For Kenya, Forever Ago

Abdul was anything but dull. He was our Matatu driver for most of the two weeks with KOP and, until the Thursday of the second week, he thought my name was Phillip (no-one in our group is called Phillip). On Wednesday, he was sitting next to me when I introduced myself to someone as Henry. Abdul wore a Stetson (Stetsons are cool) and gave me the honour of wearing it on Wednesday evening. We'd gone to a club called Signature which overlooked Lake Victoria (this seemed a little unnecessary to be honest as it's a club, it's dark and overlooking Lake Victoria is about as impressive as overlooking a brick wall, given that in low light at night time they both look black). Abdul (our driver) was sipping a Guinness talking to the owner so I said I was just on my way to the bar and offered to get him a drink - my hidden intentions with this plan was that the owner would insist on getting me the drink but alas, he did not. So not only did I give him 160 shillings, I also bought him a drink. However, he did actually insist on the barmaid giving me another beer when I was done so instead of my efforts resulting in a net loss, it was in fact neutral.

Abdul said he wants to move to Uganda to join the army. But Abdul also said he was 28 (he looks 40) and said he was getting married to a nurse in December (he already has a wife) - so maybe what he said needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Two other things happened this evening (along with some lighthearted prostitute banter) which are: I tasted the most amazing carrot cake in the world at a cafe/bar called Laughing Buddha in Kisumu. If you're ever in Kenya, it's worth making the trip. Also, when we went into the club they had the TV on showing a programme called 1000 ways to die. If you've never seen this programme, seek it out. They should have it on in Cindies/Oceana/Litten.

On Tuesday, we visited the brand new Medical school at Meseno University, outside Kisumu. We got the chance to quiz some doctors about the state of the health care system in the country and about medical education. Kenya, they said, only trains around 500 doctors a year. Probably less than Kings and Cambridge combined in the UK. The medical school (set to open in January) currently only consists of the shell of some labs, and a freezer storing dead bodies. I can't help but feel their start date may be a little ambitious.

Wednesday saw the start of three days at the Oasis of Hope Secondary school on the outskirts of the city. KOP have built an additional two classrooms for the school and as we were the last group in Kenya it was our job to sand and paint the walls. The issue was: there was no gloss paint. We ended up just doing a couple of coats on the outside, and observing a debate in the afternoon. Thursday came and there was still no gloss paint. We all split up and observed/taught in classes (I sat in on a 80 minute lesson on the Haber Process - not fun). However, over Thursday and Friday I taught 3 biology lessons, going over all of Human Reproduction to some unbelievably keen 16/17 year olds. Some of the questions I was asked which I struggled to answer: Does glucose cross the placenta by active transport? What triggers the wave of calcium in a recently fertilized egg? Could a post-menopausal woman be implanted with an egg fertilized in-vitro? I should know the answers to these.

So, came the end of the two weeks with KOP. On Friday night we had a party with some of the boys from HOVIC and members of staff from partner organisations. It was good to see the HOVIC boys again, I danced with Hassan as well as Tamara, the 2 year old daughter of June one of our minders. I can't understate how valuable, incredible and inspirational the work that KOP does in and around Kisumu is. Walking around the bus station in town you see boys with glue bottles stuck up their nose in rags - KOP rescues people from this life. Life on the streets was described to me by one of the boys at the centre who simply said, "It's the streets, you live, you die." He shrugged.

The 8 hour journey back to Nairobi on Saturday was unremarkable, except I'm pretty sure I saw water flowing uphill which messed with my head. Oh, and we probably crossed the equator again.

NB. In my last blog I was mis-informed regarding whether the boys from HOVIC go to school. Some, those deemed 'ready' are sponsored to go by KOP however, as sponsorship isn't cheap there simply isn't the money to send them all to school. Hence why many of the boys on our final days were begging for sponsorship.

I've learnt a few things while being out here. I've learnt that lion in Swahili is simba - which is funny when you think about it as the protagonist in the Lion King is coincidentally named Simba. I've learnt that if you leave a window open and there is food in your vehicle in an area which is densely populated by baboons, one will get inside. I've learnt that in Kenya many pubs and hotels are attached to butchers shops (a business model I don't think will catch on in the UK). And today I learnt some 'facts' about lesbianism from a life skills class book. I learnt that lesbianism is painful and dangerous. I learnt it is delicate/can tear off (that is 'Lesbianism is delicate/can tear off'). I learnt that lesbianism is only practiced in boarding schools, jails andjuvenilee school. And that girls often become lesbians due to fear of being approached by boys.

On Thursday, Friday and today we were at the Hope for Victoria Children (HOVIC) centre, frequented by David Walliams as it is run in partnership with Comic Relief. They provide shelter, food, accommodation and healthcare for street children in Kisumu. They approach children on the streets offering them a way out. Many of the children are orphans, some have been abused by parents, step-parents, siblings or other relatives and 'escaped' to the streets where some of them as young as 8 had to beg and scavenge for scrap metal. Many were addicted to glue.

