Mzuri Sana

So last weekend I went to the Great Rift Valley to visit Lake Naivasha with Aidan and Chase. It was a short (Saturday morning-Sunday night), wet, exhausting trip on which everything that could go wrong did.

First of all, it rained pretty much all Saturday afternoon, and then started pouring again late Sunday afternoon. We got poured on while we visited the lake to try and see hippos, while we waited for matatus about a dozen times, and while we tried to find food. We stayed at a hostel near the lake, which was clean and cheap for a private banda, but it didn’t serve any food like we had been counting on, were in a remote area, had the most uncomfortable beds of anywhere ever in the world, and the other guests proceeded to get completely wasted on Saturday night, partying until 4 in the morning and drunkenly knocking on our door every hour or so. When we went to find food Saturday night, we had to wait for an hour for a matatu, arrived to find everything was closed, ended up having to eat sketchy roadside backroom tavern stew, and were only able to find a store selling deep-fried bread, meaning that on Sunday we had bread, water, and some hard candy to eat for the whole day.

Plus we got ripped off by the matatu.

Despite these factors, though, the trip was absolutely awesome. I got to see hippos in the wild, hang out with Kenyans in some very Kenyan places, see the Great Rift Valley, hear Chase talk in his sleep (apparently granny smith apples are “perfect”), visit a place called Hell’s Gate, where we went through a gorge in Maasai lands with a Maasai guide, and go rock climbing. Plus it was a lot of fun to hang out with Chase and Aidan. Considering that I came here with no idea who my co-workers would be, I feel like I got very lucky with some pretty cool people. Overall, I had a really great time – I would definitely do it again!

Race to the Finish

So, sorry it’s been so long. I was incredibly busy last week, with just tons and tons of meetings and organizing things and buying things for the CBO and the women’s group. It was an exhausting week, but there were a couple of highlights. On Tuesday Wycliffe, Philip and I finally completed the registration for the CBO, which enables the group to do things like open a bank account. And on Thursday I went with Mary and another lady to buy soap-making materials, so that on Friday they were able to make their first batch of 25 liters. Aside from those events, though, the week was pretty much just, well, exhausting. I know I said it before, but it bears repeating.

As a result, on Sunday I did very little, which was great. I was quite happy with it.

This week started off poorly, as I got dehydrated and ended up with heat exhaustion-type symptoms on Tuesday. So I had a crappy couple of days because of that, and lost some time I would have preferred not to, because the fact of the matter is that I only have two more weeks of work, followed by a week to travel, before returning to the US. I’ve been trying to impress on the women just how little time is left in order to light a fire under them so that they get themselves organized and produce enough of the hand-made bags, placemats, and other items that they want to produce in order to make it worthwhile to send them back to the US with Chelina in September.

Right now the products that are hopefully going to end up in the women’s product line are a tote bag, a messenger bag, place mats, a small envelope-style clutch/billfold, and a skirt that the ladies think is shockingly short. Each of these items will be made in the colorful, bold printed fabrics that are traditional to East Africa. I think that if they produce at least 40 of the place mats and 12-15 of each of the other items, they would be in brilliant shape to stock the Etsy store that KDI manages from the US. Even if they only managed to produce the mats (the easiest item to make) and the two types of bags, I’d be happy. But needless to say, they’ll have to really get to work. I’m hoping that they’ll be in production by Wednesday, if they finish producing the samples Chelina and I have asked for and we are able to buy fabric and rent sewing machines for them to use. This will give them about a week before I quit working and two weeks before Chelina and I leave Kenya.

Good luck, ladies…

We're for yes

This week, my major accomplishment was to get the executive committee of the CBO elected. I also made several steps towards registering the group, although it will be next week before that is complete.

