Meru Homestay: Survival of the Fittest

This past week I lived in a rural community in the mountains of Meru, near the base of Mt. Kenya.  I stayed with a lovely family on their farm where they raised cows, sheep, goats, and chickens.  The chickens had the pleasure of running around freely on the property, and I soon learned that they are greedy little bastards.  They will eat ANYTHING! Trying to sort rice under the shaded tree? Better have a stick or pile of rocks ready to pelt at the pests who are prepared to pounce on that night’s side dish.  My 200-year-old toothless grandma had quite the arm (and quite the aim).  Those chickens had no chance when she was wound up and ready to fire.

Word of advice: Goats don't make the best playmates. They're pretty cliquey.

Seeing as my last post was organized and aesthetically pleasing, I have decided to format this post into a list as well.  Here are the highlights from my 7 days in Meru:

First Impressions:

I met my host parents, Margaret and Henry Ndugu, who are approximately the same age as my biological parents.  I called them Mama and Baba.  They live on a farm with their son Humphrey, who is 23 and lives in his own house on their property.  In Meru culture, the daughters are married off and go to live on their husband’s farm.  The sons inherit their parents’ property as soon as they pass away.  If there are multiple sons, they split the inheritance.  Luckily for Humphrey, he’s the only son in his family.  Two of my sisters are married off and living closer to Meru town.  The youngest is studying at Kenyatta University in Nairobi.

What I quickly learned during my homestay is that education is the golden ticket out of Meru.  In Kenya, the education system is organized into an 8-4-4 structure.  Students go through eight years of primary school and then they take a standardized final exam.  If they pass, they continue on to secondary school for another four years.  After secondary school, students take another final exam.  Those students scoring in the B+ and above range go to university where they can become doctors, lawyers, and professors.  Those students scoring a C or higher can go to a college where they become teachers and nurses.  Anyone scoring lower than a C cannot go on to get his or her degree.  All of the adults I met in Meru had ended their education after secondary school and started a family.  However, they all have hopes that their children will test well enough to move on to university where they can live in Nairobi and have more opportunities than they themselves had. 

Bottom line: If you don’t go to university, you stay in Meru.  If you’re smart enough to score well on your final exam, you go to school in Nairobi and stay there permanently as long as you can find a job.  Many people’s ultimate goal is to move to America, but Nairobi is a close second.

Accommodations:

My home in Meru did not have electricity or running water.  Therefore, my bathing consisted of taking sponge baths out of a basin.  As for the bathroom, I used a latrine (otherwise known as a 6-foot deep hole in the ground).  We listened to the radio for entertainment and after 6pm we relied on flashlights and my headlamp for vision.  What I failed to realize was that not everyone in my group was “roughing” it as much as I was.  When we reminisced on our bus ride back to Nairobi, I learned that many of them watched Spanish soap operas dubbed in English for the duration of their homestay.  Silly me.  What kept me sane was knowing (or rather, believing) that 22 other students were experiencing the same agony that I was. 

Meeting the Neighbors:

Walking on the dirt roads of my neighborhood was quite the experience.  I learned basic Kimeru greetings (because obviously there shouldn’t be any reason for me to use the Kiswahili that I spent the last week intensively studying). Everyone in my community is fluent in Kimeru, and I was lucky to meet anyone proficient in English.  Kimeru is a local dialect based off of Kiswahili, so I was able to get around well enough.  One of the most frustrating things during my week in Meru was not being able to speak English quickly and articulately.  I had to simplify everything I was trying to say and verbalize it VEEEEERRRRYYYYY SLOWLYYYY. 

Anyway, back to walking on the street.  Everyone loved seeing the “mzungu”.  It was like witnessing an alien that had just emerged from the mouth of a lion and was breathing purple flames.  Their eyes would widen as I approached, their head tilted slightly to the side.  As soon as the white girl smiled brightly and said “Muga!” [“Hello, how are you?”], they would respond “Muga mono” [“I am fine”] and erupt into a bout of laughter.  I wasn’t trying to be funny.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do almost anything for a laugh.  But that time I was just trying to be friendly.  The sheer fact that a white girl knew even one word of their local language was enough to make them chuckle uncontrollably.   

Sorry American friends. You've been replaced.

