The article is published!

Sweet summer greetings, and some good news!

For those of you who were totally zealous in reading my early blog posts, you may remember that I spoke with the editor of The Oregonian's travel section about writing a story on my trip to Africa. You may also recall that he was less than enthusiastic that I could come up with anything intelligible. Well, to cut to the chase, he ended up eating a few of his own words, as the article was published yesterday -- with photos! Here is the link, if you'd like to see it yourself:

http://www.oregonlive.com/travel/index.ssf/2010/07/in_africa_volunteers_see_their.html

I'm thrilled to say that just since yesterday, I've received over 30 responses from women wanting to join our Portland group. I also was contacted by the editor of a new regional women's magazine, who wants me to write a short feature about Dining For Women for their premiere issue!

Just wanted to share my joy. I'll send my next post out when I get invited on Oprah, or start planning for the next trip, whichever comes first. Happy sunshine!

Last Post

Quite a bit of time has gone by now – I’ve been back from Africa for almost 4 weeks now, and I have been wanting to write just one more post, to try to tie things up, bring my story to some sort of completion. I started writing this “last post” awhile back, but got distracted with other events in my life, and am just now returning to my task. I wanted to tell two more stories that I hadn’t shared – important ones, especially since they concerned the two groups that we originally went to Africa to visit (The BOMA Fund in Kenya and BeadForLife in Uganda). It seems like a huge slip-up on my part to not have discussed them at all, especially since those visits were so rich. But when I went back to the story I started and tried to pick up the thread, I realized that I’ve moved on from the telling of all the stories now, and that you probably have too. I felt like I’d do all this writing and no one would be interested anymore – too much time has passed, we’ve all got other things on our plates.

So I’m going to end instead by trying to put into words what I’ve gotten from this journey. I’ve been working on articulating it ever since I returned; it’s ephemeral and hard to pin down, but it goes something like this:

I’ve found a sense of generosity inside myself that has grown larger and kinder.

I learned deeply and truly that one person can indeed make a difference, and that we each have a responsibility to do so, in whatever way we’re called.

And I feel connected with the rest of the world in a way that I wasn’t before – it’s smaller now, and my heart understands that there is no difference between the human experience in middle-class America and the human experience in an African slum. The only differences are the circumstances and relative challenges; the longings and joys, connections and love are identical.

So that’s my take-away, and my strong wish is that these learnings continue to expand my being, and don’t fade away with the passing of time. And my other strong wish is that you’ve enjoyed coming along with me virtually, and that you’ve gained something for yourself too. Thank you for your interest in my journey – knowing you were reading these posts, and encouraging me to put my experiences into words, has deepened and grounded the events for me. So thank you for being there, cheering me on, and sharing this experience with me. It’s been awesome.

Images, finally

It's taken me quite some time to cull through the 2700+ images I brought back with me, and pull out ones that showed a bit of a storyline through the trips. I've narrowed it down as much as I can...feel free to stop whenever your eyes start to glaze over.

They are in two separate albums, one for Kenya, one for Uganda, with little captions for things that aren't totally obvious. You can view them as a slideshow by pushing a button above the images on the left. I'd suggest changing the timing of the slides to 5 seconds so you can both read the caption and look at the picture. (It's an option in the bar at the bottom once you start the slideshow.)

Let me know, please, if this isn't working. Otherwise, enjoy (I hope)!

Kenya:

http://picasaweb.google.com/110166153804188489963/PicsForBlogKenya?feat=directlink

Uganda:

http://picasaweb.google.com/110166153804188489963/PicsUganda?feat=directlink

Enduring Images

I’m starting to get asked by friends that I’ve talked with since getting back, “What’s one thing that really sticks with you from all you’ve seen?” but of course being me, I can’t narrow it down to just one. From Uganda, there are two that I can’t get out of my mind, one disturbing, one hopeful. Which would you like first? (This tells me a lot about you.)

OK, we’ll start with the sad, end with something good.

We were in rural Uganda, having just spent two days at Paraa Lodge, an amazing place overlooking the Nile River (the Nile!!! I kept pinching myself), located in Murchinson Falls National Park, the largest game reserve in Uganda. On the way back to Kampala, we stopped at the Boomu Women’s Group, a small collective that makes and sells crafts, and also has simple accommodation and meals for travelers on their way to the park. The leader of the Boomu group, Edna, was our guide and took us on a tour of the entire village, most of whom are not associated with Boomu, but just live in the area and allowed us to walk through and observe their daily lives -- cooking, doing laundry, washing dishes. (This is where the blacksmith I mentioned in the last post lives.) While these villagers are much better off than those in the slums we visited a few days earlier, the poverty is still wrenching – I have a picture of one of their “toilets” which consisted of a 2-foot hole in the ground with some largish sticks across it to keep you from falling in. Right out in the middle of the field, no walls, and certainly no toilet paper. Never mind flushing.

