Bittersweet Goodbye

I am writing this blog with mixed emotions today. It's been a busy and anxious week since I last wrote on Canada Day. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, there had been a number of 'incidents' as I called them in the Eastern part of Kenya with regards to small scale terrorist attacks. After much debate from both the students and our partners back in Canada (the University, the NGO were are associated with, parents), it was recognized that there was an unpredictable level of risk associated with the escalation of attacks in the Eastern part of Kenya. Therefore, the University decided to make immediate plans for us to travel back to Canada. 
I arrived home on Friday night safe but tired. 
I wanted to thank everyone for taking the time to read my blog and appreciate all of those who posted comments. 
I look forward to catching up with everyone and will say so long for now.

Sunset in Kenya

Canada Day in Kenya PLUS Pictures

Happy Canada Day!!!

We had one great day here yesterday. We invited many of our new friends and acquaintances to come and celebrate Canada’s 145^th birthday with us. We spent the morning making cookies, brownies, meatballs, fried rice, pizza, tomato salsa, mango salsa, and guacamole. It was pretty interesting watching people eat as many of them did not get that the salsas were for dipping nachos in, or that you could eat the meatballs all by themselves. We had some rather entertaining rounds of “pin the tail on the zebra,” and dodge ball, and the water balloon toss, three-legged race, yoga session, and Frisbee were all big hits too. The nuns were probably the funniest, and they really got in on all of the action.

It was great to see everyone smiling and having fun and for the Canadians it was a good reminder of how lucky we are to call Canada home. For those of you that follow the news, there have been a number of ‘incidents’ as we’ll call them in Kenya over the last week that really make you appreciate the safety of our country.

To finish our day off we made s’mores over our gas stove (the marshmallows we found were actually pretty good) and imagined that we were at home sitting around a campfire!

We have a busy week planned… our last two “Champs” sessions and a couple of school visits. Tuesday is officially our halfway point and we have booked another safari this weekend to celebrate. We are all really looking forward to getting away for a few days.

I will post pictures when I can.

Team Bununu all dressed up for Canada Day.

Sister Lilian with her maple leaf bandana.

Three-legged race.

Festus losing the water ballon toss.

Pin the tail on the zebra.

This is one of the stalls at the women's market where we buy all of our produce. So fresh, tasty, and cheap.

Another Busy Week

It’s been a steady few days since I last wrote…

The church service on Sunday was quite entertaining. We showed up two hours late (on purpose) as Mama Jen did not want us to have to sit through the entire service, which was being presented in Kimeru - the local dialect.  We arrived just in time for one last hymn, the choir, and the closing prayer. Following that, the congregation wanted to hear us sing, and as it was the only song we could think of that we all knew, O Canada was sung loudly, albeit off key to the whole church. Following the service, there was a fundraising auction where bananas, oranges, different types of grains, and 3 live chickens were sold to raise money for the new church that is being built.

Monday saw us visit a very remote and desolate primary school (Kamuketha), and once again I was amazed by the resilience of the people here. They are able to make do with so very little. This school had just had all of their sweet potatoes stolen from the ground and were in the process of replanting…

Tuesday, we were out in the community of Mikinduri with the Ruuju women conducting more food security/diet diversity interviews; and as we have been suspecting the women in this community are far more food insecure – odd given that the area is more lush than around Kiirua.

We are also conducting follow-up interviews with the school lunch programs to find out if they are still implementing recommendations (i.e. using a fortified oil instead of solid fat, or using whole grain maize instead of polished maize) made in 2010 – so far we have been quite impressed.

Wednesday consisted of 5 home visits with the Muchui women in Kiirua. We were all over the countryside for these ones and I was very tired, hot, and dirty by the time we got home. My belly was also tired as we were offered bananas or hard-boiled eggs AND tea at EVERY house. It’s very rude not to accept, especially when many of these women don’t eat this food themselves.

