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.

Say hello to Riverside Usafi Group

So I have basically settled into a pattern where I catch up on office work from home in the mornings and then go to Kibera in the afternoons for meetings. This week, these meetings were largely regarding the establishment of the CBO, the process for which is now finally underway, after a fairly bumpy ride.

The biggest difficulty has been working with James from YDF. He is supposed to be in charge of the entire process. But as it happened, he missed virtually every meeting we had this week – Monday, Wednesday, two on Thursday, and Saturday. On Thursday, however, Chelina and I talked with him and made sure that he was available to meet with the community on Saturday to write the constitution. Not only did he say he was available, he asked Chelina and me to arrive early so that the three of us could discuss strategy.

But when we got to Kibera on Saturday afternoon and called him, he told us he was in the CBD and wouldn’t be back until the community meeting started. Then when it was time for the community meeting, we called him again – only to find out he was still in the CBD and probably wouldn’t make it at all. Only after the meeting was over did we discover from Bernard that James had been avoiding us on purpose. It turns out that James thinks he should be paid for the work he is doing, but rather than actually talking to us, he was just going to not do the work until we offered to pay. Unfortunately for him, I think his plan backfired – we may just remove him from the project and let Bernard handle it.

There is also a very real possibility that Chris and Power of Hope will be removed from the day care project, which has been their responsibility. Since Chris has only occasionally been showing up for events and meetings recently, we are basically going to wait and see if they come up with the plans for the center that they are supposed to have by the 1st. If they don’t, they will probably just be off the case. Where we go from there, I’m not sure, since I don’t know anyone else who knows how to set up a day care.

However, despite these difficulties, we have managed to get the CBO off the ground. At the constitutional meeting yesterday we had a very good turnout, and everyone who came was helpful, committed, and had a lot of really good ideas. It seems like the people in this group are really enthusiastic, and they also seem to have at least some familiarity with community organizing. Hopefully we will finish the constitution in the next few days and the group will be able to vote on it and get off the ground officially by the end of the week.

Links

I added a few links if anyone is interested in finding out more about the project I'm working on or Kibera. In particular, the KPSP blog contains semi-up-to-date info about the projects.

Kibera TV recently posted a clip about the clean-up KDI did at site 2 last week - it should be accessible from their blog.

And if you want to support the Public Space Project, you can always order a basket from KiKi Weavers through their Etsy site. :-D

I will probably put up some real posts tomorrow - haven't had any time off in a while. I'll probably do several posts at once, once again. I know this post-dumping thing is a little bit weird for a blog but it's hard to find the time to post them every day or couple of days.

Clean-ups and more soccer

Saturday’s clean-up was a great success. Over 80 people, including residents of the second site’s neighborhood and members of the CBOs, showed up to clean, even though we didn’t have tools for that many people. This was both good – because of the enthusiasm for the project – and bad, because people without tools sitting around encouraged people with tools to sit around. But we still got a fair amount of work done, and everyone enjoyed a well-earned soda at the end. Incidentally, sodas in Kenya, which still come in the glass bottles that are nowhere to be found in the US, cost just 20 /-, about $.25, with a bottle deposit of 10 /-. The most popular sodas in Kibera include Coke, Sprite, and many flavors of Fanta, as well as more local drinks like Krest (like Sprite but more lemon-y) and Stoney Tangawizi, an absolutely delicious, incredibly ginger-y ginger beer. So we all had a drink to celebrate the progress made. Now all we need is for the surveyor to hurry up and then we can get a move on with Project Two.

Saturday night, Aidan and Jean and I headed over to another ex-pat’s apartment, where we were to see a screening of Hot Sun’s Togetherness Supreme. In the end, the event ended up moving to the home of Mercy and Nathan, the founders of Hot Sun and the producer and director of the film. It drew a pretty good sized crowd of mostly Americans working in Kenya for the summer (as well as one Northern European couple and a handful of Kenyans). Some of the ex-pats included three students who are working on a project mapping peace work in Kenya and a law student working with a legal aid firm assisting Kenyan prisoners.

Today was another relaxed day, with no real work to be done. Aidan, Chase, and I went to YaYa Center mall for lunch, where I had a yummy chocolate-banana milkshake. In the afternoon, we all went to Kibera for a rematch of last week’s soccer game. Before the game, I had an interesting conversation with Bernard. He told me that he hopes someday to go to the US to work. His study has been in community activism/organization, and that’s what he’s doing now with Ushirika. He would like to find a job doing the same thing in the US – within ten years, he says he has to be there.