As we were walking though the huts on the dirt paths, we came across a skinny young girl, about 11 years old, who looked visibly pregnant -- I would have guessed maybe 7 months or so. We were all pretty aghast, having heard about very young girls having babies, but seeing it eye-to-eye was another thing. All sorts of thoughts were running through my mind – who did this to her? Is she married already, so young? Was it rape? I asked some of the other women in our group if they saw her and what they thought; we gossiped for a bit. Finally, I talked to our tour guide, who said she’d asked Edna what the story was. She isn’t pregnant, Edna said. She has worms.

Worms.

Can you imagine living with a belly swollen up like that, knowing what’s inside you, especially when the rest of you is so skinny?

“There isn’t the money to give her medication,” Edna said. De-worming pills cost around 30 cents each. “There are many like that in the village.” By the time our tour had finished, most of us had dug deeply into our pockets, and left Edna with a fund to purchase enough medication for everyone in the village who couldn’t afford the pills. Edna’s eyes were glowing, and her gratitude was genuine. It was clear this was going to happen. She wanted to write us a receipt, and promised to follow up with our tour guide, whose email address she had. Not necessary, we all agreed. We trust you. One woman in our group is a nurse who has worked a lot in poor countries, and she said that in situations like that village, the worms couldn’t really be eradicated, but the goal was just to cut down the numbers in the body and lessen the impact on people’s health.

This still makes my skin crawl just writing about it. The things we get to take for granted living here! This is the image I want to remember the next time I feel like complaining about some miniscule irritant in my own life. We are so very privileged. As Nicholas Kristof says, we won the birth lottery…

Now on to our hopeful story.

Our second full day in Uganda, we stopped at an orphanage that BeadForLife has an association with. Mark, our BeadForLife guide, told us that this orphanage was for parentless street kids who had no place to live, and had been started by a couple of young men who had grown up under the same circumstances. One of those young men, Derrick, met us in front of the gate and told us a bit about the orphanage. It’s called M-LISADA, which stands for Music, Life Skills and Destitution Alleviation. They house about 80 children, and provide a meal and daytime activities, including music lessons, for about another 70. At one point, he opened the gates to let us in, but instead a tidal wave of children came pouring out, screaming with excitement, yelling “Hello! Hello! Welcome!” and hugging each of us tightly before moving on to hug another of us, on and on til we were all grinning like fools and slightly wobbly from so much affection being poured on us. The children then began to choose favorites, and each of us found ourselves “adopted” by at least two or three children, who hung on to our hands and arms and escorted us indoors. “How are you?” said the thin boy who had glued himself to my side, with a thick Ugandan accent. “I am fine. How are you?” I replied. This seems to be the first exchange everyone learns in English, and the kids seem so proud to know that one. “My name is Ivan. What is your name?” Obviously this child had gone to at least some school, as he could communicate in English fairly smoothly, thick accent or no.

Soon the children were pried off of us, and we were given a tour of the facility, along with the personal and very moving story of the orphanage’s founder, Bosco, who had grown up without a father, only to have his mother leave for a trip to purchase supplies when he was 11, and never return. Suddenly this young boy found himself in charge of his two younger siblings, with no place to live and no way for them to feed themselves. As they moved from porch to porch to sleep for the night, Bosco learned to forage through the slums’ huge garbage dumps to find food, and eventually started hiring himself out carrying water for people for a few shillings. School for any of them was completely out of the question, but he used to stand behind the fence of a private school, watching as the children practiced their music lessons for the marching band. “Please, could I learn how to play, too?” he would ask the music teacher. “No, of course not. You’re just a dirty street kid. We can’t have your sort mixing with our children! Get out of here!” But the boy persisted, standing at the fence every day, and through sheer luck, finally encountered someone who was willing to help his dream come true.

Fast forward through years of just the right person showing up and being willing to help at just the right time, and you now have the present situation, a donated house of about 1200 square feet, where 80 children and 7 volunteer staff members live. The boys’ bedroom consists of about a dozen triple-level bunk beds crammed together, and they have made a firm rule: no more than two boys to a mattress. They are sad to not be able to offer a room to the other 70 children that show up each day for activities and a meal, but there is not a square inch in the home that’s not utilized to its full capacity. There simply is no more space for even one more bed. But what they have saved space for is their linchpin music program. One room is reserved for the lessons, another for storage of the many donated instruments and uniforms for their brass band. They hire their band out to various functions to earn money, and the kids are surprisingly good at what they do. They showed us a video they’d recently recorded of the band marching through the local neighborhood, spearheading a community event to clean the neighborhood of its street litter (with no scheduled garbage pickup in Uganda this problem is very pervasive).

