Jackaroo

22nd December, 2008

I set the alarm on my new €17 watch that I purchased for this trip, electing to leave behind my Omega. It turns out that although my Omega doesn't have an alarm, that is infinitely better than a watch saying it has an alarm and the alarm not working. Come 8am (my self designated wake up time), both I and my €17 watch were sound asleep. In fact, we continued that way until 9:13am when the maid knocked on the door of the hotel to make up the room. I jumped up with a start, and rushed to the door opening it before even realising my attire. Fortunately, I learnt my lesson several years ago about sleeping naked in hotels through a stress induced sleepwalking episode that had me on the front lawn of a hotel at 4am in all my glory. Still, no one should have to see an overweight white man in boxers first thing in the morning. I told her to come back later, and she handed me the morning paper. Thus ended the conversation.

I had arranged previously for Mike to pick me up at 9:30am and take me to Cura. This gave me 17mins to get showered, dressed, packed and checked out. After years of staying in hotels, I'm a master at precisely this feat but I was angry at myself (well - more at my €17 watch) for sleeping in and having to cut short the last hot shower I was likely to have for 2 weeks. Still, all the morning ablutions were performed and I was lining up at the hotel cashier to check out at 9:28. It took a little longer than expected but by 9:40 Mike and I were heading out of Nairobi on our way to Cura.

We passed several slums and villages on the way out as we weaved in and out of the large buses belching thick black smoke from their exhausts, whilst people stared at the two white men in the red Mercedes slipping by them. Most of the journey was on the tarmac, and as Mike described some of the initiatives that were being undertaken at Cura, I followed our progress on my iPhone noting that Google Maps wasn't nearly as accurate in outer Nairobi as it is in downtown Paris. Many roads were unmarked and the small blue dot representing our position from the GPS frequently was several hundred metres from the yellow line representing the road.

After about 40 mins we were in Kiambu district and we left the tarmac and headed down a dirt road. Mike pointed out a sign with foliage growing in front of most of it, that said that the Cura House was some 1.25km away. The road was unsealed and as bad as many of the roads I remembered in PNG and Indonesia as a child. The soil a rich red earth was bone dry and clouds of red dust billowed from our vehicle as we jostled down the road.

Off the road, the land was surprisingly green and fertile. I could see Maize, Banana Trees and Coffee being grown in the plots of land on both sides. Many Kenyans were walking up the road on both sides many heavily laden with bags of rice or other pulses on their heads. Children ran towards the car as we moved past shouting "Hi" each one of them with bright white smiles flashed across their small dark faces. Most were without shoes and were in clothes that were stained with the red dust.

After what seemed much longer than 1.25km, we turned off the main dirt road onto a smaller dirt road that was corrugated by the weather with a large gouge taken out of it by rains. We got to the top of a small hill where Mike pointed out the Cura Primary School. This is the school that his wife went to and many of the other relatives I met yesterday. We turned off the smaller dirt road cum driveway, and headed straight across what appeared to be a school oval. It had a rickety soccer goal post erected at one end sans net. Once on the other side of the oval, we turned left towards a roughly built block structure. This was home for the next two weeks.

The Cura Orphans Home was built by the Rotary Club of Nairobi. Whilst it can hold 150 orphans, due to the cost of keeping them only 50 are able to be resident at this time. To the right of the home is a small clinic and to the right of that a large church and several other rough block buildings. We exit the car into perfect blue skies and 27 degree heat and are greeted by Moses, the Manager of Cura. Around him are 3 young boys, who I later learn are Peter, Duncan and John, plus a tiny 3 year old girl with braided hair and a stark white dress. The little girl Ciro is the daughter of the nurse in the clinic who lives in a small house next to it. The boys speak surprisingly good English but the little girl only speaks Kikuyu (the local dialect in this region).

Mike, Moses and I head into the "Board Room" of the Home; a small yellow room in front of Moses' tiny office that seats about 8 plastic chairs. After some more introductions, we tour the home and a couple of the surrounding buildings including the clinic. The home itself is a rectangular block building with a "courtyard" in the centre with a set of swings, a broken set of monkey bars, a trampoline (donated recently) and several clothes lines stretching across the length of the courtyard. To the side three of the House Mothers are painstakingly sorting out good and bad grains of rice in preparation for lunch.

We head back to the Board Room and milky tea is served from a thermos. Whilst I haven't drunk tea or coffee for some time, I realise that for the next two weeks I'm going to have to as all the water I drink will be boiled and this will help kill that boiled taste. To go with the tea we are served white bread sandwiches with a sweet butter in between them. After some more discussions Mike needs to leave and so climbs back in his car and heads off to Nairobi.

