My last couple days in Kenya

Hello Everyone! I am back from the dead...sorry for the delay. For the couple days I had in Toronto I was running around even more than I thought I would, and ended up being in no mood to write a blog post. Then ever since I headed off to camp (where I am working for July and August) I have been busy and distracted from such things as writing a blog post, almost constantly. I am going to write probably two more posts for the time being. One will be in terms of what happened while I was there and one will be a reflections post with some thoughts I have on my trip after I have had some time to think on it. The second post will also include some ideas on what I will do with the blog going forward, and with the project going forward. Hopefully both will be interesting.

So, that Wednesday, as I mentioned, was set aside largely for feedback sessions with the Board. We met up with Sally just down the road and walked over to Rose’s house first. It was quite interesting to talk with her in a smaller group since she was one of the quieter Board members during the sessions. She had some good feedback about what we had been teaching: she wanted to learn more about long term budgeting both for the bank and for the Board members themselves. The idea being that what the Board members learn, they can then pass on to the clients. During one part of these feedback sessions we set aside time to highlight the Board member’s strengths and areas where they could improve. Rose really brightened up when we started talking about how she is very observant and works very hard. She was also touched by our comment to speak up more and ignore her level of education (which is lower than anyone else on the Board) because in all reality it doesn’t matter and she is clearly very intelligent.

Once our session with Rose wrapped up, she took us part of the way to Joice’s house, where we were greeted by one of Joice’s children. Joice is a very interesting woman...50 years old, given birth to 14 children, I think 10 of them are still alive, and one is working on her Masters in engineering.  She is the chairperson of some church group which represents all of the Kanyawegi sub location, and is an avid farmer. Her house is pretty impressive compared to Rose’s place, as it is a fairly spacious property surrounded by a wall, with the house having fully sealed walls and flooring (ie. They are stuccoed or painted in some way). We had a good talk with her around her role both as she saw it and as we saw it. She has a lot of experience and people in the community really do listen to what she says, so we are hoping that she will use that to help build the reputation of the bank. During the training sessions we spent some time with each Board member share what they are saving for or talk about why they save and her story was very cool. A few years ago she had saved up a lot of money, which she then supplemented with a loan to plant a field of tomatoes. She says that she invested 10,000 shillings into the project, and got back 70,000 shillings the same year. It is stories such as hers that we hope will inspire more people to save towards a goal that they can reach, although hopefully that story won’t create unrealistic expectations! Once we had finished the feedback session and had moved into small talk, Katie and I started getting ready to leave...only for Joice to pull out some chapati and soda she had prepared for us to eat together. This dashed our hopes of finishing on time, but did allow us to talk with her for a bit longer. We noticed that during the training sessions she remained a bit detached or removed from us, preferring to not fully get involved with what we were doing and she made a number of jokes that we did not understand. So this meant that it was good to be able to talk with her more casually and in a smaller group setting while she showed us pictures of her children and talked about what they were doing.

Once our sodas were finished we parted ways and left to go meet up with the other Joyce (internally we refer to her as Joyce with a Y), who was at Ober Kamoth for a meeting relating to some of her position as a Community Health Worker (CHW). The health clinic is pretty far away, and would take almost an hour to walk to from Joice’s house so we planned to catch a boda boda (motorcycle). By the time we made it out to the road where we would have to catch one, we knew that we would not be able to make it in time, so we postponed the meeting until later. We were very close to Sally’s home, so she offered to take us up to see it. It was quite a walk up from the road, as you had to take this small path up a hill and beside a mine to get there, but the view from the top was quite beautiful. She had purchased the house and farm right beside it with her husband only a couple of years prior. Now she lives there with her husband when he is around (he seems to travel a lot for work), her daughter, two sons and her niece (because her sister is not as well off as Sally is). She wants to improve the house a lot in order to make it more comfortable by putting in permanent windows and flooring, while also getting the walls painted and better decorated. That being said it looked pretty comfortable already. Even though we had been complaining to her about how everyone gives us soda when we come to visit them at their homes, she pulled out a couple sodas and some cookies for us to have together. We were already pretty full from what we had just drank, but managed to force ourselves to accept her offer and sipped on them while she also showed us pictures of her children and husband. We couldn’t stay for long however as we had to rush off to baraza to meet with the chief as we had promised.

