Challenges in the Diaspora – PART II

The weather. We dressed in summer clothes. Inside airports at Amsterdam and Atlanta were heating, we were warm. The Ben family, our close friends, received us upon our arrival at Hartsfield Airport, and they came along with a few other Kenyans. Our first stop after landing would be the Ben family house. Soon after we went outside the airport to walk to the car parking lot, we were engulfed by very severe cold winter weather.  The Ben family knew the cure for such cold conditions…hot Kenyan tea. Ben’s father made the best tea for us. As he was making tea our little son went to the kitchen and looked at him making the tea and asked him “Mama Ben, are you the one who cooks here?” We were all quiet and Ben’s father never answered him, even when he insisted to know if he were the one who cooked for the family. 

The following morning sitting in a hotel room-Pascals near the window the sun heat was warming us from a glass window reflection. My mind was telling me that God was gracious to us that morning to bring a warm day and had blessed us with a bright sunny morning that we would never be cold again. I was wrong. In Kenya a sunny day was warm. Not so in winter in the US.

Ben’s family came to pick us up from the hotel for breakfast at the restaurant at the corner of Raymond street and Martin Luther King Jr Street. The Bens family came wearing heavy jackets and as they entered the hotel room and said to us it is very cold out there. We did not understand how it could be sunny and cold at the same time. We never commented. We proceeded to the car. We were engorged with the same cold as the previous night at airport parking. At the restaurant tea served was cold plus ice and with no milk. The coffee was hot plus cream, not milk. We were used to drinking hot tea with milk. We never grasp how one can drink iced tea on a very cold morning. Every food we ate was unfamiliar. Yet, we did not know the address 57 Raymond, Atlanta, Georgia 30314 will be our near future address.

We temporarily moved from Pascals hotel to Gummon Methodist hostel near my late spouse’s (Jotham Gatungo Wandu) school, the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC). We stayed in the hostel for two weeks while the secretary of the dean helped us locate a house near the school. Jotham picked our meals from the school cafeteria three times a day and brought it to the hostel. Some foods such as jelly mold melted before reaching the hostel. It was cold winter, we had no winter wear to walk and eat in the cafeteria. 

Foods. Once we moved from the Gummon hostel to a house we had to buy groceries familiar to us and cook the usual way we knew how. Groceries were very expensive in regular stores, we chose to buy from whole stores and market in large pack boxes once a week. To rationalize the scacy  money we had. We never any day ate out in a restaurant. We cooked and made sure we bought the necessities, the foods served in the restaurant for kids to make their things in the house-pizza, hotdogs, harmburg, french flies that they did not have a reason to go to eat from the restuarant. 

For the meat we bought a large goat from a farm and had it slaughtered and cut into portions enough for a meal and froze. Back in Kenya we grew most of the food in the house yard  and for the milk we kept a cow, and chicken for eggs, fruit grew in a farm in the village, cooking oil from animals we  raised in the village-pigs, cows, goats. We bought that which we could not grow such as sugar, soap, tea leaves, salt, etc. In the US, we had to buy everything. 

A yard garden. Later on when we moved  to a house with a large area to make a garden. I grew all the foods I knew on a fertile virgin soil. There was great yield. Some friends saw it and were scared to eat produce saying  that the soil in the city in the US is not clean because of the chemicals from constructions such as lead. Our children on hearing that refused to eat the foods from the garden and all went to  waste. I never gardened any more.

Our first house in the US was found, a two bedroom with a very old dirty carpet,  address 57 Raymond St, Atlanta, GA 30314. The renta fair fee. The monthly bill $200.00 per month excluding the utilities The house was not lived for a long time-condemned as it was later discovered. The heating was not working. I remember the two elderly men from our church, John Montgomrg church at Sherad in Decatur working on the heating in a very cold night. Finally, heat was installed. We were warm. 

Carbon monoxide. One morning we woke up all having headaches with red eyes. We breathed the carbon monoxide all night, the doctor at central Presbyterian church clinic learned by St Joseph’s clinic downtown Atlanta said. We were treated. We hadn’t used public bus transportation before to the hospital. 

Bus fare. The passengers paid by change.  Our money was in paper. Fortunately, the bus driver, instead of leaving us alone and continuing his way helped us by asking the passengers to give us change and they changed and paid the ticket. We put money in a slot. No ‘makanga’ to take fair like in Kenya bus. We learned how to travel in a Marta bus henceforth. The morning was a cold one.

The rats. The big rats from outside and the basement came to the house in the night. We didn’t know where to buy big rat traps to kill them. We asked a couple students coming to school from Kenya to bring us big rat traps. They didn’t bring any. They said they thought we were joking with them. The rats destroyed our first sofa set seats underneath. 

House furniture.  It was winter and the heating system was not working. The furniture-two used beds and four comforters supplied by the school secretary; the interim dean, the pastor of Hill presbyterian Church provided a large metal office desk table and six metal chairs; from the thrift store, we bought everything for the kitchen wear for $20.00. Everything in place we were settled.  The metal chairs were very cold to sit. We covered them with clothes.  We picked free of charge used clothes from the Columbia seminary closet at Decatur. The children were mocked when they wore those clothes. We thought the clothes were very wonderful and free to get. The clothes were out of fashion and different from the current fashion other children in school wore. In Kenya, all school kids wore uniforms from preschool to high school. Each school chose its own color.  All the school children looked the same in school. Our little son for one year, everyday kept on asking his dad “dad you told us you will take us to America, when are you going to take us to America?” The Dad never said a word to him and finally he stopped asking.

The rental fee. It was our first time to rent a house. The institutions we work for in Kenya, my late husband- a church worker in Kenya with Presbyterian Church of East Africa-the parish provided a pastor with a complete furnished house and free utility. In the high schools I worked, the house was provided to me fully furnished including utility. Now we had to pay the rent and utility and income was not in our favor. Our journey  to the US, out of pocket  money allowance to get out of Kenya- the law allowed us, a family of six people was $700.00. The spouse scholarship included an  out of pocket money of $200.00.