My Africa Trip - 6

6/4/11 (trying to remember the past two days)

The days are blurring together, so much has been happening. Every night I go to bed exhausted. I don't have nearly enough time to journal during the day, and am so tired by night I sleep with the pen in my hand.

On 6/2/11 we began the first real day of REM. I hesitate to start listing all the problems I have with this, but I struggle to remember the last time I've tasted regret this bitter. For everything that I hate about this trip(heat, difficulties, sickness, etc), this church meeting that sucks all my time and effort away from the sole reason I came here at all is the only thing that actually really pisses me off. I was totally expecting hardship and while I enjoy colorful complaining, I am really happy to take on that hardship if it means I'm going to make even the smallest difference in some starving kids' lives. REM taking me away from that mission is frustrating beyond belief. How poorly things go stack on my patience like a thousand tiny weights.

As I write this I have cool air on my wet face, and all the problems seem days behind me. Even so, at the time my blood was boiling more and more each day.

Everything from the music equipment to the name tags on the attendants was very disorganized, to put it mildly. When registration started, only one of my group showed up. I was hopeful no one else would come so I could focus on helping the kids. This was not in the cards. After attendees were switched, and new and late people showed up, I ended up with 18, more than any other group.

This did not please me. Every day I'm trying to assess the needs (mainly hunger) of these many kids, figure out where to buy everything, what to buy, how to deliver hundreds of these items to their destinations, one of which is 3 hours away on a road that's more an off roading excursion than anything man made. This is all being done during extremely short meal breaks by talking to people who can barely understand my English better than the little I could understand theirs. I speak maybe 3 words of Swahili and zero of Turkana dialect.

One of many explaes was the simple word "hot". In California, we pronounce it like "hAHt". They pronounce it like Mufasa saying "hOHt". There was so much confusion i started doing my best African Lion King impression as a half-joke. Somewhat surprisingly this actually helped a lot. I felt more than a little ridiculous, but countless times I would change my voice because they simply couldn't understand me unless I was doing my horrible James Earl Jones accent.

Speaking of hunger, I've completely lost mine. Maybe from the heat, or fury, but I constantly feel like I'm on fire. I also can't seem to even pretend to be hungry with 30 starving kids staring at everyone eat from behind barbed wire. The attendants get maybe some rice and beans and a little bit of cabbage-like vegetables. Usually there's not enough for everyone of the around 150-200 people. The REM Team members, on the other hand, get a totally separate meal of rice, beans, goat, soft fluffy bread & stewy sauce, a variety of vegetables and lots of it. They make this tomato & onion mix with some tangy sauce that's extremely good. I can only put a bite or two in my mouth before I'm done and give it to someone w/o any food.

Really irritated by the REM meeting by day one. The heat, sweat and stink multiply the effect. There was off key singing, constant instrument mistakes, and repeating of song verse/choruses about 5 times after everyone felt good about them, climaxed the emotion, then awkwardly continued on wondering why we didn't stop. This was on the songs everyone liked. Half the time songs were sung at screeching, high keys, with the wrong words displayed so the people awkwardly tried to hum along to a song they obviously had never heard, and weren't being sold on. Then there were the dancing motion songs... Getting a bunch of grown ass African men dancing like 16-year-old Japanese cosplayers is only impressive the first time. The women, a huge portion of which were actively breast feeding, didn't seem incredibly interested either. I later found out that many of them didn't even understand, let alone read, English.

There was no speaker present. They played a DVD of this old Korean woman, Reverend Lee, preaching while a Korean looking man translated what she said every so often. This essentially made an 18 hour day out of maybe 4 hours of pertinent information.

How does that math work out? Around 90-95% of the audience were pastors, or other clergy. The rest were mostly team members, 8 of which were the only Koreans, and only ones that could understand Korean. All of the Koreans have already heard this exact teaching multiple times. So for much of the day the audience was hearing Korean they didn't understand a word of, speaking in tongues that's only distinguishable from epilepsy with a trained eye, or songs they don't know, couldn't learn, or couldn't care less.

Maybe I'm focusing too much on the negative. I didn't see any guard towers around the barbed wired fencing and the one gate opened freely during the daylight hours. Pretty much everyone stayed so it wasn't all heat torture and propaganda. At least the guys at my table seemed to genuinely want to know every logical reason to believe that Jesus actually is the Son of God, even if they already knew 90 out of 100 of them.

I don't think any of the guys at my table really needed me, but they all seemed extremely interested in getting my contact info and staying in touch. All were very friendly and genuine when they weren't sleeping through the fifth time Rev. Lee repeated something they'd years ago already come to believe. Plus several made a point to thank me personally. They all seemed to like me, although I'm still not totally sure why. The only real interactions we had was during discussion time and all I did was listen actively and loudly repeat what they were saying with different word summaries...oh right, so there's that.

Yes. No one's beyond pride it seems. Sometimes I think we like our ego's stroked more than we do our erogenous zones. No matter, service is very rewarding. When I wasn't furiously angry and sweaty about the meetings, I was very happy ...and sweaty.

A quick word about the African people I've come in contact with. The men are all extremely friendly. I barely know anyone and it's all hugs and smiles. They are incredibly warm, talkative, and funny. Many are missing half their teeth, and/or have scars that look like burn torture, but they act like life is a gift and a joy, even when they're frequently trying to get free food. They solicit free stuff more than a San Franciscan bum, except they don't refuse food or work and their clear eyes are obviously not interested in booze or drugs.

As I've stated, the kids are incredibly nice and playful. Katie and I love being playful so they constantly surround us when they're not being chased away by an adult and a stick.

