$1 = 70 Ksh in case you're wondering.

Now that we have finished an overabundance of food and we return to the real world, I of course return to my beloved Kenya. Today it is in my heart and in my head as I read the Sunday Nation (one of their two daily papers). I ache for them and feel somehow smaller for the pinch we complain about here. At least the norm here is not starving. Even in bad times we have food pantries, churches, and shelters. Over there it's just starvation. So now that we're heading back to our homes and our stocked pantries and refridgerator I thought you should read the Nation if you have a moment.

The Nation Sunday 30 November 2008
Households despair as hunger stalks


It is 4pm on a Friday. James Otieno, 28, walks through the endless rows of Kibera slum houses, his four-year-old daughter Belinda Atieno clinging onto his back. He has just picked her up from a Lutheran nursery school and is taking her home.

The Sunday Nation walks with him the entire 3km journey to his house. After several turns and twists, Mr Otieno finally ushers the Sunday Nation team into his house.

His three other children are having lunch consisting of ugali and sukumawiki (kales).

“This is how we live. “When you see us taking late lunch it means there isn’t enough flour for supper.

Instead we will make porridge,” says Mr Otieno as his wife Alice Aoko, 23, nods in support of her husband’s remarks that the family has not eaten meat this year. Bread too has become a luxury.

“At Sh240 a kilo, meat is just too expensive,” says Mrs Otieno. Her husband earns Sh130 a day from his job. When the business is down, his boss pays him Sh70. He has to pay a Sh500 monthly rent and meet the other family needs.

“When I get the Sh70, we go for the half-kilo maize flour, but since it is too expensive now, we opt for one gorogoro (2kg tin) which costs Sh60,” says Mr Otieno.

But he is not alone in this predicament. The soaring food prices are continuously making life unbearable for many Kenyans like him.

The prices of essential commodities such as maizemeal have been rising since the start of the year.

Last year, the price of a 2kg packet of maize flour was Sh48. It is now retailing at between Sh100 and Sh120 in most Nairobi retail stores.

Offered subsidies

The shortage in flour comes a few months after farmers demanded that the Government subsidise farm inputs to increase production. The price of fertiliser shot up from Sh1,700 to Sh6,000 a bag before Agriculture minister William Ruto intervened and offered subsidies.

Last week, the Cabinet authorised the release to millers of 700,000 bags of maize from the National Cereals Produce Board strategic reserve. The Cabinet also approved the importation of 5 million bags.

Agricultural economists at Egerton University’s Tegemeo Institute say Kenya produces about 33 million bags of maize a year, but the consumption is about 34 million.

“For the production period 2007/08, Tegemeo had estimated a deficit of over 10 million bags. This has serious food security implications as most people in Kenya effectively equate food to maize and food security as access to maize,” says Dr Mary Mathenge, the institute’s director.

Early this year, the institute warned that Kenya would have only 1 million bags at the strategic reserve if no appropriate action was taken.

Ms Betty Kibaara, a policy analyst at the institute, says there is an urgent need for short-term measures to deal with the current deficit especially through removal of trade restrictions.

According to the institute, 3.5 million bags of maize were destroyed during the post-election violence.

Happy Turduken

Ok,so I know it's been a long time since I was here. I have not heard from Monica yet and I'm beginning to worry. Working in Kenya means accepting that planning is neither a noun nor a verb in their vernacular. Perhaps because life is so impermanent, perhaps because they never want to say no...or their out of communication range literally. I'm not sure whether Monica is in the Sudan, laying low or what. I will call her after the holiday.

Which of course brings me to the annual eating festival called Thanksgiving. Because I am one and my children and families are several I always go to them. I don't really understand making people with children enter into the melee at the airport the day before Thanksgiving and then making them return that Sunday. Everyone knows bags are lost, lines are like aerobics in hell, and definitely most flights will be canceled one way or another. However, I digress.

This year we had decided to go out to T.G. Older daughter has had a difficult year to say the least, and didn't need to do the usual fall fandango. We had reservations etc.
However, during one of our weekly chats I told her that I wanted to try a turduken. She admitted that she was also curious about this southern concoction. (It is a boneless turkey stuffed with a boneless duck stuffed with a boneless chicken stuffed with cornbread stuffing). Since I am all about overstatement, I couldn't resist. I'd get a turduken for Friday so we could try it. However you can't get a small trial size turduken...only one that feeds 22. What the heck we could have leftovers..so I ordered it anyway.

