Just Another Day

Just another day in Maweni Village with Brian and Brenda

Just another day… “In Paradise?”
Kenya’s coastline is dotted with beautiful five star resorts tucked comfortably under palm trees. Visitors enjoy tropical breezes with pool side drinks and grand buffets. They fly in and out of animal game parks on luxurious safaris. And if you ask them, how they like Kenya, they’ll tell you that they “Love it. It’s paradise.” I have seen the resorts and the safari tours and I can tell you that I do not love Kenya. In fact I couldn’t wait to leave the place. No amount of comfort could take away the hopeless despair and frustration that grew like a cancer all over me. What is there to love about babies who are born to die, shrunken bodies full of abuse? I have seen teens that survive on hate and violence, fathers that drink their children’s ration of food and mothers that pray for their salvation while God continues to deliver more suffering? The place felt full of empty hope; desperate to be rescued but not reaching for a life-line.It’s true our experience was tainted from working in the poverty stricken slums of Kenya where our friends and co-workers were some of the most difficult people to like or respect. I learned to weave our differences together to create a union that barely held me through the burden of another day of conflict, crisis and tragedy. When I left Africa, I was aching to put it all behind, but found that each of these tragic, absurd and comical days have followed my conscious and tested my resolve.
When I wake from this strange journey that has been my life I wonder if the full impact of its weirdness will ever surprise me? I think we have lost something soft and tender for life while becoming calloused and resilient to its daily suffering.

Just another day with Brian: “Fire in the Hood”
The sun is too hot. The shade is too hot. Sun screen and sweat drip down my face and burn my eyes. My muscles ache from regular dehydration and exhaustion. Our daily ration of drinking water has been consumed by the local drunks who have stumbled into our construction site. I can’t blame them, as we covet every drop of water and only I can afford to buy more. Sitting atop the roof I hammer in the last nails and dizzily peer over the village of thatched huts while children serenade me in the new classroom below. Young mothers saunter past the school, balancing stacks of firewood atop their heads and rummage through the dump for useful things, while their children are singing “we are happy, so happy.” I wonder if they keep repeating the verse, they can actually start to believe this.
I don’t see anything that resembles happiness for they are living to find food each day. Life is hard and they know it. No one seems to be able to do more than stay alive. I have worked hard and am rewarded with a life of plenty. Here in Maweni village everything a family has worked for, fits into a five foot grass shack. Many times I have peered into their little room with only basic essentials and wondered which things are meaningful to them. Do possessions mean anything at all? I remember thinking of a time that I needed a ski boat and diesel truck to be happy.
“We are happy, so happy” is ringing through the school ground, but the verse is interrupted by a strange shrill that startles me back to reality. Shouts and screams replace the innocent and hopeful voices of children. The daily village hum suddenly turns to chaos. I scramble down and race to the scene across the road where a red hot fire is quickly consuming a line of homes. People are jutting into the flames trying to remove their valuables but come running back, empty handed. A push cart of water is raced through the crowd and we line up pouring priceless cans of wet liquid on the dry palm siding. One by one the roofs cave in and walls of flames shoot into the sky. Desperately we cut tree branches and beat out the flames in a futile attempt to save even one home. The fire devoured its fuel and flickered out only when it reached the dirt floors. In a matter of five minutes, all of the homes and shops burned to the ground, leaving nothing but a small charred pile of undistinguishable belongings.

A woman steps into the cloud of smoke and kicks the blackened bones of her home. She lifts her hands in despair, reaching up to an empty sky. Then throws down her arms and begins to weep. Chance, fate, life in Africa? Today is just another unfortunate day in Maweni Village.


Just another day with Brenda: “Hopeless Existence”
We have just moved from a dirt floor hut into our new Adult Education classroom. I’m teaching English and Swahili to students who range from 20 to 50 years in age. They are all illiterate but anxious to learn. We have become a tight group and teaching and learning together is the most satisfying thing I have done in Kenya.
Today, I prepared a series of lessons, trying to include all levels of students. There are some who are just learning how to hold a pencil to make shapes on paper and others who can recognize alphabet letters and form words. I start with the familiar game called ‘hangman.’ They call out letters of the alphabet and with each wrong answer, body parts appear on a noose. A strange vibe moves through the class and I remember that hanging is a common punishment for crimes in Africa. My students must know people who have died this way. Oops. I quickly erase the noose and finish drawing a stick figure on the blackboard. Now we are playing ‘disappearing man’ and they laugh out loud as the figure looses a leg or an eye. They seem to be comfortable with these afflictions.

