Fun with laptops, fundraisers and football

Hi everyone,

So as mentioned we went to a fundraiser for the community health initiative that GIVE has been supporting. Before going however Katie and I decided to multi-task by working our work…and more importantly our tans! So we camped outside while drafting a monthly report form that we will have the board send to us. Our multitasking was however interrupted by one of the local children who has taken a special liking to us: Bridget (we think that’s her name but she has given us a few different ones depending on when we ask). She was fascinated by our computers and the sounds they would make. It was very interesting to watch her try and figure out how it worked. For example removing the internet stick from the laptop would cause the computer to make a sound, as would putting it in, but only if you waited. She is pretty bold and confident so if you try and show her too many things at once without letting her do the exploring herself she is perfectly happy pushing your hand away from the laptop. We first showed her around typing on word (which she thought was funny but couldn’t quite get the hang of).

Katie showing Bridget around the laptop

 She then caught me taking a picture of her and Katie, so she asked to use it. She is quite the little artist and was pretty good with the camera, although the zoom function still confuses her and as a result most of her pictures are super zoomed in! After she went around taking some pictures we went back to the laptops and I showed her some of my own pictures. Here she found the zoom function much more interesting and would always spend a bit of time zooming into parts of a picture to see everyone’s faces. The only pictures I really had were from the village and from my trip backpacking through Europe from a few years ago. It was pretty funny though because Bridget would always point to people as if to ask if I knew them…even though they were complete strangers in the background of my pictures.

Photographer Extraordinaire: Bridget

My portrait by Bridget: Aren't I charming

 After playing around on our laptops for a while we had to go in for lunch and to get ready for the fundraiser. The place it was to be held at is around a 20 minute bike run away, and we were told it was starting at 2:30, so naturally Maurice arrived a little after 2:30 himself. He then told us it had been pushed back a little bit. Still not sure how that works. The fundraiser was a funny affair, with a bunch of chairs under a large tree with a bunch more chairs under a tent facing back at the tree. There was an MC for the event and a DJ who was playing some weird music. Naturally we had to shake everyone’s hand when we got there and there was a lot of ‘soda’ handed out. Eventually we were honoured with a seat under the tent as people continued to arrive. There was a very funny little girl who started crying every time she saw Katie or I, apparently we are very scary looking! 

Katie can be pretty scary sometimes you know...

The ceremony consisted of a few speeches and some dancing (which Katie and I got dragged into!) before the donation portion began. One person would come up and talk then donate some money, at which point anyone who knew the person would donate on their behalf. Once we figured out what was happening it was pretty funny because people would donate 1 shilling on someone’s behalf (just over 1 cent Canadian). The event went on for a while, with nearly 2 hours of that before it started to rain and everything was moved inside. This was fortunate timing for us, as we didn’t have to get publicly recognised for donating and managed to steal away to go watch the Arsenal game.

We biked quickly back to Obambo market where we had seen signs up advertising the game. We hid our bikes in the computer shop and went inside the viewing place. 30 bob for a seat so we stood by the wall. It was packed in there! Easily over 60 people in this tiny little area (naturally all were male). The difference in demographics compared to the bank members was pretty stark. We caused a slight stir for coming in to watch the game and heard the term ‘mazungo’ bandied around a few times (it means white person). The power went out from the storm not long after we got there, but once it was back on we settled in to watch the Manchester City match. The game was fairly interesting for me, but I think Katie was just more interested in the atmosphere than anything, despite my best efforts to explain all the back stories (ie. How the title was to be decided by that game). Occasionally the screen would split into two as it showed highlights from other games, and it became clear that some teams had more support than others! About half the people were Manchester United fans that got pretty excited once they scored, and the other half went nuts after Manchester City scored. Halftime eventually came and we went outside to get some fresh air. The temperature change was pretty large between the inside and outside from all the body heat and because of the rainstorm that had passed over. At times it had been hard to hear anything because of how loud the rain was.

I was pretty tempted to watch the second half but it would have been pretty dark by the time the game was over and Katie wanted to go back, so we waited a bit to see if Maurice would come. To kill time we awkwardly stood in the centre of the market to call our dear mothers for mother’s day before then heading home because Maurice was nowhere to be seen. He said the fundraiser was still going on. They must really love their fundraisers!

