A Good Thick Skirt

San Francisco

Off to San Francisco with my friend Kathryn for the American Library Association Conference.  The first time I was in San Francisco was in 1976, hitchhiking here with my friend Don, on our way to explore the world.  It was a trip of firsts, including the first palm tree I had ever seen, beside the I5 highway.  Thanks to the seventies, SF was an almost mythical place in both song and story.  It was a time for living as cheaply as possible, since we would have to go back and find jobs when we ran out of money (which inevitably happened, six months later).

Today we flew in, took a taxi to the Hilton in the Financial District, halfway between Chinatown and the Embarcadero. By the time we checked into the hotel and ate dinner, we had spent enough money to exist on for a week in 1976.  We decided to go for a walk, get some fresh air, and look for something more appealing than hotel food.

The ferry building has been turned into a wonderful upscale farmers’ market with small shops selling everything from pottery to organic food, and gluten free baking.  There are fish shops and meat shops, dairy shops, and a bookstore.  A shop selling “Tasty Salted Pig Parts” smelled wonderful, but wasn’t altogether useful without a kitchen.  We found a restaurant where they cooked the food, and I had a local fish called escolar, wonderful tasting and cooked with pesto.

Tummies full, we wandered the shops, and bought fruit, cheese and bread for breakfast. The bookstore managed to extract a little money from Kathryn, but I escaped unscathed.  We wandered back to the hotel, passed a couple of parks.  Unfortunately they showed the other side of the city – sleeping bags on the ground, people looking like they were setting up for the night.  Now I wonder, was it always like this, and I just didn’t notice when I was young, was it different, or was the fact that I had very little money somehow changing the way I looked at things? On that trip we stayed in a strange hotel  room that was $9 and had a bathroom down the hall.

The hotel has provided a couple of surprises.  First of all, as we were lying around chatting, a woman opened the door and started to come in. They had given her our hotel room!  She left, full of apologies.  Then we discovered that the blinds on the windows don’t open, so although we can hear some interesting Chinese music, we can’t look out and see where it is coming from.  Finally, neither of us has been able to connect to the free wifi.  We are reluctant to pay, since it’s $10 a day, so we’ll see what we can sort out tomorrow.  It makes me cranky when an expensive hotel wants to charge extra for everything…including the bottled water in our room, which is $3 a bottle, (over $4 Canadian).  Obviously I’m getting grumpy so it must be time for bed.

Today I was joined by two women who I greatly admire: Jacinta Were, and Kay Raseroka.  They are incredibly powerful and well connected libraries and I was honoured to be working with them.  They were here to help facilitate the workshop and learn a new workshop facilitation method…from me! After the day was over we had dinner together, and it was a lovely time with stories about how we became librarians, and all the funny things that had happened to us on our trips to  where we are now.

With dinner we had a drink that is made with lemon, ginger and honey, and served hot.  It is a wonderful energizing drink.  I picked up my glass and there was a wasp swimming in my drink.  He looked like a pretty good swimmer, but after a few minutes I decided that I didn’t want to see him drown, so I took my spoon and flipped him out.  The next time I looked at my drink, there he was again, doing the back stroke this time.  There are some people/wasps you apparently just can’t save.  All in all, a great day.

Today was the first day of the workshop in Nairobi.   Theoretically is should have been the same as the workshop that I did in Harare…I am still piloting the same material, but what a difference.  The people in Zimbabwe were really easy to work with- enthusiastic, curious and energetic.   This group really used up a lot of my energy this morning…getting them to participate was like pulling hens’ teeth.  Only about half of them had appeared by the official start time, more trickled in as the morning wore on, and some never appeared.  Oh well — it’s like that some time.  By lunch time, they had pretty much succumbed to my will (or my charm, or my zillion years  of doing this work) and most of them were participating.  It’s been hard to convince them that there is no right answer though.

Breakfast and lunch here have been a pleasant choice from Ghana.  Lots of choice,  lots of fresh fruit, and the waiters don’t stare at you if you ask for something.  A couple of the people in the workshop are entertaining and fun to talk to, and we got through the day.

