Delayed update from earlier this week

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the delay in getting to my next post. Especially now that we have gotten fully into preparing the project on the ground, the time I can spend on the blog has been more limited than I would have liked. The internet has also been a little sketchy recently.

Okay…where to start. So aside from a run in the morning we spent Monday basically just at the house working on the project. It felt very good to get back to running again, and it also gave us a chance to explore a bit in an area we otherwise would not have seen much of. Unfortunately I have lost a lot of the fitness I previously had during the soccer / triathlon season! Hopefully I can get some of it back while here.

Once we got back from our run, we started working through our long to-do list. We continued working through the audit and completed a document with everything we want to do during the focus groups. The plan is that this will function more or less as our script for the event. We then went through that document with Maurice, and scheduled all the focus groups (or at least started to, but found it difficult to get past the first couple). Our ideal size for one of these focus groups is probably around 10-12, but it is impractical for us to go through any more than maybe 6-8 focus groups, which limits the number of members we can reach. Some of the villages have many more people than other villages. Kagoo for example has 117 members at our last count, while Seme for example only has 4. We have organised two focus groups for two of the villages, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. They both have around 15 members in them, which we hope should be a good number (under the assumption that some people won’t be able to make it). Our goal with these focus groups is to build support for the idea of increased community involvement with the bank, which we hope to direct towards some form of representation. Based off the people we have talked to so far, this should not be too much of a stretch. We are planning on having a translator for Katie and I while Maurice can engage the members in a flowing conversation. The hope is that with Maurice engaging the clients in a meaningful conversation, and with us following along through a translator, that we will be able to get the clearest picture of how the clients see the bank moving forward.

After sorting out the focus groups Maurice headed back home to finish some of the planting on his farm, while Katie and I continued working. Next on our list was to develop the series of computer lessons we wanted to give to Maurice. One of the other travellers, who will be coming later with the health team, has generously donated her laptop for Maurice to use, and he has requested that we teach him some skills on the computer. He is already fairly computer literate and he can send emails, but his typing is slow and his knowledge generally limited. Since we had been inside a lot already, we decided work on our tans while working and camped out on a concrete area outside the house. We then got to work on the curriculum, to include a range of skills for Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, the internet, folder management and typing. We managed to outline most of the lessons in pretty good detail, although we were rudely interrupted by a swarm of curious ants. Apparently they didn’t like me sitting on their house! Thankfully they didn’t bite and left us along after I moved away.

Following our ant adventure and computer lesson planning we headed in for dinner and worked on the audit further. Thankfully we are getting close to being finished, with just a few small pieces of information left to be gathered. It has been somewhat of a funny year just with the bank moving to a new location and Maurice taking on more responsibility, so it will be nice to have everything finally sorted out. That night I had a phone call to a meeting in Vancouver for a consulting program I have been enlisted to help organise for next year. I have to say that it’s pretty cool to be able to do that. Although my line cut out (more than) a few times, I still managed to listen in and contribute although I am halfway across the world from Vancouver.

Tuesday was spent as a day in town to run some errands. After getting up and ready we started to plan the final details of our trip to town (we were determined to try going ourselves), but quickly it dawned on us that we would need some kind of guide. Thankfully Pamela, our housekeeper, was willing to join us and we caught a mutatu into town. On our to-do list was to visit the bank where we have been depositing the client’s savings to sort out some issues, and to withdraw some money for the summer’s projects. Kenyans seem to be very set in procedure, but we managed to set up the groundwork for completing the changes next time we visit. Once our business there was complete we headed to the Nakumat, which is easiest to explain by describing it as the Kenyan version of Walmart. Katie and I decided that we needed to stock up on our teas: getting some Masala Chai, Green Tea and Camomile tea for us to indulge on. There were some other small house items to make our stay more comfortable, such as some handtowels and me finally getting my own shampoo! We also decided that eating the same food (rice, beans / lentils with cabbage, all doused in turmeric and beef spices) was getting repetitive so we picked up some spaghetti, tomato paste, oregano and garlic powder to make some true “Italiano” pasta.