Today we finished off our last 4 of 26 interviews with the Muchui women. Now we will be able to begin inputting the data and comparing it to last year. It will be interesting to see the results as this year has not been as arid as last year. Hard to believe.

We are in Meru this afternoon enjoying a milkshake and making use of the 'higher' speed internet here. I have managed to download a number of pictures that I have thus far not been able to. 

We are hosting a Canada Day party on Sunday for all of our Kenyan friends here. It should be fun.

Mama Jen's Church - the old portion is to the left; the new to the right.

Auctioning off a chicken - it went for about $10.

These are children at the school music festival we attended a couple of weeks ago.

More music festival children.

These ones had the best costumes!

A view of the country side. We were out doing home visits this day around Kiirua.

A plant at the corner of the road by the hospital we are staying at. Notice the dirty red leaves? This is what I look like when I come home every day!

A wild elephant!!! This one was at the side of the road on our way into Meru.

A giant cactus. This was the landscape around Kamuketha school.

Kamuketha primary school. This is the most remote school we have been to.

A typical maize field around Kiirua.  There will be no harvest this growing season.

This is one of our "Champs" home. She is considered the "godfather" of farming in the area and many women model their farming practices after hers.

The newly installed posts of a future screenhouse. This screenhouse will keep out the birds and contain drip irrigation. These are making a world of difference in these women's lives.

Walking to a home. Yet another washed out road.

I took this picture in disguise of capturing the dog - notice how skinny it is? This is very common - animals are NOT pets here.

A home visit with Joaninah (far right - the woman to the left is Rosemary, our translator). She had the most amazing garden I have seen yet. I had fresh guavas and passionfruit here.

The "Champs" singing for us after one of our nutrition sessions.

A little bit of home? This picture reminds me of PEI.

Good Week (minus the internet!)

It’s been almost a week since I last wrote - not for any reason other than that the internet has been incredibly slow, if available at all. I did not realize how much I value being able to check my emails (and that’s all I do… I don’t even bother with the news, or the weather, or anything else anymore - it is near impossible to access). It is my only connection to my life outside of here and I find it so frustrating to not have that luxury - which is what it has become.

The week however was great despite the lack of internet.

Monday saw us at one of the local primary schools. We were trying to determine what is being taught in their curriculum in terms of nutrition. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that nutrition is part of their science curriculum and not the health curriculum and therefore actually does get taught to the students. In Canada as it is part of the health curriculum it often gets pushed aside for other ‘more important’ subjects such as math, writing, and science.

On Wednesday and Thursday we conducted two “Champs” sessions with the Muchui women’s group and had a blast. Again, lots of cooking, lots of laughing, and lots of eating (lots of hard work too – mashing a huge pot of mokimo with a wooden spoon in the hot sun definitely resulted in some sweating). It was interesting to watch the women, as this group was much more interactive than the Ruuju group. They were asking many questions about the specifics of the ingredients and the methods of preparation. There was some lively discussion over whether it was ok to leave the skins of the ‘irish potatoes’ on when they boil them. They always peel the skins and we want them to leave them on for the nutrients. One thing that I have noticed is that they are very receptive to new information, and they love learning. Wish people felt the same about nutrition back home…

We also conducted a number of our food security/diet diversity home visits and for the first time we had a woman tell that us it was very difficult for her to answer these questions. She was fairly well off (by rural Kenyan standards), but admitted that all of their money was going to pay for the children’s school fees and that often meant less food on their table. We take so many things for granted in Canada.

Friday we helped the nurses conduct a women’s clinic with the Ruuju women. There were about 50 women that came and they had their height, weight, BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen levels, and blood glucose measured. It was quite interesting to see some of the differences… there were a few with worryingly high blood pressure (but getting to a doctor is not an option due to lack of transportation), and all of them have higher blood glucose levels than Caucasians due to their ethnicity (predisposition) and diet (in Canada averages are between 4 and 7, whereas here they are between 7 and 11).

