Article 13 Initiative - Blog

Saturday is our practical day at SHOFCO, and this morning while some went out into the field to take photographs and as Wojciech taught programming to a few keen students, I made pancakes.  With the assistance of Anne Chege and then the company and conversation of Dorah and David, I cooked up forty or so of the biggest pancakes I have ever laid eyes on.  As I mentioned in a previous post, when SHOFCO eats, they really eat.  For less than five dollars, Martin picked up some flour, eggs, bananas, and baking powder for me, and we used the sugar, salt, and vegetable oil in the cupboard, as well as the milk we had brought from the Siloma’s family home, where they keep many cattle (in true Masai fashion).  Using a paraffin stove and an aluminum plate to fry them on, we spent a good three hours cooking our pancakes.   The whole point of my pancake pursuit was to give SHOFCO a little taste of Canada…I brought a bottle of maple syrup that disappeared in no time, as it was the piece de resistance on top of the pancake and banana pennies (or banana shillings as we called them today).  Almost as soon as the pancakes were devoured, many of the SHOFCO men asked for the recipe, and one was even so bold as to say, whomever can make pancakes can be my wife!  Dorah and Anne and I told him that David was the pancake connoisseur. : )

Something funny that I’ve noticed in Kibera is the proliferation of people who make their living as shoeshiners.  In a place that is so dusty and dirty, I guess there are many shoes to be washed, but as soon as you step down off the stool, they are almost instantly in need of another shine.  Is this a point of pride?  Or perhaps shoes are indicative of status?  I have yet to find out…  Even within SHOFCO, the moment a person steps inside the gate, they will often stop at the water pump to wipe down their footwear.

I worry that sometimes I may portray Kibera and Kenya in a blindingly positive light, but we have had our few trials as well as triumphs.  Yesterday as we waited for the 111 back to Ngong, we were approached by a man who asked us for a job.  Taken aback - we would have been more prepared had he asked us for money - Wojciech stammered a sorry, we have nothing, but he persisted, and asked if he could tour us around Nairobi.  We said that we have a friend who is doing that for us, and physically moved off down the platform to avoid him.  Later Wojciech pointed out that he had kept his hands in his pockets for the whole conversation, which worried us both…what might he have been hiding?  And would someone be hesitant to be violent in such a public area?  We may have been very lucky with the outcome of that encounter.  Aside from that one little scare, today I nipped my finger in the sliding lock of the gate at SHOFCO and now have a big purple bruise.  Last weekend I was also bitten by a vervet monkey at Keekorok Lodge in Masai Mara, as I was taking a photo of a male grooming a female when another one approached with a mango skin in her mouth from the other side and suddenly territory was an issue and I was too close!  Luckily, the monkey’s bite didn’t pierce my pant leg (thank goodness for jeans) and I am quite alright.

I had a funny moment of culture shock this afternoon with Wojciech, as we walked from Olympic Stage back to Namba Nane, weaving our way through Kibera on our own.  Wojciech was talking about Starbucks, and somehow the idea of this corporation and the cafe culture and richness of the lifestyle that I associate with that coffee struck me as totally ridiculous as we wandered past women cooking maze over small stoves, cages filled with squawking chickens, and children jumping rope.