December

View from Ngong Hills



Biking Through Hell's Gate












Me and Michael in a tea field in Kericho













Happy Holidays Everyone! I hope you're all doing well and staying warm. December has been a pretty awesome month for me. School closed on the 5th, so I took off the two weeks following the last day to relax and travel. I got to spend a lot of time with my friends, eat too much nyama choma, enjoy a few Tuskers and spend time with my family here. Plus, I got to spend 6 days traveling around Western Kenya with Michael. We took an overnight bus to Kisumu that arrived at 4:30 in the morning. Kisumu is the 3rd largest city in Kenya, with a population of around 330,000-a pretty large step down from Mombasa (730,000) and Nairobi (3 million). We met up with some of Michael's friends from last time he visited there, walked around the town a little and spent an afternoon relaxing at Kiboko Bay which is on the shores of Lake Victoria. It was beautiful and we couldn't have asked for nicer weather. That night we went out a bar called Octopus's Bottoms Up Club. When we first got there and were shooting some pool, there was lots of lovely Christmas music playing, followed by the first ~45 seconds of "Thriller" six times in a row, then a DVD of a late 80's Michael Jackson concert. How do you have a bad night after that?
The next day, we packed up and headed to a small town called Kericho. If you've ever had tea from Kenya, there's a pretty solid chance this is where it came from, as they produce about 75% of Kenya's tea. But while they do tea very well, that's about it. We had a nice dinner and went to bed early as there really isn't much to do there. The next morning we got up early and went on a tea tour in one of the plantations. It was really beautiful and I learned more than I ever expected to about tea. After that, we got on a really crowded matatu (at one point, 20 people in what's supposed to be a 15 person vehicle) to Naivasha Town. We took another quick ride and arrived at Fisherman's Camp, right on the banks of Lake Naivasha. We spent the afternoon and evening relaxing, having dinner, and sitting on the pier. Unfortunately, the lake is extremely low right now, so we didn't see any hippos in the water, but the views were beautiful none the less. We got up very early the next day to rent bikes to go to the nearby national park, Hell's Gate. What an incredible way to go on safari! You bike through the park and there's nothing separating you from the wildlife. They say there are cheetahs and leopards there, but we didn't see any-something I was semi-OK with. While it would have been thrilling, and I'm sure we would have been fine, being at the total mercy of a large cat is not something I was totally prepared for. In total, we biked about 30 km (18 miles), and it made me painfully aware of how out of shape I am. Might be time to join a gym. Also, I got totally sunburned, but don't worry, I'm not asking for sympathy from anyone who can see snow outside right now. That night, as we were sitting around having some pizza, a hippo came up from the lake and was grazing no more than 30 ft. away from us. It was awesome.
We headed back on a Saturday and that night, met up with some friends and went to see Brick and Lace in concert. They were the "it" band last time I was here, so we were all pretty pumped. Unfortunately, in true Kenyan style, they were about 5 hours late and a concert that was supposed to start around 9 pm didn't actually start until 2:30 am. Then, after 3 songs, they went off stage again, so we threw in the towel and went home. Brick and Lace were definitely a let down, but there were about 6 other bands that played, so we still had a good time.
As for the rest of my month, I went into school a few times to play soccer and frisbee, do art, and teach the kids about computers. And we got the results from the KCPE's, the national exams our boys took-they did amazing. All of them passed with above average scores, some extremely competitive. I could not be more proud and can't help but smile every time I think about it. Knowing where most of them came from and the hardships they've had to endure, the fact that their hard work has really paid off and they all get to go to secondary is so exciting. So big ups to my boys.
The holidays were a little difficult, first Christmas away from home. Luckily I have my surrogate brother here, so we were able to partake in our tradition of watching A Muppet Christmas Carol together on Christmas Eve. On Christmas, my host family had a big party, so that was a lot of fun as well. Definitely a very different holiday season-no snow! Hardly felt like Christmas.
New Years Eve was a lot of fun, but not terribly different than any other night out in Nairobi for a lot of Kenyans. People here party pretty hard. There was no count down at the bar we went to, all of the sudden everyone just started popping balloons. So happy 2010!
The day after Christmas, a few friends and I took a day trip out to Ngong Hills, only ~30 minutes outside Nairobi. Our friend Simon just opened up a restaurant there and the view out over the Rift Valley is incredible. We did a mini-hike and visited a place called Pride Rock-pretty sure Pride Rock from The Lion King was based on this view (not really, but I took a picture where I pretended to hold up Simba anyway).
School started again today, it was great to see all of the kids that left during December again. The weather has been totally crazy, raining almost every night and many days. It makes walking to school on a dirt, excuse me, mud road a little tricky in flip flops. This is supposed to be the dry season, but there's nothing dry about it and they say El Nino is the culprit. It's not all bad though, there was a pretty serious drought before I got here, so the rain is good. Should make Maasai Mara nice and green for when my parents come visit.
Ok, gotta run. I hope you all had wonderful holidays and good luck on any resolutions you may have made. I miss you!
Peace and Love, Hannah

