The Eighth One

This past week while traveling to work, a not-for-profit organization was situated at Union Station collecting money to give to those who didn’t have food. Although I was extremely hesitant, I decided to donate the money I had withdrawn from the ATM to give to this worthwhile cause.

Let me tell you, this day was the longest I have ever experienced. Not only did I not have any other money on me, I didn’t have a single bank or credit card either. The feeling of being hungry and not physically having any thing to eat or money to buy anything is something I have never experienced before. Although I had the option of asking co-workers to borrow money or food, I wasn’t comfortable doing this. It was almost demeaning thinking about having to beg for food. My entire day I was focused on how much longer I had to wait to leave work to travel home so that this rumbling in my stomach would cease. I can’t even imagine what living life day to day like this would be like.

After finally devouring my dinner later that night, I took time to reflect on this experience. The first thing that came to my mind was good old Thich Nhat Hanh. In The First Precept: Reverence For Life, he explains, “It is important for us to stay in touch with the suffering of the world. We need to nourish that awareness through many means -- sounds, images, direct contact, visits, and so on -- in order to keep compassion alive in us.” Through not having food to eat, even for one day, I was able to undergo the suffering many all over the world suffer daily. I’m sure in my new home outside Nairobi, Kenya I will witness the suffering of those not having the food required to sustain daily life. As Thich Nhat Hanh further expresses, “we need to stay in touch with suffering only to the extent that we will not forget, so that compassion will flow within us and be a source of energy for our actions”.

I have no doubt that traveling and living in a country such as Kenya that I will experience an immense amount of suffering while there. My concern however, is the transformation back to the Western world after seeing this first hand. I sometimes worry that these problems that I experience abroad may be too overwhelming for me that upon my return home I may attempt to forget about the suffering I will have been exposed to. We have all been warned by many about the struggle that past Beyond Borders students as well as others that travel to developing countries undergo after being exposed to the suffering in their host country.

I truly hope that through this experience I am able to cope with the transformation back from Kenya and remain in contact with the people in the community I will be living in. I also hope that with the knowledge of each community I will be able to assist in the development of it even from home back in Ontario. I think that one of the benefits of traveling with a group is that this will greatly assist with the return home. Although each of our experiences will not be identical, it will be nice having others to talk with about specific people or locations.

Before the conclusion of this blog, I just wanted to send out a huge thank you to the St. Jeromes community. I was able to travel up to Waterloo this weekend to help out Conor with the Sunday mass, and was shocked at the amount of support we received. Not only did we have a huge success raising financial contributions, but an overwhelming number of people stopped by after hearing our story to wish us good luck and share stories of their own. THANK YOU!

The Seventh One.

This week has been full of numerous things I would like to share with you all.

To begin, looking back on my last blog regarding my frustrations from lack of support, I’ve recently received what feels like an overwhelming amount of interest from others. I’ve discovered that although people may not specifically comment on the good intentions we may have behind this trip, merely showing interest may often be enough. Not knowing how to bring up my upcoming trip to Kenya in conversation at work, I had briefly mentioned it to a few co-workers in order to get a feel for their reaction. I guess water cooler talk spreads fast- a few days later I was being interviewed for our branch monthly newsletter. What a lovely surprise!

Secondly, I would like to share with you some of my recent experiences in Toronto. For those of you who have never ridden the Go Train before-let me tell you, it is a complete culture of its own. To start off, very rarely does any one ever talk on the train in the morning. In fact, it is so quiet that you can hear the man snoring 5 booths over from your own. Even on the way home, no one ever talks to each other. How absurd is it that most people sit so close to each other that their knees almost touch the person across from them for almost an hour, yet don’t say a single word to that person?

Another aspect of the Go Train culture that absolutely shocked me is the amount of awareness people have for others around them. More then once I have seen elderly men and women standing on the train with no seat, while commuters half their age remain seated. What’s worse is when people remain standing because someone else’s brief case remains on the seat they could be sitting in. Just last week an elderly lady hobbled onto the train car I was standing in barely able to keep her balance. On a train full of suit wearing, brief case carrying business men, not a single one offered to give up their seat for this women after glancing up at her. It wasn’t until a boy- about my age noticed and gladly offered her his seat that she was able to sit down.

I have high aspirations for myself – goals, dreams, etc. but seeing this corporate “every man for himself” life style makes me question my life path. I know that through gaining respect from others, one is able to take a leadership role and in turn make changes. We’ve seen this with many leaders, from Gandhi to Hitler. My hopes are to gain respect from others by achieving a higher education and leading others with the knowledge I’ve acquired. However, after seeing all these “corporate sell-outs”, how do I know I’m not going to turn into one of them? Is it possible to follow the system just like everyone else, yet still have open eyes? How does one keep from doing this? These are just a few of the questions I’ve been asking myself lately.

On a different note, after hearing about my placement in Kenya my Grandmother and her sister (my Aunt) came over to learn everything they possibly could about where I will be going and what I will be doing there. Even though they came over to learn from me, it was really quite the opposite. My Aunt traveled to Nairobi during the 1980’s when the UN met to discuss the role of women in Africa. It was here they presented the facts that women were completing as much as 80% of the workload in the average household, yet only receiving 2% of the compensation brought in. This is a topic she is extremely passionate about and I am so excited to hear everything she has to tell me about the history behind the country of Kenya!

