Kenya, so far

so we had a whilrwind first two days in kenya, starting early morning friday to see all the college students we had lined up to select for scholarships. lots of students came to the donated sudanese "office" in nairobi, and we ended up splitting up into two teams with me and mom working separately, so we could see everyone in a timely fashion both for the students' sake and ours. some of these kids came from really far so we had to see them, no matter whether they were promising or not.

to hear them describe what they go through as you try to figure out how they live, how they study, what their plans are, is really something else. another post.

after a hectic first day, this morning we woke up super early (like 2am) because we couldn't sleep. late night i had been compiling all the student information into one coherent master list, so at 3 or 4 mom and i decided to work on it together as neither of us could sleep anyway. so we ate the emergency quaker granola bars and finished the list, two separate ones, one for college and one for high school candidates.

then at 6 we started to get ready to check out of the hotel already for nakuru, where we are now. nakuru is a couple hours away from nairobi, and it is where a lot of high school candidates are. so we came here. there were lots more high school students waiting for us than college. we ended up seeing 35 yesterday, not sure yet how many today. we just got done and went to eat food, and then came here. we are restless but zombielike because of the jet lag.

on the way to nakuru we were told we'd have to stop and vacate the car and be inspected by police because there have been recent cases of people with guns in buses like ours, but it didn't happen.

the sudanese are definitely treated differently here. you can tell they are different by their facial features and they are a lot blacker than kenyans. we don't understand swahili but we understand they are called by their nationality "sudanese" sometimes and this evening one of the students claimed he needed 3,000 kenyan shillings (conversion: 67 KSh = 1 dollar) to get home because the police stop him and take money from him, and he's in trouble if he doesn't have the cash.

there are lots of stories like this going around. i tend to believe them despite how awful they sound because they are so alike among sudanese refugees, and because they tell you the truth even when they don't have to (for instance we ask, what are your grades? they will tell you B- or whatever they are even when they didn't bring their documents. they could just say A, right?). anyway.

i am surprised to find who i like working with and who i almost cannot tolerate. i really like john agou, and deng, and chol, and mayen. i am on a short string with mario, who is from the US and got 8,000 through Univ Unity to check things out in Sudan. i just lost my patience after awhile. and after the 30th interview you're just like please...but mayen is really honest and hardworking, and chol always has a smile on his face, and john has a cool head but he notices a lot of things, and kwai is another one who is coordinating everything behind the scenes. we couldn't do this without them. they made the lists and told everyone when and where to come, and had staplers to staple documents, and gave us the applications as the students came in to ensure steady flow to get things done efficiently, etc. etc. we really have to be grateful.

now we have the even more daunting task of going through all this information and selecting the students. we wanted 5 girls and 5 boys for college and 15 high school students in roughly the same gender proportions. it's tough to find college girls, easier to find female high school candidates. but we have so much information on so many candidates, and because we split up into two groups over two full interview days, we have to communicate so everyone is up to date on every candidate and we can all make a fair, informed decision. not to mention that we haven't done proper justice to the essays of each applicant, so we have to do that.

we are also taking photos of each applicant to put together with their scanned autobiographies and other school documents, to create a profile online of each of these students, so that their efforts in applying to Universal Unity scholarships will not be in vain, God willing. our hope is to put each of their profiles up on the internet, and publicize it so that donors can be connected with these students and can put money toward their tuition, kind of like kiva.org. this was reshma's idea and i think it is an excellent one. we want to show appreciation for the fact that they came all this way and overcame so much hardship to pursue their desire to study, jumping through our hoops of paperwork, essay, and face-to-face interview. none of this could have been easy.

tomorrow we are going to see lake nakuru, apparently there are flamingoes there so we will hopefully visit for awhile. nakuru is not a big city, but it is definitely a town and not a village, so there is a lot of commerce and traffic here. i want to walk the streets more and get more of a feel of what life is like here before we leave on monday morning. and of course, we have a LOT to talk about regarding the candidates we have interviewed!