Update #2

Hello friends!

I write this update in the middle of what may end up being one of the most hectic weeks of the whole year here in the Village. We currently have 26 volunteers staying in the Village from 7 different countries – Spain, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, the U.K., the U.S., and Poland. Yesterday, 7 new volunteers arrived from Poland, 10 more from their group arrive tonight, and a couple stragglers come in on Thursday. It’s nuts here.

The projects that are being done by these volunteers, however, are pretty awesome. Right now all of the students are on their August vacation which goes from the 12^th until around the 29^th, which means that there are non-stop activities for the children. In the mornings they are busy working around their homes and shambas (farms), and in the afternoons are arts and crafts, sports, and movies. All of this means that the volunteers play a huge role in creating activities for the children to take part in during their vacation, and as Volunteer Coordinator, it means that my days are nice and hectic!

Sidebar – I have to share that I just had to take a break from writing this in order to catch a large lizard that was running around my office. All in a day’s work. Picture attached below.

But back to the projects.

There is a group from Italy who are involved in a few different projects. The youngest of them (about my age), Mario, is leading the planning for the Nyumbani Olympics, which are happening tomorrow morning. There will be small tournaments for all of the children in football (soccer), basketball, volleyball, and track. There will also be a power-walking race for the shushes and umaus (grandmothers and grandfathers), which I’ve heard is always quite the spectacle.

Two of the other Italians, Fabio and Michele, are engineers who have been designing the high-efficiency stoves that have been constructed by the 4 students from Spain over the last 6 weeks. Today they are installing the metal grates, which are the crux of the firewood-saving efficient design. To celebrate the official inauguration of these new stoves, this afternoon we are going to have the Master Chef Nyumbani competition. Every household will cook a small meal using their new stoves, and several groups of volunteers will go to different housing clusters to rate the meal (all the volunteers ate small lunches today in anticipation of tasting some 20-25 different dishes this evening). The overall top three houses will get a prize; a rooster and a hen (both alive…for now) for third place, a 3,000ksh (~$30) gift card to the small store located in the Village for second place, and, for the grand prize winners, an entire goat!

The final group from Italy is heading up what is probably one of the most glamorous projects ever to be held at Nyumbani. The project leader is Bali Lawal, a former Italian supermodel who grew up in Italy, but is Nigerian-Sudanese by birth. She is being assisted by a Spanish designer who lives in the UK, and a Kenyan beadworker and designer who lives in Nairobi. Over the past 10 days, they have been working with the girls in the tailoring/sewing class of the Nyumbani Youth Polytechnic school in order to produce a line of clothes that take traditional Kenyan fabrics and styles, and incorporates them into high-end fashion. Tomorrow afternoon after the Olympics we are putting on a Fashion Show, where the girls will model the clothes they have made on the “catwalk”, aka the overgrown amphitheater that is behind the Social Hall. One of the coolest parts of their project is that following her time at Nyumbani, Bali is going to take the clothes back to Italy, where they will be featured in an exhibition during Milan Fashion Week. Be on the lookout for the Nyumbani Collection, due out soon in a store near you.

We said a sad goodbye this morning to an incredible couple from the U.S. who were here for only 2 short weeks. Chris spent just about every waking moment trying to learn and record how Nyumbani functions as an entire cohesive system. Gina spent time working with the children to create some truly amazing artwork using fabric and natural “found objects” such as sticks and seed pods. Both had been professional actors for 20+ years and had incredible artistic talent and drive. I was blown away by the work that both of them did in such a short amount of time. They are incredible people who I look forward to seeing the next time I am back in the States!

Life in the Village has been crazy recently, but I am incredibly grateful to have had the chance to meet some of these incredible, kind, motivated people. Something I look forward to every day is the time spent after work, talking with the other volunteers about our days or our lives, and learning a bit about the humbling mosaic of lives and perspectives that are so integral to life in the Village. It’s hard to believe how many people I’ve had a chance to meet in only my first 4 weeks, but it makes me incredibly excited about the year.

Maybe once a week or so, we go to the local town of Kwa Vonza for dinner and drinks at a small restaurant. Just eating in the restaurant is an experience in and of itself. In order to use the bathroom, you have to go through a dark, unlit alley, being careful not to stumble over the tied-up goat that will presumably be on your plate in an hour or so. Once you reach the bathroom, you can be entertained by the man in the “Wholesale Wine & Spirits” shop on the other side of the alleyway singing along to Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop”. There’s nothing quite like it.