After the women’s clinic we headed back to ‘Mama Jen’s’ house for a sleepover– she is the lady that we stayed with when we first arrived here. She taught us how to make chappatis from scratch and we had a great time chatting over dinner. It was nice to not be locked in the compound for a night! We are off to church with her today, which should be an experience… Church is a very important part of life here and can often take several hours on a Sunday – I’ll keep you posted.

I have managed to download 8 pictures from the week - mostly the Champs sessions and from the primary school. 

Emily and Doris cooking chapatis over a traditional wood stove - the picture is cloudy due to the smoke from the fire in the room

Muchui women chatting over chapatis

A traditional 'kitchen' stove - very energy inefficient and smoky due to the lack of ventilation. There are many respiratory problems with women and children here because of this.

Rael with her new kitchen stove. Very energy efficient - it requires only two logs to burn and it is ventilated as well. Rael is a very wealthy Kenyan woman and this cost her about $40 Canadian to install. This is not an option for most women here.

Cutting boards? Never heard of them.
Samantha and I peeling potatoes

Emily and I mashing the mokimo. Definitely worked up a sweat doing that!

Class rules at Kinyinjere primary school - Canadians children could learn a thing or two from these!

A typical staff room - teachers marking workbooks.

Quiet Weekend PLUS Pictures

It’s been a relaxed couple of days here. We had intended to do a school-meal assessment on Friday morning but were informed that the regional school music festival was being held and were invited to that. So off we went… it was quite entertaining and both the singing and the dancing that these children were doing impressed me. There were over 20 schools there, and all were in some sort of costume. They sang songs that I couldn’t understand - but they had great moves and some of the young girls had exceptional voices. We were however (much to our embarrassment) the main attraction. It was quite obvious that we were the odd ones out, and on top of that they made everyone clear a space for us in the front row. It was kind of funny however as there were many children standing behind us, and every once in a while I would feel a little finger reach out and touch the back of my arm (most of them just want to know what our skin feels like).

We had a good old pancake breakfast Saturday morning and then spent the day in Meru (the nearest town), wandering around and checking out the main downtown area. I am slowly becoming more comfortable with the chaos of life here and am not so put off by people shouting out at us, cars honking, dirt blowing, donkeys or goats running across the road, or the smell of burning garbage as I was initially.

I picked up a leso at a textile store and spent $2.50 on a new pair of flip flops as I do not have much confidence that the ones I brought with me are going to last the summer! I come home every day absolutely filthy (for example I sat in chicken poop on Thursday) and have to scrub myself down. My shoes are a disaster. Yet, what continues to amaze me is that the women here always look impeccable… I don’t know how they do it!

We are all adjusting to life in the compound. We are not allowed out after 6pm and so are getting used to playing lots of card games, board games, and watching movies. We try to exercise in our little courtyard everyday and have a ‘family meeting’ every Sunday night to discuss the week’s events and anything upcoming. We have tried to plan something to do each weekend so that the time goes by a bit faster.  Hard to believe but we are actually a third of the way through on Monday.

This week will be full of home visits and “Champs” sessions. We also start at some of the schools on Monday with some follow-up assessment and teacher training. Should be a good week.
Check back for pictures!

Cooking in my leso

A typical main street (business) in Kiirua

A typical main street (residential) in Meru

The main road that leads to the Muchui Business Centre - it was washed out by the rains in January and never repaired

Our family meeting! We have started calling ourselves 'Tribe Bununu' (for Business, Nursing, and Nutrition)

Great Day PLUS Pictures

Today was one of my most enjoyable days so far in Kenya. We were out in Mikinduri where we completed another four home visits and were yet again blown away by the lack of food. One woman was telling us that two weeks ago they frequently skipped meals and went to bed hungry until they got a crop of beans in, and now things “aren’t too bad”. This same woman gave us fresh eggs and a bag of oranges as we left to say thank you for coming into her home.

