Elections complete!

Hello again everyone,

Phew, what a busy week. We managed to finish off all the elections yesterday evening and 'announce' the results. Just over 67% of the members came out to vote so it was all very exciting, and we are happy with the people who were chosen.

Hard at work at the bank

Some of the children keeping up company at the bank

I am losing track of time a little bit so I will just run you through what generally happened this week before sharing a few specific stories. Wednesday as I mentioned was spent doing more elections at the bank, before powering through some more preparations for the board training sessions coming up next week. Thursday, Katie and I headed into town in the morning to see the bank where we deposit the member savings, do some more photocopying of ballots, buying some project supplies and picking up some groceries (including cake supplies for Allie's birthday on Friday). While there we actually bumped into Maurice as he was depositing the previous week's savings. Unfortunately things can take much longer to finish here than we are used to so all three of us ended up getting back to the bank later than we had expected. The mutatu we caught back was not very full, and so when we stopped off at Kisian (the junction / fork in the road before heading past Kaguya and Obambo) to get more people. We were on time at this point...but over 30 minutes later once the mutatu had filled up we finally left. It was a little frustrating because there was nothing we could have done, but thankfully the members who had showed up on time to vote were okay waiting around until we (and eventually Maurice) got to the bank.

More of the local children, they are much more photogenic than I!

Keeping us company at the bank

Later that afternoon we had a phone call with our friend Ashfan, who we were put in contact with through Liz, to get some feedback on the board and how things were going. Ash is very intelligent and perceptive so his feedback was very useful as always (thankfully he liked everything we were doing, so mostly just had small suggestions and words of encouragement). It is pretty cool how 'international' our team is with Liz and Diane helping us from Vancouver, Ash helping us from the UK (He is studying at LSE, I think working on his masters) and then we are in Kenya working with Maurice and the other community members.

Me being serious

Helping Will with his writing

Friday was the first bank day of the week so we were at the bank from 9 until almost 6 getting people signed in to vote and deposit. That evening we enjoyed a nice candlelit dinner (since the power was out again), which included some fish which Maurice had given to Allie for her birthday. It was all very tasty, and Maurice ended up coming over to have some food and share the story of how he met Irene, his wife. We have the whole story on video, and it was a good one, so I will have to put it up sometime. He was saying that he saw her one time when he was visiting a friend of his who happened to be Irene's uncle (or something along those lines), and from the moment he laid eyes on her, he thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. From then on he was determined to see and talk with her whenever he could. After a few years of them still not actually dating but keeping in touch, she moved to Nairobi. Maurice was devastated, especially as cellphones were not very common in Kenya at that time. He managed to somehow get a phone, and find out the phone number of the uncle she was staying with, and they would sneak in phone calls whenever they could. Eventually after another year or so of this, she came back and finally agreed to meet his family. The story was not over at that point however, as he still had to finally propose. The way it is done here is by the hopeful husband going to the woman's house and asking to see her. At this point all of her family can ask the hopeful husband whatever questions they can of him which he must answer to their satisfaction. Once through they asked Maurice why he is there again, he responded that he deeply loved their daughter Irene and wanted to marry her. Then Irene was allowed to come out and was asked by her family if she knew who this man was, and why Maurice had come, to which she responded that he was the man she loved and that Maurice had come to marry her. Then that was that, quite the story and courtship that lasted nearly 6 years, and although he said it was very tough, he is clearly happy now so I am sure he thinks it was worth it.


My story telling pales in comparison to his version, but hopefully I did it some justice! Reminds me a little of my own parent's story (although the specific details of their story always seem to change!).

Snyder, Evans' sister, and Evans

Once Maurice headed home, we enjoyed some sangria, music and cake to celebrate Allie's 19th birthday. Not often we get to spend a birthday in Kenya so that was fun. The next day (yesterday) we had the last day of elections! It was pretty exciting, as we had just under 50% of the members having already voted. Things started out a little slowly in terms of voters, but we had a steady rotation of children coming by to keep us company. We ended up working with a couple on their writing by writing out short phrases and then having them re-write them. One of them had pretty good writing, it was even better than mine! (which doesn't actually say much). We also hung out with a new friend I had made earlier in the week: Evans. Evans is a very interesting character, he works as a tailor in the village at his mother's store. They grew up in the village but lived in Nairobi for a few years when he was younger. Following the violence during the elections of 2007/2008 in the capital, they moved back and set up shop in Obambo. Evans is 16 now, but first met Maurice 3 years ago at one of the annual HIV soccer tournaments which GIVE has been running. He still has 4 years of high school left but has run out of money to pay for it (the cost is roughly 7000 shillings a year for school, which is pretty cost prohibitive for most people). He is very kind to all of the younger children when they hang out with us, and is clearly very bright based off the questions he has been asking us. Katie and I are thinking we may get him to make us some dresses and dress shirts respectively (which we wanted to do at some point anyways). We want to help him with his school fees but know that it would be difficult to do that and not send the wrong message. Our thought right now is to see how things go, and maybe when we get him to make those clothes we might 'tip' him for his good work. Will have to keep thinking on it though.

Evans' mother working in the store (Taken by Evans himself)

In Evans' store

Anyways the elections finished up that afternoon, although they dragged on a little later into the day than we had hoped, with nearly 40 people coming between 4-6pm (after the bank was supposed to be closed). Then, as it was getting dark and starting to rain we counted the final votes. Thankfully Pamela got in, receiving 107 votes out of a possible 188 (still need to check the exact number of votes cast, but it is something like that). We got to congratulate her today, and she was clearly very happy! The other board members see to be solid choices, so now we can look forward to our first training session on Monday with them. Maurice was a little disappointed that 4 /6 of the board members are from Kagoo, the biggest village, but they were one of the best villages for voting (in terms of % who came to vote) so it's not surprising. We gave the opportunity for village representative to 4 villages and only Kagoo took advantage of it, so we have no problems with the result.


Alright I should probably call it quits at that, we are going to head into town to pick up some more groceries (it's hard to buy enough food to last for 7 people!) and some more project supplies for Monday's training. Hope all is well with you,

 Graham