Progress at Last?

Dear Everyone,Things are starting to show some progress on the project finally. After waiting for a month and a half I was finally able to meet with the District AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections Control Officer (DASCO) yesterday morning. It was a typical meeting with an appointed bureaucrat in Kenya, lots of dodging questions and evasiveness and little to no answers. The good thing came out of the meeting was that I was able to get a copy of the “Instruction guide for VCT site registration, annual licensing and accreditation.” There was only one copy of the document for the entire district so I had to go down the street from the district hospital to a shopping center to make a photocopy of it. The document provides the criteria for which the VCT shall be evaluated for registration. This is great aside from that it doesn’t elaborate nor explain where things such as the national VCT guidelines may be found and acquired for being displayed. When I inquired from the DASCO how to acquire such things he dodged to the best of his ability, attempting to hide that he didn’t know. This was especially frustrating when I asked for supplies and knowledge that all other VCT’s I had visited said they acquired from their DASCO. I tried to schedule an inspection for registration with him for as soon as possible knowing how ‘Kenyan time’ runs, and he wouldn’t set a date with me unfortunately. He said they’d be able to come as soon as we had the clinic ready, but it might take them two weeks after date before they came. With the guidelines in hand I am now attempting to acquire all the supplies necessary to ensure that our clinic shall be ready for inspection and registration as soon as possible. It feels great to finally be accomplishing something.Aside from the monotonous boredom of waiting for responses and information from the government I managed to a few little excursions. Two Sundays back when I was planning on going to Kakamega I ended up climbing a local mountain, Mount San’galo. It was getting to late in the morning that day to head to Kakamega and be able to truly appreciate it so we headed to Bungoma instead. While there Ellison and I decided to head to Mount San’galo, while Rhea and Sean headed back to the farm because they weren’t feeling so well. Riding a matatau to the village San’galo we could see the looming rock outcropping rising out of the fields of maize and cane as the first drops of started to fall. We got dropped off about half a mile from the mountain and began to walk down narrow footpaths cutting through fields of crops to gatherings of mud huts and into claustrophobics passages in the sugar cane before arriving at the base. At this point the afternoon rains had already come and proceeded to drench us for the rest of the journey up the mountain. It was exhilarating climbing up mountain as we walked, jumped, shimmied our way up amongst the rocks. At one point we even had to squeeze through a gap just large enough for our bodies without a bag as we braced between to two walls of rock on either side to support us pulling ourselves through and up. After this squeeze we arrived at high level area which led us through a cave formed from one massive boulder balancing on another which we had to go through to continue on. Once we got as high we could without climbing gear to scale the sheer stone pillar that went up another hundred feet, we were granted with a beautiful panorama looking across the African farmland surrounding us. It felt like we were at pride rock in the Lion King with a large table top like boulder balancing horizontal stretching out before us. During the climb it finally felt like I was in Africa, that I was out in the wilderness exploring not just sitting around at the farm.Last Friday night I went to a Hindu temple for the first time. Krishna had been invited by some members of the local Indian population to bring some volunteers over for a festival that began that day. I was given a tour of the temple which consisted of a large main room and two adjacent areas. In the main room walls were covered with pictures of the Hindu gods and prophets and an altar was in the middle of the floor with people dancing about and a stage with a band in the rear. On the right side there were shrines to various Hindu gods and prophets along with an area for burnt offerings, while the left side housed a kitchen attached to the main room. When I arrived people were dancing around the altar in a rhythmic pattern I had no chance of picking up. I ended up talking along with Krishna and Brent, a Peace Corps volunteer, to various Indian gentlemen there. It was interesting talking about the project with them because they all said that it was taking so long for our project because we had not bribed any of the official and that would move things along. Even Brent talked of having to bribe people to get his Peace Corps project done. It’s frustrating that everyone here just accepts corruption to be normal practice and supports it. At some point this round dancing ended and we had dinner which consisted of some savoury fried potato balls along with a spicy chutney and a tamarind sauce. After dinner was another round of dancing. This time it included sticks which you hit in a pattern while dancing with a partner. I was able to get this down and participate. There was an elderly Indian on the side who encouraged us on, telling us to be more exaggerated pick up the pace of the dance to the beat. It was all around a fun evening and I may go back sometime this week with Krishna once he’s back from his trip to Rwanda because it’s a nine day festival.Hopefully things will get moving along a bit quicker on the project now, and we’ll be able to have the VCT up and running before we leave.
Josh