As I step off the boda on the tarmac and onto the eroded dirt road kids in ragged clothes and big smiles run and slip their hands into mine. They escort me to the orphanage I am partnering with, only really communicating through smiles and the swinging of arms.
Inside the orphanage I wander around the side where I find two teenagers playing a silver tuba and trumpet that look as though they have made a tour around the world before they made it to this orphanage. It is school holiday, so kids are running around everywhere, but these two boys are practicing. I explain to them my dad’s affinity for the tuba and how random outbursts of “Tuba Love” are relatively normal. They stare at me, failing in their attempt to mask the fact that they believe I might be crazy.
Two younger boys come and welcome me with warm hugs, grab my hands and help me find my way to the office. I am greeted by five twenty-something men, the founders and administrative staff of the orphanage, “Welcome Madame Rachel”. I am still coming to terms with being a Madame…
This is by far the coolest orphanage I have encountered – an orphanage for street kids by street kids. Everyone that works there and lives there once lived on the street - begging, collecting recyclables, fetching water, pick-pocketing or working as a house boy/girl.
When Bosco was 11 his mother, went to town and never came back. He heard through relatives that she had died in some vague accident. His dad was already gone, Bosco was left alone with his two sisters to look after. He spent his days collecting plastic bottles and fetching water for what amounts to about fifty cents. While scavenging in the Nsambya slums he came across some boys playing brass band – he was enraptured. It became his goal to be able to play as they play. It turns out these boys were practicing for a local school, so he asks the teacher if he could learn. The teacher refuses, the band is only for students (and street kids are rather stigmatized here). But he persists. He really wants to play. Eventually the teacher submits, and allows him to play as long as he pays 500 shillings(twenty-five cents) each lesson. Bosco agrees, and works harder to collect money in the slums so that he can raise his music fee and feed his sisters.
Eventually Bosco invites more street kids to join him in class, and eventually convinces a visitor to help him get a home to establish their own band. This visitor buys them five instruments and a two room house. One room for the boys and one for the girls. After raising his sisters, Bosco is hyper aware of girls issues, especially those struggling on the street. The house becomes a center and in time, a man from the UK buys them a larger house that is the orphanage and music school today. They write for corporate sponsorships and have band uniforms from MTN and coca cola and fundraise through concerts and playing special events. The house currently sleeps about 75, but another 75 street kids come on any given day to play music, sing, dance and eat. They are now a big family, calling the older boys Uncle, and me in my subsequent visits, Auntie.
What blows my mind here is Bosco at 11 thinking not just about himself, but about other kids on the street. Bosco could have just learned music on his own, and not think about bringing in other kids from the slum. When he was given a house, he didn’t have to invite others to stay. At 11 years old, he was thinking beyond his own needs about those of his community. All 75 kids living at the center have school fees paid for by fundraising and private donors. The staff all work for free in exchange for housing and food. And about once a month, the kids do community work. The community no longer looks down on the street kids as they once had. Bosco has built something quite remarkable.
The music program fills a very deep hole in the lives of street kids. It fills them with passion, dedication and drive. The kids are not forced to get their instruments out and practice, it is what keeps them going. As we finish up the tour, Bosco takes me around back.
The band has gathered in secret to surprise me. The moment we step around the corner they start into a rousing rendition of Silent Night. It begins slow and traditional, but after the first verse, the tuba steps in on a double beat, the choir sings faster and louder, the conductor’s body jolts full of energy and they all begin to dance to what will forever be my favorite version of Silent Night. I have the goofiest smile across my face and start dancing with the kids that remain on my arms.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The sun is setting, Kenya is burning
He orders a double tequila and orange juice. I think, ‘wow I like the way he rolls, but it is 1pm’ and order a Nile beer. After all, it is 1pm on my first Saturday off in months. We are at a pool with a view, The Best View in Kampala in fact. It is up on the hill overlooking the edge of town and the start of the Great Lake. We are the only people at the pool - it is stunning, the beauty, the quiet, the peace.
