Back By Popular Demand

Have you ever sweated through the front of your t-shirt? I can now officially say that I have.

One of the problems of blogging an extended stay such as this is that the new and unusual situations of your stay become commonplace. Whereas, when I arrived, seeing wild animals roam the streets was novel, I hardly notice them anymore. Fortunately, I was on the ball when I snapped the photo below as a herd of cows rumbled along the pathway in front of my house.


Highlighting this juxtaposition amid the Kenyan landscape is essential to understand the culture. Men work strenuously to push handcarts along downtown avenues while drivers cruise by with mobile phones abuzz. International soccer matches are streamed via satellite while armless women care for their babies on the street. During facilitation sessions here, we provide lunch stipends to our students which are pocketed rather than spent. Money can be transferred via cell phones but there is rarely a night without power outages. It seems that everywhere, the traditional and the modern are forever thrusting themselves into my visage, relentlessly making me marvel at the pace of progress and the unyielding nature of the past. In that vein, I really enjoyed taking this picture during rush hour as we left Kisauni.



Last week, the YCI volunteers were working in tandem with the Kwacha Afrika members to lead gender training workshops in a conservative suburb of Mombasa called Likoni. For the first two days of the training, we had the participants split by gender, so that the programming and discussions could be focused. The third day allowed the two genders to come together and discuss leadership in their community.



It is striking to hear some replies that we received. According to one male youth, women were inducing rape by wearing short skirts. On the other hand, some women were calmly acquiescent when describing how they were required to submit to sexual intercourse whenever their husbands wanted. But those were only the exceptions. For the most part, the facilitators received many thoughtful and encouraging answers from the youth. Female participants were not afraid to speak of how they should take on equal control of their household's finances, especially if they were a main contributor. Male participants were particularly good at espousing the equal rights of women. In my opinion, the most well-received portion of the training was a female Kenyan lawyer who talked about the Sexual Offenses Act and human rights. All-in-all, the feedback we received was favourable. At this point, I would credit a lot of success with the talented Kwacha youth, particularly Georgina, Aisha, Chamto and Samson. The picture above is of Samson leading the combined group in a leadership seminar.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to keep abreast of the Winter Olympics, mostly for the men's hockey tournament. I had been hoping to find some satellite coverage of the games, but then I stumbled across a newspaper article attempting to explain ice hockey to the average Kenya. My hope just faded. Please, somebody tell me they TIVO'd the games...

Miscellaneous Musings

Old Town in Mombasa, Kenya.

Lacking a theme to opine upon today, I thought I would send out an assortment of random thoughts with which my readership can mull over:

Things I like:

• Freezy business operated out of my homestay - 24 hour access to mango-flavoured deliciousness


• Seeing sea turtles


• Nights without electricity


• Very professional dramas produced by Kwacha Afrika

Things I do not like:

• Getting stiffed by matatu conductors looking to make easy money off foreigners

For the most part, I expect local vendors and drivers to target me, judged mostly on my skin colour. However, after three weeks here, I know the going rates to take the matatu bus everywhere I need to go and the prices of most common foods. It becomes a great aggravation to haggle every time I want to go somewhere in town.

Also, the other day I pulled out my wallet on the matatu and flashed ten American dollars. The passenger next to me asked if he could have it. That was quite the annoying assumption. I mean, many people assume that the YCI volunteers are wealthy (I wish) because we are white. However, would that man have had the same gall to ask a wealthy Kenyan for the same thing? It seems highly unlikely.

Myself, Kasena, and Mody.

To return to things that I like...

Kwacha Afrika hosted a theatre night in downtown Mombasa last Sunday. Like most of their outreach activities, their plays are themed upon HIV/AIDS awareness and gender empowerment. Sunday's play told the story of Layla, a recently widowed young woman who suspected her former partner of dying from HIV. Scared to have herself tested, she still is intent upon marrying another man. Her sister Lulu is convinced that her new fiance is, in fact, the one who needs to be tested. Her love for Layla pushes her to sabotaging the wedding and leads to ostracism from her own family. In the end, the fiance confesses to being HIV-positive, Lulu rejoins the family, Layla comes to terms with the news and they all live happily ever after.

Kwacha Afrika youth performing for an HIV/AIDS outreach event.
Lulu, played by Nti Abdala (above) during Kwacha's play.
Tabulezy (above left) and Shiko (above right), stars of Kwacha Afrika's HIV/AIDS awareness drama. Shiko played the starring role of Layla.

As an allegory for the locals, the Kwacha youth hoped to impress the need for absolutely everybody to be tested for HIV - even if you are fairly certain that you do not carry the virus. Hopefully, this message will be heeded by the fifty-plus youth who attended the show. Young people in Mombasa are fortunate to have the energy and vision that Kwacha Afrika delivers to their commmunity.

Things are getting busy here for the YCI volunteers. Coming up this week, we are holding a 3-day gender issues summit for youth in the Likoni, the south side of the city. Mostly, it will focus on empowering women to join the workforce and for men to shed the stereotyped roles that women are given here. It will prove to be an interesting discussion, I believe. Thanks for reading my posts!

An Outsider's View from the Inside - Sex Tourism

Club night was a resounding success again this past Saturday. My group decided to go local and visit a non-tourist destination simply called, "Bob's". Bob's is a patio bar situated in what looks like the inside parking lot of a cheap motel. But when the sun goes down and the laser disco starts up, Bob's becomes the nighttime hotspot. Locals and the occasional tourist bump and grind to an eclectic mix of 90's RnB, African hip-hop and some European techno. After the past week of daily computer classes, the YCI and Kwacha Afrika volunteers were ready to let loose. Drinks flowed, people danced and the revelers made merry. Persistent amidst all of this were the ubiquitous sex tourists.