Following our Nakumat experience we proceeded to the vegetable market, before realising that we still needed to pick up a flip-chart for the focus group, and a receipt book for documenting any project expenses. After a call with Maurice we found out that we had headed in the wrong direction and had to backtrack. This was where Pamela came in handy since she knew where to go, and even know somewhat of a shortcut which we could take. Needless to say we would have been lost without her, although I think we should finally be okay on our own next time. This task done we headed to the market and picked up the onions, green peppers, carrots, tomatoes and cabbage we needed. Naturally we also had to get some of the juicy, fresh mangos, for a snack later. At this point we caught a mutatu and headed back. Katie has not entered her cheap phase yet so we paid the extra 20 bob (shillings) each rather than walk back 15 minutes back to our original mutatu stop. The same money collector on the mutatu we took home ended up being the same one which had taken us home from the airport a few days back. I guess we are pretty easy to remember!

Once home we sunk our teeth into setting up the house budget. It is somewhat of a headache, but we managed to set up a good system that we think will work (if everyone uses it). I have already had some experience with doing the same thing with my roommate in Vancouver, and Katie has some experience helping her mum with some accounting jobs, so we were able to figure it out. While I worked on the expenses, Katie updated the board training document which we then went over with Maurice to get some feedback, especially around its feasibility. He seemed to like it and had a few small suggestions around the structure of what we had thought up. That night we shared a call with Liz, our wonderful team leader in Vancouver, to update her on what we had been doing and to seek some advice. While here on the ground it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture, or to forget the larger reasons for the things we had planned, so it was very good to have a call with her. Due to us starting the focus groups later than we had originally hoped, all of our plans have had to be pushed back, and therefore we will have less time with the eventual board than we would like. Our training therefore was a little tight for time, and Maurice suggested that we compress our training into fewer days, but holding a full-day session. This makes logistical sense, but after talking with Liz we were reminded of the original purpose of the board training…which is more than making sure they learn all the content we want them to. The bigger purpose will be to build a connection between us and the board, in addition to a connection between all the board members such that they can effectively function together as a group. Therefore although it would made sense logistically to compress our training sessions…it gets away from the ultimate goals of them. Everything we are working towards while here ultimately comes back to getting a strong, functioning and committed board that will serve in the best interests of the community. Although each part of our project this summer is dependent upon the other parts, this training will be one of the most important sections for the project to succeed.

Okay so that is all for now, I am going to do some other work and come back to do one for Wednesday afterwards if I have some time. Today was exciting since we got to hold our first focus group (finally!) and met Maurice’s family, so I promise to try and make it a good one.

Hope all is well, wherever this post may find you,

Graham

Some brief thoughts on Economic Development

Hi everyone, so as mentioned I just had a few thoughts which I have had which I wanted to share while I remembered.

First of all, for those of you who don't know I took a course on the Development of Environmental Thought last semester. It was very interesting, and very broad in scope but we did manage to dig into the sustainable development argument briefly. Following the Brundtland report, sustainable development became a fairly often (mis)used term. The big idea or change however that it brought to light was that economic development and environmental viability are not completely in conflict. A good example of this is Haiti, where low economic development has certainly caused great environmental damage in terms of deforestation, simply because the forests were poorly managed, and the people were not very well off: hence the over dependence on firewood.

From my experiences so far, I can see what they were getting at. It still astounds me how much garbage collects on the ground and in the ditches. There is little regard for the effect that has, since recycling and garbage collection seem to be viewed as a luxury or not important. Also the cars do not have very good exhaust systems...I have lost track of how many times I have held my breath while a truck or mutatu drives bye, because of the black cloud that is emitted from the tailpipe. I completely understand that higher consumption which the "Western" model seems to thrive on has many negative effects on the environment, but I have seen some pretty strong evidence that low development is not ideal either. The issues are certainly different, both in terms of scale and in terms of type, but the concepts are still pretty similar. "Sustainable development", if it is possible, will require more intelligent use of the natural world by people on both ends of the development spectrum (neither can shoulder the load on their own). It will likely require some re-allocation of wealth and knowledge, and will not be without some costs or hardship, but also will create many benefits.

That's all I had for now since it is getting pretty late here, but please feel free to comment :)
Cheers,
Graham

ps. one last random thought for the day: Kenyans seem to have the most amazing knack for getting random clothes. We saw a Tim Horton's t-shirt today (small world eh), and have seen more than a few people wearing some fairly nice dress pants or nice shirts...with the odd small hole in them.

