10 things that make Kenya fascinating

1. Night Runners are normal people by day, but by night they become ‘possessed’ to run around naked in their villages, they can cry or imitate the sound of being strangled, with the aim to frighten people. Most are harmless but some run with tamed animals like Leopards. I would love to see a night runner in action!
   
2. Public transport, anything goes! - Matatu’s (public minibuses) have a capacity of about 15 passengers, whenever I have been in one there have been over 20, Tuk Tuks designer to carry 1 or 2 people often carry 3 seater sofas on their roof, and hundreds of chickens are carried on buses and even cars!
3. Dowry & Multiple wives - When a daughter is to be married, the ‘would be’ husband offers a gift to the daughter’s family, the gift should be of the walking variety – cow’s or goat’s!       Polygamy is generally being phased out, but there are still some who have more than one wife, I have heard of an old fella who has 85 wives! He generated huge wealth with the dowries paid for his daughters. I met someone who told me that folk law of his tribe dictates that if your wife sleeps in the same bed with her granddaughter then you can never perform your marital deeds with her again. When this situation occurred with him he stuck to these guidelines and, to his family’s dismay, found himself a second wife!!
   
4. Hotels, but not as we know them - When I first started to drive around I noticed the many roadside hotels – often 5 or more in a village! They are basic wooden structures with iron sheets as roofs – some with glamorous names! I’m now pretty sure that they are just roadside cafés!
5. Keeping time for an appointment is not as important as at home (although this doesn't apply to everyone). 2-3 hours late is common, once we were 3 and a half hours late for a meeting with 80 people – nobody seemed bothered though, especially when we handed out the sodas! Some of the language used, in my experience, adds to this… ‘Where are you?’- ‘I’m Just Around’ translates to ‘you won’t see me for at least an hour’. And ‘Where are you?’ -‘I’m here!’ translates to ‘I’ll be there in 10 minutes!’

   

   Road Obliterated!

6. Roads - Many of them are awful! Some been built by shoddy contractors on questionable agreements with government officials & others have been battered by the heavy rains or constant flow of Lorries. The Chinese are now here to build the roads to a better standard. But that won’t save the dirt roads which in rural areas can be obliterated by the rains…
7. Get rich, then share it out - The middle class is growing, people are becoming more educated and better jobs are there to be had. However when people attain wealth there is a barrier to retaining it - obligation to family or community. If you are the wealthy sibling of, say, 8 then you should contribute towards your nieces/nephews school fees. If you come home to the weekend to your relatively poor home village you should bring a car full of shopping. If someone dies then you should contribute to the funeral!
8. Respect Kenyan’s are more hierarchical 

   

   Meeting Grandmother - head of the homestead

   than Westerners; the head of the family is often the eldest and makes the decisions. Children show respect to elders, which I experienced when walking through a school  field;  the children stood up as I walked passed them and then sat back down when I had passed, if this were the UK I’d instead expect a football kicked in my face!
9. Tribalism & Politics  
   
   Kenya has been around for about a hundred years, before then it was a collection of lands inhabited and governed by tribes. When the European’s decided to create Kenya, and subsequently it gained independence, these tribes were forced together to run the country. When elections come around the local tribe usually vote for the candidate from their tribe, the history has been that when your tribe is running the country that you have preferential treatment; more investment into roads, hospitals, job creation. And that is why people love politics, there is so much riding on it! And that’s why there has been corruption, assassinations and riots in the recent past.
10. Friendliness – ‘How are you, fine’ Kids love waving to Muzungu’s (which is what white people are called & translates roughly to ‘someone who is wandering around’) You can feel like a celebrity on a car journey by sticking your arm out of the window which alerts the kids on the roadside & triggers a cascade of ‘Muzungu, how are you?’. School kids are greeted by their teacher with ‘How are you?’ to which the answer should always be ‘fine’. This is drummed into them to the extent that some adults/kids will respond to a ‘Hello’ with ‘fine’, or a response to “good morning” can be “fine”!

