Today, being our last Sunday in Machakos, we threw a party for the girls. Every day, the girls eat one of two meals; muthakoi (beans and corn), or rice and beans. The government only has enough money to provide for necessities, so the girls haven't enjoyed sweets or alternative meals since they lived at home. So yesterday, we went into Machakos town with our friend Lucy, and bought ingredients for stew, rice, chapatti, and mandazi.
We bought most of the ingredients for the stew in the open market, where Lucy has many vendor friends. We spent a while just hanging out in the market with all the women selling fruits and vegetables. When a man carrying a stereo walked by us and we started dancing, we heard an enormous burst of laughter and cheering. When we looked around, we realized that literally, every person in the market was looking over at us and cheering. Mzungus aren't common in the open market.
Before doing our shopping, we spent the afternoon at Lucy's office with her support group for orphaned children who have AIDS. Twenty children and their care givers (usually grandmothers) gather at Lucy's office once a month to enjoy a delicious meal that she cooks for them, toys, television, and music. We spent a long time talking with many of the caregivers and were really impressed by the sacrifices that they make for the children. It's not easy for them to provide for themselves, let alone their grandchildren who have many additional needs because of their sickness. One of the caregivers even contracted AIDS herself from caring for her sick daughter who had the virus, and now, despite her own malady, is caring for her HIV positive grandaughter. After leaving the office, Lucy took us to the area where most of the children and their caregivers live; the Machakos slum. One of the caregivers showed us her home, where she and her three children live. It was one room with a dirt floor and mud walls, that was only large enough to fit two twin sized beds and a desk. She told us that she struggles to pay the rent every month (700 shillings, approximately 8 dollars). Despite her obvious struggles and poor living conditions, this woman, along with the rest of the caregivers and their children, seemed to carry a surprisingly positive attitude.
We spent this morning in the kitchen with the oldest girls and the cook preparing mandazi, chapatti, stew, and rice. It was interesting how all of the girls knew by heart how to cook each dish. We realized that even now, neither of us know how to cook any specialized dishes, while these ten and eleven-year-old girls have at least six under their belts.
Earlier this week, the manager of the center, Olive, expressed her concern that if we threw this party for the girls, they might "starve". After discussing with other staff members about the quite stressful and frustrating conversation that we'd had with Olive regarding the party, we realized that her expressions of concern for the girls' "health", were just an excuse to ruin their one fun day. Francis has informed us that Olive's only concern is money, and that she has no care whatsoever for the children's wellbeing. Even the girls have told us numerous stories about Olive's mistreatment. Apparently if she catches them playing or having fun, she punishes them (cleaning the toilets). In fact, the one time that we've ever seen her interacting with any of the girls, was when she walked by about five of them and found reasons to scold each individual girl there. We almost feel like we're witnessing the real life version of Matilda, in which Francis is Ms. Honey, and Olive is the evil principle. However, we certainly proved Olive's "concerns" wrong as each girl got six mandazi with tea, a huge lunch and dinner, and so much chapatti that they were actually giving them away after dinner. On a normal day, the girls would be scraping their plates clean and sometimes even eating roasted grasshoppers.
In the afternoon the girls did various activities such as a dance competition, relay races, and bible trivia. The girls knew the answer to all the questions that Christine prepared, while we struggled to even understand her questions. Everyone we've met here is Catholic, and we've gotten used to their prayers before meals, although we still don't know whether we're supposed to close our eyes or not when the prayer is being said. On Friday night we had dinner at Lucy's house along with one of her colleagues, a volunteer from Japan. As we sat down for dinner, Lucy's husband suggested that one of the three of us lead the prayer. After looking around awkwardly, we each declared our very non-catholic religions; "independent lutheran...jewish...buddhist." Lucy's husband decided it best that we just not pray.

This is Maria, left, and her twin sister, Catherine. We took this picture while we were painting one of the classrooms. Though some of the girls have lost their initial excitement about having us here, Maria is always just as excited to see us as she was on the first day. Whenever she sees us, she runs up to us, grinning. She's also very good at sports, and loves the camera more than any other girls. Catherine also has the same great spirit as her sister. Her humor is both cute and sarcastic, and she has a hilarious attitude. While she's never annoying about hanging off of us or constantly hugging us, she can still be so cuddly and cute. Even though she's not one of the best English speakers, and we can't converse with her as easily as we can with some of the others, we feel like we know her personality the best of all the girls, and we love her so much. One of the things we love about her is how rounded her personality is. She's talented at so many things. She's a really amazing dancer, and we can tell she truly loves it because we've often seen her just dancing alone to no music. She also loves to draw. Whenever we do big drawing projects with all the girls, Catherine always helps one of the youngest girls, Vanessa, with her drawings, which is so nice to see because she usually acts like the tough girl of the bunch. She always adds some humor to whatever she's doing. She sings the American songs we've taught her at ten times the normal speed and in a funny voice, which always makes us laugh.