Transportation to and from Kwa Vonza, however, is one of my favorite things about living here. The easiest (and cheapest) means of transportation is a 20-minute ride via motorcycle (called a boda boda) back and forth from Nyumbani to Kwa Vonza. On my first ride back during my first week, about halfway through the ride I looked up and could see the most incredible night sky I have ever seen. Light pollution is near-zero here, and wow does it make a difference. Some of you may have watched the Perseid meteor shower last week; we were all so excited because it was supposed to be 5 times stronger than in normal years and was expected to be really incredible to see. If you saw it, email me about it, because it was just about the only night we’ve had for a month that has been 100% overcast.

Life in the Village is not all fun and games and starry skies. This being rural Kenya, there are a lot of things that I am having to get used to, as well as things that affect the Village as a whole. It is incredible how frequently we use sinks or running water in general in the States, something that I don’t think is possible to fully appreciate until you experience it. This past weekend, there wasn’t any water at all for a vast majority of the people who live in the Village. There were only a handful of pumps that were functioning due to a shift in the water table, and those who didn’t have water simply had to wait and hope that it returned, which it fortunately did. Even when the water tables themselves are stable, there are other issues that can lead to water shortages. In order for water to reach the houses from the shallow wells located along the nearby riverbed, the solar powered water pumps need to be well charged. The result? After a cloudy day (of which there have been unusually many during the past 2 weeks), you can expect for there to be considerably less water for bathing, washing clothes, etc. Fortunately drinking water comes from the collected rainwater, of which there is still enough. It definitely gives a little note of warning for the last few weeks of September, when water supply dips even lower before the October rains come.

Another change that has required a bit of a mental shift has been making sure that I watch where I step. In addition to the fact that just about every single plant here comes equipped with thorns that would make most rosebushes look like silk blankets, there is another fun little thing to look out for: snakes. There’s a lot of them in the Village. In addition to the 4.3-meter (14+ foot) African rock python that killed a dog in the Village a few months ago, 2 puff adders have also been found (and subsequently killed) in the past month. This includes one that was found on the front steps of the Guest House where I live. If you’re not sure what a puff adder is, just Google “deadliest snake in Africa” and you’ll be all set. I’m normally someone who thinks snakes are super cool, but when you’re about 3 hours from a good hospital, your outlook changes.

Finally, this past weekend I went on my first adventure of the year to Lake Naivasha and Hell’s Gate National Park! I travelled with the group from Comillas University in Madrid: Arturo, Paloma, María, and Fátima, with whom I’ve become close friends. We travelled also with Angie, a Nyumbani social worker also from Spain, and two of her friends. An unexpected side effect of these last few weeks is that I have spoken more Spanish in my time here than I have in the last 4 years. It has been great to practice my ailing Spanish, along with trying to remember the fragmented Kiswahili that I learned in Tanzania. Hell’s Gate National Park was a beautiful trip; what makes the park unique is that because of the lack of predators in the park, you have the option of walking along the roads or renting bikes to travel through the park. We rented bikes, and saw herds of zebra, impala, Thompson’s and Grant’s gazelles, waterbucks, Cape buffalo, giraffes, warthogs, all framed by gorgeous red cliffs. There was also a deep volcanic gorge that could be explored on foot. We rented a house for ourselves in a campsite on the bank of Lake Naivasha, where we could watch hippos grazing at night just 100 feet from where we were eating dinner. It was a perfect weekend trip to prepare for the chaos of this week! I’ve included some photos below of some of the things we were lucky enough to see.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about my life here in Kenya!

Lots o’ love,

Shan

 And my new officemate:

Week 1

Hi everyone!

This update will likely be one of the longest (apologies in advance). I am more and more impressed every day with the things that Nyumbani is doing here, so I wanted to start off the year by explaining it all thoroughly!

Nyumbani, the umbrella organization that operates Nyumbani Village, was founded in 1992 by Father D’Agostino, an American Jesuit priest. The program first established Nyumbani Children’s Home, an orphanage exclusively for HIV+ children located in Karen, Nairobi. Nyumbani later started Lea Toto, a community outreach program that established clinics for HIV+ children and family members in some of the most impoverished communities of Nairobi.

