You will just feel free.

This is a phrase you hear in Kenya. It’s the equivalent of telling someone to make him or herself at home. But I think about feeling free, and use it as a mantra. No make-up or shaving the legs–that’s what I thought it meant to “feel free.” But I find myself “feeling free” when I do things like paint each fingernail a different color. Or get a 1950s dress made in an interesting African print. To feel free is just to be completely comfortable as myself. That’s something I’ve learned about me.

I went to the U.S. for two weeks in September. It was amazing how easy it was just to fit back in to the life I left. Had I really been in Kenya for such a long time? And it made me want to come back here.

“When you look back at where you’ve been, it often seems as if you have never been there or even as if there were no such place.”

-Norman Maclean

One day, after I leave here, the time I spent in Kenya will seem like a dream. Which is funny because right now, in it, it seems like the most real thing I’ve ever done.* Another Peace Corps Volunteer (and one of my best friends in Kenya), Helen, just left to go back to the states. And it hits me how things can change so quickly. I leave in July, and I want to be completely present in every moment until then.

I spent New Year’s Eve in Jinja, Uganda. I rung in 2012 with Helen two other good friends on the Nile River. Living in the Kenyan bush, we take any opportunity with electricity and hot water to get dolled up. The place we stayed had both, and we were all in nice cocktail dresses (all made locally by Kenyan tailors). Plus it was New Year’s Eve! Who doesn’t get dressed up? Apparently backpackers who spend New Year’s at a rafting camp in Uganda. I guess we picked the wrong place to celebrate. I wanted to hear Kenyan top 40 and get down on a dance floor, not laze around wearing L.L. Bean and listening to 1990s grunge. Time and a place, people!

Just an opinion. Be yourself, even if it means wearing lumberjack clothes.

*Real as in having a bat watch you use the bathroom. And washing dishes in a basin because I don’t have running water OR a dishwasher.

What do these items have in common?

Within the span of one hour, they all passed by my window as I waited somewhat patiently for my Busia-bound matatu to actually become Busia bound.

This is Kenya. More specifically, this is the Kisumu matatu stage. And although the words “Black Friday” have no connotation here, I took part in the day-after-Thanksgiving consumer-driven extravaganza. I felt so at home. Shopping is so much fun in America, but here, it’s even better because you can BARGAIN.

Ironically, I felt like I was taking part in an American tradition I had merely observed before. There was the time I was working retail and had to wear black to work, in reverence of the biggest shopping day of the year. I folded never-ending piles of clothes, and was probably on my feet for 10 hours straight, watching people come in the store eager for a deal, and leave happily with the day’s treasures.

Then there was last year… (Was it really just last year?) I was at the paper full time, working harder than I ever had in my life. I had Thanksgiving Day off, and I used it to drive the five hours to Kerrville (and the five hours back) with my Grandma. Thanksgiving night, we got home at midnight. I wrote my column (I had procrastinated all week), and went to bed. Four hours later, I awoke. I had to be at the Wal-Mart at 7 a.m., because I had a story to write about the Black Friday madness. I had interviews to do, all for a 9 a.m. deadline.

So you see, I grew to resent this day. I could jabber on and on about the evils of consumerism, but I love to shop, so who am I kidding? I just never had the opportunity to fully participate in the madness.

Anyway, this year, I enjoyed my purchases, all made from the passenger seat of a matatu. I bought a bracelet, a birthday present for Sadila (he lives on my compound and just turned five), and a CD of Luo music. I wasn’t folding clothes, and I didn’t even have to move. Awesome.

Back in the U.S., I was such a Coke Zero/Diet Coke addict. Oh, I tried to quit… several times. But I always came back to that conveniently available soda. When I found out I’d be coming to Africa, I thought that would be my opportunity to go cold turkey. Surely the village life would provide enough of a distraction that I wouldn’t even think about the soda I couldn’t get. Wrong. If there is an American product that has saturated the Kenyan market more fully than Coca Cola, I sure haven’t found it. But while Coke, Fanta and Sprite are household names – even in the bush – diet (as in Diet Coke) is a word that doesn’t exist.

I’m picky. It took most of my college life to sufficiently appreciate the goodness of calorie-free soda. I flew right past developing a taste for the stuff and landed squarely in the land of the Diet Coke fiend. Now it’s really hard to drink sugary soda, but that is all that is readily available here. So quitting? No, because I have found a few places that do carry the Kenyan equivelent of Diet Coke. Coke Light entered my life in Loitokitok, and continues to make guest appearances. Any day I can get the stuff is a good day… it’s one of those “little things.”

I had a terrible few days last week. I won’t go into the details, but it involved water entering my house uninvited. I will tell you that I sobbed like a little girl… the first time I’ve let myself cry since coming to Kenya.

Time put things in perspective, but it didn’t do it alone.