Sally's House

Having a soda and some cookies with Sally

On the walk over to the chief’s office (near the bank) I had to make a couple phone calls with my parents in England to try and organise my flight from Kisumu to Nairobi. Unfortunately my credit card got compromised after I used it at the supermarket so I was getting by on whatever money I had left with me and any that other travellers could lend me (my bank card also was not working). Once we got to the chief’s office, we found out that it was a very busy day for baraza, with a lineup of people out the door. This was mostly due to the fact that all of the CHWs had come for a meeting right after the baraza finished. Katie and I saw Joyce sitting outside so we ended up pulling her aside to have her feedback session while we all waited for the meeting to get quieter. Joyce is a pretty amazing woman. She doesn’t have any formal work but rather takes care of her farm, volunteers as a CHW (and as their secretary), volunteers at her local school as a teacher and now is a member of the board where she has also been elected at the secretary. She is quite popular with the nutrition team as well because she has a great sense of humour, is friendly and hard working. We encouraged her to take more a lead role in figuring out all the details for different plans, since some of the other members have some pretty lofty or ambitious ideas for the bank and she seems good at staying organised. She has been very good at speaking up if there is something which she doesn’t agree with, so we encouraged her to continue doing that.

Our feedback session finished just as baraza ended up finishing, and as the CHWs started getting organised for their meeting with the chief. We had intended to talk with the chief at the baraza itself, but he asked if we could hang around for a meeting afterwards. This was probably for the best anyways since we had wanted to talk in private about legalizing the bank, and the result was that we had some time to relax while we waited for the chief to finish the CHW meeting. The meeting itself went very well, the chief was very open in his gratitude to what we had been doing while here, and very optimistic about the future. The previous year had been a challenging one for him and the bank as he had to mediate between GIVE and KASOW. He was clearly very pleased with how Liz, Katie, myself and Maurice had involved him in the project through honest and open dialogue. On a personal level he also seemed to be sad to see us leave, as we had been seeing him on almost a weekly basis the entire time we had been there. We took a picture of us together right before we left, which we have since passed on to Chief Philip. Katie and I both hope to return one day to see the chief again.

Katie and I with Chief Philip

With that meeting out of the way we headed towards the bank to check up on the nutrition girls and their nutrition day. Of course Sally was also there, and a large number of children seemed to have shown up. It was neat to see the new posters which the girls had made following all the questions they had been receiving from some of the 20ish year old males in the village around gaining weight or muscle since their focus has traditionally been with new mothers. Originally we had been planning to meet Fredrick that afternoon, but we had been texting him to postpone since we were running behind schedule. In the end he showed up to the bank while we were there anyways so we walked over to his store for his feedback session. Fredrick’s session was a bit of a tough one for Katie and myself, since he has some strong opinions about what he thinks the bank should do. He is very confident in his own abilities as well after having completed part of an accounting course, so our goal was to direct him towards being a more passive leader within the Board. The skills and drive to improve the bank which Fredrick has are things that we are very grateful to have on the Board, but we don’t want him to let being chosen as the chairperson to get to his head.

One of his big ideas in addition to moving towards microcredit is to have income generating projects (including buying land, creating rental units and farming among other things), and to start investing the client savings to generate returns. I think he understands our reasoning for wanting to move slowly, but hopefully some of his ideas can move the bank towards one day being fully financially sustainable. It will be an interesting challenge during the year to keep him upbeat and willing to talk with us, while reigning in his more far-fetched ideas. One good idea he has is to start working on some system of passing on the knowledge and plans from one Board to the next, similar to the continuity report which Katie and I are working on currently. This was not something we have fully thought out yet, but that we hope to develop as the year goes on.

Once our session with Fredrick finished, Katie and I started heading back towards Kaguya with the plan to meet Pamela for her session. We had wanted to see her house anyways so we convinced her to let us come over to her place. To get there requires a short, few minute walk past Kaguya before then going on a short path over a hill and around some bushes. She has a few main buildings: one for her and her husband to live in and one for some of her older children in addition to a small chicken coop and latrine. You can tell that she cares about the place for it is perfectly clean and in order – especially the latrine! (thankfully) She was saying that Michelle (an old / former traveller) had stayed at her place for a couple weeks when she had come to visit, so hopefully Katie and I will also one day get the chance to stay over with Pamela. Naturally our Muma Pamela gave us some soda (our third 500 ml bottle for the day!) and some delicious chapati as well, which we were forced to accept. After spending some time just hanging out, we got into the feedback session. We really enjoyed the talk with Pamela because she is great about being a straight talker – she tells it like she sees it. Our main message to her was the same as it had been to Rose, which is that she should not let her education level dictate anything for her since she is clearly very bright. We also tried to push her to keep the board realistic and on track during the year when we are not around. She was very good about jumping in during the training sessions if she has strong views on something but is pretty quiet aside from that.

