Survived what is probably the most dangerous part of my trip to Germany: the Mombasa high way. It is amazing how this busy road, connecting the largest African harbour Mombasa with east Africa, is basically a country road and I use the word road loosely because there is a huge chunk of it which is basically just country. Rain season has really kicked off and you can't escape it for more than 7 hours at a time.
As there is some money left over, which is not enough for a fourth tank, I have convinced Peter to use it to build 3 further gabions to stop soil erosion on the road and farms. Originally he wanted to convince me that it would be spent best on a fence around his own farm.


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It's raining again so this year really nobody can complain about not enough of that stuff. Let's hope I get some dinner as sometimes the fire wood also gets wet and then I'll go to bed hungry.
In other news: when I speak of doing this or that in the village with somebody most of the time I'll be talking of musyoki. He's the only one completely open, honest (90% of the time) and interested in me and I enjoy prefer his company to anybody else's. He is increadibly helpful when it comes to cooking, going some place or passing the day. I play a lot with the toddler of the sister to Peter and am his second nanny when the grand mother isn't around. I'm hoping to make a long lasting impression and that he'll be as open, if not more to future volunteers, as musyoki. There are also two boys who like fooling around with me. One lives with the grand mother (Mwendwa) and the other lives in musyoki's compound (Ken). The first lost both his parents when he was young and the latter's father just died 2 weeks ago in an accident in Nairobi.


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Of course once you meet richer better educated kenyans the attitude changes and you're pleasantly surprised how nice it is to be treated indifferently. Not in the sense of being ignored but just as another mortal human being.
It's also impressive with what people can be satisfied with. As I mentioned in earlier posts the songs on the radio all sound the same (and with 2 exceptions I'm actually not kidding). Everything is repeated over and over again whether it is tea for breakfast, ugali and suquma for lunch then ghitheri for dinner or even the movies shown at the movie place we sometimes go to. Chuck Norris is a pretty cool guy but after seeing one of his movies once I've had enough unlike all the others around me who forget what the movie really was about the moment we leave. Another funny thing about these movies is that, although not even remotely challenging, I get asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger is actually real, the 13 meter boa strangeling jenifer lopez exists and listen to a discussion whether a one-eyed monster with 4 arms beating up a man was real or not.


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Excuse my absence but I have been in a bit of slump as of lately. The last few weeks have been dreadful. I have no idea how the days have gone by, because frankly I have not been doing much. The water tanks will be delivered on June 2 to 3 families that have changed again because the ones before do not trust plastic tanks so be it. I've convinced Peter that we need to make a reference for every plant on the farm with some brief information so the farm can actually become a model farm where people see what alternatives there are to maize and beans. It has been raining so much that the drought has been forgotten and it's back to hakuna mattata. The rain also means that there is little weeding to be done and the big job has been extending the gabions and gathering plants for compost. I plan my weeks and months so that I get some change to my project life as often as possible.
March ended with our second seminar in Nairobi. As practically nothing had changed in the months between the first and the second seminar we voiced our concerns and problems without any restraints. However, only when the representative of the ijgd told us that the night before he had told the kvda they would not be sending any new volunteers the coming year did I get the feeling we were being listened to.
In late April I was visited by Nora, who had been a volunteer last year, and I told her to tell the sci to do the same thing as the ijgd. She confessed that all the other volunteers she had talked to had said the same thing. Sending volunteers that are barely 20 to Kenya while working with an organisation like the kvda is irresponsible. Especially as there are plenty of alternatives. We all have the impression the kvda just does not care. For some that does not matter for others it became so frustrating they turned only to Anna for assistance, changed organizations or left the country.
This lack of interest became most evident when we talked about little our projects had been prepared. None knew our names, projects were surprised to find two volunteers or that we were staying for 11 months. None had been previously visited so the unlucky ones that were sent to to dreadful places and, thinking that it must be their responsibility now to be "open" about the "experience", were taken advantage of. I know we could have done our civil service in Germany but this is Kenya and you can not expect volunteers to cope by themselves especially as the aim of the weltwärts program is to promote the millenium goals.. Good luck with that.
The news of volunteers getting robbed or nearly raped have affected us so much that we now take a taxi at 19:30 to drive what would otherwise be a 7 minute walk (two volunteers were robbed at gun point a few months ago). The fact that the willingness to be extremely violent for just 200ksh (2 euros) is so high and the traffic accidents are so frequent nearly make it impossible to feel safe when you leave the gate of your gated shopping center, gated restaurant or gated apartment block. Nairobi is one ocean of walls, barbed wire and gates. Although I've heard that one could not go to the city center either 3 years ago and now it's just as busy as any other city center so maybe it will get better.


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