by Mary Anne Hoff

I’d never wanted to go to Kenya. Paris? Yes. London? Every chance I got. Peru and Costa Rica? Yes. The Greek Isles? Yes. Kenya? It had never crossed my mind to go to Kenya.

Last August, I had to search for Kenya on a map of Africa. So, I surprised myself when I said “Yes, I’ll go.” I would travel with two other women from Soar-Kenya, a non-profit group founded in Wisconsin by Don Hoffman who had been a Peace Corp volunteer in Kenya. Later one of the others decided not to go, and I wavered.

On October 3rd, the British Airways 737 taxied to the terminal, and we stepped into the hot, steamy Nairobi night. I didn’t know anyone in any direction for thousands of miles.  

Some where in the crowd of black and chocolate and caramel faces were two people—Vitalice and Nelly, the founders of Hopewell School—waiting for us. Next thing I knew, I was being hugged and kissed on both cheeks like in Lyon, France. This was going to be okay, as civilized as Lyon. 

Our driver packed us into a car and sped toward our hotel. Not everything was strange. Coca Cola, Barclays, Exxon, and other signs announced that Americans had been here, and this was planet Earth.  

Around midnight, I stretched out for a blessed sleep, the kind of sleep that only comes after seventeen hours in an airplane. Then, suddenly, I’m awake. What is that sound? Dawn is beginning outside the window where a male voice fills the entire world. He pauses; I hear a rooster crow. From the bed at the far side of the room, Nelly says, “The mosque is next door. He’s praying. It’s the first day of Ramadan.” I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and wonder why there’s a rooster in the middle of Nairobi, in the Westlands, an upscale neighborhood in Nairobi.         

“Will he pray very long?” I finally ask. No answer; Nelly sleeps.

The next day I’m trying to stay awake as Mr. Doshi thanks us for the “pads.” I assume he’s talking about pads of paper. We’re sitting in his conference room on the thirteenth—maybe it was the nineteenth– floor of one of Nairobi’s skyscrapers. We’ve been served Coca Cola by his attendant whose only duty seems to be to make guests comfortable. How civilized.  

Mr. Doshi says, “I had to buy panties for the girls. They don’t wear panties.” Suddenly I’m wide awake. What is this about? He passes around a package containing three white cotton panties, so we can see their merits. “The pads are locked in a warehouse and guarded.  Your school will need to have security or the pads will be stolen.” Vitalice nods. I’m uncomfortable. I wonder what females use when they don’t have access to sanitary pads. Throughout the month, I bounce between thinking this Kenya is a civilized country to thinking it is uncivilized.

Mr. Doshi continues, “And now the girls do not have to miss school. Missing school put them behind, you know. So, thank you, thank you.” He’s a dear man, probably about 80 years old, gracious and smart and kind. (Wrestling the World needs most of the credit for supplying sanitary pads.)

It’s been months since I left Kenya. I’ll be weeding my garden or washing dishes or driving into town or dreaming in my sleep and once again I’m in Kenya.  

I’m listening to the speakers at Founders Day and smelling the stew that actually has meat in it. Some one donated a bull. That reminds me of “barassa” and I smile. Sometimes on a Friday, at 2 p.m. Kenyan time, I imagine Vitalice and Calvin, the student leader, waiting under the big tree at Hopewell School.  

Hopewell School is a school equivalent to our high schools. Barassa is one of Vitalice’  management tools. Every Friday afternoon, each student comes carrying a metal chair. Vitalice and Calvin face the 600 students.

Vitalice calls barassa “the safety valve”—a time for students to lodge complaints, complaints that either Vitalice, Mr. Kahunda to this crowd of young people, or Calvin will resolve. It seems so civilized, so sensible to have a student leader chosen by the faculty. I think back to my years of teaching high school and wonder what effects “barassa” would have had at the schools where I taught.

Vitalice stands, “Who’s first?”

