First Board Training

As promised, here are my posts about the first three Board training sessions! Only a week late -  in a Kenyans opinion, these are right on time.

The first training was held on Monday. It was exciting to say the least to meet each new Board member. Sadly, everyone ran on Kenyan time and we had to start half an hour late. It was fun for Graham and I to watch the members form opinions of us. We knew Pamela quite well (she is our Momma after all) and our translator Joseph (from the eleven focus groups…) but the other members were people that we had only met three or four times briefly in the past three weeks.

It was apparent that none of the members knew what to make of the training when we started. We started off the meeting with icebreakers, which on reflection I don’t think they regularly use over here. One of the introduction questions we asked was “if you could be any animal, what would you be and why?” Some of the answers we got were a little weak (Graham said he would be a beaver, since they are smart and hardworking. Last I checked beavers just block rivers and look soggy) but others were inspiring. Joyce said she would be a giraffe, since she would use her height to continually look forwards over the horizon. Fredrick said he would be a simba so he can protect the bank from corruption. We found these quite interesting, but the members could not figure out the ‘point’ behind them.

Shortly after coaxing them through the introductions and icebreakers, we got to the good stuff. We had presented a case study about working for the benefit of the community, and they all rocked it. In fact, they actually provided better answers to all the questions than we had anticipated them to have. Brainstorming also gave them an opportunity to get very engaged with their learning. They gave us some great responses to our brainstorm on Ways to Engage the Community Members. However, we shortly had to introduce time limits on their presentations. Brevity is not a widely used skill here.

After the session finished, we asked for some feedback on the pace and teaching style. We got many compliments on the fact that we did not stand and lecture them, but rather had every section act as a different style of discussion. That was a great feeling, hearing that all our hard work paid off to provide them with a valuable experience!

As for the Tea Situation. We presented our idea, but before we even had the opportunity to finish our sentence, all seven members were laughing at the idea. They did not see the point in pooling their tea supplies. That was their choice, we offered but apparently it’s engrained in their culture too greatly to change. We have opted to not provide tea for the remaining sessions as well, as we didn’t see the value in providing tea when they weren’t willing to share either. More updates to come.