Saturday, April 28, 2007

Helen of Nakuru (Part I)

Who says angels are not to be found here on earth. The past week I spent time with a few that even Gabriel would be proud of. Meet Helen, she works as an ICROSS field officer in Nakuru, Western Kenya. Helen is part a great team of ICROSS field officers who provide support and training to the HIV/AIDS patients in and around Nakuru.

ICROSS has set up support groups in different areas around Nakuru for both HIV+ patients and volunteers. Most of patients have been abandoned by their family and friends and find refuge in their support group where they find other people like them, where they can share their stories, get love from them and the ICROSS volunteers. They are taught vocational skills, given medicine for their aches and pains and some diseases, but more importantly, the LOVE that they so desperately seek. The hug, the touch that they were longing for so long but no one was willing to give it to them.

Helen lives in Bondeini, about a 15 minute bicycle ride from downtown Nakuru. There, she heads a couple of support groups for both community volunteers and HIV/AIDS patients. She meets with the support groups once every week where she trains them on a wide range of things such as personal hygiene, nutrition, educates them on STD’s, proper use of condoms and how to make a living for themselves by making and selling necklaces and bracelets made of beads.

One of the many success stories at these support group meetings is MARY ACTIENG; she is part of the Bondeni group. She has been a member of the group for the past 2 years and was in good health and good spirits. Helen had found her 2 years ago in an abandoned house not far from Bondeini. Helen was out on a Home Visit to see another HIV/AIDS patient when the neighbours pointed out Mary’s house. Helen found a very weak lady lying on the floor unable to move anything except for her eyes. Mary had not eaten and drank anything for almost 4 days. Testing later on showed that her CD 4 (immune system test) count was way below the normal level. Seeing her in this state Helen started working her magic. She cleaned up Mary, cooked for her, stayed with her for a week till she got up on her feet. Helen got her necessary testing done, had her put on antiretroviral medicine and filled her house with food before leaving her. Then Helen contacted her family who had abandoned her, educated them on the fact that Mary is not different to them in anyway, she will not make them sick and finally convinced 2 of her children to start visiting their mother. Today, Mary was living the life of a reborn person and is very active in her support group as she feels that she can impact the lives of dozens of others patients like HELEN had done for her.

I accompanied Helen on her visit to the hospital in Nakuru where she met with a few of her support group members who were admitted in the hospital. (to be contd......)

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Heading to Nakuru

Well i’ve been missing in action for the past couple of weeks, part of it was procrastination of putting in what I have on my journal on to the computer, I was in the Bush (forest) though, and part of it was just being busy and too tired at night to do anything meaningful. I’ve been enjoying my time with Jesse over the last couple of weeks. Jesse is a senior at Washinghton University in St. Louis. He is a very smart and level headed kid, anthropology major who like most intelligent people has no clue of what he wants to do with his life. The other day we were watching Al-Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and after the movie Jesse wanted to change to his major to environmental science, but i guess that documentary has that affect on a lot of people. I’m pretty sure most of you must have seen it but if not then please do, i guarantee you that it will change the way you think about the life you are living.

pics added (http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi )


Coming back to Jesse, he is part of a group of 28 kids from a bunch of liberal arts colleges is in the US who are in Kenya for a semester. Jesse in his last month is working with ICROSS as his Independent Study project. Jesse and I had been in Longausua, southern Kenya, mostly Masai land, monitoring maternal health care at the ICROSS clinic and working on a proposal for a small new project in the area. I’ve put the pics online. We both had a hell of a time, lived in the BOMA, a traditional Masai home. The captions and pics will explain it all. I’ll hopefully write in detail about what we did there and the project that we hope gets approved. After getting back from the BUSH jesse and I spent 4 days re-writing the entire Annual Report for ICROSS, probably made it worse. I’m going to attach a copy in the email with the hope that most of you ignore it but if you are brave enough please feel free to read about what ICROSS does.