As we moved through the tour, we headed outside, where all the children were waiting for us. They first sang one song in Swahili, then broke into The Star-Spangled banner, the tune being carried by a lone trumpet, while the kids, knowing the melody but not the words, sang along with “la-la-LA, La La LAAAA…” We all joined in, supplying the words, tears streaming down many of our faces (including mine). After, my buddy came back up to me again and grabbed my hand. “Hi,” he said. “Do you remember my name?” “Yes, of course, you’re Ivan!” I said. Those of you who know me well are aware that this feat was a minor miracle, as my ability to retain peoples’ names ranks at about the level of a topiary plant.

He beamed at me. Clearly these kids do not get much individualized attention, and he was going to make the most of it. We chatted for awhile about what instrument he played in the band (trombone) and what he wanted to be when he grew up (an engineer). Then our group moved on again for the rest of the tour. We eventually got to the kitchen, a very small room with a tiny sink and a mismatched collection of plasticware drying on the counter. “You feed everyone out of here?” someone asked. “Yes,” Bosco replied. “But where do you keep your food?” “Well, in this closet here,” he pointed to room with a half-empty sack of flour. “But we’re out of food right now…we haven’t eaten yet today, we have no money.” This was stated matter-of-factly, no guile, no trying to twist our heartstrings. More embarrassment on his part than anything else.

150 of these wonderful kids in their care, and they’ve run out of food? I felt like the air had been knocked out of me. We had been warned by Mark before arriving that this organization was run hand-to-mouth, on a shoestring budget, but I wasn’t prepared for what that meant in reality. By the time the tour ended, we had quietly collected donations from everyone, and handed them $700 US, enough to keep them afloat and pay all expenses for about two weeks – and hopefully buy lunch. Where the next chunk of funds was going to come from after that was up in the air, but they had managed to survive in this manner for over 10 years, and they are determined to stay open one way or another.

Part of the presentation involved their plans for the future, and their hope of doing some marketing to let others know of their existence. They now have their own web page (www.m-lisada.org) and are part of an organization called PYE -- Partnerships for Youth Empowerment (www.pyeglobal.org/4partnerships.html), which also has other partner organizations right here in the Pacific Northwest. If you search M-LISADA on Google, you’ll also find YouTube videos of the band in action.

The young men who run this organization – all volunteers and in their 20s – were so inspiring in their commitment to these kids and this project, that I can only hope that somehow the $25,000 that would pay all their bills and feed all 150 kids for a year somehow materializes so that each day is not such a crap shoot for their existence, and they would have time instead to focus on making themselves independently sustainable, their goal. Their energy and dedication, and the hope they hold out for the possibility of better lives for these forgotten and stigmatized children makes me believe it will happen.

Yes, they can.

Safely home

I'm going to try to catch you up with the rest of my trip over the next few days -- internet access in Uganda was basically worthless. I wrote two extensive blogs, only to have them both eaten by the computer instead of it posting them. Needless to say, I gave up. So now I'm home -- 33 hours door-to-door, arriving Wednesday night, and although my brain seems to have gotten lost somewhere over the Atlantic, my intestines have managed to import something that got through customs with no problem. So I'm lying low. A good chance to catch up on my blog.

Uganda proved to be a vastly different experience than Kenya, pretty much as I expected it would be. Even though the countries are next to each other, Kenya has pockets of strong Western influence, Uganda not as much. Parts of Kenya are very developed, Uganda is a bit more behind the curve. I was told that during colonial rule, the British settled in Kenya, but ruled Uganda from afar, not actually living in the country. There are no third-generation whites in Uganda, as you find in Kenya. The contrast between the countries is not as strong as going over the border from the US to Mexico, but isn't it amazing what a difference a few miles can make? As for the land itself, much of what I saw in Kenya was brown and barren, while in Uganda it's strikingly green. Winston Churchill, when traveling there in 1920-something, called Uganda "the pearl of Africa" (a quote that's plastered everywhere).

The biggest bummer for me was that they really don't speak Swahili in Uganda -- after all my practicing! English is their official language, but it's only spoken by those who have an education. Otherwise, it's one of 52 tribal languages. I started trying to learn some Luganda, spoken by many of those in Kampala (Weberle nnyo! -- thank you very much!), but after a few hours on the road, I was told nope, now we're in Luo country and we don't speak Luganda. We speak Luo. (Afueyo matae! -- thank you very much!) Another couple of hours, and it's nope, we don't speak Luo, we speak...

I gave up on that too.

The capital city of Kampala, home to over 2 million people, is filled with countless wooden shacks and sports potholes the size of antelopes. Traffic is best endured with your eyes closed (as long as you're a passenger), so as not to jump out of your skin as bicycles, motorcycles, trucks and cars all compete for the same lane, seemingly engaged in a mad game of chicken. Bicycles are used for transport of every possible item. We saw one man wheeling an entire bed -- with the sheets still on it -- down the road on top of his bike. Motorcycle helmets are unheard of, and passengers riding sidesaddle, holding small babies, is a common sight. We saw a young girl thrown into the middle of the street when a scooter went down right in front of us – she landed head-first, screaming, blood was streaming everywhere, then someone else loaded her on yet another motorcycle to take her to the hospital (it looked like she was not injured too severely).

