Focus groups here we come

Hi everyone,

Naturally my other work ate up my time and I didn’t have time to complete my blog post so here she goes. I will run you though what happened on Wednesday and then today.

Feeling adventurous, Katie and I decided to go for a bit of a longer run Wednesday morning. We followed the same route down by two of the quarries but continued farther down towards the lake. We ended up going a fair distance on a road parallel to the main road our house is on, but closer to the lake.  One the way we passed a few schools and many confused people. Although Katie usually listens to music when she runs I convinced her to ditch the iPod and we ended up talking for most of the run. One thing that we have found very interesting is how in Kenya, even with all the poverty, that there is no noticeable homelessness. When we asked Maurice about it earlier he was shocked to hear we had homelessness in Canada. I suppose that the family support network is stronger in Kenya than Canada, where we rely more on government systems to assist when people are struggling.

After our run we met up with Maurice in town to print out the required documents for the focus group we also picked up some phone top-up cards since Katie and I are both running low on minutes. Once we got home I tried to load the minutes and got through most of them but unfortunately two of the 50 shilling top up cards didn’t work. (The amount is small enough that I am going to just hope it doesn’t happen again) It is an interesting system for adding minutes by sending in a code to Airtel, which then activates / automatically updates your balance. I am curious as to how the businesses selling the top up cards make money, and how that chain of supply works. The mark-up would have to be pretty high even if they made only a few shillings on each phone card they sell…some food for thought.

After lunch we headed back to the bank for our first focus group! Very exciting. We got there nice and early to set up, and were surprised to find a few members already waiting outside the bank. We had been told to expect people at least one hour late, but Maurice said that he had told them to not be late this time. This time did allow us to talk with the members a bit before the actual focus group started. It was pretty funny actually to see how shocked they were to hear that Katie didn’t plan to marry until she was at least 30! Got to love the cultural differences. She has had an ongoing joke with Maurice that she will only marry someone if they get here the big 5 (in baby form) as a dowry.

Anyways, joking aside, once a few members came we got started. Only 20 minutes late! So not too bad. We at first started by introducing ourselves and trying to get the meeting going, only for Maurice to pull us back and make sure that we had a prayer before starting the meeting. Not something I would have remembered on our own, so we will make sure to include it in our future meetings. Once the prayer was complete, and everyone had introduced themselves fully to us (handshakes and full names) we were able to get started. Maurice kicked things off by getting the clients to think of how they see the bank in 10 years, and how they see their involvement. The goal of the first section was to understand how they perceive the bank currently and in the future, then in our second section we pushed them towards how the community could achieve those goals for the bank. The idea was to get them to see the board idea as part of the solution, in addition to increased involvement by community. In the third section we then directed them towards our idea for a board, and asked if they agreed with our idea (thankfully they did), at which point we got them to think about what kind of qualifications or criteria they would want in their representative. To close up the focus group we directed them to think about what to do if the board doesn’t work, and to feel out how they think the board should be governed / manage the privileged access to information they will likely have simply as a result of the position. Then we had a protracted closing where Maurice got talking more generally about the bank and encouraging them to keep saving.

All in all it was a very positive experience. We had to iron out a few things for our next focus group, but the answers were very positive and insightful. I really liked the way that they describe things and what they tended to focus on. They were for example very insistent that the board members would have to not be corrupt, and to love everyone! I don’t think you would get the same love comments at a similar focus group in Canada.

Once the focus group wrapped up we headed home with Maurice. Finally we convinced him to let us see his house, his son Flavin and his wife Irene. Maurice’s family has clearly done their best to improve their lot in life, and their plot of land has developed into somewhat of a mini-village. As is tradition, his house faces back towards his parents house, where most of his younger brothers and sisters still live. Maurice and Irene own a farm right next door, as does his parents. He also has some chicken and a few other small buildings for various purposes (ie. They have a small chicken coop). Flavin is pretty funny, although he is still really young. As you can see in the picture he was a little confused by us! Irene was very welcoming and has invited us to join them for a dinner sometime, which we are looking forward to. We managed to weasel the story of how they met out of Maurice, apparently he had his eye on her for 6 long years before she finally agreed to meet his family. It will be nice to get to know her better over dinner if we get the chance. I always find that the best way to get to know someone is through meeting other people they know, so I am sure she will have some funny stories to share about Maurice!