On Monday, the CBO held its elections in two stages. We started by electing only the chair, secretary, treasurer, organizing secretary, and trustee. Once we had tabulated the votes, we discovered that each person elected had come from Mashimoni – due largely, I suspect, to the effort of Mashimoni people to bring out all of their friends for the election, including people that haven’t been involved with the CBO before or since. The group has already had some tensions along the Mashimoni/Lindi divide, with Mashimoni people wanting to write into the constitution that at least 60% of group members be from Mashimoni, claiming that they have more right to the project since the first phase is being constructed on the Mashimoni side of the river. Meanwhile, Lindi people wanted to require the group to have exactly equal representation from both sides. Because of these issues, we wanted to make sure that both sides were represented by the officers. Thus, we moved into the second stage – electing the vice-chair, vice-secretary, and vice-organizing secretary, nominating only people from Lindi for these positions. In the end, we had a board with 5 from Mashimoni and 3 from Lindi, and I think more people were satisfied than dissatisfied.

Our week was interrupted by another election in Kenya – the constitutional referendum, which took place on Wednesday. Because of the violence that followed the 2007 general election, we took the precaution of staying home on Wednesday until we were sure that the proceedings had been peaceful. Basically, this meant sleeping in late and laying around all day, watching election updates on CNN. Incidentally, this was the first time I had turned on the tv since arriving in Kenya. At our apartment, we get the following channels: a couple of Kenyan news channels, a couple of channels of music videos, CNN international, Al-Jazeera, a Christian channel, and Chinese and Iranian state-owned English language news. The Iranian channel, Press TV, is quite intriguing.

The election itself was uneventful, with the constitution being approved by a resounding margin. This was definitely a good moment for Kenya – the new constitution does a great deal to decentralize the government, hopefully reducing corruption by the executive, which has been a huge problem since Kenya gained independence. I am very proud to be able to say that I was here at this time – I think the new constitution will help Kenya become a more stable, prosperous country in the long run.

After Wednesday, my main task was to try and get the group registered. We haven’t succeeded yet – my first trip with Wycliffe, the group’s secretary, to get the signatures we need, resulted in being told that all of our paperwork was filled out incorrectly. But we’re trying again, and hopefully the registration will be done by Tuesday. For the rest of the time I’m here, I’ll mostly be focusing on getting the group going so they’re ready to run it on their own when I go, as well as helping the women get some of their businesses running. It’s getting to a point where we really need to focus, since I have basically only until the end of August to finish my work. At that point, although I’ll still have another week in Kenya, the other interns are leaving so I’ll probably end my work then as well in order to take a few days to travel.

Baby Elephants!

This weekend was pretty fun. While my roommates headed to Mombasa, I stayed here and had a few adventures of my own. Saturday morning, I decided to try and go to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Centre. Sheldrick is a conservation group that rescues orphaned elephants and rhinos, raises them by hand, and then releases them into the wild as adults. When I set out looking for it, all I knew about the location was that it is in Karen, which is an almost entirely white suburb (and was once the home of Karen Blixen, who wrote Out of Africa). I also knew that it was supposedly on Magadi Road, and that it is accessible by matatu, which was how I planned to get there. Unfortunately, once I got to town, all of the matatus there seemed never to have heard of it. Each bus I approached pointed me in a different direction. Eventually I just decided to get on a matatu heading towards Karen and see what happened.

As we headed towards Karen, I saw nothing that said “this is where the baby elephants are” to me. So eventually when I saw some signs for the A.F.E.W. Giraffe Centre, I decided I would just go there instead. Especially since by this time it was 11:45, and there was no point in trying to go to Sheldrick, since it’s only open from 11 am until 12 pm every day. So I hopped out of the bus and headed towards the sign. It turned out the sign was maybe about ¾ of a mile from the entrance to the Centre, but eventually I got there. It was really cool – the Centre rescues Rothschild’s giraffes, then trains them to help people by impersonating doctors, lawyers, teachers, or police officers.

