Limuru

June 1st-3rd, Limuru, Kenya and Jikaze, Kenya, Days 7-9. From Brian:

We spent the past 3 days in the towns of Limuru and Jikaze, north of Nairobi. Eric put us in touch with his friend Joe who lives in Limuru and he was kind enough to allow us to stay with him for a couple of days. Joe lives in a beautiful house in Limuru and is currently hosting a group of 11 college students, most from UNC, so it was a great atmosphere for us - lots of people to talk to and share experiences with. I'll give a play-by-play and some commentary of the trip:

We left Nairobi around 4:00 on a matatu headed for Limuru. The night before, we had talked to Edison, who lives near Limuru when he isn't at Eric's house, and he told us which route to take. This was by far the easiest matatu trip we have taken - we got on the express route, which takes the highway to Limuru where you're not allowed to stop and pick up more passengers. Edison thought it would be about a 1 hour trip, but it only took us 40 minutes. Once we got to town, we called Joe (having a cell phone here makes everything so much easier) and he came and picked us up. Joe works for a group called Global Connections and he basically lives in Limuru and takes on development projects as they come up near him. He does work in a children's center, in Jikaze, where his group is building houses for those displaced by the violence in Kenya after the 2007 elections, and various other projects, as well as hosting groups of university students who want to volunteer with the projects he works on. We were supposed to hear a talk on the post election violence from a Kenyan who lived through some of the worst of it, but his car broke down in Nairobi and he wasn't able to make it (for those of you who have seen Blood Diamond, TIA - This is Africa), so Joe gave us an overview of the situation. You can read more about it here, but here are the basics: there was a disputed presidential election in 2007, and the two candidates incited some young men in their tribes to go kill members of the other tribe. There were about 1,300 people killed, and most of them were friends and neighbors of those who murdered them. Many people who were not killed were forcibly removed from their homes by these gangs. The gangs would then occupy or burn down the family's home. These victims are called Internally Displaced People (IDP's) and they moved to various refugee camps around the country. In an effort to get rid of the problem of having so many refugees in their country, the government decided to give each person 10,000 Shillings (~USD125) and then told them to go back to their homes and move in next to the people who had forced them out of their homes at gunpoint. There was a small group of 150 people who decided that they could not move back, and decided to pool their money to purchase a new plot of land in the Great Rift Valley and make a fresh start as a community. This is now the resettlement village of Jikaze. When Joe first came upon the village, it was 5 acres of people living in tents - structures that were overcrowded, not rainproof, and hastily put together. Global Connections then began a project to build them homes. Joe and other volunteers build 50 homes for the people of Jikaze, made of a wood frame, mud walls and a tin roof. I know that doesn't sound great, but these houses are structurally sound, keep the rain out, and give the people of Jikaze something to own and care about.

We went with Joe and his group of volunteers to Jikaze to rebuild 2 homes that had been demolished last November when a trucker fell asleep at the wheel and plowed them over. No one was hurt, but the houses were leveled. We started the day by meeting with the elders of the community and taking tea (chai - which is tea with milk. I thought it was ok until I tried it with sugar. Then I thought it was delicious.). We listened to Mine (MEE-nay) talk about the story of Jikaze and about how much Joe had done to help them. Then Kristina took the floor and told everyone that despite all the hardship this community has faced, they now have hope in the Lord because of what Joe had done to help them. "You're country may abandon you; your family may even abandon you; but God will never abandon you." She also said that God uses people to do His will, and that Joe was a person God had used to do His will in Jikaze. Joe was in tears. It was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen.

After the meeting, we went to work putting walls on the houses. There were balloon frames in place already, and we were there that day to take some branches and nail them to the frame to make walls. Picture the 4 posts of the corners of the house, and we attached the branches between them, kind of like ribs attach to the backbone. Mud would then be filled in to create a solid wall. Sharon and I worked with Apollo, an older man of about 50, who looked much younger than his age. He attributed this to staying on the Lord's path and not chasing booze and women. Apollo showed us proper hammering technique with his hammer, whose handle had split and whose head had lost the face that is used to strike the nail. Sounds like a handicap, but I actually preferred it to the brand new hammers we had bought that morning. He also showed us how to cut the branches with a Panga (machete). I had never used a machete before, and they are officially awesome. After lunch, we went back to work, but Apollo had gone off because his goats had wandered into the forest and he had to go get them. We started cutting wood and hammering by ourselves, and asking "Hey, where's Apollo's hammer? Where's Apollo's machete?" Then we decided those sounded like mythical objects that we had to go on a quest to find. "Jikaze - The Quest for Apollo's Hammer." We packed our lunches, but some women cooked for us anyway and brought out a huge bowl of Mokimo - a potato and corn dish that was delicious.