Day 2 at the Bank and Church Day

Hello everyone!
So alas I did not have time to complete the blog post this morning which I had originally planned, so I am going to cover a couple days in here. Its funny how you think that you will have much more time while here, largely separated from the internet and other such distractions...but there is so much to do and still so little time.

Okay so anyways, we spent our second day at the bank busily digging into the project. We spent the morning mostly working with Maurice to get on the same page around how the elections work (logistically and also in terms of how voting / representation will work). Then a large amount of time was spent copying over all the client names and account numbers into excel before adding which village they are from. This was quite the undertaking since almost every client has 3 names, and they are all spelt in odd ways (from a Canadian perspective). It is a very interesting system though: The first name is chosen by the parents basically however they want, then the second name (middle name) relates to how the child was born or the situation. For example a boy born in the evening will get Otieno as their middle name. As a general rule a boy will have a middle name starting in O, while a girl will have one starting with an A (with some starting with other letters). That being said there is some room for creativity by the parents around what part of the situation they want to represent with that name. The last name is the last name of their father or husband, in much the same way as we do it in Canada.

Katie and Maurice at the bank

Lion King - the 12 o'clock showing

 Once the name list was completed, determining which village everyone is from was also a large undertaking since people move around sometimes (such as if they open up a shop in Obambo market or marry), or can be located on the boarder between villages. Hence there are some judgement calls. Thankfully Maurice has been able to figure out (mostly from memory, and from talking to people) where all 268 members are from. Anyways, this was a time consuming but very important step towards establishing both the focus groups & nominations, in addition to the elections themselves, because we will have to categorise where everyone is from to determine how the ballot works. With it being a task that required a fair amount of input from Maurice, we had some time to ourselves while he dealt with clients...which naturally we used to hang out with the village children (ie. taking pictures with them and showing them the Lion King - both very essential activities)

Once we completed our excel work, the bank started to get busier and we interacted with the clients a bit more. After the bank closed we went for a soda with Maurice which was fun, and a nice way to close out a busy day, before heading back to Kaguya for some well deserved dinner and planet earth time.

Moving on, today was Sunday. We had church lined up as the first thing on our schedule. Apparently it started at 8:30 am and we had to leave at 8 am to get there (because for the first service of each month it is held at a bigger church that is a bit farther away). Although we were ready in time, Maurice didn't show up until fairly late, as apparently the service had been moved back 30 or so minutes (not sure how that works). We made the trek out there, and on the way there both Katie and I got to experience our first boda-boda rides (motorbikes). I know my mum is probably terrified at the thought of that, but with 4 people on the motorbike I can assure you it was not going very quickly. In addition to that the trip we made was short and the road is very wide where we are so all in all it seemed pretty safe.

Church was fun and interesting...and long. I am spoiled by my infrequent visits to the local United church in that sense, but have been totally missing out on the dancing and singing components of Kenyan, Catholic, services. There was a great procession of singers and dancers heading into the church to both open and close the service. It was hard not to smile and enjoy it. We got copies of the program on our way in, so Katie and I tried to follow along as best we could (naturally getting lost pretty quickly!).

About an hour in however Katie and I had to step out to take a call from a contact we had picked up. The issue of the bank not being completely legally recognised had been raised by Maurice the night before, and had been in the back of our minds since last year when we had looked into some various options (such as being taken over or becoming a specific type of bank). So as a follow up, we set up a phone call with one of Katie's contacts at WOCCU (worldwide organisation council of credit unions). We talked with him about the bank's options in terms of becoming legally recognised, and found out that to do that through the credit union system would probably require becoming a SACCO (Savings and Credit Co-Operative). This was pretty disappointing to hear however because from what we have heard the SACCO regulation system is highly corrupt here. All the same it was a useful call to have, and we have a few leads to keep following up and some ministries we will probably visit when we next go into town.