You have to order a turduken months in advance and then tell them precisely when you want this edible behemoth delivered to your door. Ours arrived a week before and was huge. It was huge, and my elder daughter was complaining of an overabundance of potatoes. Definitely a change of plans was necessary. So we decided to skip going out and just made everything ourselves. I am pleased that my children share my enthusiasm for overabundance. Some like sweet potatoes with marshmellows, some mashed, cornbread stuffing..but what if we don't like it. No problem, let's make regular stuffing as well. Beans or brussel sprouts why decide make both. The pie is the only thing we had one of, and there were only 4 of us at the table.

We anxiously talked about the turduken, posted it on our Facebook pages and answered rafts of questions from curious people. To say the taste is exquisite is an understatement to the nth degree. However, I googled turduken and found that I could show you all what a turduken is invivo, so I present to you turduken carving. I suggest next year you email Cajun Ed and get your own. Or if you really hurry you can get one for Christmas

A Letter To The Peacekeepers

There is a statue at the end of my street. Many people miss it as they hurry to the chic restaurants that dot the gentrified neighborhood I now live in. But there was a time, when I moved in that the neighborhood was much more diverse, and a group of activists worked to get the statue placed in the park to note that Harriet Tubman once lived in the South End. There she stands, her arms stretched across the chests of slaves pushing towards freedom. And there this morning on her outstretched arms was a bouquet of flowers, red, white and blue. I believe all across this country folks are having those moments and people, silently are leaving mementoes to let us know we remember a different time, with dogs, and fire hoses, and riots, and beatings, and we are glad to leave not flowers to mourn, but flowers to rejoice.

Dear Peacekeepers,

I suspect all of us are still glowing from the election. I don't always share my history with you, but I am compelled to by the events of the last year. As most of you know my father was in politics. In 1961 he left Chicago and went to work for the Kennedys (Bobby actually). it was an amazing time in my life as a kid in junior and then senior high. Jackie and John were a young couple just like the Obamas and their reign was called Camelot. Our spirits soared as young people because we believed in them and the hope of all that spread before them
.
My daddy worked in Civil Rights and I went to many things with him. I lived with him off and on throughout his time in D.C.
We were there in August of 1963 on the lawn for Martin Luther King's speech. I saw a patched, sparkling tapestry of people wherever I looked. It was hot and yet no one was complaining, we were all just waiting to hear the words of a man who electrified out souls and gave us hope. I didn't know at the time I was part of history. But I remember looking over at my father and seeing tears streaming down his eyes. He turned to me and said "Lefty, remember this day, remember this time, you are part of history." When I asked him why he was crying he said "Because I know Martin Luther King is a dead man." and later indeed he was proved correct.

For those of us who lived through that time, who dreamed dreams with JFK and Bobby and Martin, we had our time both good and bad. Never, though, did I think I would have the opportunity to see a new Camelot come to pass. But Camelot is back again and you have a chance to be there to witness it. I urge you to come to Washington on inauguration day. Go in groups, go on the train, crash at a friend' s house but come. You cannot imagine what it is like to be part of hundreds of thousands of people there at the same time, knowing this time, that we will be witnessing history.Watching on t.v. just won't ever be the same.

I know many of us thought as we saw Obama stride across the stage in Grant Park, "oh please don't kill him". However for now it is real and we can only pray that the masters and God keep him safe. So join me for this incredible day. I will be there with my daughters, husbands and grandson. For me it is a passing of the torch, an honoring of my past and a firm belief in the future and in all of you. It is your time, it is you who will help him change the future. Why not start on Day 1?

All good things,
susan




How R U Coping?

I am finding that people are either totally ready to talk about politics or completely turned off. As a shrink I have to keep my views to myself, unless the person sitting across from me reveals that they are a democrat. Then my heart soars and I know that I shall be asked something about Obama. I feel a special kind of ownership of Obama. After all back in 2002 I met one of his cousins (who lived and unfortunately died in Kenya). I have film footage of his grandmother, footage of his cousins. I even speak better Luo than I do Swahili (which isn't saying much).

What I am totally puzzled by is how anyone can vote for McCain/Palin. What are they thinking? Her I.Q isn't even room temperature, and frankly his DSM IV would give him Dementia, Paranoia and definitely a personality disorder. He referred to a crowd as "my fellow prisoners", are you kidding? And the worst part is that he didn't even recognize it. Then there's Sarah, you know how I hate her. Well, I am coping by watching YouTube and praying that we won't have her to kick around much longer. But Just in case you like one last shot, check this out.