Poverty has a face

November 10, 2007

Never have I felt so far from my world as I am today. And I just now ran away to a place called Shewe Guest House, the most upscale hotel in Kakamega. I am sitting in a banda, overlooking a peaceful green valley. From the town, I can hear the politicians speaking and people cheering for them. But that is another story.

Since I first came to Kenya, I’ve lived in Kakamega for the equivalent of 8 months. Kakamega is a very poor town, even though is in the midst of an active agricultural area and is a commercial center. I’ve been working with micro finance clients who are generally not the lowest on what is called the pyramid of poverty. My meetings with clients are held at central meeting places which have limited my experience of what their lives are like. I’ve also been invited to people’s homes in Kakamega but surprisingly those houses didn’t match my preconceived notion of their living conditions. Those people live in permanent houses with cement walls and cement floors. They were sparsely furnished, but the family lived comfortably by Kenyan standards.

Last night, that changed. The picture is Faith and Junior. When I lived in a part of town called Koromatangi, these children lived along the road where I walked to and from town everyday. Their house on the road was a one room mud walled hut with a dirt floor. I was never invited in, but from the door I could see that there were no furnishings in the house. Really, like most all little kids on the lane, Faith and Junior were always excited to greet the mzungus who lived in their neighborhood. But Junior was especially enthusiastic. He’d wait in the road in front of his house at the time he knew I would be walking home, and from way down the road I could hear him shout, Mzungu, Mzungu! Then, as I got closer, he would run and jump into my arms, sometimes stumbling along with his pants falling down around his knees. He was indomitable. When Bob visited, he and Junior became good buddies. I think he was drawn to Bob because of the curly white hair and Bob’s crazy laugh. Bob loved Junior’s spunk, often he had just gotten in trouble for doing something mischievous. Ultimately, Bob and I decided that we would like to provide financial support for these children to attend a private primary school. In Africa, investing in a child’s education is one of the only effective ways to help him to find a better life as an adult. School tuition, uniforms, transportation, lunch and books and paper cost $375 per year for each child. I really don’t know why we chose these particular children over the hundreds of other children like them. In Kenya people would say that we had been sent by God in response to their prayers.

Yesterday, I visited their house. In an informal way, our financial support has made me the “shosho” or grandmother of the house. Mama ya Faith met me at the road to escort me to the house. She looked so young; she must be about 21 or 22 years old. She has three children, Faith is the oldest and she is about 4.

At the house, I met poverty face to face. This family of five live in a one room house that is approximately 8 feet by 14 feet. The room is divided in half by a sheet hanging from the ceiling. The sitting room has two or three chairs and a coffee table. The second “room” contains a bed in which all five people sleep and where they store what few things they own. There is no electricity.

Every child in the neighborhood greeted me in the yard. I brought my camera and they loved it when I took their pictures and they could see them on the monitor. There were so many little hands grabbing at me and so many unattended snotty noses.

Mama ya Faith sent one of the kids to buy a coke for me. Conversation was difficult, she spoke broken English and I spoke bad Kiswahili, but the welcome was genuine. Shortly, baba ya junior came home. I had never met Joseph before and at that moment; the reality of everything hit me. The dad is very sick and if I am guessing right, he is severely affected with AIDS. His eyes were sunken and he was gaunt. When it got dark in the house, they sent one of the children to buy about 12 cents worth of kerosene for the lantern.

Even living here, until I experienced it, I was hanging on to my idealized view of poverty. It’s disheartening and discouraging. I want to save everyone. But, in reality, even Bill Gates can’t provide for them.

My good friend, Peter Ingosi, who has been my mentor and teacher in Kakamega has told me a thousand times that the “way forward” is not by giving people money. Until yesterday, I’ve always been halfway skeptical of this advise. He’d tell me that ultimately, they have food for today, but nothing else. I had to meet poverty at Faith and Junior’s house to finally understand his advice. Right now, there are no jobs and no hope for people in Kakamega. Foreign aid has a choice, we can feed the people for one day or we can use our resources to help them build industries that will provide jobs to feed them tomorrow and the next day.

You know what, it is an overwhelming job. Sometimes I want to give up and turn away just like I am doing today as I sit here on the Veranda of Shewe Guest House. I want to pretend that somehow people will manage because they have for hundreds of years. But, it is getting harder for me to ignore that in my time and place, I have been more than fortunate. All of my problems together don’t measure up to the struggle Africans face when they have the perseverance to get up every morning and find a way to make it through another day. Words sound so corny and inadequate in trying to tell this story. I just hope that sharing my experience will help people understand at some level that it is so important that we keep trying, because the people here are not giving up, they have no other choice.

FAMILY LIFE IN KAKAMEGA

I woke up feeling gray today. Not on my head, but in spirit. The weather here has been very rainy, people say it is due to global warming. It is supposed to be summer here, but it has rained every day and night for the last couple of weeks. And I mean rain, it absolutely pours down cats and dogs. It makes traveling around town very challenging. Balancing an umbrella while riding on a boda boda is a practiced skill, and then the umbrella doesn't totally protect me so I end up soaking wet when I get where I am going. Believe it or not, it is a little bit cold as well, jacket weather. It is just not what you expect in equatorial Africa.

In any event, I was invited to the home of my friend Evelyn Buhenza last night for tea. She lives in a permanent two bedroom house with about 10 or 12 members of her family. The house doesn't have electricity. The kitchen is a small shack behind the house where the mama cooks over a fire and the tradition 3 stones. the goat pen also shares the kitchen. Goat milk is rumored to be very nutritious especially for people with HIV. Their are also some chickens who live in the house with their chicks so that they are out of weather and more likely to survive. Evelyn is my friend who is HIV positive and has herpes xoster which is a large brown growth on the left side of her face. It is painful, it semi paralyzes her face and she has lost all of her teeth on the left side as a result of it. She is taking ARV which is very successful in keeping the virus from progressing However there are side effects like the stomach ulcers she has.

