Three Down

You know that feeling, after you’ve just run a marathon and realise you can take a minute to breath? Yeah me neither, but I can imagine it feels somewhat like this.

Though I really don’t have a good excuse for not writing in so long, an excuse I do have. Originally, we had planned to spread our five training sessions over three weeks. We had our first meeting on Monday, and announced the schedule to our new Board members. Well, apparently the dates we had planned for, particularly during the third week, simply did not work with their schedules. After re-juggling and considering everyone’s weeks, the agreed training sessions ended up looking like so: Monday, Wednesday Thursday, Tuesday, Thursday. A little worrying, since Graham and I felt like we still had mountains to climb in order to finish the plan for the second training, let alone the third.

However, in hindsight, getting forced to figure it out with considerable time pressure was the best learning experience I could have asked for. Instead of procrastinating and waiting for other people to help me figure it out, I was thrown in with Graham, given about forty eight hours to plan seven hours’ worth of training material. Other than the rough work we had prepped while determining which topics to cover on each day, we had little to work with. It’s amazing what you can accomplish once you get pushed out of your comfort zone.

Rest assured, all the sessions turned out to be very successful – simultaneously the most relieving and rewarding feeling I have ever experienced. Two sessions packed with auditing, budgeting, goal setting and case work, all from scratch.  There were countless touching and eye-opening experiences. If and when the internet starts working again, I will post about all of them. 

Election Night

The elections wrapped up last night, and it was pretty exciting to say the least. It was surprising to feel so excited during the counting process, not at all what I was expecting. The overall stats were pretty good. 67% of the bank members came out to vote - we are happy with that! [100% was the goal, and Maurice tried suggesting we extend the elections one more day... for democracy you know. We told him that it would be undemocratic to change the dates, since it didn't give everyone the same opportunity or knowledge]
On the note of Maurice, he was not as excited as I had thought he would be. A small part of me thinks this might be because he is scared of the Board. He runs the Bank throughout the year, does an amazing job of it, and knows more about the members and the system than anyone else does. I think he's a bit scared to let these six people into his project that he has built. Completely reasonable, he cares incredibly about the Bank's success, since it has such an impact on the community's life. Another part though that I have made a note of is that many places in Kenya have "Boards" and "committees", yet these really don't do much other than have the title and a little bit of corruption on the side. I think once Maurice realized that this would be a Board Board, one that meets monthly and evaluates both the Bank and Maurice's role as the CEO, he got a little nervous. Not accusing Maurice in any way, but the Kenyan way of doing things is to get things done the easiest way, then re-image the whole scheme to make it seem that it was done another way. 
We will conquer that issue in the Board training, which is set to begin in 30 hours! Surreal - the little imaginary Board that Graham and I have built the training for, whom we just referred to as the BoD now are very much real people!
Introducing Pamela, Joice, Joyce, Rose, Fredrick and Michael - our new Board members!

Project Run Through

It’s somewhat of a running joke at Kaguya that none of my blog posts refer to the projects we are working on this summer. Not fair but kind of true, I guess when compared to Grahams blog

So I figured I would start writing waaay better project updates than he does. Challenge accepted.

The goal for the time that I leave Kenya is to have created a Board of Directors that will create both security within the bank and member engagement within the community. Please note that the six members that will be elected for this position a) probably won’t speak English b) have probably never worked within a formally structured job setting before and c) are completely volunteer. The elections run until Saturday, May 26th, after which we will have our six board members. The first day of training is Monday, May 28^th. And from that day, there is thirty days until my flight leaves Nairobi to return to Canada.

Within those thirty days is 5 days of board training, two days of audit education, one full-fledged board meeting, one bank day celebration,  dealing with the Barclays saga (to be explained soon, it’s completely comical) as well as determining how to deal with Honey Care Africa (another situation that makes me break into hysterical laughter just thinking about it).

As of tonight, the end of the third day of voting for the Board, 30% of the members of the bank had voted. We haven’t yet reached 100%, but we’ve got until Saturday evening. At a minimum, we are hoping that over 50% of the members show up, to really promote democracy. [side note: people here love the idea of democracy, though they have trouble grasping the full concept. I congratulated Maurice on the fact that we had a 44% turnout rate for the focus groups last week, and he told me he was upset. When I told him that no, 44% for a focus group is really good, he accused me of not believing in democracy, because it would only have been democracy if all 280 members had attended. I told him that democracy was providing every individual an equal opportunity, which we had done. He refused my answer and that conversation ended pretty quickly]

Actually, just realising that there is little over thirty days left almost gave me anxiety. More like a shock that my trip is a little under half-way over. 