The boys at HOVIC are between 8 and 17. They're all full of energy and full of banter. Many were keen to play, others to learn (I did a few informal maths tests) and some just to sit and talk about their experiences. We also did a bit of touching up of paint work in the centre, spoke to the centre nurse about the issues faced by street children and also visited the womans shelter (where the above 'facts' on lesbianism were learnt).

The existence of HOVIC is in fact only half the battle. KOP and Comic Relief do not pay for children taken into the programme to go to school (although we've been told that primary education is free, in actual fact it isn't due to book and uniform charges and some 'levy's'), so many children rely on sponsorship. I was asked by a couple of my 'mates', as were most other people. Additionally, the resolution for many of the boys is to be reconciled with their parents/relatives, however many of the boys do not have this option (they are dead) so are at HOVIC indefinitely.

On Saturday we travelled to the second most popular national park in Kenya - Lake Nakuru. We saw some pretty funky animals such as zebra, lion, giraffe, rhino and flamingos. It was cool. And then on Sunday we went to another of KOP's projects called VIMA and had a little garden party with children who were on their programme receiving food and schools fees. As KOP is still a young charity, it would be nice to see some integration between the different local programmes supported, possibly allowing the boys at HOVIC to benefit from VIMA's school fee programme.

Finally, on Sunday I got my haggle on and bought some tourist tat at a local craft market before going to Lake Victoria to see some hippos and watch the sunset. The sun looked big.

So, the conversation went like this:
Small Kenyan Child: What is my name?
Me: What is your name? I have no idea. Do you mean what is my name? (I point at myself)
SKC: Yes.
Me: Henry.
SKC: Hend-ry.
Me: Close enough. What is your name?
SKC: Barack. Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is a shy 6 year old. He gets two meals a day from the Kenyan Orphan Project feeding centre in Kochogo in Western Kenya which is about an hour by road outside Kisumu. The KOP feeding centre provides two meals a day, every day for a further 180 orphaned, partially orphaned or vulnerable children (vulnerable children include those who are HIV positive). Some of these children walk up to 7km each way to access the centre.

We spent three days at the feeding centre. It's a fairly basic building which has a large, main room in which all the children take their meals and a few additional rooms for storage, administration, food preparation and a resource room. We didn't have a strict programme or structure to our days, although there were a few things we wanted to achieve when there including adding some Cambridge/Kings artwork/murals to the walls and also repainting the resource room to make it a cleaner environment in which teaching might be able to take place, rather than an office which it currently was.

Trouble struck on the first day however. The back left tyre of the matatu we were in fell clean off leaving us standing on the side of he road in rural Kenya. Quickly, we were surrounded by children shouting 'Mazungu' (white man) and were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. We ended up playing football in a bog at the side of the road with a boy called Clinton (we have also met children called George Bush and Nixon). He showed us round his small plot of land where his family farmed a variety of crops. They lived in a two room house which, in total, was about the size of my room in Cambridge last year. The walls were mud and the ground was continuous with that of outside. In the house we were told by Clinton's mother that both his birth parents were dead and that they had adopted Clinton.

The mechanic we were told would be there in 30 minutes. After 2 hours, we set off towards the feeding centre. We were shown round and then we de-maized some maize plants. After lunch I spoke to a 17 year old called Dennis. He hadn't been as fortunate as Clinton and had lost both his parents in 2004 to 'illness' - he said he was too young to be fully aware of what they had "Maybe HIV, maybe cancer." he said. Dennis is fully supported by KOP and an NGO called the Omega Foundation. KOP provides all his meals while the Omega Foundation pays for him to go to secondary school, and he hopes will pay for him to attend university in Kisumu to study Engineering. Without KOP, he couldn't go to school as he'd have to work to support himself. Without the Omega Foundation (supported by KOP), he couldn't go to school as he couldn't pay the fees. It was satisfying to know that without KOP, without people sponsoring me to run 13.1 miles with no training and being in agony for days, these young people would literally have no future, and now they do.

As we returned to our hotel with hot showers and beer for sale from the rooftop bar for £1.20 (with stunning views over Lake Victoria) we stopped at a school KOP had built over 2009/2010. It was a really impressive structure and the Headteacher decreed that "KOP is like a second God to us." This sums up the work KOP does, but only in a tiny part of one city, in one country, on one continent.

I have since met 3 other children called "Barack Obama".

This tempting offer was plastered on the side of a float (Yes, float, like those at Leighton Buzzard Carnival circa 1998 - full of people dancing, loud music, but overall a little tacky and crap looking) which was offering this procedure for free. "Get circumcised today, for free, to reduce the spread of HIV." I laughed, when I first saw it, the way you laugh at Daily Mail headlines because they're both hilarious but tragic at the same time. I genuinely wonder how they managed to ethically do the research to categorically prove this statistic although the evidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_and_HIV - I only quickly glanced at this) seems to suggest it's maybe, possibly true. I can't help but feel however that free condoms (even castrations) rather than circumcisions are a better initiative the government could be offering to tackle this issue.

