"Why do you value DOGS more than people?"

Ouch. This was one of the questions the young girls (ages 14-30, mostly teenagers and one 40 year old) finally asked me after about a half an hour of me begging them to ask have a question and answer session about life in the U.S. Part of the initial trouble may have been the language barrier, but they are also a bit afraid of me (or were) and were by far the hardest crowd to "teach" that I'd ever encountered. There were about 10 too many occasions when I could hear crickets. I had been asked to take over the weekly "business skills" class about 30 minutes before the class was supposed to start this morning. Peris was tied up with training the Tanzanian nun, Samuel was giving a spontaneous visitor a tour and the field staff were all out doing a baseline survey.

So my answer to the question was: I don't value dogs more than people. I think they are equal. They rebutted, "but you feed the dogs and some of us are hungry". This is the point when I began to feel a little resentment. I explained. The puppies are young, they need me and you all don't need me because you are already here at G-BIACK learning how to support yourselves. "but they have their mother" they argued. "Yes, but nobody feeds her either." Next question...

Once I broke the 27 girls up into groups of roughly 5, and gave them time to come up with questions they opened up a tiiiiiiny bit. Some of the questions were: are there tribes in your country? which tribe are you from? are there deserts? what is your staple food? does your country have poor people? do you have orphans in your country? how old are you (i was really tickled that they all seemed genuinely SHOCKED to learn my age and thought i was a few years younger. YES!!!). Then I would visit the groups since they seemed too shy to shout out their questions and by this time the background buzz in the training hall had reached a really comfortable level.

They asked if I have a boyfriend, do they have Christianity in my country, what religion am I, do I have brothers and sisters, can I sing them a song? I asked what they do with their free time and they told me they sing and dance. I asked what type of music and they said rhythms. Which I think is spelled "riddim" here. Or something like that. One girl quietly asked me "do you receive?" over and over. "DO you receive?" After what felt like 10 minutes I somehow heard the word "blood" from someone else in the group and realized they were asking if I menstruated. I told them yes, every month. One of them told me that they heard women in another country also menstruated and I said yes, it is true and as far as I know women of the right age menstruate no matter where in the world they live. I was asked if my country has family planning and uses condoms. Yes, I told them, it is SO important and we have many organizations dedicated to just that.

They also wanted to know where the poor live. When I told them some of them don't have houses they asked where they slept. They asked what homeless people wore. And why they are poor. I decided to explain it's often for similar reasons as why people are poor here.

One girl asked me "what is stress?". I think this is because I had shared with them that in my free time I do yoga which helps me with a lot of things in life including stress. As I explained stress to her group I could see their faces lighting up with understanding. The next question was "what do you do when you are stressed?". I told them I go for a walk anywhere, I talk to a friend, I read, I do yoga, I listen to music. They all nodded and then said "thank you". It really got me in the heart.

When confronted to sing a song, I dashed for my computer and before I even had it open they had all scooted their chairs into a (perhaps a little inappropriately small and close) circle around me. I could feel their breath on me and the body heat made me begin to sweat. A couple of girls playfully poked at my hair. A handful or maybe 8 or 10 girls stayed seated at the tables and looked at me like I was crazy while I searched the internet for videos of songs. Someone suggested a blues song and I ended up finding a video of Bonnie Raitt when she was maybe in her 20s singing Angel from Montgomery. Which is hilarious since I am not even sure that's considered blues. Then I shifted to Bruce Springsteen and as I belted out "Born in the U.S.A" their faces lighted up and they smiled and joined me in the chorus. Never in a million years would I have pictured myself at an agricultural training center in rural Kenya, with nearly 30 teenage girls singing Born in the U.S.A.. along with me. Such joy. I live for unexpected, delightful experiences like that.

I also introduced the idea of pizza to them and not a single one had heard of it. Maybe if we get another hot day I can try baking one in our solar box cooker for them. I was also asked if I eat snakes, snails and frogs. I told them no and I don't plan to. They totally fell apart laughing when they saw my facial expression when asked these questions. I asked if they eat snakes and one girl enthusiastically said "yes". I asked her what it tastes like and she said it had delicious meat. Everyone giggled and it occurred to me that this may not be true. So I asked what kind of snakes does she eat. "Cobra" she informed me. More giggles, still unsure, I asked if she was serious or joking. "Serious." she told me. Everyone else laughed louder and said "joking".

It was also decided that one of the girls would braid my hair this Friday. A few of them debated about how it should be done and what style it should be. Being a girl is so fun sometimes.

This just so happens to be my day since I just received the call that the glass jars for the seed bank arrived to the store close to Thika. I really hope we can pick them up today after work!!!