September 20, 2005
Today, I psyche myself up to take a boda boda into town, asking him to drop me at Dr. Sokwala’s office. Inside, a couple of medical sales guys wait to see the doctor, so I go right in. Dr. Sokwala sits behind her desk and I tell her I’m struggling with the decision to stay in Kisumu or return to the U.S. It’s weighing on me and I’d like to talk with someone.
“Do you provide couseling?” I ask.
“I do, but not during regular hours. This office is not the right environment. I usually like to go to lunch or dinner, and then talk in a relaxed environment, as friends.”
So we decide to meet at 12:30pm for lunch.
“I try to leave here at 12:30,” she says, “but sometimes it’s hard and I don’t get out until 1pm.”
I don’t tell Dr. Sokwala why I’m thinking of leaving Kenya. That can come later. But she senses the stress it is causing me and she says, “That’s a wonderful problem to have, isn’t it?”
I look confused, so she says, “Good things will happen whichever decision you make. If you decide to stay, you and I will get to see each other more and if you decide to go, you’ll be with your family or friends.” I was so grateful to her for framing the situation in the positive.
“See you at 12:30,” I tell her.
With two hours to spend, I go to the internet café. There’s one very important email that must go today, so I spend time crafting it carefully and discover, upon trying to send it, that the net is down. I look around and notice the owner at the front desk on his cell phone. They always call the service provider, which has its office in this shopping complex. Turns out the problem isn’t the service provider but the phone line. Soon, two men from the phone company show up saying a bill hasn’t been paid. This seems highly unlikely because the café’s business is dependent on phone lines. Why would someone who has a business dependent on phones not pay their bills?
People are leaving the shop because the internet is down. I have no way of saving the email so I’m desperate to get it sent. The phone company men argue with the owner as we all watch. If he paid the bill, then all he has to do is produce proof the payment went through the phone company’s account. He can do this by faxing the proof with a form. Good God!! This stupid bureaucratic bullshit. It’ll take him hours to produce the proof and fax it over.
I’m frustrated, not being able to send the note after spending so much time on it and not being able to save it, unless I want to save it onto a hard drive accessible by lots of people. I must leave to meet Dr. Sokwala, so I tell myself to take a deep breath. To let it go. The note will reach its recipient for I’ll try to send it later. These glitches occur regularly in Kisumu. Either the electricity is out or the phone lines are down. We must learn to be flexible.
Still slightly frustrated, I rush through the busy streets to Dr. Sokwala’s office, only to see the door closed and padlocked. My heart drops. A guy strapping vegetables to the back of his bike says, “She just left.” I must be late but can’t believe she’d leave me. Tears are working their way up as I cross the street in the bright sunshine. I feel like I’ve thrown my lifeline out and it wasn’t caught. But then I remember six months before when I left Dr. Sokwala’s office. She told me then not to be a victim. My head goes up. I’m not a victim. I wanted to speak with her, to get an objective perspective about my decision to either stay or leave Kenya. Because everyone else has a stake in what I do, I thought she could provide a neutral opinion. But deep down, don’t I already know what my decision is? Don’t I truly want to go back to the U.S. where I’ll feel safer and will be able to pursue other options, including continuing to promote TICH using reliable technology?
Yes, I already had my answer, I was afraid to bring it out into the light, for fear it’d look like I was running away. I now admit this truth and feel lighter. I go to another internet café and email Chris at VSO in Nairobi, saying I’ve made up my mind and I’ll be returning to Atlanta.
Walking through Kisumu on my way home, I’m not happy. I’m not thrilled. It feels like things are unfinished here. The hardest part about leaving will be telling the Ruprahs and my co-workers at TICH. It makes my stomach hurt to think about telling them I’ll be leaving Kenya.
At the top of Oginga Odinga Street, the main thoroughfare through Kisumu that ends at Lake Victoria’s edge, police are moving street vendors from the sidewalks. There is arguing and chaos as the vendors are packing up their wares. Boda Bodas, too, have been forbidden to congregate on the street where they normally wait to pick up passengers. Kisumu is cleaning up its image because a conference is coming to town and with it come top executives from sugar companies all over Kenya as well as ministers of parliament from several East African countries.
They’re painting the curb of Ogina Odinga and the curbs on the roundabouts in town. They’re sweeeping the street clean and are spraying for mosquitoes in all parts of town where the MPs might go during their two week conference. Milimani, the neighborhood I live in, is the nicest residential area, so they spray for bugs. I notice immediately there are no mosquitoes in my house, where before I had to burn a repellant coil just to be able to sit in my living room and sew or read without being bitten. Or I had to climb under the net to read free of bites. On average, while living in Kisumu, I’m bitten by mosquitoes about 10 times a day. But suddenly, there are no mosquitoes.