A weekend ago at Tembo, I had my first up-close experience with the dirty secret of Western dignity: the parade of young Kenyan women and men being courted by middle-aged tourists. Sex tourism is accepted by the locals as a necessary evil. These young men and girls do need to make a living. Its market strength is such that before anybody else hits the dance floor, the prostitutes are out there strutting their stuff for potential clients. As the night heats up, so does the business. Mustachioed men, clad in their Birkenstocks and tropical t-shirts sidle up to barely post-pubescent girls and make their intentions known with their hands, pelvises and kisses. Likewise, I witnessed two fifty year-old women hold court with two native Kenyan men apiece. The four men were dressed in traditional Masai dress complete with head feathers and colourful sarongs. Debauchery of this sort has even prompted the whoring out of traditional culture.

My own moral compass nearly got me into some trouble that night. Some British tourist was enjoying being sandwiched between two beautiful and tall Kenyan prostitutes. The scene of this stubby tourist getting his rocks off on these girls made me a little sick, so I pointed it out to my group of friends and laughed him off. Unfortunately, he didn't take too kindly to my mocking and made a point of flipping me off, which made me laugh even more. Coming over to me, he asked me if I had a problem with him and if we needed to settle it. Harnessing my best self-control, I calmly told him there wasn't a problem. He turned away and I gave him a patronizing pat on the back as he walked off. What a real man, I suppose, sticking up for himself like that. Although - a real man wouldn't have to buy his sexual gratification.

Since I promised pictures, below are a few that I have taken so far. Uploading pictures here takes roughly twenty minutes at the internet cafe. Consequently, I am posting only five pictures today.


Above are two pictures of my neighbourhood. We live in a very sandy and dusty clime replete with dirt walking paths that branch off of the one main road.

Mom, you should be happy with the picture above. It's myself and fellow volunteer Melissa doing laundry by hand in front of our homestay.

This photo is taken from an old Portuguese fort overlooking the Indian Ocean in the Old Town of Mombasa. The fort served as a transit point for the slave trade in the 1500s.

In my next few posts I'll try to delve into more of the work we do here. It has not been all fun and games here, and the schedule looks to get a lot busier. Upcoming this week we have three outreach sessions with the Matatu driver sector, a population segment that is at high risk of contracting HIV. Some of the issues we will tackle are gender roles, HIV stigma and drug use. It definitely portends to be an interesting session.

But alas, I only have so much time. I'll do my best to post ASAP. Thanks once again for following my adventure here. Miss you all.

Racism and Other Tidbits (a little late - my apologies)

***This blog post was meant to appear this past Saturday***

Mombasa is an interesting locale for the average tourist. It's considered the tourist mecca of Kenya and hosts a wide variety of people from Africa and the Middle East. In its downtown, white people are not unheard of, but they aren't exactly common either. Out where we live though, there is a peculiar sense of your own skin colour when you walk around the suburbs. Your daily walks become a strut down a gauntlet of greetings as people shout at you from all sides. A twenty minute walk becomes doubly tiring as you expend lots of effort shouting back greetings and responses.

For all of the political correctness shoved down our Canadian throats, the Kenyans hold none of it dear. It's not unfriendly either, however. The notion of a foreign visitor is of special importance to Kenyan culture. I was informed by my homestay father that, to Kenyans, hosting a visitor is a mark of honour and that same honour extends to their wider community. For every slack-jawed idiot catcalling our female fellow volunteers, we receive gregarious "Jambos" and "Karibu Kenya" ("Welcome to Kenya") from tenfold more locals. The children are especially friendly, as for many of them it would be the first white people they had seen in person. Trying to pass by a school elicits a cacaphony of little voices shouting, "how are you?" Celebrity does have its perks. Unfortunately, after so many days, the novelty of being different has worn off for us volunteers.

Despite the friendliness, the endless shouts of "mzungu" or "white European" have become a little tiresome. Some children could be forgiven, but the idea of walking around and having adults shouting, "Chinaman!" or "Black guy!" becomes a little bit grating. While the intention is mostly genuine, the idea of us as curios in their community compels them to single us out for being different. Instead of recognizing us for trying to contribute to their community's development, we exist purely as rich, white tourists in some of their minds. I suppose it is a small price to pay for what we are trying to accomplish.

Meanwhile, since my last post the computer classes have a fait accompli. In the picture below you can see my roommate, Evan Trippel, teaching a Microsoft Excel tutorial to a class. Running the classes was a study in perseverance in the face of obstacles. Whether it was cramming fifteen students into a six-person internet cafe, or running voltage adapters from outlet to outlet to plug in one extra computer, the preparations stretched the limits of our organizational creativity. Luckily, the students were very laid-back, understanding, and eager to learn. After a week full of classes, fully thirty Mombasan youths are now computer literate enough to work the Windows environment, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and internet e-mail/browsing. Working with my cohorts and the Kwacha Afrika volunteers has been an immense pleasure. When everybody is on the same page it makes the work that much more smooth.



Speaking of smooth, the Youth Challenge International volunteers joined ranks with the Kwacha Afrika members for a club night last Saturday. It was by far the most interesting night of my trip thus far. Tembo is tropical disco that deserves a place on a resort but is nestled snugly in our little suburb of Mombasa. I left our homestay wearing a white button-up shirt and returned looking like I had participated in the most unappealing wet t-shirt contest ever witnessed. Dancing is a sweaty enough affair as it is, but dancing in thirty degree heat exacerbates the whole situation. In my next post I'm going to touch upon some things that happened that night including dancing and fighting sex tourists.

Mothers, lock up your daughters - it's club night again tonight. At this point I'd like to issue a pre-emptive apology for anybody who has to see, touch or smell any party of my body tonight...