Evelyn has been lucky that her family has welcomed her back after her husband died of AIDS and she tested positive. The stigma is so high here that most HIV positive people are left to manage on their on. However, Evelyn has joined another woman here who has publicly acknowleged that they are HIV positive and have become active advocates for overcoming stigma and inspiring other HIV positive people to seek ARV treatment and to find ways to live positively while looking toward the future. As many of you know, Evelyn has returned to school to get a degree in social services and i have raised a small amount of money from people in Chico to assist her with the tuition. I really respect and admire her and am happy to be able to support her work. She has told me that when she tested positive she felt like she has received a death sentence and that her family felt like they were living with a dead person. But now she has so many opportunities and is so enthusiastic about her work and her goals for the future.

My greyness disappeared after meeting with her at her school this morning. She has to be extremely brave because as we walked down the street, people openly stared at her and her face. I am uncomfortable being stared out because I am white, but people here believe that a person with HIV has somehow done something immoral so her reception is for the most part very distant. I've realized how far we've come in the US since the Ryan White case.

She is also one of the rare women feminists in Kakamega. Women have traditionally held an inferior position here. Sincerely their only option was to get married early so that they did not remain a burden to her parents. The Luyha tribe, where I live, still pay dowries. Funny enough, when people die here they are buried in the family plot inside the shamba or boma. But if a woman dies without getting married and her husband dies and she doesn't remarry, she is buried outside the boma, usually at a place far away. She was also telling me about women and children outside of marriage. It's required that the woman name a father on the a birth certificate. If she doesn't know the father, she is forced to name someone. Then , the man's parents are entitled to come and take the child to raise. However, if the family doesn't believe the man is actually the father, they will take the child but most likely the child won't survive.

Those sound like terrible stories, but ultimately, it is all about a scarcity of resources. People do what they have to do to survive and to keep their families going. These are such hard concepts for me to understand and I try my best to not make any judgements because, I have never been faced with those choices. I imagine it will take more than one or two generations to make the changes that Evelyn and those few other women are stuggling for.

POLITICS IN KENYA

This is an election year in Kenya. The president serves for 5 years and can be elected to office twice. The current president, Kibaki, is running for reelection.

Kenya gained indepence from the British in 1963, so they haven't been participating in government for very long. It is unbelievably interesting to watch the process that we must have gone through a couple of hundred years ago. The first president was kenyatta, he was highly respected and got the country off to a good start. Then, in 1981, i think, Daniel Arape Moi took power and ruled until 5 years ago. Moi was totally corrupt and almost bankrupted the country while doing nothing for the people. He neglected all the infrastructure so badly that i think it will take 20 years for Kenya to catch up, even under the assumption that the government will honestly allocate money for the projects. The worst and biggest hurdles to economic development is the roads. The roads make it almost impossible to get raw materials to and from places and to get finished goods to market. The other day I took a matatu to a town called Kericho, which is the tea capital of the country. The road was so bad that the cars have simply driven off the side of the road and made a new dirt road. it was literally four wheel driving the whole way. and of course, the driver drove mostly 80 miles an hour except for the really bad potholes. as we say, any day you get somewhere safely in the matatu is a good day.

anyway, all the politicians(they are called aspirants) who are running for office are now campaigning around the country and the people are talking about nothing except the elections. It is Kibaki(a kikuyu) against Raila Odinga(a luo). Kibaki is for the status quo, which is to keep all power in Nairobi and manage in a top down approach. Raila is supporting a radical idea which is to transfer power to the provinces and let them decide how to use their taxes and natural resources best. Unfortunately, the majority of the people in the rural areas are not well educated about government and are easily swayed by who gives the best t-shirt at the rally. in addition, no matter who gets elected, managing resources in kenya is all about taking care of your own. first priority is your extended family, then your tribe, then your community. It has been that way for hundreds of generations and i sincerely don't know if it will ever change. i think there is a growing population of young people who would like to see change, but they are swimming against the current.

Yesterday at the Golf Hotel, one of the "American" hotels in town there was a big rally. i was eating lunch there and watching the dynamics of the goings on. There were quite a few well dressed men who exuded an air of importance who i took to be the candidates and their staff. Their was a canopy set up on the lawn and all the seats there were filled with men. There interstingly enough, a section of chairs outside the tent where the women sat. The rally started with a long prayer and then, the women did some sort of welcoming song for the cadidate. After that, it was a speech that could be heard by any candidate in any country.

However, in spite of the exclusion of the women by the general audience, there are several women who are running for office all over Kenya. The unfortunate thing is that, every day in the newspaper, there are stories about those women getting beaten up. It is condemned by the press, but of course, the people in the rural areas who are participating in this do not frequently read the papers. it is definitely a slow going and painful process of political reform.

I wish I was going to be here for the elections which are held in December. The energy of the town has really picked up with all the activity and i imagine things will really start to get interesting. My prediction is that Kibaki will triumph. In my experience, Kenyans are slow to accept change and prefer to hope that the current situation will improve, rather than risk the unknown.