More blogging to come this week. The house is back in session next week so trying to get as much as possible done before then! Woohoooo!

The Sixth One.

Warning: This is a rant blog.


I'm not sure if people just don't know how to react when I tell them I'm going to be living in a slum in Kenya for 3 months this summer with a smile on my face, or what? Lately I've received the most obscene responses to this statement.

"Oh, why would you do that?"
"I would never put my self through that"
"...sounds like fun......"

Now its not to say that everyones reaction crushes my heart this much and makes me sink deeper down into my little hole. The majority of my friends and family have been overly supportive of my journey, sending their blessings, items for raffles and donating money. Its those occational few that I sometimes wish they would take off their Channel sunglasses and put down their Louis Vuitton purses for just a second and listen to what I have to say.

On a better note, even though yesterday was a super sucky day for me (my car brakes stopped working - $800 later my car is now safe to drive), where I least expected it, I found a light at the end of the tunnel. Just before closing I ran to the mall to get a SIM card for my phone which was stolen a few months ago. While in the wireless wave store I thought I would ask about what will happen to my phone plan while I'm abroad. The man behind the counter, probably in his late 20's asked where I was going. When I said Kenya, his face looked up from the computer screen he had been staring at with a huge smile, and words began flying out of his mouth a mile a minuite. His family was from Nairobi, a city he was very passioniate about. He told me about the problems of crime, the heat, the food and the language.

Fun Fact:  hakuna matata (From the Lion King) is actually Swahili, which is the language often spoke in Kenya

Aside from all the great information he gave me, he also gave me some words of encouragement which I had longed to hear from someone--anyone.

"you're doing a really great thing"

Thanks man from wireless wave.

The Fifth One.

My enthusiasm for research was sparked after reading Conor’s blog Slums and Suburbs, enticing me to further investigate the slums outside Nairobi, Kenya where I will be living this summer. While searching for online journals, I stumbled across a great report created by Amnesty International titled Kenya: The unseen Majority; Nairobi’s Two Million Slum Dwellers. Here are some shocking facts that I discovered reading this…

•          2 million people (half the capital’s population) are crammed into only 5% of the city’s residential area
•         This problem dates back to the Colonial period when most Africans were barred from the city’s residential area as they were reserved for Europeans and Asians
•           In 2002 only 24% of slum residents had access to piped water (92% in the rest of Nairobi)
•          For those without access to piped water, private water vendors are the only other option – the average resident can barely afford to purchase 20 litres a day (2 Ksh or $0.025 US)
•           In the slum of Kibera, an estimated 130,000 have access to only one reliable private health facility
•          The Kenyan government launched a free primary education program in 2003 –- however most children in slums do not have access to this
•         The cost to send a child to school for a year outside Nairobi is Ksh 800-1,200 or US$10-15) per child – a price which most cannot afford
•         Many families in the slums see prostitution as the only way to afford their housing and put food on the table
•          1.5 Million in Kenya are living with HIV

For those who didn’t notice, the majority of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals are inadvertently addressed within these brief points. Goals 1 –Ending Poverty and Hunger, 2- Universal Education, 4- Child Health, 5- Maternal Health and 6- Combat HIV/AIDs, which are each mentioned, I have found to be the most problematic and stagnant while learning about the devastation in Kenyan slums. Author Carl Sandburg compared human life to an onion. We have to peel it one layer at a time, and cry in between for the problems are so immense.  

The description of the slums we will be living in reminded me of the vivid images we gained while reading Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country. Much like South Africa during the apartheid era, Kenya is now experiencing similar conditions as the country is currently housing “ten millionaires and ten million beggers” as a Kenyan news reported stated. In South Africa, however annual slum growth has fallen markedly according to the UN-Habitat Report. In addition a recent South African water law stipulates that every household should be provided with 200 litres of free

water daily.

Although numerous suggestions have been brought forward and presented regarding the upgrading of slums and international standards on evictions, I am hesitant to side with which approach would work best. I think that because of this course I’ve learned how important it is to create change using a bottom-up or grass roots approach, so I feel that any recommendations would be best provided after actually speaking with the people living in these make-shift communities. That being said, some recommendations that I feel must be followed or implemented regardless of the proposal are: 

·      Support and commitment from Government backed by written and publicized bold policy reforms

·      Protection for squatters and surveillance over forced evictions as they are as violation of human rights that governments are obligated to prohibit and prevent

·      The creation of affordable housing land to prevent the increased growth of new slums

Although my opinions may change once I’ve landed in my host country and become truly aware of the complications involved with this problem, these are my current suggestions. Even after reading about the slums of Nairobi for hours each day, I don’t think anything will prepare me for the initial shock of actually seeing one, let alone living in it. I know many of my friends think I’m crazy for saying this, but this is something I am certainly looking forward to experiencing. 

Amnesty International. (2009). Kenya: the unseen majority; nairobi's two million slum dwellers.         Amnesty International Publications.