Mombasa

We went to Mombasa this weekend. We spent a lot of time at Diani beach where there is probably the highest concentration of white people in Kenya. Because of this, there are also a lot of "beach boys" and Masai warriors who bug you inscently to buy their goods. Throughout our three days spent there, we made up roughly fifteen different stories about ourselves to get them to leave us alone.

Wamaitha na Waithera

Yesterday Nancy, Betty, and Lilian gave us Kikuyu names; Wamaitha and Waithera. All the girls have two names, the first of which is generally an English name while the second is a name from their tribe. Most of the girls at the center are either Kikuyu, Luo, or Akamba. Often Kenyans can tell what tribe others are from just by knowing their second name. The other day we were telling Christine about Vivian, Lilian, and Betty, and she was able to tell us where they came from and what their tribes were. We hadn't realized until this week that the girls mostly call eachother by their second names rather than their first names. It gets a bit confusing sometimes because a lot of the girls share the same first names.
The above picture is of two girls we really love, Wendy (right), and Citrus. Wendy has been here for the longes out of all the girls. At a very young age she was brought to the Nairobi Children's Home by the police who found her wondering around alone in a slum in Nairobi. Despite the fact that she most likely doesn't have a home to go back to, Wendy is always in high spirits. If we were to give the girls superlatives, Wendy would easily be "the sunshine". Whenever we look over at her, she grins, but then quickly hides her smile shyly. We can't think of one time when we've seen her in a bad mood. Citrus would most definitely be given the superlative "class clown". Almost every morning we hear her loud, distinguishable laugh over the other noises such as unidentified, suspicious animals climbing around on our roof and girls running (we still don't know what exactly their doing).

From left to right: Vivian, Citrus, and Betty in the back.


** Aliya-We were so happy to read your comments! We miss you!! Hope Kirov is great!

Mafuta tafadali!

The other day we were watching the girls wash their clothes. We were amazed at how methodical and efficient all the girls, including the youngest ones, were at this chore. After washing their clothes, they used the same bar of soap to scrub their heads and faces. We noticed that the soap made all their faces very dry so we brought down some of our own lotion. While we had initially intended to give lotion to only Faith, the girl in the above picture, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a swarm of excited girls with their hands out, asking for "mafuta". Since that day we've been occasionally bringing the lotion down and the girls are just as excited as the first time.

Who won the world cup?

Munyiva's farm

Thursday was a busy day for everyone at the Rescue Center. In preperation for the visit of the Children's District Officer, the girls were given cooking and cleaning tasks to do instead of their normal school day lessons. The girls and women had set up a makeshift kitchen in one of the classrooms where they were cooking mandazi (a sweet roll), rice, and stew, while dancing to a blasting stereo. We were drawn into the room by the amazing smells and air of excitement. Nancy and Betty stealthily showed us handfulls of sugar that they had stolen and had stored in their pockets. The Children's District Officer was one of several visitors who were coming that day. One of which was Sophie, a good friend of Dean Cycon, who came to pick us up and bring us to her mother's coffee farm. The girls were also anticipating the arrival of Lilian and Betty's long lost grandmother. Francis told us that she had been located in March and was finally coming to meet her daughter's daughters for the first time. We only got a glimpse of her as we were leaving but we could see, even from afar, how happy Lilian and Betty were to meet her.
When we got into Sophie's car, we of course introduced ourselves to all of the passengers, Sophie, her son, her nephew and her husband who was driving. As Sophie was talking to Francis outside, we had a lengthy conversation with her husband. First we introduced ourselves, and proceeded to ask him several questions about himself. Sophie and her family live in America and are on vacation in Kenya, so we asked him how long he had lived in America. He answered that he lived in Nairobi, which confused us a bit but we didn't dwell on it.
The drive up to Munyiva's farm, which is deep in the hills of Machakos (the very ones that we've been admiring throughout our stay in Machakos), was very bumpy and dusty. The roads were a deep red color, and on either side was a lush green of the farmland. Upon arriving at Munyiva's house, we took a couple minutes to just take in the view of the farmlands below, which was spectacular. Equally as amazing as the view was the lunch that Munyiva served us soon after we arrived. The two of us, Munyiva, Sophie, her nephew, and her son sat down at the table for a delicious lunch of rice and stew. Sophie's husband (Munyiva's son) sat seperate from us, on the couch, to eat his lunch. Nobody was speaking to him which also confused us but again, we didn't dwell on it. After lunch Munyiva gave us a tour of her "shamba" (garden). It turns out that most of the hill actually belongs to her and her family. Although her main crop is coffee beans, she also grows bananas, avacados, macademia nuts, beans, corn, pumpkins and probably more that we didn't even see.
We spent most of the next day at the Machakos open market. We'd been there several times, but this time was very different as Munyiva knew most of the venders and stopped to chat with everyone there. For lunch we ate a meal that was familiar to us because of the Trader Joe's frozen section. Although we do appreciate Trader Joe's, the homemade lentils and chapati that Munyiva made put frozen food to shame. We spent the meal talking to Munyiva about her life and her ten children. When she mentioned that we should meet her oldest son, Sophie's husband, we confusedly asked her who the man who had been with Sophie and driven us here was. She off handedly answered that he was the cab driver. We both broke into hysterics about our mistake, and Munyiva, not knowing what we were laughing about, joined in, which only fueled our laughter more. Later we realized that this was just the true nature of Munyiva, who's a really fantastic woman. Although she's seventy-six-years-old, she lives alone and spends the whole day working really hard. Since her husband died a couple years ago, she's been running the farm by herself. She doesn't seem lonely because her daughter-in-law and grandaughter live literally ten feet away in the next house. On Saturday, we went on a gorgeous run through Munyiva's shambas with her ten-year-old grandaugther, Grace. It quite possibly could have been the most scenic run that either of us had ever been on.
Throughout our time spent with Munyiva we tried numerous tradtional Kenyan meals, thoroughly enjoying every single one of them. We had ugali, chapati, getheri, rice and stew, and much more. Every meal was followed by fresh oranges and two cups of delicious tea (0% hot water, 100% hot milk). We drank more milk in those three days than we had in the past two weeks.