Our new friend Frederick (Left) whom we met outside the church: he has promised to visit us at the bank next week

After the call was finished (at this point over an hour and a half into church) we headed back to the outside of the church and listened from there, assuming it would end soon. We made a friend with one of the kids who could speak pretty good English, and it turns out he lives near our house and goes to school right beside the bank in Obambo market. The boy, Frederick was very useful for getting a lady to stop asking us for money. Once church finally finished (another 1.5ish hours later) we headed back to Secian junction to meet up with the chief. The chief is on a holiday right now so we didn't want to hold him for too long, but we presented him with a card and some gifts from GIVE to thank him for all the support he has given us. We then proceeded to tell him of our plans and hear his thoughts. He was very happy and grateful with all we had done, and liked our plans. The only sticking point is getting over the legal issue, but we are hoping that we can get him to help us with that since we don't know much about the Kenyan system of government.

After that we headed home and dug into doing the audit (taking a short break for some yoga / playing with the local kids time and for dinner prepared by our cook Syprose (Note: I found out that I have been spelling her name wrong this whole time, sorry!)). We have decided to try and make an Access database that can help with a lot of small issues we have uncovered. For example around having better access to information about the bank from Canada, ensuring that the village / elections system is well established, making the generation of reports much easier and increasing the security of the information. A big sticking point when separating from KASOW (the organisation which helped us get set up in the area originally) was over who got control of the physical documents with all the client information and account balances, so the hope is that we will have more control over that information with this database. That being said it is more of a side goal which we will work towards whenever we have spare time.

Phew alright so that has pretty much caught you up with what has happened. We just got off the phone with Liz, our team leader, to update her on what has been happening and to seek her advice based on what has occurred. We are planning on being very productive tomorrow: not only going for our first run in the morning, but also finishing the audit, finishing our planning for the focus groups and getting some more concrete work done on the board training modules. We will probably then go into town on Tuesday before jumping into the focus groups for the rest of the week.

I am going to post something right after this with some thoughts that I have had from my reading and experiences, but other than that I hope to post something tomorrow night or maybe the following morning.
Cheers,
Graham

(ps. I completed my first 'load' of laundy here by hand...not as difficult as I thought it might be, and my clothes actually probably smell better than they do when I wash them at our place in Vancouver!)

Company arrives!

So as mentioned, Katie arrived yesterday! It is nice to finally have someone else to talk and joke around with while people chat away in Luo. Pamela and I headed out and caught a mutatu at the road again. This time we managed to get an open air one, that pretty much was a hatch-back truck with bars around the back to somewhat enclose it. I actually liked this one best of all because you get lots of fresh air to keep cool. 

We got to the airport with lots of time to spare in the end, and I had a good chat with Pamela about the bank. She talked a lot about how grateful she is to the bank, and how big of a difference it has made in her life. She used to not know anything about saving, and found it hard not to just spend any money almost as soon as it was earned. Now with the bank, and after going through the financial curriculum, she saves regularly (so regularly that she was saving every day that the bank was open, partially because she really wanted to be the bank ambassador and partially because she wanted to save as much as possible). She also was able to get a loan the second year that we ran the microcredit, which she used to open up a store she had been wanting to open for a long time. It was interesting to hear her talk about how she sees the bank maybe evolving in time to reach more and more people, and it was very good at that point to hear from someone directly impacted by the bank. She know Maurice fairly well and had heard about the board of directors we are hoping to work towards creating for the bank, and seems to think fairly positively about it as long as it is run well and transparently...as do we.

Anyways finally Katie arrived and off we went back to Kaguya (the house / compound we are staying at). It was a lot of fun to take Katie on her first mutatu ride...the best way to describe it would be the image of a kid at a candy store! She couldn't stop laughing and smiling or pointing things out, so I found it quite funny. Once back at the house we showed her around, let her get settled and shower before having some lunch. Cirpose (and Pamela) were very excited to meet Katie, the on-going joke with all GIVE travellers has been that they are our "African Mothers". Having finished lunch we both headed to the bank, and got to be the first GIVE members to see the new location. Although the furniture is limited and the decorations even more limited, there were some freshly painted signs and everything. The location is now right beside Obambo market and traffic ahs been much higher. Maurice showed us how everything works on the ground, from opening an account to withdrawing and depositing money. It is amazing how much busier the bank has been since moving and there are new clients signing up almost every day that it has been open.

The fancy new bank signs!

