First Full Day in Kenya!

So what fun is a day when I don't embarrass myself, right? Today started out great, seeing my friend (and boss) Rose Ayuma Moon for breakfast at my hotel. She left me in the capable hands of a driver we know, John. He stayed with me while I got my mobile phone and a microsim card for my iPad sorted, and then I told him I needed a bathroom before we started our drive to Nyeri. He took me to a public pay toilet, which was itself an adventure. The man at the desk wanted 5 shillings (about 7 cents), for which he handed me 4 squares of toilet paper. I told him I wasn't that confident, and offered 15 shillings for triple the paper. My family is reading this and asking themselves where my ever-present "ladies room" (not what I actually call it) bag was. Of course I'd left it in the car, or I would have been amply supplied with TP, hand wash, and wipes.

I entered the line of women in a room filled with large plastic barrels of water. Their reason appeared when the first woman to exit a stall reached into the nearest open barrel, took out a pitcher, and went back into the stall and poured water into the hole. The stalls had perfectly nice squat toilets, tiled, with water cisterns and pull chains above that obviously had no water in them.

The women had fallen silent when I walked in. I have a feeling that white women in town simply do what I would have done if John hadn't taken me to the public restroom, and walk into the nearest nice-looking hotel. Kenyan women can't easily do that because security guards often won't let them in if they can't prove they have a reservation. Plus, purchasing extra toilet paper was evidently an oddity. So, anyway, I emerge, flush by pouring a pitcher of water down the hole, and notice that everyone is looking at me. Figuring that they were admiring my willingness to adopt Kenyan ways, I started to walk proudly out of the restroom. Until one of the women stopped me and yanked my skirt out of my underpants, where I had tucked it neatly into the back. Thanking her graciously, I fled.

Traffic was awful, but three hours later we were in Nyeri. Magdaline and I had a great time catching up about our families, and a good meeting about the sanitary pad-making workshop she attended last week. Here she's showing me the layers for one of the pieces.



Tomorow we meet with about ten women whom I trained to teach sex ed in 2008. It will be fun to see them and catch up, and Magdaline and I are going to interview them about how they do or don't use their knowledge, and listen to stories. When it comes to sex ed in the field (literally in the field sometimes here) there are always stories.