KEEP and the last day of my life as a Volunteer!

Hello!!! I know its been a few weeks since posting, but I have moved from Tsavo to Wasini island, both places with absolutely NO electricity, therefore no ability for me to be able to post my wonderful thoughts on the interwebs!  I am back, for a few hours, before leaving again, so I would love to bring everyone up to do date on whats been going on for the past month, and also to announce a very exciting new venture for me!

So, Tsavo - was incredible.  We worked in two different villages in Tsavo West National Park, Kidong and Lekole Lepolosi.  Both were absolutely incredible experiences that I will never forget, and I also gained a lot of professional skills in working with CBOs (Community based organizations).  Both groups embody a joint organization called "Poachers to Protectors", and we got to hear their amazing stories about beginning alternative lifestyles to poaching bush animals in the national park.  Their lives were extremely hard before, and very dangerous.  Rangers in the parks are licensed to shoot on site if they see poachers in the parks, and they also had to fight for their lives every day with lions, elephants, hunger and the type of poverty that comes with a 'easy come, easy go' lucrative business.  They gave it all up, and with the help from organizations like GVI are working towards creating alternative, sustainable, and eco-friendly livelihoods.  They have a website going up soon, which I will be sure to post as soon as its ready.  Here is a picture of us working in Lepolosi with some Maasai community members on crafts making projects:

We also got to feast on roast goat and roast shoat!!! Which was absolutely delicious...all in all two of the best weeks of my life.

Actually, the last two weeks were equally as incredibe...I spent them on a boat doing marine research in Kisite National Park!!You can read all about that here: http://www.kws.org/parks/parks_reserves/KMNP.html

and see all the beautiful pictures of where I got to snorkel :-)  Here is a picture of my absolutely favorite fish, the Emperor Angelfish

Now onto the great news...my internship placement!!! I will be working for KEEP (Kakamega
Environmental Education Program) in Kakamega rainforest!!!  The site is here if you want to read more, please do!!  I'll be doing work with their eco-tourism program development!! It is absolutely perfect for my Capstone, and I'm so excited to be working on my own.  I cannot wait to post pictures of the site here, it looks like I"ll be headed up there in a few weeks.  For now, just peruse these random google images:

 Fluffy Colobus Monkeys!!

Continuing on the whole covering up thing...

SO, I was going to write a blog today about a phenomenon called ‘community feet’, which turns out isn’t that much of a blog, because it can be described in a PICTURE (oh, technology, what you do for me), which you can see below:

The mind blowing part is that I had washed my feet twice the day this picture was taken.  But when your schedule takes you to four different schools in one village, all about a 20 minute walk from each other, on dirty roads, and you have impromptu games of football with children (the football is actually a bunch of plastic bags wrapped with duct tape…I should get a picture of one to share…) and you also work with Shimoni Environmental Agency making alternative charcoal out of coconut shells (again, this would be a great time for another picture…)

OK, you get the point, and I guess there actually is a pretty interesting story that goes along with the dirt on my feet.  However, I really want to expand upon what I was writing about yesterday.  After some great discussion with my fellow GVI members and some private contemplation on the matter of women covering their heads and bodies to respect their religious beliefs, I feel that I have a lot more to say.  DISCLAIMER : What I’m saying in no way reflects Islam as a religion, or Muslim people as a culture, in general.  I am merely reflecting how I view the women of Shimoni village, a village that relies mostly on fishing as a means of making a living, a village that can be described as conservative (albeit a relative term), and a village of which the majority of its inhabitants identify as Muslim. 

This is how I walk into the village everyday, I think I look pretty cool...

Moving on.  So the question that I’m after, and that what people who have read this seem to want an answer to, is “Is the empowerment of women hindered or helped by the fact that they have to cover their heads, shoulders and knees?”  I have to admit I don’t have an answer to that in ANY WAY.  Because, I have seen a lot of un-empowered women in the free world, let me tell you.  For example, is  this  an empowered woman?  Is this?  

These are two very obvious extremes, but they illustrate my point.  How can we tell how strong, how smart, how worldly, how creative, how beautiful, how hard-working, how loving a woman is by just looking at her?  I know a few women in the village, a few very strong and smart and beautiful women, and they inspire me more than any ‘regular’ woman I have ever met in the states.  They have next to nothing.  I mean, they are the people you hear about living on less than $2 a day.  They have children, husbands, homes to care for…and yet they volunteer teach, they come to GVI’s outreach programs, they come to the women’s group to learn. A woman came to our adult environmental education course out of her own time and she was at first shy, but then she was taking notes and even said to me she would love to use this knowledge to become a community facilitator.  It gave me chills to hear her say that, it took a good amount of teeth clenching not to yell “You go girl!!!!”

I remained professional, but just thinking about it now makes me giddy.  Women are fucking awesome.  I’m sorry, but they are.  And they are here in Shimoni.  When I see a woman here, she is carrying 15 gallons of water on her head, nursing a child, washing clothes, and she stands tall.  She looks at me in the eyes and dares me to say hello first.  She welcomes me into her home and offers me chai and asks me about my life in America.  She is my friend, and she is my equal.  I guess I have my answer after all.  