Pamela's yard with her boy's house on the left

Pamela outside her house

Our session over, and it starting to rain, we headed back to Kaguya, saying goodbye to Pius (Pamela’s husband) on the way. Back at Kaguya we got to meet Jo, who had just arrived that day, and eat dinner. Jo had travelled to the village a year or two ago, and Katie and I both knew Jo from the year before when we did a bake sale at UBC to fundraise for GIVE, which she had helped us with. The house was very full by then with 10 girls and myself (now having been bumped to sleep on the couch for the night). I was okay with that however since I usually stay up the latest, and only had two more days there. The evening was in the end spent mostly doing work for the project and inputting data into Access which is pretty time consuming.

Thursday morning Katie and I got up early to meet up with Maurice for a town run. We needed to fit in a lot of things and as a result we wanted to get to the bank in town just in time for opening. I was a little worried that we would be late since all the matatus were full by the time we got out to the road, but Maurice managed to hail down a regular car that was willing to give us a lift. We got talking with the driver as we went into town, and found out he was a lawyer in town whose his wife does some similar work to our health team, but with TB rather than HIV. I am not sure of the specifics but it sounds as though she does counselling and support for people who are on, or supposed to be on, drugs for TB. In the end he refused to accept payment for the lift into town because of the work we have been doing and since he was going there anyways. He was a very nice man, and even dropped us off right outside of the bank.

At the bank we talked with the woman we had met before to go over the required documents. She told us that we still needed to sort out a few things and that it was going to take a bit longer before we can open the account, unless we could sort out those issues. We have had some trouble in the past because GIVE is registered as an organisation in Canada and is also registered as a CBO (Community Based Organisation) in Kenya, but the Kenyan government refuses to allow foreigners to be a part of the CBO. This makes official things, such as opening a bank account, tricky. We ended up calling Liz, going to the old bank, and going back to the new bank all in an effort to sort it out. Hopefully this transition will be over soon and we can have a fully operating bank account in town.

Our work finished, we then did a little bit of personal shopping. I had been hoping to get some shirts while here since my brother had gotten some pretty nice ones made for him while he was in Bangladesh, but I had no luck in finding the right fabric while there. I was told to try one of the Kenyan supermarkets but the shirts there were not much less expensive than back home so I decided to pass on them. Our shopping finished, we then rushed back to Obambo market before taking a boda boda over to Ober Kamoth (the health center) for our meeting with Joyce. We wanted to go over the monthly report forms with her one last time since she had been elected as the secretary and would be the one filling those forms out. We also used this meeting to clarify some of the procedures such as around organising a meeting and changing a meeting time. Joyce then showed us around Ober Kamoth, which was very interesting to see after hearing about all the work that GIVE has done there. The facilities are in fact pretty good all things considered, with most equipment being just older versions of the equipment we may have: they have a maternity ward, an ultrasound machine, a small pharmacy, a small lab, a few doctors’ rooms and a couple offices for some of the staff. There is a man there from the Netherlands who is working on his PhD by doing research around access to a medical clinic to give birth, and as a result he has gotten a lot of grant money to ensure that every mother in the surrounding area can give birth at the clinic. I don’t know what will happen when he leaves / his research ends (since the financial incentives are pretty high for the CHWs to bring expecting mothers to the clinic), but at least it is helping those people while he is there. Hopefully it should also help to create an expectation that mothers will give birth in the clinic that will persist even after he leaves.

Our meeting finished we said goodbye to Joyce and left for Kaguya. That evening we were to go out as a house with Maurice, Syprose, Kennedy and Sally for some dancing in town, so I had a quick nap to prepare once we got back. It was fun to get dressed up a little bit, listen to some music and get excited for a night out since we hadn’t been able to do that while we had been there. After (more than a few) pictures were taken we finally met up with Maurice, who had organised a matatu to give us a lift into town and back sot that we wouldn’t have to worry about transport. In town we went for dinner together and then went to a few dance bars / clubs together. The night was a lot of fun, if a little unnerving at times with us being in an unfamiliar situation.  Once we were all danced out and ready to head home (not long after midnight) we walked back to the matatu to return to Kaguya. The matatu ride was largely uneventful as everyone was quite tired by this point, since we had all be waking up early all week.

Preparing to go out dancing as a house!

