Open Air Markets

Yesterday I ventured into the heart of the open air market in Maua to buy a used pair of shoes. While doing so I figured out how to describe them.

Imagine a standard sized Good Will store. Now imagine that dividers are put up dividing all of the sections of clothes into groups of 15. Each group of 15 gets its own sales representative, whose sole lively hood is derived from the number of items he sells from his particular group of 15 items. Next to him there is another salesman, with another 15 items that are almost indistinguishable, and each of them is trying to compete and get you to buy their used shirt, shoes, or trousers, none of which are an exact fit, and none of which are your favorite style.

You know that they rely on their sales to feed their families, but that doesn't mean that you should buy something you wont use. You go to 7 of these stalls and none of them has a pair of nice looking and comfortable shoes in your size. So you end up going back to the first stall and buying a pair that are a half (or full) size too big for the equivalent of $9.50.

A friend was commenting that I have been making a lot plans for my $6000 readjustment money. I dream of the day when I can browse through clothes without someone standing over me. I marvel at having a sales representative that will honestly tell me whether or not an item is my size instead of trying to tell me that everything is my size.

I go back and forth on whether or not I will make a trip to a shopping mall when I get back to America, but even if I buy my clothes from a Good Will, at least I will be able to freely choose from 200 shirts while the only sound in my head is the soft jazz humming through the store's public address system.

The Other Side of Running

There is a side of my experience that I rarely share with people outside of the Peace Corps sphere. All of you know that I stand out everywhere I go, and I have talked about some of the attention that I get, but the following is an example of some of the common, unflattering attention that I receive.

It starts pretty normal, I was running, with tons of people yelling at me and some people running along side me. Today I decided to run 10 miles, and I had completed about 8.5 of those miles when I child threw a small stone at me and hit me. This is about the 5th time that this has happened to me in the past month. My reaction was to show this child that this was bad behavior, so I started chasing after her. I caught her after about a 30m chase and grabbed hold of her arm. Then she started shouting something that I did not understand in kimeru. It must have been something pretty intense because she kept repeating it and within about 20 seconds the population on the street had gone from 10 to 50. They all saw that she was not in any danger, so they just stood by looking amused and waiting to see what was going on. The girl kept screaming, but I carried her to the nearest person that looked like a mom and explained that the girl had hit me with a rock. The mom replied by telling me that this girl did not do it, but she definitely did, which I tried to explain to her although it was difficult since I had just finished running 8.5 miles... I finished the rest of the 10 miles without much hassle.

At the end of the run I decided to do about 1.5 miles barefoot at the primary school attached to the secondary school. There were some local young men hanging around watching the Athiru Gaiti football club practice. One of them bystanders started running right in front of me, looking back at me with that look on his face that says "look at you, I am beating you" (I commonly have people start running in front of me yelling at the top of their lungs, "I am beating the white man"). Although this guy didn't make any sound, the words were still there, so I told him in kiswahili "continue for 16km and then you will have reached where I am." After I said this he sped up and flipped me off.

I just kept running and he stopped running and left me alone. I continued by myself for half a mile, then a couple of kids started running with me. They were really great. A couple of nights ago they laughed at me when I stepped on a big rock barefooted, but then I scolded them and they apologized. Today they ran with me, without saying anything. Then when it got so dark that I was afraid of really hurting my bare-footed self me and one of the kids said good night and I returned home to wolf down some calories.

Return Is Inevitable

In town yesterday, I received a wonderful birthday package from a returned Peace Corps volunteer yesterday (Thanks Kelly!). The afternoon was sunny, but not too hot, and I did not have anything pressing to do at school, so I walked leisurely. Included in the package were some granola bars. I picked an almond flavored bar out and started to munch as I walked.

At that moment it struck me, my return to America is inevitable and eating granola bars that come in nice little packages with all sorts of captivating nutritional information will once again be common place.