My reward for working so hard was dinner with my friend Normand, a French Canadian who lives here.  He’s a real foodie, and he always chooses great restaurants.  Tonight is was a seafood restaurant and I  got to try fresh sardines for the first time.  I was expecting some little tiny fish, but these were about 8 inch long …  two of them on a pile of salad was the starter, but I’ve actually caught trout smaller than they were.  I also wasn’t expecting to see them smiling at me from the plate.  The restaurant was quite dim – the good news was that I couldn’t see the expressions on their faces very clearly; the bad news is that it’s difficult to bone and take apart a fish that you can barely see.  It was delicious though, but I was full before the next course appeared.

On the way to the restaurant, we drove through a part of Nairobi that I have never seen before. It is a neighbourhood called Lavington, definitely on the right side of the tracks. Large and gracious houses set well back from the road, with large gardens.  The houses look quite old, and apparently many of them date back to the 1920s.  The neighbourhood is still sometimes called by its old name, St Austin’s, named in honour of St Austin’s Mission established by the French Holy Ghost Fathers.  I had never heard of St Austin, but it turns out that he is actually St Augustine…Austin is the name his parents gave him when he was born.  I also didn’t know who the Holy Ghost Fathers were/are. Turns out they are also known as Spiritans and have been the large group of Catholic missionaries in Africa.  They are actually famous for buying large numbers of slaves in and around Zanzibar and setting them free.

Actually, what I wanted to say was that driving through Lavington reminded me that most cities are very pleasant to live in…if you are rich.

…whatever gruntled is, I wasn’t it.

The morning was a little less frantic than usual as we didn’t go to church.  I very much missed the church service, but it had been cancelled due to a commitment in another parish.  After a leisurely breakfast, we took one final picture and set off for Kisumu.  For once we were able to drive at a comfortable speed as we weren’t worried about missing the plane.

I had a very nice lunch at Apollo and Jessica’s apartment, and another quick visit with Patrick.  We were chatting about Kenya Airways and how they could be difficult to deal with, and he told me that he always spoke KiSwahili with them, and he thought that made them more friendly.

Eventually we said our good-byes and I checked in at the airport.  I greeted the nice young man at the counter in KiSwahili and began the check-in process.  Almost inevitably, due to all of the fabric, my bag was overweight.  The agent winked at me and said he was sorry but he would have to charge me…I apologized in KiSwahili, and he said that he really needed to charge me several hundred shillings per kg, and then gave me a big smile, put a tag on it and checked it in.  I must remember to tell Patrick that his technique probably saved me at least $20 USD.

After an uneventful flight, I was greeted by a driver from the hotel who managed my luggage and whisked me through the throngs of would-be drivers and porters who throng the airport exit.  The ride to the hotel was quick as there is less traffic than usual because it is Sunday night.  The hotel is in a part of Nairobi that is unfamiliar to me, so it was interesting to look around.

The hotel looked perfectly nice.  When I tried to check in,  they said they had no record of me, and weren’t expecting me.  I pointed out that they had sent a driver for me. They weren’t sure how that could be.  I pointed out the signs for tomorrow’s workshop.  They asked me to sit down.  People were summoned.  Apologies were offered.  I was tired and grumpy.  Phone calls were made.  After 45 minutes, the driver arrived.  He told them who had booked him. More phone calls. A “boy” was sent off in search of someone.  Suddenly all was resolved, and I was given a key and conducted to my room.  The explanation:  the office had failed to inform the desk of my arrival.

A shower, a sandwich and bed; tomorrow is another day.

My life in Ndwara has a similar rhythm every time I’m there.   Mama and I get up early and chat,  I wander around outside in my nightgown listening to the birds, and watching the sun come up while I brush my teeth. When I’m ready one of the guys brings me a giant plastic bowl of hot water and I shower.  The washing room in the house is about as big as a walk in closet, with a drain at the bottom of the wall to let the water out.  There’s a stool to put the bowl of water on, and there’s always enough water to get nice and clean and rinse afterwards.   It always seems that as soon as I am dressed, people are arriving to greet me or visit. It’s busy but I never feel rushed.