The first problem involves a new student who paid 25 cents for a locker but then holds up a metal chair with a big hole in the wooden seat. Laughter moves through the crowd. Not every student has a “locker,” a metal box attached to the underside of a chair. Most of Hopewell’s students are orphans and all are poor. They work in the nearby quarry or on farms to earn the $21 to attend Hopewell. If they can’t pay, they’re happy to help the school in some way. Many of them work in the school’s fields where vegetables grow for the daily lunch. Lunch is the only meal many of these students have every twenty-four hours. But many students who do have the fees also work in the fields. Imagine students hoeing and weeding, seeding and harvesting their food.   

“CAL-VIN,” Vitalice stresses both syllables. Calvin will resolve the “locker” problem.

 Voices scatter on the breeze making it difficult to hear. I think of the theaters, gyms, auditoriums, and libraries with microphones in our American schools. What if it had rained? Would barassa have been canceled? I doubt it.

The next problem is a serious charge of unfairness by a teacher. Vitalice stands, “Anyone else having this problem?” About five hands go up. “I’ll investigate.” Vitalice sits; he whispers to me, “Because a teacher is involved, I’ll check it out.”

“Next,” Vitalice calls out.A young man suggests that the cow donated to the school for the Founders’ Day stew be kept alive and milked. A murmur of approval comes from the crowd. I hear a student say, “Milk would taste good.”

Vitalice stands. “It’s a bull . . . a male. It can’t be milked.” Everyone laughs. Now you understand why I smile when I smell the stew cooking in the kitchen.  

The “kitchen” has a dirt floor, a tin roof, two cooks, and three huge iron pots that hang over wood fires. At 6 a.m., the cooks are the first to arrive at Hopewell’s gate. The security guard lets them in to peel onions and carrots, wash kale and tomatoes with the clean water from the Hopewell well . . . possibly Hopewell’s most treasured asset, donated by  the Rotarians. People throughout Barut, the slum where Hopewell School is located, walk miles to get water at the well.

Rail-thin men come on bicycles loaded with three to five yellow plastic vats. They stand on the pedals and off they go with the water-filled vats strapped to the bicycle—one on the bicycle seat– and possibly one on their back. Rail-thin women in thin cotton dresses come and leave with a container of water balanced on their head; they carry a second one  and most likely a sleeping infant in a sling made from tying a scarf around their necks and waists.   

Hopewell also has electricity in the administrative building, the 14×10 foot tin-sided building where tree-trunks are used for 2x4s. Other luxuries are a cement floor, plywood partitions, and a door on the office where Vitalice and Nelly each have a desk, a real wooden desk like my teachers had in our country school. The office has one window, no glass.        

Founders Day is a big deal and rain has delayed it for several hours. No one minds. No one worries or tries to get a weather report. No angst. No stress. A church has brought a speaker system, a keyboard, and several ministers. Most of the students have gathered, once again carrying their chairs. They visit in small groups while they wait in the drizzle, red sweaters over their heads.

Hopewell students wear a uniform: navy blue trousers or straight skirts, pale blue shirts or blouses, and a red sweater. The males wear striped red ties. These are the only clothes many students own.

A lot of people know how to play the keyboard. Male students take turns break dancing. Their classmates cheer and clap.  Small groups sing. Names are called out, and a classmate makes his or her way to the front to perform.  Obviously these young people know each other’s talents and skills. I wander over and hang at the edge of the group. But shortly, a student taps my shoulder and escorts me to a chair in the front row in time to see a group of teachers—many are Hopewell graduates—sing amid much laughing and clapping. The students love this performance.

The rain does stop, and the planned program begins. Many people make speeches: the president of the PTO, the chief of Nakuru, several people running for office in the coming elections. A pastor gives a sermon. Students from the state’s primary school down the road sing and dance and play native drums. The “wee” ones from the care center that Hopewell sponsors steal the show with their singing and dancing. Awards are given: for the best overall student, the best students in math and science, the best groomed student and so forth. It feels familiar; it is similar to what we do in our schools in the U.S.