So that was all for Sunday as we called in a fairly early night because we had 3 (!) focus groups the next day. I will catch you up about those and other things tomorrow,

Bye for now,

Graham

On expertise, and rain

Hi everyone,
I have decided to make an early new years resolution...to put up more pictures and less words on my blog. I seem to lose track of how long my posts are getting so I will try and at least split them up to make reading more manageable in the future.

Okay so I got up in good time today and had a bit of time just sitting outside reading, thinking and enjoying the fresh air. It poured down rain last night so the air was fresh and there was a slight mist as the water on the grass started to evaporate. I love these mornings as they remind me of being up at our cottage. That being said it is hard to beat a Kenyan sunset:

It is hard to capture on a camera, but that yellow colour was probably the deepest burnt orange sunset I have ever seen. Simply gorgeous.

Anyways, while I had some time to myself I was thinking back, reflecting over what I have read while on my trip and what we have been working on. As I mentioned a week or so ago, I started reading The Rule of Experts by Timothy Mitchell. I was fascinated by how he portrays the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt by foreign directed engineering not as an introduction of knowledge where there previously was none, but rather as a reorganisation of knowledge. The purpose of the dam was to generate power and to regulate the flows of the Nile. Previously, the inhabitants of along the Nile had learned to accommodate the yearly flooding and to adapt to it. Once the dam was built however they lost that knowledge as the flows changed, and therefore lost knowledge rather than gained it.

This got me thinking about what we have been doing, and what we should be careful of while being here. The goal for us is not to impart our way of thinking as the best, but rather to help organise the clients of the bank into a position where they can better make decisions. We plan to impart some of our knowledge, but want that knowledge to match the local situation and cultural context. As Timothy Mitchell argues, any solution will be shaped by 'nature' or the context it is in, regardless of whether that is the intention of those implementing the solution. I am beginning to recognise that it can be a very fine line to walk between imparting 'expert' knowledge which can then simply concentrating and reorganising knowledge. Through the focus groups we have pushed the members to think of the board not as the ultimate solution to increased member involvement, but rather as part of the solution that depends upon them. We are hoping that the training we provide for the board members will serve everyone in the community well, not just them.

That is all for now. Today we will be going to a community health worker fundraiser in the afternoon which should be interesting, and then hopefully watching the Arsenal game in Obambo market. We will then finish planning the 9 remaining focus groups and go from there. Here is a picture of me hard at work, Katie suggested I put in "just to prove we are actually doing something!".
Ciao for now,
Graham

Maurice training me to be a bank officer (he said he might hire me in a few years)

The tea question

Hello everyone,

So our Friday was a bit of a slower day. The bank was open but we didn't have any focus groups planned for the day so we spent most of our time finishing off some lose ends with the audit, working on Access, documenting what we had been doing, writing up the election / nomination rules and writing up a more comprehensive board training plan. As I mentioned earlier we decided to extend the training process to 4 session rather than just 2 or 3, with the goal of increasing cohesion and increasing the contact points we will have with the board before formally presenting them at the bank day.

Maurice has been pushing to try and get us to learn how to run the bank on a daily basis so that next Saturday he can get more involved with the HIV Awareness Football Cup, but we have been holding firm that our lack of ability in Lou makes this infeasible. We ended up spending the morning at the house doing project work before heading into the bank. Although it is understandable that Maurice would like some help with running the daily operations of the bank, it does not make sense that we should do this work. Some people are too nervous to come in when they see us in the bank until we encourage them to come in, and we are worried that this is largely because they are comfortable with Maurice. Explaining to a new potential client how the account operates, and the importance of saving, is hard to do without knowing Lou. In the past the Football Cup was organised by a part-time field officer / employee of GIVE, but the previous person (Patrick) has moved on, and Maurice has been slow to find a replacement.

Access has been coming along but it is slow...I am trying to teach myself how to do it, so there is a lot of trial and error. I have gotten Katie to ask her mum if she can send along a copy of Access for Dummies with one of the other travellers coming next week (who is picking up some other stuff for us from her anyways), so I am hoping that will be able to help. I am tempted to email my Management of Information System's professor, but it is hard to explain the issues I am having over email...Generally it is a lot of minor issues that I struggle with, but have been finding ways around them. At times the program is too logical, and at other times I think it just follows a different logic than what I know.