The women on the other hand are a totally different story. Apparently women are sold off into marriage for goats at very early ages. The poorer the family, the less goats and earlier the age they seem to do this. The better families, I'm told, can get up to 200 goats at 1-3000/= each, or $12-$36 each. Pastor John, the bus preacher, told me a sad story of a 14 year old being sold for 2 goats because the parents were so poor. He seemed genuinely broken up by this.

Maybe it's the strict rules about married women interacting with other men, or because they're a bunch of racists, but most of them stared at my glowing alien skin only when I wasn't looking directly at them. Then were rather stand-offish when I tried to make eye contact, smile, and be friendly, like the men all seem to do.

Most were except for one rather attractive woman, named Rael. She wasn't one of the several towering, Naomi Cambell-looking, 6 1/2ft tall goddesses, but she was thin, had big bright eyes, cute hair, and a full, white smile. (seriously, there were at least 4 women from Turkana that were model to super model gorgeous. They were better looking without make-up or nice clothes than every single model on every ad, billboard, or TV commercial in the much richer Nairobi capital city. I actually toyed with the idea of managing their modeling career. Even if they got mediocre modeling/acting careers they'd be thousands of times richer.)

I think I mentioned teeth, but it was really a minority that seemed to have all their teeth. I don't know if they yank out teeth with cavities because the nearest dentist is a 20 hour, packed bus ride away, or because they enjoy fight clubs, but there are a lot of missing teeth.

Anyways, I caught Rael's gaze a couple times, once I could swear she blushed. This is a tough claim when I'm partially red-green color blind, and she's a dark skinned African woman. It was more in the way she rolled her head down and to her shoulder like she was embarrassed by my smile.

Later, I was at the lunch table, where the food was being passed out to the attendants, and I was annoyed that the team members were getting huge portions of superior food, and it was looking like there wasn't going to be enough for the attendees. At this point I was extremely annoyed by just about everything and wasn't remotely hungry. I had a big bowl of everything sitting in front of me, untouched, while they were scraping the bottom of pots to give the last people a little rice. Other members seemed rather urgent about making sure I ate. With the heat, the way the REM meeting was going, and the fact that I just wanted to be helping the hungry kids, 30 yards away behind barbed wire fences, calling out for food all added up to equal a rage fueled, complete lack of hunger. I only hesitated to take my food to them because they are mad dogs over free stuff. They don't understand English or the basic concept of sharing and they are born manipulators. They can get teary eyed begging for a balloon when they already have one hidden away. There's so many of them it's hard not to see a group and miss the individuals. A few stand out, and I can tell how smart they are. I can't blame them when they only eat the one meal a day given them by their school, but to give to one while the others see is suicide. I barely had enough to give each kid a couple beans and a pinch of rice but the chaos would never let that happen. The grabbing and the screaming and crying of those roughly pushed aside and stomped on for a grasp at a bowl of freely offered food was in no way worth it.

As I stood there, waiting to see how the line progressed, I inwardly lamented Sarah's continued broken promises. Many times she said she would show me in town where I can go to get large quantities of food the teachers could pass out to the kids in an orderly fashion.

Then Rael came up to me. "You're not eating?"

"No, I'm not very hungry."

No woman here even acknowledged my presence let alone came up and started a conversation. She definitely likes me. "What's your name? Where are you from? What's your background? Yadda yadda." I'm having a hard time not being distracted by how cute this girl is.

Katie comes up to me. Rael quickly says "I guess I'll talk to you later" and scampers off. I chuckled to myself and later mentioned to Katie how Rael likes me. Katie of course rolls her eyes and continues to crush my dreams of starting a harem or at least of feeling somewhat still attractive despite getting old, fat, and balding. She claims I overestimate my ability to read the signals. More on my devastating validation later.

The line is finally dwindling but the food is essentially gone. I think the one guy got someone else's left over beans and loved it. The kids are starving, but the adults really aren't doing much better. The Koreans wave me off with a "They're used to it." I might have thrown up in my mouth if I had anything in my stomach.

"I'm good, just need water", blah blah blah, I finally convince them to give my food away which seems totally strange to me. I'm the rich fat American. My sole purpose for coming to Africa was to give some of my excess to the less fortunate. I'm thicker than 95% of the attendees and that's rather unusual for me. I'm plain not even remotely hungry. Give it away already! She hands my heaping bowl to one person. The rest of the few get rice, if that. ::FacePalm::

A couple kids (smarter ones I recognize) have snuck onto the church/school property and look longingly at the left over beans. I scraped a few different plates together onto one plate and snuck it to them. I hissed at them to "share" but they don't seem familiar with the concept. One kid grabbed the plate, and the smaller kid right next to her immediately gave up on the several bites they could have shared to look for other food. I don't think they understood me at all, and were shortly after chased away by some adult with a stick. I think my hives are starting to itch just thinking about it.

They've grown up in a land of scrape by, droughts, few natural resources, terrible crime, and on-going tribal warfare. They literally are growing up in a land where spears and fire arrows are still being used to kill other tribes for water rights, religion, or just because that's what the tribes did for generations.

Begging has almost become a societal feature here. Even the adults aren't too proud. Later I gave my watch away to one of my table guys. It was a cheap sports watch from Walmart that I actually kinda miss(used it to wake up), but apparently it was a piece of the 21st century for these guys. I got several requests for it. The main problem is so big though, I feel embarrassed giving my dinner to an older kid under protection of night. It's a silly drop of rain in the vast vast desert and I feel like a silly douche, thinking I can make a difference.