After the incident, I needed a break. I went into my closest big town, Bumala, and walked into a restaurant that I have frequented quite a few times in the last three months. When the waitress came to greet me, she already had it. She didn’t even have to ask. The Coke Light was in her hand. I was jumping for joy on the inside, but on the outside I just smiled and said “asante sana.” Everything in my life is OK.

(Obviously) I enjoyed the soda, and went on my way.

(And so no one worries… I’m not an addict. It is just REALLY comforting to be able to get ahold of an ubiquitous something from your former life when everything that now surrounds you is strange.)

I boarded a matatu, wondering what life’s next little pick-me-up would be. I didn’t have to wait too long. Britney Spears’ “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” (or whatever it’s called) was blaring, and I almost burst out laughing when my matatu driver and his manly Kenyan accent began singing along.

The buzz of electric lights, the hot shower, the flushing toilet. I can’t believe I almost forgot those things existed. What a transition to go from my quiet life at site to the cosmopolitan Nairobi! With all those amenities, plus friends I hadn’t seen in months, the two weeks flew by so quickly.

And in a flash, I boarded a bus, and took the eight-hour trip back to reality. The actual universe where I reside, not the alternate universe that contains many a stimulus overload.

I was glad to be back.

“We have some news, good and bad,” Stellah said as she greeted me at the gate.

My mind raced. What had I missed?

Stellah told me Emmah had given birth to a baby girl, called Viona.

I knew that would happen. Emmah was about to pop when I got to site in July. And in that way she remained for two months. But still, how exciting! I couldn’t wait to see baby Viona.

And the bad news? The puppy on the compound had been killed. It was attacked in the night by a neighbor’s dog. The other two dogs on the compound were strong enough to fight it off, but not our little puppy.

Now it’s just Doggie and Max. And even Max, the dog adopted by the previous volunteer, hasn’t been around lately. I can only assume it’s because she hasn’t been spayed.

“Max, she wants to get pregnant,” Florence told me once.

Yeah, she’s always wandering off.

Anyway, the puppy’s gone, but a new baby’s here. I’d only been gone two weeks. For me, it was two weeks in Nairobi time. For Joshua and company, those two weeks passed in village time. And village time is a lot slower.

Wednesday morning, before a meeting with the community health workers, I decided to tackle that mountain of laundry that had accumulated in Nairobi and beyond. Emmah had come by and said she was going to wash clothes, so I took my massive pile of clothes and trekked to Emmah’s. I knew it would be an opportunity to see little Viona as well.

Viona was napping when I arrived, but Emmah and I got busy scrubbing our respective collections of dirty clothes. She went fast:

A) Because she’s a Kenyan woman

and

B) Because she said Viona could wake up at any moment.

She had less clothes to wash than I did, and because my hands were starting to bleed, she helped me. When Viona awoke, I offered to hold her so she wouldn’t cry. Wow. I hadn’t seen a new baby in a while. She was not yet three weeks old, and tiny. Some older babies I’d seen in the village had cried at the sight of me. They had never seen a white person before, so what could I expect? Of course, Viona had never seen a white person before, but she is too young to realize that I was different. And this thought fascinated me.

I will be here, in this village, until Viona is nearly two. I wonder how much her perspective of the world will develop up to that point. I also wonder how the village itself will develop in that time. And how will it change me?

If the two weeks is indicative of the rest of my two years, I’m going to see many things change. At the same time, many things will be changing back  in America. Those changes, I won’t be there to see. But I know the alternate universe will still be there when I return, no matter different it and I have become.

Liz Crawford
Peace Corps Volunteer
P.O. Box 8 Butula-Busia
50405
Kenya

(This means I would like to receive mail. Thanks)

I had cooked. After eating ugali twice a day since my arrival, I was itching for something a little more American. What is ugali, you ask? Just search it on Wikipedia. You’re too lazy? Ok fine. It is maize flour mixed with water, then heated and stirred. The consistency is somewhat like porridge, but it’s a solid. Maybe something like polenta. It doesn’t really have a taste, but is used to scoop up things that do. Like beans, kale, fish or chicken. But in this compound, it’s mostly kale. With a lot of salt.

“It is our staple food, Liz,” Florence told me soon after my arrival. “Don’t you have a staple food in America?”

I guess we really don’t. Americans  love variety, especially when it comes to satisfying the palate.

Last month in Nairobi, I had picked up some emergency supplies. A box of macaroni and cheese. And last night seemed the perfect time to use it, but I knew I had to share. In this communal culture, I really didn’t feel comfortable cooking something in my house and eating it alone. It’s just weird. But how would I stretch this box of mac and cheese to feed 10 people?