We took tea again that afternoon and then headed back to Limuru. The view of the Great Rift Valley from the road was amazing and we stopped at an overlook to get a coke on the way back. the elevation was between 6,500 and 8,000 feet depending on who you asked. We went back and had a delicious taco dinner with awesome guacamole because avocados are about USD 0.07 here. Kenyans are blown away with how expensive they are in America. We planned on leaving the next day, but decided that we had such an amazing time the first day that we really wanted to go back to Jikaze.

The second day, we found out that the truck that would deliver more wood to Jikaze (we worked until we ran out the day before) would not arrive until around noon, so we decided to stop over at the children's center and hang out with the kids for a while. The center serves kids who are pre-school age, and when we came in, they were doing math problems that I'm pretty sure we don't do until 1st or 2nd grade in the states. Stuff like 9+6-4=? The craziest thing was that when we walked in, the kids were all sitting quietly at their places doing their work. With no teacher in the room! We helped the kids with the problems and graded papers, but I'm pretty sure they would have done better on their assignments if we hadn't shown up at all. The kids were really cute though, and it was so cool to be able to spend time there. Except I did feel a little bad because I made Thomas do his problems over again a few times and he didn't like me very much after a while.

Then we went to Jikaze and decided to go ahead and work on the mud walls of the houses while we waited for the truck to deliver the wood. We dug pits and mixed water in with the dirt, and then stacked mud in between the ribs that we had put up the day before. I think there was a little too much water in the mud, so we started making fun of each other for "not learnin' proper muddin' technique." I'll admit it's a little disheartening to watch the wall you just build come sliding down after 5 minutes while you scramble to try and save it. Picture your favorite sandcastle at high tide. We also saw Apollo again, and he said he wasn't feeling well, and then described his symptoms, which sounded like those of malaria. Hope he feels better soon.

The women made us delicious rice and beans for lunch while we waited out a rainstorm (tough to do proper muddin' in the rain) and then Sharon and I took a walk through town after. We picked up a heard of about 12 kids who all wanted to hold our hands and play. We ran them around for a little bit and took some pictures, and then hauled them back to the worksite. Sharon went back to muddin' and I went to the truck to unload the shipment of wood. I decided I preferred to carry heavy stuff than to lose the war with the mud. I spent the rest of the day hammering away and finishing up some walls that we couldn't finish yesterday. We then took a quick tea and headed back to Limuru. Joe dropped us off in town so we could catch the matatu back to Nairobi, and we said goodbye to everyone.

Expert matatu riders that we were, we hopped right on the 116 route back to Nairobi, only to be informed that this one didn't go all the way there. So we got off and hopped on another . . . which didn't go past Eric's place like they said they would. Sharon decided we were being slapped in the face because we were getting cocky. So we got off downtown and walked until we hit a road we knew, and then tried to hail one that was going towards Eric's place . . . except they were all full going that direction. Then it got dark. Then it started raining. We walked back towards downtown to the main matatu center and looked for our route back to Westlands, by Eric's place . . . and the line was 30 people deep. We finally squeezed our way onto one and headed for Westlands . . .and then turned back onto the road that we took into Nairobi from Limuru. Then it started raining hard. Like, monsoon season hard. Like, later in the trip, we had to cross a road on a speed bump because we were afraid of getting pulled downstream by the river that now occupied the road. I tried to talk to the driver, and finally found out that we had already passed Westlands, and would have to get out and catch a matatu going the other way. Just then, Sharon saw the sign for the road Eric lives on! We got out right there and ran back to the shopping center on the same road to dry off and let our anger subside a little, bought some chicken for dinner and headed home. So, the trip that took us 40 minutes on the way there took 2 1/2 hours on the way back. We'll be less arrogant in the future about transportation in Africa, I promise.