One small step...One giant leap...: My last week in Kenya :(

On Monday, Molly and Daisy and I had lunch over Mama Janes. We had ugali, sukuma, and she treated us to LIVER. That was probably the toughest thing I have had to eat since coming here…I don't even eat cow meat, so cow liver was a stretch. But in Kibera, where families don't usually eat anything besides ugali and sukuma, I couldn't not eat something Mama Jane spent more money than she had on. I was especially grateful for her hospitality after talking to George and hearing that he wasn't at school (even though he has 2 months until he graduates) because they sent him home since he didn't have school fees for that month. Mama Jane is truly an amazing woman - so joyful and always smiling, so liver or not, it is a blessing to spend time with her and her family.

On Monday night, Molly was headed home, so Jeffrey, Sam (Mama Jane's son), Daisy, Molly, and I loaded into a taxi and headed to the airport. Although there is very few rules in Kenya and you can basically get away with anything, we just happened to pass through a police check with four people in the back seat. Police checks are essentially police men with big guns that sit on the side of the road wherever they want, pull people one, and try to find something wrong so they can get money from you aka corruption at its finest. They told us we had to pay them or they would take us to the police station since we had too many people, so Jeffrey had to bribe them so they could let us go. I have no idea how much he paid, but we bought him lunch the rest of the week to try to pay him back. Sam ended up getting out and taking a bus back to Kibera, so we made it the rest of the way to the airport without any problems. We were all pretty disgusted at the corruption, but its so present in Kenya, that I guess our experience wouldn't be complete without witnessing it.

Saying goodbye to Molly at the airpot was tough - much harder than I thought it would be. We have grown a lot closer than I thought we had I guess - nothing quite like the African bush to draw two people together. Daisy, Jeffrey, and I all had a pretty quiet car ride home…it made me realize how quickly I was leaving and how hard goodbyes would be.

Goodbye Molly!

On Tuesday, after another good day of work with Zulu, Daisy, Edith, and I met up with the University students - Allen, Mweru, Roy,and Karl, for dinner at Carnivore, one of the most popular restaurants in Nairobi. The restaurant is famous for its all you can eat meat buffet of all different animals. We didn't get the all you can eat option, but we split 2 kilos of meat between all of us. It was all delicious: pork, chicken, lamb, crocodile, and ostrich. The ostrich was actually one of my favorites, but crocodile was a little chewy and almost life fish.

Goodbye UoN students!

On Wednesday, I headed into town center alone to pick up a thermometer for testing. Traffic was ridiculous, but it was cool to realize how I wasn't even phased by walking through town anymore, where as my first days in Kenya it terrified me even when I was with David. I then headed back to Kibera for the night.

Fruitful Women, the women's group that I talked about in one of my first posts, that makes jewelry, and runs a school and orphanage, invited Daisy and I to sleep at their shack that night. Just to make sure we had the full Kibera experience - it started pouring as we headed over there. When we got there, we got to see a bunch of kids performing dance routines as part of one of their after school programs. After they performed, Daisy and I joined them and a few young girls started teaching us how to dance. It was so much fun, even though the place started to flood and we had to end early.

We then started helping to make dinner, and eventually ate ugali and sukuma around 9 pm. Before I went to bed, I used the latrine after trudging through mud. It was probably the worst one I have had to use - there were plenty of flies and maggots.

In the one room orphanage, there were 15 kids sleeping on 4 different beds (two without mattresses), and on the floor. Daisy, two of the women, and I slept on the floor on some pads sharing two blankets. Luckily after all of the flooding in the rooms they had dried up the muddy floor with a muddy cloth. I surprisingly slept very well and was pretty warm. I just woke up to a wailing baby around 6:30 am. We had to leave early to make a meeting at the university at 9 am, and they didn't want to let us go. Besides Molly, saying goodbye to them was my first really goodbye.

Child care is very different in Kenya than it is in America. In America, every single need of a baby is immediately attended to. In Kenya, there is not constant supervision. Kids are free to wander wherever they want throughout the day (even if they are 2 years old), or just sit on a bed all day if they can't walk yet. At night they just feed whatever kids show up, and I don't think they ever actually take count of the kids. When a baby cries, it is often ignored for a while because the mother doesn't have food to give it anyways, or has other kids to attend to. We ended up going to bed around 11 pm, and some of the youngest kids were still up and stayed up until the women went to bed. One of the girls, Brenda, who is only 15, did more work than a mother should have to do. She was in charge of cleaning up and locking the gate, helping with dinner, buying food, putting kids in bed…very different form my daily life when I was 15. With all of her responsibility, she was as mature as a 20 year old. Even some of the 3 year olds acted like they were at least 10, perfectly able to just sit on a chair and do nothing for a few hours or feed themselves, since there is no one to give them attention anyways.

On Thursday morning, we had a good meeting with the UoN students, and afterwards I had to say more goodbyes. It hurt to say goodbye, not knowing when I would see them again. They were such a blessing to spend time with and get to know, and made me miss being at MIT among students were are similar to me. Ahhhh let the goodbyes begin! :(

On our way back to Kibera on a bus, I realized before we got off at our stop that my wallet was missing. My first reaction was to freak out…but luckily I only had about $15 worth of money in there, and not my passport. I lost my license, school id, health insurance card, debit card, and keys to my home stay. As it was getting stolen, I had been praying that God would teach me something these last two days, and I guess He answered that prayer quicker than I had hoped. It reminded me how God is always in control, something that Stevo from Zulu tells me often. It reminded me to trust in Him, because I could have lost so much more, or been prevented from going to Uganda/home. And it taught me how people and relationships are so much more important than material things or money. It hurt a lot more to say goodbye to the university students than it did to lose my wallet. Living in Nai-robbery for two months and not getting anything stolen was just too good to be true, so I guess its all part of the Kenya experience. My host sister got her entire bag stolen last week (including her smart phone, national id, $), and didn't have any money to get home, so came home the next day. Someone at the CFK office got her bag stolen two days ago as well…so when I told people, they weren't really shocked. They were more shocked that my phone or camera weren't stolen, and that I hadn't been robbed yet. As Opa always said: "if it can be fixed with money, then it's not important." :)

After this eventful day, it was good to go home, start making thank yous/goodbye gifts, and just spend time with my host mom. I spent the afternoon listening to worship songs with her and writing thank you cards for everyone here in Kenya.

Friday was a day full of goodbyes. Daisy and I brought ice cream for Zulu for my last day (and they were shocked - I don't think all of them had ever had it). I then went to Mama Jane's house to say goodbye to Sam and George. I then went back to CFK, and after giving some flour and sugar to Mama Jane as a thank you gift, I said goodbye to everyone (except Jeffrey wouldn't let me haha). Daisy and I then went to Mama's hotel for lunch, and I said goodbye to them and gave them pictures that we had taken together. Finally we went to Zulu, made a last bit of charcoal, and prolonged goodbyes as long as possible. Jeffrey came by and said goodbye and gave me a few big hugs and a Kenyan bracelet. I then had to say goodbye to Zulu - Stevo, Ndiso, Msioks, Karanja, Zola, Pablo…ahhhh goodbyes hurt.

When I got home I started packing, ate dinner, and watched the Olympics with my family. It was weird that I had been in Kenya for so long, and that I was sleeping in my Kenyan bed for the last time. The next morning, we woke up early, drove to the airport, said goodbyes, and I was Ugandan bound.