Saturday 6/27/2009 10:00pm

As far as I can tell, there is no concept of personal space here. Today Jane took me with Innocent and Enoch to see her sister who had a baby 3 months ago. We drove 4 hours out of the city to a farm. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, there was a woman sitting next to me. Then I dozed off again and when I woke up, there was a man sitting between us. Enoch and another little boy were in the back of the station wagon.

The man was pretty much sitting on top of me, and when we were jostled into each other, it was no big deal for him at all. At the orphanage, handshakes turn into hand-holding, and everyone sits less than 3 inches from each other. I am usually in physical contact with someone else, or surrounded by 5-15 people. At the farm house, we gathered in Jane’s sister’s farm house with about 20 other relatives. Everyone was sitting on top of everyone.

We stopped for coffee on the way, where the server asked me if I wanted it “Black or White.” I had no idea what white coffee was, but it turns out that they serve hot drinks with the milk already in the water. Then you either add a tea bag, or a packet of Nescafe.

Friday 6/26/2009 6:40pm

Michael Jackson, RIP. There is not a lot of mourning around here. Everyone is aware of his death, but no one really cares. I am deeply saddened. The news called him a genius and I think they are exactly right.

I taught 2 art classes today and a gym class. Gym takes place in a field of big rocks and mud puddles.



The “jungle gym” is an enormous stack of junk plywood with nails sticking out everywhere. A tire is the favorite toy, although a mini soccer ball is also kicked around, and they play a sort of basketball by trying to shoot it through some circular metal that isn’t at all perpendicular to the wall.



I attended the primary school debate, a weekly occurrence on Fridays (there is also a debate among the high school students). The topic was: “Science vs. Social Studies” (which is better to learn?) (the topic for high school was: should catholic priests be allowed to marry?). Some intriguing arguments included: Science teaches us about our bodies, and how to avoid diseases. Yes, but if you don’t learn social studies, you’ll never know any capitals. Somehow, social studies won the debate. When a student is called on, he/she must say “Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, and thank you, house at large” before beginning the argument. Then someone would raise their hand for clarification point, objection point, or addition point.

There were also Ministers of Agriculture, Education, Finance and Health who came in to answer questions. They were good questions, such as “Honorable Minister of Finance, you raised the price of food in the last year, but decreased the price of alcohol, how are we expected to eat?” But the answers were pretty much all: “I’m working on it.”

Thursday 6/25/2009 11:35pm

I met with the children today. It was a long walk to the orphanage, about 30 minutes. There are huts on the side of the road covered in tarps where women sell things like fresh fruit (pineapple, watermelon, bananas), clothes (all used), and random dusty trinkets on the way there.

When I entered the orphanage, the odor of human waste literally nearly knocked me out. By the end of the day I still wasn’t used to it, but I tried to tell myself it was like being in a barn, and that helped somewhat.

One of the 12 year olds asked me if I was white. “Are you white?” “huh??” “Are you white?” “what?” “are you white?” “sorry??” until finally he wrote it down: WHITE? I said, that’s what I thought you were asking, yes I’m white.



I’m trying to teach Grace english, and learn Kiswahili from her. Innocent and Jane tell me when I speak, its at the level of a 3 year old. Its true. I am very good at saying “I want candy,” “where’s the nose?” and “what is that who?”

Thursday, 6/25/2009 4am

Awake. Wednesday afternoon I met with the 7 other volunteers who will be here over the next few weeks. Jane walked me to a storage unit and when she opened the door I realized the block of storage units was actually used for shops and offices. I stepped into the By Grace office, surprised at the size despite the tiny turquoise blue metal door. The other volunteers arrived and we waited for the volunteer coordinator, Sonya (my roommate at Jane’s house) to show up for our orientation. We waited. And waited. The car she was in had broken down,.

In the meantime, it rained for about 40 minutes. In the states, rain makes the ground immediately shiny. Its a strange effect here, because there is so much dust on the road that it takes about 10 minutes of rain for the ground to actually appear wet.

