It is not over until it is over

I have now lived in Shianda village for 3 months, which means my halfway point as a volunteer in Kenya has passed. I try to prepare myself for how fast the remaining time will go, but I know it will feel like a blink of an eye no matter what. 

An attempt to slow time down a bit is to think back on what has happened so far. To begin with, the house was enriched with two more volunteers. Their arrival has brought a lot of positive energy and laughter to the group. We are like a family who do basically everything together; grocery shopping, cooking, eating, training, and of course, we work together. My favorite part is when we go touristing together. We have visited museums in Mumias and Kisumu, waterfalls, the Crying Stone and Kakamega Forest. One highlight has been our trip to Nairobi. I was lucky to have friends from Sweden visiting Nairobi at the same time, and I really enjoyed spending a couple of days with them! To be in a big city, meet new people and eat food that is not found in the village, was refreshing and gave new energy and motivation.

Friends visiting

The Crying Stone 

Kakamega Forest

Ambururu Waterfalls

Nairobi National Park

Nairobi National Park

Nairobi National Park

The weeks that followed were busy with planning and carrying out activities. Mattia and I visited the women groups of WEFOCO to see what they are working on, what their challenges are, and what they can improve. Based on our observations, we arranged two days of trainings focusing on agricultural practices and financial keeping. The topics we discussed were the importance of soil health, methods to enhance crop production, and strategies to become financially literate. Preparing and facilitating a full day of training is something I have never done before but I am happy and proud over how it turned out. With translation support from our mentors, we managed to create a good learning atmosphere where the participants were engaged, asked questions and shared their own experiences with each other. We look forward to continuing with the practical parts of the training and are planning to carry them out in the coming month! 

Group visit

Group visit

Training

Training

Training

Training

My fellow volunteers, especially one (not to mention any names), are joking about how little time there is left before I leave. But it is not a joke anymore: time is really running out and I am looking at the calendar trying to figure out how to fit all the activities and trips I want to do before leaving Kenya. The math is not mathing so the only option is to start planning the next visit to Africa :) Jokes aside, it is not over until it is over and for the remaining time I will enjoy every minute; gorge on fruits from the market, dance in the pouring rain, slide around in the mud, embrace the darkness of power cuts, and throw ugali in the air like a true local!

Trainings, rain and runs

 Hi all!

 

After the first month of adapting, the second has really flown by! 

 

Certainly, the focus of these last few weeks has been on getting the preparations ready for the training with the local groups.

Ebba and I have already conducted two of the training sessions, and we are very much looking forward to keep working with each group on the different topics that we have introduced so far.

Each training per se has been a bit of an adventure. Ebba had hers on a Monday, and I had mine on a Friday. After some time of waiting I started getting a bit worried because we were supposed to start at 9am, but by 10.30 only a few people were there. I guess the on-time European inside of me has not fully adapted yet to the very relaxed time perception of Kenya!

However, at the end all the people arrived and we had a very nice training session.

We focused on financial training, and they seemed to be very interested, curious and happy about the content that we discussed. Some of the topics they were quite unfamiliar with, but we worked together to make sure that they understood them. For this, we will keep visiting them to make sure that they implement them in their daily lives and can keep growing as farmers and as citizens! 

Jane (my mentor) was very helpful with translating in Swahili what I was telling them. 

This past month we also spent a couple of days in Nairobi because the others already had to renew their visas (I will have to do so very soon) and I decided to join them to see the big city.

It was a very interesting weekend! Certainly Nairobi is very different from Shianda, meeting a lot of new wazungu (the plural Swahili word for foreign/white person) was exciting and refreshing.

I love the fact that in Kenya smoking in the city is not allowed, and during the Free Tour our guide showed us one of the only places where people can smoke.

I have to admit that I was happy to come back in Shianda after a couple of days: much more peaceful, calm environment with a lot more nature and just a different atmosphere.

                             

For Easter we went to Ambururu Waterfalls with Esther and Joshua. It was very nice to spend the day with them there! A different kind of Easter, but a nice one nonetheless!

