I spent my 21st birthday in Kenya which will be an interesting story for years to come. It turned out that the volunteer I was staying with was also celebrating her birthday just a day after mine, so we decided to have a joint birthday celebration this past Tuesday Night.
We invited out all our co-workers who are a bunch of Kenyans around our age, along with our bosses and the two daughters we stay with as well. The town we work in is nothing but bars or brothels, so we definitely had a wealth of options when it came to selecting a venue to celebrate. Our boss took us up to a bar that was on the 5th floor of a building that looked as if it could tip over and crumble at any point.
The inside of the bar was actually quite nice, and we proceeded to buy 5,000 shillings worth of alcohol (roughly $60 US) for everyone and enjoyed the night. It was a lot of fun, and it was definitely interesting to see that each of our co-workers danced differently according to what tribe they belonged to. Even though homosexuality is outlawed in Kenya, I saw at least ten of my coworkers (who are all men) grinding up on each other. It's something that you would never see straight men in America do, but Kenyans obviously have a different culture and it was pretty entertaining to watch.
Overall it was a fun 21st, definitely different from what I expected, even though one of our co-workers ended up drinking too much and got beaten half to death after leaving the bar and running his mouth off.
Life during the week in Kenya is pretty simple, and I enjoy it, there aren't constant distractions that I would find back home in the states. My days consist of waking up in the morning to cook breakfast before leaving for work. After work we generally just come home and hang out with the two daughters that live with us, and I will usually read to pass the time if no one is around. I get along well with the two daughters, whose names are Salome and Beautiful. We even convinced Beautiful that my name was "Handsome" for over a week. She's bright though, and eventually caught on that my real name is Zack.
Sadly I can't say that I've been enjoying my work placement that much though. I really like my co-workers, as they are all my age and have grown up in Kenya their whole lives so I never run out of things to talk about when I'm with them. But when it comes to actually working, there just isn't much for me to do. Almost all of the educational outreaches we do are spoken in Swahilli and not English. It's very cool visiting all these different slums, but when we arrive it's as if I'm nothing more then a White mascot who just stands there while everyone stares at me in amazement (some of these people ave never seen a white person up until this point.)
I've decided to switch my placement because of this, which was a difficult decision as I really like the family I stay with, and have learned a lot about Kenya from my co-workers. However, I did come here to preform volunteer work, and I haven't done much of that up to this point. A volunteer who recently left had started up a program in which they provide food to families that live in one of the garbage slums. I decided to join this program and help continue it with another volunteer since the one who started it is no longer here. This means I'll have to leave my host family behind and live in the volunteer hostel, but I'm sure it'll all be worth it. This weekend I'll be leaving for a Safari and look forward to hanging out with some Elephants and Lions!
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