I notice many of the little gifts we brought are the “awards.” Soar-Kenya t-shirts, battery less flashlights, blank books, pens and pencils. The best overall student receives $25. The crowd gasps. It’s a small fortune. The receiver grins. Vitalice, who wears a Kenyan tunic, speaks. Nelly in her robin-egg-blue suit speaks. My stomach growls: the aroma of the simmering stew drifts past continually. Later Vitalice tells me they have served nearly 1000 people. Amazing.

But still more amazing are the scholarship students who have come. Soar-Kenya provides scholarships for three of Hopewell’s last-year graduates: Daniel, Martin, and Alice.  Daniel studies computer technology. Martin, who is considering the priesthood, studies at a university in western Kenya. Alice is becoming a nurse. These students believe themselves to be the most fortunate people on earth. In their opinion, they won the lottery, caught the bride’s bouquet, successfully played the wheel of fortune.  If Kenya can educate young people like these three, it will resolve its problems, end corruption, and give many citizens the futures they deserve.

The sun is low in the sky, and Alice has passed word that all females should gather. She has learned how to examine breasts for cancer and doesn’t hesitate to show us. She has asked Nelly and me to sit in front of the crowd and dutifully follow her instructions. We search our breasts for “lumps that don’t move.” Of course it is hilarious, but Alice reminds us the practice is necessary.

If I thought examining my breasts in front of some 300 young females was my final act of the day, I was wrong. We have come up one Soar-Kenya T-shirt short. Daniel and Martin are wearing theirs. Alice doesn’t have one. And I’m wearing mine, the one I shortened and added under-the-arm security pockets to. Soon, I find myself in the “office” where a number of males and Vitalice are talking. Will they notice a woman removing her T-shirt over in the corner?  I hand it to Alice who puts it on, and I quickly don my rain jacket. All is well.

If a fairy godmother came and granted me one wish, I would wish for funds for Hopewell. . . enough funds to provide student loans for all the Form 4 students. If a student did not do well enough on the tests– which last for three weeks and the only one I could pass was the English test–to study at a college or training school, he or she would receive money to start a small business, for example a used clothing stall in Nakuru.

I’m researching foundations, writing letters of inquiry, learning to write grants—all in an effort to obtain student loans for the next four to five years. The students will pay back the money, so the fund will become self-sustaining. And Mr. Doshi and the Nairobi Rotary Club will match our funds.  

And if I had two wishes, I’d also ask for beds. Some 160 girls are safe in dorms (recently converted from two tin-sided classrooms). They will gladly sleep on the floor until beds are available. Females are always at risk in a third-world country, but the violence following the presidential election escalated the danger. They risk rape and female genital mutilation (FGM). Many of the girls walk long distances to and from school in total darkness on isolated paths. They work like slaves in exchange for a place to sleep and something to eat. Even their sleeping place may not be entirely safe. Vitalice and Nelly reshuffled Hopewell’s priorities and built the dorm. And as soon as they figure out how to build more dorms, they will.

I learned a lot in Kenya–from Mr. Doshi and Vitalice and Nelly and the young people. From Mr. Doshi I learned to ask “What do you most need?”  I heard him ask Nelly and Vitalice, and I heard them simultaneously answer, “student loans.” They could have listed so many things: chalk, a copier, paper, uniforms. I learned: never assume to know what people in the third world need; ask.

From the twelve students I accompanied to Nakuru National Park one glorious Sunday (and that is another story), I learned, “Right now, right here is where I want to be.” They don’t wander around in the past; they don’t daydream about the future. The present, this moment is all they really have, so they live it well. I try to remember to live in the present and to live it well.

It’s 9:34 p.m. in Kenya. I hope they are all safe. I hope they all had something to eat today. I hope they are healthy. I know they laughed. I know they learned. And if a white person visited their school today, they asked endless questions and felt his or her hair and wanted their picture taken with the “pink” person.