November

Well, I've been keeping pretty busy since my last post and I'm really looking forward to December where I'll have a little more free time. A bunch of old friends are coming into Nairobi (one from the States, one who has been working in Lamu, and two who have been working on an island in Lake Victoria) so it should be a lot of fun. School ends on Friday, but the kids will still be coming throughout December because they eat lunch at Hamomi everyday. I have plans to teach them about volcanoes and lead a week-long art project building a volcano so I can show them the baking soda/vinegar lava thing. It may be a bit ambitious, but it should be a lot of fun.

My brother from another mother, Michael Kenyon, arrives in Nairobi tonight and I'm looking forward to hanging out with him again. Cross your fingers that I take the right bus to pick him up at the airport!

Some of the highlights from the past few weeks include:
-Going to the Kenya/Nigeria soccer match. Totally insane. Unfortunately, Kenya lost, but they put up a good fight. Other spectators were not happy with the ref (he sucked) and showed it by throwing full soda bottles onto the field. Things got a little rowdy after the game, but luckily I went with a few Kenyan guys and they made sure that I made it out safely. Also, it was $3. Unbelievable.
-Going to a Kenyan wedding. We arrived a little late, but after all, I am in Africa-seems I've adjusted to their time. Instead of proceeding down the aisle at the end, the entire wedding party danced. It was great.
-Having my English class write thank you notes to all of the American volunteers who recently went back home. My personal favorite was to Kory, the PE teacher. It said "Thank you Mr. Kory for making us strong, and for making us to be with muscles." Awesome.
-I got cowboy boots at a local market for ~$8. That might not seem like a highlight to most people, but I was pretty excited.
-Finally getting the Kangemi Health Center to come to Hamomi and give our kids deworming tablets. As an added bonus, they had a health talk with Standards 6-8 about HIV/AIDS and living a healthy life. To have an open discussion about HIV/AIDS is a pretty remarkable thing here, and the kids seemed to receive it really well.
-Taking the standard 8 boys to a nearby cyber cafe to let them experiment with computers and the internet. Another intern has been teaching them about computers and it has definitely paid off. They did a great job and now all have email addresses!
-It was a little difficult to be away from home on Thanksgiving (a first for me!) but a friend and I made a big dinner and shared it with my host family. My family called and my uncles still managed to tease me, even though I'm halfway around the world. Definitely made me feel at home again. Packers won and I was still able to eat way too many mashed potatoes, so I did alright.

Starting tomorrow, I will be taking over the teacher workshops that another volunteer started a few weeks back. Not sure why anyone trusts me to teach other teachers, but hopefully we'll be able to work together and come up with something productive. We'll see.

My life here continues to challenge me, entertain me, and keep me happy. I've made some very good friends and experienced many new things. December should be great, I'm looking forward to traveling, seeing old friends and meeting new friends, working at school, and all other things that are coming my way. Please keep in touch if you've got a free moment, I'd really love to hear from you and I promise I'll write back as promptly as possible. I hope you're all staying warm!

Peace and Love, Hannah

My First Month

Hey Everyone-
I've never really done the blog thing before, so I figured I'd just break my life here into a few paragraphs to hit on the major points.

My New Home
I live in an area of Nairobi called Lavington with the Koech family. Diana (30) is the head of the household and a wonderful person. Since we are fairly close in age, we have become good friends, but she watches out for me in a semi-parental way which can be very comforting. She has 2 kids. Carl (10) has been at boarding school most of the time that I've been here, but was home for a week and we get along well. Kayla (6 months) is adorable and one of the most mellow babies I've met. She has no choice but to love me because I play with her all the time, and I do think that she actually likes me, but sometimes looks at me like I'm a crazy mzungu, which I guess I am. Diana's brother Amos or Kipto (depending on who is addressing him-a fun fact that took me ~1 1/2 weeks to figure out) is 28 and we also get along really well. Their younger sister Faith just turned 24 and we actually met last time I was here-very bizzare coincidence. We have become fast friends and sisters. I'm very grateful to have a Kenyan my age! All in all, they are wonderful people and I feel very luck to live with them.
Also, it happens to be a very nice house which was unexpected, but made my transition quite a bit easier. My own room and bathroom give me some necessary along time, and the pool doesn't exactly hurt...

