Hello from the Kenya team at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). After 16 hours of traveling we arrived in Nairobi on May 1st , and we were greeted by our Kenyan host Pamela’s son and nephew, Denis and Edwin along with a fellow Western student, Kathleen Walsh, residing in Kenya since February for an internship with Western Heads East.
Kathleen has been great at helping us adjust to life in a third world country. She knows her way around everything from getting our Kenyan SIM cards to navigating the grocery stores to finding our way around campus. It has also been comforting to have a fellow Canadian who has already been through the adjustment process. I think I can speak for the whole team when I say we would not have survived the first week without her.
Our first week has been full of notable experiences: meeting a woman from Switzerland, Elvira, who retired from banking to live in Kenya and run a safari company, travelling to a small village in West Kenya called Migori, driving through the Rift Valley and spotting baboons, visiting a primary school and two secondary schools and attending church with our host family.
For this post, I want to tell the story of a dinner with our host family. It was a special occasion as the next day most of the 11 children were returning to school for the start of the new semester. One son was going back to Nairobi University to study medicine, and the eldest daughter and another son were headed back to the top high schools in the country where they board for the semester. Other children were headed to other schools, but I struggle to keep track. For the occasion, the family was slaughtering a goat they had been raising in their backyard. The goat was basically cut up and charred almost to a crisp. As a result, it must be eaten with your hands, and it requires a lot of chewing. Being unaccustomed to such an experience, I mistakenly chose a piece that was majority bone. My Kenyan mom, Pamela spotted my error and swapped my piece out while exclaiming that one will require Kenyan teeth. I did not protest.
Once our stomachs had been sufficiently filled with goat, greens, rice, beans and coleslaw, the whole family gathered in the living room to say a blessing. The father began by speaking to each of the 11 children, commenting on their past academic successes or areas for improvement and laying out the expectations for their grades this semester. 500/500, the top score possible on the national exams, was oft repeated. I was impressed by how well he knew the details of each of his children’s lives despite the fact that they are numerous and spread out around Nairobi. One daughter had not performed as well as expected on her exams, and she is entering a critical period where her next set of exams will determine her secondary school. Her father demonstrated nothing but support saying he knows she is capable of excellence, and she must be confident in her own abilities. He then passed the floor to her wife who continued with a similar message. In particular she commented on one son’s passion for basketball. The message was not that he give up his favourite sport to focus more on academia, but he must strive to find greater balance between the two.
After the parents had spoken, the three eldest children added their own comments, encouraging each other and expressing their gratitude. The entire family has an impressive ability to improvise speeches. Perhaps it comes from having two parents who are pastors. At one point the power went out as it often does. No one even skipped a beat, and one person left to fetch the gas lamp. Before the blessing ended, two of the younger daughters got up to sing a hymn in what was probably the most adorable moment of the entire trip so far.
I felt lucky to have been included in what I consider a private family moment. I cannot speak for all families in Canada, but from my experience I have never seen or heard of anything similar. It is admirable to see that despite the size of this family they all remain close and supportive. One thing that can be certain is that each of those children will do great things to improve Kenya’s future.