Final thoughts....

So I am back at home now and have had some time to reflect on my experience in Kenya...

I feel very blessed and grateful for the opportunities I've had the past few months and the people that made that possible.

It definitely was a dream come true in that I got to do exactly what I have always wanted to, in a country I love, surrounded by wonderful people. I have grown and changed irreversibly.


This time around, I learned a lot more about global development, how organizations function and disfunction. And how I want to contribute in the future. I know what I don't want to work on or be apart of, as detailed in all my work here.

Its amazing that communication is my biggest lesson. I have never felt I communicated that well, but having a development organization that doesn't listen is horrifying to me. Accidental neo-colonialism. I want to work on communication and dissemination strategies for getting out information.

As you read, I am much more critical now about the effectiveness of "helping" people in the Global South. I hope my observations will stay with me so that whatever I do in the future, the focus is on grassroots level empowerment, because that is where my heart lies. All of my experiences were possible because I have been empowered by others to take risks and seek out opportunities, to create my life moment by moment, and now my goal is to find out what I can do to instill that confidence in others.

From my Kenyan friends who let me crash on mud floors, eats bread with ants crawling on it, and get over thinking I needed ANYTHING other than some love and good people in this world, I have learned the most. I do not fear death right now. I do not fear not eating for days on end. I do not fear dark and dangerous places. People holding guns up to my face for a bribe. Trusting strangers who don't speak my language and have no reason to be good to me at all (in fact they should hate me). I trust some things so much more now, while also trusting other (mostly the business of "doing good") less. I am less naive now.

I feel very powerful, nearly invincible right now, and I have exactly $0 in the bank. Had to live off my last $5 in Belgium coming home, by buying a giant jug of yogurt that I ate for my 14 hr layover. Ha! Its all part of the journey.

*Its not the amount of money in the bank you have, it is how powerful you feel when you have nothing at all.*

How the other half lives

So L* was going up to stay at his property in Naru Maro, and also visit the Aberdere Mts (one of the last places to find untouched indigenous bamboo) and invited me to come and film. It was quite an opportunity into a part of Kenya that is difficult to see, the life of the past colonialists; the British that have hung on to their land and often fortunes, after Kenyan independence.

For me, it was much like I expected it to be: conservative politics and a beautiful property. They were wonderfully hospitable, as one would expect: tea time and fresh cakes 5 times a day, expensive wine for dinner, desert after every meal, huge English breakfasts, classical music, and cute English words like "chap". Probably because they allowed me to voice my very different opinion and view of history and were very honest about their own opinion, I was able to agree to disagree with them. A constant topic of debate was whether the british were actually "great" for Kenya. They said yes, because the British brought roads, healthcare, development (mostly for themselves, but sure a few Kenyans benefitted). I said no, first because I don't believe that development is necessarily a good thing (having money in your pocket doesn't mean happiness if your community is destroyed). But even if I did think development was good, my main argument for why the British were bad for Kenya and still are at fault for this country's problems are that the British destroyed the confidence of the Kenyans. They told them that their culture, religion, dress, everything was wrong. Then they told them that everything British was good. And even now development groups continue to tell Kenyans that they dont know anything. Development aid sometimes turns into another way to say, "you can't manage by yourselves". And that's why most Kenyans really lack confidence to take leadership roles, business risks, and oppose the status quo. Which makes it easy for others, like industry and corrupt politicians to take advantage of them. As Aileen has said " we are an African shell, on the inside we are very confused about what is right and wrong and what we believe". And I also see the greed and the crime from greed are a consequence of that lack of confidence. I'll try and quote Thomas who said, "you find that with time here you start looking at things with a "whats in it for me" attitude, and that attitude is not part of the Kenyan heart, but is learned because everyone here is competing and trying to take all the credit and leave you with nothing. You end up realizing that if you don't do the same, no one will ever give you what you deserve. "

So the dominate belief in the house was: Capitalism is the only way. Bush is doing the right thing, to keep power in the right people. Conquest has been happening for centuries, so it makes sense to take over and detroy other cultures. You must use force with “these guys”. Listening to their debate, I realized that their opinion makes sense for them in their position. And I don’t hate them for their position, but what's best for my people is whats worse for theirs, since my people are not the wealthy and powerful, but often the ones taken advantage of. I was impressed that L* and his brothers were fluent in Swahili though, which is usually a sign of humility as far as the local people are conserned, but their knowledge is mostly from having a Kenyan nanny growing up rather then pure desire of their own. The family, especially the mother, was very religious and would not approving of a daughter-in-law from a non-cultured background or non-Christian upbringing and morals. Which is the contradictory part of their political and religious beliefs: how can you be a good Christian and yet prescribe to a "might makes right" philosophy that is totally against everything Christ teaches?