The guardian cat (naturally he ignored us)

We ended up not staying at the bank for all that long since Katie was feeling pretty out of it, so we headed back and she had a quick nap. Later that evening, Maurice came over and we got to dig into the project in more detail. For those of you who haven't heard here is a breif summary of what we are hoping to do:

The goal, especially after moving to a new location and with somewhat of a fresh start, is to increase community involvement and engagement with the bank. We recognise that for the bank to work in the long term, expertise and ownership will have to be built up in the community. The solution we are hoping to help facilitate is to elect some kind of council of representatives (or board of directors) to represent the members. This board would be able to gather feedback from the clients, in addition to meeting and discussing any main issues which the bank faces. Then, in the short term the idea is that they would provide reports on the status of the bank, and recommendations to GIVE. At this point GIVE would use the recommendations as a basis point for all of our decisions around the bank. Hopefully this will increase the level of engagement, and expertise in the village around the bank.

Katie with two excited children (and one not so excited one) who live near the bank

We had been very worried that Maurice could perceive this board structure as GIVE questioning either his abilities or trustworthiness, so we wanted to make sure that the air was clear on that end. Our meeting went very well in the end as we were able to address this fear directly with him. He even jumped ahead to say that the more he had thought about the board the more it made sense, for many of the same reasons we were hoping to present to him ourselves. The meeting was therefore very positive in terms of getting us all on the same page. We had tried to communicate about this over the phone before we came, but it is incredible difficult to communicate about such deep issues, across culture and to some extent language, over the phone. That roadblock being out of the way we started the first preparations for our time here. We are hoping to hold some focus groups with as many of the members as possible to learn more about what direction the members want the bank to go in, and to build support for increased community ownership (vs. GIVE and Maurice doing most of the work). After that point the idea will be to collect nominations for the board positions, before then holding elections for those positions. Once elected, Katie, Maurice and I hope to be able to train the board on not only the hard skills (ie. how to audit the books) but also the soft skills (such as around decision or consensus making) which the position will require. It will be very exciting to see how the project evolves over our two months here.

Anyways I am actually writing this a day late, having just completed another day at the bank with Katie, but I will have to call it quits for now as I am falling asleep. Funny how your perception of time changes (ie. that it is getting late if you are still up after 9pm!). I will try and post something tomorrow morning (our time) to update what happened today (our first full project based day I suppose). 

Hope all is well with you wherever you may be,

Graham

ps. feel free to post any questions you have in the comments section. Let me know if I am skipping over or ignoring some things, or if there is anything that you would be interested in hearing more about

Hello Kisumu and Kanyawegi!

Hello Everyone again. I was planning on writing this last night after my first full day in the village, but fell asleep on the couch trying so I had to give up.

As you have probably guessed, it was a fairly busy day in the end. After having a shower (when I found out that I packed conditioner, not shampoo, oops) and having some breakfast (tea and jipati, which I supplemented with some of the gorp my mum packed for me (Thanks!)) I got all ready for the day. In true Kenyan fashion however I ended up having a lot of time to walk around the compound, take some pictures, read and talk with both Ciprose and Pamella before Maurice eventually made it over. Once here, we began building a long shopping list for town. No point in wasting a good town-run without picking up everything needed. Since I was the first one here, there were a lot of things to buy which would probably last for most of the time we are here (ie. cooking gas and cooking oil).

My humble bed

Our house

Once ready Pamella, Maurice and I headed for the "ndara" (road) to catch a mutatu. Maurice saw a three wheeler one and ran to hail it down (apparently they are nicer since you get a breeze to keep you cool...no complaints there). We then sped off towards town, naturally having to fit 4 people into the two person back seat. We made a quick stop at the junction (where the road forks, and there is a small market / mutatu stopping area there) to let out our other passenger. Thankfully there was nobody else headed to town so we got to enjoy the rest of the ride in relative comfort. The mutatu let us off in town and we went to the bank to deposit some of the bank client's money. They have been saving very well recently as we deposited almost $200 CAD worth of shillings.

View from the mutatu

Off then we headed to the supermarket to pick up some stuff. Which took longer than I had expected, since many of the brands which Pamella knows best were not in stock but eventually we picked up most of the stuff and headed towards the vegetable market. On the way we stopped in a few other super markets looking for the illusive "VIM", which is a cleaning supply. Finally having arrived at the market, we found that it had been closed. Apparently this was because some of the "richer ladies" were shopping. We then went through the open air market which was located nearby and worked our way through the shopping list while we waited for an old gas canister to be delivered to us to be filled. Our bags were getting heavy at this point and it was very sunny so once we had picked up most of our veggies we found a seat and waited for the gas canister to be delivered to us. I must have looked tired because people kept offering me their seats, although I did not feel particularly tired at this point. Finally the canister was delivered to us by a smiling man from Kanyawegi on a motorbike (their name escapes me at this time).