My New Job
I am a volunteer teacher at a school called Hamomi (hamomi.org -check it out!). It's located in Kangemi, which is a slum a little ways from Lavington. It currently has 104 students, all living in Kangemi either with parents or guardians. They range from kindergarten (or "baby class" as it's referred to here) to standard 8. The people I work with, both Kenyan and American, are great. Right now, everyone is a volunteer and they really do a lot for these kids, who wouldn't really have a chance to go to school if it weren't for Hamomi. I've been teaching English to standard 5 and 6, and Science to standard 3. The students call me "Cha," which is short for teacher. It's pretty endearing. Last week I worked with the 6 standard 8 boys, helping prepare them for their national exams. These exams are really important, as the scores determine if and where they get to go to secondary school, so I think/hope the extra effort helped. They seemed very confident coming back today. I had a blast working with and getting to know them. They are very bright and incredibly motivated boys, and they made me promise to come visit them once they're at secondary.
Besides being my super cool and cheery self (even at 8 am after the hour-long walk to school-those of you who know me in the morning won't believe this, but I'm kind of a morning person in Kenya!), I brought one other thing to Hamomi with me-kazoos. Credit on this one goes all to Ann Brophy, well done Mother. I brought ~120 kazoos over and have mini-music lessons a few times a week. I've taught a few of the older classes scales, but we mostly just do songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat, and I'm learning the Kenyan National Anthem. They once requested for me to sing (yes, sing) the American one and I obliged...hasn't happened since. Wonder why that is? But they love the kazoos, and sometimes when I walk in for regular class they say "Cha kazoo?" and are quite disappointed when i make them learn about prefixes instead. Oh well, such is life.

KSLP
So far, we have made a lot of progress for KSLP. A few weeks ago, I traveled to Maua and Igembe South Constituency with an old friend and new colleague, Brian Redmond, to meet people and visit schools. Nick Nyagah, the principal at Nkubu Boys and a close friend of KSLP, showed us around and introduced us to the MP (member of parliament) in Igembe South, who is very supportive of us. He even lent us a driver and a Land Rover for 2 days. This made it possible for us to visit 11 schools, some right off the tarmac and others, well, not. Let's just say that without a Land Rover (and someone who knew where to drive it) it probably would have taken closer to 3 weeks, so thumbs up to making friends with connections.
It was all a pretty cool experience. If you're reading this, then you've also probably heard me talk (a lot) about KSLP over the past year or so, and probably didn't think it would be possible for me to believe in the cause any more than I already did. But now that I've actually been to the schools we'll be working with, seen waht they have, and heard from their mouths what they think a better library could do for them, I really do. Plus I got to do it all in a government vehicle and hand out business cards. I felt so grown-up!

Traveling
So, I'm aware that I'm already traveling, but since I live and work in Nairobi, I count leaving the city as traveling.
First, Maasai Mara for safari. Awesome blossom, extra awesome. It was amazing! We did one afternoon safari and one early enough to see the sunrise over the Rift Valley, totally incredible. We saw tons of animals (duh) including zebra, elephant, giraffe, impala, warthog, hyena, cheetah, buffalo, and wildebeast. But I was most excited about the king of the jungle, and we saw tons of lions. We saw a lion and lioness fighting each other over something, and we saw a lioness stalking a heard of zebra. It was straight out of Planet Earth and made for a awesome weekend.
I also got to go to Machakos and visit my host family from last time. I missed them a ton and it was really great to spend time there again. Life moves at about the same pace, not a ton has changed. I played several games of Uno with Brenda (now 8) and the neighbors. Unfortunately, the other kids were all away at school, but Mama made chapati and stew which is my favorite Kenyan meal. I really enjoyed relaxing and spending time in a place that was my home for 2 months. Also, since visiting, I have been getting lovely text messages from them every few days- my personal favorite is, "Morning daughter. We are fine & happy after a night of heavy rain. The weather is "super sweet" n the birds are singing & dancing in the sky. Happy times-love Dad." How do you have a bad day after that?
For the future, I have plans for a weekend on the beach in Mombasa, and in December the kids are off school, so I will be traveling to Tanzania with Brian. Let me know if you want some food. I'm not gonna cook it, but I'll order it from Zanzibar!

General
On Kenyatta Day (a national holiday to honor Jomo Kenyatta-first president of Kenya), my family had a BBQ, complete with a full goat-delievered to and slaughtered at our house. No drinking of the blood this time, but it was a unique experience none the less.
I've gotten pretty used to the day-to-day life here: walking a ton, work, Matatus, arguing with people over "mzungu prices," power-outages, the occasional Tusker or two, ugali and eating with my hands, and using Kiswahili (I'm getting better!) I love meeting new people, which I do everyday, and I'm very happy.
If you read all the way to here, thank you and I'm sorry it was so long! Please e-mail me at hbbrown87@gmail.com if we haven't been in touch yet, I'd really love to hear from you!

Love and Peace, Hannah