In all of Kampala, there are only 3 traffic lights, and two of them don't work. Instead, there are white-uniformed traffic cops -- THESE guys are wearing motorcycle helmets -- trying vainly to direct the clogged mess into some semblance of movement. Occasionally a goat or even a herd of cows gets into the act, then things really come to a standstill. Uganda has the highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world (a fact that our tour guide only tells people when they're on their way to catch their departing flight). Luckily, although there were some very close calls, we managed to complete the entire trip unscathed. I wouldn't trade jobs with our drivers for all the world!

In traveling around, we found ourselves transfixed by the shop signs. Stores can be "sponsored" by a company, and it will paint the entire store its company color and plaster the logo all over it. Many buildings were hot pink -- the color of the top cell phone provider -- but my favorite was the store that was sponsored by Stayfree Maxipads, the building baby blue and complete with a giant painting of a sanitary napkin in glorious detail ("with wings!" it declared in large type above the door). Others were privately owned enterprises: The Tick Hotel, God Willing Beauty Shop, and my first prize winner, Junga Junga Acrobatic Man. We'd see them as we sped down the road in the countryside, and it was all I could do to not yell, "STOP THE CAR! I've GOT to get a picture of that!!!" (I did get one of the Tick Hotel, for all you unbelievers.)

We got our first real exposure to local cuisine in Uganda (in Kenya we were served Western food exclusively), and while most is quite tasty, they pretty much eat the same thing over and over. One of the main dishes is matoke, made from small green bananas which have been cooked and smushed into something resembling mashed potatoes. The meals are heavy on starches, serving both rice AND potatoes (simply called "Irish"), matoke, sweet potatoes, and cassava root, which to me tastes alot like white school paste, only drier. But they also frequently serve chicken, beef, or dried fish (you have to be careful in your ordering or you could also end up with goat), and the gravies are quite tasty. Another common side dish is ground nut sauce, which is pretty similar to a Thai peanut sauce, and served over rice.

These are just the stage settings in which our journey took place. The real stories are about the people we met – the women we stayed with at BeadForLife’s Friendship Village, the street kids playing in the brass band at the orphanage, the old man in the rural village who worked as a blacksmith, using bellows made of goatskin, still crafting spears and arrows.

Those stories will come, maybe tomorrow. But this will do for now. I just got notice that my brain made it on the connecting flight in Chicago.

Back to Nairobi

Jambo! (I'm learning Swahili.)

I've struggeld for awhile trying to figure out how to encapsulate the awesome experience that this half of the trip has been, and how to give you a real taste of it without typing my fingers to the bone or reddening your eyes. So I will pick one piece of the journey and leave the rest for now. Suffice it to say we're back in the bustling city of Nairobi -- contrary to God knows what I was thinking beforehand, this is a huge modern city complete with skyscrapers, malls, and traffic jams. Except for being a very obvious minority here, I could be in any big city in America. But the farther away from the city you go, the more things change. The houses become poorer and cement block homes turn into corrugated tin huts the size of some people's walk-in closets, the fancy shops become roadside shacks, and many people appear beaten down by life. I have not visited the slums here, so imagine I'd see much more of a contrast right within the city, but the countryside is striking in its poverty.

But what has been most fascinating to me is the time we have spent with the Maasai people. I feel like I've taken a crash course in social anthropology. As we drove deeper into Maasai country on our way to Maasai Mara, the biggest game reserve in Kenya and directly north of the Serengeti, the Western dress of the people we were seeing began to slowly mix with the traditional dress of the Maasai herdsmen -- bright red plaid cloaks called shakas (?) worn over another bright red shift-type piece, almost a dress. I asked Kathleen (our tour guide) where the plaid came from -- Scottish missionaries! This color is worn by almost all men, as it scares away the wild animals. (Hence wearing khaki colors on safari, to NOT scare away the animals.) And wild animals are definitely an issue -- the school we visited in Hellen's village (pictured on my blog) had been running evening classes for the shepards, but had to stop them for awhile as the drought had brought the hungry elephants down to the vilage looking for water, and a hungry elephant is a nasty elephant, definitely known to kill people. And there is no electricity in any of these villages, so walking anywhere at night also has the dangers of attacks by the other nocturnal hunters -- leopards, lions, hyenas. The Maasai boys go through a long initiation ceremony to turn them into warriors (5 to 7 years living in the bush, among other pieces) and killing wild animals when necessary is part of their training. Therefore they always carry their spear with them. Hellen told us that it was hard to talk them into leaving their spear outside the classroom when they did come to the evening classes, so some would bring it in, but then it made it so difficult for them to try to hold a pencil and their spear at the same time!