A Quick Hello

I apologise for not posting for so long, I can’t believe that a week has flown by – it’s been crazy busy over here.

Over the weekend, Kaguya grew from two to seven! Victoria and Lisa, from Nutrition, joined us on Friday, and our three Education girls, Chaviva, Allie and Sarah, got in on Monday. The past few days have been spent showing the girls around and introducing them to the Kenyan way.

On top of all that, the Nomination and Election process is in full swing. We had a great nomination week, with over 29 nominees. We had a mandatory nominee meeting on Sunday, to congratulate them and discuss what the positions would entail. Some people didn’t show up, so we ended up with 22 very strong candidates to the position. Its very exciting, as we were a little nervous that we would not get very many at all, or that we would be left with weaker candidates.

Throughout this week, we are running elections. So far, 25% of the members have come out to vote! It’s Thursday on this side of the world, and these elections run until Saturday evening. How exciting the project is getting is unreal.

I’ll post a longer blog tonight, I am just running off and heading to Kisumu, we need to get some more groceries! (Mangos are 45 cents, needless to say, its mostly all I eat)

Holla Holo

There are very few stores in Kanyawegi. I could probably count on one hand the number of stores I have seen since being in the region that would qualify under North American standards. Here, it is all about the markets. Graham and I have spent a majority of our days in Obambo market, where the Bank is located. Obambo is small and quaint, with a couple Mandazi places, one place to get cold soda, a place to watch football game in, and a few open air stalls the merchants use. Most of the produce isn’t grown locally, but is bought in Kisumu and brought here. It’s a lazy little market that only gets exciting when it starts to torrential downpour.

Holo, a twenty minute bike ride, has become my new favorite market. Tuesdays are known in the region to be Holo Market Days. No joke, we couldn’t hold a Focus Group late on Tuesday because people would be at Holo, and luckily we didn’t. Maurice took Graham and I, and it was such a fun end to the day. While it doesn’t compare in size or crazy to a Thai Night Market, it is a wonderful place. We can find all our fruits and veggies there, along with rice, beans, lentils and any dried fish we could desire (we passed on that). Plus, one little stall made crazy good African Samosas.

 
I’m pretty excited to head over there again next week and really get to explore. It’s a nice medium between the African slumber of Obambo and the relative intensity that is Kisumu.

Monkey Business

So far our exposure to wildlife in Africa has been pretty limited. We have BB Cow living in the yard, some goats that bleat at us as we bike to the Bank each morning, some irritating chickens and roosters that start cock-a-doodle-dooing at 5 am, and the pack of guard dogs that howl all night. The little birds are kind of cute, little balls of bright blue and yellow bouncing between trees. We also have somewhere between three and seven geckos roaming the house. Pretty lame on the African Exclusive animals.

BUT I DON’T CARE ANYMORE BECAUSE I SAW MY FIRST AFRICAN MONKEYS

They like to live in the Mango trees that line Kaguya. They were running across the roof of one of the buildings towards the mango tree. The children who live on the property were playing with our bikes when they pointed them out to us. I was in such a fit of excitement I quite forgot about pictures. Mama Pamella and Mama Syprose laughed when I told them how excited I was about seeing one. Apparently they are huge pests and eat all the good mangos during mango season. And apparently they frequent Kaguya, I just need to pay attention and spend more time lurking near the mango trees.

Maybe I’ll even tame one and make it my best friend. Who knows, Africa is a crazy place

Mama Africa

I’ve found that since I have been here, it becomes so easy to get dialled into creating processes that you can lose sight of why you’re even in Kenya

While here, I have connected closely with Pamella, our house keeper. We call her Mama Africa, and she calls me her Daughter (watch out Mum, I might not be coming home!). She’s extremely sweet, and taught herself English over the past few years of working in the GIVE household. She told us that people assume she has a university education when she speaks with us since she is fluent (she only has up to a grade 8 education)

She’s been a member of the Bank since the beginning, aka 2007. She claims that the past five years have changed the way she lives her life. Before she began saving, she wouldn’t even have a spare 50 shillings, and her household had no security of any kind. The Bank gave her the venue to do so, though it wasn’t until 2010 that she really got into it. She was a recipient of GIVEs second round of microcredit lending, which she used her loan to grow her little grocery shop in Kanyawegi. Her business grew, and most of all, she was given confidence and strength. Pamella now is a consistent Super Saver, coming to the Bank sometimes more than twice a day! She saves whatever she can, even if it is only 20 shillings (about 30 cents). She can afford to put her children through school, and even had the ability to send her eldest to Boarding School, which is much more expensive than public school here.