The next lesson is a simple application for job. I give each student a worksheet and explain common words found on the form starting with their name and show them where to place the answers. I recognize the blank expressions as confusion and repeat the instructions. After discussion I realize they don’t even know what, a ‘legal name’ is. They use the name of their first born child, followed by the title Mama or Bwana. Could they forget, not know or never given a proper birth and family name? They have tribal names and Christian names and nicknames but I don’t know what to put on the form. The class is puzzled by this complicated lesson. It’s hard to imagine this simple existence but started to make sense to me when I considered their surroundings.

I move on to ‘date of birth’ and ask them to write the month, day and year they were born. Dark questioning eyes stare back at me as if it was the million dollar jeopardy question. Again I repeat the instructions and they begin to talk amongst themselves discussing the year of the famine or the year their family migrated. It is astonishing to me, that no one kept track or celebrated when children were born. Nine out of ten students did not know their birth date and could only guess the year. They don’t know how old they are and ask me why this information is important anyway? Again, I didn’t have an answer. I realize the lesson is a failure but it creates debate and discussion and I continue despite my own bewilderment.

The next line is for address and phone number, but as soon as I look at the page I understand, there’s no reason to ask. Although one woman has lived here 20 years they are still squatters and living in a temporary slum. There is no power, water, mail or phone service in the village. I ask the question; “If I need to send you money, how would you receive it?” Each person thinks of someone they know and I assign homework to find an address. I guess no one has ever paid taxes either so what’s the point in waiting for retirement checks or birthday cards?

I should have seen this one coming but I proceed to move down the form to the spaces provided for educational background. I started asking if anyone had attended a Kenyan high school, middle school, elementary or preschool?? Feeling their embarrassment, I went around the room and simply wrote, ‘Introduction to English and Adult Education’ on each form. Even though they are grown, today is their first time in a classroom and this is their only education. These men and women, never had the opportunity to learn and they are spending every day trying to catch up on a life they missed. I feel naïve as their teacher and wished I had been more thoughtful when choosing this lesson which only makes them seem inadequate. I skip over a few irrelevant questions but the class urges me to finish the form with them.

In Kenya, you are required to state your marital status and children on a job application so I’m feeling confident that they would know this information. However, it never crossed my mind to question the amount of wives on the form because in this culture, men are not restricted to one wife. Wanting to end the lesson without causing further humiliation, I showed them where to list the number of children on the form and skipped the rest. After a long uncomfortable silence, one woman spoke up shyly asking if they should list how many children they gave birth to, or how many are still living? We all became silent and I didn’t know how to answer. I was lost for words. Eyes became teary as they told me about the children who have died. Every student has lost at least one and up to three children. Now I understand why African woman have many births. It never made sense to me that they would want more mouths to feed when they couldn’t provide basic needs for themselves. Infant mortality is high in Kenya and childhood disease takes the lives of many more. In order to keep a family and have children to help around the house, you need to conceive twice as often and burry your sorrow and loss with the bodies of children.
I can see on their faces that it has been an upsetting lesson. I announce an early dismissal but instead the room remains motionless. They linger in a long still silence until out of the thick air a single beautiful voice sings out a piercing wail that sends a chill down my spine. She closes her eyes, lifts her hands and repeats the chorus ending in a long howl. Like a massage that tightens and loosens your muscles and eventually reaches your bones, the release of pain and sorrow moved through the class. One by one with long awkward pauses, they rise from the chairs swaying to the rhythm. Together they build a drum beat of claps and performed a tribal dance. Each voice joins the following chant of verses until the entire group is singing, dancing and marching out the door. I am alone now, standing at the front of their first classroom watching the line of black heads move down the pathway. Tears pour out for their determination and tears flow for their loss. Tears stream down my face until I am flooded in their hopelessness. And when my tears stop, I blot my face dry and go home to prepare for the surge of the next day.

Just another day with Brian: “Dennis the Menace”
If this guy says another word to me, I swear I’ll toss him across the field. Dennis the Menace is back to harass and he never leaves us alone. Dennis the Menace showed up on the first day of our arrival to Kenya forcing gifts upon us, then demanding loads of money for them. When he discovered we had plans to build a school, he thanked us and later came back to ask if we could just give him the money instead. After Brenda gave him the definition of a volunteer worker he sat back in the shade and watched for a few days, then decided that he wanted to be a volunteer too. As we cleared the field of shrubs he followed on our heels scooping up the cut grass then throwing it in the air. Then he collected it again to make bird nests for the flowers.(??) The whole crew stood motionless watching him concentrate on the useless task. Next he took our tools and wandered off to the village bar but raced back to pose for pictures of himself pretending to work. When his 15 minutes of volunteerism were over he gave us every reason why he should be paid for his labor. Then he insisted we all stop working and take him to the resort to buy him beers and lunch. We remind him that we’ve never been to the resort, but his recourse is to show us the way. Dennis is never kidding. He is always serious and very sincere. Yes, this is Dennis the Menace and he never leaves us alone.

