Pole, Pole (pronounced pole –ay, pole –ay) is Swahili for “slowly, slowly.”  It is the overarching mantra for the African lifestyle.  Time has no presence here in Africa.  If you need something done, it will get done, but pole, pole.  If you have somewhere to be, put no restrictions on how long it will take to arrive.  To an African, this is arbitrary.  The important thing is that you arrive.  It could take 2 hours, it could take 20.  But one thing you can count on, it will happen pole, pole.  Jane and I have come to understand just how extensively this phrase permeates African living over the past 2 1/2 months.  When planning this portion of our trip, our stay in Kenya was to be a time of cultural immersion.  A time to take in all of the intricacies and complexities of Kenyan living.  While we did accomplish this goal, it did not happen at all like we had planned, but I guess that is the beauty of travel.  You can’t plan everything.

Our initial plan after arriving in Nairobi from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, was to immediately make our way to Homa Bay, a small town in Western Kenya situated on Lake Victoria, where we would be WWOOFing for 3 weeks.  For those of you not familiar with WWOOF, it stands for Worldwide Organization of Organic Farming.  This organization pairs volunteers with organic farmers, and in exchange for a hard day’s work, you receive room, board, and a true cultural experience.  Jane and I were very excited to be spending our time with Tobias Ojala and family.  Our travel day from Nairobi to Homa Bay was long and at times painful.  Traveller’s diarrhea still haunted me, and I was just praying that the Cipro would do its thing and plug me up, as there are no bathroom breaks on African bus trips besides the 3 minutes you might have to go cop-a-squat in the bushes at a random stop.  After 7 hours on the bumpiest bus ride EVER (at one point our bald-tired bus turned 4X4, hit a bump that jolted Jane and I at least a foot out of our seats, not good for the girl still battling Montezuma) we arrived in Kisumu, only to quickly make our way to the chaotic matatu depot (what Kenyan’s call a jam packed mini-van), to begin our journey to Homa Bay.  According to Lonely Planet, the trip from Kisumu to Homa Bay should take no longer than 2.5 hours.  However, whenever you put a time restraint on Mama Africa, she laughs in your face.  In order to avoid a known police stop where they fine matatu drivers for transporting more people than the van was made to fit (how dare they), our matatu took the pot-hole laden back roads.  By the way, African pot holes are what we would consider trenches or canyons.  So, needless to say, 4 long and painful hours later, we pulled into Homa Bay.  At that point we had no phone to call Tobias with (we have since wizened up and invested in a cheap, no-frills, unlocked Nokia), and were hoping he would be there waiting for us.  How foolish.  That’s ok, we’ll borrow some nice African boy’s phone to call our host family, except the number he gave us was not in service.  Awesome.  Long story short, with the help of some nice young men in the Homa Bay bus depot, we got a hold of Tobias and he came to collect us. We experienced our first ride on the back of a motorcycle taxi, commonly referred to as a “boda boda.”

To get directly to the point, we failed miserably in our first WWOOFing experience.  We had idealized what our situation would be based on the information we had been given, which as we soon found out, was not quite accurate.  When selecting a farm to volunteer at, Jane and I both looked for a host that was serious about developing a sustainable, organic farm.  Africa is a continent of a plethora of needs, and many hosts advertised for help on a farm, coupled with devoting volunteer energy to a school, orphanage, church etc.  We specifically weeded out those options and selected Homa Bay Organic Farm with Tobias because he seemed serious about further developing his farm using organic practices.  However, soon after arriving we found out that the farm was not exactly Tobais’ priority.  Tobias was actually Pastor Tobias, pastor of the Christian Life church in Homa Bay.  He also had ties with a rural school, and unbeknownst to us, we were to begin teaching English the Monday after arriving.  Other than weeding, there were no big plans for the work we would be doing on the farm.  The living situation was also a challenge, to say the least.  Jane and I were both still battling traveller’s diarrhea coupled with other stomach issues.  This was exacerbated by the fact that there was no running water, which meant no way to flush the toilet after using it.  Not pretty.  While we loved sharing meal times with the family, we both had an extreme aversion to the food being prepared, since it was the food we had been eating for the past 2 months….rice, potatoes, cabbage, ugali, and pumpkin leaves.  All of this came to a head when waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, Jane turned on the light only to find that covering every inch of the floor, including our packs, were our other 30+ cockroach friends we were unknowingly sharing our room with.  It was then we decided that before imposing any more on the Ojala family, it would be best that we leave.

