Hello Africa

I like Kenya.

I like being here, I like the culture, I like the people. If Kenya was a facebook status I would press “like”. Today we took a short walk, we were surrounded by high mountains, and it made me feel as being in the middle of a post card. We've also been helping out in the kitchen today, I cleaned the floor while Nessica was cleaning the benches. The afternoon has been spent in school, where I helped the 5^th grade students prepare for their exam tomorrow by asking questions, and I am glad I had the answers to the questions. On which day did God create the animals? I guess it is common knowledge but don't ask me for the answer, because I don't know.

So... there is a lot here I like, but you cannot like everything and everyone on this overcrowded planet. As Nessica already has mentioned briefly (hehe), there are two ladies here that are driving us crazy. I will just give a short, but extremely good, example. The second day they told us that the orphanage has been given a fridge, but, and this they asked with a pitying and at the same time smug voice, do you know what they use it for? For storage! And they smiled their pitying and superior smile and added, but they don’t know better, you know.

OF COURSE they know better! They know much better than us the best way for THEM to use a fridge! In case any teacher is reading this, this is a typical example to bring up on a lecture. They do not use the fridge because THEY DON’T NEED ONE. They don’t use anything that needs to be stored in a cold place, so of course it is better for them to use it to store other things. The whole idea is so stupid, to give a fridge to a place who don’t need a fridge and then call them stupid when they don’t use it. This is a good example of constructivism, I would say. Knowledge is a social construction, and the “right” way of using a fridge is a social construction too, I mean, it all depends on the situation. Give me a telescope and I will use it for putting my jewelleries on it, because I am not in need of a telescope… Mon dieu.

Let’s move on. The social worker, (the ladies referred to him as a person “who can say yes and amen but that’s it, he do not understand English but he is REALLY REALLY kind! *insert pitying smile*” Oh, so usually when a person don’t know English, he is not kind? Sorry, I said I would move on and I will. ), he is a clever and helpful person, we have had hours of interesting discussions with him (consisting more words than yes and amen), and he gave us some great papers to look at, regarding poverty in this geographical area. The papers brought up the importance of empowering people, different underlying factors to poverty, the effect of the SAP:s, and the fact that poor people must be given the right to make the definition of poverty, no-one else should make the definition but them. The text is very post modernistic and yes you guessed right, I like it a lot.

Well, time to "take a shower", = take an empty bottle, fill it with cold water, and pour it over my head.

See you! , Elin