Nan's donation to Senior Chief Onunga School for the Deaf

My Nan, Marjorie, entrusted me with a couple of hundred pounds to put towards a worthy cause during my 6 months in Kisumu, Kenya. I decided to donate it to the Senior Chief Onunga School for the Deaf.

The school is situated on the edge Nyalenda - the second largest slum in Kenya. They teach the state school curriculum, with 5 teachers, one unpaid volunteer to 25 deaf students.

All the students are fully deaf; half are Orphans and most live in the slum. Before the school opened in 2011 some of these kids suffered abuse as, due to their disability, they are perceived as less valuable. The school not only educates the kids but also sensitizes the community towards understanding the importance of treating them fairly and understanding their disability.

Students, Staff and me showing off much of the donation

Courtesy of the government, their current budget per student for teaching materials and other costs is 1500 Kenyan shillings, which is about 12 British pounds, per year (although students under 7 years old receive no funding at all). In addition to this meager budget the school survives on donations from the church and individuals in the community.

The school has numerous challenges such as: no water supply, no electricity, no computers, lack of teaching and learning resources, lack of dormitories, classrooms and school van. In fact with some additional investment in capacity they could easily attract 75+ more deaf children, from Nyalenda slum, who currently don’t go to any school at all.

In consultation with the Head teacher, Jane, and teacher, Barack, based upon our budget and their priorities we invested in the below items…

Students using the new laptops

• 4 mini laptops with pre installed learning aids and games designed for deaf children
• Fee’s to switch on the electricity
• 60 Exercise books
• Geometry equipment
• Coloring pens and pencils
• Atlases
• Dictionaries 
• Text books
• A Football & Colour co-ordination games
• Office supplies (staples, stapler, pens)
• A Kettle (currently they must build a fire to boil water to make a cup of tea!)

Mr Collins Otieno Okeyo (Education director for the National council for children’s services) was present to officially accept the donation, and on behalf of my Nan I was pleased to receive a letter of appreciation from the Head teacher, see it scanned at the bottom of this blog. It goes to show how a relatively small amount of money for us Westerners can make a very big difference to those working for a worthy cause, on a tight budget.

Following a meeting with the Village chief a seed was planted… Rachel (my colleague), Melanie and I were looking into a micro-financing project for people, living on less than $1 per day, in Nyanza (Kenya’s poorest and most HIV/AIDs affected region), to start their own businesses. He advised growing onions, watermelon, keeping chickens and goats, and finally dairy cows…

Kids at the Omen Feeding Centre

Dairy cows produce 10+ litres of milk a day, local Cows in Nyanza produce 1 litre. Dairy cows are not popular here due to high cost and lack of awareness that they produce so much milk. We decided to pilot a dairy cow investment for the Omen feeding centre (they provide daily meals for 75 orphaned kids - free of charge). The Milk will be drunk by the kids and also sold to pay for their food, the main risk is that the cows are not fed and watered well and don’t produce enough milk. Surely this risk was worth it as if the project works we can be sure it should be promoted across the region.

After speaking with 2 schools in the region that kept dairy cows with little effort, we became more encouraged that the project could work, although coming from Suburban London we had to learn cow lingo to understand what people were talking about : ‘serving’ a cow ‘showing heat’ means getting a bull to do the business with a horny cow!

Lending a hand to the construction efforts!

Building the Cow accommodation was next, I sketched a plan – which I thought was pretty good, but after we bought the wood, nails, roof and paid a local fundi (Kenyan odd job person) to build it, the finished version wasn’t similar to the original plan! They didn’t give a reason but probably didn’t want to hurt my feelings in that my plan was rubbish! Then we set off for the rift valley -  4 hours away, here we agreed on 2 healthy cows with good credentials (their mother produced lots of milk).

Cows arriving

The cows arrived last week, christened by their former owners as Melony and Rachel, Kenyan’s sometimes struggle with the name Melanie! Although the second cow didn’t look like the one that we agreed on we were very relieved to finally have the cows. The team at the feeding centre will be taking care of the cows and milking them as soon as their calf’s come, in May and July.