However, when Ed visits, I ask if he’s noticed fewer bugs.
“No,” Ed says, “as a matter of fact, there have been many more bugs lately. When they sprayed Kisumu, all the mosquitoes went to Nyalenda. The slums are two blocks behind our house. Typically, few people in Milimani get Malaria. People in Nyalenda are infected regularly. Because they’re infected, mosquitoes also become infected. It’s a nasty cycle, one that could be broken by residents of Nyalenda taking anti-malarials. Ed tells me two female volunteers from Holland arrived to work at his organization, Pandipiere, and both of them contracted Malaria within their first two weeks of being in Kisumu. That’s because Pandipiere serves Nyalenda, the slum area, and they insist on their volunteers living in the slums while volunteering. Being in Nyalenda puts them at greater risk of Malaria and Typhoid. Funny that the risk is so much greater in Nyalenda, a place separated from Milimani by two residential blocks.
As I watch the improvements taking place in town, to impress our very important visitors, I wonder why Kisumu doesn’t sweep the main street free of vendors and boda bodas all the time. Why don’t they clean the streets and paint curbs as a matter of city maintenance? It seems the appearance of being well-managed is more important to city leaders than actually manging the city well. They create illusions of city planning and an idealic place to live. When Priscah, the mayor of Kisumu, visited the TICH campus to pass out certificates at the end of the entrepreneur workshop, she gave a short speech on how great Kisumu is and how safe it is. She wouldn’t allow anyone to suggest things in Kisumu are less than perfect.
There are advantages to being positive about your work, but not if it means sweeping the true situation under the rug. And Priscah was sweeping Kisumu’s less palatable features out of sight. Like the unreliable city water plant that supposedly distributes safe drinking water but which no one drinks without boiling or filtering. And city water isn’t even piped into Nyalenda, where it is needed most to combat disease and other health hazards. And then there’s the issue of city sanitation. Street vendors sell food that is not monitored by food safety officials. Cars and trucks emit masses of pollutants. Street boys are beaten by the police. Everyone, individuals and businesses, are afraid of being robbed by “thugs.”
As I walk home from town with the sad knowledge I’ll be leaving Kisumu, the boda boda drivers call out to me, “We go, White Lady?” I just shake my head “no” and keep walking, wondering what it’ll be like to drive through town for the last time, headed for the Kisumu airport and London and Atlanta.
“Do you provide couseling?” I ask.
“I do, but not during regular hours. This office is not the right environment. I usually like to go to lunch or dinner, and then talk in a relaxed environment, as friends.”
So we decide to meet at 12:30pm for lunch.
“I try to leave here at 12:30,” she says, “but sometimes it’s hard and I don’t get out until 1pm.”
I don’t tell Dr. Sokwala why I’m thinking of leaving Kenya. That can come later. But she senses the stress it is causing me and she says, “That’s a wonderful problem to have, isn’t it?”
I look confused, so she says, “Good things will happen whichever decision you make. If you decide to stay, you and I will get to see each other more and if you decide to go, you’ll be with your family or friends.” I was so grateful to her for framing the situation in the positive.
“See you at 12:30,” I tell her.
With two hours to spend, I go to the internet café. There’s one very important email that must go today, so I spend time crafting it carefully and discover, upon trying to send it, that the net is down. I look around and notice the owner at the front desk on his cell phone. They always call the service provider, which has its office in this shopping complex. Turns out the problem isn’t the service provider but the phone line. Soon, two men from the phone company show up saying a bill hasn’t been paid. This seems highly unlikely because the café’s business is dependent on phone lines. Why would someone who has a business dependent on phones not pay their bills?
People are leaving the shop because the internet is down. I have no way of saving the email so I’m desperate to get it sent. The phone company men argue with the owner as we all watch. If he paid the bill, then all he has to do is produce proof the payment went through the phone company’s account. He can do this by faxing the proof with a form. Good God!! This stupid bureaucratic bullshit. It’ll take him hours to produce the proof and fax it over.
I’m frustrated, not being able to send the note after spending so much time on it and not being able to save it, unless I want to save it onto a hard drive accessible by lots of people. I must leave to meet Dr. Sokwala, so I tell myself to take a deep breath. To let it go. The note will reach its recipient for I’ll try to send it later. These glitches occur regularly in Kisumu. Either the electricity is out or the phone lines are down. We must learn to be flexible.