Emma, Ebba and I also finally went to the Kakamega forest to celebrate Emma’s birthday. We managed not to get lost (which is a great starting point in my opinion) but we did not see any animals apart from some birds and hearing some monkeys. However, the forest was truly beautiful and I am sure we will go again in a couple of weeks as we only explored a small part of it.

 

I am running even more than I had planned to, and I am very happy about this. Multiple times a week I get very early, and by 6:30 I am already running. During my long runs I get to explore new areas around Shianda. Sometimes I pass by places where they maybe have not heard yet of the wazungu in town, and people are very surprised to see me appear in the little paths between the farms, running in the mud. 

Yes, everything is very muddy right now! We are in the long rainy season and every afternoon we get very heavy rain. In fact, ten days ago we had a severe hailstorm and it was the biggest hail I have ever seen, I am happy it was a Sunday and we were in the house and not out doing things. I was worried about the farmers’ cultivations, but I think they did not have much damage.

 

I will write another update next month,

Baadaye! 

Everyday life

I won’t lie, but I want to start my blog with “time is flying by”. It is the actual classic, but life is happening, and somehow, three months have already passed since I first arrived. To summarise, we are now four volunteers, which is nice because it means that we have a strong support network among each other. Our Swahili could be better, but we plan to tackle that issue - soon, we will be fluent (Inshallah). And I have completed my first few activities as a gender advocate here.

International Women's Day in Shianda

To start with the latter, at the beginning of March, I was able to get various stakeholders together to talk about GBV and develop a plan to proceed from here. With International Women’s Day, we were able to join hands and organise a march through Shianda to raise attention to gender equality and GBV. These were some interesting events with many lessons learned. Most of all, it was great to see the motivation of community members and to meet new people working on the same issues.

Other activities that I am planning include a refresher course for the current GBVA and recruiting and training new GBVAs to strengthen the community's efforts. However, my mind is also wandering towards the identified deadlocks that are limiting the GBVA's work and measures to overcome them, which is quite a challenge on its own.

Chairladies meeting

Although work and private life tend to get mixed up a lot in and around the house, which is a given fact when you live with three of your colleagues, we are also able to enjoy our moments off work. We mostly share our meals together, which is nice as I can often get away with cleaning the dishes afterwards. We fill the house with books, have little movie nights, and our love for sports is combined with our hatred for doing the dirty laundry afterwards. We have visited various places, including the Crying Stone in Kakamega, Ambururu Waterfall, Kakamega Forest, and Nairobi.

Visiting the country’s capital city was a bit of a startle, having skipped it altogether upon arrival and having lived in a rural area for 2,5 months. We had to travel to Nairobi for our visa renewal and for me to take my PMP exam. Seeing the difference between the places puts more things in perspective. While enjoying the luxuries of the city, it was also hard to grasp the fact that one meal could easily cost over 1000KES while two days prior, I was dealing with a survivor of GBV who couldn’t afford a 10KES book to visit the government’s medical facility - let alone the costs of medicine after diagnoses. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the headspin Nairobi gave me. Even though we see and understand the disparities (the reason that led us to be here in the first place), there are these moments when nothing makes sense anymore. It is especially during these moments that I realise having this network of volunteers around me to help me ground again is a blessing.

Daily views from the field visits

The gym has always been an essential release for me, and you have no idea how glad I am to continue that habit here. There is something about the sunrises in that little rustic room, the unorganised and confusing weights system, the welded steel beams that function as a leg press or shoulder press, the poorly laid wooden floor, and that intrusive smell of sweat that is simply motivating. Mumias East will keep a bodybuilding competition soon; needless to say, the guys are training hard. And while I will definitely stay out of that, it is nice to train alongside people who are just as motivated to push themselves to their limits.

The sunrise from the gym

We have had our fair share of issues surrounding the house, considering we spent 11 days without electricity, we wake up regularly to the fact the water has run out, and we have to wait until the sun generates enough energy to fill the tank, and the question of how we keep our grass short without overspending (yes at one point we had some cows and goats over). But all in all, I am very grateful for the place we call home - which does have plenty of space, wifi, and even a little projector to create a cinema effect on movie nights.

Life is not all roses, sunshine, unicorns and rainbows. But for some reason, I find myself at peace here. I get carried away by all the little glimmers in life that seem to make any obstacle worth conquering.