My Humble Abode

10/29/07

While in Nairobi last week, I took some time to see some of the sights around. Since I have been coming to Kenya, the only thing I have ever seen in Nairobi was the airport and downtown. So, I hired a taxi driver to show me around for a few hours. Solomon gives tours like this often and was an old hat. We first visited the animal orphanage at the Nairobi National Park which, believe it or not, is on the outskirts of the town. There is an animal orphanage that takes animals brought in from the bush by wildlife officers. The animals are not released back into the wild but live out there lives there. There were many lion cubs and several adult lions, a cheetah and a leopard. The most enjoyable part of the experience was that there were several nusery school field trips there and to watch those 3 and 4 year olds and their excitement at seeing these animals was so fun. They all were wearing the standard school uniform of shorts(boys)skirts(girls)white shirts and sweater. The schools are differentiated by color, red, green, maroom, blue, etc. After, we visited a giraffe sanctuary housing 14 giraffes. Did you know there are 3 different species of giraffes distinguishable by the patterns on their bodies, and if their pattern extends all the way down their legs. Visitors stood on a feeding platform and fed the beggars pellets. Giraffes have black rough tongues like a cat, but they are about a foot long so their tongue snakes out of their mouth and grabs the pellets out of the palm of your hand. They were pretty demanding to be fed and at one point, one of the more dominant giraffes swung her neck and head butted a woman standing there unaware. It was a really hard blow and the woman was shaken up. The attending volunteer remarked that "we have a sign warning about head butting". One is expected to use common sense and personal responsibility in Africa. And people here know that accidents happen.

After that, Solomon told me he would drop me for lunch and we proceeded to drive to the ultra rich ultra white part of Nairobi called Karen. The area is of course where Karen Blixen, the author of "Out of Africa" lived. We went to the Karen Country Club and I had a delicious vegetable crepes with creme sauce lunch. I felt transported by scotty to another planet after having lived all my time here in Kakamega. The homes in this area are absolutely monstrous, probably averaging between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet, all of them with separate servants quarters. These are the remants of the white colonial Kenyans. I just couldn't help wondering why the hell these rich white Kenyans weren't pitching in to assist in the development of the impoverished rural areas in Kenya. OH well, who said life was supposed to be fair. Oddly enough, on the return trip, about 1 mile from Karen, you see the immense shanty town slum famous in Nairobi called Kibera.

Silly me, a couple of days ago I found out that my hotel room does have hot water! Well actually it is warm water, but alot easier to start the day with than cold water. There is a small switch on the bathroom wall that turns off and on the water heater. Wonders never cease. Downstairs there is a restaurant and bar and last night was the big football match between the English premier league teams, Arsenal(1/2 of Kakamega mens chosen team) and Liverpool. The other 1/2 of Kakamega cheers for Mann U. I could follow the game from my room by the sounds of quiet or the sounds of cheering from below. When the game was tied near the end of the game, the fans went crazy with happiness, whistling, cheering, clapping for a period of about 5 minutes. The identify so completely with their english team. I guess the game ended in a draw but Arsenal remains as the league leader. That is all you can hear being discussed by all the guys in town today.

Finally, a word about Kenyan words. The Kenyans speak British English and have a much bigger vocabulary than we do as lazy Americans. So when I am here I almost have to learn to speak another language called English. You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to always try to be articulate when you are talking. They also have a british/kenyan accent and use many british/kenyan phrases that it can sometimes require thinking about. Rather than having a baby, they say "she got a baby", rather than me too, they say "same same to me" rather than saying I live in that direction, they say "I live the other side". I am always wondering the other side of what? The list of unique phrases is quite long and it is my intention to develop a phrase book to help other clueless mzungus to communicate with Kenyans.

So for now, god bless you, good night and it will be ok.

P.S. Here are some makeshift pictures of my hotel room. The one is of my underwear drying on the balcony. It is considered very rude to let someone wash your underwear or to even see it drying on the line, so i have to do the washing in a bucket in my room.

Settling In

10/21/07

I am sitting watching the sun set over Lake Victoria in the city of Kisumu and listening the children play in the pool five floors down. They let people bring their children to swim on Sundays. I think the hotel management feel like if they have a pool, they might as well let someone use it. I am staying on the 5^th floor, which is actually called the 4^th floor, and the elevator is not working. In reality, until not too long ago, elevators were a real luxury here and so everyone is quite accustomed to running up and down the stairs. Me, on the other hand, I am not so anxious to run down to the lobby just to get something….

On the way from Kakamega we passed two stacks of plastic green lawn chairs just sitting by the road. When I see odd things like that, which is pretty often, I always wonder about the story behind it. I came in the taxi of my friend Maloba. He is a very safe driver although the roads are literally bombed with potholes; I don’t know how their cars stay in one piece. Actually, when we got to Kisumu, Maloba’s car began having problems with the idle and it totally died every time we slowed down. We solved the problem by recruiting a couple of guys every time it stopped to give us a push so he could jump start it. Flexibility is the strength of Kenyans.

In pursuit of implementing our girls’ empowerment project, I chatted with six high school girls to get their input and ideas. Initially they were very shy, but after devouring chicken and fries, they were surprisingly open. When I asked them about what kind of topics would be interested in discussing during the meetings that are a part of the program, they gave answers like abortion, coping with stress, learning how to care for an HIV patient who was ill, and how to overcome and live with the stigma that always accompanies having a parent who is HIV positive. The typical day for these girls are to get up at 5 am and prepare some sort of food, get ready for school and depart for school at 7 am, go to school until 5 pm, travel back home for one hour, do all the household chores and complete their homework. It is staggering to think of what is expected of 15 and 16 year old girls. They also wanted some advice on how to improve their concentration in class.

Not all students in Kenya are admitted to high school. They sit for exams in the 8^th grade. Based on their marks, they are then admitted to a school for which they are eligible. There are four classes of schools, based on highest marks to lowest acceptable marks. The national schools, the provincial schools, the district schools and the harambee or community schools. The most desirable schools are of course boarding schools where they can escape the responsibilities of home, but of course they cost considerably more and even if a student is chosen, they may not be able to afford the fees.

The students sit for exams again after they complete the 12^th grade, and currently because there are so many students and not enough facilities, the universities are only accepting students who score and A- or higher. Even if the student qualifies for university, it requires a bribe of about $2000 for the student to be considered for acceptance.

According to the papers, the college admission board one of the top three most corrupt institutions in Kenya. Do we really understand how lucky we are in the US?

