change after a little bit. I’m going to stay in Kenya for at least the three months I’ve signed up for because I would feel terrible withdrawing and taking money back from them, but this isn’t what I thought it would be at all. Paddy feels the same way about his program. He signed up for sports development but so far all we’ve done in that realm is a couple of hours running around in a field. We are both a little bit pissed off at IVHQ for making it seem like there were established programs here. I was under the impression that I would be teaching music all day, maybe even under the guidance of a superior or something. What I’m actually doing is helping with random academic subjects for most of the day and then attempting to control a class of unruly kids for a couple of hours every two days and teach them some music.
I’m still happy being here, but I don’t think I want to stay for long. I think I will relocate to Mombasa on the coast and do some other some of volunteer work; I will have to do some research for that to happen though.
Wow that’s a lot of words, I think I’m going to stop now. I hope you’re all well, send me a message on facebook or something if you care to talk. I think I’m going to buy a modem tomorrow (apparently they’re like $40 and it costs about a penny a minute to use the internet) so I will be more connected in the next little while. Next update will have details on my upcoming outreach weekend. I’ll be biking in Hells Gate national park (I get to see the real Pride Rock!) and delivering some food to some of the worst slums in Africa, including the aforementioned garbage slum. All the volunteers that I’ve spoken to that have done it already say it’s a very humbling experience and one to not be forgotten in this lifetime, so I look forward to that, even though I will be face-to-face with some of the most extreme poverty on Earth. But hey, that’s why I’m here, to do good and whatnot.
Until next time, take care.
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