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I'm sorry for the great delay between my last post and this one. Much has happened - I finished my first year of grad school, welcomed my parents and our friend Joy to my adopted home and embarked on a true safari with them. I want to share something I wrote to be read to ambassadorial scholarship applicants for the 2010-2011 school year (since I couldn't be there in person). I have also posted some recent pictures from our safari at my smugmug site here, and am working on catching up on many past-due photos as well. I am in the Bay Area working with eBay on WorldofGood.com until October 3rd, when I will return to Nairobi (via Istanbul where I'll do a week stopover!) to start my final year at University of Nairobi. Thank you for sharing this journey with me, and for all the support that I have received. My attempt to put the experience into words that follows, is just that - an attempt. Words, as much as I love them, will never do it justice.

"I’ve spent my scholarship year in Kenya where I’m pursuing a M.A. in Development Studies, and savoring every moment of an experience that has truly encapsulated the current Rotary theme of “Make Dreams Real.” Having an organization like Rotary recognize your goals and aspirations and extend the support they do is as great a gift there is. I know each of you have unique and incredible ambitions and aspirations, and whether you get this scholarship or not, I’m confident you’ll find ways to pursue them.

As for myself, these are the things I find myself treasuring as I near the end of my scholarship year abroad. These are things that I know come only from this sort of experience, from an investment in time and exploration in a country so far from home.

They are:
• The Kiswahili words that now flow easily from my mouth, but that will have no meaning to friends and family when I return home.
• The foods that I now crave with afternoon tea (heck, afternoon tea!) that I know I won’t find when I return home.
• The subtle cultural nuances I’m still learning to adjust to and accommodate in my daily commute, or when I enter a room here for the first time.
• The inner struggles to acclimate to a different set of norms while at the same time staying true to my own comfort zone and interests.
• The opportunity to present myself as a foreigner, as an American and as a citizen of the world in a way that those I interact with in my new home may have never seen or understood before.
• The equal opportunity to see in them something different than I may have expected.
• The appreciation and final acceptance of utter and complete differences sometimes small and other times incomprehensibly big.
• And finally, the realization that always hits me at the oddest of times: In the end, the culmination of such differences in culture, location, interests and day to day reality are in fact all actually subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) reminders of the sameness that binds us all together as humans.

In closing, I’d like to make a special acknowledgment of how much richer this experience of studying abroad has been simply because it has introduced me to the Rotary family. I knew little of Rotary before I applied but I cannot imagine how different this experience would be if I did not have the many Rotary clubs and local Rotarians (not to mention support from Rotarians at home) accompanying my journey. I have been afforded intimate access to all walks of life in Kenya, exposure to major leaders and a first hand glimpse of how the local community is tackling the development problems I’m studying."













The boys from the home I've visited many times in Nakuru in the sweatshirts and clothes my friend Heather and her co-workers donated - thank you everyone!


My dad celebrated his 80th birthday in Kenya! What a gift to share this trip with him.

More pictures available here.

On the inside

Have you seen The Constant Gardener? Do you remember the rolling sprawl of rusted tin roofs in Kibera? Did the movie capture the fractured earth, the plastic bag-choked bits of green amidst the ever-present brown?

I went to Kibera for the first time shortly after I arrived here to visit Red Rose School. I wore the wrong shoes, and was cautioned that were I ever to go through the gate next to the school that beckoned into the depths of the slum I better make sure my feet were covered. I’ve been back many times since to the inner Toi market (fabulous used clothing market, I have a friend who got an authentic Louis Vuitton for under $1) and Makina market where my tailor is. All these visits allowed me to say, “yes, I’ve been to Kibera” though none of them in anyway conveyed the reality of the place I visited for the first time today. The border does not betray the inner sanctum’s reality. No, it does not.

My class had a field day today where we were tasked with visiting an acting development project. I arranged for us to visit school empowerment groups in Kibera that are being run as part of my house mate Megan’s organization, Zanna. I’ve been wanting to visit for ages and this was a great opportunity to do so. Plus, the vision and strategy behind Zanna is exactly what I think the development field needs in order to have a hope and a prayer of actually solving the problems that continue to permeate countries like Kenya.

The first thing you notice about Kibera is the abundance of children, all of whom seem to be the same size. It’s like a slum full of four year olds, all fluent in the language of “How are you!” of which as a mzungu I heard continuously throughout my visit. Then you realize how careful you’re being walking, and the sense of risk you feel as you attempt to peel your eyes from the uneven ground in order to take in the sites and smells around you. A butcher. A sausage cart toiling as it would over a cobbled street but leaving a trail of loose rock in its wake. Mamas and babies peeking out of low, dark windows. A woman in a purple lesso sifting and lightly blowing on maize with a rhythmic toss. Children everywhere, laughing and running, holding hands. A pair no more than three, each wearing one blue flip flop on the opposite foot. What friendship.