In a break in our saga of life stories, the drinks arrive and silence follows. Absolute silence. There is not a church down the hill practicing the organ. There is not a man nailing iron sheets to his roof. There is not a matatu blowing his horn and kicking up dust, there are not kids calling to each other on the football pitch. SILENCE. I instinctively take a deep breath, a sip of beer and lay back on my recliner. This is the life…
It only takes a few minutes for this peace to turn to disquiet. An unknown tense anxiety rolls over me. I can’t place it. I walk to the end of the pool and look out over town. I expect to see tufts of smoke rising over burning Kikuyu businesses and homes. I am taken back to Kenya two years ago. The quiet in the days following the election was deafening - thick with tension.
I am sitting out back of Marcus’ apartment anxiously pretending to read a book about a travel journalist in East Africa, hoping the neighbors will turn on the international news. Kenya broadcast TV and radio have been shut down. Waiting. Every hour or so Nate would check in on me and see if I heard anything. I was going mad - I felt the madness of the country. It wasn’t even my country, but I felt the pulse of the people - quickening. I needed to stop thinking about the what-if’s for a moment, so I walk to the road just as the cops shoot tear gas at empty shops where one too many people had gathered.
It wasn’t my country, but that day when I heard the election results announced on the radio in favor of Kibaki I started crying. The country had stopped, held its breath, waiting, praying that this would not be the result. People knew what was coming long before the announcement. I go inside to tell my friends the result, they don’t believe it. Charles chuckles cynically, knowing he had just won 5,000 Kenyan shillings in a rigged election.
Without really thinking, I immediately leave- I need to talk to people. To get a sense of the destruction that was to come. People that voted for Kibaki were afraid to tell me, and were just as upset by what had happened. They knew that their man had stolen the election, and they too were scared, not just for repercussions of having supported Kibaki, but the repercussions of a government that is derived from corruption. I walk out to the road where I have a decent view of Kericho. It is burning. I hear the pops of gun shots in town. Right in front of me, I see men hoping over fences-running.
I find myself on a rooftop, watching Kenya burn as the sun sets. The people in the apartment nearby invite me in to watch the inauguration of the President. This is thirty minutes after the results were announced. The ceremony is in secret, only about twenty of Kibaki’s closest party members are present. Only one TV station is covering the event, but it is the only thing allowed on air, so there is no real difficulty finding the right station. There is no pomp. There is no circumstance. Just making it official. I felt dirty watching it. I cried with the people gathered in the small room. A few shook their hands at the TV crying, “The blood is on your hands.”
People had hope for this election. They finally had the opportunity to express true democracy. They no longer had to live under a dictator, and they no longer had to make alliances they didn’t believe in inorder to depose that dictator. They had a choice, and looked to the future. But the ruling elite didn’t like their version of the future.
Morgan inquires after my sudden solitude. I begin to go into the moment I was just in but feel myself sinking. I dive into the pool and return to my beer.
In a break in our saga of life stories, the drinks arrive and silence follows. Absolute silence. There is not a church down the hill practicing the organ. There is not a man nailing iron sheets to his roof. There is not a matatu blowing his horn and kicking up dust, there are not kids calling to each other on the football pitch. SILENCE. I instinctively take a deep breath, a sip of beer and lay back on my recliner. This is the life…
It only takes a few minutes for this peace to turn to disquiet. An unknown tense anxiety rolls over me. I can’t place it. I walk to the end of the pool and look out over town. I expect to see tufts of smoke rising over burning Kikuyu businesses and homes. I am taken back to Kenya two years ago. The quiet in the days following the election was deafening - thick with tension.
I am sitting out back of Marcus’ apartment anxiously pretending to read a book about a travel journalist in East Africa, hoping the neighbors will turn on the international news. Kenya broadcast TV and radio have been shut down. Waiting. Every hour or so Nate would check in on me and see if I heard anything. I was going mad - I felt the madness of the country. It wasn’t even my country, but I felt the pulse of the people - quickening. I needed to stop thinking about the what-if’s for a moment, so I walk to the road just as the cops shoot tear gas at empty shops where one too many people had gathered.