Friday morning I got up for an early breakfast and to say goodbye to all the girls heading out for their project, since there was a chance that I would not see at lunch. Once everyone had left, Katie and I had a very good talk with Maurice (this was our feedback session). We learned a lot from this talk with him, as he opened up about a few things that we had not heard about previously. He was very appreciative of all the work that we had done while there, and all the work we had put into the project before coming – especially that we had run our ideas by him before we came. It sounds like some of the other teams had not been as good at giving him enough information to prepare properly for their arrival, so hopefully that can improve for everyone in the future. In addition to this Maurice also shared a story where apparently the board had agreed in their meeting that at bank day Fredrick was not supposed to mention that he was the chairperson and that Joyce was the secretary since the board wanted those positions to be internal and for them to all be considered equal. We will have to keep an eye on this throughout the year, but Maurice said that he was going to make sure that nobody steps out of bounds with their position. Although having him do this may cause the set up to get away a bit from the CEO – Board structure that we were hoping to create, the feedback should always be going both ways between the “CEO” and the Board.

Our meeting complete, Maurice headed off to open the bank and I took some time to finish my packing. At the time I had thought that I had remembered everything (only to now realise that I forgot my running shoes there! – thankfully Lisa has offered to ferry them back for me). Katie and I then left for Obambo to say goodbye to Evans and a few other people. Unfortunately Evans was not there when I popped by so I left him a note and went to the bank. We dropped off a few things with Maurice and then I said one last goodbye to him. It was hard to hold back tears but I just barely managed to keep it in. We did a lot of work with Maurice, and he welcomed us into his family while we were there. At times we had to be pretty tough on him but we had built up a pretty close relationship with him and I was very sad to say goodbye. Back at Kaguya, Katie and I had some lunch along with Robyn and Elisa, before we said our final goodbyes to them, Pamela and Syprose. I will admit I couldn’t hold back the tears while saying goodbye to Pamela. She pretty much welcomed me (and all of us) into her family, and has done so much for the bank that I will really miss her. She offered that I can stay at her place when I come back, so I will have to keep that in my back pocket! Our two ‘mumma Africas’ certainly made our stay much more comfortable and enjoyable, with their friendly presence and help. It was fun sharing recipes with Mumma Syprose (we showed her pasta and sweet potato soup, while she showed us manadazi).

Saying our final goodbye to our Mummas (Syprose and Pamela - Left to Right)

Our goodbyes and photos finished, Katie and I headed to the airport. Just as I was getting on the matatu Evans walked up, so I had to give him a quick hug and goodbye before finally hopping onto the seat next to Katie and what turned out to be Samuel. We had met Samuel in Holo market when we first went with Maurice because he knew some of the former GIVE travellers pretty well, and we had seen him a few times around the village and in Holo market since then. At the airport I checked in and dropped off my checked baggage before settling down to a Tusker with Katie, since I had a couple hours until my flight left and she was in no major rush to get into town. It was cool to have some time with just the two of us to reflect back on our trip that had started two months previous. We had gone through a lot together, done a lot of cool work, had the odd argument (which everyone else in the house naturally found hilarious), and had gone to the Masai Mara (along with Lisa). It was interesting to hear her perspective on what she had learned, and appreciated the most about the trip. I think we both agree that the trip was not as ‘shocking’ as we had thought it might be, in the sense that the poverty is not abject in the village and that we had prepared ourselves to not let it affect us too deeply in a way that would take away from the project. In many ways more of what we learned was related to the local culture of the people and around working together on a project where we had so much independence.

Once my flight time got a bit closer we finally parted ways, shared a hug and said our goodbyes, with Katie heading into town and me heading home. The flight was pretty quick, especially as I had “The Search for Meaning” to read (which is a pretty quick read that I strongly recommend reading) and I spent some time just writing a long to do list and a long reflections list which I hope to share in a following post. I then had a long 6 hour wait at the airport for my flight out of Kenya to leave, which I spent working on the continuity report, having some food, and sharing calls with first the girls back at Kaguya, Karim, and then Shahzad. I spent most of the time in a bar / restaurant until I felt a little awkward for having stayed there for so long and headed into the airport itself. Just as I was getting pretty antsy we got to board and off I went.

The trip home was spent on a combination of working on the blog, sleeping and reading. I am happy to report got lots done for all of those activities! (save perhaps the blog). And then before you know it I was home and getting picked up at the airport by my brother. Thankfully he still recognised me after the previous two months spent working on my tan and the 30 odd hours of flying.