Wish them luck, there is a long way to go but if successful we will try to introduce more dairy cows in this part of Kenya!

Omen Feeding/Dairy Centre Team

Greetings from Kenya, after almost 4 weeks Melanie and I have experienced and seen so much, it feels like we have been here for months… The fun started when we arrived, the heavens opened and a tropical storm pounded the tarmac and dirt roads on our taxi ride to our hotel in Nairobi. Our taxi driver, looking at a fully misted windscreen, took one wrong turn and we entered a puddle – which turned into a small lake - and my feet were getting drenched, “Driver – reverse!”

After a quick connecting flight the next day we arrived in Kisumu (see pic) our home for the next 6 months, it is the third largest city in Kenya. To our Western standards there are some modern amenities like big supermarkets and nice restaurants, but there are also things that we are not so used to like huge open-air markets, and slums. 

We are staying in a nice complex our apartment even has cable TV (every English match is shown live!) initially we stayed with some other volunteers; Doug, Matt, and Matt’s family for a short time. They kindly showed us the ropes of where to go and where not to go, and also took us out on a few day trips, including a day in the Kakamega Rain Forrest; the only remaining rain forest in Kenya with huge trees and many of types of Monkeys swinging around (see pic)

We also hiked the nearby Nandi hills, which was tough, especially due to it being baking hot that day. When hiking past the rural homesteads on the way up the locals were very  welcoming, it was humbling to see the simple way that they live; with a couple of banda’s (see pic), a small crop and a couple of chicken and goat, this family invited us in to see their home.

Melanie and I also took a New year’s trip to the Masai Mara, where we stayed in in tented camp (this isn’t a fancy way of saying that we camped in a 2-man tent out on our own – it was a permanent tent with a bed and bathroom, even a hot water bottle magically appeared in the bed each night!). We saw Lions, Giraffe, Zebra, Elephants etc. The scenery was spectacular.

After settling in, and seeing a few of the sights, we are now working (volunteering) during the week. Melanie works for Ogra Foundation, and I am working for Ujima Foundation as well as Ogra.

Ogra foundation, are focused on treatment and prevention of Malaria, TB and HIV/Aids. For Ogra I am helping some of their projects become sustainable. For example, they run a feeding centre for orphans and vulnerable children in a rural area (see photo), where the kids are served breakfast and lunch. Currently their modest tomato and cabbage crop supplies the feeding centre and they sell a small amount to hotels, I would like to build upon this - any ideas? . Each Ogra project is located upto 3 hours’ drive away, getting around is sometimes challenging there are many dirt or mud roads.

Ujima Foundation work with 18-25 year old orphans who have younger siblings or kids of their own to look after - there are 2.5m orphans in Kenya 2/3rds are orphaned due to HIV/Aids. They help over 200 orphans get jobs each year, by a program of employability skills training followed by work experience - and I think that they do a very good job at it. At the moment I am learning the ropes by sitting in during the training sessions and visiting trainee’s on work experience. I am also helping in their marketing both in Kenya and to potential international partners. 

In summary we are getting used to life in Africa, aided by the hot and sunny weather, the incredibly friendly people of Kisumu, and the prospect of more adventures to come.

P.s. the Kenyan elections are happening now. People are very passionate about them – much more so that at home, this picture shows a governor candidate leaving in his helicopter.

Melanie and I are off to Kisumu, Kenya in just over 3 weeks. I am taking 6 months off work and Melanie has a voluntary work placement through her employer. During the six months Melanie will be working for an organisation, the Ogra foundation, and I am working for Ujima Foundation and Give us wings Kenya.We are looking forward to the start of our big adventure; we need to pack up the flat, say our goodbyes to friends and family, and make sure we dont miss the flight on Boxing day! Ill start posting when we get to Kisumu, hopefully with some interesting tales of our experiences, travels & adventures!