It wasn’t my country, but that day when I heard the election results announced on the radio in favor of Kibaki I started crying. The country had stopped, held its breath, waiting, praying that this would not be the result. People knew what was coming long before the announcement. I go inside to tell my friends the result, they don’t believe it. Charles chuckles cynically, knowing he had just won 5,000 Kenyan shillings in a rigged election.
Without really thinking, I immediately leave- I need to talk to people. To get a sense of the destruction that was to come. People that voted for Kibaki were afraid to tell me, and were just as upset by what had happened. They knew that their man had stolen the election, and they too were scared, not just for repercussions of having supported Kibaki, but the repercussions of a government that is derived from corruption. I walk out to the road where I have a decent view of Kericho. It is burning. I hear the pops of gun shots in town. Right in front of me, I see men hoping over fences-running.
I find myself on a rooftop, watching Kenya burn as the sun sets. The people in the apartment nearby invite me in to watch the inauguration of the President. This is thirty minutes after the results were announced. The ceremony is in secret, only about twenty of Kibaki’s closest party members are present. Only one TV station is covering the event, but it is the only thing allowed on air, so there is no real difficulty finding the right station. There is no pomp. There is no circumstance. Just making it official. I felt dirty watching it. I cried with the people gathered in the small room. A few shook their hands at the TV crying, “The blood is on your hands.”
People had hope for this election. They finally had the opportunity to express true democracy. They no longer had to live under a dictator, and they no longer had to make alliances they didn’t believe in inorder to depose that dictator. They had a choice, and looked to the future. But the ruling elite didn’t like their version of the future.
Morgan inquires after my sudden solitude. I begin to go into the moment I was just in but feel myself sinking. I dive into the pool and return to my beer.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Benson
“Whoever gets education may also become strong leaders, may learn to change things, but the rebels did not want the war to ever end.”
This quote is from Benson Wereje, a refugee from Congo, describing why the Congolese rebels attacked school children, attacked his school. Benson’s life and dedication has become one of the deepest roots of Educate!. Every mentor and every student that passes through our program reads his story, and after they meet him for the first time, a little fire is lit inside. I met Benson for the first time this last weekend. Though, when I met him, he was no longer the frightened young boy running for his life through the Congolese forest towards some unknown destination that had to be better than his burning village. He is now a strong young student at one of East Africa’s best universities and the president of a successful refugee organization who returned earlier this year to his home village to establish his community development organization at the request of President Kabila. Shaking Benson’s hand, a fire was re-ignited in me.
My Peace Corps experience and the aftermath of the Kenyan election made me a cynic. I continued pursing this line of work because it was at my core, this belief, and because to not try was unimaginable. But Benson, Benson gives me hope, he brought out the dormant in me.
After an overwhelming day like today-that started at 9am with me leading a 3 hour meeting with our six Ugandan mentors and went straight into creating the weekly newsletter, holding one-on-one meetings with my mentors, dealing with demands from the state side of our operation and ended at 7pm (only because I made myself stop) with me working on a white paper for the ministry of education-Benson’s story reaffirms why I am here - Why I moved across the world, away from every person I love, every comfort I enjoy and fast internet.
Education, civic empowerment, social responsibility. These ideas really can revolutionize the world. I believe in it, and in my three weeks here I have seen it .
This quote is from Benson Wereje, a refugee from Congo, describing why the Congolese rebels attacked school children, attacked his school. Benson’s life and dedication has become one of the deepest roots of Educate!. Every mentor and every student that passes through our program reads his story, and after they meet him for the first time, a little fire is lit inside. I met Benson for the first time this last weekend. Though, when I met him, he was no longer the frightened young boy running for his life through the Congolese forest towards some unknown destination that had to be better than his burning village. He is now a strong young student at one of East Africa’s best universities and the president of a successful refugee organization who returned earlier this year to his home village to establish his community development organization at the request of President Kabila. Shaking Benson’s hand, a fire was re-ignited in me.
My Peace Corps experience and the aftermath of the Kenyan election made me a cynic. I continued pursing this line of work because it was at my core, this belief, and because to not try was unimaginable. But Benson, Benson gives me hope, he brought out the dormant in me.
