First of all, apologies for taking so long to post, I have been pretty busy recently and now that a few more people have come I have to be considerate and share the internet stick. Life is rough I know.
So to get caught up, Thursday was spent finishing up the focus groups. We had 2 final ones which we managed to get through before relaxing with some mandazi and soda. At each focus group we would introduce ourselves and we have gotten the attendees to name themselves which has been very interesting. The tribe that lives in the area we are staying in, the Luo, have 3 names that make up their full name. The first name is given to them by their parents, and the last name is either their father's last name or the middle name of their husband (in the case of a woman). The middle name reflects how and when they were born (literally). For example Maurice's full name is Maurice Otieno Amoke. Amoke was his fathers name and Otieno is "boy who was born in the evening".They have a variety of different potential middle names: Akoth for example means "girl born in the rain", Anyango means "girl born in the morning". (Girls have their middle name start with an "a", boys with an "o"). It is surprisingly specific though as some of the time bands are only a couple hours long. Some other names (which I forget what they are) can be for: someone born during a famine, someone born upside down, someone born in the afternoon. It is odd since it is such a personal detail about someone that you share with the world, but I have grown to like it.
Anyways getting back to the focus groups, Maurice decided that Katie and I needed to get some Luo names. Unfortunately I had no recollection of when I was born, so I guessed the morning hours. Maurice then told me to introduce myself as Graham Onyango. The only problem was that I forgot what name he had given me and said Graham Otieno when I was introducing myself...and now its too late to switch. Especially since I have introduced myself that way to probably close to 80 people now, it has started to stick. We were in town and saw a few people from the village and stopped to say hi. Naturally they started out by saying "Otieno! How are you?", so there is no going back now! Sorry Mum! I found out last night that I was born at 4am while it was snowing out...which I don't think they have a name for.
Okay so since the focus groups finished, Katie and I were tasked with a massive overhaul of our board training plan, which had only consisted of an outline with all the activities we wanted to do, but no details on how to do them or detailed descriptions of each detail's purpose. We started to crack open that nut while preparing for Friday since 2 girls from the Food Security and Nutrition Team were arriving (early in the morning). We did a bit of a clean up and some decorating at Kaguya (ie. putting up the calendar), plus balanced out all our expenses.
On Friday we got woken up at around 6 with a call from Victoria and Lisa that they had just got their ticket and were going to board the flight to Kisumu from Nairobi. They had 'slept' over at the airport the night before but hadn't been sure which flight they could get on. I say slept, but don't think they actually accomplished much sleeping. We then met them at the airport and brought them back to get settled, shower, and meet Maurice. Once they met Maurice at the bank we headed into town with them to pick up all the groceries. Katie and I had drawn them down pretty far so we were in need of a lot of food, especially as our number was increasing dramatically from 2 to 7! Thankfully Katie and I know our way around pretty well now (in terms of the places we need to go) and the trip didn't take too long. We did take up a lot of room on the mutatu on the way back though.
Once home the two girls took a quick nap while Katie and I did some more board training work. We were both feeling a little overwhelmed with the task of developing an effective board training, motivation system for the year and a phase out plan for the next 5 years of the bank. Big issues which neither of us have ever dealt with before! That being said we worked through a lot of the higher level thinking around the board training that day, and reached out to a few people for some advice. Katie's father was especially helpful as he got us to think about re-framing the 'training' as an educational certification, which could then be built upon during the year. The idea of continuous personal progression as a motivational tool for the board members while we are not here is appealing and hopefully stronger than trying to create a sense of responsibility to the community (which is hard to influence, and probably already fairly strong). With education being such a prized accomplishment here, we are hoping to make their educational progress fairly public or physically recognised (ie. through a certificate). All of this is still in the development stages so who knows how it will change.
We managed to power through a lot of work which we hope to work through with our exec: Liz, Sunday night. Although Bridget really wanted us to come out and play with her and her friends! Earlier that day we had picked up some Tusker (the best known African beer) and had a one or two each while we worked which seemed to help us tone down the stressful parts of developing the board training. After all our work we are feeling a lot more comfortable about it now.
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| Come play! |
In brief, Saturday was spent doing some more work and hanging out with Victoria and Lisa. We were all given a bit of a scare since 3 more girls were supposed to arrive...and had agreed over email the day before to call us when they knew what time their flight was as they were sleeping over at Nairobi as well. Unfortunately we didn't find out until later that evening (almost 12 hours after we had been planning on meeting them) that they were leaving a day later, after we asked Katie's mum (who had met up with one of them). We couldn't figure out what could have happened, so that was relieving.
Oh and the best part of the day (naturally) occurred when we saw some more monkeys stealing a snack from the mango tree on the property:
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| Cheeky Monkey |
I am writing this Sunday morning as we wait (again) to hear from those 3 girls. It will be relieving once we finally hear from them. Katie and I will be meeting with Maurice later before holding a nominee meeting at the bank to run over a few things and to finalise the list (anyone who forgets / doesn't show up is off the ballot) before hopefully having a phone call with Liz. Should be a busy day but I am looking forward to it.
I think that's all for now,
Best,
Graham
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