Just kidding. The Centre raises these giraffes, which are extremely rare in the wild – partially because they just don’t have a very extensive range, and partially because they were almost hunted to extinction by a Ugandan dictator who had his army use them for target practice. The Centre is basically responsible for saving the Rothschild’s giraffe from extinction by releasing mating pairs back into national parks. At the Centre, you can get really close to the giraffes – guides hand out food pellets that visitors can directly feed to the animals by placing the pellets on the giraffe’s long black tongue. I also saw one guy “kiss” a giraffe by putting a pellet between his lips and then letting a giraffe take it from him. Gross.

After I was done at the A.F.E.W. Centre, I went back to town, where I got stuck in a horrendous traffic jam. I finally got out of the bus and walked because we had gone about a quarter of a mile in half an hour. By the time I got home, I was very, very tired.

Sunday I woke up early, determined to actually get to Sheldrick. I had called the night before to find out what matatu would actually take me there, and the guy told me that 125 went past the center. So I went to town, found matatu 125, and asked the guy to tell me when to get off. When he did, I climbed out, only to discover that I was at the front entrance to Nairobi National Park. While Sheldrick is adjacent to the park, it’s not accessible from there. Even I knew that. So I asked the guard at the entrance how to get to Sheldrick, and he told me that 125 was right, but that I needed to ask to get off at Central Workshop on Magadi Road (the park is on Langata Road). So I went and waited for another matatu to come by, and this time I was actually dropped at Central Workshop. From there, I had to walk for about 20 minutes through part of the park to get to Sheldrick. But I finally arrived at 10:15, which meant that I had to wait for 45 minutes before they would let me in.

That wasn’t too bad though – I talked to a bunch of people who were also waiting, and met a German woman who offered me a lift to Yaya after we left the park. That was great, because Yaya shopping center is right by my apartment. But then it was time to see the baby elephants!

This was an incomparably awesome experience. While baby elephants are not soft and furry, they are totally adorable. First the young ones, 18 months and under, came out and had their bottles from the keepers. Then they got some time to run around and play. Baby elephants are pretty rambunctious – they throw dirt around, kick soccer balls, and wrestle with each other. Several times one of them would push up against the rope that was separating the spectators from the animals, and once one of them stepped on my foot. I got to touch several of them, and one even let me pet his trunk. That was pretty great, I have to say. After that, the older group, who are between 18 months and 3 years, came out and had their bottles. These elephants are much bigger and stronger than the little ones, but similar in behavior. Luckily none of them stepped on me.

The elephants are being raised by Sheldrick because they have been found orphaned in the wild. Baby elephants are typically not adopted by others in the herd if their mother dies, so they would die too. Many of their mothers die due to poaching, habitat destruction, or other human interference. Sheldrick rescues them and raises them until they are old enough to be released back into the wild, where they can rejoin a herd.

Overall, I had a really great weekend. I got to touch a bunch of wild animals, which was totally cool. It was an experience I could never replicate in the US where conservationists are much stricter about prohibiting people from interacting with animals. Although it’s true that there could be negative repercussions from the animals interacting with humans too much, I think that as long as the groups here feel that the animals they have rescued have not been harmed by the human interaction, this was a pretty awesome experience.

Week Three

This week has been all about two things for me: first, site prep began on Site 2 on Wednesday, which was a major event. So of course Tuesday was spent running around town picking up supplies and trying to make sure everything would go off without a hitch. Which it mostly did, except for the message I received from Chelina at 8 am on Wednesday morning, saying that she was on site for the beginning of the first day, and no one had a list of the people who were supposed to be working. It turned out that was because I had both copies of it. Oops. Once I texted her the full list of names, though, work was able to begin. By Wednesday afternoon, the crew had already cleared almost all of the trash from the river. On Thursday, they began tackling the mountain of trash that has collected on the banks. They have already made a huge dent – the site looks completely different.

Chelina has also spent much of the week coordinating with the engineer and interviewing contractors. The engineer made his first site visit on Monday and another on Friday. Since they have both gone well it seems like construction on the foundation will be able to begin next week. Yay!