I wonder if he’ll be able to find a job like that. After all, the US has no shortage of community organizers. But I think that perhaps if he were able to get a job with a US-based NGO, somewhere like the YMCA, Amnesty International, or something else, he might find a way to transition to a US-based position. He is a bright, charismatic guy, although he would probably have to get off Kenyan time to succeed in the US. He also told me that in the next few years he needs to get married, and that he wants to have 3 or 4 kids. I asked if he would let his wife decide whether 3 or 4, but he told me that this decision is up to him, and he just hasn’t made up his mind yet.

Once again, I didn’t play in the game, opting instead to sit with a group of kids and take pictures of them and the game. The kids here love it when we take pictures of them, mugging for the camera and then begging to see the result. After the game, we enjoyed a soda with the Chief (yummy Stoney for me), and then I left with Chelina’s friends Robbie and Andrew, who are visiting from the States, while Chelina and the other interns went to a community meeting at site one.

Lions and elands and wildebeest, oh my!

On Thursday, I met Chris from Power of Hope at the matatu stop near my apartment early in the morning so that we could buy some supplies needed for the clean-up. We went into town, where we were able to successfully locate rubber (hospital-type) gloves and trash bags. Before heading back to Kibera, Chris made a stop at the bank. While I was waiting for him, I struck up a conversation with a guy who asked me if I am Kenyan. I doubt that he actually thought I was, but he probably figured that there was a chance I might be, especially since I was in a bank (which a tourist usually wouldn’t be) and didn’t want to insult me if I was. But we started talking – he said he knows how strange it is to be in a country that is very different from one’s own, since he has spent two years in Madagascar as a missionary.

Back in Kibera, Chris took me to the office of Power of Hope so that we could make copies of a flyer advertising the clean-up. On our way, I saw a small girl in a blue dress wave at me, so I waved back as we turned the corner. A few moments later, I felt a hand on my waist, and turning around, there was the same little girl. She stuck out her hand so I shook it, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she started walking with us. She was so small that I was afraid she would get lost, so I had Chris ask her if she knew where she was going in Swahili. She told him that she was going to school, and sure enough, after a few minutes she dropped my hand and ran into a church just off our route. Once we arrived at Power of Hope’s office, Chris showed me his garden, where he grows produce to sell to shopkeepers. He also showed me where he has illegally tapped into the power lines so that he can wire the homes of his neighbors for 300 /- a month. Chris is a pretty successful businessman – although he still lives in Kibera, he can afford a snazzy iPhone. Other than my shopping expedition, Thursday was a pretty low-key day. I returned home early and just chilled for the afternoon.

Friday, however, all of the interns took the day off and had an adventure. With the help of our friend Edwin the taxi driver, we rented a van with a pop-up roof and went to Nairobi National Park, where we were able to have a mini-safari. We saw a variety of wildlife, including baboons, giraffes, zebras, lions, rhinos, ostriches, gazelles, impalas, wildebeest, warthogs, vervets, elands, and a zillion birds. Seeing the lions was pretty cool, and the vervets are very cute. It was also interesting being able to see all of these wild animals against the backdrop of Nairobi. Since it was Friday, when we returned we decided to have some fun. We went to the supermarket for beers (and Oreos!) and then played card games for a couple of hours. Later, my roommates decided to go to a local karaoke bar and sing some songs, although I decided to be lame and go to bed early since I had to be up early for the clean-up on Saturday.

Hot Sun Films

On Wednesday I had a meeting with Chelina and the leaders of Power of Hope, Ushirika, YDF, and NNDC to organize Saturday’s clean-up at the second site. Although the meeting was scheduled to begin at 1, it was actually 2 before it got underway, and Bernard didn’t arrive until about 2:30. But eventually it happened, which is the way things work in Kibera.

After the meeting, Chelina took Aidan, Jean, and me on a tour of a part of Kibera we hadn’t visited before. Kibera is bisected by a railway line, which amazingly is functional despite the presence of stalls crowding just feet from the tracks. The tracks themselves serve as a thoroughfare for people and animals when no train is in site. On Wednesday, the first thing we did was to walk along the tracks, first to the site of a clean-up organized by several Chiefs of the districts of Kibera. We then continued west along the tracks to where part of Kibera is on higher ground than the district we work in. From here we could see all of Kibera spread out below us to the south – and a golf course adjacent to the north.

Eventually we ended up at the Olympic entrance to Kibera, where we stopped in at Hot Sun Film School. Hot Sun Films is a production company that has produced a short film, Kibera Kid, and a feature, Togetherness Supreme. Both are set in Kibera with a cast and crew made up primarily of Kibera residents. In addition, the founders of Hot Sun, Nathan and Mercy, run a film school which accepts students from Kibera who are interested in learning about filmmaking.

