My last couple days in Kenya

Hello Everyone! I am back from the dead...sorry for the delay. For the couple days I had in Toronto I was running around even more than I thought I would, and ended up being in no mood to write a blog post. Then ever since I headed off to camp (where I am working for July and August) I have been busy and distracted from such things as writing a blog post, almost constantly. I am going to write probably two more posts for the time being. One will be in terms of what happened while I was there and one will be a reflections post with some thoughts I have on my trip after I have had some time to think on it. The second post will also include some ideas on what I will do with the blog going forward, and with the project going forward. Hopefully both will be interesting.

So, that Wednesday, as I mentioned, was set aside largely for feedback sessions with the Board. We met up with Sally just down the road and walked over to Rose’s house first. It was quite interesting to talk with her in a smaller group since she was one of the quieter Board members during the sessions. She had some good feedback about what we had been teaching: she wanted to learn more about long term budgeting both for the bank and for the Board members themselves. The idea being that what the Board members learn, they can then pass on to the clients. During one part of these feedback sessions we set aside time to highlight the Board member’s strengths and areas where they could improve. Rose really brightened up when we started talking about how she is very observant and works very hard. She was also touched by our comment to speak up more and ignore her level of education (which is lower than anyone else on the Board) because in all reality it doesn’t matter and she is clearly very intelligent.

Once our session with Rose wrapped up, she took us part of the way to Joice’s house, where we were greeted by one of Joice’s children. Joice is a very interesting woman...50 years old, given birth to 14 children, I think 10 of them are still alive, and one is working on her Masters in engineering.  She is the chairperson of some church group which represents all of the Kanyawegi sub location, and is an avid farmer. Her house is pretty impressive compared to Rose’s place, as it is a fairly spacious property surrounded by a wall, with the house having fully sealed walls and flooring (ie. They are stuccoed or painted in some way). We had a good talk with her around her role both as she saw it and as we saw it. She has a lot of experience and people in the community really do listen to what she says, so we are hoping that she will use that to help build the reputation of the bank. During the training sessions we spent some time with each Board member share what they are saving for or talk about why they save and her story was very cool. A few years ago she had saved up a lot of money, which she then supplemented with a loan to plant a field of tomatoes. She says that she invested 10,000 shillings into the project, and got back 70,000 shillings the same year. It is stories such as hers that we hope will inspire more people to save towards a goal that they can reach, although hopefully that story won’t create unrealistic expectations! Once we had finished the feedback session and had moved into small talk, Katie and I started getting ready to leave...only for Joice to pull out some chapati and soda she had prepared for us to eat together. This dashed our hopes of finishing on time, but did allow us to talk with her for a bit longer. We noticed that during the training sessions she remained a bit detached or removed from us, preferring to not fully get involved with what we were doing and she made a number of jokes that we did not understand. So this meant that it was good to be able to talk with her more casually and in a smaller group setting while she showed us pictures of her children and talked about what they were doing.

Once our sodas were finished we parted ways and left to go meet up with the other Joyce (internally we refer to her as Joyce with a Y), who was at Ober Kamoth for a meeting relating to some of her position as a Community Health Worker (CHW). The health clinic is pretty far away, and would take almost an hour to walk to from Joice’s house so we planned to catch a boda boda (motorcycle). By the time we made it out to the road where we would have to catch one, we knew that we would not be able to make it in time, so we postponed the meeting until later. We were very close to Sally’s home, so she offered to take us up to see it. It was quite a walk up from the road, as you had to take this small path up a hill and beside a mine to get there, but the view from the top was quite beautiful. She had purchased the house and farm right beside it with her husband only a couple of years prior. Now she lives there with her husband when he is around (he seems to travel a lot for work), her daughter, two sons and her niece (because her sister is not as well off as Sally is). She wants to improve the house a lot in order to make it more comfortable by putting in permanent windows and flooring, while also getting the walls painted and better decorated. That being said it looked pretty comfortable already. Even though we had been complaining to her about how everyone gives us soda when we come to visit them at their homes, she pulled out a couple sodas and some cookies for us to have together. We were already pretty full from what we had just drank, but managed to force ourselves to accept her offer and sipped on them while she also showed us pictures of her children and husband. We couldn’t stay for long however as we had to rush off to baraza to meet with the chief as we had promised.