After lunch we cleaned up and headed into the bank, where we were finally able to finish the audit. We have managed to reconcile everything to within 160 shillings ($2), which isn't perfect but pretty good considering everything. On the positive side, I have confirmed that I have no desire to be an accountant. We then were able to dig into the elections procedure, which can be a little nitty gritty. It is pretty interesting though because we get to see inside how an elections process can run. There are many small issues or concerns which we have had to take into account. For example we only are planning on / going to have 6 positions on the board along with a few alternates should someone have to give up their position on the board, yet there are 10 villages currently represented by the bank and village representation seems to be fairly important to people here. Henceforth we have had to design a system that can accommodate their desire for some closer ties to village representation. The ballot system is a little complicated to explain but basically 4 of the 10 villages have qualified to 'get the option for village representation', and the two remaining board positions can be from any village. Those 4 larger villages (Kagoo, Konyango, Kogada and the sublocation of Lower Kadongo) will get a ballot with two sections, one with representatives from their village only, and one general pool section with all candidates. Should more than half of the members from one of those villages vote in the first section (no matter who for), then they will retain that right to village representation and having the most voted for person getting a board position (they have two votes per ballot, with a maximum of one vote in the local pool). Every other village will just get two votes in the general pool section. At the end once the local representatives are determined the general pool votes will be tallied to find the 2 remaining positions, and the alternates (we are going to have 2-3 alternates selected in case people drop out).

Up next we updated the board training plans and walked through them with Maurice briefly. This is where it gets interesting. A surprisingly important issue which GIVE has faced in the past is whether to provide food or tea at our meetings with the community. We have found that when soliciting feedback from community members and providing tea that it can actually create a sense of entitlement in that it becomes perceived as them doing us a favour by providing feedback (although that feedback ultimately shapes / influences their lives not ours). To get around this, we have tried to only provide tea for training sessions that run over a certain amount of time, and lunch only if it is a full day training session. With the board training, we do not want to have their position to be seen (either by the board members or the community) as an entitled or especially privileged position which could encourage the potential for corruption. Therefore our idea (Diane from our team deserves the credit) was to use the tea as a metaphor / exercise to explain how important it is to work together as a community. At the first or second training session we would get everyone to volunteer to bring one "ingredient" or supply required for tea to the next meeting. For example collectively people could bring cups, hot water, tea bags, sugar and milk. Then later in the meeting we would surprise them with some tea to get through the first meeting and to reiterate that this would be a onetime thing. The idea makes sense in theory, especially when thinking about it in Canada, yet when we raised the idea with Maurice he was very skeptical. He argued that we always provide tea at training sessions and that it does not cause problems (a sentiment we don't entirely agree with). He also argued that it would be too expensive for people to bring those supplies, but we have offered to bring the most expensive or most difficult items as our contribution (ie. The milk, or maybe the hot water). Although it may sound like we are being horribly stingy and cold, the idea all along has been to move the bank towards being sustainably run by the community and we see the board as an opportunity to set the precedent for the future. The hope is that an exercise such as this could encourage the board members (and the community) to recognise that for it to be sustainable they will have to find ways to pay for the things they want done, and therefore make sure that it is worth spending money on. It is funny, according to Liz, the issue of tea is one of the most hotly / commonly debated topic between the exec team back in Canada. Who knew that tea was such a big issue!

Getting back to the board training, we have been looking for ways to get the board motivated and running efficiently in a few ways. We want them to feel responsible towards the community members in terms of representing them, to each other on the board so that they complete all the required work in an equitable manner, and responsible to GIVE such that they are willing to work with us towards our mutual goals. I have been trying to think of how this has been done in the past in my experiences and keep coming back to my time on staff at camp (where I have worked for the last two summers and will be working when I return back to North America). One of the amazing things about working at Camp Wenonah is how motivated the staff group is to support each other when needed. At a meeting anyone available will volunteer to guard for a 6:30 am swim at the drop of the hat if needed. During our pre-camp we focus a lot on how the camp has developed over time (so we feel part of a bigger movement) and also on the importance of what we do / the influence we can have on the camper's lives which both contribute to creating this atmosphere. We are therefore hoping to spend some time talking about the bank's growth, potential future and the influence it already has on the members. We are also going to spend some time going over what we learned from the focus groups, such as the nomination criteria that each group came up with and getting them to spend some time at the bank while it is open to meet clients they don't know. I would be curious to hear any suggestions or recommendations around what else we could do to achieve the cohesion and motivation from the board that we are hoping to create in addition to the tea idea and those I just mentioned. Fresh ideas and perspectives are always welcome!