Although the students must be able to read and write proficiently in English, they are not required to have any formal education, and the school does not charge a fee. Funding for the school comes from Africalia, a Belgian group, and from private donors. We watched some of the student films which this year’s class has put together, and after only two months they show a lot of promise. According to Mercy some of the students did not even know how to use a computer mouse when they arrived at the school, but now they are writing, directing, starring in, and editing their own films quite adeptly. Hot Sun seems like a really interesting and worthwhile effort – especially since two of the eight or so members of last year’s class received jobs using their new skills immediately upon graduation.

If you are interested in checking it out, I think Kibera Kid is available online, although I haven't verified this. Some Hot Sun alumni have also launched Kibera TV, which posts 1-3 minute videos about life in Kibera online, which is accessible here.

Tuesday, July 13th

Today I went with Jean, Aidan, and the KiKi Weavers to harvest water hyacinth in the morning. The process takes a long time, is boring, and is in the hot sun. Basically, we walked along the river to the dam, where we found hyacinth plants that had been pulled from the water and tossed on shore by a crew of prison laborers. We severed the stalks of the plants and cut off the leaves, and then collected them in large canvas bags. Once the bags were full, we returned to the project site and sliced each stalk in half and left them to dry in the sun. Tomorrow they will turn the stalks and on Thursday they will treat them and start making rope.

In the afternoon we all went with Chelina and Bernard, the leader of Ushirika, to see the Community Cooker, which is a project Ushirika created. People bring their trash to the Cooker, where it is sorted and combustible trash is burned to power a stove and oven that can be used by community members to bake and cook for themselves and for sale. Hopefully, this will serve as an outlet for the vast amounts of trash that people have until now been dumping at the second site, but this is dependent on the Cooker actually running when it is supposed to.

This evening, we all went to the community meeting at the second site, where the leaders of the three groups and Chelina talked to community residents who had been recruited to be the founding members of the CBO. Once again we stayed out late, and had to be escorted out of Kibera. When we got home the other interns and I cooked dinner together. Tonight was Aidan and Chase’s turn to make grilled cheese and tomato soup, since Jean and I cooked the spaghetti with meat sauce that we ate the last two nights. It’s been really nice cooking meals and spending time with the other interns, which has fostered sort of a camaraderie that I haven’t always felt at other internships. It’s nice having other people to hang out with and talk to in a place where there are so many cultural differences between myself and the residents.

So what am I doing here?

My job, in contrast to the other interns, was very poorly defined until after I had actually arrived and started working. All I really knew going in was that I would be assisting Chelina at the second project, hopefully getting some hands-on experience in the urban planning process. So on the first day of work I went to our orientation meeting with no real idea of what I would be doing – and came out of it, still with no idea. Once that was over, I accompanied Chelina to the office of the surveyor who is supposed to be surveying the second site so that we can get our plans approved by the engineers and begin laying the foundation. He’s been dragging his heels though, and right now he doesn’t seem ready to get to work.

After that, we actually went to the second site for the first time. I saw where we would be building a toilet block with an honest-to-goodness sewer connection, a daycare, a playground, and several kiosks for selling goods. It’s a compact site, squeezed in between a school, numerous shanties, and the river. Right now it is strewn with garbage, but soon we will be having a volunteer cleaning day to get the community residents enthusiastic about the project.

At the second site, I finally found out what I’ll be doing for the summer. My main project will be to help the residents who live in the immediate vicinity of the site organize themselves into a CBO. I will help them register with the government, come up with ideas for raising money for the site, and hopefully help them come together as a community. In addition, I will help Chelina as needed with projects related to the beginning of construction.

The last thing I did on Monday [7/12] was to attend a meeting with Chelina and the heads of the three groups sponsoring the second site – Power of Hope, Ushirika, and the Youth Development Forum. We discussed our plans for the community meeting that was held tonight and for our next few weeks as we begin construction. By the time we finished it was late – after 7 and already dark. So instead of walking out by ourselves, Chris, the leader of Power of Hope, led Chelina and I to the gate of Kibera, where we found a matatu and made our way home. Although I do not generally feel unsafe in Kibera, I would not want to walk around by myself, especially after dark. Although I do not think there is a high risk of being hurt in Kibera, or anywhere in Nairobi, as long as I am cautious, the truth is that I stand out like a sore thumb (more about this another time) and people assume that I have a lot of money – which they might try and take.

