Visiting houses- #1- Chege and Lois

Ahhh.... my throat hurts soooo much... or as they would say here, it hurts 'toooo much'. I have been visiting all day with people and talking a lot. Hmmm… I’m tired now and am starting to think in kiswahili… this is good for me, but I’ll try to stick to English as much as possible for all of you J Actually, in the last seven days I have eaten at someone’s house or had my meal bought for me every lunch and supper except three. People here are SO receptive to visitors- unlike anything I have experienced before. If you are considered a visitor, people treat you amazingly well and won’t let you pay for anything… which is really humbling and makes me feel quite bad as they are in much tougher economic situations than I. But, this is the culture. They seem to feel responsible for providing for you however they can. I try to bring presents for people as I visit them. As a result, my supply has suffered a large dent- if I keep up at this rate I’ll be completely out in two weeks.

In the evenings I have been part of a traveling entourage made of three men plus myself. We seem to come as a package deal. Two are visiting lecturers, and one is a student from Sierra Leone. Let me tell you a bit about the families I visited today, and the ones I have seen in the week:

Sunday & Tuesday- Chege Bernard (staff at ICM), wife Lois, son Stanley (age 9), daughter away at school (age 12), newest addition to family happened on Thursday- a daughter, Grace Wanjiku.

Chege is a pastor of a small church here in Kitale in addition to being a lecturer and staff at ICM and working on post graduate studies. His congregation is lively, charismatic, and housed in a small, dark, badly leaning building. The building is overshadowed outside by a large metal pole frame which is meant to be filled with bricks in order to build a bigger church building.

A common theme here is the building style: People collect materials pole pole (slowly) and then start building pole pole- as they get the money and materials amassed on site. After attending Chege’s church we went to his home and was greeted by his wife, his son, a 20-year old girl who stays with them as house help, and an assortment of neighbourhood kids. Their house is the most beautiful I have seen so far in terms of interior decorating- simply because it is so simple. The walls are covered inside by smoothed mud, giving it a textured appearance that many people try to achieve in North America by sponge-painting the walls. On the wall was only one decoration- a poster of a fantastic watercolour painting of an African Jesus talking to children under an acacia tree. It was a welcome change from the numerous gaudy posters and random poor quality photos in other homes.

Chege’s yard looks like a brickyard fringed by banana trees, a small veggie patch, and a large patch of napier grass, which is chopped daily and fed to his one cow. The one cow is in a small fenced area, which is cohabited by a small flock of chickens meant for meat (African chickens). An addition to the chicken house is a small box which houses some laying hens (mzungu chickens) meant for egg production. The bricks are not yet fired… that will come later once all the bricks are built or bought and a kiln is made on site where large pieces of firewood are burned to fire the bricks and turn them bright red. Bricks are used to build all of the walls of the house, including the inside walls, so a lot are used. They can be bought for 5Ksh each (9 cents), or you can pay someone to make them for you out of your own dirt at a rate of 2Ksh each.

This house, like most others of this style, had no electricity, so the open door and only one or two small windows were the sole sources of light until it got dark and they turned on gas lanterns. We were seated on a matching set of solid couches, made locally, with the fabric covered by some sort of lace material like giant doilies. There was an assortment of coffee tables taking up the space between the couches, which we used as our dining tables. Most families had a dining table that fit themselves, but with the added guests it would not have worked to sit there.

Food was served from pots placed on the table- delicious food- rice or pilau (spiced rice) or chapatis or ugali (stiff maize meal porridge- the staple here- if a person has not eaten ugali in a day they ‘have not eaten’), plus ‘stew’ (mildly flavoured tomato broth with pieces of meat or vegetables), ‘vegetables’ (finely chopped green leaves- kales or something more bitter called sujaa), mashed potatoes (called Irish potatoes to distinguish them from sweet potatoes), and at the end, a nice cup of chai. Before we eat one of the women- usually a house-help girl- holds out a basin below and pours a jug of water from above over your hands for you to wash. I remember being the one to help people wash their hands… it was actually a very humbling experience at the time…