I think that is all for now, we did a few other small things before going out with Maurice and one of his friends to get a soda and hang out, before coming home to read and get some sleep. Today we are working on the computer lesson plans further, creating a cheat sheet for Maurice on the computer and developing a proposal around the long term phase out plan for the bank (both responsibility wise and financially). Should be interesting to go through.

Cheers,

Graham

Ps. Feel free to send me a message if there is anything you would like to hear more about, always nice to hear back from friends back home

Pps. My dad found an interesting article from the Financial Times around inflation in Kenya, apparently it is being driven largely by an expanding credit market in addition to a housing boom. It’s curious to see the effects on the ground when going to the market with Pamela to see how high she finds the prices for things these days...gives you a perspective that you otherwise don't get

(Katrina Manson, "Kenya looks to ease growth sapping bubble" May 10th, Financial Times)(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18fdabd2-952f-11e1-ad72-00144feab49a.html)

Focus groups here we come

Hi everyone,

Naturally my other work ate up my time and I didn’t have time to complete my blog post so here she goes. I will run you though what happened on Wednesday and then today.

Feeling adventurous, Katie and I decided to go for a bit of a longer run Wednesday morning. We followed the same route down by two of the quarries but continued farther down towards the lake. We ended up going a fair distance on a road parallel to the main road our house is on, but closer to the lake.  One the way we passed a few schools and many confused people. Although Katie usually listens to music when she runs I convinced her to ditch the iPod and we ended up talking for most of the run. One thing that we have found very interesting is how in Kenya, even with all the poverty, that there is no noticeable homelessness. When we asked Maurice about it earlier he was shocked to hear we had homelessness in Canada. I suppose that the family support network is stronger in Kenya than Canada, where we rely more on government systems to assist when people are struggling.

After our run we met up with Maurice in town to print out the required documents for the focus group we also picked up some phone top-up cards since Katie and I are both running low on minutes. Once we got home I tried to load the minutes and got through most of them but unfortunately two of the 50 shilling top up cards didn’t work. (The amount is small enough that I am going to just hope it doesn’t happen again) It is an interesting system for adding minutes by sending in a code to Airtel, which then activates / automatically updates your balance. I am curious as to how the businesses selling the top up cards make money, and how that chain of supply works. The mark-up would have to be pretty high even if they made only a few shillings on each phone card they sell…some food for thought.

After lunch we headed back to the bank for our first focus group! Very exciting. We got there nice and early to set up, and were surprised to find a few members already waiting outside the bank. We had been told to expect people at least one hour late, but Maurice said that he had told them to not be late this time. This time did allow us to talk with the members a bit before the actual focus group started. It was pretty funny actually to see how shocked they were to hear that Katie didn’t plan to marry until she was at least 30! Got to love the cultural differences. She has had an ongoing joke with Maurice that she will only marry someone if they get here the big 5 (in baby form) as a dowry.

Anyways, joking aside, once a few members came we got started. Only 20 minutes late! So not too bad. We at first started by introducing ourselves and trying to get the meeting going, only for Maurice to pull us back and make sure that we had a prayer before starting the meeting. Not something I would have remembered on our own, so we will make sure to include it in our future meetings. Once the prayer was complete, and everyone had introduced themselves fully to us (handshakes and full names) we were able to get started. Maurice kicked things off by getting the clients to think of how they see the bank in 10 years, and how they see their involvement. The goal of the first section was to understand how they perceive the bank currently and in the future, then in our second section we pushed them towards how the community could achieve those goals for the bank. The idea was to get them to see the board idea as part of the solution, in addition to increased involvement by community. In the third section we then directed them towards our idea for a board, and asked if they agreed with our idea (thankfully they did), at which point we got them to think about what kind of qualifications or criteria they would want in their representative. To close up the focus group we directed them to think about what to do if the board doesn’t work, and to feel out how they think the board should be governed / manage the privileged access to information they will likely have simply as a result of the position. Then we had a protracted closing where Maurice got talking more generally about the bank and encouraging them to keep saving.

All in all it was a very positive experience. We had to iron out a few things for our next focus group, but the answers were very positive and insightful. I really liked the way that they describe things and what they tended to focus on. They were for example very insistent that the board members would have to not be corrupt, and to love everyone! I don’t think you would get the same love comments at a similar focus group in Canada.

