World Malaria Day 2012

Yesterday, April 25, 2012 I attended my fellow PCV, Cassidy’s World Malaria Day Event in her village of Chebunyo. Malaria kills 72 children every day worldwide! The worst part is that this is an avoidable disease. Therefore, we handed out nets and taught the villagers how to hang them and tuck them in at night. We also played mosquito tag where one kid was a mosquito and the rest had to run under the net for safety without getting tagged.  I think everyone learned a lot and appreciated my friend for holding the event. I know I enjoyed being a part of it! Hope you are all recognizing World Malaria Day back in America. We are fortunate enough to not have malaria in our country, but others are not.

Follow @StompOutMalaria and @RollBackMalaria on Twitter.com to find out what you can do to help!

Earth Day Update and Gender and Development

Friday, April 20^th, I got together with my students at Singorwet Secondary for the Tree Nursery Project and I’m happy to report it was a great success! I had prepared a whole lecture for the students and went into it really nervous because I had never planted a tree before in my life, let alone built a whole nursery. But luckily when I got there, the students seemed to already know exactly what they were doing. We built two beds, plated each with different seeds, and then covered each with mulch cut by the students. It looks really professional! I was excited to provide these seeds to the students because the school could really use the extra income they will generate from selling the trees once they become seedlings.

After planting, we had a trash cleanup contest in the community. I told the students to get into teams of 2 to 3 people and whichever team picked up the most trash would win a prize. We walked up to the center of town from school picking up more than we could even carry. Every bag was stuffed full of trash and we still didn’t even clean up as much as there was. There are no trash cans in the village so people just throw trash on the ground. It’s a horrible mentality around Kenya in fact. There is also not really any type of recycling program here, and people just burn their trash. Although, bags and bottles are used over and over again. Anyway, we picked up so much trash and at least made a dent in cleaning up the community. Plus, I think it showed a good example to the rest of the villagers that we were willing to get our hands dirty to clean up our village. Today, as the students reward, I’m donating a soccer ball to the school and getting them each candy. I couldn’t choose just one team to be the winner because they all did such a good job.

The rest of the weekend, I spent in Nairobi where I had a GAD (Gender and Development Committee) meeting. GAD funds gender related projects to PCVs in the field. In fact, I funded my entire International Women’s Day event through a GAD Grant. I applied for GAD awhile back and was selected to be on the committee so this meeting was my first. We talked about that we are in desperate need for money. We funded about $900 in projects this last year and now all we have left is $40! People at home, if you are willing to donate to GAD please let me know! You can Western Union me the money and I can put it directly into our account. It goes a long way to helping PCVs fund their projects and creating sustainable projects that benefit women all over Kenya. So also at the meeting, we had elections for officers because they will all be finishing their service soon. I got nominated for Chair, Co-Chair and Secretary! I had wanted Chair for a long time and I’m happy to announce that I got voted in as the new Chair for GAD! So I’ll be running the program and plan to put a lot of effort and work into building up this committee. We also run 2 CAMP GLOWs a year, which are girl camps that teach empowerment and reproductive health. A lot of our funding for these camps comes through PEPFAR, but we also raise money from home for this. Please let me know if you can contribute to help (aflynnschneider@gmail.com).

Anyway, so I’m back to work in my community now. I’m really trying to put in a big push for this maternity ward. I’ve been struggling to get the project budget done because I’m having trouble finding medical suppliers in Nairobi (plus my internet has been really bad lately). I want to get as much as I can done as quickly as possible because all of June I will be traveling with my dad when he comes to visit me here, and in July I have a trip planned to Zanzibar in Tanzania. All the positive energy you can send me would be a great help J 

Alright, that’s all for now folks. Missing all of you always and keeping you in my prayers!

Much Love

Chepkosgei 

Uganda or Bust

Life is fabulous and full of fun and excitement lately!

I headed out to my old site of Matayos about a week ago to visit old friends and students. It was so good to see everyone and they all missed me very much. Everyone called me Nekesa again which was a trip. I stayed in an orphanage with my old students and visited my supervisor and counterpart during the day. My counterpart had a new baby so it was so fun to play with her. The trip overall was good for me because I felt like I finally got some closure since they rushed me out of there so fast before. I feel like I’m where I’m suppose to be in Bomet now and the whole move was a good thing.

Anyway so from there, me, along with 20 other volunteers, took a bus to Jinja, Uganda to white water raft on the Nile River! I repeat, The NILE RIVER! The hostel we stayed in had nine person bunk rooms, a bar and a bungee jump! The next day we got into groups of 7 to raft down the Nile! The rapids were about class 4 mostly with a few class 5s. It was sick! We flipped twice. The first time was really scary because the waves were so massive it was hard to orientate myself and I got kicked in the chest, but by the second flip, we felt like pros. They treated us to a nice lunch half way down and then it was back to rapids.

The day wasn’t over though, after rafting, we were all ready to party and celebrate our feat! There was an upside down canoe strapped to the ceiling of the hostel and you could get up in it and take a shot upside down so we all took our turns. After, a few of us wanted to go out so we grabbed a ride to another bar. I was dancing with my friend Hannah and there are so many white people at this bar, I say “hey I bet Peace Corps Uganda people must be here somewhere”. So Hannah and I start yelling “who’s Peace Corps?!” and eventually someone raises their hand haha! So she introduces us to the rest of the volunteers she’s with. Now I have met Peace Corps Volunteers in 4 countries this year (Kenya Peace Corps is the best looking).