The first visitor was a young man, Felix, who has just started studying to be a plumber, sponsored by Terry.  He just came to tell me how his first month at school was, and to say thank you for the support.  It was great to see someone who is enjoying the chance to go to school as much as he is.  There is one girl in his class, along with all the boys.  He was busy telling me all about the practical part of his courses, and how much fun it is putting pipes together.  He is aiming to do very well at school, because he has heard that there is a shortage of plumbers…

The first meeting was with the Michael Simning Scholarship Committee.  Because I was sick yesterday, all of the meetings were held in Mama’s yard, under the trees.  The committee decided on the process to be followed so that we have a girl ready to go to school in September.  While I will trust the process, I have my fingers crossed for the young woman who volunteers in the library, and is interested in becoming a library technician.  I think Michael would have enjoyed the meeting, and the project very much.

Second meeting: the library committee, which had nothing but good news.  Our volunteer staff member is doing a great job, use of the library is up, the school is bringing even more classes into the library, and the secondary school English teacher is requiring that students read a novel.  It looks like we have money on the way,  and I was able to report on my meeting with the Kenya National Library Service.  If we can come to an agreement with them it will take care of our sustainability concerns.

Next meeting: the parents of the sponsored students.  We are now sponsoring 24 students in three grades plus the ones going out of town for school so this is quite a big group.  The kids are there too,  and each family stood and introduced themselves.  Many of the kids are orphans, so the group includes grandparents, aunties and others who have taken the children in to help raise them.  The headmaster, who had organized the meetings, asked each family to introduce themselves and their children.  Many of them simply said thank you, but others wanted to tell what it meant to them that their children were able to go to school .  I wish I had been able to record them –some incredible tales of the steps they went to in order to get their kids to school.  One widowed mother talked about her child’s hopelessness when he found out that there was no money to go to school, and his decision to commit suicide.  She talked about hearing that there was a way to get your child into school in Ndwara without money, and how far they walked, asking the way, until they got to Ndwara and found out it was true.  She thinks we saved her child’s life. Another one talked about her niece coming home and saying that she had heard about this school, and persistently dragging her auntie here and there until they could figure out  who they had to talk to.

After the storied, the headmaster talked about how well the students were doing, and how well they were placing in regional exams.  The top students in both form 3 and form 2 are our sponsored students.  Not only that, the first goal in the football game against a neighbouring school was scored by one of our sponsored students.  The headmaster had just come back from a conference, where Ndwara’s school was widely discussed because people wanted to know how a brand new village school could be doing so well. One of my personal points of pride is that two girls that have had babies are back in school, and I think that I had some influence in that, by raising it with the headmaster when we first met.

The big surprise for me was the gifts:  from the headmaster , a traditional picture made out of dried water hyacinths; from the parents’ committee, 6 yards of beautiful fabric so I can make myself a dress; from the future plumber’s grandmother, a leso;  and from the Widows’ and Orphans’ Society, fabric for my daughters in law.  The other gifts were even more valuable:  the Widows’ and Orphans’ Society were challenged to make enough money to sponsor one more student,  and the headmaster and several of the form 3 students had figured out how to apply for bursaries that they are using to sponsor four more students.  This made me so proud of them, as they are working to make this work so they don’t need outside funding forever.

By lunch time the meetings were over, and we were able to set off on a drive. We went to the shores of Lake Victoria. For me the most interesting thing was watching the Luo boat builders.  Their boats are distinctive, and men were building them using a chain saw.  That is a change from tradition when all of the work was done with a panga (opanga in DhoLuo).  They are very skilled at shaping the boards with chain saws, and while it is a very manual process, it is very efficient, and the boats come out looking as they always have. I was told that the only modification from the shapes that they have been using for ever, is the addition of a board at the back for an outboard motor,  rather than relying on sails on oars.  I was delighted, however, to see a boat sailing in. The traditional sail is very much like a dhow,  so I am wondering if there is an Arab influence here.