This means that I have been in Kenya for over a year and a half. The thing is, I have like 6 months left, but right now, 6 months seems like nothing. Phrasing it like this makes me think of other times in life when we are given set arrival and departure dates. One such notable analogy is prison. The problem is, I do not know which side is prison. Do I gain freedom in 6 months or do I lose my freedom? Of course it is not as simple or as complicated as that. The dichotomy is artificial though. There will certainly be a lot of external changes though. I will have more choices of how to use my money, but I will also become more of a slave to monetary choices.

Maybe the scariest aspect of returning home is that I do not know anything about my future life. I do not know if I will get into grad school, if I do get in I do not know where in the country I will be, I do not know what I will do before August of 2011, and how I will spend the little money that Peace Corps will give me.

Thinking about those things now, while I am seated in the staff room in front of my laptop, I am scared. Yesterday, strolling down a dirt road munching on a delicious granola bar, I was excited. Maybe this means that I need to spend more time outdoors eating granola bars...

Garbage Truck

Cruising away from Meru town the matatu that I was in followed a dump truck full of garbage for about a kilometer. The truck has just been loaded up with garbage from the town and was piled high.

It might be hard to imagine how much garbage there is spread around public areas in Kenya, but a few months back they removed something like 50 tons from a creek running through Nairobi. Meru is as dirty as Nairobi and I applaud the efforts that these people had made in removing garbage.

Most of this garbage is in the form of small plastic bags, due to their ubiquity in Kenyan markets. Each time you buy an orange, a drink, biscuits, or tomatoes, the purchased object is put into a bag, which is instantly discarded by the buyer.

This dump truck was not tarped and at 80 km/hr these bags were forming a perpetual cloud above the bed of the truck. Hundreds of the bags in this cloud would lose equilibrium and would shoot out to the sides of the truck, gently falling to the ground on either side of the road. Simultaneously more bags would be dislodged from the ever decreasing pile in the truck bed.

Maybe this garbage truck is not actually headed for a specific dump site; maybe the journey is the end of the line and the goal is to redistribute all of the manufactured goods that had converged on the city.

Maybe they were trying to make the statement that what they were doing to the forest is what all of us are doing to the forests, or, more likely, they just don't care.

Perpetual Road Work

As we cruise along the road in a matatu, there is a man ahead with his back bent towards the road, jimbe (hoe) in hand. A cigarette is hanging loosely out the side of his mouth, as him an another man spread dirt inside of a pothole. As the matatu approaches the man holds out his hand asking for the driver to pay him for the work that he is doing to fill the holes. Instead of stopping, the driver maintains speed, and as we pass over the hole dirt flies out, pushed by the wheels and rising as a dust cloud in back of the matatu.

This happens every time that a car passes, but the men continue to refill the hole, hoping that someone will give them money.

I haven't written much for about a month, in part because the school term has begun and I have gotten into what appears to be a routine: get up at 6am, plan for lessons from 7am, teach and work on curriculum until 4pm, play volleyball or help officiate a club until 5:30pm, go for a run until 6:30 or 7pm (By the way, I am training for a half-marathon - or maybe full marathon? - at the end of June), eat a little, bathe, read, and meditate until bed. As a write this, it is dawning on me just how many of my days in the past month have followed this exact pattern...

So that is my excuse for why I haven't written more, but what I really want to write about is this book, Born to Run, which was lent to me by another Peace Corps volunteer.

Ever since I ran cross country in high school I have ended almost every season/period of training with an injury. Even now, as I am training for this run I have been ending each run with sharp pain in my groin muscle and an aching right knee. I have always blamed my body for not being able to run without injury, but it turns out that I have just never known the proper way to run... As soon as I got the hint from this book I changed my stride and since then the aching in my knee has subsided and the pain in the groin has entirely disappeared.

The book chronicles Christopher McDougall's research into a tribe in Mexico that routinely runs 50-100 milers. As he studies them, he also studies ultra-marathoners in the United States and anthropologists who are studying our evolutionary roots.