Gender Roles:

The main thing I noticed on the second day (that I had observed on the first day as well) was the gender gap between men and women.  My mother lived to serve my father.  He would come home from work around 5, sit on the couch, and turn on the radio.  He wouldn’t get off the couch until it was time for bed.  Meanwhile, my mother and I would be doing fieldwork, milking the cow, and preparing dinner.  If there was ever a time that he needed something, my mother would have to stop what she was doing and tend to his needs.  Dinner took between 2-3 hours every night to prepare, but a couple of times we had to stop halfway through to prepare tea for my father because he was thirsty.  By the second day, I wanted to walk up to my father and yell, “Get off your ass and make it yourself!”  What I soon realized, however, was that my mother and father really loved and respected each other.  The culture they were raised in engrained this behavior in them.  They’ve never known anything different.  My father never talked down to my mother.  In fact, a couple of times she called him out, like to tell him to turn off the radio while we prayed before dinner, or to stop reading me the story of Passover from the Old Testament after I told him I was Jewish.  I learned to appreciate my role as his subservient in some respects but his equal in others, like dinner conversations when I would interrogate him about Meru culture, religion, and politics.

Ladies who lunch (otherwise known in Meru as ladies who sort beans, gossip, and drink chai)

Jew in the Land of Gentiles:

I went to church for the first time on Sunday and IT! WAS! GREAT! I have never had so much fun at any Bat Mitzvah service, not even my own.  There was praying. There was singing. There was dancing.  There was a DJ.  I greeted the 200+ church members in Kiswahili…and they loved it.  The best part: there was an auction!

To raise money for the church, people from the community donated their crops, which were then auctioned off and the proceeds went to support the church.  People bought carrots, potatoes, mangoes, bananas, onions, and tomatoes.  Then, out of nowhere, the auctioneer whipped out a chicken! Yes, a real, live, flapping chicken! It was sold for less than 3 US dollars. 

But that’s not all!

Then a box labeled “drinking chocolate” was placed on the table.  People started yelling out bids and they were getting pretty high, closing in on 400 or 500 shillings.  Then, the auctioneer reached his arm into the box.  It was like a magic show! Out of this cardboard box he pulled out a RABBIT! Poor little Thumper was sold for the equivalent of 7 US dollars to be eaten later that night.  My friend Caitlin, who I ran into at church, had to literally pick my jaw up off the floor.

Post church

(From left: Minister, Caitlin, Caitlin's host mother, me, my adorable nephew Bret, my host father)

Cuisine:

Speaking of strange eating habits, the food I ate this past week could have been featured on Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods.  On Sunday night we had beef stew full of cow liver, cow lungs, and cow kidneys.

The last night, my mother prepared a “special” going away dinner.  Like all other dinners, it consisted of steamed cabbage, some form of starch/carb such as chapate (Kenyan version of a tortilla…THE BEST) or ugali (maize flour-based flavorless wedge), and meat stew.  Whereas other nights’ meat had been bought from the market, my last supper was marked with the sacrifice of one of our beloved chickens.  Luckily I missed the beheading, but I did have the honor of receiving an anatomy lesson from my mother.   I now know the entire internal structure of a chicken. Lucky me! Because my family wasted NOTHING, I watched as my mother tossed out the intestines and stomach, but threw the rest of the remains into the pot.  She added some tomatoes, onions, salt, water, set it on the open fire and called it a night. I may or may not have consumed the chicken’s heart that evening.

  My family after dinner in our living room

(From left: me, Mama, Baba, Humphrey)

This past week was filled with new people, new places, and new experiences.  At times it was difficult, but for the most part I have very little to complain about.  My family treated me like royalty even though they were instructed to put me to work, I had access to an endless supply of the best mangoes IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the community members were eager to meet me and hear about my experiences.  Of course, realizing that I am highly allergic to the grass used to feed cows wasn’t all that fun because I developed a pretty nasty rash and my eyes swelled up like those of lizards!...but who really cares now that I look human again.

Tomorrow we start our classes in Nairobi and Saturday we leave for a week in Mombasa.  For those of you who have gotten this far, I’ll do my best to make my next post a bit briefer.  Time to go pick out my first day of school outfit! Kwaheri ya kuonana!