Sally's House

Having a soda and some cookies with Sally

On the walk over to the chief’s office (near the bank) I had to make a couple phone calls with my parents in England to try and organise my flight from Kisumu to Nairobi. Unfortunately my credit card got compromised after I used it at the supermarket so I was getting by on whatever money I had left with me and any that other travellers could lend me (my bank card also was not working). Once we got to the chief’s office, we found out that it was a very busy day for baraza, with a lineup of people out the door. This was mostly due to the fact that all of the CHWs had come for a meeting right after the baraza finished. Katie and I saw Joyce sitting outside so we ended up pulling her aside to have her feedback session while we all waited for the meeting to get quieter. Joyce is a pretty amazing woman. She doesn’t have any formal work but rather takes care of her farm, volunteers as a CHW (and as their secretary), volunteers at her local school as a teacher and now is a member of the board where she has also been elected at the secretary. She is quite popular with the nutrition team as well because she has a great sense of humour, is friendly and hard working. We encouraged her to take more a lead role in figuring out all the details for different plans, since some of the other members have some pretty lofty or ambitious ideas for the bank and she seems good at staying organised. She has been very good at speaking up if there is something which she doesn’t agree with, so we encouraged her to continue doing that.

Our feedback session finished just as baraza ended up finishing, and as the CHWs started getting organised for their meeting with the chief. We had intended to talk with the chief at the baraza itself, but he asked if we could hang around for a meeting afterwards. This was probably for the best anyways since we had wanted to talk in private about legalizing the bank, and the result was that we had some time to relax while we waited for the chief to finish the CHW meeting. The meeting itself went very well, the chief was very open in his gratitude to what we had been doing while here, and very optimistic about the future. The previous year had been a challenging one for him and the bank as he had to mediate between GIVE and KASOW. He was clearly very pleased with how Liz, Katie, myself and Maurice had involved him in the project through honest and open dialogue. On a personal level he also seemed to be sad to see us leave, as we had been seeing him on almost a weekly basis the entire time we had been there. We took a picture of us together right before we left, which we have since passed on to Chief Philip. Katie and I both hope to return one day to see the chief again.

Katie and I with Chief Philip

With that meeting out of the way we headed towards the bank to check up on the nutrition girls and their nutrition day. Of course Sally was also there, and a large number of children seemed to have shown up. It was neat to see the new posters which the girls had made following all the questions they had been receiving from some of the 20ish year old males in the village around gaining weight or muscle since their focus has traditionally been with new mothers. Originally we had been planning to meet Fredrick that afternoon, but we had been texting him to postpone since we were running behind schedule. In the end he showed up to the bank while we were there anyways so we walked over to his store for his feedback session. Fredrick’s session was a bit of a tough one for Katie and myself, since he has some strong opinions about what he thinks the bank should do. He is very confident in his own abilities as well after having completed part of an accounting course, so our goal was to direct him towards being a more passive leader within the Board. The skills and drive to improve the bank which Fredrick has are things that we are very grateful to have on the Board, but we don’t want him to let being chosen as the chairperson to get to his head.

One of his big ideas in addition to moving towards microcredit is to have income generating projects (including buying land, creating rental units and farming among other things), and to start investing the client savings to generate returns. I think he understands our reasoning for wanting to move slowly, but hopefully some of his ideas can move the bank towards one day being fully financially sustainable. It will be an interesting challenge during the year to keep him upbeat and willing to talk with us, while reigning in his more far-fetched ideas. One good idea he has is to start working on some system of passing on the knowledge and plans from one Board to the next, similar to the continuity report which Katie and I are working on currently. This was not something we have fully thought out yet, but that we hope to develop as the year goes on.

Once our session with Fredrick finished, Katie and I started heading back towards Kaguya with the plan to meet Pamela for her session. We had wanted to see her house anyways so we convinced her to let us come over to her place. To get there requires a short, few minute walk past Kaguya before then going on a short path over a hill and around some bushes. She has a few main buildings: one for her and her husband to live in and one for some of her older children in addition to a small chicken coop and latrine. You can tell that she cares about the place for it is perfectly clean and in order – especially the latrine! (thankfully) She was saying that Michelle (an old / former traveller) had stayed at her place for a couple weeks when she had come to visit, so hopefully Katie and I will also one day get the chance to stay over with Pamela. Naturally our Muma Pamela gave us some soda (our third 500 ml bottle for the day!) and some delicious chapati as well, which we were forced to accept. After spending some time just hanging out, we got into the feedback session. We really enjoyed the talk with Pamela because she is great about being a straight talker – she tells it like she sees it. Our main message to her was the same as it had been to Rose, which is that she should not let her education level dictate anything for her since she is clearly very bright. We also tried to push her to keep the board realistic and on track during the year when we are not around. She was very good about jumping in during the training sessions if she has strong views on something but is pretty quiet aside from that.