I told Florence in advance that she would probably have to prepare something just in case my dish didn’t work out. And then I took the stone soup approach. I bought tomatos, potatoes, onions and beans. I cooked all of them and cooked my little box of mac and cheese. I put it all together, and I had something interesting. I figured that since Joshua, Florence and the kids had never tried anything like this, they wouldn’t be too hard to please. But the dish was actually good! (I was surprised. Back in Texas, no one was asking me to do the cooking. My sister, Emily, is Paula Deen, Rachael Ray and Julia Child all rolled into one. I have burned water I was trying to boil.)

Anyway, it was a success. I enjoyed it, and the family enjoyed it too. Joshua said he liked American food, and asked what I called the dish. I had never eaten or cooked the dish in America, so I wasn’t sure if it qualified as American food. And it doesn’t really have a name.

With some of the nameless dish left over, Florence wanted to take it to Joshua’s mother’s compound, situated just behind theirs. And I wanted to go too. So we went.

Oh man. They loved it! Joshua’s mom, aunt and neice all tried the mac and cheese concoction. By this time, it was about 8 p.m. We stayed for nearly two hours, and I drank the day’s third cup of chai. (Serving chai to visitors is somewhat of an unspoken obligation). I’m not complaining.

As the women jabbered on in KiMarachi (A language I can barely understand, and only if it is spoken slowly and deliberately), I went to that thoughtful place between wakefulness and sleep. At that moment, I felt so at ease. In this rural Kenyan village near the border with Uganda, far from first world comforts I had taken for granted for 25 years, I found a completely different place to belong.

I sat up, and Florence said, “Let us go.”

She took the lantern, which is when I found myself following her fast footsteps. In a few minutes, we were entering the gate to her compound.

“Home…” I said.

“Yes,” Florence replied. “East, west — home is best.”

Anyway, like I said, after two months of tightly-scheduled training activities, I am where I will serve for the next two years — and I’m finally able to e. The equatorial sun is bright and unforgiving… the antithesis of which is the black night, which seems even darker without the glow of electricity. It’s something I’m getting used to.

I suppose it’s implied, but I am now an official Peace Corps volunteer (pending one more language test — I’m a slow learner.)  Swearing-in was surreal. It was at the Nairobi home of Michael Ranneberger, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya. After living in not-so-cosmopolitan Loitokitok for two months, the posh ambassador’s house was almost too much to handle. Almost. It was welcome break. The imported American Doritos were reason enough to attend. Flushing toilets definitely sweetened the deal.

Oh, and another wildlife sighting.  As the ambassador spoke, a monkey made his way from one of the yard’s acacia trees onto the roof of the ambassador’s home. While the news cameras were on Ranneberger, the volunteers’ cameras were aimed slightly higher, waiting for that monkey to strike a pose.

After the ceremony, there was pizza and even legitimate cookies (they were soft!) It was great, but maybe not something on should experience the day before moving to rural Africa.

So — my home. I live on my supervisor’s compound, but I have my own house. It’s a one-room hut with a plaster floor and walls, complete with a grass-thatched roof. It’s idyllic, and exactly how I pictured my house to be ever since I started my Peace Corps application. But now that I’m actually here, making that house a home is the next step. I’ve already gotten a bookshelf, so we’re headed in the right direction.  I am really loving the house. Being inside is a very welcome relief from the blazing Kenyan sun.

Speaking of sun, a permanent sunburn seems to have graced my nose, forehead and cheeks, even though I wear sunscreen every day. On top of the sun being more ruthless here, I spend a majority of my day outside. I think my hair is one or two shades more blond.

I can’t wait for the day when everything here seems normal to me. I am told it will come soon enough, and when the two years are over, maybe I won’t be ready to go back to America.

It’s hard to believe over three weeks have passed since I stepped off the plane. A combination of the lack of free time and the lack of easily-accessible internet have contributed to me taking this long to give an update.

But I am doing well. After three days in Nairobi, a group of current volunteers took us trainees to the food court of a nearby mall. The selection was surprisingly American. Can someone really miss food that much? Indeed. I had pizza. A little bit of it fell off my plate as I was eating, and I looked at it longingly. Should I go ahead and eat it? Megan, one of my fellow trainees, was sitting across from me. She noticed my dilemma.

“Whatever man, TIA.”

And of course, I ate it. Who knew when I would get pizza again? In the next two years, I will probably consume things much more daunting than table-contaminated pizza.

So back to TIA.

TIA: This is Africa. A phrase I’ve been waiting to say after I heard Leonardo DiCaprio first utter the phrase in the movie “Blood Diamond” and I found out I’d be coming to Africa. Yeah, Megan reminded me. And now I’m going to be throwing it around every chance I get.

We weren’t in Nairobi for long. The Saturday after we arrived in Kenya, we boarded a bus for Loitokitok. The road to the town had recently been paved, cutting what I was told was a six-hour trip down to four hours.