The only way we can deal with his annoying presence is to laugh but he never gets the joke. I look at his pathetic existence and even when my tolerance has faltered, I still feel sorry for him. He is from the messiah tribe and dresses in a red loin cloth and yellow sash across his skinny chest. His skin is falling off and he is dying of AIDS. He survives by walking the beach wearing his messiah outfit and begging from the tourists. Dennis is drunk by 10 am every day and never misses the opportunity to demand the shoes off my feet. I remind him that I have only one pair and real messiah men don’t wear shoes anyway. This doesn’t stop him from following me home, waiting for me to take them off.

We were ecstatic the day our fence enclosed the property, keeping Dennis and other drunks on the opposite side and away from the school children. But Dennis was so offended with this new concept of walking around the school, to get to the village bar that he shouted complaints over the fence the whole day long. His witch doctor friend sat beside him placing curses on us and our family while tossing rocks at us. On Christmas day, Dennis made the village kids come to our house to sing carols so that we would give him money for more beer. Then he invited us to spend the holiday together, but only if we bring many gifts. And Dennis is always serious and very sincere. On New Years day, he confronted me while I was riding my bike home. He stood blocking the path and commanded that this was my “last chance!” He told me that I could choose to give him my shoes or give him my bicycle. “Humm Dennis, I already told you, I am not going to give you either of these. Ever!” His expression saddened while he implored, “But Brian, that was last year. This is a new year and you have to make a new deal.” Yes, this is Dennis the Menace and he never leaves us alone.

Today I am so angry with Dennis that I’m tempted to throw him out of this planet. Instead I choose to walk away from his obnoxious drunken stupor knowing that he will stumble behind. I quickly lock him on the other side of the gate and wait for his banter to end. I’m so tired from working all day in the hot sun and really wish to be at home resting. But I know this game and have to remain until dusk awaiting Dennis to fall asleep or wander off. When the coast is clear I sneak home taking the back alleys so that I won’t be seen, but tomorrow will be just the same.

Just another day with Brian: “Justify Violence?”
Today was like many others. A woman’s voice screamed out terror from a mud hut in the village. She cried for help and we could hear her wail uncontrollably while a man shouted obscenities and drug her out by the hair. Children raced from all directions to see the morning drama and it sickened us to understand, that violence was their entertainment. The children returned to class and we all resumed our work while she continued to sob on the other side of the fence. I tried to put the scene out of my mind knowing that I can’t change the dysfunctional behavior of these people. We’re doing our best to build a safe and secure educational environment for these children and this community. We believe with education and good examples they will have more choices in life. Most days only bring saddening disappointment. Brenda came home for lunch today with more tears and frustration leaving us in silent disgust.

She explained that she was on her way to the gravel pit to check on Mama B. but found her at home preparing to comfort a friend while they buried her two year old baby. Brenda had joined the mother in church yesterday while they praised God for this child’s recovery from Malaria and now the baby is dead. Brenda went instead to the neighbors hut and noticed that that the children were gone. Mama B. explained that they had gone to the hospital. The youngest girl needed treatment for a concussion. We check on these children regularly just to be sure the drunken parents remember to feed the two girls. We knew the young mother was having a difficult time in life and recently lost her unborn child during delivery. There weren’t enough doctors working to receive her at the hospital, so she delivered alone and lost the infant. This woman had gained our sympathy compounded by the fact that one of her daughters has a crippled leg. Still, we watch in disgust while this mother makes frequent stops to the village bar with her broken daughter strapped tightly to her back. Today, Mama B. explained the history of this family’s violence. While this little baby was still swaddled to her mother’s body, the parents became drunk and violent with each other. In a brawl they ripped the baby’s hip joint from its socket and left her crippled. Today’s trip to the hospital is the same, only this time she has received a severe head wound from her drunken parents. We can’t imagine the terror this child felt, being battered while tightly bound to her mother, who was the cause of her torment. There was no escaping and we wonder if this child will ever know protection or feel safe again? Will this shrunken, bruised baby end up buried as well? Perhaps it will be her tragic blessing, which prevents a life of anguish. Living with so much despair, we find ourselves trying to find a glimmer of optimism, but each day leaves us with less hope.