Once the focus group wrapped up we headed home with Maurice. Finally we convinced him to let us see his house, his son Flavin and his wife Irene. Maurice’s family has clearly done their best to improve their lot in life, and their plot of land has developed into somewhat of a mini-village. As is tradition, his house faces back towards his parents house, where most of his younger brothers and sisters still live. Maurice and Irene own a farm right next door, as does his parents. He also has some chicken and a few other small buildings for various purposes (ie. They have a small chicken coop). Flavin is pretty funny, although he is still really young. As you can see in the picture he was a little confused by us! Irene was very welcoming and has invited us to join them for a dinner sometime, which we are looking forward to. We managed to weasel the story of how they met out of Maurice, apparently he had his eye on her for 6 long years before she finally agreed to meet his family. It will be nice to get to know her better over dinner if we get the chance. I always find that the best way to get to know someone is through meeting other people they know, so I am sure she will have some funny stories to share about Maurice!

Maurice's home with chicken coop beside

 On the way home we picked up the bikes which we had patiently been waiting to get fixed and biked home. They are a little rickety but should reduce our travel time significantly. Once home we were pretty unproductive…to be honest getting the focus groups all set up and run was a pretty tiring process even though it didn’t involve much in terms of physical effort.

Katie with a confused Flavin

Their new puppy :)

After an uneventful sleep we got up and went for another run. I challenged Katie to do our original loop around the quarries and back without stopping. She had to walk a short distance but is getting much better (I am also noticing that my fitness is returning which is a pleasant feeling!). Once back I made sure to some laundry...to save me from running out tomorrow. We spent the morning digging back into the audit, since we now had all of the information needed (or so we thought) and then meeting up with Maurice to adjust the plan for the focus groups for today. We are both very grateful for all the work Maurice has done, he tends to be a little confusing with his dates, but all things considered he is a very organised person. With everything that went on around moving to a new bank location, things have been pretty well documented. About the focus groups we encouraged him to engage the clients in more of an ongoing conversation to get deeper answers this time, and to let us use the translator we have hired more effectively, which he agreed with.

After some lunch we then biked over to the bank…which is pretty uncomfortable, but much quicker than the journey by foot. At the bank some clients again came a little early even for the meeting time with a few arriving a bit ‘late’ by Canadian standards. We still did well by Kanyawegi standards however as almost everyone arrived by 20 minutes past 2. The meeting was again very productive, in some ways more so, as Maurice ran with the role we had given him. The translator was very useful to make sure that we could follow along with what was happening while not seriously interrupting the conversation going on. He also by this point knows what answers we give to certain questions so was helpfully proactive in both getting people to speak and in answering some of their questions. It was interesting that they asked whether increased community involvement meant that GIVE was planning on leaving them. The question was much easier to answer (by saying that we would support them but that the drive for change would have to come from the community) in the small group setting than if we had been asked the question at the big bank day. Although we were only expecting around 10 people, there were 11 in the end at my last count, so attendance was quite positive in addition to their responsiveness to the focus group. It was interesting that one of the members mentioned hearing about the other focus group we had done. I am curious to see how word spreads through the community about what we are doing.

Maurice leading the second focus group

Maurice (somewhat) following our script

 Once the meeting was finished we headed to the market next door in Obambo market to try and find some bananas and mangoes, but were disappointed with the selection so headed home. Back at Kaguya we were pleasantly surprised by Syprose with some spaghetti! We figured out that the reason Katie has been feeling a bit under the weather is that she is vegetarian, yet one of the spices they were using contains some meat in it. Not to mention it is nice every once and a while to have some food we are more used to seeing. Naturally her attempt at pasta (a first) was much tastier than ours. Pamela then came home and we had a good conversation with her about English. She was asking whether we thought she should go ahead and take some more courses in English. Her English is very good considering she only speaks it a few months a year, and had been out of school for over 20 years, so I think we convinced her it wouldn’t be necessary. It was funny though because she was saying that people often don’t think we are actually speaking English because of our accents / pronunciation! Which makes sense, and is kind of funny, but is not something I ever would have guessed. Anyways, after dinner we dug more into the audit which we have almost finished, and then we called to update Liz back in Vancouver…and here I am.

Anyways, I am going to head off to bed now so take care for now. Tomorrow Katie and I will be going back into the bank and hopefully getting into the board training plans in more detail, plus a bunch of other things. I’m sure we will keep busy! Katie and I wrote up an outline for our continuity report for the next team to be able to use…it looks like it will be a long document with everything we are doing! Hopefully it will provide some value though. Okay that’s all for now,

Cheers,

Graham

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