They did have a point that when the British were around there wasn’t much deforestation, because all the land was privately owned. Course now that I think about that debate, I would argue that we (white people) are the ones that destroyed the systems in place (like chiefs and tribes) that controlled greed in the past by inflicting strong social consequences for them. I’m sure L* would say the African slave traders were definitely greedy but that wasn’t the majority of Kenyans.



We went for a drive to see all the illegal deforestation going on nearby. There were plenty of charcoal pits. At night people come and cut one tree at a time, and often cut it into wood or make charcoal there in the forest, then carry it out on their backs, bicycle or donkey. The plumes of smoke are very visible at night, so if the forest department wasn’t in on it, they could squash the business fairly easy.






Got up at 5:00am to head to the Aberderes Mts with the L* and his father. Much like you would expect a national park in the mountains to be, it was heavily forested, cold, and green. There is only one road in and one road out, so it is not a prime spot for illegal harvesting. The park was absolutely gorgeous, and we were the only people there! We saw lots of buffalo, an elephant, and some bush buck, worthogs, and birds. I had no idea that there were elephants living in the forest who apparently like eating and rubbing up against bamboo.





Bamboo was everywhere and very tall...



We ate a nice breakfast on a hill side, then L* and his father went fishing at the river. I wandered about nervously, since L* warned me there were elephants, buffalo, and possibly even lions (although most had been killed). I carried around a shovel, but still was hesistant to really explore, since being mauled by a frightened elephant didn’t sound like the type of adventure I was looking for.







All in all, I enjoyed staying with the family. They were very warm and friendly. However it is interesting how much of a “white man’s manifest destiny” is still a part of their thinking. I imagine this is the line of thinking Bush and his cronies subscribe to as well. Its fairly easy to think this way if you don't have close contact with poorer people on a equal footing basis.

“You got to be hard on these guys. They don’t want peace”, was a phrase of this family, and of Bush on Iraq. But where is that line of thought coming from? Every Kenyan I know wants peace and wanted it even as they fought for independence. Every person I think wants peace. It is easy to dehumanize that which you dont want to understand. No one at L* has ever lived with Kenyans in a Kenyan home or dealt with Kenyans outside the power structure of "white makes right". And neither have the people in the US that think the Muslims dont want peace. What they want is some dignity, self-determination, and their own culture, which we make almost impossible to have without resorting to extremely violent ways.

We (Americans, British, ect) are the ones with the incentive for war, since we make most our money off war, weapons, and then rebuilding places, we gain from all of it, not them. So who really is fighting for peace?

My newest revelations

So I just visited the farm of L* who has started a private company to grow bamboo, sell bamboo seeds, make bamboo furniture, and also produce electircity and charcoal out of bamboo.

Since the main reason for deforestation in Kenya is the lack of fuel for keeping warm and cooking, growing bamboo for this purpose has a lot of good implications for reducing illegal deforestation, protecting wildlife habitat, or of course reducing poverty and making life easier for rural and urban people.

L* is one of the small percentage of white Kenyans, whose family was part of the white colonialists generations back. He got started doing the bamboo thing because he really enjoys the outdoors and realized the only way to prevent deforestation is to sell wood for timber and fuel cheaper then even illegal sellers can do. Which is possible with bamboo because of how fast it grows without any imputs.



After seeing L's place and all the work and investment he has doing with bamboo, I realized that he was getting a lot more done, for a lot less money than ICRAF or the UNEP (from my experience). Maybe the future of good development is in the private sector.

Sand and Sun at the Slave Port

We just had a 5 day weekend due to National Holidays landing on friday and tuesday. Tuesday was Eid (the feasting celebration marking the end of Ramadan fasting), and lunch has never tasted better! So for the holiday, I made a last minute decision to go to Mombasa, Kenya aka "Coast" with Atieno (my twin sister from Kisumu). It was a great adventure since the train and all the buses were full (Coast is the vacation spot) so we had to go around town at 6am to try and find some way to get there. We ended up getting the last 2 seats on the last bus on friday, which was the worse looking bus around. What luck! We were skeptical whether or not we'd ever arrive at Coast, so we decided to say a little a prayer with the women sitting next to us who was equally doubtful.

The trip is 9 LONG hours, half of which is on a horrible road. Considering Atieno and I were one row from the last row, the turbulence effect was even worse for us. My housemate Rachel packed me some Indian sweets she bought for the Indian Diwali festival that had just happened, which I broke fast with on the way. What a sweetheart...