Hellen has done an amazing job in her small village of Maji Moto (which means hot water -- a thermal spring is near to their village) (www.majimoto.org) and welcomed us very warmly. She has started a school mainly for girls, as in the Maasai culture, girls rarely receive an education, and have no rights. The fathers often marry them off at a very early age (between 8 and 12 is not unusual) since the girl's family gets paid a dowry in cows for their daughters. Cows are THE measure of wealth in the culture of pastoral peoples, and a girl is typically bought for 6 cows. She has absolutely no say in who she marries or whether she marries. Polygamy is very common among the Maasai (and still practiced by more modern people too -- our very sophisticated driver has two wives -- one in the country where his family comes from, and one in Nairobi where his business is based. We kidded him alot about Wife Number One and Wife Number Two. The wives (according to him) don't seem to mind the arrangement at all). As the young men build their herds, and can afford the dowry, they will buy more wives, as another measure of wealth is how many children you have. One man we met was one of 18 children by 4 different wives. Very often the men are much much older than the girls they buy, which is very hard for the girls. Then the men die, and the girl is now a widow, in Maasai culture unable to marry again.

Early marriage is technically against the law since 2001 --the legal age is now 18 -- but in practice it is still widespread. However, if a girl is very strong-willed she can sometimes run away and go to the authorities, who can take her to people like Hellen, who provide shelter and education for these girls. While we were there, a young girl was brought in who was an orphan, and her relatives instead of caring for her were going to marry her off to an older man who was HIV-positive, in order to get the cows. She ran away and with the help of her neighbors went to the authorities who brought her to Hellen. We decided as a group to sponsor her first year of education, at the total cost of $300.

The children at Hellen's school were so sweet -- right now she has two grades, and is adding one more class each year as the kids grow. We were lucky to be there on a Tuesday, as they wear their traditional clothes to school on Tues and Thurs, and wear their uniforms (EVERYONE wears uniforms in school in this country) the other days. Cute does not BEGIN to describe these kids! They sang for us and we took pictures like crazy -- the kids LOVED to see themselves in the camera monitors...

There is SO very very much more to tell, and I am out of time. I wish I could give you a better picture of this village as we met the warriors and elders who are supporting Hellen and her mission, and also sang and danced with the widows in the village Hellen has created for them when they are cast out by their families, as well as buying some of the jewelry and crafts they've made to support themselves. This is the village that Jamii Mojo in Portland supports, that I talked about in an earlier post. I hope to have access in Kampala once I get to Uganda -- leaving tomorrow! Another chapter begins very soon...

Tuanande baadaye! Kwaheri! (see you later! goodbye!)

Greetings from Kenya!

We're finally at a place with internet access, which I am so happy about because my memory banks are getting overloaded with so much to report!

The trip over was uneventful but grueling, 30 hours door-to-door. Everyone arrived safely except for the luggage of 4 of our group, the last of which finally appeared today (she was much more cheerful about it than I would have been). The night of our arrival I was so exhausted I could barely remember my own name, much less the 16 other women I was meeting for the first time. By morning, everything was much better and we had an amazing breakfast at our hotel in downtown Nairobi with the best coffee I have ever tasted -- nothing but Kenyan coffee for me from now on! It was great to see Marsha again (the founder of Dining For Women) and to meet her 13-year-old daughter Anna Lise. I had been a bit concerned how it would be since she is the only child with us, but from the moment I met her I knew it would actually be a bonus having her along -- she's articulate, engaged, friendly, and very self-assured for her age. I should have known -- she's Marsha's daughter!

Immediately after breakfast we headed out in 4 vans (called matatus here, and they are the ubiquitous form of mass transit for the entire country) and drove 6 hours up to Samburu Game Reserve. At one point, Kathleen, our tour guide, stopped our caravan to let us know that we would be staying in a different lodge than we had planned on, as the rains had come early this year, and she just found out that our original lodge had been innundated that morning by a flash flood! (The whole area was devasted, 4 lodges were wiped out, but luckily no one was killed or injured.) Fortunately, there was room for us across the river in Buffalo Springs Game Reserve, so with the required flexibility that any trip to Africa requires, we changed course and headed over there instead. It turned out to be perfectly lovely and we were all fine with the change. We stayed there 3 nights (someone asked at the desk if they had internet access and the response was "Internet?? Um, no.") and were treated both early morning and late afternoon with game drives through the preserve. Over the days was saw families of elephants (pretty similar to my top picture, in fact), gazelles, impalas, warthogs, baboons, and a number of animals I'd never heard of before in the gazelle/impala family. We saw so many giraffes that way too quickly we wouldn't even stop anymore -- "Oh, it's just some more giraffes. Let's keep going!" But it's spectacular, truly amazing, to see the animals in their own environment. The crowning piece was the day we saw first the male lion, quite close, then later two females with four small cubs. They were wrestling and playing tug-of-war with a long stick. The moms just dozed. Magical!