Pamela's yard with her boy's house on the left

Pamela outside her house

Our session over, and it starting to rain, we headed back to Kaguya, saying goodbye to Pius (Pamela’s husband) on the way. Back at Kaguya we got to meet Jo, who had just arrived that day, and eat dinner. Jo had travelled to the village a year or two ago, and Katie and I both knew Jo from the year before when we did a bake sale at UBC to fundraise for GIVE, which she had helped us with. The house was very full by then with 10 girls and myself (now having been bumped to sleep on the couch for the night). I was okay with that however since I usually stay up the latest, and only had two more days there. The evening was in the end spent mostly doing work for the project and inputting data into Access which is pretty time consuming.

Thursday morning Katie and I got up early to meet up with Maurice for a town run. We needed to fit in a lot of things and as a result we wanted to get to the bank in town just in time for opening. I was a little worried that we would be late since all the matatus were full by the time we got out to the road, but Maurice managed to hail down a regular car that was willing to give us a lift. We got talking with the driver as we went into town, and found out he was a lawyer in town whose his wife does some similar work to our health team, but with TB rather than HIV. I am not sure of the specifics but it sounds as though she does counselling and support for people who are on, or supposed to be on, drugs for TB. In the end he refused to accept payment for the lift into town because of the work we have been doing and since he was going there anyways. He was a very nice man, and even dropped us off right outside of the bank.

At the bank we talked with the woman we had met before to go over the required documents. She told us that we still needed to sort out a few things and that it was going to take a bit longer before we can open the account, unless we could sort out those issues. We have had some trouble in the past because GIVE is registered as an organisation in Canada and is also registered as a CBO (Community Based Organisation) in Kenya, but the Kenyan government refuses to allow foreigners to be a part of the CBO. This makes official things, such as opening a bank account, tricky. We ended up calling Liz, going to the old bank, and going back to the new bank all in an effort to sort it out. Hopefully this transition will be over soon and we can have a fully operating bank account in town.

Our work finished, we then did a little bit of personal shopping. I had been hoping to get some shirts while here since my brother had gotten some pretty nice ones made for him while he was in Bangladesh, but I had no luck in finding the right fabric while there. I was told to try one of the Kenyan supermarkets but the shirts there were not much less expensive than back home so I decided to pass on them. Our shopping finished, we then rushed back to Obambo market before taking a boda boda over to Ober Kamoth (the health center) for our meeting with Joyce. We wanted to go over the monthly report forms with her one last time since she had been elected as the secretary and would be the one filling those forms out. We also used this meeting to clarify some of the procedures such as around organising a meeting and changing a meeting time. Joyce then showed us around Ober Kamoth, which was very interesting to see after hearing about all the work that GIVE has done there. The facilities are in fact pretty good all things considered, with most equipment being just older versions of the equipment we may have: they have a maternity ward, an ultrasound machine, a small pharmacy, a small lab, a few doctors’ rooms and a couple offices for some of the staff. There is a man there from the Netherlands who is working on his PhD by doing research around access to a medical clinic to give birth, and as a result he has gotten a lot of grant money to ensure that every mother in the surrounding area can give birth at the clinic. I don’t know what will happen when he leaves / his research ends (since the financial incentives are pretty high for the CHWs to bring expecting mothers to the clinic), but at least it is helping those people while he is there. Hopefully it should also help to create an expectation that mothers will give birth in the clinic that will persist even after he leaves.

Our meeting finished we said goodbye to Joyce and left for Kaguya. That evening we were to go out as a house with Maurice, Syprose, Kennedy and Sally for some dancing in town, so I had a quick nap to prepare once we got back. It was fun to get dressed up a little bit, listen to some music and get excited for a night out since we hadn’t been able to do that while we had been there. After (more than a few) pictures were taken we finally met up with Maurice, who had organised a matatu to give us a lift into town and back sot that we wouldn’t have to worry about transport. In town we went for dinner together and then went to a few dance bars / clubs together. The night was a lot of fun, if a little unnerving at times with us being in an unfamiliar situation.  Once we were all danced out and ready to head home (not long after midnight) we walked back to the matatu to return to Kaguya. The matatu ride was largely uneventful as everyone was quite tired by this point, since we had all be waking up early all week.

Preparing to go out dancing as a house!

