April 2006

Habari Zanu? How is everyone?
I'm doing very well. I am writing from Stonetown in Zanzibar (Paul, just so you know the food here is much different from the menu at the west side restaurant!). It's a beautiful old water front community which was once the seat of an empire, a center of international commerce, and the hub of the east African slave trade. It's not hard to realize that this place has an interesting and complected history. Today the town is almost all Muslim or tourist, though from what I can tell these groups are not at odds with one another. Instead many seem to be thinking out how to preserve history within a tourist economy. This collective and forward thinking attitude is different from Mombasa, Lamu, and Taita were focus is placed on past or present.
SO it is beautiful, lots of large stone buildings, soft beaches, colorful sky, etc.. Pictures will come once I get home. This is a bit of a vacation after our exams and our village stay before we begin out independent research projects (ISP). Over the past three weeks I have been in Mombasa, spent 2 days in Savo national park sitting on the roof of a bus spotting elephants, zebras, giraffes, hippos, lions, antelope, buffalo, and baboons.
I then spent 10 days in Taita living with a wonderful family with 9 kids. The village is on the sides of large hills and deep valleys, it is currently very green thanks to recent rains and is by far the most beautiful place I have seen in Kenya yet. My father Francis is a school teacher and my mom Lucy tends that house, most of the kids are in school but also do a lot of work on the farm. They cook all their food over a fire, milk the cow in the morning, use an outhouse, and have paraffin lanterns for light. The family spends much of their time sitting in the kitchen on stools around the fire making tea or beans or corn, laughing or singing in such a loving way. These 10 days were some of the most wonderful. Other than hanging with the fam' we also worked on the hospital that the town is constructed. They have been working for decades to finish the building and are close but have run out of money again. If helping to create health care facilities in Kenya is on your list of things to do let me know and I can help get your resources to the right place.
In Taita my sister Jenta and I became close. She is 23 and has recently moved back home after 3 years of sowing in a sweatshop in Mombasa. Recently Jenta has started to Hear Jesus, as she explains (Taita is catholic), and is now spending much of her time as a vessel for Jesus to heal people through. She told me that she has been able to cure illness and disability through prayer, but like with all things, including medicine, it only works if the person has faith. I really admire her. She is so committed to her work and her faith. Other people in the town, though, think she's crazy and Lucy thinks it might be malaria. Its wild, the reaction in Taita is not that different than I might expect from a community in the US.
Since Taita we returned to Mombasa to re-join our first home stay families and work on our research plans. I got to spend a good amount of time with my research adviser, Dillon. He is a 25 year old PhD candidate from Rutgers studying the informal economy of Mombasa. He is a wonderful resources since he understands the history, economics, politics, diversity, and pop-culture of Mombasa so well and because he is completel willing to keep up with my unending questions. I feel really lucky and optimistic about this coming month.
My fellow students and I will be in Zanzibar for the next week before returning to Mombasa to venture out on our own. For now we are learning, relaxing and enjoying each others company. I am really happy with the people I am traveling with. They are smart and generous and all work to challenge each other in good ways. All in all I am very lucky.
I'll write again once I have stated my research to tell you about what I am learning and how I am living. Until then let me know whats going on at Wes and around the world. I bet it is starting to warm up back home!
Lots of Love,
-Gabi