The best part of the trip so far, though, has definitely been the visit over to Umoja village on our second day in the Samburu region. This village is a haven for women only, who have been abused by their husbands, want to escape early marriages to much older husbands, or have been abandoned by their families because they were widowed. It was started 20 years ago by Rebecca Lolosi (sp?) and has become an educational outreach center where Umoja women go to the neighboring villages and meet with the women there to talk about women's rights, the importance of sending their daughters to school (very rare in this part of the country, although this issue is also prevalent all over the third world), and to try to end the cultural practice of female genital mutilation. As you can imagine, this does not go over very well with the men in the villages (and some of the more traditional women also) and they have had many problems with backlash and village security. But they have persevered and become fairly well-known, and host visitors groups like ours on an ongoing basis. This helps them support themselves as they charge an admission fee to the village, give a tour and discuss the history of the village, and have beautiful handicrafts for sale that the women have made.

As we first pulled in to the village, I was spellbound to see a large group of women standing at the entrance to greet us, all in their traditional clothes (which they always wear -- this was not for show) of beautiful brightly colored long dresses and ring after ring after ring of beaded necklaces. They were singing a traditional welcome song, and one by one danced towards us in welcome. (I have a video of this that I'll post when I get home.) This went on for quite some time, then we were invited beyond the walls to the inside of the village, where they brought us into a circle with them and sang more and got us to dance with them too. This village is poorer than anything I've ever encountered, except for what I had seen on the trip from Nairobi to Samburu. The homes throughout the region -- in this village and all the others surrounding -- are small huts made of sticks of wood with cow dung for roofs. In some cases as the cow dung deteriorates with the weather, they patch it with pieces of cardboard. People sleep on goatskins or cardboard -- mattresses are a real luxury. They are a pastoral people, so their food consists of milk and meat from their cattle or goats. There has been a very severe drought in Kenya over the last 3 years, in which much of the livestock has perished, making their plight even harsher. Yet they are able to find joy in their lives too -- the children are always waving at us as we go past, and smiles are quick to appear from everyone. But back to the village -- we toured their shcool where both their sons and daughters attend -- two rooms built on very barren land (as is true for the rest of the village too). The children sang for us and one young boy cried the whole time in fear -- I don't know that he'd ever seen a white person before!

These women, poor as they are, are still proud and resourceful. I struggled quite a bit after we left with being the "white woman with camera" going around taking pictures, and we talked about this quite a bit in our group as most of us felt similarly, but were assured by Kathleen that they were used to this and knew that it was a part of opening their village for a tour and that it was one of their main sources of income. But picture-taking of people here in general is something that I'm very sensitive to, and try not to be invasive as much as I'd like to document all that I'm seeing.

The journey so far is deeply rich, insightful, heart-wrenching, and mind-expanding. And there's still so much more to go! I've left out so many stories and other visits, but this is plenty for now, poor reader! If you want to see where I'm staying tonight, go to www.serenahotels.com/mountainlodge (I think!). I'll have plenty of pictures to share when I get back --sorry to say I can't upload now. Yesterday, I culled the shots I've taken already down to 655...

More at the next internet access point!

On my way!

Four hours from now I will be leaving for the airport! I leave at 5 am, so yes that means I'm writing this at 1 in the morning. I have just about completed everything on my list except chopping carrots to take on the plane with me and writing down a few last addresses for postcards. I knew the trip was officially beginning today when I took my first dose of anti-malaria medicine, which has to be started two days before arrival. I did my final luggage weight check last night, and come in at a modest 45.5 pounds -- a whole extra 4 pounds I could have packed! What else might I need...hmmmm...

The flight will cover 10,226 miles and take me 27 hours, stopping in Newark, then Amsterdam where I'll meet up with 8 other women on the trip, then we're on to Nairobi, arriving at 8:30 pm on Wednesday. There's a 10 hour time difference, and I was advised by a frequent flyer friend to try to get on local time ASAP, which means my strategy is to take a sleeping pill as soon as we take off from Newark at about 3 pm Oregon time, and hope for a full night's sleep. Which with the way things are going with getting to bed right now, shouldn't be too hard. (True confession: Part of the reason I'm up so late is that I had to -- repeat HAD to -- watch the season finale of The Bachelor. Can you believe he picked Vienna?!? My sordid secret is now out. I feel much better.)

One last hope for fixing the technological glitch that has everyone who subscribed to my blog getting flooded with everyone else's responses: PLEASE DO NOT respond to the blog post emails -- it goes to everyone! If you'd like to comment (which I would love) please either go to the blog itself (http://patricia2africa.blogspot.com) and leave a comment there, or send me an email at my normal address. Everyone thanks you!

My next post will be from Africa, the first time I find access. Thank you everyone for all your well-wishes for this journey -- I feel very loved and supported, and am so glad you're coming with me!