It sounds like such a clichéd story you get from a brochure or on those late night infomercials. But it was surreal to hear it coming from Mama herself, and to hear the passion in her voice as she talked about how much the Bank means to her. She’s currently nominated for a Board of Director position at the Bank, and she is the perfect candidate. I almost want to fix the elections to guarantee her a spot, because she does nothing but good for the Bank.

Kaguya, in photos

Yes, I finally overcame my laziness to get Graham to compress a couple of photos I had taken of Kaguya (our little compound we live in). Then, after that process was finished, I had to wait for Safaricom to figure itself out. And here they are!

This is the entrance to our little GIVE palace

BB Cow! Pretty sure he was born a day or two before I arrived, such a cutie, he's just learning to walk around by himself, he stands outside the house most days

Graham chilling on the cement thing, with the laundry. This is our preferred tanning location

The back side of the house (left) and the second house (right). There are too many GIVErs to fit into the one house!

There is my first round of pictures, hope you enjoy! Better late than never, right?

A Mad Tea Party

Kenyans only drink two things I have realized. Soda (either Coca-Cola or Fanta) and Tea. This isn't even an exaggeration. Last night, while walking home from grabbing a soda with Maurice and his friend Timothy, Timothy said how he thought it was funny that Muzungas (white people) drink water.

Soda is a very social event, very much like grabbing a drink in Canada is (drinking any alcohol here is reserved for alcoholics, so we've been staying away from that representation).  Its casual, you go sit in the market place after work and talk and make noises at the farm animals that also live in the market place (goats and chickens mostly)

But Tea is a totally different ball game. The American Tea Party doesn't even represent how political Tea is in Kenya. I mean, it’s tasty and I have pretty much replaced drinking water with drinking copious amounts of green tea and masala chai. 

So what is the big deal with the politics? Most meetings and conferences I have been to serve both coffee and tea, but never have I shown up at those events expecting a free drink – it’s just a nice perk really.

But in Kenya, things are completely different. Bringing tea to a meeting sets a precedent, and gives the group the mentality that they can begin to make demands. Tea makes things real intense. Not only does it give the group that entitlement, but it also sets the expectation that you will continue to provide tea, for each and every upcoming event. Especially if it is a Muzunga providing the tea - they know we can afford it (it costs about 100 shillings to provide the tea, which is a $1.30).

All we wanted to do was provide refreshments for the training sessions for our Board of Directors. We had this idea, that as a group strengthening activity, each Director would bring a different ingredient and we could all have tea and be merry and continue on with our lives. But when we asked Maurice if this would work, he told us how inappropriate it would be, how hard it would be for the individuals and what if they couldn’t afford it? Gah.

To tea or not to tea, that is the question.

The Safaricom Situation

“Katie, you really need to learn to ditch the sitch” – Alana McMullen

“Here, you should just use my phone” – Graham Clark

“I would not wish Safaricom on my worst enemy” – Katie Dergousoff

People in Canada whine and moan over how overpriced and shady all of the cell phone providers are. But I swear I will never ever ever again complain about Rogers or Telus or Shaw Cable as long as I live under my parents roof. Nothing is as horrible as Safaricom.

How naïve I was, that first day when I flew into Nairobi airport and saw the Safaricom sign – cheap calls to Canada! Four shillings a call! Five cents! Wow, waaaaaay cheaper than Rogers could ever dream to be! And wow, Graham had gotten us a Safaricom UBS rocket stick! Internet at Kaguya, so key.

No. No. No. Katie from last week. Don’t do it.

My Safaricom SIM card cannot hold connection for more than ten minutes, IF it can even find reception in the house (which is about once a day, with two bars if I am particularly lucky). Texting is a particularly fun adventure, as it can take up to half an hour of resending a message before it goes through, then up to four hours to receive a message back (tried and true.)

