My Favorite Day

Over this past weekend I set out with 4 of my friends on a hike near Kisumu town. I had a hand written map from another friend and a vague idea of where we were going. Mostly I was interested in seeing up close the interesting large racks on the hillsides near town. The day was already hot at 10 when we set out, but since it had rained a lot the night before we couldn’t leave until the mud roads had dried out some.

We followed a road on which cars haven’t driven in some time, since the bridge to cross the river washed out some months ago. There is a sturdy foot bridge to cross for bikes and humans but no cars can make it coming from the direction of Kisumu town. As we hiked up the road everyone was waving at us from their homes or fields where they worked. We called out greetings in Swahili, “Habiri!” (Hello, how are you!) to which the common response is “Mzuri” (Fine). The children would run out to the road and shout hello or others would run and hide we they saw us coming. This is an area that probably hadn’t seen 3 white people, one Asian, and an Indian walking down their road in a very long time.

We climbed up towards the top of the hills and got some close views of the huge boulders that dot the hillside. At one point we left the road for a small foot path that was cut into the hill side. Around noon we stopped for a snack break and to decide where we would go next. We found some boulders in the shade and settled in for a bit of a rest. Within minutes we were approached by a beautifully smiling woman with her four children. As it turns out we were sitting near this woman’s field on her land. She was happy to have us there and welcomed us her village, as I passed out cookies to the kids my friends started to ask the woman about her town. Soon we were joined by her husband who as it turned out was on his way to a meeting of the village advisory board for the community clinic. Since we explained to him we were all student studying medically related fields he invited us to visit the clinic. It was small and had limited supplies but the 6 members of the community advisory board were so proud of the fact that they were the first town in their area to have built a clinic and that had been staffed by the national government health system.

After a few more pictures with the group we head back towards town. We had two children from the village that were out guides. Here we were all of us in hiking shoes and these two kids were wearing flip-flops! They lead us a ways form their village to make sure we rejoined the right path that would get us to a safe bridge to cross the river again.

After walking almost non-stop for 5 hours we finally made it back home tired even one might say exhausted but so so happy. It was probably my favorite day in Kenya so far. It wasn’t seeing the zebras, lions, or hippos, though those were amazing, it was spending time in that village on the top of the hill just talking to regular Kenyans about their lives. I have had in many ways a privileged time here, I go out to visit our study site frequently but always in a big white land rover with our logo on the side and wearing my bright green badge that identifies me as an employee of the organization. We go to places that are fairly used to white people coming to ask them questions and who also live a bit of a different life then other Kenyans because they might receive special services through the projects that my organization works on. The people that shouted their hellos to us and those that showed us their clinic, they were just Kenyans who were happy to welcome these strangers to their two and show them the life they live there. I am only sorry that it took nearly two months for me to see that side of Kenya and experience just how wonderful the Kenyans are!