IARD Kenya Reflection

Joanna Barrett IARD 4960 International Internship Reflection 18 November 2014

Over the summer of 2014, I spent ten weeks in rural southwestern Kenya for my international internship. I lived and worked in Keumbu, Kenya, with a U.S. non-profit called

Arrive (arriveinkenya.org) and their Kenyan non-profit extension Fariji. Arrive runs the Keumbu

Rehema Children’s Home, an orphanage in Keumbu. During my time there I lived and worked at the home. Robert and Terry Nyamwange act as parents to all thirty children at the home, in addition to their own biological children who live entirely intermingled with the adoptive children. Over the summer the Nyamwange acted as my host parents, looking out for me and making sure that I was taken care of and providing a welcoming home for me and every other volunteer who came through over the summer.

I shared a thirteen-feet by thirteen-feet hut with mud and dung walls and a tin roof with anywhere from seven to eleven girls - varying when some of the older girls had breaks from their boarding secondary schools and universities around Kenya. I am happy to say that in the time since I left Arrive has been able to knock down that hut and rebuild a beautiful, big house with concrete floors and plenty of room for all of the girls. Despite being somewhat cramped I appreciated living in the situation that I did. Getting woken up at 4:30 AM every weekday by giggling twelve year old girls up to do their chores before school was at times painful but meant that I was able to befriend and bond with the girls in a way that I otherwise would not have had the opportunity to.

I spent most of my weekdays working at Emmanuel Lights Academy - one of the local primary schools - for 5-6 hours each morning, then running errands in Keumbu or Kisii or helping out around the home (or occasionally sneaking up the mountain or down to the river to set up my hammock and take a nap) until the kids came home from school. The rest of the day was typically spent playing with the kids and attempting to help with chores or household work.

I took a number of short trips to Nairobi, Kisumu, Kakamega, Maasailand, and regions along the

Ugandan and Tanzanian borders. During the second half of my stay in Keumbu, more volunteers arrived, and as a result I spent increasing amounts of time running errands and showing newer volunteers around Keumbu and Kisii. During my final three to four weeks in Keumbu, I spent several hours each day in Kisii at the Level 5 government hospital, a private christian hospital, and around various landfills and other hide-outs where street children lived.

My time in Kenya this summer was certainly life-changing, but I would not say that it came with any great epiphany. Although I moved into an entirely different culture, part of the world, and language, I was already aware of much of the daily realities faced during my time there - whether by myself or the community and individuals around me. As an International

Agriculture and Rural Development and Biology and Society major I was intellectually familiar with my foreign surroundings. I could tell you anything that you wanted to know on sustainable agricultural practices, disease prevalence, gender inequality, financial and cultural barriers to education and ecological constraints on developing countries. In one way it was gratifying to know that the two years I had spent at Cornell so far had prepared me to some degree for the career path and area I was supposedly becoming an expert in. But the simplified terms and statistics provide a narrow view of much more complex phenomena. Even a short two months immersed in Keumbu and its culture was enlightening and gave much greater meaning to everything that I’d learned up until then.

One reality that I had understood statistically but not in its actuality, was the incredible frequency - and as a result, inconsequentiality - of death. Sub-saharan Africa has both incredibly high fertility and mortality rates. A combination of disease, malnutrition, alcohol and drug abuse, inadequate medical care, harsh living conditions, and the violence associated with urbanizing impoverished regions meant that even in a town as small as Keumbu, every single day there was a funeral somewhere in Keumbu or Kisii. Talking with the children at school and at the home I came to find that all of them, whether six or sixteen year old, could tell me about at least a dozen people from their lives who had passed away - many had witnessed some of those deaths firsthand. Death was very commonplace and public. While death is a certainty and a regularity in the United States as well, expectations were different. One of my students, a sweet fifth grader nicknamed “KenKen,” is one of approximately ten children in his family with advanced AIDS.

His father has had AIDS for the last fifteen years, but refuses to stop having sex or wear condoms. People like KenKen’s father have created a blameless population of ill and dying children - and unfortunately there is a good probability that KenKen will have passed away by the time that I return. But beyond those suffering from HIV/AIDS and the like, there’s a population of children and infants killed every year that no one talks about - the disabled.

Beyond the societal shame of producing an “imperfect” child, parents also tend to be unable or unwilling to commit resources to a child indefinitely.

Separately, gender inequality was another phenomenon that expanded much further than the intellectual understanding I come to Kenya with, or than my own American understanding. In

Kenya, women are restricted from owning land and all property is left to the closest male relative. Many girls, especially in more remote tribal communities such as the Maasai, never go to school, or if they do, drop out by the time that they’re twelve or thirteen years old to raise their family members or be married off to aged/elderly husbands. As a twenty-year old unmarried, unattached female I was a bit of an anomaly. Although I always laughed it off, at least once every day or two someone would ask my male host how many cows he wanted in exchange for me, or asked to talk to my father to make the same negotiations. The number of rapes I heard of over the summer was astounding - most heartbreakingly, a thirteen-year old autistic girl who was also partially paralyzed, who was raped every single day for months by men who paid her father a fee. I never felt endangered, unsafe, or unappreciated in Keumbu, by my host family or the community members. But it certainly made me so incredibly grateful for the lucky circumstances of my birth to a loving family in the US. And it gave a much greater depth to my understanding of and frustration with the systematic and cultural sexism women face in much of the developing world.

Despite these two striking realities, my summer gave me a lot of hope for development, developing countries, and even myself. In the face of some pretty terrible conditions, I was surrounded by a resilient, loving, vibrant community of people grateful for everything they had.

And within that community were Kenyans and foreigners alike dedicating their lives and resources to helping everyone that they could in sustainable, permanent ways. One of my favorite kids from the KRCH inadvertently nearly brought me to tears one day when he told me that when he grows up he wants to start an orphanage and “save all of the kids like me who never got a chance.” And that knowledge alone made my summer in Kenya so incredibly worthwhile.

Cornell provided me with an incredible experience where I got to experience life and development work firsthand and reaffirm my passion for such work. I learned so much about the community and beautiful country that I was in, but I certainly learned more about myself: what

I’m capable of, what my real interests are, and where I want to be when I inevitably graduate and join the real world. And I have unending respect for Brian and Terry and Robert Nyamwange, and would absolutely recommend that any/all IARD students spend time in Keumbu with Arrive.