The girls are loving ultimate frisbee, although they do ocassionally use the frisbees to carry pumpkin guts. This is the field that we play in-the view from it is absolutely beautiful. You can see all the Machakos farmland below.

In the past couple days we've had a lot of long conversations with the manager and guidance counselors of the rescue center about the case history of certain girls. The girls come from three different backgrounds. Some have been either seperated from their parents or their parents have died. Others have been abused by family members and taken away by the police, or neglected and abandoned by their parents. A few were victims of forced early marriage (these girls are only 11, 13, and 14 years old). Finding out many of the girls' pasts has been really hard for us, but definitely necessary to understand them better. It's amazing to see that they can still be so cheerful and loving despite their extremely difficult pasts. We've also been learning about where the girls go from here. This Rescue Center is somewhat temporary because its main purpose is to locate any family members and reunite the girls with them. When family is located, it's still hard to determine whether they'll treat the girls well and be able to support them. If the center is unable to locate family members, the future of the girls is very uncertain. Sometimes girls have had to stay here until they get married. As Francis has told us, the Kenyan government doesn't value girls education and therefore makes it expensive for them to pay for schooling. Two girls, whose grandmother has been located, have expressed their worry to us that if they go to live with her, they won't be able to get a proper education because she can't afford it.
Tonight we're eating dinner with the girls for the first time because they're serving rice. Everyone's really excited to eat something different from beans and corn mashed together!

Lilian and Vivian

Vivian is the girl on the left. Ever since the first night we arrived, she stood out to us, not to say that we don't love all the girls. She's always by our side translating swahili into english for the girls that don't speak english as well as she does. She's only nine years old but is so bright and is always eager to learn new english words or teach us swahili. This is fitting too because she's told us that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. We have full confidence seeing that she's already taught us all the swahili that we know. Vivian's best friend, Lilian, is the girl on the right. Lilian has surprised us in such a great way. Unlike Vivian, we didn't really notice her in all of the constant excitement of all the girls because she's more quiet and less all over us than many of the others. But as we've gotten to know her through teaching her and her sister, Betty, in the highest level class, we've come to love her so much. Whenever we're teaching the girls anything from English and world history to new american songs, she's always concentrating and focusing entirely on what we're saying. We can tell that she has such a strong drive to learn new things. Both girls have such great spirits and we enjoy every minute we spend with them.

We spent this weekend away from all the girls for the first time, and it was so much harder than we had expected. We said goodbye for the girls as if we were leaving forever, although in reality, we were only leaving for two days. We spent the entire Matatu ride from Machakos to Nairobi looking at pictures of all the girls and talking about how much we already missed them (a matatu is the most popular form of public transportation in Kenya. It's like a large van run by any person who can afford to buy a large van. People are constantly getting on and off and it's usually very squished).

The girls were definitely on our minds the whole weekend although we were very busy. On Saturday we went to the Nairobi open market and saw more "mzungus" than we had seen since we first arrived here. We went with Joseph's sister, Hannah, and her friend, Alice. It was definitely helpful having them there to pretend that they were the ones buying things instead of us. The prices that we ended up paying for most of the items were about one third of what they originally offered us. We also went to Kibera, which is one of the largest slums in Africa. After walking around Kibera for about an hour, our little room in Machakos seemed like a palace. Today we went to the Lake Nakura National Wildlife Reserve and had our lunches stolen right out of our hands by huge baboons...while we were in the car.