Alright I will leave it at that for now, sorry again for the delay. I wanted to give a good representation of my last couple days in Kanyawegi...and also got somewhat lazy about finishing my account.

I will put up one more post soon, hopefully before the weekend.

Best,

Graham

A Mountain of Oogali

Hello again,

As promised here is a (comprehensive) summary of more of my last week:

Monday was our last preparation day for the Board wrap-up meeting we had on Tuesday. Before we could get going on our preparations however we had to go into town again to run some errands. We were very low on groceries and also needed to visit the bank in Kisumu we are looking at switching to. We wanted to clear up some issues and submit some documents.  Before we could do that however we had all been invited over to Maurice’s house for a full day event of eating (he said we would have to eat a mountain of oogali - a form of maize meal that you use to eat other foods - very high in energy), exploring, hanging out and getting to know the rest of his family better. Katie and I were planning on going to his place after we returned from town, but we had a few things to clear up with him and a few documents to pick up for our trip into town, so we headed over at around 9 after eating some breakfast. As it turns out we had no need to have eaten breakfast before going over as his wife Irene had made us some chapati and samosas with tea, so we were both royally stuffed by the time we left. Once in town we first met with the woman who will be in essence our account manager, before we then decided to try completing a special errand of ours for the Board. They had requested that they could have GIVE t-shirts (a common request) or some form of name tag to identify themselves as Board members while at official events. When we had originally submitted our project proposal to the executives of GIVE early in the year, one piece of feedback we got was a concern over the motivation of the Board during the year. A suggestion which we then got was to make business cards for the Board members, with them receiving more business cards each month if they attend the meeting and are still actively engaged in the Board. I was less sold on the idea than Katie I must admit, but she seemed set on the idea so we went ahead with it. It turned into a bit of a process to get them made however as we first went to a print shop only to find out they didn’t do business cards. The people there did however point us to a place where we could. To get there we had to walk through a back walkway (alley is the wrong word) behind the Ukwala (a cheap version of Walmart?). They hadn’t told us that the place was an insurance broker, but despite the confusing appearance, they did offer to make business cards.  

After spending some time designing the cards and paying a down-payment, we printed off some photos for the Board members and did some grocery shopping. With Jo coming on Wednesday there would be 11 of us, so we had a lot to pick up! It is hard to fathom how much food you go through with that many people after having lived with one roommate for most of the past year. For example we go through probably around 4kg of rice a week...(that number is also due to us eating it twice per day, every day of the week. Fully loaded with the vegetables (another group was picking up the other stuff) we finally caught a matatu back to Kaguya to drop off our stuff and return to Maurice’s place for dinner. We got there just as everyone else was finishing off their dinner, so we were tasked with helping to finish what was left. A common joke of Maurice’s is that if you don’t finish your food you will get “chira” which is a form of a curse given by a woman to someone else (we have already confirmed that you cannot get chira from that!). It was quite the feast though and we had trouble trying to finishing everything that was there. Irene had prepared us chapati, rice, lentils, ogali, chicken, fish, beans, potatoes, kale and some other things I cannot remember. It was cool to get to eat all together with everyone including Sally our translator and Kennedy who is the field officer for the Education Team. It was also pretty neat to see some scrap books which past travellers had given to Maurice after they left. It got our minds going about trying to do something similar. Once dinner was finished we were all given a tour of Maurice’s family farms (one for him, one for Irene, one for Dorris and one for Phlavine his son) before returning to try and finish some more food!

The next morning (Tuesday) we got up early for another beekeeping meeting, this time with the beekeepers themselves. Katie and I recognised that developing a solution would take longer than we had still in the village, so we enlisted the help of some of our other travellers who will be staying on: Victoria, Lisa and Hannah (from the Nutrition Team). It was a bit of a rush to get to the bank since we had requested that Maurice tell them to come early, and they actually did come early. Once there we got to meet with Joshua, Alex and Dorris (Maurice’s mother) who were the only beekeepers that could make it (they are also the most engaged ones). It was a very useful and informative meeting, as we got to hear first-hand about their experiences with the program, and with HCA. We knew that Ayub had missed a meeting that he was supposed to attend (out of his own personal time), but did not realise that he had ignored the attempts of Maurice and the beekeepers to contact him otherwise. We walked through the three options we had been developing, but they seemed most attracted to separating from HCA. Although it would be more uncertain, they seem to have formed a good and productive relationship with a group of other (more experienced) beekeepers in the area who they had paid to come in to show them how to harvest honey.