According to their research, homo-erectus evolved as persistence hunters (read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting). This means that we ran animals to death... We have the unique ability to dissipate heat on the run, where as most other animals have to stop and pant in order to expel excess heat (example: dogs have to stop and pant). So all of our ancestors were regular marathoners. On the great open plains in Africa they would run after a gazelle just fast enough that the gazelle did not get time to rest, until finally, after between 10 and 20 miles, the gazelle would die of heat exhaustion. They even found a small tribe near South Africa that still persistence hunts.

These guys run these distances until their 60's and they do it bare-foot. We, on the other hand, buy $150 shoes and get injured after running regularly for 5 months... The reason is because these shoes are so padded that they allow us to use the worst running form ever known to man.

The book has changed my life because I know have a slightly better idea of how to run, and how to run long-distance. I also have a better idea of who I am, because I have a better sense of how we evolved into what I am today.

The writing is totally gripping and I lost sleep in order to continue to read the book. I think that the book would be interesting even if you are not particularly interested in running.

Crash Course In Mid-HOOVEry

Last night I was preparing to read a book in bed when the school watchman started talking to me through my window.  I couldn’t really make out what he was saying, but it was clear that he saying something about the school cow and that he wanted me to come.  Feeling slightly annoyed I put on a jacket and headed outside.  He led me to where the school cow was laying on the ground, with what I think you would call a dilated birth canal. 

Before my very eyes part of the sack enveloping the baby started coming out, and within a few minutes I was staring at two hooves.

As we watched this happening our watchman and the primary school’s watchman decided that we needed the animal doctor to come and assist us with the birthing process.  As the watchman and I kept vigil the primary school’s watchman hurried off.

After a few minutes with the two of us watching the calf it became clear that the doctor may not come in time.  Despite this, I was slightly disturbed when the watchman grabbed the placenta and popped it, causing a small flood of fluid.

As all of this was happening, the mother was periodically becoming disturbed by a dog that was circling around her.  This caused the mother to jump up and hobble around with two hooves sticking out of her.  She looked so unstable that I thought she might seriously break a leg, but she never did and after each of these movements she settled back into a birthing position.

Then the watchman decided that it was time to, figuratively, take the baby-bull by the horns, or literally take it by the hooves, and separate it from it’s mother.  As he grabbed the head to keep the mother from jumping up, it became apparent that I was to be an integral part of this magic trick.  From his shouting I gathered that I was supposed to grab the hooves and pull, which I did.  The mother didn’t seem to enjoy this much, and I guess I don’t blame her.  I quickly found out that the hooves I had been seeing were the front ones and after about a minute of frantic pulling, I soon saw a head.  I do not know how many of you have ever tried to do this before, but it reminded me of trying to catch a greased pig at the country fair.  I have never tried to catch a greased pig, but I think that this would be a good analogy, so long as your greased pig had gotten himself wedged inside of a hole with an opening a third his size. 

Somehow I succeeded at this unlikely fair game, and once the calves' shoulders emerged the mom seemed to relax and the rest of the calf slipped right out.

Not a bad performance for my first time performing the pull-a-cow-from-another-cow trick!  The doctor then arrived in time to confirm that we had done good work. 

What I was noticing at this point was that the mother did not seem very interested in her new-born calf.  The doctor had a solution to this though.  He got a big handful of placenta and he smeared it all over the mother’s mouth. Instantly upon tasting this seemingly gross blood-water mixture, the mother became so excited that she hopped right up from where she has been trying to sleep and started licking that calf clean with a vigor that is possibly only matched in cows during the period when the bull is trying to mount the female.  This was a lot nicer to watch though, and I seriously cannot express my surprise at how energetic this mother became just from tasting placenta.

Below is a picture that I took of the calf about 14 hours after it was born.  With all that the calf and I have been through together it is sad to think that it will grow up for a few years only to be slaughtered.  Such is the life of cows though.