Today, I looked around the school yard and was grateful for the fence that protected these children from their environment. We want them to enter the compound, knowing they will be sheltered from the storm of their life. We watch as some children come to school exhausted and fall into a painless and protected sleep. They linger after school and dread to go home and we encourage them to stay with us longer. They beg to help, cling to our sides and scramble up on our laps. They are content to just to be near us and feel safe.
But…today was different. While I was building their community center, envisioning a harmless environment, I heard the blood curdling scream of terror coming from a child inside. I was on the roof and could only peer through a classroom window to see what was happening. I was completely shocked and appalled by what I found.

Little Thomas is a six year old boy who has lost his mother and father to disease. He was given to his grandmother who has been left with five other grandchildren. They too have lost their parents. Mourning the loss of her own children, this grandmother does little more than lie on the grave of her daughter just outside the door of her hut. The grandchildren run wild and fend for themselves by begging beside the grandmother on the main road. They go without food, with out supervision and are deeply troubled. The children are starving for both food and attention and behave as so. Today Thomas has gotten the attention of the teachers.

When I heard Thomas scream, I searched the classroom to find him shaking with his eyes locked shut, holding his hands tightly over his ears. His mouth was askew and screaming in terror as the teacher threatened to cut off his ears. One of the teachers reached for a knife and held it like a dagger over his head. She continued to threaten him while his small body shuddered in fright. I looked to the staff and crew to understand what was going on, but the teachers and staff responded with laughter. The knife was replaced with a stick as they proceeded to cane the trembling child. Tears burst into my eyes as I watched the child disappear into isolation and numb himself to the pain of life.

The teachers told me later, “This is exactly how we handle a situation. This is our culture and our way.” I couldn’t believe their admission and lack of compassion. I gathered my things and walked to the gate, ready to leave this place forever. I could not witness or support more abuse to people in Kenya. I stopped short of the path, leading to my home and turned around. I can’t make this right, but I can give leave an example of a better way to handle the situation. We gathered in a meeting and the teachers boldly justified the cruelty assuring me that Thomas will never steal again. But the same day, I found Thomas sneaking into the class and watched as he uncovered a small bowl of rice and beans from his back pack. Hungrily he devoured the stolen food and crept back out to play. Is there crime in desperation? Is the circle of violence justified when it is all they know?

Just another day with Brian and Brenda: “Trials and Tribulations”
Five months in a foreign country and you begin to feel like you’re starting to get it. You get used to dealing with conflict and you find ways to avoid it. Eventually the tribal wars seem justified, the witchcraft seems entertaining, and the heat and bugs almost become bearable. It is not until you realize that these things are eating you alive, do you fully understand, that you don’t belong in this environment and you’ll never get it.

It was meant to be a quiet Sunday morning and we lounged back for coffee and soaked our blistered feet in cool water. Hoping for one peaceful and easy day, we decided to stay away from the village and relax at home. Last week was extremely chaotic with strings of conflict leading to pandemonium and stress. There is never a dull day in Maweni village.
This week, the school staff stopped speaking to each other. Apparently one teacher witch crafted a curse on the other and ‘cut her shadow,’ causing a sever typhoid outbreak and near death experience. (Yes, these are our co-workers) Two cups of rice and oil are missing from the kitchen and they are screaming corruption. One teacher left 30 preschoolers sleeping on concrete bags in the dirt and went home to practice email. Our workers won’t look at the building plans and insist on drawing sketches in the dirt with a finger, instead of on paper with a pencil. A witch hunt interrupted one day as a trail of people chased a black robed man holding a staff while searching for a red feather from a white chicken or some cockamamie thing. Then the village drunks had a knife fight and left a bleeding man to die, sprawled out in front of the children. And yesterday I was accosted and detained by an armed swat team at the ATM. There is never a dull day in Maweni.

Then there was the night that we startled awake, with itching welts and crawling bugs on our mattress. Those beautiful village children had left some of their creepy crawly bugs on my clothes and I guess they found their way onto our sofa and into our mattress. I’m sure you’ve never had to deal with bed bugs but it’s a process where everything had to be washed and put in the sun to dry. Only we had no water because the pump at the well broke, while our landlord went off on a long safari.

But we recover from one problem and begin to prepare for the next. We have discovered many small blister-ish wounds on our feet and finally decided today that it deserved our attention. It seemed they could be septic mosquito bites or infected slivers but we weren’t sure. As we looked closer, we discovered deep holes with a disgusting substance. I cut open a sore on my foot and removed a white sack for inspection. The sack broke open and tiny eggs spilled out. Having a weak stomach, I cringed in panic while desperately wanting to cut my feet off.