Friday morning I got up for an early breakfast and to say goodbye to all the girls heading out for their project, since there was a chance that I would not see at lunch. Once everyone had left, Katie and I had a very good talk with Maurice (this was our feedback session). We learned a lot from this talk with him, as he opened up about a few things that we had not heard about previously. He was very appreciative of all the work that we had done while there, and all the work we had put into the project before coming – especially that we had run our ideas by him before we came. It sounds like some of the other teams had not been as good at giving him enough information to prepare properly for their arrival, so hopefully that can improve for everyone in the future. In addition to this Maurice also shared a story where apparently the board had agreed in their meeting that at bank day Fredrick was not supposed to mention that he was the chairperson and that Joyce was the secretary since the board wanted those positions to be internal and for them to all be considered equal. We will have to keep an eye on this throughout the year, but Maurice said that he was going to make sure that nobody steps out of bounds with their position. Although having him do this may cause the set up to get away a bit from the CEO – Board structure that we were hoping to create, the feedback should always be going both ways between the “CEO” and the Board.

Our meeting complete, Maurice headed off to open the bank and I took some time to finish my packing. At the time I had thought that I had remembered everything (only to now realise that I forgot my running shoes there! – thankfully Lisa has offered to ferry them back for me). Katie and I then left for Obambo to say goodbye to Evans and a few other people. Unfortunately Evans was not there when I popped by so I left him a note and went to the bank. We dropped off a few things with Maurice and then I said one last goodbye to him. It was hard to hold back tears but I just barely managed to keep it in. We did a lot of work with Maurice, and he welcomed us into his family while we were there. At times we had to be pretty tough on him but we had built up a pretty close relationship with him and I was very sad to say goodbye. Back at Kaguya, Katie and I had some lunch along with Robyn and Elisa, before we said our final goodbyes to them, Pamela and Syprose. I will admit I couldn’t hold back the tears while saying goodbye to Pamela. She pretty much welcomed me (and all of us) into her family, and has done so much for the bank that I will really miss her. She offered that I can stay at her place when I come back, so I will have to keep that in my back pocket! Our two ‘mumma Africas’ certainly made our stay much more comfortable and enjoyable, with their friendly presence and help. It was fun sharing recipes with Mumma Syprose (we showed her pasta and sweet potato soup, while she showed us manadazi).

Saying our final goodbye to our Mummas (Syprose and Pamela - Left to Right)

Our goodbyes and photos finished, Katie and I headed to the airport. Just as I was getting on the matatu Evans walked up, so I had to give him a quick hug and goodbye before finally hopping onto the seat next to Katie and what turned out to be Samuel. We had met Samuel in Holo market when we first went with Maurice because he knew some of the former GIVE travellers pretty well, and we had seen him a few times around the village and in Holo market since then. At the airport I checked in and dropped off my checked baggage before settling down to a Tusker with Katie, since I had a couple hours until my flight left and she was in no major rush to get into town. It was cool to have some time with just the two of us to reflect back on our trip that had started two months previous. We had gone through a lot together, done a lot of cool work, had the odd argument (which everyone else in the house naturally found hilarious), and had gone to the Masai Mara (along with Lisa). It was interesting to hear her perspective on what she had learned, and appreciated the most about the trip. I think we both agree that the trip was not as ‘shocking’ as we had thought it might be, in the sense that the poverty is not abject in the village and that we had prepared ourselves to not let it affect us too deeply in a way that would take away from the project. In many ways more of what we learned was related to the local culture of the people and around working together on a project where we had so much independence.

Once my flight time got a bit closer we finally parted ways, shared a hug and said our goodbyes, with Katie heading into town and me heading home. The flight was pretty quick, especially as I had “The Search for Meaning” to read (which is a pretty quick read that I strongly recommend reading) and I spent some time just writing a long to do list and a long reflections list which I hope to share in a following post. I then had a long 6 hour wait at the airport for my flight out of Kenya to leave, which I spent working on the continuity report, having some food, and sharing calls with first the girls back at Kaguya, Karim, and then Shahzad. I spent most of the time in a bar / restaurant until I felt a little awkward for having stayed there for so long and headed into the airport itself. Just as I was getting pretty antsy we got to board and off I went.

The trip home was spent on a combination of working on the blog, sleeping and reading. I am happy to report got lots done for all of those activities! (save perhaps the blog). And then before you know it I was home and getting picked up at the airport by my brother. Thankfully he still recognised me after the previous two months spent working on my tan and the 30 odd hours of flying.

Alright I will leave it at that for now, sorry again for the delay. I wanted to give a good representation of my last couple days in Kanyawegi...and also got somewhat lazy about finishing my account.

I will put up one more post soon, hopefully before the weekend.

Best,

Graham