I admit I loved being there. I loved the children running by and giving me high fives. I love any opportunity to be reminded how people survive and make the most of the worst of conditions. To find an alternative to the individual stories of grief and despair, to the continued political and ethnic debauchery, the remaining IDPs, the rampant corruption. The sun was shining. Life continues.

One of our professors, a recent PhD graduate assisting our research-burdened tenured staff walked with me for a time. He couldn’t contain his disgust, his frustration at the scene. He takes it more personally than even I do for all my struggles with the inadequacies of humanity. How can some of us rock climb for fun while others build houses upon shifting land amidst rocks of poverty-laden rubble? He is Kenyan, these are his people. This is his land, right nearby the “poor” area he himself lives in. An area that cannot compare to the filth of Kibera.

Kibera, for all the attention it has received, is no joke. Incomes, where they exist, are cobbled together. I passed many tarps of odds and ends – rusted wrenches, dented mechanical parts I could not name, bits of old metal and wire for which I couldn’t imagine a purpose. Every once in awhile a shiny mobile phone. On one tarp, a single upside down porcelain urinal filled with buttons.

It is hard to reconcile my ability to see the beauty, joy and goings on of life in the slum, with the revolting site you have to process in order to know it must be changed. The land is sucked of the green. The water is scarce, the trash unbelievable. Children meander through filth, shining their glorious youth and innocence in order to make it human, to make it bearable.

There is music, constant music. There are babies being held, old men shooting the shit, hunched grandmas walking together. It is life, at the same time as it should, and never should, be.

Scene: A Typical Phone Call

Some insight into the strangely significant sort of cultural accommodations you have to make here on a daily basis.

My phone rings:

Me: Hello?
Person calling: Hi Megan! How are you?
Me: Hi I’m good, thanks. Who is this?
Person calling: Fine, fine (by way of response to my unasked question of “how are you?”). Are you in Nairobi?
Me: Yes, sorry, who is this?
Person calling: Great great, when can we meet?
Me: I’m sorry who is this?
Person calling: (finally tells me who it is).

End scene.

Defensive dressing

There are a million funny bus stories I've failed to record or share here, but I couldn't keep today's to myself.

I often do grocery shopping in town, and today I had my computer as well so by the time I got to the bus I had my hands full. When we passed the stop before mine I got up as I usually do and made my way to the stairs at the door. As I stepped down, preparing to hover in the door so that I could jump off as soon as the bus slowed, the bus sped up and the weight of my bags pulled me forward. In a moment of panic I kicked one foot forward, effectively launching my left shoe out into the street and under the car behind us. Thankfully I didn't launch myself out of the bus, but I was a very silly site walking back from my stop, about 200 yards down the road, with my hands full and one bare foot.

Today's incident adds loose flats to my list of what not to wear on the bus. The biggest prior offender being, of course, the wrap-around skirt.

Playing hooky

Here's what I know: Hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa. They can run upwards of 14 miles an hour, have seriously huge tusks and a massive jaw (not to mention their substantial bulk).

Here's where I was on Sunday night: Fisherman's camp - famous for the hippos that come up to eat the grass below the campsite that sits on the edge of Lake Naivasha.

Here's why I was there: I've wanted to visit Hell's Gate National Park since I got here. It's just an hour from Nairobi (though by matatu it took me 4 hours...grrr...) and the only place where you can do walking or biking safaris (no lions or elephants - but there are buffalo and leopards so it does require some care!). I haven't had any friends interested in going when I've been free, so its been one of the many tourist attractions I've flat out missed until last week when my friend Allan, a volunteer in Mombasa, said he wanted to go and convinced me to skip my Monday classes (two of which ended up canceled thankfully).

Here's where our tent was: About 15 feet from a very pathetic looking electric fence, that didn't appear to be on. Allan had impulsively leapt over it when the grass was hippo-free just after dinner, hitting it in the process with his metal crutch (he had a sprained ankle) with absolutely no reaction on the part of the fence.

Here's where everyone else's tents were: A lot further away.

And finally, here's what happened: We went to sleep around 11, sad we hadn't seen any hippos but ready to rest in order to get up at 6 for our biking safari (for which I sadly have no pictures because I forgot to change my battery - snap!). At about 11:30 we were awoken by the unmistakable sound of a large animal outside the tent, most likely chewing the grass, but possibly just walking through the spongy ground (it had rained that day). Allan bolted out of the tent with my headlamp, while I simply rolled over and tried to get back to sleep since I knew I wouldn't be able to see anything and I was comfy.

A few minutes of relative silence passed. Then, I heard the deep, deafening roar of a single adult hippo. It broke through the night like nothing I've ever experienced. It sounded like he was just outside my tent, and I was sure that the fence we'd observed before must have had a gap we hadn't seen that allowed him to wander up to the grass next to the tent.

The roar was followed by the immediate sound of running directly past the tent. I remember being sure that it was the hippo itself, I could hear the weight in the movement, though thinking back I think I was hearing both the hippos mock charge and what I found out was Allan, crutches free, sprinting past the tent at virtually the same time. I wish I had words to articulate the combination of the roar and the speed of the thunderous running. The first few seconds of this video show what a charging hippo can look like:



Then, silence.