Maurice's home with chicken coop beside

 On the way home we picked up the bikes which we had patiently been waiting to get fixed and biked home. They are a little rickety but should reduce our travel time significantly. Once home we were pretty unproductive…to be honest getting the focus groups all set up and run was a pretty tiring process even though it didn’t involve much in terms of physical effort.

Katie with a confused Flavin

Their new puppy :)

After an uneventful sleep we got up and went for another run. I challenged Katie to do our original loop around the quarries and back without stopping. She had to walk a short distance but is getting much better (I am also noticing that my fitness is returning which is a pleasant feeling!). Once back I made sure to some laundry...to save me from running out tomorrow. We spent the morning digging back into the audit, since we now had all of the information needed (or so we thought) and then meeting up with Maurice to adjust the plan for the focus groups for today. We are both very grateful for all the work Maurice has done, he tends to be a little confusing with his dates, but all things considered he is a very organised person. With everything that went on around moving to a new bank location, things have been pretty well documented. About the focus groups we encouraged him to engage the clients in more of an ongoing conversation to get deeper answers this time, and to let us use the translator we have hired more effectively, which he agreed with.

After some lunch we then biked over to the bank…which is pretty uncomfortable, but much quicker than the journey by foot. At the bank some clients again came a little early even for the meeting time with a few arriving a bit ‘late’ by Canadian standards. We still did well by Kanyawegi standards however as almost everyone arrived by 20 minutes past 2. The meeting was again very productive, in some ways more so, as Maurice ran with the role we had given him. The translator was very useful to make sure that we could follow along with what was happening while not seriously interrupting the conversation going on. He also by this point knows what answers we give to certain questions so was helpfully proactive in both getting people to speak and in answering some of their questions. It was interesting that they asked whether increased community involvement meant that GIVE was planning on leaving them. The question was much easier to answer (by saying that we would support them but that the drive for change would have to come from the community) in the small group setting than if we had been asked the question at the big bank day. Although we were only expecting around 10 people, there were 11 in the end at my last count, so attendance was quite positive in addition to their responsiveness to the focus group. It was interesting that one of the members mentioned hearing about the other focus group we had done. I am curious to see how word spreads through the community about what we are doing.

Maurice leading the second focus group

Maurice (somewhat) following our script

 Once the meeting was finished we headed to the market next door in Obambo market to try and find some bananas and mangoes, but were disappointed with the selection so headed home. Back at Kaguya we were pleasantly surprised by Syprose with some spaghetti! We figured out that the reason Katie has been feeling a bit under the weather is that she is vegetarian, yet one of the spices they were using contains some meat in it. Not to mention it is nice every once and a while to have some food we are more used to seeing. Naturally her attempt at pasta (a first) was much tastier than ours. Pamela then came home and we had a good conversation with her about English. She was asking whether we thought she should go ahead and take some more courses in English. Her English is very good considering she only speaks it a few months a year, and had been out of school for over 20 years, so I think we convinced her it wouldn’t be necessary. It was funny though because she was saying that people often don’t think we are actually speaking English because of our accents / pronunciation! Which makes sense, and is kind of funny, but is not something I ever would have guessed. Anyways, after dinner we dug more into the audit which we have almost finished, and then we called to update Liz back in Vancouver…and here I am.

Anyways, I am going to head off to bed now so take care for now. Tomorrow Katie and I will be going back into the bank and hopefully getting into the board training plans in more detail, plus a bunch of other things. I’m sure we will keep busy! Katie and I wrote up an outline for our continuity report for the next team to be able to use…it looks like it will be a long document with everything we are doing! Hopefully it will provide some value though. Okay that’s all for now,

Cheers,

Graham