Day 6, Thursday, 5/8

Today, Amy and I visited Kambekisii, a slum of around 500 people (according to a resident, though there seemed to be way fewer people during our visit) located 15 minutes from Ngong/Karen road, together with Susan, Veronicah, and Rachel from Providence VCT in order to hold an "empowerment" session.

Kambekisii is situated directly next to a wealthy suburb, a somewhat poignant juxtaposition. Kambekisii's cluster of flimsy-looking, corrugated-iron shacks provides a stark contrast to the modern, western-style brick buildings (complete with tiled roofs and state-of-the-art water tanks, a luxury in Kenya) located literally just a few meters away. These two worlds are thinly separated from each other by a stone wall. Next to this wall is a ditch that drains away the waste water from the luxury homes. The slum residents, however, call it a "river" and do all their laundry there.

During the outreach, we were housed in a little wooden shack, where Amy and I gave a presentation on the basic facts of ARV Therapy in English (which Rachel helped translate into Swahili) to a small group of around 20 people. After that, we went around the slum distributing free brochures on HIV testing and prevention.

What I found interesting/puzzling was that though the staff demonstrated how to use a diaphragm (during which the women and girls giggled hysterically), there was, however, no instruction on the proper way to use a condom (there were men present in the audience). In fact, during her presentation, Rachel encouraged "total abstinence" before marriage, and told the villagers that she wouldn't even encourage the use of condoms. Though I could understand that technically, "total abstinence" is the safest way to go, I wonder how practical her recommendation is for these slum-dwellers (how do you teach abstinence to girls who have to prostitute themselves to stay afloat financially?).

I finally experienced my first "culture shock" in Africa. I was a little shocked when one of the young mothers, who was sitting directly in front of me, bared her breast and started (openly) breastfeeding her baby (I believe I was in the middle of a sentence when this happened, and I nearly choked on my words). Halfway through the meeting, the other babies too, started latching on to their mothers, who made little attempt to make the process more private. Was I the only one who was surprised by this collective (concerted?) public display of nudity? It seems like Kenyans (Africans?) have very a different notion of privacy as far as nudity is concerned. In any case, to avoid any potential awkwardness, I looked away whenever possible.

Oh, one of the villagers also gave me a Kenyan (Maasai?) name, "Kripotich" which supposedly means "the one who is born when the cows are coming out." Go figure.