The view from the road was stereotypically African. Acacia trees dotted the landscape. But I grew tired of looking at them, and I was tired in general. I told my seatmate, Lauren, to wake me up if we passed anything interesting. I nodded off. Maybe some 20 minutes later, I awoke to Lauren hitting me in the arm and yelling “Giraffe, giraffe, giraffe!!!” Sure enough, I looked out the window and saw the lanky creatures lazily making their way across the savannah. The first of what I hoped would be many animal sightings. (A side note — I’ve been to Nairobi and back since then for a very minor orthodontic problem. On the way back, I saw a zebra and an ostrich. Awesome.)

Training in Loitokitok has kept us very busy. We learned KiSwahili for a week and a half, and then many of us switched to tribal languages. Now I have been learning KiLuhya. It is the language I will speak in my village — where I will go in July and serve for the next two years.

I’m headed to Western Kenya — a village near the town of Busia. I will be close to Lake Victoria and very near the border with Uganda.

I am settling into a routine with my host family. I have a big family — I am living with a Mama, Baba (father), an aunt, a host brother (12) and two host cousins (12 and 7). My host mama and baba’s other son will be home this week from boarding school. He’s 14.

The family is attempting to teach me the Kenyan way of life. I have learned to make many traditional Kenya foods, including ugali, chipati and githeri. All Kenyan foods have one thing in common: heavy amounts of fat. Yum!

Although my family has never hosted a volunteer before, they are extremely patient. I am very grateful.

Well I will update later. I have so much more to say but it is nearly 6 p.m. and I have to be home by dark. I also have a lot to do. Unlike in America, the laundry won’t do itself!

I can see it now: the bustling (or maybe sleepy) town near Kenya’s border with Tanzania. Mt. Kilimanjaro looms in the distance, beckoning the curious adventurer. All versions of African wildlife are present, roaming where they please. When you think of Africa, you think of this… snap out of it! I’ve got to finish packing.

I’ll soon find out if Loitokitok is as idyllic as my imagination paints it. Peace Corps told us to get rid of our expectations, but it’s hard not to think about it.

I really should be in bed or at least in the shower, but, seriously, how can I be expected to sleep when tomorrow I begin my journey halfway around the world? Those emotions are at long last making an appearance.

Well, I suppose my next post will be from Kenya — though it’s a total mystery as to when I will have internet access.

I thought the best way to make the jump to blogging — and the 21st century — would be to post my final Ennis Daily News column.

The following was originally published in the April 30, 2010 edition of the Ennis Daily News (Ennis, Texas).

“The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”
-Jerold Panas

Dear Readers,
Seeing with new eyes — I believe I am.
I was fresh out of college when I was hired at the Ennis Daily News in October 2008. Previously, I had written for my college paper, the TCU Daily Skiff. While my college education was a valuable foundation, I learned so much more in my first year at the EDN than I did while in school.
And, readers, my real-world education is thanks in part to you. Thank you for sharing your points of view with me — thank you for opening my eyes to the various issues I’ve covered during my time here.
I also wanted the chance to say, publicly, that I am forever grateful to the guidance EDN Editor Nick Todaro has given me since his arrival almost a year ago. I’ve told him time and again, and he’s probably tired of hearing about how much of an impact he’s had on my work. But I had to say it one more time.
The quote above from Jerold Panas is from a Meals on Wheels calendar that counted down the days of 2009 for me. Panas’ quote graced the October 12 page — Columbus Day, appropriately. By that time I had been at the EDN for almost one year, and it resonated with me. I had already learned so much. I tore off the page and it has been on the bulletin board next to my desk ever since.
I want to continue to learn; continue to see with new eyes. Although Panas said you don’t have to see a new place to have a new point of view, going to new lands can definitely accelerate the onset of a new perspective.
Everything thus far has lined up and led to my next adventure, which I consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I am leaving in less than a month for Peace Corps service in Kenya.
I’m about to turn 25, but I can assure you this isn’t a quarter-life crisis. It’s something that has been in the back of my mind since high school, and the time is finally right for me to go.
Everything I’ve done since I was 18 has led me to this point.
Finishing college, volunteering with a hospice, substitute teaching and, finally, receiving the valuable full-time experience as a newspaper reporter here at the EDN.
Although my Peace Corps volunteer position is officially called “HIV/AIDS and Hygiene Educator,” I am sure my communication skills will be put to good use in Kenya.
My last day at the EDN will be next Thursday, and until then, I will continue to do as much as I can for the Ennis community.
I don’t know exactly what is in store for me when I get to Kenya, but I know I will still be writing. Contact me for a link to my blog, if you are interested in reading about what I’m up to.
I want to thank everyone I’ve interviewed and everyone on my beats (Ellis County government and education) for contributing to the age-old process of informing the public about issues important to their daily lives.
I’m leaving, but I won’t forget the valuable roles each of you have played in my career here at the EDN. Thanks for reading.