Woke up at 3 am as sick as a dog.  Stayed in bed most of the day, taking antibiotics and drinking aloe juice. I’m not sure I can recommend the aloe juice, at least not for drinking.  The only saving grace was  that it was a lot less unpleasant to be sick when staying with family who made me tea and made sure I was more or less comfortable, than it would have been in a hotel.

I love the drive from Kisumu to Ndwara…since it’s familiar to me now, I like looking for landmarks, and seeing what has changed.  Lots of work on the road, which is improving it somewhat.  I was happy to see that the men working on the road project were Africans and not all Chinese workers as I have seen in some other places.  It means that the money will get spent locally and benefit lots of people.  I have been told that Chinese construction companies pay their Chinese workers by depositing the money in their bank accounts in China, so virtually none of it gets spent in the country where the work is going on.

Arriving home was the same as always.  A few things have changed, many things remain the same.  The baby chicken that I named Jacinta last year is now fully grown…and turned out to be a rooster.  I suggested that they not let me name any more chickens, since Jacinta is probably suffering from some gender confusion, but apparently it is a great source of humour.  They wanted me to name another one this time, so to be on the safe side I named it Rocky which was the most gender neutral name I could come up with at short notice.

A quick wash and change my clothes when I arrived, and then off to the celebration of the appointment of a new assistant chief of the region.  This is a government position, something like an assistant government manager for the region, and for the first time ever, it is someone from the Ndwara community.  This is a cause for real excitement, and is likely to have a positive effect on the library.  Unexpectedly, I was expected to speak, but all I could manage was a small speech of congratulations, and express the hope that we would have a long and fruitful working relationship.

The really good news from the government is that we have been promised more Constituency Development Fund money,  which should be enough to finish the building.  Still it’s sometimes a long trip here between the promise of money and its appearance in the bank, so I will save my real celebrating for when it appears.

My wonderful puppy Willie is now full grown and has become a lovely dog.  He is very affectionate which doesn’t seem to be very usual here, and really loves to play with Mathews who is the boy who lives with Mama Doris and takes care of Willie.  I always think of Mathews as a little boy, since he was when I met him, but he is now in Grade 11 and taller than I am.  He is one of my favourite sponsored students here.

I was really tired after the adventure getting from Ghana, and it was wonderful to climb into my familiar bed in my familiar bed room.

I should have suspected that things might go pear shaped when I got an email from the travel agent saying that my flight had changed and it was now leaving half an hour early, and had a different number.  The time didn’t really make any difference since there was a combi to take 16 of us to the airport to catch various flights, and we were all going to be plenty early.  Actually it took 2 combis, one for the luggage, and it started to rain.  Heavily.  Nonetheless we all arrived at the airport, but it was so congested that the two combis had to park at different ends of the terminal so we all got soaking wet trying to retrieve our luggage.  There is nothing as dispiriting as departing on an overnight flight in soggy pants.

When we got inside, the gate for our flight hadn’t opened yet, even though it was three hours before flight time, but they explained that it was because the flight was delayed for half an hour.  I met a very nice mining engineer in line and learned a lot about mining while I was waiting.  Eventually we managed to get checked in and went through all of the normal airport stuff.  First step health check  – they take your temperature by pointing a thing at your brain, and your temperature comes up on a little screen.  You show your yellow fever card, and if you don’t have one, they send you to another counter to get a shot.  Next stop security, then immigration.  I caught up with my friends from South Africa in the coffee shop and we had one last bout of Ghanaian food, although it seemed better, perhaps because we were out of the dorm atmosphere.  We rushed a little because we had all be told sternly when we checked in that the gates would close at the specified time, with no exceptions.

