Day 2 at the Bank and Church Day

Hello everyone!
So alas I did not have time to complete the blog post this morning which I had originally planned, so I am going to cover a couple days in here. Its funny how you think that you will have much more time while here, largely separated from the internet and other such distractions...but there is so much to do and still so little time.

Okay so anyways, we spent our second day at the bank busily digging into the project. We spent the morning mostly working with Maurice to get on the same page around how the elections work (logistically and also in terms of how voting / representation will work). Then a large amount of time was spent copying over all the client names and account numbers into excel before adding which village they are from. This was quite the undertaking since almost every client has 3 names, and they are all spelt in odd ways (from a Canadian perspective). It is a very interesting system though: The first name is chosen by the parents basically however they want, then the second name (middle name) relates to how the child was born or the situation. For example a boy born in the evening will get Otieno as their middle name. As a general rule a boy will have a middle name starting in O, while a girl will have one starting with an A (with some starting with other letters). That being said there is some room for creativity by the parents around what part of the situation they want to represent with that name. The last name is the last name of their father or husband, in much the same way as we do it in Canada.

Katie and Maurice at the bank

Lion King - the 12 o'clock showing

 Once the name list was completed, determining which village everyone is from was also a large undertaking since people move around sometimes (such as if they open up a shop in Obambo market or marry), or can be located on the boarder between villages. Hence there are some judgement calls. Thankfully Maurice has been able to figure out (mostly from memory, and from talking to people) where all 268 members are from. Anyways, this was a time consuming but very important step towards establishing both the focus groups & nominations, in addition to the elections themselves, because we will have to categorise where everyone is from to determine how the ballot works. With it being a task that required a fair amount of input from Maurice, we had some time to ourselves while he dealt with clients...which naturally we used to hang out with the village children (ie. taking pictures with them and showing them the Lion King - both very essential activities)

Once we completed our excel work, the bank started to get busier and we interacted with the clients a bit more. After the bank closed we went for a soda with Maurice which was fun, and a nice way to close out a busy day, before heading back to Kaguya for some well deserved dinner and planet earth time.

Moving on, today was Sunday. We had church lined up as the first thing on our schedule. Apparently it started at 8:30 am and we had to leave at 8 am to get there (because for the first service of each month it is held at a bigger church that is a bit farther away). Although we were ready in time, Maurice didn't show up until fairly late, as apparently the service had been moved back 30 or so minutes (not sure how that works). We made the trek out there, and on the way there both Katie and I got to experience our first boda-boda rides (motorbikes). I know my mum is probably terrified at the thought of that, but with 4 people on the motorbike I can assure you it was not going very quickly. In addition to that the trip we made was short and the road is very wide where we are so all in all it seemed pretty safe.

Church was fun and interesting...and long. I am spoiled by my infrequent visits to the local United church in that sense, but have been totally missing out on the dancing and singing components of Kenyan, Catholic, services. There was a great procession of singers and dancers heading into the church to both open and close the service. It was hard not to smile and enjoy it. We got copies of the program on our way in, so Katie and I tried to follow along as best we could (naturally getting lost pretty quickly!).

About an hour in however Katie and I had to step out to take a call from a contact we had picked up. The issue of the bank not being completely legally recognised had been raised by Maurice the night before, and had been in the back of our minds since last year when we had looked into some various options (such as being taken over or becoming a specific type of bank). So as a follow up, we set up a phone call with one of Katie's contacts at WOCCU (worldwide organisation council of credit unions). We talked with him about the bank's options in terms of becoming legally recognised, and found out that to do that through the credit union system would probably require becoming a SACCO (Savings and Credit Co-Operative). This was pretty disappointing to hear however because from what we have heard the SACCO regulation system is highly corrupt here. All the same it was a useful call to have, and we have a few leads to keep following up and some ministries we will probably visit when we next go into town.

Our new friend Frederick (Left) whom we met outside the church: he has promised to visit us at the bank next week

After the call was finished (at this point over an hour and a half into church) we headed back to the outside of the church and listened from there, assuming it would end soon. We made a friend with one of the kids who could speak pretty good English, and it turns out he lives near our house and goes to school right beside the bank in Obambo market. The boy, Frederick was very useful for getting a lady to stop asking us for money. Once church finally finished (another 1.5ish hours later) we headed back to Secian junction to meet up with the chief. The chief is on a holiday right now so we didn't want to hold him for too long, but we presented him with a card and some gifts from GIVE to thank him for all the support he has given us. We then proceeded to tell him of our plans and hear his thoughts. He was very happy and grateful with all we had done, and liked our plans. The only sticking point is getting over the legal issue, but we are hoping that we can get him to help us with that since we don't know much about the Kenyan system of government.

After that we headed home and dug into doing the audit (taking a short break for some yoga / playing with the local kids time and for dinner prepared by our cook Syprose (Note: I found out that I have been spelling her name wrong this whole time, sorry!)). We have decided to try and make an Access database that can help with a lot of small issues we have uncovered. For example around having better access to information about the bank from Canada, ensuring that the village / elections system is well established, making the generation of reports much easier and increasing the security of the information. A big sticking point when separating from KASOW (the organisation which helped us get set up in the area originally) was over who got control of the physical documents with all the client information and account balances, so the hope is that we will have more control over that information with this database. That being said it is more of a side goal which we will work towards whenever we have spare time.

Phew alright so that has pretty much caught you up with what has happened. We just got off the phone with Liz, our team leader, to update her on what has been happening and to seek her advice based on what has occurred. We are planning on being very productive tomorrow: not only going for our first run in the morning, but also finishing the audit, finishing our planning for the focus groups and getting some more concrete work done on the board training modules. We will probably then go into town on Tuesday before jumping into the focus groups for the rest of the week.

I am going to post something right after this with some thoughts that I have had from my reading and experiences, but other than that I hope to post something tomorrow night or maybe the following morning.
Cheers,
Graham

(ps. I completed my first 'load' of laundy here by hand...not as difficult as I thought it might be, and my clothes actually probably smell better than they do when I wash them at our place in Vancouver!)