First Impressions & Introductions

My first impression of Kenya was mainly how dirty it is. There is no trash collection, so it mostly either ends up by the side of the road, or people burn it. As a result, there is a lot of trash by the road, and some of it smokes. Also, many of the cars are diesel or just really dirty, so there is a lot of smoke from them. Many of the roads are unpaved, and few have actual sidewalks, so we’re usually just walking along the side of the road and trying to avoid being run over. Kibera is extremely crowded and noisy, with many tiny stalls where people sell all sorts of goods and services. It is also overrun with trash to a far greater degree than the rest of Nairobi, and with no regular sewage system, you can probably imagine how it smells.

The first few days of work were extremely busy. On Sunday we went to Kibera to play football with the members of Ushirika wa Usafi (Cooperation for Cleanliness), a community building organization that carries out projects to improve sanitation in Kibera. Ushirika is also a partner with KDI in the second public space project. After that we went to a community meeting at the first public space, where the leaders of each group involved in the site updated Chelina, the director of KDI and my boss, on the progress they have made in furthering their projects since she has been gone. She also introduced the other three interns, who will be working closely with groups from the first project, and me, even though I won’t be spending much time there.

Jean is working with the KiKi Women Weavers, a group of women who harvest water hyacinth, an invasive species, from the Nairobi Dam, which is just a short walk from the site. They then weave the hyacinth into baskets which they sell to tourists and wholesale markets and even online. Right now they are having some difficulty finding outlets to sell their baskets, although they have had some luck selling on Etsy. Jean’s job will be to find fairs and other venues where the women can make contacts with shopkeepers and others who will be able to buy their baskets, as well as to get them more comfortable with using the internet so that they can sell online unassisted.

Chase is working with the New Nairobi Dam Committee (NNDC Group). They are growing produce and making compost which they can sell. Like KiKi, NNDC has been having trouble finding outlets for their products. However, in just the last two days, Chase has overseen the realization on the part of one group member that he could easily sell a large amount of produce to shopkeepers at a profit to the group and himself. With the compost, the challenge will be creating standardized packaging so that it is easy to sell. There is also the difficult of needing a name for their product – although there are tourists and Americans who would buy baskets or produce on the strength of the feel-good story of empowerment, for each one there are probably 20 Kenyans who would never buy something they associate with Kibera, since they do not want to support people who they see as lawless hooligans. So balancing the need to appeal to these two groups will be a challenge for both Jean and Chase.

Aidan is a film student, so his project is to create a documentary of the projects KDI has been working on in Kibera. Much of his job will be following each group around and conducting interviews. Although he will be working mainly at the first site, he will also be coming to the second site to film progress as it is made there.

Transit Adventures

If you’ve seen my Facebook statuses, you know that I did make it to Kenya alive. However, there was some concern when I flew out that I wouldn’t make it at all. The departure of my flight from Chicago-Brussels was delayed by about an hour, and we were only able to make up a little of that delay in flight. Since I (and about 10-15 other people on my flight also going to Africa) already had a short layover, I only had about 40 minutes to make the transfer in Brussels.

This was not enough time.

I arrived at a C gate and had to find my way to a T gate. This meant a 10 minute walk, a 20 minute wait to go through security again, walking halfway down another terminal – and then taking a bus to get to T terminal! Since I picked the wrong security line, adjacent to a staff priority line, just as I approached about 15 airline staff rushed through and jumped ahead of me. By the time I made it through security, it was already 10:40, the scheduled departure time for my flight. But I finally made it to the plane, which was waiting since it had already received all of the baggage from people from my flight, so it couldn’t leave without us. It was also held up by a security issue regarding a 12-year-old from Scandinavia who had made it into Brussels without the appropriate papers.

By the time we did leave, we had been delayed about 2 hours. We were able to make up half of that en route to Uganda. I had a short layover there, but didn’t have to get off the plane. The last leg was a short flight from Entebbe, Uganda to Nairobi. By the time I arrived it was about 11 pm, and by the time I arrived at my apartment it was midnight, or about 24 hours after I had arrived at O’Hare. I was the last of the four interns to arrive, since they had all been here a couple of days already.

On my first day we were taken to brunch at a café that is popular with expats by a couple of the people from KDI, the group I am working with. In the afternoon I went for a walk with one of the other interns, who showed me everything they know in Nairobi so far. Basically, that meant walking down to Kibera and then to the supermarket. In the evening we went out for Ethiopian food. Today we will be going to a community soccer game and a community meeting in Kibera, and there are plans to watch the World Cup final tonight. Work starts tomorrow! [note: I wrote this on Sunday, July 11, so "tomorrow" refers to the 12th.]