I also attended a meeting of the group of microfinance entrepreneurs that have come together to form a coalition with the intent of strengthening their businesses as a collective. The seriousness of the members is astounding. They have formed a registered community based organization, elected officer and adopted a constitution. The constitution outlines fines for lateness to meetings, excused absences and unexcused absences and expulsion of a member who does not regularly attend. The meetings are conducted by Roberts rules of order, except for the prayer part. Prayer is a major part of all gatherings, public or family and these people are expert prayers. There is a prayer to the opening of the meeting, before we eat our snack, and at the close of our meeting. I would guess that the praying took up about 20 minutes of the meeting. They have a strong faith in the goodness of God and rely on prayer to bond them together as a community. I am just praying they don’t ever call on me to lead the prayer….

The chairlady of the group had just experienced some bad luck. She had purchased a tree and paid someone to turn in into lumber for her, using a borrowed chain saw. Apparently, someone had been watching the goings on, and in the night, came to the house where the wood was waiting to be hauled away and stole the lumber, the chain saw and the truck being used to haul the wood. They also beat up the owner of the house so badly that he is in the hospital. She had borrowed money to buy the tree, which she could have easily paid back after the sale of the lumber, but now she has no means to repay the loan. This is a story I hear repeatedly in Kenya. Theft is so rampant here. The group members agreed by consensus that they would each be prepared by the next meeting to financially assist the woman. Helping and sharing among friends and family are an integral part of rural Kenya. There is no hesitation or doubt about the obligation of helping someone in trouble. It is the way things work, you can absolutely count on getting the same type of assistance if and when you are in need. The government doesn’t make Kenya run, the caring people of Kenya do.

I AM HAPPY TO BE BACK

I arrived in Kisumu, a town on the edge of Lake Victoria on Sunday via Kenya Airways. I decided the 80 bucks was worth it over a 9 hour very very very bumpy ride from Nairobi to Kakamega. Kakamega is a one hour taxi or matatu ride north of Kisumu. You actually travel a whole world away, from the third largest city in Kenya to a very rural town of Kakamega. While I am here for 5 weeks, rather than staying in an apartment, I am residing at the Ambwere Alliance hotel. It is actually nicer than I anticipated for about $7 per day. It has a balcony, a nice bed, it's very clean and has a sit down toilet with 1/2 of a toilet seat, the back half. The room is painted like every room I've ever been seen in Kenya, the bottom half is painted turquoise blue and the top half is painted pale yellow. I am really curious about the meaning behind the color scheme. My first night here I ate in the dining room. The ubiquitous black and white tv was on, showing a Japanese movie with English subtitles, the sound was turned down because the radio was blaring over the loud speaker. The building is of course constructed of concrete and has large, high halls. In the morning I am woken by the usual African sounds, the roosters, the boda boda bells, the chatter of people working and a treat, the maid singing swhaili hymns as she works.

However, cold water is not part of the deal. There is a low pressure shower head, but taking a cold shower requires bracing myself. For shower shoes, they provide a pair of mismatched blue and red thongs(flip flops, not underwear)

I've seen so many people I know and they once again have been very welcoming. I have discovered if I walk at a slow leisurely pace people assume I am more of a mzungu resident than occasional visitor, plus by slowing down I recognize people I know and can be more friendly. Africans always have that stone face, but if you greet them with a smile, they bloom into really friendly people. They just look intimidating.

I am surprised how my swahili is coming back. It seems like it needs to simmer in my head during the times I am at home, and then it is there to use when I am here. The maid at the hotel doesn't speak English so I am truly forced to speak swahili, rather than be lazy and speak English. It helps that she is very patient. Children are also good to practice on.

It must be the rainy season. It has been pouring cats and dogs most days. That makes it a little more difficult to get around. Even an umbrella doesn't really help, the wind blows the rain sideways. Apparently it is not really mosquito season though and no malaria is going around, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that my malaria medicine is effective and I am going to skip that part this time.

Everyone is focused on politics right now. The presidential election is in December. The present president Kibaki is running again and another guy named Raila. The race is really against a Kikuya(Kibaki) and a Luo(Raila). Those are the two biggest tribes in Kenya. The other remaining 40 tribes are in the process of lining up with their preferred candidate. Most tribes traditionally like or dislike the one of the tribes represented, so rather than voting on an issue basis, they vote for the preferred tribe. I guess that is really not so different than the US. The Luhya, the tribe I live with, hate the Kikuyu, so they are Raila all the way. Also, there is alot of news in the paper right now of election corruption and buying votes, which is very effective for people who only eat one meal a day.

The First Normal Week

The trip to Kisumu had a hectic ending. We picked up Alicia Robb, who is the founder of the Foundation for Sustainable Development, at the Kisumu aiport and arranged for a taxi to take us to Kakamega. There were several taxis vying for the trip, so after all the drivers haggled for a while, we ended up in a pretty nice honda mini suv. however, at the last moment for some unkown reason, we had to transfer all of our stuff to a different car in which we had to hold most of our stuff on our lap. About halfway home, the car started to smoke furiously and the driver had to pull off the road, which made us all a little uneasy. He opened the hood and looked at it suspiciously, but it was clear he didn't have a clue what was wrong. He made several calls and finally arranged for another driver to come. In the meantime, it started pouring down rain, it was very hot and humid in the car while we were waiting. Another guy arrived in about 45 minutes but he was unfortunately in a double cab truck and didn't have a tarp to cover all the luggage, so we were forced to put the luggage in the front seats and four of us crammed into the back seat. Actually, three of us sat on the seat while Alicia laid on our laps. Ah, don't you just love Africa. We made it home safe, but not really sane.

