Yesterday Brian joined me and the Young Women in Enterprise team in one of the Nairobi slums called Mathare. He had some down time from the Gates proposal and wanted to experience what the YWE team was doing in the field. Mathare is a much different slum than last week's Kawangware. It's the 'real slum' as some of the fellow Technoserve folks like to say. It's densely populated, barely any leftover space for additional people or kiosks. It's important that we are there.
We were divided into teams and spread out to cover certain geograpic areas. All the mizungos (Swahili for white person) were split so as to be leveraged for the attention that we can bring in the slums. Each day that I go to the slums young children yell out "mizungo, mizungo, how are you? how are you?" Apparently there is a regular TV show where children have learned to associate the phrase 'how are you?' with a white person. It's really amazing when you have a whole schoolyard full of children chanting it in unison waiting for the "I'm fine, and you?" response ;) Kenyan children are beautiful and brighteyed gems in what can be a challenging and dreary environment.
So Brian was off in a group, his teammate Julia also joined us, she was in another group, and I with a new team this week. We headed off in our respective directions to recruit young girls for the next few hours. It was a very successful first day in Mathare. Because of the dense population it was easy to rack up the numbers. My team reached over 50 young women and the top team reached over 70! A total of over 260 girls were recruited - truly amazing!
We all returned around 3pm to our temporary office (a local church) to congegrate for a late lunch. During this time we went around the room and shared the number of our recruits and stories. One story in particular took the cake that day. Brian had paired up with Paul, a Technoserve staff member, and Paul explained to the group this very interesting story from the field. As Brian and Paul were out trying to recruit the young women, loads of children were drawn to Brian and started following him around. Brian enjoyed the company and began playing a bit with some of the kids. At one point he was picking a few up and swinging them around. This sparked a revelation by a couple of the children. Here is a white person, with a beard, and appears to be quite strong. This could be none other than CHUCK NORRIS!!! A few of the children started chanting, "Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris" and soon they all caught on while following after Brian through the streets of the Mathare slum.
For your information, I refuse to be called Mrs. Norris but I can still kick a lot of butt when needed. And for your reading pleasure please see below.
Chuck Norris Facts:
If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you.
There is no 'ctrl' button on Chuck Norris's computer. Chuck Norris is always in control.
Apple pays Chuck Norris 99 cents every time he listens to a song.
Chuck Norris can sneeze with his eyes open.
Chuck Norris can eat just one Lay's potato chip.
Chuck Norris is suing Myspace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.
Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.
Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.
www.chucknorrisfacts.com
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