But the engineer has actually been only a minor focus for me. Instead, my other big project this week has been getting the CBO’s constitution written. After our first meeting last Saturday, I prepared a draft for the next meeting, on Wednesday. At that meeting we went over the draft (which I basically adapted from another group – fixing grammatical issues, removing stuff that didn’t apply, changing or suggesting changes to other parts), discussing every issue in detail. From who can be a member to how officers will be elected, we went over everything. So that meeting dragged on for ages – almost three hours, probably. Then I spent the next couple of days fixing everything we had talked about so that we had a tentative final version. We met again on Friday and had another read through. There were only a few more minor changes, but otherwise the constitution has been approved! Now all we have to do is have elections, which are set for Monday, and then file for registration with the government.

I have also started taking tentative steps to get another part of the CBO off the group – starting our first income-generating project. A group visiting from Colorado did a demonstration of how to make liquid soap on Thursday, so Chelina and I took a couple of the women from the CBO to see it. This soap can be used for bathing, laundry, dishes, and any other cleaning that needs to be done, plus it’s cheaper than the soap the women use now. If they start making it and selling it they should be able to find a pretty decent market for it. So overall, it was a busy, productive week. This coming week I’m looking forward to starting construction on the foundation, getting the CBO registered – and of course, the constitutional referendum on Wednesday.

When frustration sets in

In addition to James wanting money for his part in our project, it seems everyone else in Kibera does too. Bernard and Chris have negotiated to be given an allowance for every day that they basically do anything during construction. The community residents think we are not paying enough for construction jobs, despite the fact that we are paying average wages for jobs in Kibera, and they are upset that we cannot have all 90 interested workers work every day of construction.

Unfortunately, KDI is a small firm with relatively little money for an American NGO. So we just don’t have enough funding to give everyone as much money as they want. Unfortunately, big NGOs have a reputation for paying inflated prices for labor. Because Kenyan, and particularly Kiberan, labor is so cheap by American standards, many groups can afford to pay 400 shillings ($5) a day to unskilled laborers, and 600 shillings ($7) to skilled laborers. But when you multiply the extra 100 or 200 shillings a day by the number of workers, it can quickly add up to a few thousand dollars, and we don’t have that kind of wiggle room in our budget. But I was touched by the older guy who came to the community meeting and stood up in front of everyone to say that he thought we were paying too much – because this project is for the community, and it will improve all of their lives in the long run. So in his opinion, it is up to the community to take ownership of the project and not be angry about the wages, which are still pretty good for residents of Kibera. Eventually, we talked the community around to that idea, however grudgingly.

We don't need no stinkin' surveys

This week, we have also been dealing with the surveyor issue. We gave up on the original surveyor, since it seems like he is simply unable or unwilling to do what we require. So on Monday we found another surveyor who came highly recommended and asked him to do the project. He told us he definitely could, it was just an issue of whether he would, since apparently he is afraid to go into Kibera. On Wednesday Chelina and I escorted him to the site so that he could see for himself that there is nothing to be afraid of. It seemed like it was going to work out, although it was going to cost significantly more than the first guy.

But then we started hearing that he was still uncomfortable with the project and there was probably no amount of money we could offer to get him in there. So it seemed like we were back to square one. But by Friday a solution seemed to be in sight. Then engineer will be coming on Monday, and he will be able to tell us the most important things we need to know about the site. So we’re just going to skip the surveyor and do a design-build project instead. Basically, that means that we’re going to take the drawings that we have and just start building, using the expertise of the contractor and the on-site architect to make adjustments as we go.

Incidentally, after the second surveyor fell through, Chelina called some of the people she knows in Nairobi to see if they could recommend a new one. Although we had already decided to skip the surveyor, yesterday she got a message from one of her friends, saying he would call a really good guy that he knew – the same surveyor who we had spent all week trying to convince to take the job. So that makes about eighteen different people who have asked him to take this project, but none of it will persuade him that the people of Kibera are not dangerous.