The purpose of Alicia's trip was to visit several of the organizations that interns of FSD have worked with in the past. One of them is a center for handicapped children. The headmaster is great, very well educated and knowledgeable about children with special needs. In Kenya, children with special needs are thought to be sent by God to punish someone's bad acts. As a result, most children are hidden in the house or actually tied behind the house like an animal. The Center does outreach to identify and bring these children to live at the school. They seem to thrive in this environment but still it tugs at my heart to see how tough their lives are.

On a separate day, we visited shikokho high school and delivered the soccer socks and shoes. Last year, thanks to the Chico State Women's team we were able to deliver uniforms and several pair of shoes. Even though the girls team is only 6 years old, they performed very well at the district tournament last year. Believe it or not, the village of Shikokho just got electricity and they already have a computer lab that is serviced by high speed internet. It is so great, it really connects the high school students to the world. Another neat thing that has happened here is that it is possible to get internet through your phone, so our program director Peter actually can work on the internet at his house which doesn't have electricity. Thank God for Alexander Graham Bell.

After that we went to a women's group in Malinya. They are a group of widows who are hiv postive but have come together to support each other and to do community work. They met us at the gate dressed in their lavendar sateen dresses and sang and trilled to welcome us.
They also presented us with strings of tinsel as a kind of a hawiian lei. We did all the formalities and then they fed us dinner, ugali, kale, cabbage and chicken. It rained heavy in the afternoon so it was very dark in the house while we were eating, but really i can't imagine a nicer experience. I worked with some of the women at k-rep and they were very welcoming. I have seen so many people i know here, I hadn't realized how many people i had gotten acquainted with. It is a wonderful second home.

I haven't had water in my house for several days so I have come to town to buy a jerry can and water. It is so funny that in Kakamega where it rains every single day that the water is so inconsistent. People here are so accustomed to adjusting to whatever circumstances happen.

I am not in Kansas any more

After a 30 hour flight and 10 hour bus ride, I am back. Someone asked me how was Kakamega and I had to reply, it is the same as it was 10 years ago, I am sure. In some ways, the slow pace of change is very relaxing. There is comfort in knowing that I don't have to learn and adjust to very much, that I can slip back into my same routine.

People here have been more than wonderful in welcoming me back. Because I am an older white woman, which is a very rare species here, people tend to recognize me and are surprised to see that I have returned. In the next few weeks I will have a chance to visit some of the microfinance groups I worked with before and that will be great. However, I anticipate some tough times too, since many of the people had Aids and there is a distinct possibility that some may have died. I did get a chance to see one woman from the groups, who had shared her story with me last year. She is in the advance stages of AIDS and has herpesxoster on the left side of her face. This condition is like a big dark mole or wart that is progressive and actually debilitates the nerves on that side of her face. In any event, not only is having the medical problems difficult, having this disease is like wearing a scarlet A for aids. She shared with me that not only is her farming business going well, she has become certified for HIV testing and counseling as well. I am really impressed with that because so few people here with are willing to be an AIDS victim in public, instead they remain secluded until they die.

I saw our adopted children, Faith and Junior. I actually live on the same lane again, only a little further down the way. They were very cute, yelling mama Nette, mama Nette. When I picked junior up he told me in kiswahili that he is reading. They seem to love school and all the extended family is very buoyed up by the fact that they are going to school. They do have a new little brother named Peter. The guy who helps me by paying the school fees and buying the uniforms is named Peter and he is really thrilled to have a namesake. In any event, I can see that I may have to go back to work to support more than a couple of kids! There are so many children here that could use our support. While I am here I will be taking some picture and videos of children that would benefit from some support and I will share those with you when I get home.

The people I will be working with here are Peter Ingosi, the man I knew last year, and a young woman from Florida named Lillian. She is an old pro, she has been here since August. Our first group of new interns arrives on June 3rd so we are busy planning the orientation week for them. Currently, there are four interns here. This weekend we made a trip to the Kakamega Forest and spent the night. On Sunday morning, we started a hike at 4:45 am and ended up on a hill watching the sun rise over the rain forest. It was beautiful, the mist was hanging low, all the birds were making a raquet and you could hear the colobus monkeys call all around the forest. On the return trip, we actually spotted a gaboon viper crossing in the trees above us. Thank god it was little and didn't seem as dangerous as a big one would have. I still had the creeps.

We are cramming into a matatu this morning and heading to the big city of Kisumu to do some errands. Then I will know I am back, hot, crowded and dangerous. Africa in a nutshell.

This is the countryside around Kakamega. It is much greener and more pastoral than I expected to find in Kenya

This is all the partygoers stuffed into my living room. Andrew Lutomia helped corral everybody and the kids were unbelievably well behaved.

These are the winners
of the boys dance
contest. They could
really go.

This is one of the lender groups.
They live in a small village about
30 minutes outside of Kakamega.
50% if these people are HIV
positive, but they were the most
fun and happiest group I worked with

This is my faithful boda boda
driver, Francis. It was so great
to see friends every day.

this is my friend and client named melbarkley. she is hiv positive and a single mom.

final chapter in kakamega

I left Kakamega on Friday, October 6th. The six weeks that I stayed in Kakamega this time went so darn quickly. I stayed really focused on work while I was here. For me, the work was incredibly rewarding and I felt like I was really doing valuable work and making a positive contribution. Working on a volunteer basis for no pay is a wonderful experience because I was no longer relying on how much money I was making to determine the worth of my efforts. Instead, my connection to the people I was working with and their feedback were all that I needed to feel happy about working. I managed to video about 8 clients and their businesses for my training DVD project and both Bob and I are really looking forward to the challenge of creating it now. I also was able to complete the framework for the training manuals and I arranged to set up a classroom as planned in the Kakamega office. Both the program director and the managing director in Nairobi were very happy to add these tools to their program and I think we all feel that implementing an effective training program for our clients will not only give them the direction the need to make their businesses successful, but also to add to the quality of their life with education as well. Anyway, time will tell if that is true or just a hopeful fantasy!