Well today on the18th of April, I woke up to find out that I’m heading to Nakuru in Western Kenya. It is a city of about a million and ICROSS has several projects in and around the city. Although Kenya has about 7 percent of its population affected with HIV/AIDS the small towns around Nakuru have a staggering 1/3rd of its population with HIV. My job will be to get as many personnel stories as I can, put them up on blogs and websites so that you guys know about them. Look at the project from the Policy stand point. See where ICROSS and the GOVT policies are affecting the people and get to learn as much as I can from this whole experience. I should hopefully make it back on the 24th just in time to witness MILAN kick MAN UNITED’S butt in the UEAFA Champions League, go KAKA (Milan and Brazilian midfielder), thats right all you Man U lovers you’re going down, and also watch the KIWI’s take the ICC World Cup.

Well i’m going to call it a night right after this song “Man Atkeya Bay Parwa Dey Naal” by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, written by Baba Bulleh Shah is going to end, funny how a 17th century Sufi’s poetry is helping a guy in a remote village in Africa. Anyways most of you must be thinking i’m crazy.
Good night and good luck.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Perks of Having a Pakistani Passport

Well what happened today was truly remarkable, certainly something that I will keep telling for a while. Woke up Monday morning realising that as I had only gotten a one month stay stamp on my passport for Kenya, I needed to get my passport restamped. Now I do have a six month multiple visa so I was going to have to go in just to get the passport restamped, no visa renewal!! Anyways, so I asked Danny what needed to be done, Danny acted as if it was going to be a no bigge, instructed Jose to take me to the place in Nairobi which was a 45 min ride on the Matatu (Public Transport vans). So Jose and I head out for our seemingly rudimentary journey. We got to the place at noon to find out that it was closed till 2:00 pm. Disgusted by the situation I asked Jose to take me to a bookstore as I needed a book on Swahili and also needed cheap but really nice sunglasses, I’m sure you guys know what I mean.

So we got the book which I love and the glasses which were 100 bob ($1.5), so far the day was going perfecto, got the book I wanted, got glasses and now was heading to get the restamping done. When I got to the place I proceeded to the first counter only to find out that my case was going to be dealt at counter 6. When in line at 6 the guy from 7 called me over only to tell me that I needed to go to 5 so I went to 5. Counter 5 had a lady sitting behind it, now whenever I see ladies I feel so much more relaxed, because more often than not they have a lesser of an ego and are willing to listen. So the lady tells me to fill out a form and see Yolander on the 7th floor. I thought, okay finally something in the right direction, a form is always a good start.

Jose and I head to the 7th floor, once we get there I see a sign saying INTERROGATION and thought okay, that’s kind of strange but who cares it wasn’t like they were going to investigate me right. From here onwards things started to insanely wrong. I got to Yolanda’s office and find another gentleman there who asks me how he can help me. Well I tell him why I’m there and he takes my PAKISTANI passport and tells me to follow him. He takes me into the waiting room of the Senior Immigration Officer, comes out after 5 mins and tells me to follow him again to the last room on the floor. The room looks kind of shady as it has bars and is locked from the outside. At this point I’m so bewildered that I’m tongue tied, I think I knew inside that this was not a waiting room but was in denial. The room had broken chairs and a table on one side. I was told to wait there till I’m called. Inside were two of my fellow INMATES; I like the feel of the word, me a convict, anyways, they ask me what airport I got arrested at and I think that they’ve lost it and tell them off. They both laugh and state the obvious to me, “You are arrested my friend, why you think they locked you from the outside”.