When it wasn’t raining, we waited outside, getting various reactions from people. Some gave us the stink eye while others tried to hide from us. Some came up to us and shook every one of our hands “hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.” Chickens ran across the road and a group of school children played jump rope at the end of the street.

After we had waited for 1.5 hours, it was decided Sonya would not make it. We walked to the field where the By Grace children were playing. The field is actually just a yard of dirt with groups of tall weeds growing in patches everywhere. A group of mixed age boys played soccer in the middle of the field, and the older kids hung out around the perimeter and watched. The younger kids surrounded us and shook our hands. There was a lot of hand holding. Even when I was just standing, someone was in front of me, with both hands on mine.

When it was time to go, a group of children led me out. I told them I didn’t think I lived this way, but they said, yes, you live this way. Suddenly a teenage boy runs up to me and points back to Jane. I had already walked a block in the wrong direction, so I waved bye to the kids and headed home with Jane.

Back at home, we ate dinner, played with Grace, checked our email, and watched a dubbed Chinese soap opera on TV (the cleavage is also blurred out, for modesty’s sake!). The power went off twice for about 20 minutes each time. Then we played some race-solitaire and off to bed.

Wednesday, 6/24/2009 Noon.

I am staying with a family of 5. The parents are Innocent and Jane, and the children are Gideon - 15, Enoch - 8 and Grace - 3. Grace was the only one up last night when I arrived at 11pm. I have trouble understanding her mix of Swahili, English, Spanish and gibberish. But she’s very cute.


I played cards with the 3 other volunteers and Innocent for an hour, and the whole time wondered what the coughing was coming from behind a curtain in the living room. I found out later it was Enoch, who has malaria. It seems not to be a huge deal; apparently the night after he was diagnosed he was out playing soccer with his friends.

The other volunteers love playing a game called squidge, which I determined is actually just a race to see who can finish solitaire first. I played 2 rounds and was terrible.

Laying down in bed was the most glorious feeling after 25 hours of sitting up in uncomfortable positions. I heard mosquitos buzzing around my head and couldn’t determine whether they were in my mosquito net or outside of it. I suffered a few psychosomatic bites during the night and woke up scratching furiously throughout. The volunteer sharing my room seems super badass as she slept without a mosquito net.

No extraordinarily odd dreams last night to report. I was shopping for a hat, helping to put on a latin-themed production of the king and I, meeting a drug dealing cop at 1000 E 10th Street apartment 1G (I haven’t smoked since leaving so American Spirits were the illicit goods), and speed-dialing Ashish on his birthday to see if he wanted to go to a soduku party and a concert afterwards.

June 22, 2009

Sadness slightly dilutes my excitement; it seems like every day now will be closer to the end of the trip. Stray corgi hairs embedded in my clothes and pillow are comforting me as I wait for my plane. A part of corgi is literally coming with me, and even though I understand that these are hairs she will never miss or even really know about, their presence lessens my usual pre-flight jitters.

In the airport, I looked for trinkets to bring to my host family, and found myself drawn to the Field Museum store, to the section with jewelry and bags in the style of Africa. I realized that what attracted me most would be a totally lame USA souvenir and considered that conversely, maybe what I found revolting might be a great gift. “Here’s a metal thermos from Starbucks, one of the the greedy corporations that form the backbone of America’s economy. And here’s a tiny cup on top that we don’t even use in the US, for various reasons that all boil down to laziness. Americans like things that could in theory serve a useful purpose but turn out to be unnecessary and worthless in practice. Like our last president. Anyway I thought this would be good for if you don’t like your tea to get cold throughout the day. ”

There’s a girl next to me who just arrived from backpacking Europe. I thought of my trek through Europe and asked her where she’d been, but neither of us had been to the same cities. I was grateful for this fact, because I don’t really like talking to people in the airport and was relieved to not feel compelled to compare stories and experiences.

My dreams have always been very lucid, so I’m not sure if I can attribute the dream I had last night to the malaria pills yet. Vance was playing in a mixing bowl of liquid butter, dipping his face in it, blowing bubbles and laughing. It was the grossest cute thing you’ve ever seen. I wonder how much weirder it gets than that but have a feeling I’m going to find out soon.