The next day we wake up bright and early so those who want to can bungee jump 145ft into the Nile River. They even dip you in! Since I had done the one in South Africa, I decided to save my money and just watch, but it looked like so much fun! After the jumping, a few of us decided to go drive ATV Quadbikes…I was all bragging about how good of a driver I am etc etc, when it turns out…I was a disaster on those things! Around the first turn, I smacked into a tree! Then I went into a ladies farm! So by that point, I decided it may be better if I go with the guide on his bike ha! It was still so much fun going with him because it began raining and he would slip and slide the bike all over the muddy path. We were literally going through African bush while children ran to the road to wave to us as we flew by on the quad bikes. A few other people got hurt pretty bad on the bikes…I can’t believe they just let anyone ride these.

That night we all went out to celebrate by treating ourselves to amazing Indian Food in Jinja. It was so great hanging with all the other volunteers who I don’t get to see very often. After dinner, a few of us went out to a local club where we danced the night away. It really was an amazing trip.

Back in Kenya, we spent a night in Kisumu, by far my favorite city in Western, Kenya. We danced, ate delicious food and reflected on Uganda. I truly hope I get a chance to go back and spend more time in Uganda. It was really beautiful and super green. Uganda was officially my 11th African country! And when my dad comes in June, Tanzania will be my 12th.

I’m happy to be back at site and listen to the rain once again on the tin roof of my house. It’s been cold here compared to Western Kenya and it’s hard to get use to again. I miss electricity. Today I baked banana raisin bread with my neighbor and then taught her how to make paper beads. Next week I’ll be working on the maternity ward budget mainly because there is no school. And then I’ll be back in Nairobi over the weekend for a GAD (Gender and Development Committee) meeting.

Anyway, miss you all back home and am thinking of you often! I’ve felt a real disconnect to home lately, so thank you to those of you who have supported me so much with your emails, letters and packages. I can’t explain how much it means to me.

Much Love
Chepkosgei

HIV Hotline and Tree Nursery

I spent the last few days in Nairobi where I got some R&R, ate some amazing food and saw a few Peace Corps friends, but now it’s back to work at site. I have two new projects in the works for this month which should keep me very busy.

First is my new HIV Hotline which will provide HIV/AIDS support, STD/STI information and testing clinic referrals to people in 3 different languages (Kiwahili, Kalenjin and English). A man name Alfred who I worked on the International Women’s Day event will be helping me. He will carry around the phone from about 10am-3pm everyday and people can call and ask him questions about health. We’ve had a general meeting to make sure we are on the same page with health issues, especially HIV, so no false information will be spread. We made a couple of different posters for advertising and hopefully within the next few months the hotline will be ringing off the hook! Although it will be confidential, we will ask callers their sex and age to keep track of which type of people we are helping the most and who we should target.

My other project, is a tree nursery that I will be putting together with a local secondary school. For Earth Day, April 22nd, we will get together to learn how to plant the trees and how to keep them healthy. All I’m providing is the lessons and the trees and then it is up to the kids to keep them up. The goal is to hopefully sell whatever trees are not needed to start a scholarship for kids that cannot afford school.

I’ve been really motivated since the Women’s Day and am using the popularity I gained after the event to propel my new projects and ideas. Everyone keeps telling me how grateful they are for everything I’ve been doing and it’s truly humbling.

Next week I'll be visiting my old site near Busia and seeing all my old friends! I'm so excited to catch up with them and see my old students especially. After I will be traveling to Uganda with 20 other volunteers to go river rafting on the Nile River!!!!

Basking in the Little Things

I'm proud to announce that my International Women's Day was such a successful event!!! In the end, the community really came together and made the event their own. Over 200 women that attended took home valuable information about HIV, Water Sanitation, Financial Banking, Starting a Business, the Importance of Education, Family Planning and how to make reusable sanitary pads! We gave out over 500 condoms, 100 reusable sanitary pads, 50 fertility awareness necklaces, 75 business plan worksheets and tested 50 people for HIV! We also had an impromptu fundraiser for the maternity ward I'm trying to build and we raised over 10,000ksh (about $100 US) which is a great start!

I'm really proud of my community and feel empowered to keep up all the hard work I've been putting in. I'm really trying to find glory in the small things I accomplish here to keep me going. The bad days here are very very low, but the good days make it all worth it.

After my event, my fellow PCVs and I went to Kisii to celebrate and I got to eat a bacon cheese burger!

Celebrate International Women's Day

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce

International Women's Day is this Thursday, March 8th! I'm writing to encourage all of you to go out, find an event, and celebrate the milestones women have overcame over the years. Not only in America, but in Africa, women have fought to gain basic human rights. The suppression of women has only made us a stronger gender. Here in Africa, women raise the children, tend to the farm and usually hold small jobs on the side all to support their family! They are the bedrock of Africa. That is why we call this continent Mother Africa.

We are lucky as women in America to have all we have. Women in Africa are still confined to their stereotypical gender roles. It is unheard of for women to even wear trousers in the village. Women must take on the entire burden of the family. Even if they are married, many times men run off and find second wives or girlfriends and their first wife cannot say or do anything. It's rare to find a woman here who is financially independent.

That is why I am working hard to teach women how to make healthy choices, learn business skills and create options for themselves through gaining higher education. I ask all of you back home to use this day to reflect on how far women have come, and how much further they have yet to go. Appreciate your mothers, your sisters, your wives.

I'd love to hear what you're doing so comment below!

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ~Roseanne Barr

SAVING THE WORLD!