We also had our first cooking session with the Ruuju “Champs.” This was the first group of five to implement our orange sweet potato suggestions. Sooo much fun. We spent a couple of hours cooking with them over open fires and with very little in the way of kitchen conveniences; chapattis, stew, and uji (all with OSP). We were then joined by approximately 30 other women from the community to share the meal and discuss the messages surrounding the importance of Vitamin A. The “Champs” then shared the ingredients and methods of cooking with the women so that they are now able take the knowledge home with them, in addition to spreading the word to other women in the community. They included us in a full song and dance at the end and I have never been so happy being so dirty, and sweaty, and smelling of campfire!

We learned how to tie lesos around our heads and our bodies – the women here use them for everything from hauling potatoes on their backs, to slinging babies up, to using them as aprons while they cook (although you never serve food in your leso… it’s very bad manners).

It was also quite funny when the women discovered that my hair was real - they all thought I was wearing a weave!!! Then they all wanted to touch it and kept saying how 'smart' it looked. Many of the women here keep their hair very short and just wear a wig - which can be confusing when you first meet them and their hair is  short hair and then the next time you see them they have a completely different hairstyle.

It still bothers me to see some of the animals that people have on their farms – the cows and pigs are pretty skinny, but the dogs are the worst. We saw one puppy today that I’m sure was on deaths doorstep. I’m getting good at pretending it doesn’t bother me.

Belton and Cyrus are cooking up a storm in the kitchen right now. Last night they made homemade fish and chips and I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were all in agreeance that this was some of the best fish and chips we’d ever had… even better than PEI!

Our "kitchen"

Rolling out the chapatis

Cooking the chapatis - these are the traditional "three stone" stoves

Stirring the uji

Paulina and I cutting tomatoes

One of the women who we did a home visit with runs a pseudo day care out of her home - these are the children shelling beans

The "Champs" - all wearing their lesos around their waists (Mary, Paulina, Rael, Jane, ?, Damaris)

Damaris with the chapati dough

Rael preparing the sweet potato for the uji - notice the bend?

Rael bent over cutting up carrots on a banana leaf

Home Visits

It’s been a busy few days of food security/diet diversity home visits with the women in the community. I realized today that so far, for me, this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job here this summer. I love spending time with these women – they are incredibly resilient and hard working and seem to make the most of things with whatever they have. I love spending time outside with them in their kitchen gardens hearing both the good (and the bad) and knowing that for them this is their livelihood. If these women didn’t spend all day working in their gardens their families quite simply would not eat. Secretly, I am also amazed at the Kenyan woman’s ability to bend over at the waist like a gumbi doll keeping her legs straight and work like this in her garden ALL day. First of all my hamstrings wouldn’t let me do that and second I wouldn’t last 30 minutes.

We also had another “Champs” meeting, this time with the women at Muchui. We have planned to incorporate orange sweet potatoes (OSP) into four different dishes that wouldn’t normally have sweet potato in them: chapattis, mokimo (a mashed plantain dish), githeri (a maize and beans stew), and uji (maize porridge). They have been growning white and purple sweet potatoes for awhile, but have only just begun growing the orange variety. They are quite high in Vitamin A so we are trying to encourage them to use them as much as possible. It was really interesting to sit back and watch them talk as a group (in Kimeru – the local dialect) how they could do this. They were very animated and they even decided that they could dry the OSP, grind it into flour, and incorporate it into even more dishes.

Other than that not much is new. I feel like I am settling in here and learning to live by “African Time” – our taximan AND our translator were both one hour late yesterday… but we finished the work we set out to do, so “hakuna mata” as they say.

Will post pictures when I can.

One of the many reasons why I am so lucky to have Edward in my life - he had two big bouquets of lilies delivered to the hospital for me

The Muchui "Champs"

That's it for pictures for today. I had a whole bunch of the women in their gardens but they are taking too long to download. So long for now.