By interviewing clients for this video, one of the bonuses was getting to know them so much better. One of the women who started from absolutely zero and now owns several successful businesses was very inspiring. She has publicly acknowledged that she is HIV positive which is a rare and brave action. She told me that she choose to go public because in reality most people around her already knew and everyone spent quite a bit of time whispering about it, so by acknowledging it, she stole the gossip back from them. Now, she calls herself an ambassador for hope for people with HIV. Her story about HIV is so typical of many of the women I got to know in Kenya. She and her husband were living in Nairobi, he died and she found out that she was HIV positive. As a widow and HIV victim, she lost everything, even the support of her family, even though being positive was not her fault. So, with one child, she moved back to Kakamega and started participating in the FAHIDA micro credit program and really empowered herself. Another women with a similar story invited me to her home for tea one evening. She and her 9 year old daughter live in one room about 10 feet by 20 feet. There is a curtain hanging accross the middle of the room to separate the bed from the living area. She was so welcoming to me, we had chai, boiled yams and boiled sweet potatoes which we ate by latern light. I know that everyone in Kenya struggles in the same way, but I was always so touched at how people made the absolute best of their situation and seemed to be happy in spite of it. That is a story that I witnessed time after time in Kakamega and it has made me think so hard about our lives here in the US. But that is a whole nother blog entry!
One of the final highlights of stay before I left was that I gave a small party for 56 of the neighborhood children. The children who lived on my lane and in my neighborhood gave me so much happiness. When I came home after work and walked down the lane to my house, all the little kids waited by their houses to come out and greet me every night. One of them would see me coming and shout for all the other kids to come say hi to the muzungu. I was teaching them to say howdy and give me five. It literally took me 30 minutes to walk home since I stopped so many times to say hi. My favortie group of kids lived near me and I have already put their picture on the blog. Their names were junior, faith and cecilia. They all wanted to be picked up and hugged when I came by, and sometimes they were pretty dirty and without any pants, so i just hoped mommie had wiped their bottoms good when I picked them up. Anyway, one Friday night, Andrew Lutomia and I visited all the houses in the neighborhood and invited the kids to come, which they did precisely at 10:00 the next morning, all dressed in their best clothes. We had balloons and dance contests first. They also did some reciting while we took video. Then, we gave out little boxes of crayons and books so they could color. and finally little packs of cookies and juice. I think they all had a great time, Andrew assured me that they had and that undoubtedly not one of them had ever been to a party or gotten free gifts before and that they would probably remember this party for the rest of their lives. It seemed so little compared to what we shower our children with on holidays and birthdays. I really loved having all those kids around. For a few days on the lane, some of the older mamas would stop me and tell me how happy the kids had been at the party.
Here are some of the things I will miss about my Kakamega. I will miss my boda boda driver named Francis who has a degree in Philosophy and tutored me in Kiswahili while we rode to work. I will miss my Muslim friend reading the morning paper on the corner by my work who went out of his way to greet me every morning. I will miss my work partner at K REP, Benard who shared so many insights with me about Kenyan people and the culture. I will miss a little taking a bath in 3 inches of water in a plastic basin and the lizards that lived in my bathroom. I will miss paying 5 cents for a huge avacado. I will not miss ugali and kale. I will miss speaking Kiswahili and having the old mamas laugh when I spoke Kiluhya to them. I will miss the all the dogs in the neighborhood howling at the moon at night. I will not miss the unbelievably horrid bumpy, potholey roads. I mostly will miss the simplicity of life and the contentment that comes with knowing that your only choice is to find a way to cope with everything and the true realization that ultimately, none of us really control anything.

travel in kenya

9/18/06

What a trip to the town of Kitale to see Mt. Elgon! Kitale is north of Kakamega about three hours and and sits at the foot of Mt. Elgon which is the 12^th highest mountain in Africa. The town itself has some industry which makes it more prosperous than Kakamega. The major industry is a seed producing company which is the only supplier of seeds in Kenya. The surrounding area is absolutely breathtaking. Besides the mountain, there are rolling hills which are planted primarily with maize and even though the maize was recently harvested so the stalks have turned brown, the whole area is overwhelmingly green. The area outside Kitale is fairly sparsely populated compared to the other areas I have visited in Kenya. The farms themselves are large and spread out and there are even places you don’t see anybody living. Once you get up on the mountain and look at over the plains below, the view is even better! And there are other mountain ranges that surround the area in the distance. Once again, it is just not the scenery I ever thought I would find in Kenya.

I was accompanied by my young neighbor Andrew. He is typical of almost all Kenyans, except for going to Uganda, he had never traveled outside Kakamega to see any of the scenic spots in his country and literally had never seen any of the wild animals that live in Africa. The first day in Kitale, we visited the tiny museum(which made me remember Grandma Violet’s museum in Three Forks). The museum had a small reconstructed village of the Luhya tribe. It was great to be with Andrew because he could explain the significance of the way the bomas were arranged and why the houses were built with the features they all have. The museum also had some wildlife on display. The highlights were the crocodiles and the snakes. There were two pretty big crocodile in very small ponds surrounded by a not very secure fence that you could probably reach over if you wanted to. The best part was a sign hanging over the ponds which said something like, even though these are friendly animals, they might be dangerous. The snake pit was not very deep and had virtually no upkeep with couple of small trees. In the trees were my worst nightmare, a green momba and a huge black momba. Apparently there are many mombas in the rainforest on the mountain but everyone assured us that they were very shy and hid from people. That still didn’t stop me from nervously watching all the trees when we were hiking in the forest. After the museum, everyone recommended we visit a wildlife sanctuary. So Andrew negotiated a price with the taxi driver. The wildlife sanctuary was still under construction so it wasn’t really open. However the assistant manager showed us around. A lot of money has been invested in the place. It has a lodge, a couple of bars, a conference room and some funky caves that are kind of like Disneyland or the Flintstones where inside they have built benches and tables out of rock and cement so people can sit and drink their sodas. The neat thing was that they were mostly using all natural materials from the area for construction and employing only men from that area as well. They also have a game park with some sitatunga antelope which are almost extinct and a couple of élans. They also have a small pond about 8 feet deep with a boat. Africans are deathly afraid of being in water so all the men were really terrified when we went for a short ride in the boat. Oh by the way, the taxi driver and what I thought was his co worker went with us on the tour. Later I found out that the second guy was not a co worker but just a customer who had decided to come along for the ride!

