Yoghurt Yoghurt Yoghurt

WE STARTED PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION!!!!
Such a great week; so satisfying to be able to give all of these people what they’ve been looking forward to for so long. I love interacting with the clients. Some complain about having to come in every day or that the serving size is too small or that they would rather consume the yoghurt at home. But then we have the ones who tell us every day how much they appreciate having us here giving them the yoghurt. On the second day of distribution, one such man said to me, “The yoghurt works! Yesterday morning I had a cough, then I took the yoghurt and I was fine!”. So sweet.

The first few days were really crazy- we would be at the kitchen from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., just trying to get the day’s yoghurt packed and ready for distribution in the morning. Then we would go home, throw down a quick dinner of pineapples, mangoes, and- you guessed it- yoghurt. The tracking sheets for the study subjects needed to be updated on a daily basis at the beginning since everything was changing so frequently, so we would then spend until 1 a.m. preparing them for the next day. Everything has gone relatively smoothly, especially considering all the roadblocks we kept running into before. Our schedule is easing up a bit now as we’re trying to have the Yoghurt Mamas doing all of the production and distribution on their own, as they will have to know how to do it all when we leave (in a week for our safari, and in four for home!)

At one of the distribution centres, which is located in an HIV/AIDS Counselling Centre, one of the volunteers called me out from the room we had the yoghurt in. She asked me to explain to her 40-50 patients why they weren’t being included in the study. Ouch. I tried explaining that we didn’t have enough funding to sponsor everyone who was infected in Oyugis. Pretty brutal, but we managed to sell the yoghurt to a few people, which was great for the Mamas (who are volunteers except for what excess yoghurt they are able to sell). Learned a lot about the virus that I didn’t know before, such as the criteria to be eligible to receive free ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) from the government, and the steps that HIV positive women take when they become pregnant in order to minimize the risk that their child will become infected.

One batch of yoghurt didn’t meet the quality standards we have established at the kitchen. Disposing of over 200 packs of yoghurt was incredibly sad. I kept thinking about all the time the Mamas had spent preparing the yoghurt, the money that had been paid for the milk, and the wasted packets. We sat on the kitchen floor for two hours squeezing yoghurt out of their packages into big buckets. We had to do this so that people wouldn’t take the sealed packets out of the trash. Kids have a habit of hanging out around the front of the kitchen and squeezing out any traces of leftover yoghurt from the patients’ used packets, which as you can imagine is incredibly unsanitary. I squirted yoghurt all over my pants, and was literally covered in yoghurt by the time we left. Thankfully it was 5:00 when we discovered the problem, so most patients had already come to collect their yoghurt. However, two of the good ones had been set aside because they were frozen, which we were so grateful for when the seven year old girl who treks an hour to pick up yoghurt for her siblings every day came by.

One of the Yoghurt Mamas gave birth to a baby girl last week. Her name is Rani Jennifer Amanda. Seriously.

I realized something about Kenyan society this week that made me really sad. International aid and the dependence on sponsors has developed a preference by many people to have things handed to them rather than work to earn it. This leads to people wanting/expecting handouts, which in turn breeds the corruption that they all complain about. This by no means applies to everyone I’ve met, but I’ve definitely seen too many examples of this to not have noticed. It’s too bad, because habits of thinking like this take a long time to change, and must do so before the country can make any real progress.

Went out for a friend’s birthday and the electricity was out, so we sat by candlelight for a while, which made for a really cool atmosphere. They all went nuts when it came back on, because it meant music and dancing. And boy can Kenyans dance. We attempted to keep up, and I learned “The Lion Kill” and “Milking the Cow”. Should make for an interesting presentation back in North America.

Took a trip to Kisumu with our friend Nick, which was phenomenally fun and yet quite the culture shock (I`m scared to see what Nairobi/England/Canada/USA is going to do to me). Seeing huge, Wal-Mart-esque mega-stores, paved roads everywhere, expensive restaurants, and white people EVERYWHERE is just such a sharp contrast to what we live every day here in Oyugis. Here we have fruit stalls and one supermarket half the size of my local bakery, one paved highway, hotels whose most expensive meal is 200 ksh (less than $3 Cdn), and less than a 1% white/Indian population.

Had pretty much a private matatu, since it was a Saturday and everyone was at church (most people are Seventh Day Adventists) or at home with their families. Was really, really fun, and we ate pineapple on a stick for the first time! Wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie, but although it came out in Nairobi and Mombasa two weeks ago, it still hasn’t arrived in Kisumu. The bowling alley we were going to head to has apparently been closed for seven months, so that plan was squashed. But I did get to eat pizza and salad, which was heavenly. Haven’t eaten any form of cheese in two months, so this was quite the treat.

Was also nice to not have people staring at us or yelling ‘Mzungu!’ as often, as whites are so common around here. Although apparently people were in fact staring at us, especially when we went out at night, because mzungus usually keep to themselves and don’t hang out with locals. There’s no way you can truly experience Kenyan culture in a group of mzungus, so we were grateful to have close local friends to show us the ropes. I have found people here to be very respectful, even more so than at home a lot of the time. Definitely feel that people were overly cautious and fearful in their warnings to me about traveling and living in Africa. As long as you keep your guard up and use common sense, you really don’t have a lot to worry about, especially in the smaller towns.

OBSERVATIONS
• Many people have twisted and mangled feet- I’ve seen a number of different people on crutches because one leg is significantly shorther than the other. One woman’s foot was so twisted that it was the top of her foot that touched the ground as she walked. While carrying a heavy load on her head and a child on her back.
• This crazy cow came running towards us, and we had to run out of the way so that we wouldn’t get run over
• On questionnaires that people fill out, the marital status options include ‘Married, Polygamous’ and ‘Married, Monogamous’
• Annual income ranges that can be selected started at <10,000 ksh ($130 Cdn) and went up to >70,000 ksh ($1,000 Cdn)
• Looked over a Form Four (Grade 12) Business Exam (they have national exams, as all 8 courses are mandatory for everyone) and the questions were SO cool and relevant- e.g. ‘List 5 ways unemployment can be reduced in Kenya’. When we asked the student what his answers were, he listed reducing the birth rate and increasing private sector activity as two important steps.

QUOTES
• “You should stay in Kenya and get married. Unfortunately I am no longer of marrying age. But you should get married before you’re too old and no men want you. Can I have your phone number? Can I buy you a soda?”
• “We should socialize outside of work. Can I have your phone number? How old are you? Let me guess, sixteen? Oh, twenty-one! I’m thirty-one.”