The internet stick is even more comical. No website has ever been developed for third world country internet. Not joking, it has probably taken about fifteen minutes just to publish this post. The Facebook homepage can load, and if I am lucky I can see my notifications before it crashes and refuses to load for another twenty four hours. Gmail loads on the html view, but pray to the lord that you can open an email or send an attachment. Uploading a single picture takes more than an hour, but I am not too sure as my patience ran out shortly after that and I threw the stick across the room.

However, I will give the acceleration and braking on the stick credit, as the kilobytes per second tend to fluctuate like so:

0 kb/s, 400kb/s, 2.345 kb/s, 0 kb/s, 30kb/s, 999999999999kb/s, 0 kb/s, .03 kb/s, 3 kb/s

Safaricom is the bane of my existence. 

Love is all you need...

It’s quite funny. I always had this little idea in my head that most organisations worldwide have the same processes to reach success, with the differences lying in each community’s definition of ‘success’.

In Sauder we are taught a specific way of thinking which involves a very logical, mathematical (hah) way of thinking. I came over here with the expectation that our focus groups regarding the evolution of the bank would follow this thought process. Yes, I had factored in the fact that the majority of the members present at these focus groups would not have a formal education past high school (if that) but my strong belief of the one way to implement this Board of Director structure won out.

Naturally and slightly ironically, everything I had been taught about the ‘way’ to do things was wrong. To the villagers of Kanyawegi, this Board of Directors would not just be a group of seven well-liked individuals from the community who had the capacity to learn the hard skills of commerce (such as auditing and reasonable decision making). While we were envisioning the Board as a group of members liable to the community, who would act as a check against Maurice, the community feels that this Board will have the power to achieve great things. This Board will change Kanyawegi. This board will be courageous, honest, loyal, transparent and determined.

And the word that was used more times than any other word? Love.

Love is not a word I have ever associated with formal business. Saying that the Board will have to have love, that they will be bonded by love, that they will work out of love for the Bank, those things would just never ever be said in a Western society looking at the same challenge. They feel that love will conquer corruption and jealousy. I’ve never thought of love this way. But to these villagers, the Bank has surpassed just being another place. The fact that each participant in this initial focus group felt so strongly that any member elected to the Board must feel this love shows the impact our little Bank has had.

Truly humbling. 

Shaggy

The little estate that we are living on, Kaguya, is conveniently located in the heart of Kanyawegi. However, it is irritatingly far from Town, aka Kisumu. Also irritating is the fact that such things as Barclays (which GIVE has an account with) and the supermarket are located in Kisumu. 

Mutatus are to Kenya what the 99 b-line is at rush hour to Vancouver. Packed, sweaty and driven by a maniac. However, unlike Vancouver, Mutatus have hilarious names stamped across the front window, such as 'Mystery Machine', 'The Lord Savior' and 'Challenger'. Today was my second time riding in a Mutatu. Its name was 'Shaggy'. It played reggae, was the size of a Dodge Minivan, and held over fourteen people. Also smelled lovely.

Today I also had my first Town experience. I learned how to find Barclays from the Mutatu stops (essential to survival) nd explored the Kenyan version of Walmart - the Nakumatt. Sadly, I left my phone and camera at home, because I was warned by Maurice that people in Town actively try to steal things from foreigners (though it seemed to me that people were more likely to openly stare at me than get close enough to steal my things) but Town is such an experience that I am sure I will have to relive, probably over the weekend. 

Tomorrow begins the first day of our project to implement the board within the bank. We are holding our first of six focus groups. It will be interesting, and I will definitely record some of the funnier quotes that will undoubtedly be spoken.

Pictures are coming, I promise! I am still trying to figure out how to upload them without causing my rocket stick to go into overdrive and crash the internet. a

Peek-a-boo

Graham and I had a lazy day this afternoon, with no commitments to be anywhere. So naturally we spent the entire day lounging around doing absolutely nothing.

That’s a joke; we actually accomplished so many things, without even realising how hard we had worked.

The day started off a bit too early for me, which resulted in sleeping through my alarm and forgetting to unlock the door so Mama Syprose (our cook) couldn’t get inside the house for quite some time. I think she forgives me now, but she got her revenge by leaving us with leftovers for dinner.

