Caro's Memories

Looking back at my trip to Kenya travelling in Africa was an unforgetable experience. Between the dangerous and overcrowded matatu rides, the 18 hour train ride between Nairobi and Mombasa, our snorkeling trip to a tiny island off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania, we experience Africa at its best. Although we had an amazing trip, culturally, it was challenging. It’s not everyday that someone like Max or myself from the “Western World” is faced with the dangers and harsh reality of the “Third World” (or, to be politically correct, the developing world). I will never forget the image of small children eating food that had been cooked in close proximity to chickens over a fire that was being fed plastic from plastic bowl that had been “cleaned” with dirty water, nor will I forget the stories of children who could not afford to attend school, but whos close ones readily raised money for their local church. I maintain that much progress has yet to be made in Kenya and surely in all of Africa.

I will not forget the harsh image of reality nor will I forget the fear of danger and paranoia. Having visited the doctor several times before leaving to Kenya, I was well aware of all of the possible diseases I could contract in Africa. My doctor at Wellesley had immunized me for Polio, Yellow Fever, Typhoid, and H1N1. I had also been taking Lariam for 2 weeks before arriving in Kenya and was well informed about all of the health risks at hand. It wasn’t the disease that scared me the most, though, upon ariving in Kenya. The traffic and the people constantly hasteling foreigners posed a much greater threat. Most illnesses can be treated, but a car accident or an aggressor can take someone’s life away within seconds.

(Posted by Caroline Dupraz)

Finally the tanks have arrived and I took some pictures to show you. My year is almost up and although the last few weeks have been really enjoyable I'm glad that it is. Each tank can fit up to 6000l and as the last family put it "would have taken us 3 years to achieve without extra help". I'm glad I chose 3 larger tanks instead of a few smaller ones because these will guarantee that the families have enough water throughout the year without having to fetch water from the rivers that are now (as rain season is over) visibly contaminated with pesticides and fertilizers or dirty puddles. Next to me on all three pictures is my host father Peter Kioko. Currently he is responsible for the observers of the upcoming election on the draft constitution and nervous about whether there will be any violence. He is happy though that "this time people do not hate each other for being Kikuyu or Luo but for yes or for no". Great progress!

Children Playing in the Village

A Series of Photos

World Cup Training with Mwendwa and Ken

Landscape around my Project

The Matatu from Machakos

Judy, Joshua and Sami from the Village

The two little ones and me

Walk to my Project

Street Vendor in Nairobi

Streets in Nairobi

Survived what is probably the most dangerous part of my trip to Germany: the Mombasa high way. It is amazing how this busy road, connecting the largest African harbour Mombasa with east Africa, is basically a country road and I use the word road loosely because there is a huge chunk of it which is basically just country. Rain season has really kicked off and you can't escape it for more than 7 hours at a time.
As there is some money left over, which is not enough for a fourth tank, I have convinced Peter to use it to build 3 further gabions to stop soil erosion on the road and farms. Originally he wanted to convince me that it would be spent best on a fence around his own farm.


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It's raining again so this year really nobody can complain about not enough of that stuff. Let's hope I get some dinner as sometimes the fire wood also gets wet and then I'll go to bed hungry.
In other news: when I speak of doing this or that in the village with somebody most of the time I'll be talking of musyoki. He's the only one completely open, honest (90% of the time) and interested in me and I enjoy prefer his company to anybody else's. He is increadibly helpful when it comes to cooking, going some place or passing the day. I play a lot with the toddler of the sister to Peter and am his second nanny when the grand mother isn't around. I'm hoping to make a long lasting impression and that he'll be as open, if not more to future volunteers, as musyoki. There are also two boys who like fooling around with me. One lives with the grand mother (Mwendwa) and the other lives in musyoki's compound (Ken). The first lost both his parents when he was young and the latter's father just died 2 weeks ago in an accident in Nairobi.


