Like many things in these journal posts, the events chronicled here may have happened in the last several days. When they happened is not as important as the fact that they did happen and I was there to experience them, so please do not look at the date above as when the events happens. It simply is a marker of when I wrote this.
Running water is a luxury, not having a mosquito bourne illness is a blessing, electricity is a miracle here. The streets are filled with poverty, animals running everywhere - that is except for Maseno university down the street.
Maseno school (where Barack Obama’s father attended school) and Maseno university are for the minority of the population that are able to get through secondary school (which costs a considerable amount of money for most Kenyans) and know English. The buildings are much nicer than the tin roofed shanties that dot the village everywhere, it really is a different world, especially since the only 2 places you can reliably expect folks to know English is either at Maseno University or at the Maseno Hospital I work at (and I mean staff, not patients).
On the way back from emailing off my latest journal update at the cyber café at Maseno University, I came across a big group of students outside blaring Kenyan/American hip-hop fusion from a series of laptops. Posted in those letters that you hang to celebrate a co-worker's birthday, the word “Opera” is tacked to several trees around the group. “That doesn’t sound like Opera”, said my frail companion Patrick (this was prior to his bucket toilet incident). But, I was intrigued and I told him I was going to see what was going on and told him to head back to the hospital without me.
It turns out that some of the Maseno University students are very technologically minded, and they having an installation party for the new Opera 10 web browser. It was such a marked contrast to so many of the Kenyans I have met - that would be completely clueless if sat in front of a computer. We talked about bittorrent, Kenyan music, Windows 7 (many of them were running the RTM pirated version), and how technology was going to hopefully bring Kenya out of the quagmire of poverty and disease. It gave me more hope than anything I have seen so far.
While we are in so many ways unable to help so many of the people we see at the hospital because we lacked the resources we have in the US, these students renewed my hope for a better tomorrow for Kenya. We discussed the corrupt politics, the positives and negatives of the western influence on their culture, I even met “DJ Jackson” who loaded my flash drive with Kenyan music. I asked the guys to keep a lookout for my lost Ipod touch and they took it extremely seriously. I gave them my phone number and I have received calls already that they are actively investigating for it!
Yesterday, I received a call from Jackson saying he was waiting for me at the gate outside the hospital - while he didn’t have info on my lost IPOD touch, he did have something incredibly cool-a DVD-r with over 4gb of Kenyan music on it “for Doctor Dan” it said on the disc. I was so psyched that as soon as we finished for the day I went home and played it on my laptop. David and Helen heard the music and both of them requested some to take back with them. It was then David professed that he had several years of dance lessons under his belt and Helen loved to dance as well.
The day prior, 59 y/o David told me while we were watching a soccer game at Maseno school how much he hates being old and not being as active as he used to be since he had a hip replacement. I will tell you though that David and Helen, inspired by the music, danced the night away. We moved the chairs and tables and I watched them salsa, disco, and even ballroom dance (and have it on video!).
When they asked me to dance as well, I had a half liter of Guinness foreign extra stout in my system and was asked to dance to Indian music. Helen explained-“hold one foot in the air and lean forward like you are trying to slap that foot and that’s how Indians dance”. If only it was that simple. The spectacle that occurred you bet was captured on film and will be shared with you when I return to the states. I am really glad I am making new friends here, and my knowledge of all things technical has proven to be a valuable resource thusfar!
Until next time, when hunting Firefoxes on Safari, remember they like music…IE Opera!
I love it! :) This has probably been my fav update so far!!
ReplyDeleteI want to hear some of this music when you get back.
ReplyDeleteBrowser preferences have been a point of frequent discussion for me lately since I have been testing a web-based software program. A friend of mine is a die-hard Opera user.