Since all the hives and equipment are technically all still GIVE’s, as no repayments had been made yet, there are two sides to the project which we want to sort out. The first is a contract or system for the beekeepers to harvest and sell their honey: either through HCA or this other group. The second will be a form of loan repayment, with the goal being that GIVE gets some of the originally invested money back, and that the beekeepers can have formal ownership of the hives and equipment. Due to the lack of success of the project, Katie and I have been given pretty free reign, where any repayments are welcome but at this point not expected. After talking with the Nutrition Team, we decided that it would be fair for the beekeepers to pay back the hives only before getting ownership of all of the equipment. When starting the project, we were given an estimate that each of the hives would produce on average 30kg of honey, and that the beekeepers could reasonably be expected to pay back GIVE 30% of their revenues. Knowing then that the price per kg from HCA (which is lower than the market value) would be roughly 150 KSH (between 150 and 200 KSH), we then came up with an expected value to pay back within 3 years. This is a very generous repayment system considering the original investment, but it creates a win-win situation for both sides (with GIVE getting some of the money back, and the beekeepers finally getting full ownership in a much more tangible / realistic time frame). I don’t know what the original travellers who set up the system would think, but they drifted away from the project pretty quickly after getting back to Canada, which is something I really do not want to do. Especially after seeing what has happened with the beekeeping project.

After the meeting was finished, I rushed into town with Victoria, Hannah and Lisa to pick up the business cards and run some other small errands (including meeting up with a lady who was going to make a skirt for my girlfriend). The trip was a success, and a nice break in some ways. Katie and I had been spending virtually every waking minute together so it was nice every once and a while to split up for a bit. I ended up parting ways with the Nutrition Team girls to head back to the village as they were having a day off to relax in town. I didn’t have time to eat any lunch but I did manage to make it to the bank just before the meeting was supposed to start. Naturally nobody else had showed up yet, not even Maurice, so maybe I could have stopped by at Kaguya for some lunch. This did give Katie and I some time to set up and whole punch all of the documents we were putting into the Board of Directors guidebook. Unfortunately a couple of the Board members were unable to make it but we got started about 45 minutes past when we were supposed to start. One of the Board members (Rose) was sick, and the other one (Joseph) was at the hospital as his twin children were sick. Hopefully they will all get better soon! Joseph was mentioning how important saving was to him because it allowed him to take his children to the hospital when they got sick, so that was a real world example of how saving can change your life...

The Board meeting went well, and they seemed grateful for us having put everything together. We have had a few requests to develop a training manual so that they can refer back to it, and use it if needed to train a new Board member. That will probably take a fair amount of time so Katie and I had been putting it off, but we do want to hear their feedback first so that we can make some adjustments. As the meeting was finishing we got to unveil the business cards we had gotten, and they were a hit! Everyone (including Maurice) seemed to like them, since only professionals really get them. They had the Board member’s name, title, company (Kanyawegi Community Bank) with their phone number, email (a common one which we created for the board) and the GIVE logo. Maurice has been put in charge of dispensing the business cards, but we don’t know how strictly he will act on giving out only 10 cards per month.

Once the meeting was complete we gave ourselves some time to relax and catch our breath before starting some work to prepare for the feedback sessions we were holding the next day. I have been in a lot of feedback sessions in the past through work, so it was interesting to be on the other side of preparing the feedback. Our feedback prepared we then settled down to watch “The Gods Must be Crazy” with the rest of the girls, which is a movie about a coke bottle being dropped out of an airplane that is flying over a bushman territory. They have never seen planes before, let alone a (glass) coke bottle, and assume that it has been sent to them by God. At first the bottle is seen as being amazing for it can be used for many different things, but it can only be used by one person at a time and creates property issues that lead to violence. (One person wants to use it, but another person is, so one of them hits the other). The result was that it gets characterised as being cursed and the man who finds it is tasked with throwing it off the edge of the earth. The rest of the movie is about his journey. It was pretty funny, with a fair amount of “3 stooges” humour. As people started to dose off I tried my hand at doing some more Access before giving up and heading to bed. 

Alright I have to run off for a doctors appointment now so I will leave it at that. Other people were in charge of taking pictures for these few days so I don't have any to put up. There should be lots in my next one though I promise!

Graham

Belated Bank Day

Hello again everyone,

Phew, I am sorry for not getting another post up before I left (I am sitting in the Amsterdam airport on my way home as I write this) but it was quite a hectic week and I was busy every night.

