Reminders #1-6

Well for the past few days I’ve really felt that I’m living in a foreign country. The day to day routine—things like using a choo instead of a toilet, cooking on a kerosene stove, not having a car, and washing clothes by hand—has become just that: routine. I generally don’t think about these differences very much because I’m used to them. But this week, enough out of the ordinary has happened that I can’t ignore the fact that I’m in Africa. Tuesday I went to the Central Coffee Auction in Nairobi to see how our coffee is sold. This meant that I had to be ready to go at 6:30, so we could ride a bus for 2 ½ hours to Nairobi then walk to the auction (reminder #1 I’m in a developing country). The process was interesting for about the first ½ hour, until I figured out how everything worked. And then it was just tedious. We only had a few lots of coffee for sale, and they didn’t come up until about three hours into the auction. Our coffee sold for the highest prices of the day (well over any other coffee that was bought), which was encouraging and livened things up a bit. After four hours of the auction, we called it a day and left to get lunch. Since neither the coworker I was with nor I know the city very well, we just picked a restaurant close to where our matatu stage was. After trying to order three things on the menu that they didn’t actually have (reminder #2), I finally settled for fried chicken and french fries, which was actually really decent. After lunch my coworker had some errands to run and then we were ready to head home. After rejecting several other options, my coworker picked the most cramped, hottest, smelliest, and overall most unpleasant matatu I’ve been on yet to get home. Though it was unpleasant, I still don’t feel like I can complain because we didn’t break down or get robbed, no one threw up on me, and I didn’t sit on gum or pee (all things that have happened to other volunteers) (reminder #3).

Wednesday we had some visitors to the co-op. Three buyers—from the US, Denmark, and Norway—came to tour the co-op. I like when people visit because I usually get information I need through listening to their conversations. It was a little strange, though, because it made the mzungu-to-Kenyan ratio equal instead of me being the only one (reminder #4).

As part of my ongoing Kiswahili learning, I had scheduled a “Language Immersion” workshop for the weekend. Three other volunteers and a language trainer had agreed to come stay at my site for the weekend so we could speak Kiswahili together. PC is really pushing for us to learn as much Kiswahili as possible, and they pay all the trainer’s costs so we can do this. They were supposed to arrive Thursday afternoon, so I had been spending the week making sure things were set for that. Thursday morning, after I had cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and scrubbed the floors I got a text message from our Safety and Security Officer about a scheduled demonstration by a Kenyan group called Mungiki that may interfere with public transportation. I live in a small town and the other volunteers that were coming live fairly close to me, so I didn’t expect this to be a problem. Wrong. Turns out this group shut down matatus and/or roads in every town the others needed to pass through to get to me, including my town. According to Wikipedia, Mungiki is sort of the Kenyan equivalent of the mob, and there’s a lot of tension between it and the police right now. They spent yesterday barricading roads with semi-trucks and flaming tires, as well as threatening matatu drivers to keep them from operating. This happened in and around Nairobi and throughout my area of Central Province, although I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in my town except the lack of matatus running. This is apparently ongoing today and may last throughout the weekend. I wasn’t planning to go anywhere this weekend anyway, but just knowing that I can’t if I needed to makes me really antsy (BIG reminder #5). Also, we didn’t have power all day yesterday, so I couldn’t “monitor the news for developments” like we were advised (reminder #6).

Today, like yesterday, my boss is unable to get here, so we’ll have to delay our meeting about what I should be doing until next week. I came across one of my grad school papers from a strategic management class and decided I can at least do my own strategic audit of the co-op and maybe that will give me some avenues to pursue. While the visitors were here, they were accompanied by a representative from the coffee mill that we use who offered training in “cupping” coffee to anyone from our co-op that was willing to learn. Cupping is basically tasting coffee to determine its quality, and I said sign me up, so soon I will start learning!

And so I finish my eighth week at site. I have good days and bad days. I am motivated and I lack motivation. I’m content with my day to day and I look for new things to occupy me. Most of the time I feel like I’m on a roller coaster. Nothing is static and everything—especially my emotional state—is constantly different than it was just a minute ago. Welcome to the life of a PC volunteer!