As he leaves another man Kenneth arrives. Kenneth lives in over the hill in Cura and often helps out around the home. As Kenneth arrives, lunch is served. Lunch is made up of a generous serving of rice and a bean stew with potatoes. Both the beans and the potatoes were grown at the home in the small vegetable plot they have. It's surprisingly tasty for how it looks.

Moses, Kenneth and I head back into the home to start sorting out my sleeping arrangements. Whilst initially they had intended for me to sleep in the home in one of the rooms normally reserved for the children, they change their mind and decide it would be better if I slept in the clinic. The next thing is to find a bed.

All the children sleep on small wooden bunks. Moses and Kenneth suggest taking apart a bunk and giving me half of one. However, I'd rather not take apart a perfectly good one and instead point towards a number of broken bunks stacked up in one of the rooms. I ask that we take two of the less broken bases from this pile and use that. With the children helping we carry the two bases over to the clinic along with two thin mattresses. Within moments the "Recovery Room" has now been turned into perfectly good guest quarters for me. There is a single power point in the room, a bare light bulb in the ceiling and a small stained sink in the corner. To be honest it's not that unlike my French apartment when I first moved in! The walls are painted a thick custard colour with dirt over most of them. The two windows at either end both have bars and have a thin sheet draped over them. There are three small childrens desks in the room and two plastic chairs. Perfect.

After trying unsuccessfully to find a key for the lock on the door, we decide to walk about 3 km to the nearest town called Wangige to buy a new lock. They are adamant that my room be able to be locked not because of theft but because the children are very curious. We walk down the dusty road stopping along the way to meet various people some of who are herding goats, others are just walking to or from the markets. Again children run out to the road to see these two Kenyan men escorting the white guy. The children are not scared, nor do they rush up begging. They just seem to be amused by the whole situation

The term Jackaroo actually comes from the Aboriginal word dhugai-iu which literally means "wandering white man". Thousands of kilometres away, this word could not be more suitable for describing me as I walk down this dusty road in the middle of Kenya.

Eventually we get to Wangige and the guys show me around. We stop at a few hardware type stores and inquire about locks. None of the stores have one but they have latches we can put on the door and then attach a padlock. The going rate for these seems to be 70 Ksh (around €0.60). After purchasing one of these, Moses heads to the bank, while Kenneth shows me the rest of the market. Mondays and Thursdays are the big market days and so every Kenyan for miles around is at these markets. Naturally, I'm the only white guy. There are many types of pulses, fruits and vegetables on display. Most of them I immediately recognise although they are not always similar to what we have in Australia or France.

After wandering around the market, having 3 bottles of soft drink for 60 Ksh (around €0.50) we then head back to Cura. Often Moses and Kenneth will take a taxi back if they have a lot of shopping. However, today we have only a small bag so walk down the hot and dusty road like all the other Kenyans.

About half way back, a taxi stops by us to chat to Moses and we decide to hitch back to Cura with him. In the back is an old frail Kenyan woman probably around her mid 60's but looking more like her mid 90's. I'm stuck in the middle and as we bounce down the road it takes all my strength to hold myself still in the middle for fear of crushing her.

We are deposited at the end of the small dirt road leading to Cura Home, thank the driver and he speeds off. Moses gets back to doing his book work whilst Kenneth and I, accompanied by the 4 children attempt to put this latch in place on my door. Unlike a similar project back home I'm dealing with uneven doors, recycled nails and screws, and only a hammer and screw driver. Fortunately, I have my Leatherman with me, which proves invaluable in getting the job done.

Kenneth leaves for his home and after a brief chat with Moses I decide to start unpacking my belongings in my new room. Of course the children want to help me.

With the room unpacked and looking a little more homely, one of the house mothers arrives with dinner. She deposits two large stainless steel bowls with lids on the table of the small ante room outside my bedroom with a single metal bowl and a large and small spoon. I open them both to find one contains a large amount of rice and the other a cabbage stew. There is way too much food here. I protest that this can't be all for me but she says it is. I quickly serve myself a huge helping of both but haven't even made a dint in the volume of food. I ask her to take it back but she says it will be collected in the morning. I can only guess that these seconds will be recycled the next day.

As I'm finishing dinner, another house mother turns up with a very large bucket of hot water for washing (bathing). I take this into my room along with the small plastic jug she has bought and the smaller flatter bucket and calculate how I'm going to go through this process. I eventually find a suitable method to cleanse myself change into my pyjamas and am in bed falling asleep at 7:30pm. I wake up about an hour later and decide to read a bit, start doing some preparation on the computer for tomorrow and write this blog. I'm in bed about 11, the end of my first day at Cura.

This was a good day.