The One Where the City Girl Lives on a Farm

Let me start by saying I will never truly be able to give justice to the past week. Between the ups and downs I myself am still trying to unwrap and understand the experience. I hope I am able to convey at least a small part of my experience to you all through my post. To my host family thank you for taking me in, loving me and teaching me.

For the last week I have been living with the Maina family at their home in the rural part of Nyeri. The family includes my host mom and dad and their five daughters although only the youngest daughter Leen (17 years old) was living at home during my stay. My mother is a teacher and my father is what we would equate to a super intendant. They also are farmers who grow all sorts of foods such as banana, coffee, sweet potatoes, kale, corn and much more. There is always fresh milk and eggs thanks to the cows and chickens. The house has three bedrooms, one bathroom with a toilet inside which is a luxury here, a living room with many couches for all the family and a kitchen. The kitchen is interesting because they use the dung from their cows to make bio gas for the stoves. There is a whole system so all you have to do in the kitchen is turn the dial like we would back home. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen learning to cook from my host mom and sister. They are incredible cooks never measuring or using a recipe. As they say you “add to taste” and everything for the most part tasted amazing. I now know how to cook Kenyan bread, donuts and could make chai in my sleep. Let me tell you these people love their chai. My knife skills could use some work as my mom and sister could peel and cut every vegetable with their eyes closed. And the fruit. We had banana from the farm and oranges so sweet they were like candy. I could go on and on so I think I will give you some bullet points of the best and worst of the week.

Best:

⁃Learning abou

t the Gikuyu culture. They are from the Gikuyu tribe which is one of the largest in Kenya. Now a days parents are not teaching their children the language of Gikuyu as much. As my host dad said this is “extremely bad” because it is their cultures and part of their identity. Due to the importance of keeping the language alive my family drilled me everyday on Gikuyu words. My biggest takeaway from this was while I am grateful they all spoke excellent English I am even more grateful they are proud of their Gikuyu roots. Learning about the culture and the language made me realize how much I hope parents keep teaching their children Gikuyu because the things that make us different is what makes learning interesting. I learned more about their cultures in a week then I did in a whole semester of African studies back home.

⁃“Always bring your heart to god first and your needs second” -host mom. One day my mom walked into the house and said this to me. She then went on to explain how there is always something to be grateful for, their is always someone who needs more help then you do. Seeing how generous my family was with everyone they met was more powerful then I can even describe. Unlike a lot of families they provide full meals for their farmer helpers. They bring bananas or other food to every house they visit. And they just give and give and give. That saying is something I will carry with me forever, always remembering to count my blessings first and help others wherever I can. My family was full of happiness and laughter because they were so grateful for everything they had. I am sure they have struggles they did not share with me but it was obvious that they feel truly blessed and thankful to god for everything God has given to them.

⁃Going to Mass. As a Catholic it was so fun and interesting to see a Catholic mass in another cultures. Although I am very glad our mass in the US is only an hour and not 3 hours long. I got to attended both Sunday mass and a shorter morning mass with my mom and sister on Thursday morning. I loved the mile walk to church with both of them at 7 am everything was so quiet and peaceful. I also got to go to the youth group and clean the church which was fun to interact with other children.

Hard parts:

⁃Cultural shock. The shock of not having a shower and having to boil water and take a sponge bath. The shock of having everyone stare at you for looking different. The shock of sitting in a room and not understanding a single thing going on. The shock of eating meat with the full fat and bones in your bowl.

⁃Not seeing anyone I knew for 4 days. It was 4 days until I saw a single person I knew from school and when I did I was so happy I cried. The isolation I felt before that was hard to deal with. It was by no means that I didn’t like where I was. But not having anyone to talk to who understood what you were adjusting to was very hard. What I learned from this though is that everything in life is a mindset. When you are thrown into these situation you have to make the best of it and you have to want to learn and grow as a person. You can’t expect it to go smoothly because that is impossible. You will fall but you must pick yourself up and keep going because when you stand tall on your own two feet you will be amazed by what you can learn and over came.

⁃My stomach hurting all the time. I am perfectly fine, but man did the food play a number on my stomach.

This week was hard it challenged me to step out of every comfort of home I knew and create a new image of home. It pushed me to learn and ask question that might seem uncomfortable at first. There were times when I would cry from the home sickness and the want of something familiar. However I found myself when leaving my Kenyan family behind not wanting to go. Wanting to stay in the house that never turned off the music and where the people were always laughing and smiling. I found myself wanting to learn more. And I found myself asking when I could come back to visit and share a cup of chai with them at the table under the trees. I am walking away from this week a better person, a global person and person who is hungry to learn more about the world and people around me.

I promise myself from this day forward to always “take my heart to god first and my needs second”. As they say in Kenya “take the good with you and forget the bad” which is what I plan to do.

-Nyambura (My Gikuyu name meaning rain which in the culture is a blessing)