Unfortunately the type of canister was different than what we were expecting and we had to wait around at the mutatu loading area in the sun for almost two hours before finally getting it filled. Maurice must have been tired from looking around for a place to fill them, since I was from just sitting around with Pamela! People seemed to be fascinated by me, but I suppose that is not surprising as I saw maybe two other white people. Amazing the number of hawkers that you see around selling almost anything, ranging from glasses to toys, to candy to drinks, to ice cream, and even locks! They seem to work in teams of some kind so that one leader controls the money and supplies while the others do the actual selling. It may be the business student in me, but I found that pretty cool in terms of people watching. Once we finally got everything together we caught a mutatu (this time a bigger one, but packed to the max such that I barely had room for my legs). We even had a couple people hanging out the door for part of the trip! I don't think these mutatus were designed for people of my size in mind! But all the same I found it very enjoyable to be moving again and to see everyone. It is funny because you can tell when a child especially sees you, because they usually do a double take as their eyes widen and follow you until you pass.

Once back at Kaguya (our compound / house) we unpacked and thankfully Ciprose started preparing some lunch / dinner, since I had not eaten since the small breakfast earlier that day. Pamela was telling me that prices has been rising significantly in recent times. For example the cooking gas used to be at least a few hundred bobs (shillings) cheaper. While waiting for dinner to be made I decided to do a little more exploring, and got to play with some of the local children. I could barely understand a word they said, but they found it hilarious to mimic me! I showed them some of the more interesting balancing / yoga poses, which certainly challenged their mimicking abilities! They then showed me some of their games, for example where one person is in the middle of a circle, while everyone else holds hands. The person in the middle tries to then break free as they sing a call-and-response. When they do it becomes a game of tag to try and catch the person who escaped. Needless to say it was a lot of fun, and we were all out of breath soon enough. They then showed me a river nearby before I had to bid them goodnight.

Dinner was almost ready at this point, so I went with Maurice to meet "Mama", who is basically the landlord. She is quite the woman. Although her husband has died, she still takes care of her many children and grandchildren (and I think some great grandchildren?). She kindly offered me a soda (seems to be the thing here) and we watched some funny Italian (dubbed in English) television. A couple of the kids I was playing with came to join. I think their names are Britany and Silus but I will have to check. Finally I was able to bid them "oriti" or goodnight, and got to have some dinner. Maurice then quickly showed me obambo market before it got too dark and I called it a night. As mentioned I tried to write this post, but was falling asleep so had to call it quits.

Anyways, sorry for rambling on for so long...apparently I was in a writing mood! In a few minutes Pamela and I will head out to pick up Katie from the airport, finally I can have some Canadian company! Then once she is settled I think we will go to the bank and take it from there.
So long for now,
Graham

Farewell Nairobi

I am writing this having just had my first night in the village. It is quite the place, the house is very comfortable and surrounded by numerous birds and other animals. (Most notably an energetic rooster)

As mentioned, for my last day in Nairobi I went around with the taxi driver from the first night, Njagi, to see the museum before grabbing some lunch and heading to the giraffe centre. I was happy to have some time to spend at the museum because I had felt a little out of the loop around the history of Kenya, but now I feelt that I understand it a bit better.

Who said hippos are dangerous?

After going back to the house quickly for some lunch and to grab my bags, we headed out to the giraffe centre. It was quite the drive, but it did give me another chance to see a bit more of Nairobi, including going past the president's house. I found it a little funny to see an anti-corruption suggestion box outside the menacing army compound, I wonder how much it gets used...(We weren't allowed to take pictures unfortunately) Of course once there, we got to see some giraffes up close and personal.