After an overwhelming day like today-that started at 9am with me leading a 3 hour meeting with our six Ugandan mentors and went straight into creating the weekly newsletter, holding one-on-one meetings with my mentors, dealing with demands from the state side of our operation and ended at 7pm (only because I made myself stop) with me working on a white paper for the ministry of education-Benson’s story reaffirms why I am here - Why I moved across the world, away from every person I love, every comfort I enjoy and fast internet.
Education, civic empowerment, social responsibility. These ideas really can revolutionize the world. I believe in it, and in my three weeks here I have seen it .
Nimerudi
I have returned. After 2 days of never ending flights and everlasting layovers, I step off the plane and am hit with the hot muggy mid-afternoon African air. To my right is the airport terminal, not be confused with a 3 door crumbling strip mall, and to my left the vast lake Victoria. I have returned. Jua Kali man. The sun is still so strong. I sleep walk my way through customs, crack a smile as I always do when I see my luggage on the belt (this simple joy comes after my first trip out here where I spent the first week without luggage) and wander my way to the arrivals gate where someone is to be holding a sign with my name on it. It almost felt like the corporate world where people in suits hold signs with the name of other people in suits. But then the non suit-wearing man holding the paper with my name on it gave me a big hug, and all felt right in the world.
Peace Corps was more cush than this. Emma, my greeter, and I immediately get on a matatu (minibus-public transit). The conductor decides to jam my two large bags in the back, where they of course do not fit, but maybe repeatedly slamming the door on them will work. At this moment, I am glad for my gut instinct that told me to keep the bag with the $700 camera in it with me. Apparently slamming the door on my bags eventually worked, because we are quickly speeding down the roads, through the hills that surround Lake Victoria. As we climb one hill, a matatu speeds past us honking and pointing to our rear. The back door had come open, and all of my worldly possessions threatened to spill out the back of the matatu. We stop to slam the door a few more times, and continue on.
Through the window I watch the women carrying water in their bright kangas, the mzee pushing his bike with bedroom furniture stacked over the back, the school kids drinking fanta outside shops and the street hawkers with their abundant collections of worthless shit stitch into the red African soil and the outstretched fingers of the great lake. Nimerudi.
The matatu stops. I am back at the old taxi park – Kampala’s chaotic, vibrant, potholed answer to NYC grand central. I help Emma into my backpack, grab my timbuk2 and duffel and we make our way to the final leg of my trip, another matatu, though this time, we opt to put the luggage on our laps.
We alight at a dirt road marked with an official Educate! sign. As I am led into my compound, my mouth drops. In front of me is a beautiful yard with mango, avocado and orange trees and a HUGE house with an external spiral stairway leading to the rooftop deck. The house itself is also the office. There are two large bedrooms, I share one with Maggie, a volunteer who arrived 2 months before me, and my boss, Angelica, has the other. There are two smaller rooms which serve as offices, a large common area which is the main office/meeting space and a large yet very ill-equipped kitchen. Out back there is a boys quarters with two rooms where Connie and Barbara our office staff/mentors and Joe, the Business Coordinator, stays along with whatever male visitor happens to be here at the moment.
I’m greeted by Maggie, who turned 24 this day. She has one of those kind faces and a voice that even when angry still carries joy. I drop my shit in our room and step into the hot shower. I let out a big sigh - in addition to the last 48 hours of airport grime, I wash away the incredibly difficult last year and a half of my life. Nimerudi…
Joe gives me a brief tour of our immediate world. We have electricity (most days), flushing toilets and a hot shower. As well as a man, Emma, who cleans, does dishes, and washes clothes. When I first heard this, I vowed to not have him wash my clothes. Then I realized that when I am lucky enough to find myself with a day off, I do not want to spend half of it scrubbing my clothes and wrists raw.
After living and working here for 3 weeks, the house seems much smaller than it first appeared.