I am full of mixed emotions at leaving, but I feel ready to go home, and to see my friends and family. I am going to (hopefully) be putting up a few more posts over the next couple days that will get you caught up on what happened since I got back to Kanyawegi from the safari and hopefully provide some reflections I have had on my trip. All I will say for now (without trying to sound cliché) is that I will always remember the kindness that the people of Kanyawegi have shown us, and hope to return one day to visit. It was quite moving to hear first-hand how real an impact that our efforts (as an Economic Team and as GIVE) have made in the lives of the community members.

My memory is a little hazy at this point (in terms of chronology) but I will give as good an overview as I can of the past week. The morning after returning from our safari, Katie and I headed to the GIVE office (the bank) to meet up with a representative from Honey Care Africa about our beekeeping project. A few years ago (2009) a beekeeping income generating project was started in the villagers by a couple of the Economic Development team travellers. The concept was that GIVE would provide the capital and organisation for setting up two apiaries (think bee farm) in the village. Then a number of farmers were to be selected to receive the hives, equipment and training from a Kenyan organisation (Honey Care Africa). GIVE was to organise the relationship between the beekeepers and Honey Care Africa (HCA) such that the beekeepers would receive training, a guaranteed market for their honey and occasional technical support. The beekeepers would then supply all of their honey to HCA with 30% of their revenue being paid to GIVE towards the loaned equipment. The project was expensive (compared to most of our project) and not very successful. No honey has been produced over the past three years because of troubles relating to getting the hives colonised. The first year was very dry and since then they have only been able to get a couple hives colonised each year, with no hives making it to the stage where they are ready to be harvested. The problem has been compounded by a lack of expertise by the beekeepers (even after they underwent a fair amount of GIVE sponsored training), and poor coordination between HCA and the beekeepers. The agreement with HCA was to GIVE and not the farmers so there was little incentive for them to communicate directly or for either side to take a lead.

Since the project had been unsuccessful for so long (compared to what we were expecting), it was only a side project for us to try and develop a solution. As a result we put off the project until near the end of our visit, at which point we met up with our representative from HCA, Ayub, at the bank. The discussion was very productive as we got to hear HCA’s side of the story and learn more about our options moving forward. We also see Maurice and Ayub interact together. They are outwardly friendly enough but it is clear that they do not get along from a project standpoint. There was some miscommunication between them and Ayub had backed out of a training session with the beekeepers at the very last minute (after it was already supposed to have started). The three main options which we had were to 1) stay with HCA but sign a written agreement (the original one was verbal only) whereby a HCA employee in the area would come by on a monthly basis to help service and harvest any honey as needed. The main change from the current system is that this employee’s job would be to work directly with the beekeepers to make the project successful. The second option is the same as the first one except that HCA would employ one of the local beekeepers on a part-time basis to fulfill the same job, after receiving additional training. The last option would be to separate completely from HCA and to develop an independent group which sells to other markets the beekeepers find on their own. Katie and I were most interested in the second option (to provide more support / expertise, while retaining the guaranteed market of HCA and creating additional employment in the area), however it would require full support and commitment from both the beekeepers and HCA.

Following that meeting, Katie and I did some prep work for Bank Day on Sunday, before heading into town to see the bank we use to deposit client savings at to sort out some issues. We have been looking into changing banks because the service and functionality of our current bank account has been very disappointing. Kenya can be pretty bureaucratic so the process is a lot slower than we would like, but I have found it very interesting to learn more about how commercial banks function while simultaneously working on the governance structure of such a small bank in the village.

That evening I started to dig into the (basic) computer system we are developing for the bank. One big concern with regards to the bank is that the records are only kept in one place, and on paper, so it is a big security concern for us should something happen to those records. The potential solutions are to either make copies of the records (which would take a lot of time, be expensive and generally inefficient) or to create a database for the records. As a result I decided to try my hand at creating an Access database. Microsoft Access is a database program, which we had learned a little (very little) bit about in class this past year. I had been struggling with creating the database so one of the other travellers brought me an “Access for Dummies” book. So my project was to start working through that book and creating the database, while Katie dug into the guidebook. We decided to create a guidebook which we could leave behind for the Board to reference during the year, with more specific details for example about their role, the communication with us and all the forms they will require.

Saturday was spent working primarily on the guidebook and trying to continue improving Access. Katie made a trip to town and we also shared a call with Liz back in Vancouver. We had a very good discussion about the final steps with the Board and how we wanted to frame our final interactions with them. We decided to push a lot more for learning and personal improvement as motivation for the Board through more extensive feedback, to add to their motivation from the community. As I mentioned we spent the majority of the day working on the guidebook, as we tried to keep working through the big To Do list we had posted in our room.