Still slightly frustrated, I rush through the busy streets to Dr. Sokwala’s office, only to see the door closed and padlocked. My heart drops. A guy strapping vegetables to the back of his bike says, “She just left.” I must be late but can’t believe she’d leave me. Tears are working their way up as I cross the street in the bright sunshine. I feel like I’ve thrown my lifeline out and it wasn’t caught. But then I remember six months before when I left Dr. Sokwala’s office. She told me then not to be a victim. My head goes up. I’m not a victim. I wanted to speak with her, to get an objective perspective about my decision to either stay or leave Kenya. Because everyone else has a stake in what I do, I thought she could provide a neutral opinion. But deep down, don’t I already know what my decision is? Don’t I truly want to go back to the U.S. where I’ll feel safer and will be able to pursue other options, including continuing to promote TICH using reliable technology?
Yes, I already had my answer, I was afraid to bring it out into the light, for fear it’d look like I was running away. I now admit this truth and feel lighter. I go to another internet café and email Chris at VSO in Nairobi, saying I’ve made up my mind and I’ll be returning to Atlanta.
Walking through Kisumu on my way home, I’m not happy. I’m not thrilled. It feels like things are unfinished here. The hardest part about leaving will be telling the Ruprahs and my co-workers at TICH. It makes my stomach hurt to think about telling them I’ll be leaving Kenya.
At the top of Oginga Odinga Street, the main thoroughfare through Kisumu that ends at Lake Victoria’s edge, police are moving street vendors from the sidewalks. There is arguing and chaos as the vendors are packing up their wares. Boda Bodas, too, have been forbidden to congregate on the street where they normally wait to pick up passengers. Kisumu is cleaning up its image because a conference is coming to town and with it come top executives from sugar companies all over Kenya as well as ministers of parliament from several East African countries.
They’re painting the curb of Ogina Odinga and the curbs on the roundabouts in town. They’re sweeeping the street clean and are spraying for mosquitoes in all parts of town where the MPs might go during their two week conference. Milimani, the neighborhood I live in, is the nicest residential area, so they spray for bugs. I notice immediately there are no mosquitoes in my house, where before I had to burn a repellant coil just to be able to sit in my living room and sew or read without being bitten. Or I had to climb under the net to read free of bites. On average, while living in Kisumu, I’m bitten by mosquitoes about 10 times a day. But suddenly, there are no mosquitoes.
However, when Ed visits, I ask if he’s noticed fewer bugs.
“No,” Ed says, “as a matter of fact, there have been many more bugs lately. When they sprayed Kisumu, all the mosquitoes went to Nyalenda. The slums are two blocks behind our house. Typically, few people in Milimani get Malaria. People in Nyalenda are infected regularly. Because they’re infected, mosquitoes also become infected. It’s a nasty cycle, one that could be broken by residents of Nyalenda taking anti-malarials. Ed tells me two female volunteers from Holland arrived to work at his organization, Pandipiere, and both of them contracted Malaria within their first two weeks of being in Kisumu. That’s because Pandipiere serves Nyalenda, the slum area, and they insist on their volunteers living in the slums while volunteering. Being in Nyalenda puts them at greater risk of Malaria and Typhoid. Funny that the risk is so much greater in Nyalenda, a place separated from Milimani by two residential blocks.
As I watch the improvements taking place in town, to impress our very important visitors, I wonder why Kisumu doesn’t sweep the main street free of vendors and boda bodas all the time. Why don’t they clean the streets and paint curbs as a matter of city maintenance? It seems the appearance of being well-managed is more important to city leaders than actually manging the city well. They create illusions of city planning and an idealic place to live. When Priscah, the mayor of Kisumu, visited the TICH campus to pass out certificates at the end of the entrepreneur workshop, she gave a short speech on how great Kisumu is and how safe it is. She wouldn’t allow anyone to suggest things in Kisumu are less than perfect.
There are advantages to being positive about your work, but not if it means sweeping the true situation under the rug. And Priscah was sweeping Kisumu’s less palatable features out of sight. Like the unreliable city water plant that supposedly distributes safe drinking water but which no one drinks without boiling or filtering. And city water isn’t even piped into Nyalenda, where it is needed most to combat disease and other health hazards. And then there’s the issue of city sanitation. Street vendors sell food that is not monitored by food safety officials. Cars and trucks emit masses of pollutants. Street boys are beaten by the police. Everyone, individuals and businesses, are afraid of being robbed by “thugs.”
As I walk home from town with the sad knowledge I’ll be leaving Kisumu, the boda boda drivers call out to me, “We go, White Lady?” I just shake my head “no” and keep walking, wondering what it’ll be like to drive through town for the last time, headed for the Kisumu airport and London and Atlanta.
posted by Cindi at 4:50 PM
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