Quick check

This short post is mainly a way to check that everyone who has subscribed to the email notification of new posts is getting them. And also to let you know that if you want to read the 3 other posts that went up between my first announcement and now, you have to visit my actual blog at http://patricia2africa.blogspot.com

As I write this, countdown to takeoff is a mere 80 hours...final packing commences Saturday morning. My biggest trip accomplishment today was that my writer friend Tom and I brainstormed and decided upon my African name for this journey: Ahafta Goweewee. Being such a water girl, I feel an inherent kinship with the true spirit of this name ;-)

Right in my own backyard

Less than 5 days to go...I can hardly focus on anything else! My list is slowly getting shorter, which is a VERY good thing. I went today and picked up the donations I received from The Learning Palace -- lots of markers and crayons and a huge number of pencils -- all great stuff! I went ahead and bought some sharpeners too, otherwise the pencils become alot less useful :-) I'm so grateful to them for their generosity.

I've had some amazing coincidences over the last couple of days. My old neighbor Ciel sent me a link to an organization right here in Portland called Hands to Hearts (http://handstohearts.org), headed up by a woman she used to work with. Ciel said they recently started working in Uganda, and lo and behold, they're based in the same city we'll be visiting! So I called, and long story short, I'm going to be delivering some items for them to their 2-woman crew in Uganda, and those two women are going to come have dinner with us while we're there! We're also invited to participate in one of the trainings they'll be giving the day before we leave. Hands to Hearts is focused on providing early childhood education to the mothers and other caregivers, going over basic health issues and helping them to understand their babies better -- things that seem maybe obvious to us, but are not so for women whose main focus each and every day is to collect enough water, find enough firewood, and try to somehow earn enough (usually less than $1/day) to feed their children at least one meal. Many women are caring not only for their own children but also for orphans that they've taken on due to the long periods of violence the country has suffered. I'm thrilled that this opportunity has evolved out just following a link!

The other coincidence also involves following a link provided by another friend to yet another organization in Portland, this one working in Kenya with the Maasai tribes. Out of all the tiny villages in Kenya -- a country twice the size of Nevada with nearly 40 million residents-- this organization, Jamii Moja (www.jamiimoja.org), is working with the exact same village, and the exact same woman in that village, that we are already planning on visiting! So of course I called them too, and although there's nothing I can help bring over for them, their friendly representative gave me a fascinating history of her involvement with the village, and the work that the Maasai woman Hellen Nkuraiya is doing in her village to help bring an end to the traditional practice of female genital cutting as a coming-of-age ritual, as well as helping to provide a way of making a living for widows who traditionally become liabilities and/or outcasts from the village once their husbands died. You can read more about Hellen and the work that's being done in the village either through Jamii Moja or through the village website www.majimoto.org.

So I am more than a little stoked.

I was also asked about my packing progress, so here's that update. Going over the list of what I'm supposed to bring for the trip, NEUTRAL COLORS were highly recommended for the safari portions. If you know me at all, you know I look like death warmed over in NEUTRAL COLORS. I dug through every single drawer without locating a single neutral garment in my possession. So down I trooped to my favorite resale clothes store (The Dig for you Portlanders), and emerged two hours later -- the poor, kind clerk stayed 20 minutes past closing as I whittled down my original selection of over 50 try-ons -- with two big bags of NEUTRAL COLORS, all for $50! Ya gotta love resale! I will now blend SO WELL into the background, they'll probably leave me behind, mistaking me for a pile of sand.

Donations and Generosity

The countdown continues...10 days and 9 hours to liftoff! All sorts of last-minute details are emerging, being added onto The List, and some are actually getting crossed off. I've now purchased the soccer ball that is my share of the bunch of them our group is bringing as gifts for the kids at BeadForLife in Uganda -- now I just have to figure out how to deflate it to fit in my suitcase!

We were also asked to bring school supplies, so yesterday when I was out and about, I bumped into a place called The Learning Palace, an educational toy store here in Portland. I went in and wandered vaguely around -- me with no kids and no clue what was the best thing to bring -- and it occurred to me that maybe, just MAYBE, I could ask them to donate some stuff. So long story short, (which included a ballsy phone call and a very detailed email) it looks like they are going to do just that! I've asked for SMALL items, please, again for that suitcase problem. The Donations Guy said he'd try to have it together for me next week before I go. I'm so good at giving people long lead times!

I also received the sweetest note in the mail today -- snail mail, remember that? -- from Carol and Gene, part of my family in Ohio. They wanted to tell me how proud of me they were of me and that they wanted to support me on my trip, and enclosed a check for $100! Whoo-hoo! And a heart full of gratitude for their kindness and generosity, too.

