A Mountain of Oogali

Hello again,

As promised here is a (comprehensive) summary of more of my last week:

Monday was our last preparation day for the Board wrap-up meeting we had on Tuesday. Before we could get going on our preparations however we had to go into town again to run some errands. We were very low on groceries and also needed to visit the bank in Kisumu we are looking at switching to. We wanted to clear up some issues and submit some documents.  Before we could do that however we had all been invited over to Maurice’s house for a full day event of eating (he said we would have to eat a mountain of oogali - a form of maize meal that you use to eat other foods - very high in energy), exploring, hanging out and getting to know the rest of his family better. Katie and I were planning on going to his place after we returned from town, but we had a few things to clear up with him and a few documents to pick up for our trip into town, so we headed over at around 9 after eating some breakfast. As it turns out we had no need to have eaten breakfast before going over as his wife Irene had made us some chapati and samosas with tea, so we were both royally stuffed by the time we left. Once in town we first met with the woman who will be in essence our account manager, before we then decided to try completing a special errand of ours for the Board. They had requested that they could have GIVE t-shirts (a common request) or some form of name tag to identify themselves as Board members while at official events. When we had originally submitted our project proposal to the executives of GIVE early in the year, one piece of feedback we got was a concern over the motivation of the Board during the year. A suggestion which we then got was to make business cards for the Board members, with them receiving more business cards each month if they attend the meeting and are still actively engaged in the Board. I was less sold on the idea than Katie I must admit, but she seemed set on the idea so we went ahead with it. It turned into a bit of a process to get them made however as we first went to a print shop only to find out they didn’t do business cards. The people there did however point us to a place where we could. To get there we had to walk through a back walkway (alley is the wrong word) behind the Ukwala (a cheap version of Walmart?). They hadn’t told us that the place was an insurance broker, but despite the confusing appearance, they did offer to make business cards.  

After spending some time designing the cards and paying a down-payment, we printed off some photos for the Board members and did some grocery shopping. With Jo coming on Wednesday there would be 11 of us, so we had a lot to pick up! It is hard to fathom how much food you go through with that many people after having lived with one roommate for most of the past year. For example we go through probably around 4kg of rice a week...(that number is also due to us eating it twice per day, every day of the week. Fully loaded with the vegetables (another group was picking up the other stuff) we finally caught a matatu back to Kaguya to drop off our stuff and return to Maurice’s place for dinner. We got there just as everyone else was finishing off their dinner, so we were tasked with helping to finish what was left. A common joke of Maurice’s is that if you don’t finish your food you will get “chira” which is a form of a curse given by a woman to someone else (we have already confirmed that you cannot get chira from that!). It was quite the feast though and we had trouble trying to finishing everything that was there. Irene had prepared us chapati, rice, lentils, ogali, chicken, fish, beans, potatoes, kale and some other things I cannot remember. It was cool to get to eat all together with everyone including Sally our translator and Kennedy who is the field officer for the Education Team. It was also pretty neat to see some scrap books which past travellers had given to Maurice after they left. It got our minds going about trying to do something similar. Once dinner was finished we were all given a tour of Maurice’s family farms (one for him, one for Irene, one for Dorris and one for Phlavine his son) before returning to try and finish some more food!

The next morning (Tuesday) we got up early for another beekeeping meeting, this time with the beekeepers themselves. Katie and I recognised that developing a solution would take longer than we had still in the village, so we enlisted the help of some of our other travellers who will be staying on: Victoria, Lisa and Hannah (from the Nutrition Team). It was a bit of a rush to get to the bank since we had requested that Maurice tell them to come early, and they actually did come early. Once there we got to meet with Joshua, Alex and Dorris (Maurice’s mother) who were the only beekeepers that could make it (they are also the most engaged ones). It was a very useful and informative meeting, as we got to hear first-hand about their experiences with the program, and with HCA. We knew that Ayub had missed a meeting that he was supposed to attend (out of his own personal time), but did not realise that he had ignored the attempts of Maurice and the beekeepers to contact him otherwise. We walked through the three options we had been developing, but they seemed most attracted to separating from HCA. Although it would be more uncertain, they seem to have formed a good and productive relationship with a group of other (more experienced) beekeepers in the area who they had paid to come in to show them how to harvest honey.

