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.