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