Off to my gate, arriving about 5 minutes before it was due to close to discover that it wasn’t open yet.  Back in line with the same lovely man, and we continued our conversation.    Eventually the gate opened, with the same staff members who had checked us in downstairs, and they checked all of our IDs and boarding passes again, and admitted us to a “lounge”.  The AC was on the permafrost setting, and even though I felt silly I sat there with a sweat shirt on.  Then the lights went out.  Then they went on.  Then they went out but we could still see because of all of the lightning.  Then they told us that our plane had been redirected to Monrovia because of the storm. It’s OK if you don’t know where Monrovia it…I didn’t either until I looked it up.  It’s the capital of Liberia! (no, in case you are wondering, I don’t have any symptoms of ebola).

As we sat in the alternating darkness and light, my name was called over the PA system.  For some reason this is something I never want to hear in an airport, “Margaret Law, please identify yourself at an information desk”, so off I went.  They told me that my suitcase was caught in security, and I needed to go down and see the security officer.  I had to leave my boarding pass with the people at the gate.  Back through immigration, where I had to leave my passport, back through security,  back through the health screening point and down to the check in desk, where a fierce looking female officer led me to a back room.  Actually it was more like a concrete hallway with a table, and metal gates at each end.  I went inside with my suitcase and two security guys, while the female one stood guard outside.  I was a little anxious because I had a large bag of drugs for Ndwara…  Tylenol, painkillers, malaria medication and antibiotics and all of the containers had different people’s names on them.  I was planning my plea bargain for drug smuggling when they asked me what gold I had in my suitcase.  Gold???

Of course I said I didn’t have any, but they looked skeptical and dug through my suitcase like a dog looking for a bone.  Stuff was dumped on the table, including the large bag of drugs, while they rooted around looking for the gold I was not only smuggling, but denying.  They poked and prodded and seemed particularly suspicious of a pewter serving spoon that I had bought, going so far as to try scratching it with a fingernail.  I don’t know who was more disappointed, me or them, when it turned out there was no gold in my suitcase.  Once everything was out and they had shaken my bag thoroughly, they shoved everything back in, including the big bag of drugs, and told me to run, so I wouldn’t miss the plane.

Back through the health check, still had my yellow fever card, and no temperature; back through immigration to get my passport, and back through security.  Back to the gate to pick up my boarding pass, and sit down with my friend the mining engineer.  There are lots of gold mines in West Africa, and he was joking that perhaps they should have checked in his bag instead.  The good thing was that all the running had dried my clothes and hair.

Eventually the plane arrived from Monrovia, and managed to land, even though the storm seemed as bad as before.  By the time we got boarded, it was over three hours late, and the flight from Accra to Nairobi took an hour longer than usual, probably because of the storms and wind.  I don’t think anyone slept on the flight…the first half was too bumpy, and then, because we were flying east,  the sun came up.

When I booked my flight from Nairobi to Kisumu, I thought that the four hour wait would be perfect.  I could get cleaned up, have some breakfast, and arrive in Kisumu cleanish and rested.  What actually happened was that we landed at 9:45 and the Kisumu plane was due to depart at 9:55.  Since it’s always worthwhile, especially here, so see if the plane actually has gone, I checked with the agent.  It had actually left early at 9:35 for some reason.  Domestic plane timing in Africa is a very approximate business, and often depends on the number of government officials who are either on board or wish to be.

After I got my baggage I set off from the international terminal to the domestic terminal; at least that was my intention.  There is a large map of the airport outside the international terminal, showing the way to terminal 2.  I set off with my goods and chattels, following the side walk.  The airport is a giant circle and it seemed that if I just kept walking I would come to terminal 2.  Two problems:  the sidewalk is under construction so you can’t go there, and there is no terminal 2 anymore.  That was a temporary sign while they were building the new terminal.  Now domestic departures are from terminal 1-D (not on the map), but a nice security looking man led me down a ramp, and held up the chain at the bottom so that I could walk across the traffic circle and make my way to terminal 1-D.  When I arrived there, the sign on the door said terminal 2, so evidently I was in the right place.