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Of course once you meet richer better educated kenyans the attitude changes and you're pleasantly surprised how nice it is to be treated indifferently. Not in the sense of being ignored but just as another mortal human being.
It's also impressive with what people can be satisfied with. As I mentioned in earlier posts the songs on the radio all sound the same (and with 2 exceptions I'm actually not kidding). Everything is repeated over and over again whether it is tea for breakfast, ugali and suquma for lunch then ghitheri for dinner or even the movies shown at the movie place we sometimes go to. Chuck Norris is a pretty cool guy but after seeing one of his movies once I've had enough unlike all the others around me who forget what the movie really was about the moment we leave. Another funny thing about these movies is that, although not even remotely challenging, I get asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger is actually real, the 13 meter boa strangeling jenifer lopez exists and listen to a discussion whether a one-eyed monster with 4 arms beating up a man was real or not.


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Excuse my absence but I have been in a bit of slump as of lately. The last few weeks have been dreadful. I have no idea how the days have gone by, because frankly I have not been doing much. The water tanks will be delivered on June 2 to 3 families that have changed again because the ones before do not trust plastic tanks so be it. I've convinced Peter that we need to make a reference for every plant on the farm with some brief information so the farm can actually become a model farm where people see what alternatives there are to maize and beans. It has been raining so much that the drought has been forgotten and it's back to hakuna mattata. The rain also means that there is little weeding to be done and the big job has been extending the gabions and gathering plants for compost. I plan my weeks and months so that I get some change to my project life as often as possible.
March ended with our second seminar in Nairobi. As practically nothing had changed in the months between the first and the second seminar we voiced our concerns and problems without any restraints. However, only when the representative of the ijgd told us that the night before he had told the kvda they would not be sending any new volunteers the coming year did I get the feeling we were being listened to.
In late April I was visited by Nora, who had been a volunteer last year, and I told her to tell the sci to do the same thing as the ijgd. She confessed that all the other volunteers she had talked to had said the same thing. Sending volunteers that are barely 20 to Kenya while working with an organisation like the kvda is irresponsible. Especially as there are plenty of alternatives. We all have the impression the kvda just does not care. For some that does not matter for others it became so frustrating they turned only to Anna for assistance, changed organizations or left the country.
This lack of interest became most evident when we talked about little our projects had been prepared. None knew our names, projects were surprised to find two volunteers or that we were staying for 11 months. None had been previously visited so the unlucky ones that were sent to to dreadful places and, thinking that it must be their responsibility now to be "open" about the "experience", were taken advantage of. I know we could have done our civil service in Germany but this is Kenya and you can not expect volunteers to cope by themselves especially as the aim of the weltwärts program is to promote the millenium goals.. Good luck with that.
The news of volunteers getting robbed or nearly raped have affected us so much that we now take a taxi at 19:30 to drive what would otherwise be a 7 minute walk (two volunteers were robbed at gun point a few months ago). The fact that the willingness to be extremely violent for just 200ksh (2 euros) is so high and the traffic accidents are so frequent nearly make it impossible to feel safe when you leave the gate of your gated shopping center, gated restaurant or gated apartment block. Nairobi is one ocean of walls, barbed wire and gates. Although I've heard that one could not go to the city center either 3 years ago and now it's just as busy as any other city center so maybe it will get better.


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The French

"The French come to the kenian farmers and tell them if they grow French peas the French company will buy up all the produce with one evil, nasty and vicious trick: the seeds, machinery and anything else needed to grow them have to be bought from this company at prices that leave the poor Kenyan with very little". Stories like this or variations of it ranging from the poorest small scale farmer to the even poorer Kenyan government are repeated over and over again roughly as often as the five songs that fill a 24 hour Kamba radio station. No matter how often one tries to explain why it is always brought up when the topic of talk is "how hard is the Kenyan life". Of course methods like that are unfair and now in widespread use exactly because the "giving" side actually receives more. The solution? Simply do not agree to the deal.
I do not know whether this attitude of "why is the world so cruel" is so widespread because the politicians have played the blame game so well (colonization is the favorite here even after 50 years of independence in which the Asian counterparts such as Malaysia increased their GDP per capita tenfold compared to that of Kenya in the same time span) or because the millions to billions of aid money rushing in are seen as something of a right now. Most other volunteers believe both.
I genuinely believe most of the aid money is well intentioned but it is not showing the results it should (how can it in an area of world preocupied with wars mostly due to borders that do not reflect the ethnicity and therefore act as another easy populist target for the blame game) and it certainly is not appreciated as a temporary thing but as another source of income like a VAT. The only way to end this is to have the political will to actually do something (e.g. Deny the foreign company the deal and try it yourself) or act responsibly and accept the conscequences (e.g. Agree to the deal but appreciate how others are doing things maybe do it better next time). Or combine the two like the Chinese and let the "western" companies in but under lots of conditions, which then savagely and so unfairly take advantage of the greed and arrogance of those companies that thought they can just take advantage of the cheap labour force and move on without conscequences. These conditions allowed China to first copy (well still copy) and now produce their own.
To get this political will the other volunteers suggested to take away what is dearest, the aid. This brings us back to China because if Europe and the US pull back the aid the first to knock at the door will be the Chinese and they do not care where the money ends up or which human right is abused on the way as ling as in return they get something more valuable like a nice copper mine or a contract for a pipeline through Uganda to Mombasa and from there to China.
I do not want to paint China as a new evil imperialist but they do not have the term politically correct and say what they think whether it is in Copenhagen, Davos or Nairobi. Somebody from the European Commission told me that when the Chinese win a contract or want to build a factory in Africa they arrive with Chinese experts, workers and material because they want to "get the job done on time and on budget", whch they deem impossible with, in this case, Namibians.
This vicious cycle can either be broken by the international community making development the global issue that it is or Africans finding that political will. The first is unlikely because Asia seems to be doing fine without the international community, south America doesn't want the community and who really cares about Africa enough to go through all that trouble what does it offer? For the latter I leave you with another story this time from Kenya. A delegation of Kenyan is invited to India. When the meetings come to the end the Kenyan delegate walks over to the Indian counterpart and asks: "how did you manage to get all this wealth?" the Indian walks him over to the windows points outside and replies: "see that bridge?" "yes" "10% of it went to me". The following year the same summit is held this time in Kenya. At the end the impressed Indian walks over to the Kenyan and asks "your not doing to bad yourself what did you do?" the Kenyan walks him over to the window and asks: "see that bridge over there?" "no" "100% of it went to me"



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Only in Kenya

So I thought I would write about some of the small things I notice that just make me think "only in Kenia"
Last week with the other volunteers that have left since we passed a little 1x1m hut made out of aluminum on our way to Wamunio (the woodcarving place). Looking closer we found out it was the "police station" and the construction of it was sponsored by some company that had plastered this for the world to see on nearly every bit of the little space that was available. The mix of the pathetic size of the police station and the fact that a company was so proud of sponsoring this little hut made all of us laugh.
Two days later when they had left I was sitting in Machakos having lunch when I noticed a few older men sitting at a table next to me. Suddenly I saw that one of them had a Hitler mustache. I do not know whether he thought Hitler was a great guy and needed praising or whether that particular mustache was fashionable either reasons made me think "only in Kenya".

Judy


Ken


Mwendwa with a Swiss t-shirt!


Sammy (the child that is always happy to see me), the grandma and the child who always cries when he sees me.


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It's raining! And how it's raining.. After days of heat and in February (the hottest month) it's hailing and drumming on the alluminium roofs like steel drums. It's funny how after only 4-5 months mood now lifts when it's raining.


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Finally we have made some progress (and set-backs) on the issue of how to raise money, why to raise money and what to raise money for. The initial plan as I said on the blog was to raise funds for 20 water tanks with the help of the small project fund of the embassy in Nairobi. Unfortunately that will not work and so I had to slim down the plans to 5 tanks for 5 active community members that will contribute in cash, ballast and sand (to mix with the cement). With the "hakuna matata" attitude this has taken some time but now I have the updated prices, visited the families and solved problems such as where the tanks should be built and how large etc. I want to try and raise 2,000 Euros with your kind contributions in order to start construction of the tanks as soon as possible. Anne the other volunteer who was with me for 3 weeks is trying to raise funds in her community in Germany as well so I think this goal is reachable. I will send further details on Saturday.
And for those interested I got an unconditional offer from the University of Leicester for International Relations, which is a huge relief!
I hope everybody is well. I'm slowly succumbing the constant plus 30 degrees.
Max

Walking towards the final passport check at Geneva's airport, listening to my ipod, I was thinking about the last days spent in Europe and the next months to be spent in Kenya. When "Love like a sunset" came on, a simple 7min mostly instrumental by Phoenix, I had reached the point of thinking how great the days had been with friends and family. I guess the combination of the beauty of the song and the hopeles thought of trying to share my time in Europe to anybody here brought me to the brink of tears. Surprized by my sudden emotional outburst I stepped aside as to not face passport control with tear stained eyes you never know, these days anything can be a bomb even your underwear. I guess that showed me just how detached the two worlds are in many ways.
Putting that aside I was greated kindly when I arrived a few days late due to delays of all sorts. I adapted back quickly and have over the last couple of days improved my room and invested in the kitchen a little. With almost childish joy I have added a table from the local carpenter for 7Euros (a stool is to follow soon), hung up some of my lamps and rearranged a few things to make the room more comfortable. For the kitchen I bought a pan and spices with which I will cook for myself more often. For myself because nobody really wants to eat what I cook it is too unknown, leaves more for me! Plus I have to eat less Ugali which I really can't stand..
Otherwise the food is really okay and it is surprisingly satisfying to eat what you planted/harvested yourself. Whether it is roasted maize, watermelon or mangos they all taste great. Though all the euphoria of a good harvest after such a bad drought is matched by my disappointment that so many plants have sucumb to the sun or insects showing just how dead certain parts of the farm are.
The first evening I came back I realized to my surprise two things had changed: toilet paper was in the living room not only my room and Peter and Alice were brushing their teeth! Whether I caused them to change their habbits or they just felt like their teeth needed some hygiene I do not know either way I see it as my first major success! Another plus is that Peter reads most of the magazines I have lying around and he really seems more informed.
On the first weekend I visited the house of the family of Peter's wife just across the valey yet it seems to be a different world. I'm guessing I'm somewhere above 1500m and although it is January (supposedly the hottest month of the year after september)it gets very cold. The view is amazing as not much on the horizon is higher than us. The area is far more densley covered in trees than Kathuni and generally looks wealthier. The high altitudes and the better environment provide them with enough water. The family is very welcoming and the children especially are more open and cheerful than others. As a guest to a foreign home the entire procedures and rituals of the Kamba hospitality have to be followed, which basically means I do not see any of the women except when they serve tea or food. Another thing is that the father and Peter talk in Kikambe and clearly about me, not that I mind so much as I do not sense they are talking about me in a bad way. Peter then apologizes but not for talking about me in a language I cannot understand but for talking in Kikambe. I answer he should not be worried and everything returns to normal.
Over the past days I have come to the conclusion I want to raise funds for 5 tanks that will be spread in the community rather than giving one a family each that way we can raise more from the community and more people profit and also tought in the nursery school of 5 to 7 year olds (half of them coughing constantly as lung diseases are widespread) more to that some other.
Kwaheri

Back in kathuni and desperately looking for a light switch... I'm stocked up on books and pad notes so I think the next couple of days I will be busy as there is nothing left to do on the farm except wait.


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Stuck!

Flight from Geneva delayed for 2 hours and so I am spending the night in Istanbul at the expense of Turkish airlines.


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Location:Istanbul, Turkey