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.