Kenya Airways was able to get me on the next flight, for a small charge of $79 USD.  Having been up for more than 24 hours, I didn’t want to discuss the fairness of this, so I paid and went to check in.  One small problem – I have two bags and I’m only allowed one, and it turned out that the biggest one was overweight.  The agent suggest that I just check the heaviest one, he’ll charge me for that, and I carry three bags on the plane with me, and it will save me about $50.  Although I am morally opposed to people carrying large numbers of carry-on items onto the plane, but at this point I wasn’t going to argue with him,  especially when he gave me a wink and said that he could really only see two of them.  Out comes my credit card, but of course, it’s not that simple.  I have to leave my bags, go back out of the terminal to the ticket agent, and buy a coupon for the overweight bag for $20.

The ticket agent is a very strange thing…it is like two booths side by side with a sliding panel in between.  You go to the first one and buy your ticket and then go to the other one to pay.  The first person prints a form from the computer, and pushes it through the sliding panel.  Then the second one enters all the same information on her computer, takes  your money, stamps the first form and pushes it back through the sliding panel, and then gives you a copy of the receipt to take back to the check in counter.   Eventually I was all checked in and ready to go.  The plane arrived, our ID and carry-on bags were checked by the winking agent, and 45 minutes later I was landing in Kisumu where Apollo and his family, including his brother Patrick (I guess my “brother” now), met me.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=it%27s+a+small+world+song&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=8F6C3FCC96CF05420E998F6C3FCC96CF05420E99

I woke up this morning to an email from a friend of Michael’s in Korea, telling me that a friend of his was at the same conference as I was, and that I should greet him.  It turns out that he was at the conference to win an award for the library that he runs, in rural Kenya.  He had been teaching English in Korea, and when he went home to Kenya, he didn’t get a teaching job so he got a job in a library instead.  His library is in the same region as Ndwara but has a distinct advantage in that it has electricity.

The conference continues: the place we are staying is very like a dormitory, with food to match.  The food is good but we’ve had the same thing every day since I got here.  It is cheap though:  $78 USD a day including three meals.  It’s quite remote, and set in the middle of a large campus, next to the equally large University of Ghana campus so there is no way to escape without taking a taxi.  We are pretty much busy from breakfast to bedtime though, so there isn’t really time to escape anyway.

In Ghana, it is common to get fabric made for special groups or associations.  Each university has its own fabric, the Ghana Library Association has its own fabric, and schools have their own fabric.  AfLIA (The African Library and Information Association), the hosts of this conference, had fabric printed and were selling it as a fund raiser. They also brought tailors to the conference centre to make up the fabric. I ordered a skirt, and the guy promised it would be here today (Tuesday) since I’m leaving on Wednesday. It’s bedtime Tuesday and still no skirt.

Stu was scheduled to go paragliding this morning, something I decided to pass on. He set off bright and early, but when they got there it was raining so it got cancelled. I wandered along the street looking for something to eat that didn’t involve fried eggs or boiled milk. A cinnamon bun and black tea at the German bakery was just the thing. I bought an embroidered carry-on sized bag to carry all my new acquisitions, and chatted with the guy in the store for so long that he gave me tea. I bought some small gifts, and he gave me a yak wool change purse as a gift, and the morning was well spent.

This afternoon it started to rain in earnest. It’s remarkably like standing in the shower fully dressed, and the water is warmer than some of the showers that we have had during this trip. Seems like a good afternoon to read our books and veg.

It’s our last night in Pokhara before heading for the jungle, so we decided to brave the rain and meet Kory and Mel one last time for dinner. Many of the restaurants her have an second floor that is open to the street so we sat and watched the world go by in the rain. There are actually storm sewers in Pokhara, but there is so much rubble along the side of the road that the water can’t get to them, and consequently forms puddles that stretch across the road. Life goes on as usual. cows and dogs seek refuge under trees, and occasionally under the awnings in front of shops. The electricity is very uncertain here, and it is the low season so not many people. Because there is no light in the shops, and no customers, the shopkeeper sit on their front steps and chat with each other or watch the world go by.

Nepal’s time zone is 15 minutes different from India’s. This is a political decision to make it clear that it is not part of India…I wonder if they have a joke like, “The world will end at 10 tonight, 10:15 in Nepal”?