The next day, we took another taxi to Mt. Elgon. It is a National Park and a game reserve as well. Besides Andrew and I, the taxi driver and his legitimate co worker also came on the tour again. You are required to be accompanied by a ranger while touring the park. Our ranger was a very young girl in a military uniform who carried a loaded AK47. We only saw a few animals like baboons, water buck and lots of monkeys including the black and white colubus, which have really neat flowing coats that fly out behind them when they jump from tree to tree. The main attraction is several caves where several times during the year, a big group of elephants migrate to so that they can lick the walls of the caves which have a high salt content. Unfortunately, they aren’t there at this time of year because Andrew has never seen an elephant. To get to the caves, you have to hike through the rain forest which is exactly like I have envisioned it all my life. Also, one of the caves had a beautiful waterfall in front of the entrance and we were able to walk into the cave behind it and the view from inside through the waterfall was spectacular. On the way home we stopped at yet another game park, this one was developed by a woman from Maine who is married to a Kenyan man who is now a member of parliament. At this game park, Andrew got to see his first giraffes(and feed it pellets) and his first rhinos. So the trip ended up being really enjoyable and I loved being in the huge quiet forest where we didn’t see one other person, something that is pretty rare in Kenya.

9/12/06

My time is speeding by in Kakamega. Once again, now that I have returned, people have begun to trust me and open up and I have learned a great deal about Kenyan culture. Today I learned that Kenyans work very hard to avoid confrontation. I believe this is because they are such a close knit society and conflict between people disrupts the entire group. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure for people to resolve conflicts in a different way. The most common way to deal with conflict is to use very diplomatic language to create a situation in which there is no chance for a conflict to arise. I have encountered this method while dealing with people here but have a difficult time understanding because they use a lot of underlying innuendo to convey the message and I know I am quite often missing the point.

Another thing I have discovered is that Kenyans rely on formally organized groups to form bonds outside of their family and neighborhood and they believe strongly in the power of groups to educate and to empower people as well. Being unoccupied in Kenyan is really looked down on, those people are called “idlers.” Therefore, by participating in a group and making an effort to better yourself and your situation is seen as a good alternative to being idle. It seems that the goal of many of the groups is to work on ways to improve their communities. One of the youth groups that my young neighbor belongs to is in the process of finding ways to recycle plastic bottles and bags. Oh, by the way, I mentioned before that I was tutoring Andrew in a few subjects while I am here and now I am also teaching him dog training as well. Of course I am the expert because A) I am crazy about dogs and B) I watch the Dog Whisperer regularly on TV. Anyway, Andrew is very entrepreneurial and sees dog training as maybe being a lucrative business in Kenya. Only time will tell.

The worst crime you can commit in Kenya is to steal something. Because people have worked so hard for what little they have, it is really egregious to take something that is not rightfully yours. All over Kenya, if a thief is caught in the act, they are pursued by the mob, sometimes tortured and almost always violently beaten to death. This happened in Kakamega last month to a man who went to a man’s house to repossess a VCR he had sold to the man but hadn’t ever been paid for. He was mistaken for a thief and beaten to death by the neighbors. It is such a bad crime that it is not left to the police to handle because of course, there is no confidence in the police to enforce the law.

Finally, everyday I see many things that just make me sad. On the boda boda ride on the way to work every morning, I pass a vacant lot near downtown Kakamega where several men in very ragged clothes are sitting around a fire. It is the official place for homeless men to congregate during the night. There is a lot of garbage dumped near there and I usually see a couple of guys picking through the garbage. When you pass by during the daytime, you see lots of old worn out coats that are hung all over the signs. These are the coats that these men use to keep warm at night. Yesterday I saw an old man hobbling down the street without any shoes, which is not that unusual here. But the awful thing is that his feet were swollen to about 3 times the normal size and looked unbelievably painful. And today at the hospital, there was a naked woman with just a blanket wrapped around her waist, walking on the hospital path shouting incoherently while people just passed by without taking much notice of her. So many times here I have heard the comment from people that unless a sick person has the money for medical treatment, they are just left to die like an animal. Can you imagine such a place existing in this day and age where resources are so scarce that no resources are “wasted” on the sick and the weak. The best word I can use to describe what I experience in Kenya every day is ‘mind boggling” and beyond our wildest American imaginations.