Since all the hives and equipment are technically all still GIVE’s, as no repayments had been made yet, there are two sides to the project which we want to sort out. The first is a contract or system for the beekeepers to harvest and sell their honey: either through HCA or this other group. The second will be a form of loan repayment, with the goal being that GIVE gets some of the originally invested money back, and that the beekeepers can have formal ownership of the hives and equipment. Due to the lack of success of the project, Katie and I have been given pretty free reign, where any repayments are welcome but at this point not expected. After talking with the Nutrition Team, we decided that it would be fair for the beekeepers to pay back the hives only before getting ownership of all of the equipment. When starting the project, we were given an estimate that each of the hives would produce on average 30kg of honey, and that the beekeepers could reasonably be expected to pay back GIVE 30% of their revenues. Knowing then that the price per kg from HCA (which is lower than the market value) would be roughly 150 KSH (between 150 and 200 KSH), we then came up with an expected value to pay back within 3 years. This is a very generous repayment system considering the original investment, but it creates a win-win situation for both sides (with GIVE getting some of the money back, and the beekeepers finally getting full ownership in a much more tangible / realistic time frame). I don’t know what the original travellers who set up the system would think, but they drifted away from the project pretty quickly after getting back to Canada, which is something I really do not want to do. Especially after seeing what has happened with the beekeeping project.

After the meeting was finished, I rushed into town with Victoria, Hannah and Lisa to pick up the business cards and run some other small errands (including meeting up with a lady who was going to make a skirt for my girlfriend). The trip was a success, and a nice break in some ways. Katie and I had been spending virtually every waking minute together so it was nice every once and a while to split up for a bit. I ended up parting ways with the Nutrition Team girls to head back to the village as they were having a day off to relax in town. I didn’t have time to eat any lunch but I did manage to make it to the bank just before the meeting was supposed to start. Naturally nobody else had showed up yet, not even Maurice, so maybe I could have stopped by at Kaguya for some lunch. This did give Katie and I some time to set up and whole punch all of the documents we were putting into the Board of Directors guidebook. Unfortunately a couple of the Board members were unable to make it but we got started about 45 minutes past when we were supposed to start. One of the Board members (Rose) was sick, and the other one (Joseph) was at the hospital as his twin children were sick. Hopefully they will all get better soon! Joseph was mentioning how important saving was to him because it allowed him to take his children to the hospital when they got sick, so that was a real world example of how saving can change your life...

The Board meeting went well, and they seemed grateful for us having put everything together. We have had a few requests to develop a training manual so that they can refer back to it, and use it if needed to train a new Board member. That will probably take a fair amount of time so Katie and I had been putting it off, but we do want to hear their feedback first so that we can make some adjustments. As the meeting was finishing we got to unveil the business cards we had gotten, and they were a hit! Everyone (including Maurice) seemed to like them, since only professionals really get them. They had the Board member’s name, title, company (Kanyawegi Community Bank) with their phone number, email (a common one which we created for the board) and the GIVE logo. Maurice has been put in charge of dispensing the business cards, but we don’t know how strictly he will act on giving out only 10 cards per month.

Once the meeting was complete we gave ourselves some time to relax and catch our breath before starting some work to prepare for the feedback sessions we were holding the next day. I have been in a lot of feedback sessions in the past through work, so it was interesting to be on the other side of preparing the feedback. Our feedback prepared we then settled down to watch “The Gods Must be Crazy” with the rest of the girls, which is a movie about a coke bottle being dropped out of an airplane that is flying over a bushman territory. They have never seen planes before, let alone a (glass) coke bottle, and assume that it has been sent to them by God. At first the bottle is seen as being amazing for it can be used for many different things, but it can only be used by one person at a time and creates property issues that lead to violence. (One person wants to use it, but another person is, so one of them hits the other). The result was that it gets characterised as being cursed and the man who finds it is tasked with throwing it off the edge of the earth. The rest of the movie is about his journey. It was pretty funny, with a fair amount of “3 stooges” humour. As people started to dose off I tried my hand at doing some more Access before giving up and heading to bed. 

Alright I have to run off for a doctors appointment now so I will leave it at that. Other people were in charge of taking pictures for these few days so I don't have any to put up. There should be lots in my next one though I promise!

Graham