After finishing up at the giraffe centre by feeding the giraffes a bit, and checking out the otherwise ignored tortoises we headed back towards the city. Since I still had a lot of time before my flight we tried stopping at an animal orphanage but they were charging $20 USD for non-residents to see anything, and I wanted to save my money for another time. We did however keep going and stopped for a short while on a hill that had a good view of Keibera. The endless metal rooftops make it look very quiet, but I am sure that they are just hiding all that is going on underneath. According to Njagi it is mostly Luo who reside in Keibera, who are the main tribe located in Kanyawegi and around Kisumu where I will be going.

After this we decided just to head to the airport to see if I could perhaps catch an earlier flight, and got there a few hours early, but unfortunately there were no earlier flights. I read my book for a while (finishing the first book of the Hunger Games!) as the flight was delayed for over an hour due to a storm that came through. The flight crew that was supposed to be for our flight was coming in from Kisumu, but their flight had to be re-directed to Mombassa because of the weather. As a result we had to wait for the weather to clear up and for another flight crew to come in. All in all I was simply glad at that point to be able to make it to Kisumu, although it was pretty dark by the time we arrived.

Braving the rain to board the plane

 Outside the baggage terminal I was greeted by the smiling face of Maurice, our employee in the village. It was good to now finally meet him, after having talked on the phone with him 4 or 5 times previously. It was too late at this point to catch a mutatu, so we had to take a taxi to the house which was a bit more expensive, but probably quicker than a mutatu. At the house I got to meet one of our “Mothers” while we are here: Ciprose, and she cooked us a delicious meal of rice, lentils and cabbage with of course some soda to wash it down. They were most impressed with my bottle opening technique with my ring! Their reaction was simply priceless.

Anyways, after that I finally managed to convince Maurice and Ciprose that I needed to get to sleep, which allowed me to get unpacked. I got a very pleasant sleep and woke up around 6:30 am. I wish I could do that while at school! Going to bed before 10pm must help though. As I am writing this, we are about to eat some breakfast and then I will be going into town with Maurice to pick up some supplies, seeing the village and the bank and maybe meeting the chief. So I should be quite busy today. Unfortunately the internet connection is not great here, so I will have to add some pictures later, apologies. I had some cool ones of the giraffes and at the museum to show you. Oh well, all things considered I am pretty lucky to have a pretty good internet connection. Take care for now.

Graham

First Full day in Nairobi

Wow very interesting country. After a short sleep (I think I was too excited and jet-lagged) I got up at around 7 am to get ready for the day. It being a holiday, Karim and Shahzad (my hosts) slept in a little bit longer than I, so I continued to read the Hunger Games until we had a communal breakfast. I then got to try eating jipati (similar to naan bread) and omelet with my hands like a civilised Kenyan, which is surprisingly difficult.

On our to-do list was: getting a sim card and internet stick, changing my flight to Kisumu to later in the day on Wednesday, getting some lunch, and trying to visit the giraffe centre. Unfortunately traffic was horrid, with all the construction going on, and it too us much longer to do all of that than expected. As a result I had to postpone my visit to the giraffe centre until Wednesday. I did however make it to a few malls along the way and get to see a lot of the city during our (at times off-road) adventure:

Some giraffes in the national park located by the airport

Got my first exposure to the Keibera Slums...amazing how vast they are, but at the same time how they are now just part of the landscape in many ways. It is much more real when you see it in person rather than just read about it in a book...

We visited a local market selling goods. They can fit so much stuff into very small stores. They do like to bargain there! Still getting the hang of that, and what a fair price is for things

After all of this, we decided to call it quits just as it started to rain. There had been some pretty threatening clouds building for a while and we were lucky to have just finished bargaining at the market when the first raindrops fell. It was amazing how much water proceeded to fall from the sky, so I was not surprised to see some of the roads a little flooded later in the day. After a brief nap back at Karim and Shahzad's place they headed to the mosque and dropped me off at the local gym (which was unfortunately closed, so I had to make due with watching some IPL cricket; rough life I know).

Anyways I am writing this after having just woken up on Wednesday, I am planning on heading to see a local museum of Kenyan history, and then go to the giraffe park on the way to the airport. Next stop Kisumu and finally Kanyawegi to meet up with Maurice, who is our employee in the village. I had to say goodbye to my time in Nairobi, but I did get to have some fun trying to get the housekeepers to work my camera before I left. Not bad for their first time using one:

Saying goodbye to Mrs. Karim (Shahzad) before she headed to work

Saying goodbye to Mr. Karim, Saqib's dad.