Nyumbani Village was opened in 2006 to provide a holistic method of caring for members of the generations that were “left behind” by Kenya’s HIV/AIDS epidemic: the children and parents of those who passed away due to HIV/AIDS. In this part of Kenya, when the parents of a family pass away, their children go to live with their grandparents. For some families, this presents an insurmountable financial burden. Situated on 1,000 acres, Nyumbani Village is home to around 1,000 children and around 100 grandparents who have all encountered these tragic circumstances.

Scattered around the Village are 26 “clusters”, with 4 houses in each cluster. Each house contains a single family, which is made up of 10 children and a single grandparent. While some of the children are the biological grandchildren of the grandparent in the house, each family also has children who are not related, but were orphaned due to HIV/AIDS and did not have any grandparents to take care of them. All of the children and grandparents come from the surrounding area, meaning that they are all from the same tribe, Kamba. Almost all of the grandmothers (shushus) and grandfathers (umaus) speak exclusively Kikamba, the tribal dialect. The children also speak Kikamba, but they also learn English and Kiswahili in school, as these are the two national languages of Kenya. All of the matters relating to the families and clusters are handled by the Home Care department. Home Care is lead by 6 social workers who are each assigned to 4-5 clusters, and oversee everything family-related from distributing food to the families to dealing with conflicts within a family.

Currently, Nyumbani receives funding from private groups like Johnson & Johnson, as well as government organizations like USAID. The Village is hoping to be completely self-sustaining within a few years. In order to achieve this, there are many different programs run within the Village. First is the medical clinic. There is a full-time medical staff including a clinical officer, a nurse, a laboratory, a counseling center, and a nutritionist. There is also the on-site Comprehensive Care Center for the ~100 children and 6 grandparents in the Village who are themselves HIV+. The clinic has a pharmacy that is able to deal with a wide range of common household ailments, and there are several more sophisticated hospitals in Kitui or Nairobi where children can be referred if it is something more serious. The clinic is free for all children and grandparents, but is also available for people from the surrounding community.

There are 3 different schools within the Village. Hotcourses Primary School is for children from nursery school age through Level 8 (the equivalent of 8^th grade). This is the largest school, with around 700 children. After Level 8, students have 2 different options for continuing their education. The first is Lawson Secondary School, which has 317 students, Forms 1-4. As with the clinic, school is provided to the children of Nyumbani for free, but is also an option for a fee for the children from the surrounding community.

The alternative to Lawson High School is, in my opinion, one of the coolest parts of the Village. It is the Nyumbani Youth Polytechnic, which is a trade-based school with somewhere around 140 students. The school offers classes in carpentry, metalworking, tailoring, salon and beauty, construction, and solar energy. Almost all new construction projects in the Village are conducted with the help of Polytechnic students, including the current expansion of the Polytechnic. In this sense, the school literally builds itself, which I think is so impressive. There is a new program in the Village that allows for recent graduates of the Polytechnic to design their own businesses, put together a detailed proposal and budget, and apply to receive a microloan from Nyumbani to help get their business underway.

The Polytechnic students who study solar energy help maintain the solar gardens and solar panels that provide Nyumbani with 100% of its electricity. There is no electric grid out here to tap into; all facilities are powered by solar energy harvested on-site. Every cluster has solar panels that power lights inside all 4 homes, and larger solar gardens harvest energy that is used for lights and charging phones/laptops inside the administrative building and the guest house. Solar panels also power the water pumps that provide groundwater used for washing clothes.

As could be expected in a semi-arid climate in rural Kenya, water is precious. There are two rainy seasons during the year. The first is the “short rains” from November-December, and the “long rains” come from March-May. The rain that falls during these months has to sustain the Village for the whole year. Groundwater wells are helpful, but the most important are the shallow wells dug around the Village, sand dams in the riverbed that flows through the Village, and the Rainwater Harvesting (RW) program. RW is one of my primary responsibilities as Sustainability Fellow. Started by Johnson & Johnson (who also partially fund my Fellowship post), RW systems made of PVC pipe are on every housing cluster, the administrative building, and the guest houses. Each building has a 10,000-liter tank that holds water throughout the year. This water is treated using ceramic filters, and is supposed to be used for drinking and cooking. If water does not last through the dry season, there is a single tap in the Village that is connected to the municipal water grid. Nyumbani pays for this water per cubic meter, so water conservation throughout the year is a top priority. My job is to monitor the existing RW systems to make sure they are all working properly, and to oversee the construction of new RW structures. This year I am hoping to add RW systems to the many greenhouses where we grow produce for the Village, and on the barn where the Village keeps our livestock.