Today is Sunday and the clinic is closed, so I ran for a medical book called, “When there is no doctor.” Quickly I rummaged through the pages searching for symptoms to match ours. I found a section on ancient remedies showing “The Do’s and Don’ts” for common village illness. One page had a drawing of a lady with swollen neck and a dead infant’s hand, reaching out. The caption said: “Do not rub a goiter with the hand of a dead baby.” Another drawing had a man with black paste around his eye and a cow taking a poo. The caption says: “Putting human feces around the eye does not cure blurred vision” and “Smearing cow dung on the head to fight ringworm can cause dangerous infections.” The next few pictures were worse and I went to a new chapter when I saw a picture of an old woman hiding a knife behind her back. Maybe there are more modern medical approaches for foot problems?

Finally I discovered the parasites which had embedded themselves in our feet. Without invitation, the tiny creatures have crawled under our skin to make a home. They are living, feeding and breeding off the tissue of our tender white foreign skin. They will continue to eat our flesh until every last egg has been removed or killed. After eight hours of surgery we carefully removed the miniscule bugs and their offspring from our feet and under our toenails. Completely nauseous from the ordeal we declined dinner, wrapped our feet in gauze and limped to bed with gaping, bleeding holes in our feet. I lay awake hoping for a night with out rats or bats, mad screams or bad dreams. While I cursed Kenya and seethed its existence, I realized that something else dreadful is living within, and it’s eating me alive. My tenderness, patience and goodness, is decaying inside an exhausted and worn out body. I know that I can not last much longer in this place and admit my defeat while planning our departure.

Just another day with Brian and Brenda:“One Perfect Day”
A perfect day in Kenya didn’t seem possible. After months of grief we plan for disasters to happen. We copy and paste the good moments to remind ourselves why we came to Africa and then clear our hard drive each day, erasing everything else. If we had left Africa without this one and only perfect day, I can say that we would never want to return. One perfect day made six months of torment worth while.

There were countless things we wanted to do for the children but there was one wish we managed to fulfill. It was our wish for them, to see a world outside of their own. We wanted to give them eyes to see hopes and dreams, success and pride. None of these things exist in Maweni village. In fact most of the children have never left their little town and only know dysfunction, poverty, abuse and dejection. It was our dream to take them out of the village, to show them another world.

The children buzzed with excitement when they heard of the trip. Parents stopped by to see if rumors were true and the village neighbors surrounded the school bus, like it was a spaceship visit to Maweni village. The children were almost unrecognizable when clean, wearing shoes and dressed in their new uniforms. Proud and eager to go, children paced around the bus until they playfully wrestled to be the first ones inside. Smiles were abundant as we rolled through the village waving goodbye to their friends and family. The Amani School children turned all heads and could be heard singing at the top of their lungs and clapping all the way through town. As we moved through the country side, they counted cattle and cars and sang their favorite childhood songs. When we reached the ferry crossing to the island of Mombasa, the teacher announced to the class, “Children, this is where you take off your village blindness.”

We drove the school bus on the ferry and they jumped on their seats to watch the boat disembark as multitudes of people gathered into the city. For the first time in their life, they looked at a world of possibilities. We made a city tour through business and residential districts, then out to a botanical garden, animal park and crocodile farm. It was impossible to contain their excitement when they saw the first multiple story buildings, big markets and shopping centers. The inside of the school bus buzzed with questions and their eyes were wide open with curiosity. We watched a show in an amphitheatre then visited exotic animals through the park. They moved in perfect step strolling through botanical gardens, smelling flowers and silencing to hear to the birds sing. They gazed in awe at waterfalls and ponds and patiently waited in turn to pet the animals. Never once, was there need for a reprimand as the children were in a perfect state of mind. Each child was treated to a horse ride through the park and after lunch we rolled and played in thick green grass. They had never felt the touch of a manicured lawn and tumbled head over heals until we were all perfectly exhausted.

We loaded back into the bus and sung and danced in our seats until the younger ones crawled in our arms and lolled to sleep. We woke them from their drowsy happiness for a coastal tour through golf courses and gardens and took them out for ice cream by the sea. Throughout the hour and a half journey home, the children clapped, swayed and sung to their hearts content. We had the driver drop each child off at their own village pathway and they skipped off into the brush beaming with pride and bubbling with happiness. We imprinted each of their smiles to memory as they were the last we saw. Those perfectly happy faces were lost in the following sun rise, bringing just another day in Maweni Village.

For the pain they can not escape. For the innocence they have lost. For the joy they have never known. For the childhood that has been taken from them
.. .They had just one perfect day. Thank you to B&B Relief sponsors for helping to bring about one perfect day for us and these children.