I passed the float on a bus en route to the airport to get my bag which I hoped would be there. It was a wonderful sight to behold - there it was safely in the arrivals hall of Nairobi Int. locked in a cage. The issue was how to get into the cage. The lady from the baggage desk couldn't do it with her keys so asked a baggage handler to try and told me to "Be patient" - I've been told this a lot since arriving actually, do I have an impatient looking face? This baggage handler couldn't get into the cage with his set of keys so sent for another baggage handler with another set of keys who tried but failed open the padlock to get into the cage. We went back to the baggage desk where they decided that the only way to get in would be with wire cutters. I waited patiently while they fetched some wire cutters, cut a few wires and then contorted the outside of the cage to retrieve my bag.

With the return of my bag my veil of depression and anxiety lifted. For the remainder of Saturday I went to a 'mall' in search of something to take to the project I was to be starting on Sunday. I settled on a Frisbee so hopefully we could teach them how to play 'ultimate'. I also bought an ice cream, some Caribbean onion and balsamic vinegar crisps, a bottle of water and a mushroom and leak quiche. Nairobi was definitely improving.

In the evening, I'd vaguely made plans with some Danish girls to go out in Nairobi however I got socially trapped sharing a plate of chips with a 35 year old guy from Seattle called Geoff. He was actually really interesting, a bit of a free spirit with an impressive track history of travel (I respect anyone who's been to the Congo). Geoff is a security consultant in Iraq. Anyway, he bought me a beer so I felt obliged to get him one and I felt I couldn't leave him to drink it alone (he seemed sensitive and vulnerable) so I stayed in with Geoff. Maybe it was Jeff, I guess I'll never know.

I got to the airport before 6AM to meet all from Cambridge and Kings before trundling off to Kisumu where I'm spending 2 weeks working with/for the charity KOP. The journey was long and fairly unremarkable except for when we stopped for lunch and the mens toilet queue was long so two guys took it upon themselves to change this by having a game of 2 Kenyans, 1 Urinal. Ooo, and we crossed the equator.

I woke up pissed off. Which is not that surprising considering I went to bed pissed off. I actually collapsed into bed at 5AM, at which time people in my hostel dorm decided it was time to get up and having been allocated the bed by the door meant that there was a constant stream of people keeping me up.

I eventually woke at 9.30AM to the sound of some twat with a Ukulele (not all people who own Ukes are twats - I have one) playing a standard C/Am/F/G chord progression over and over and over and over again. When I saw who it was, I saw that he was wearing a bandana. Course he did, they always do.

I flew from London to Cairo to Nairobi and as the London-Cairo flight got delayed, this meant we had a really quick stopover in Cairo. This lay-over proved too quick for the baggage handlers at Cairo Int. who didn't quite manage to get mine and 2 other peoples bags on the plane. So at 4.40AM this morning at the "help" desk at Nairobi Int., I was making a list of all the contents of my bag and grossly over estimating their worth putting the entire contents at a value of 700 pounds. I was one of the last people out of the airport but luckily the guy who picked me up waited around. I received a similar story from him as the guy who picked me up in Delhi 14 months ago: "Mr. Henry you so late. You give me good tip for waiting for you. I was 50/50 going to leave you. I now very tired. Less time with my family. You give me little extra as I nice guy."

After being woken up this morning I came into Nairobi. I was told to get the number 46 Matubu (I don't know what this is) but I ended up getting in a minibus with the number 13 printed on the side and the number 46 in really small writing on the back. It was the wrong bus, I was going the wrong way - I figured from my natural ability to visualize maps in 3D space. So I changed buses and came to the city centre which is kind of like travelling back to the 1970's. All the building are looking a little run down. The Hilton isn't as nice as the Milton Keynes Hilton. It's not even as nice as the Cambridge Hilton which looks pretty ugly from the outside.

The Egypt Air office was on the ground floor of the Hilton. It looked much like the managers office in Flight of the Concords but more shit. I went in and the lady said she couldn't help me at all - even in confirming my bags were safe in Cairo and going to be on the next flight to Nairobi. It wasn't her job - I guess it was silly of me to expect that. I asked for compensation and she told me to wait for the manager. "When will he be in I asked?". Maybe 2 she told me. Maybe.

I went for a coffee and started talking to a guy from India who had been at my hostel. He started a battery company when he was 17 and they now employ 28 people and he seems pretty wealthy. We hung out til 2, had some tough meat for lunch, then went to the Egypt Air office where the manager was yet to arrive. His receptionist didn't want to call him. Nor did his assistant. Why not? "He is fasting." Ok. Great. "Can you give me some compensation?". No, said the assistant but talk to him. He then pointed at another office where I spoke to another guy, I was then sent downstairs to speak to a man playing solitaire, then back up, where I was offered 7000 Shillings which is enough to get me back to the airport to collect my bag, then back to the hostel, plus a little extra. The manager never showed.

I bought a toothbrush and toothpaste to celebrate my achievement.