Joanna Goldberg sends biweekly communiqués from Kenya, where she’s living with her kid
Living and volunteering in Kenya with a five-year-old in tow is, admittedly, far from easy. There’s the cost, of course. Private international school fees, uniforms, “compulsory” ballet lessons, sports camp during those interminably long school breaks, a nanny to pick her up from school. There’s the “Mama, can I pleeease have a peach?” to contend with and feeling like a cow if I don’t, but knowing it’ll cost me 20 per cent of my daily budget if I do. While other volunteers are coping with cultural clashes, accommodation issues, corruption, “Kenyan time”, illness, innumerable barriers at work, visa delays, random bus routes, critters in the kitchen, “mzungu taxes” (inflated prices for being a foreigner), among a hundred other frustrations, I’m balancing all that with Cameron’s difficult adjustments to her new school, actively seeking out friendships for her in the neighbourhood, figuring out how to have a social life with no babysitter, ensuring she doesn’t walk into barbed wire or ride her scooter into a open sewage ditch, trips to the ER, the void in her life where the rest of her family usually is, a nanny who thinks teaching Cameron to clean the toilet is a relationship building exercise…