So there I was, by myself in a tent with no screen or way of seeing outside, knowing only that one of the most dangerous animals in the world was less than 20 feet away and really, really pissed off.

I didn't know how hippos sense things (apparently it's by smell so you want to get down wind of them if possible). I didn't want to call out to Allan for fear it would attract attention, and I was afraid to move in case of the same. While I could logically run through the fact that there was a fence, that all I represented was the motionless white structure of my tent and that all a hippo at that time would be interested in would be grass, I could not calm down. Allan finally came back to the tent and explained what had happened. He'd followed another hippo down the grass a bit and when he came back caught the second one square on with my head lamp, causing the mock charge.

There were a few more brays throughout the night, but for the most part it was calm. Of course I jumped at every rustle of the trees, constructing all sorts of scenarios in the aftermath of fear (at one point convinced there was a leopard outside, at another dreaming that a man with a machine gun was entering the tent). It is by far the most scared and powerless I have ever been.

The next day we learned that most likely the hippo near us has been cast out of his herd for trying to challenge the dominant male. For now, he's eating as much as he can so he can bulk up and try again. Incidentally, we also found out that a tourist was killed at Fisherman's camp in 2005 when she came between a hippo and its calf late at night.

Suffice it to say I gave the buffaloes a wide berth on our bike safari the next day.

A new endeavor

Like so many of the most exciting projects I've been a part of in my life, my newest endeavor is the result of a last minute burst of inspiration that moved me to throw my name into the mix and see what came of it. I've just joined the Editorial Advisory Board for JustMeans, an organization dedicated to spreading the word about corporate social responsibility (CSR), providing a forum to discuss it and other related issues (ethical consumption, social entrepreneurship, sustainable development etc.) while raising awareness for both companies and consumers alike. I'll be posting roughly every other day working to generate dialogue, interview CSR professionals and everyday people about what they know of CSR and what they think it should be and much more. Today is my first post and I'd love it if you'd take a look here. Feel free to comment and send any thoughts you have about CSR my way - I'll be on the constant look out for fresh content and perspective as I work to balance this new opportunity with my final month of school and preparation to return home for the summer.

A Kenyan Wedding

You may or may not know this about me, but I'm a little obsessed with weddings. While I do think they're starting to get a bit out of hand in the U.S. (it's just one day!) I love how they combine all of life's most important pieces into one event. From family and friends to the day's underlying theme of love, plus the added elements from the spectrum of creativity (fashion! music! design! FOOD) everything blends together in celebration of a couple's new life - what's not to love? Thus I've been anxious to attend a local wedding to experience and compare Kenyan traditions and perhaps more importantly, to see what people are wearing. For you see, a Kenyan wedding is one of the best excuses to break out your hottest, brightest and most in your face African outfits. I say African because Kenya doesn't really have a national dress the way some African countries do. Some tribes have traditional wear but when it comes to Nairobi, where society is a blend of backgrounds and tastes, you pretty much get it all. Dresses for formal occasions and weddings are often made specially (and sometimes worn just once) out of traditional kangas, imported wax cloth from West Africa, more locally printed leso and kitenge or any combination thereof. I'm still learning how to distinguish what comes from where and what patterns are more traditional versus new takes on classic pieces, so I loved having the opportunity to see so many designs in one place (though I had to be somewhat surreptitious in how I took my photos!).


A great thing about Kenyan weddings is an invitation is more of a formality than an etiquette lesson. For yesterday's wedding, I was invited by a friend of the bride, who, along with the groom, I have yet to meet! The event started in a Catholic church, where a wonderful choir sang both modern and traditional hymns throughout the service. After the church portion (in which the groom was invited to "embrace" his bride - no kiss!) the guests were invited to take pictures of the bridal party before they left briefly for formal portraits. After that, a buffet line was set up and guests ate and drank (soda - alcohol isn't served until the evening's festivities which are more for the couple and their close friends - less family, more booze) while waiting for the return of the bridal party.


Upon the bride's return, all woman were summoned to greet her at the car and help bring her into the reception with song and dance. The bride is from the Akamba tribe, but her husband is Kikuyu so it was his relatives that participated most in this in order to announce her welcome to the family and her new identity therein. There was a loud call and answer song as the group made their way into the reception. Shortly after, the bride's family and friends from the coastal area were also invited to dance and celebrate their traditional songs in celebration.


A series of dances and speeches followed, culminating in the cutting of the cake, which the bride and groom took turns feeding each other and then to their parents (I thought that was a nice gesture of commitment to each other's family). The whole ceremony was very Christian, with many sound words of advice for making marriage work and biblical references. I loved the honesty and encouragement family members and friends offered - very realistic about the challenges of marriage but also full of hope and blessings for the new couple.


Turns out it's easiest (and quickest) to upload photos to facebook. You can look at the rest of the wedding photos here, whether you're a facebook member or not.