I wait there for about an hour thinking that this is a big mistake and as soon as the officer calls me everything is going to be sorted out but no one shows up. Now I start getting worried, start calling people, call Danny and Patrick at ICROSS tell them what’s going on. And then about an hour and a half later Jose shows up to meet the convict and tells me “Man you are arrested”, “I know that, you punk” I replied, “but what the hell for”, at that point I realised that Jose was more nervous than I was and thought to myself that this was not good. Jose went on to tell me that they looked me up on Google and found out the company I worked for in the US and somehow decided that I needed to be deported to either to Pakistan or back to the US. They told Jose to go back and buy a ticket for me and meet them at the airport in a day’s time. This did not make any sense to me, I did not overstay my visa, I just came to extend my stay within the dates of my SIX MONTH valid visa. I asked Jose to beg any officer just to listen to me, there had to be a confusion.

Well Jose left and I felt like laughing about the whole thing. This does not happen to real people; it happens in the movies, this really can’t be happening. But it was and I couldn’t do anything about it. Jose returned a couple of times without success and then finally the miracle happened; around 5 a lady showed up and called for me. She was an immigration officer, more like an black angel to me, okay I shouldn’t say black angel, for all we know angels might all be black but I’ll blame this one on Hollywood, they always show the white angel to be the good one. She takes me to her office and for the next half hour I go over everything with her, how I was just there to renew my stamp and I wasn’t illegal and had done nothing wrong nor was planning on anything like that. She looked at all my documents and told me what I already knew that there was NOTHING illegal about what I had done and there was no reason as to why I should be kept in prison.

I couldn’t thank her and God enough. Then came in another immigration officer, who I later found out was sent when Patti from ICROSS made a couple of phone calls to the Immigration Office. This guy asked the immigration lady for my file and she refused to give it to him (god I love her for that) but he went on to tell her that the reason why I’m being held is that I FIT the DAMN PROFILE and I needed to be kept for interrogation regardless. Now some of you must be wondering what the PROFILE is? WELL, I AM IN MY TWENTIES, MUSLIM, AND CARRY A PAKISTANI PASSPORT. YEAH YOU HEARD ME; I AM A MUSLIM THAT’S WHY I WAS BEING SUBJECTED TO THIS SHIT. Well my friends I never felt prouder of being a MUSLIM AND A PAKISTANI, if that’s what this world has come down to, then be it, I will fight back and not in the way they expect, not by blowing up shit but by reason, by intellect, by FAITH.

I was made to give a lengthy statement where I was deemed the accused criminal; for what? I do not know. But I gave it to them and if making me a MUSLIM makes me a convict then I’m ready to be in jail everyday for the rest of my life. All that talk about human rights and human dignity is horse shit if you’re a young MUSLIM in today’s world. The West wonders why people get crazy enough to do the mean things they do, well if a guy is accused of NOTHING and put in prison; he won’t exactly want to be your BEST FRIEND now would he. But we live in rational age; I still believe that this is why the best way to deal with this is with patience and reason and not with REVENGE, cause that’s what a lot of people in the west want; young Muslims to act irrationally, so that they can justify their own crazy actions.

Anyways, so after giving my statement to the immigration officer, I was told to wait while she takes my case to the superior officer. She also warned me that I still might have to leave the country right away. She came back after a half an hour and gave me good news, I could stay for another 2 months after which I’d have to leave, although remember my visa is valid for SIX months, but I guess maybe after 2 Months I’ll become a terrorist so I can’t stay more than that! But hey, I was still very happy, here a couple of hours ago I was in prison about to be deported and now I can stay longer. I really thanked the officer a million times. My passport was kept and I was told to come back the next day at 10 am as the people who would be able to do that were long gone. I picked up my bag pack and JOSE and I left the 7th Floor to find Patti and Boja from ICROSS waiting to greet us outside.

I was back at 10 the next morning was made to wait another couple of hours till I got my passport back. A free man again, haha, I could finally go out and help the poor again. Funny how the world goes after the ones that want to make it a better place.

Well finally I’m headed to Samburu in Central Kenya with Dante, Joe and Saruni for a week where I’ll celebrate my birthday and hopefully get to poor and suffering but happy people of Samburu tribe. I’ll be writing about that soon

Peace Out.
p.s check out the new pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi