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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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
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.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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"
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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"
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, February 11, 2010
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".
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".
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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
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
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