I have arrived in the Village during the busiest time of year. Because most colleges and universities in the northern hemisphere are on summer vacation, it is peak season for having volunteer and guest groups here in the Village. As the Volunteer Coordinator, this means my first few days have been nice and eventful. Guests in the Village are generally those who are staying for a shorter period of time, anywhere from a couple of weeks to just a few hours. While here, guests will become familiar with the goings-on in the Village, and will help with short-term projects in the Sustainability or Home Care departments. Volunteers must stay for a minimum of 2 months. While here, volunteers will conduct their own, more extensive projects. For example, currently there are 3 different volunteer groups in the Village. When a new group arrives, my job is to welcome them, give them the tour (telling them essentially what I’ve written in the first part of this post), and then make sure that their projects run smoothly for the rest of their time here.

The first group is 4 graduate students from Columbia University. They had initially planned on doing dental research, but ran into issues gaining ethical approval from the Kenyan government. Instead, they have been designing a dental health curriculum, and organizing a distribution plan for basic dental supplies. There is a doctor and a medical student from Poland, who are conducting medical screenings for intestinal parasites. Then there is a group from Comillas University in Madrid. They have been constructing high-efficiency stoves in each home. The stoves are made of bricks and clay, and contain an Italian-designed metal plate that minimizes the amount of firewood required to cook. I had the chance to spend the morning working with them on Wednesday, when we constructed 5 of these stoves. It was hard work, but the grandparents are really excited about the new stoves! I am really enjoying being here with these volunteer groups. There will be times of the year when there are no volunteers in the Village which I am definitely nervous about in terms of loneliness, but for now I am enjoying the hustle and bustle.

I’ll wrap it up soon, but I’ll end by talking about some of my daily routines and my living quarters. All volunteers live in the Guest House, which is a building that has 7 bedrooms, each double occupancy. The exception is my room, which I have all to myself for a year! There is an outlet with a power strip in the living room of the house that people can use to charge electronics, but, as is the case in the entire Village, there is no running water. Each bedroom has an attached eco-toilet, which is essentially a hole in the ground. To be more precise, it’s two separate holes in the group, about 6 inches apart. Without going too far into the logistics of using said eco-toilet, I’ll just say that there’s definitely a learning curve.

Right outside of the Guest House is the kitchen. Because propane is expensive and difficult to transport to the Village, all meals are cooked over a fire. We eat all meals in the Guest House. Breakfast is usually bread and butter or peanut butter along with chai and coffee. Lunch varies, but usually is either rice or ugali (maize-flour and water), along with a vegetable and either beans or lentils. Dinner is usually some type of bean and maize dish, but on special occasions we will have meat for lunch or dinner. This past Thursday, for instance, we had a goodbye party for a couple Kenyan interns who were leaving, and we had a goat roast. It was delicious!

The other accommodation option (which I’m including as an incentive to get people to visit me during the year!), is the recently-opened Kjer House. It is absolutely beautiful. It is located in one of the highest points of the Village, and is about as nice as any hotel or safari lodge I have seen. It is almost fully finished, and will include its own solar generator complete with hot running water, a refrigerator for cold drinks, and huge comfy beds. And at $15 a night, I think it’s the best deal in Kenya. The long-term plan is to open Kjer House as an eco-lodge to generate revenue for the Village.

Thanks for reading through this whole post! Or if you just skimmed the whole thing, below are some pictures that show some of what I talked about.

Feel free to email back with any questions you have about the Village or my daily life, or just to say hey!

Miss you all,

Shan

Solar panels:

Main office building where I work:

Soccer field right in the middle of the Village. Lawson High School is back to the left, Hotcourses Primary School is directly behind, and the Polytechnic is back to the right.

One of the housing clusters:

Sunset from a walk to a nearby river

My room!

Kier House! This is where anyone who came to visit me would stay. Note how incredible luxurious it looks for such a reasonable price.