9/9/2006

In pursuit of producing my DVD, I spend today talking to a couple of my clients who may be participants in the video. It was wonderful to learn about how entrepreneurial these two people had been and how they had been able to take a very small loan of about $125 and use it to create fairly profitable businesses. One man that I talked to had decided after working for a woman’s grocery business for a while, that he would never make enough money working there to be able to get married and have a family. And even thought he was making peanuts, he was able to save enough money to buy a boda boda and operate it to increase what he was making. After that, he started participating in the FAHIDA program and using the loan proceeds from that program, he started a small kiosk near a school where he sells items to the school kids. It has been highly profitable for him and he makes enough money now to send his son to private school. He has used some of his profit from the business to get a drivers license and now he is in the process of saving enough money to buy a used car and start a taxi business, which he says is really needed in the area. That way his wife can run the kiosk and he can do the taxi driving at night and they will make a very good living.
My woman client is a sort of personal shopper. She gets her clients from the university, professional people like magistrates and lawyers, and the government offices where people make the most money in Kakamega. What she does is to take notice of what kind of clothes and styles those people wear and when she goes to Uganda to buy the mitumba, she finds quality clothes that those people will buy. Once she gets the clients, they actually begin ordering specific things from her as well. She has done very well because she is able to charge a good price without people trying to bargain with her and in essence they pay her for shopping for them. It is a very unique concept in Kakamega and I am really impressed by her business savvy.
I also talked to one other women who my colleague Benard suggested I talk to because she has been really excellent at paying back several loans and is currently paying on a loan of about $800 which is a considerable sum in Kakamega. Come to find out, as she very matter of factly told me, she is not running a conventional business. In her words, “she has been a hooker throughout” and she has been paying back the loan from the proceeds of that business. I think Benard was a little surprised when I told him that. However, she assured me she is planning to open a boutique at some point! She was really down to earth and funny and I really had fun talking to her.
Once again, when I arrive at the groups we are servicing, the people are unbelievable friendly in welcoming me back, to the extent that since they knew I had been sick, they have been praying for me.

return to Kenya

9/9/2006


I hopped my way across the world from Dallas to Chicago to London to Nairobi to stay for my second night in Kenya in the city of Kisumu. A stop in Kisumu is almost always mandatory because of the mega Nakumat supermarket there. The choices include many western products and make eating in Africa a more interesting adventure. Rather than the hospital, I stayed at the Sunset Hotel and had a beautiful room with a balcony right on Lake Victoria, in a quiet part of town called Milimani.
My little house was just as I left it, literally, including food we had left in the fridge for over a month! Like a mother hen, I was overcome with the urge to clean and put my own smells in the place. This time, I brought several photos and things to decorate the walls so I have been able to make it a very comfortable home. But because this is Africa, I currently don’t have running water and the fridge doesn’t work. Oh well.
Sunday night, the Lutomia’s, my landlord, invited me to a family supper. One of their sons is married to a girl from Boston. She and the son met only briefly when he was visiting the US. They carried on a long distance relationship and got married. She continues to live in Boston and he lives in Nairobi. It must make for an interesting marriage. Anyway, dinner was served in the living room and was chicken, cabbage soup and chapatis. The TV was on with the volume turned pretty loud as it often the case in Kenyan homes, but it made it hard for me to carry on a conversation with someone across the room. I am having to get accustomed again to understanding their accent. We watched a Mexican soap opera dubbed in English while we ate. The soap opera was really dramatic with many diabolical characters and everyone really enjoyed following the intrigue. It was so nice to be included in their family. It is certainly not a daily situation that exists at home.
It was very nice to come to work on Monday and I got a wonderful warm welcome back from everyone at my office. Many people on the lane where I lived recognized me from before and were friendly. I have gotten the go ahead from the KREP head office for the DVD project that I am so excited to complete while I am here, but was informed that there aren’t any USAID donor funds earmarked for asset purchases. So this is my official plea for donations to my project if anyone is interested. Donations will of course be tax deductible. You can mail or give the money to Bob and he’ll put it in my account and I assure you, in spite of all the corruption in Kenya, I promise to use the money for which it is intended! The project I am working on is producing a business training course using a DVD. I will be using Kenyan business people who have successfully started businesses using KREP loans and interviewing them to illustrate certain business concepts we are trying to teach. I think the DVD will be very interesting to the students because it will be in Kiswahili and will feature fellow borrowers who have actually used the business concepts we are teaching to solve problems in their business. The DVD will be used as an introduction to the concept, and then the trainer can pause the DVD and expand on the concepts and do practical exercises with the students. I am really excited about the concept and it is really challenging to make it all come together like I am envisioning. I feel like it is so serendipitous that I came to Kenya and ended up working in an area. where I can use my experience from the US to perhaps make a contribution. So the above mentioned donations will be used for a TV, DVD player, a TV stand and some other classroom equipment like a chart easel and whiteboard.
So as the day went by on Monday and I did my usual routine I saw many people I had become acquainted with and everyone was so nice about welcoming me back. The young girl from the bookstore where I shop invited me to lunch and told me all about her upcoming marriage. Notice I said marriage, not wedding. When people get married in Kenya, the man has to pay a dowry for the woman and pay for the wedding so it is very expensive. So as a result, most couple only have family present while the priest marries them and then if they can afford it, will have a celebration later.
On Monday evening, one of the sons from where I live came to visit. He is a guy in his early twenties and shared with me that he had spent the last several years living in Uganda, hanging with a bad crowd and partying all the time. He has now decided to get his life straight so he has returned to Kakamega to continue his education. However, because he wasn’t serious about school before, he does not have a good education and has asked me to tutor him in several subjects, including computer, French and English. So, I guess I will be spending a few hours a week with him teaching him what I can. He’s a good kid and I kind of hope maybe spending some time with him can encourage him to keep going this direction. You know, at the risk of sounding like a bleeding heart liberal(which I most likely am) I am glad of the chance to be here and to be able to find so many ways to give back to people. As many of you know, my personal philosophy is that our true obligation in life is to generate positive energy or whatever you want to call it to give to the world while we are here and I feel fortunate that I am able to accomplish a small part of that while living in Kakamega. By the way, did you know that Kenyan salt is not as salty and Kenyan sugar is not as sweet? It’s a mystery to me.

here is a view of one of the bays in lake victoria. it is such a huge lake that you can only see a tiny portion of it standing on the bank. the dhows on the bank are still used by fishermen who fish for tilapia, which is abundant in the lake and one of the main foods in this area. lake victoria is only about 60 miles south of where i lived in kakamega.