A view of the village from above

My first week in Africa has been stiflingly hot (despite the fact that it’s one of the coldest months of the year) and disarmingly friendly. I cannot remember the last time a stranger said hello to me on the street, even in uber-friendly Eugene. But in Takaungu, a little rural village on the eastern coast of Kenya, it’s considered rude not to greet everyone you pass. The children are so excited to see new (i.e. white) people; they literally chase after us in packs shouting, “Hello!”, “How are you?”, and “What is your name?” Only once has someone asked me for money.

I rode from the airport in a new silver Mitsubishi on the worst pothole-ridden dirt roads I’ve ever seen. My driver, the husband of EAC’s founder and executive director Suzanne Jeneby, quipped that in Kenya, you know someone is drunk when they’re driving straight. The road was littered with boda bodas (bicycle taxis), goats, chickens, and cows, and women carrying pails of water balanced on their heads, as well as freight trucks and matatus (8-person vans hollowed out to fit 15—Kenya’s solution to public transportation) swerving like madmen to avoid all of the above.

Everything about development in Kenya seems to fit that standard. The wealthier families have electricity, television, stereos, running water, but no toilets. Even the poorest people have cell phones, despite the fact that they have no electricity to charge them with. The people of Kenya are trying desperately to keep up with modern technology, but the government has yet to provide a proper platform for development. The schools are especially bad: when Kenya opened the schools to the public, everyone enrolled, but the government didn’t provide additional facilities or teachers, so one classroom with five desks and one teacher can have as many as 200 students.

It’s a bizarre juxtaposition of worlds when an entire family is huddled in one room to keep warm (because they all freeze when the temperature drops below 60) and the prolonged silence is broken by the all-too-familiar Nokia ring tone.
Takaungu Beach

I am working with the East African Center for the Empowerment of Women and Children (EAC) to bring the opportunities needed for development. The EAC opened a school (with an amazing 20:1 student faculty ratio), a health clinic, a farming school, technology classes, and a sewing group to enable women to earn an income. Many of the men are unemployed and spend their days “hanging out” in front of the local shop while their wives and daughters work 20 hour days to collect, clean, and prepare food while taking care of large hoards of small children. By empowering women to bring in their own income, the center is attempting to change the cycle of poverty that has gripped so many lives in rural Africa.

The impact of Westernization is evident at every turn. The television stations, based in Dubai, broadcast The OC, Friends, Scrubs, One Tree Hill, American Dreams, etc. Many of the shows make me blush; I can’t even imagine how they must affect the strictly Muslim women who cover themselves from head-to-toe in public. Teenagers listen to Tupac, Beyonce, and the Pussycat Dolls. Clothing shops sell Value Village rejects ranging from old Superbowl t-shirts to rhinestone-encrusted “Bootylicious” baby tees. Kenya seems to be a display of American culture at its finest.