one another, accidentally bumped me. “Sorry!” they called back breathlessly, dashing away.
With Brenda as my guide, we visited some families’ residences. The small houses, really only shacks, were made of corrugated tin walls and roofs with floors made either of hardened red clay or, sometimes, concrete. Some houses had simple, peeling paint jobs; many did not.
An average home was roughly three metres by three metres, half the size of my bathroom at home, with a curtain typically hung across the centre to fashion a bedroom separate from the sitting room or kitchen. Despite the close quarters, every home felt welcoming, personalized with decorations, wall-hangings or newspaper clippings. Floral patterned- fabrics were laid over couches and tiny televisions, tuned to whatever stations their limited reception could get, ran off car batteries. These furnishings almost masked my view of their unstocked cupboards, their ragged clothes, their unspoken desperation.
I tried to put myself in their place. Could I ever feel comfortable living in such a place, sleeping on a tiny mattress, with sewage streaming at my doorstep? A neighbourhood perpetually covered in mud and garbage and flying toilets? No running water, let alone no operating flush toilets or garbage collection? Could I ever call a place like this my home? Each family kept a twenty litre jerry can, called a mitungi, to carry water. It cost five shillings to fill it up at the shared water tank—roughly the equivalent of more than twice what my family back in Chicago paid for clean water piped directly into our home.
I was stunned, paralyzed, comparing the lifestyle I’d led back home with the experiences of those I saw in Kibera: those sick, starving, struggling just to survive. At home we raided our kitchen cabinets, which spilled with cartons of groceries, only to moan, “There’s nothing to eat!” But here families often really had nothing to eat. Portions were strictly regulated and budgeted. Back in Schaumberg, my sister Erin and I often complained about having “nothing to wear,” while piles of disregarded clothes tumbled from our closets. Here children wore cast-off clothes, most donated by Americans and sold in bulk throughout the developing world. Many wore clothes handmade by their mothers.
Nonetheless, for all that was different, just as much was the same between our worlds, half a world away. Families worried about their children as they slept, played, cooked, hosted visitors, hoped for the future—just as people everywhere, getting on with their lives.
My two months in Nairobi passed in a whirlwind of emotion. Everything was new and strange. But most of my time was spent readying myself for my true destination, only a few quick matatu rides away. As the end of my orientation period approached, I picked up the basic essentials I would need: a year’s worth of tampons, a few loose-fitting skirts from the second-hand clothes market, a Swahili dictionary, malaria pills and not much else. I emailed a quick goodbye to my parents, saying I didn’t know when I would be able to contact them next but assuring them I would do my best to be safe. Then, with my immediate future again uncertain, I was on my way.
3
My New Family
Weighed down by my s tuffed backpack, I stepped out of the neon-green matatu into the street of Soko, a market town to the southwest near the Great Rift Valley. Morning was just breaking when I had boarded in Nairobi two hours before, but the sun now shone hot and unforgiving. The town was quiet, with the streets mostly vacant except for a few stray dogs, and the merchant stalls were empty. It was Sunday morning, and most Kenyans in this region, being devout Christians, were in church.
I wiped dust from my eyes as I tripped along the uphill road, thankful the rain was still holding off. My feet felt clumsy on the unfamiliar terrain and my pack shifted awkwardly as I staggered under the year’s worth of supplies. The stares of local townspeople made me stumble even more as I made my way from the matatu stage to the main intersection. There gaudy advertisements for Coca-Cola and cell phone company Safaricom splashed across roofs, alongside crates of produce and other wares.
Heading west as I’d been instructed, I found a waiting off-white Toyota pickup truck, its rust and dents speaking of decades of busy transport. A few passengers waited in the back of the pickup while others hovered around, and I felt anxiety begin to burn in my cheeks. This truck, I’d been told, would take me down the valley to Nkoyet-naiborr, the community I’d soon be calling home.
The driver, looking to be in his early forties and wearing a tattered checked sport coat, leaned against the truck’s hood. With my best attempt at a friendly greeting in Swahili, I explained how I hoped to join them on their way into the valley. I described my destination, a church with a name I wasn’t sure I pronounced correctly. The driver eyed me with obvious scepticism. Then, without a word, he took my bag and motioned for me to climb into the pickup’s uncovered bed. I hopped in. Unsure of where to sit between the shaky-looking benches and tightly packed sacks of groceries, I wiped red dust from a side rail and took a seat there. The driver handed back my bag, gave a nod, then returned to his place at the hood.
As time passed without any sign of motion, I began to understand the truck would wait until every visitor to town was ready to go. I tried to make myself comfortable, knowing it could probably be some time before we moved.
Gradually, the truck began to fill with passengers. A pair of young women, each with shaved heads and a child cradled in their arms, joined me in the back. Layers of light fabrics spilled around their bodies, accented with elaborate beadwork in every primary colour adorning their necks, wrists and ankles. The way they spoke in their high-pitched voices seemed almost like a shared game: soft, tender coos between intimate shared giggles, then bursting into a crescendo of laughter and celebratory clasped hands. I couldn’t tell whether their boisterous laughter was directed at me, the stranger almost painfully sticking out, or something else I wasn’t getting.
I felt myself retreating into myself, not knowing how to fit in, what to say or do. But this was clearly a bad time to become shy, so I tried to join the conversation in simple English. I said hello and did my best to make light of my failure to understand, shrugging comically. It seemed to work, and soon we were laughing together.
I settled in and tried to enjoy the scenery while we waited for the truck to depart. Soko was a charming small town, nestled against the green slopes and blue ridges of the Ol Doinyo Hills. Storefronts, some tin, some wooden and some concrete, lined the sides of the paved road, each bearing hand-painted and stencilled signs in English: “Blue Hotel,” “Friend’s Pub,” “Barbershop & Saloon.”
A convenience store was marked with a sign reading “Supermarket.” Supermarket? It looked about the size of my living room back at home, with wooden shelves creating three aisles inside. Definitely different from the aisles of our Dominic’s grocery store back home. Another read “Bookstore.” Bookstore? It was about the size of my first grade classroom, with drab grey concrete walls on the inside—a far cry from the scene on Saturday afternoons thumbing through books in the cozy chairs of Barnes & Noble.
Three older men bearing walking sticks crafted from tree branches came over to greet the truck. The men walked slowly and deliberately, each with bright-red blankets—like the ones I’d seen on the man in Nairobi and which I later learned in my cultural education classes were called shukas—tied loosely across their chests and under one arm. I’d seen these blankets for sale in Nairobi’s markets, but on these aged men they made a much more regal impression. The women in the truck immediately stopped their conversations to stand and bow down to these men, who then lightly touched the tops of each of their heads. The children did the same.
I took my cue to follow suit. The men laughed at my gesture. They and the women began an animated discussion about, I guessed, who this stranger might be. I caught one word I had learned in Swahili class: wetu. “Ours.”