About to start

Sunday then was Bank Day! We spent the morning completing the final preparations, before spending the entire afternoon at Bank Day. The event was supposed to start at 2pm, so we arrived just after 1 to help with the set up. It was great to see that most of the Board Members were already there setting up the tents, chairs and speaker system. We helped as best we could, but they seemed to know what they were doing so there was not much they needed help with. People slowly started to come at around 2:30.Maurice had been joking that he was going to make us present some entertainment for everyone, which we had brushed aside. However...he wasn’t joking! The third item in the program was entitled: Entertainment, and we were to fill that part. Thankfully we had already been talking about doing the Canadian anthem. To make it more upbeat we created a fully coordinated dance to go along with it. I think we all agree that we should probably not call it a coordinated dance now that we have seen the video of it, but the clients seemed to enjoy it. In return for our singing, the clients followed up with a much better sounding (and tuned!) song for us which was led by Doris (Maurice’s mother). At this point we started, after a speech by Katie and myself to hand out some awards for super savers, bank ambassadors and for Board Members. Super savers for this year were saving more than once every two weeks at the bank, while bank ambassadors were chosen for how many members they convinced to join the bank (that being said they were basically subjectively chosen by Maurice). We also read out the rules and regulations for the Board before they each individually swore an oath on the bible to uphold the rules and to serve the community in their position before they received their certificate.  

Everyone getting seated

Awarding James (our friendly neighbour to the bank) his super saver certificate

It was around this time that we saw some people (mostly Board members) walk off only to return with crates of soda that they promptly started handing out. Katie and I exchanged questioning looks since paying for soda had most certainly not been in the budget, but there was nothing we could do at that point. As it turns out the soda was donated, we think mostly by Board members for the event...they remained pretty quiet about it though since I never got a completely straight answer about who we should thank, which makes the gesture even more special. I find it especially interesting after the tea situation case which we ran during the training.

The Board fully sworn in and the awards handed, we then went through a ton of speeches (Maurice, the Board, clients and the chief), The speeches were quite touching all around. There was time set aside for 6 clients (3 male, 3 female) to speak, to which volunteers quickly made themselves available. All of them offered very genuine thanks to both us as GIVE and the assistant chief for all of the work we had done, and talked about how the bank had changed their lives for the better. A couple members also made it clear to the Board that they were excited for the year ahead, but expecting nothing less than honesty and integrity from them. It was great to see that one of the nominees, Tobias, who had not been elected (he actually lost on a tiebreaker with one of the female members of the board) speak about how happy he was with the board and the elections process. He even made a joke that next year he would have to wear a dress! Tobias clearly cares for the bank and is a very kind man, but at the same time I am very pleased with the people who have been elected to the Board. The board members then each had a short speech to the members thanking them for their votes and talking about the importance of saving or what they were hoping to do this year.

There was then some time for all of the GIVE members who were present to introduce themselves and what they were doing (the Education Team couldn’t make it). This gave all of us to thank the community for welcoming us, and also to briefly advertise for some of the projects we have all been working on. Maurice and the chief then closed out the speeches by talking more about the bank. Maurice focused on the importance of saving, and how to save for your children (such as through creating an account specifically for them). The chief finished everything by first teasing Maurice for speaking for so long, then by discussing the security of the bank. We had asked him to look into ways to legalise the bank for us, and he had gone to the Ministry of Finance to do some research. According to what he was told, the fact that we are a CBO (Community Based Organisation) legally protects us for now, but that we will one day have to become a full bank to be completely safe. To do this will require a lot more capital, and a fee structure to become self-sufficient, but the protection of a CBO is a good step forward. We had not heard anything about his research yet so this was a welcome surprise for us.

Once all the speeches were done, we closed off with a prayer and called the event to a close. With the Board and the other GIVE travellers, we all worked together to take down the tents, put away the chairs and clean up before dancing for a bit together. One of the field officers who works with the Education Team (Kennedy) joked to me that at that point we were “truly working together”. Bank day finally complete we headed back to Kaguya for some dinner and rest, and to meet up with the Education girls. They had left Friday morning (before Katie, Lisa or I got up) to go white water rafting in Uganda for the weekend and unfortunately only got back just as Bank day finished. They had some great stories so we spent a good portion of the evening trading safari stories for rafting stories.

Alright I will leave it at that for now, will try and post again tonight, then tomorrow sometime as well.

Best,

Graham