The whole covering up thing...

The whole covering up thing

So, everyday I wake up and climb completely naked out of bed.  I have your attention now, right?  Well, at least for a minute.  Not long after that I am getting dressed to go out into the village.  Mind you, Shimoni is much more modern than Mkwiro.  You only have to make sure your shoulders and knees are covered.  Only!  In Mkwiro (the island village) you have to have your head covered as well.  Or they will stone you.  Literally.

Ok, maybe they would only stone you if you were in Zanzibar.  But it would be pretty close.  My headscarf slipped once in class and a 7 year old chastised me harshly enough that I made sure it never happened again.  I was also brought back to the days of my first visit to a rural coastal village in Kenya, about three years ago.  My homestay mother, an ancient woman who spoke not a lick of English, ripped my kanga off of my body because I wasn’t wearing second one underneath it.  A SECOND kanga??!  In 100 degree heat…with 100% humidity…I had literally passed out because of dehydration and I still wasn’t getting it right.

But that’s another story.  This is the story about Shimoni, a village that is ‘modern’, however, when you walk around in nothing but bangs and a long sleeve shirt, you still get dirty looks.  Compared to when I walk into the village with a headscarf, tied up as shown below, and I get many more welcome greetings. 

When I dress like this, I am told “Umependeza!”, which means, “You look smart!”, which means, “You look dern good woman!”  I feel like a crazy person, and when you are wearing three different pieces of fabric, a strong gust of wind can almost undress you completely (remember the stones) and freak out accordingly.

However, I am welcomed into people’s homes, someone even bought me LUNCH the other day.   I am called Fatuma by people, and asked if I’m a real Mzungu Muslim.  I reply truthfully, no, I am not Muslim.  To which they answer “Ohhh you’re Christian.”  It’s a statement, you are either one or the other.  Trying to explain that you are ‘spiritual’ is sometimes interpreted as ‘I’m into witchcraft and devilwork’.  So, I usually just try to speak KiSwahili and people laugh at me and then I go along with my day.

I’m actually really glad I’ve never been fervently religious or fervently agnostic, because this would be really hard either way.  I like to think I’m coasting the line between being culturally sensitive and ignorantly religious.  I have to say I haven’t gotten anything negative by dressing the part, except very sweaty, and only good things from trying to fit in.  I even once had a man come up to me and say thank you.  He was genuinely impressed at my effort.  I felt really good.  I feel really good, I have a lot of friends in the village now.

And I also can’t say I feel oppressed.  I feel the exact opposite of oppressed.  When I dress like a Mzungu, I get snide, even disgusting remarks from men.  Now I am treated as an equal.  My mind screams that this is wrong, I should be empowering myself!  But I realize now empowerment isn’t forcing society to look at your skin.  Empowerment is trying, its putting yourself out there, testing the limits.  I would be oppressed if I stayed in my room naked all day, I would be alone, I wouldn’t have a voice.  I’m still working it out, but for now I say it’s a good fit.  

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacckkk (and in Kenya!!!)

So!  Hello.  This is a little awkward for me, because I feel really guilty about abandoning my Vermonter blog after only a few months.  The truth is that the novelty wore off, and I really thought I had embraced Vermont culture so much that I didn't have time for blogs, because I was too busy tubing down rivers, smoking all natural tobacco, drinking out of paper bags and attending free music festivals at farmhouses (see below)

I truly fell in love with Vermont.  And I miss it.  Which leads me to the reason of re-vamping the Vermonterlusting blog...I've moved to Kenya!!  I am currently working for the most kickass organization evah  , which you can real all about here.  I have been doing the most amazing things ever...and as of now I'm still in the 'volunteer intern phase', so I get to move around to the different projects going on in Kenya.  We do 6 weeks of community work, 2 weeks on Forest, and 2 weeks on Marine (which I am MOST excited for...we snorkel and look for dolphins all day long).  As I write, I am in Shimoni Village, which you can see in the little location thing.  There really are only those two main roads, with forests on each side, full of Angolan Black and White Colobus monkeys!!!

Needless to say, there is just tooo much going on to NOT write about.  I already have six weeks worth of adventure that I should have been sharing with the world.  So please, stay tuned...I am going to regiment myself to write ONE BLOG every DAY this WEEK.  Yes, its happening.  I promise.

Winter Vermonterland

So this winter has been pretty rough.  By pretty I mean really, and by really I mean, I have been in an near depression state of mind for the past 3 months.  It just snowed another 12 inches atop of 5 feet that has been accumulating since December.  See picture below:

That is my door.  It's really nothing compared to when 4 feet of solid ice fell off my roof in front of my garage, blocking my car and my freedom for an entire day.  I did however burn an approximate 1500 calories from shoveling it all away.  It also apparently isn't going to stop there, another 3-4 inches tonight is coming and again tomorrow night.  Here are some pictures of my adorable chinchilla to warm your heart if not your hearth.