The neighborhood is confused. There is a lot of building taking place. Big houses strewn about haphazardly intermixed with small wooden dukas (shacks that sell veggies and staple food items). When feeling ambitious enough, there is a big hill for me to run up with a breathtaking view of the lake. And gasping for breath I tend to be. Rolex’s are huge here! There are about three stands in 100 yards where a man occasionally sits with his jiko, and makes omelets rolled in chapatti (I ate two today). A few days a week, the morning hours are filled with the sound of weed-whackers. Yes. The people out here are rich enough to grow and maintain green lawns, but not rich enough to buy a proper lawn mower. So. The landscapers cut vast lawns with one tiny weed-whacker.
The power goes out. Maggie and Joe take me up to the rooftop to gaze at the dark sky, talk of African politics, enjoy some tusker malt and smoke. I decide not to start that last habit just yet…
Peace Corps was more cush than this. Emma, my greeter, and I immediately get on a matatu (minibus-public transit). The conductor decides to jam my two large bags in the back, where they of course do not fit, but maybe repeatedly slamming the door on them will work. At this moment, I am glad for my gut instinct that told me to keep the bag with the $700 camera in it with me. Apparently slamming the door on my bags eventually worked, because we are quickly speeding down the roads, through the hills that surround Lake Victoria. As we climb one hill, a matatu speeds past us honking and pointing to our rear. The back door had come open, and all of my worldly possessions threatened to spill out the back of the matatu. We stop to slam the door a few more times, and continue on.
Through the window I watch the women carrying water in their bright kangas, the mzee pushing his bike with bedroom furniture stacked over the back, the school kids drinking fanta outside shops and the street hawkers with their abundant collections of worthless shit stitch into the red African soil and the outstretched fingers of the great lake. Nimerudi.
The matatu stops. I am back at the old taxi park – Kampala’s chaotic, vibrant, potholed answer to NYC grand central. I help Emma into my backpack, grab my timbuk2 and duffel and we make our way to the final leg of my trip, another matatu, though this time, we opt to put the luggage on our laps.
We alight at a dirt road marked with an official Educate! sign. As I am led into my compound, my mouth drops. In front of me is a beautiful yard with mango, avocado and orange trees and a HUGE house with an external spiral stairway leading to the rooftop deck. The house itself is also the office. There are two large bedrooms, I share one with Maggie, a volunteer who arrived 2 months before me, and my boss, Angelica, has the other. There are two smaller rooms which serve as offices, a large common area which is the main office/meeting space and a large yet very ill-equipped kitchen. Out back there is a boys quarters with two rooms where Connie and Barbara our office staff/mentors and Joe, the Business Coordinator, stays along with whatever male visitor happens to be here at the moment.
I’m greeted by Maggie, who turned 24 this day. She has one of those kind faces and a voice that even when angry still carries joy. I drop my shit in our room and step into the hot shower. I let out a big sigh - in addition to the last 48 hours of airport grime, I wash away the incredibly difficult last year and a half of my life. Nimerudi…
Joe gives me a brief tour of our immediate world. We have electricity (most days), flushing toilets and a hot shower. As well as a man, Emma, who cleans, does dishes, and washes clothes. When I first heard this, I vowed to not have him wash my clothes. Then I realized that when I am lucky enough to find myself with a day off, I do not want to spend half of it scrubbing my clothes and wrists raw.
After living and working here for 3 weeks, the house seems much smaller than it first appeared.
The neighborhood is confused. There is a lot of building taking place. Big houses strewn about haphazardly intermixed with small wooden dukas (shacks that sell veggies and staple food items). When feeling ambitious enough, there is a big hill for me to run up with a breathtaking view of the lake. And gasping for breath I tend to be. Rolex’s are huge here! There are about three stands in 100 yards where a man occasionally sits with his jiko, and makes omelets rolled in chapatti (I ate two today). A few days a week, the morning hours are filled with the sound of weed-whackers. Yes. The people out here are rich enough to grow and maintain green lawns, but not rich enough to buy a proper lawn mower. So. The landscapers cut vast lawns with one tiny weed-whacker.
The power goes out. Maggie and Joe take me up to the rooftop to gaze at the dark sky, talk of African politics, enjoy some tusker malt and smoke. I decide not to start that last habit just yet…
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