Jane and I are both still processing and working through our experience at Homa Bay.  On one hand, we have felt completely humbled and, well, like complete wusses for not being able to tough it out.  This is, after all, how so many African’s live, and being able to stick it out certainly would have been a sign of solidarity, experiencing the ups and downs of daily life just as the Ojala family does.  On the other hand, we felt duped.  What we thought we were volunteering for was not in actuality what was planned.  Pastor Tobias and his family are extremely welcoming, generous, passionate, hard-working people with extremely big hearts.  While our volunteer experience with them didn’t go as planned, we both have no doubt that we crossed paths with them for a reason.  We left Tobias and family on good terms, and plan to stay in touch to help in whatever capacity we can in the future.

So, having bailed on our WWOOFing experience just a tad early, we basically had 2.5 weeks to kill before our scheduled safari.  Since we had anticipated having little to no expenses while WWOOFing, this meant we would have 2.5 weeks of expenses not budgeted for, AKA we needed to spend as little money as possible during this time, AKA 2.5 weeks of being bored out of our skulls.  In reality it wasn’t that bad. We decided to settle in Kisumu, where we found a relatively clean (our standards were pretty low at this point), cheap hotel called “Sooper Guest House”.  Yes, that is Sooper spelled with two o’s. It’s Africa, what can I say.

The Sooper Guest House!

Anyway, we also found a restaurant right around the corner called Green Garden Restaurant which served something other than rice, ugali, and deep fried chicken.  Since it was such a diamond in the rough and also CHEAP, we proceeded to get every breakfast and dinner there for all of our time in Kisumu.

The Green Garden

That said, we became friends with the wait staff, since they saw our shining faces multiple times a day.  Elizabeth, Francis, and Julius were all young, hard-working Kenyans who let us into their lives and by doing so, gave us the cultural insight we were hoping for.  Meeting the three of them was certainly the highlight of our time in Kisumu.

Courtney and Julius

Elizabeth, Jane, and Francis

I am on processing overload with all that I have learned and observed here in Africa.  Poverty in this continent is different than central and south America.  Poverty is certainly unforgiving by nature, but there is something about it in Africa that is particularly brutal.  While Africans can be seen as happy people, using “Hakuna Matata” as their life mantra, they lack a compassion for their neighbor and as a result a “survival of the fittest” mentality seems to prevail.  From a politician who has gone from rags to riches, and now makes sure his needs are met at the expense of his people, to a man who will not give us his seat on a crowded bus to a woman with two kids in tow and baggage, the mindset seems to be “life is hard for everyone, so just do what you have to do to take care of you and yours.”

Roadside market in Kisumu

Elizabeth, our frequent waitress at the Green Garden Restaurant, is a perfect example of how brutal life is for the common man in Africa.  She is a young mother of two, who after the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007, was robbed of everything she owned and beaten badly along with the other members of her family, all of this because she was the same tribe of the president, who allegedly rigged the elections.  She now works 14 hour days, 6 days a week at the restaurant while she looks for other work.  Her family has had to slowly build back even the most basic of possessions.  A spoon here, a cup there…and she still has the strength to smile and go on.  And then there is Pastor Tobias in Homa Bay, living in a house with no running water, infested with cockroaches, and just enough money to put food on the table for his family of 5, his sister, and 3 orphans that all live under the same roof.  Life is so hard for these people. It is humbling to hear their stories. It makes me feel terrible for complaining about the food when they eat the same thing at every meal.

On a much lighter note, since Jane’s birthday happened to fall during our Kisumu retreat, we were able to share the celebration with our new found friends at the Green Garden.  I got a “cake” at the one bakery in town, and coordinated with Elizabeth, Francis, and Julius so that after Jane and I ate dinner that night, they would all come out of the kitchen, with her cake, singing happy birthday at the top of their lungs.  They were more than thrilled to share in this moment with us, and like good little doobies they stuck to the plan.  The night was a success.

As you would imagine, it was difficult to say goodbye to this trio.  Francis, in particular seemed distraught about us leaving.  He was adamant about keeping in touch, and told us every day how much he would miss our presence.  Me being the extremely perceptive individual I am, thought there was something unusually heartfelt about Francis’ goodbye, but such wise intuition would not be known until after we said adios.  A couple of weeks after departing Kisumu, Jane received a particularly interesting email from our young Kenyan friend, in which he explained the fact that to him, she was more than just a friend.  Without her he was like a king without a queen.  Every night before going to sleep, he gazed upon a picture we had given him with Jane in it, wishing longingly she were there.  There were many other heartfelt gems in this love letter, but the gist was that our young friend Francis had fallen hard and was in love.  Oh if he only knew…

While our time in Kenya wasn’t exactly what we had imagined, we were still able to immerse ourselves in daily Kenyan living and take away cultural lessons that will help in shaping each of our world views.  Alongside such cultural experiences we also had one more key take away that will never be forgotten:  Jane is a cougar.   and that’s where I’m at…