My last newsy item is literally about the news-- an update on The Oregonian from my story in the first post. I was granted a meeting with the Travel Section Editor on Thursday, and brought him a sample of my writing (it was the eulogy I had written when my dog Jasper died last summer -- many of you probably received that as an email). Having seemingly passed that test, we sat over a cup of coffee and he gave me lots of pointers about how to interview for an interesting story, what types of photos they'll be looking for, and overall gave me encouragement to take the leap and write a piece for the paper. "I've never done this before -- meet with someone and give them tips like this," he said. "But most writing I see is really crap and yours at least is clear and easy to follow, so we'll see what you can do with it. I'm still not promising anything, though..." "I know, I know," I gushed, thrilled to have even gotten this far. "But I like what you're doing, I think it's a good cause, and I'd like to help you get some more publicity if I can," he concluded, standing up and bringing our meeting to an abrupt end. I grabbed my half-drunk cup of coffee and trotted after him as he strode out of the building, huge grin on my face. Another victory! So far, this is all going downright swimmingly!

Homework

I've been trying to learn some about Kenya since it's my first stop, and followed the recommendation of our Kenya travel guide and got the book "Unbowed" out of the library. It's a fascinating, enlightening autobiography of Wangari Maathi, an amazing woman born in rural Kenya in the 40s, who started the Green Belt Movement (an environmental action group planting millions of trees in a rapidly deforested Kenya) and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in 2002. She gives both a history of Kenya from colonial times and a scathing indictment of the second administration after Kenyan independence. The amount of harrassment she received from her own government, including multiple jailings and police-sanctioned beatings, gives me not only a big dose of gratitude for our own freedoms, but also a much greater understanding of what individuals in developing countries are up against as they try to shift ingrained cultural beliefs to become a freer and more just society.

It also made me aware of a buried belief of mine that if we just sent enough aid or assistance, or helped to get enough programs off the ground, that social change would naturally follow. I'm seeing how naive and oversimplified that way of thinking is, and that the answers are not only much more complex, but the issues are deeply rooted in a social milieu that one can never truly understand from mere observation, especially from afar.

Having completed that one, I'm now on to "Half the Sky," Nicolas Kristoff's probing look at the status of women around the globe. Filled with personal stories and deeply moving, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in these issues. It's one of those books that I find myself making excuses to go read.

I'll end tonight with my funny moment of the day. I went to see a movie with some friends tonight, and one part of the previews was this beautiful photographic montage of ethereal images from around the world, soothing music in the background. Across the images rolled these words: "What is a journey?...A journey is not a trip...It's not a vacation...It's a process. A discovery... (At this point, I'm thinking WOW! I gotta put this in my blog -- this is SO much what this trip is about for me) "...A journey brings us face-to-face with ourselves...It shows us not only the world, but how we fit into it..." It went on like that a bit longer, then up on the screen pops a picture of a Loius Vuitton handbag. It was their advertisement! Everyone in the theatre first laughed, then booed. I totally joined them -- but came home and found the quote online later anyway, just to share with you.

In the air in 18 days

It's all starting to feel very real now. In 18 days -- on March 2nd at 7am, to be exact, I'll be on my way to Kenya, and then on March 14th, on to Uganda. Yikes!

I've been planning this trip for nearly a year now, working with Marsha Wallace, the founder of Dining For Women, under whose auspices this trip is happening. I've been volunteering with Dining For Women (DFW) for over 3 years, leading a chapter first in Corvallis, now here in Portland, holding educational potluck dinner circles once a month. We take the money we would have spent going out to dinner, and pool our donations in support of grassroots organizations in the developing world that help alleviate extreme poverty. DFW supports a variety of programs all over the world --a different one each month -- that foster good health, education, and economic self-sufficiency specifically for women and girls (www.diningforwomen.org).

Over a year ago, I naively volunteered to be in charge of the travel program, and so have found myself at the center of all the planning, publicity, and general hoopla for not one but two trips, involving two tour guides and 25 travelers from across the country. It's been, shall we say, a learning experience. But with the responsibility comes the chance to influence some of the details of the trip -- this year's trip is for women only, we'll be getting to see a dance performance in Uganda on our last night :-), and we'll be staying in Nairobi at a locally-owned hotel as opposed to the "big box"-type hotel we were originally booked into. Luckily, the two tour guides we're working with are fantastic and take care of everything on the ground in each country, which would more than boggle my mind if I tried to do that piece too. Our itineraries are fantastic, and include an exquisite mix of meeting with the women in the groups we've supported in the last year, and getting a chance to go on safari to experience the wonderful wildlife. The groups we'll be visiting on this trip are The BOMA Fund in Kenya (www.bomafund.org), and BeadForLife in Uganda (www.beadforlife.org). One of the pieces I'm most looking forward to is a visit to the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda, and going chimp tracking! I have a bit of a thing for these close cousins of ours...

So I'll sign off for today with my tidbit of exciting news -- I contacted The Oregonian (Portland's premiere newspaper) today about doing an article in the Travel section on my trip, and they've expressed an interest! Granted, it was couched with "IF what you write/photograph comes out interesting" but, hey, I get that! All I want is the opportunity. And what an opportunity this entire trip is for me! I feel so lucky, so blessed.