The greatest achievement (in my mind) came in the form of a beautifully colour coordinated calendar. It has every task that we need to complete in the next two months, as well as the deadlines and friendly reminders to go shopping and pick up the other incoming travellers. We chipped away at the audit (Maurice “hasn’t yet got” the bank expenses, which he should have been keeping a record and the receipts of…such the Kenyan way) and managed to finish the agenda for our six upcoming focus groups. Yay!

And of course, as the day neared to the end, our favorite three children who live in our compound came over to play. Well, really they stood at the door and made loud noises until we went outside. I taught the little girl the “Kit Kat Bar” clapping game, and she taught me an “avocado” dance (to the tune of Frere Jacques, no less). They pretend they have no idea what we are saying, but they clearly know English when we talk to them! An hour after we had said goodnight and told them it was waaay past their 7pm bedtime, Graham and I were sitting down and eating our dinner. I was facing the window, and had just finished explaining to him how I hate having the curtains drawn because anyone could see us, when I had the terrifying feeling of being watched. I pointed at the window, making the ‘I’m watching you’ motion, when a burst of laughter cried out. I have no idea how long those kids were standing there without us knowing it, because they refused to tell us. Even as I am typing this, two hours after the incident, I keep looking out the window that has no curtains to make sure they aren’t standing there, playing peek-a-boo with me

Howa You?

I can’t believe it has only bee three days since I have arrived in Kanyawegi – I feel like I am already fluent in Luo(the native language) and getting quite used to the smells. Okay, fine, I only know about four words in Luo (Good morning, good day, good night, and good bye, and very much) but those words get me through every situation so far. And the smell, well let’s just say I still prefer the smells of home, where deodorant and garbage cans are a bit more widely used by the general population…

It has been a busy three days. My first day, while battling some crazy jet lag, I spent meeting Maurice and hanging out at the little Bank, watching how he preps files and conducts transactions.

Yesterday was another great day at the bank, except things got a lot more exciting when Graham and I began to pick apart the files, looking at which village every member is from, and determining that all the files were accurate. Somewhere during those three hours Graham and I realised we really needed to computerize the system, as we basically spent the afternoon doing something which Excel could have done through “highlight, sort, okay, perfect”. We also got to meet some of the children that live in Obambo market, and got to show them the magic of Disney. Though doubtful they understood the words, the kids L-O-V-E-D the Lion King, and were laughing so hard at “Hakuna Matata” (which really does mean ‘no worries’ in Swahili)!

Today (Sunday) we went to church! The villagers are extremely Christian, which Graham and I found out after we had been chided by Maurice for only going to church once in the past year. Oops. The entire service was in Luo, but the singing was lovely. They also dance, like full on a step below full-blown hiphop during their hymns. So entertaining to see them in their Sunday best, rocking out to Hallelujah.

After church, we met with Chief Phillip and presented him with gifts to show our thanks for his involvement with the Bank over the past year. While the bank was undergoing changes, Chief Phillip acted as an extremely important figure and a great ally to GIVE. He was very kind to us today, and we got to talk about his visions for the bank, and how closely they aligned with ours.

After working all afternoon on Access forms and Audits (kills me that access is so useful and I didn’t pay attention to a minute of it in MIS class), Graham and I decided to head outside to do some yoga on the lawn. I would say that we got about ten seconds of time in before the children who live in the compound with us came running over yelling “Howa You Howa You”. They tried downward dog a few times, got into warrior pose maybe once, but then started throwing grasshoppers at us and begging us to play. There was no way to turn down that cuteness.

That recap doesn’t even do justice to how amazing the past few days have been. Pictures to follow and definitely more posts!

T-12 to Takeoff

So it's my last night in Vancouver, and I am like this, just counting down the minutes

I've packed my bags (four times) and (quaduruple) checked that I have everything. It amazed me that I can pack my next two months worth of clothes and granola bars into a 45-L backpack from MEC.


 Since we aren't allowed out of the house after dark, as thats when all the hyenas come out, I've got my nights to read all those books I have always meant to. I've got my great literature reads for the trip: Gravity's Rainbow, Germs Guns and Steel, Don Quixote, War and Peace, and Tender is the Night. it gets dark at 6pm. Also downloaded some quality movies (Disney say what)  as well as Planet Earth.

Really at this point, all there is between myself and Kenya is an evening and a day and a half of flying.