Too bad those rich, fatty sweets on an empty stomach soon started feeling like someone was punching me from the inside. It was really really painful and sharp. I started worrying... maybe they'd gotten some weird bacteria from being on a stuffy bus for 8 hours. That on top of being on a bad road and bouncing all over the place, really made me worry whether or not this was the beginning of the worse vacation ever. Then when we arrived we had to take public transport, carrying our bags all over town, meanwhile I'm feeling faint and want to crawl into a gutter in fetal position. About 4 hours later when I ate some Chapati and beans at Atieno's friends house was when I felt better, but before that I was actually really really worried that something might be terribly wrong with me. The feeling even came back more then once but luckily went away permanently, or at least I think so.

The best part about going with Atieno is that instead of staying at hotels, we moved house by house to different family friends, who were happy to feed us and give us beds even though we didnt even warn them in advance we were coming. Such is Kenyan hospitality. We stayed longest with Atieno's former english teacher from 12th grade.



Mombasa is actually a series of islands, so we had to take ferries to go everywhere... here's a snap.





The Coast is a really interesting place, because Mombasa used to be a big slave trade port, where the Arabs and powerful African chiefs were selling rural Africans to go to the Americas and other places as slaves. Luckily for them Africans are very forgiving, when that trade ended, the Arabs stuck around and the population now is ethnically mixed Arab and African. The food, music, and architecture is a good mix of both cultures. It is even more interesting because it is mostly Muslim town due to the Arab history but the mixed culture coming in is more christian or other religions. So you walk around and see many
women covering their heads, many even wearing the veil, and then others dressed like it is any other beach town.



This door picture and the painting on top, actually aren't my pictures, mostly because I took no pictures in the Arab part of town, out of respect because many people don't like their pictures taken, and the streets were crowded and I would have looked even more like a tourist then I already did. But at least you get the idea...

We rode camels on the beach, went to look at the coral reefs (which unfortunatly aren't very vibrant anymore so I am pretty sure it is dying do to all the soil flowing into it from erosive practices). But it was fun!
I'll have to put those pictures up when I get them developed since I took them with a disposable rather than the digital camera.

Kiamba Africa

Last year, I went to rural villages with some students from Maseno university to survey people on how and where they got their water. Those students graduated last year, and now this year they have already gotten jobs. A near miracle when finding a job after college is doubtful ,especially in your field. Luckily there is a severe shortage of Planners and they were all studying Rural and Urban Planning.

Nearly all of them are in Nairobi this week getting folded pieces of paper which will disperse them in different and remote districts all over Kenya. From Turkana (the area with the tribe where the women extend their necks with rings = REMOTE) to Mombasa (the touristic beach city on the Coast). They have no idea where they'll be sent, but they are excited.

So since they are around, a couple of them and I took a matatu (public transport= 13 seater mini-van packed full of people, driving like mad down the road) to a red and dusty patch of land called Rock City. A family recreational place with upside down loop-de-loops, teacups, around other old carnival rides. Unfortunatly almost all the rides were down, except the swings. How disspointing.



But right when my I was thinking that our journey had been futile, a group of men with shades and matching shirts got on stage. Kiamba Africa! A famous singing group that sings songs in almost all the languages of Kenya (Masaii, Luo, Kisii, Kalingin, Kamba, Luya, Kikuyu) in the traditional style. Like seeing 10 concerts in one and at my favorite price, free.



They also sang Congolese and S. African music, but in Swahili. The fun part was they pulled us all into a Congo line, much like they do at home but with more pelvic thrusts.



My friends and I danced on stage for a while before going back to eat our food. Them with a huge plate of roast goat, which is the Kalingin favorite and me with my mokimo (green mashed potato and veggie mix), which looks like an appetizer to them.

shelves full of things no one reads

One thing about big international organizations is that they have trouble communicating what they know to the people that need it most.

Like here they do a lot of important research that mostly sits on our shelves. Some of the titles would get poor farmers interested, "Pro-poor financial rewards for environmental services", if they ever got to hear it or knew what that meant. I assumed when I came to do the video here, that there would be some kind of communication strategy as to what the purpose of me doing this was ( I mean why throw away $5000?) and a list of who we would distribute it to and why. And I also assumed that it would be part of a bigger group of communications, like radio and print, that would be made available to the farmers. At least some farmers. The people who are destroying their land and impoverishing themselves all because of lack of information. 800 videos will be pretty useless to them, when there isnt even electricity in many places. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out something is amiss with that plan.

But like I've heard about most organizations (for ex. Peace Corp), to actually make yourself useful in an org too big and too clumsy to pay attention to what its doing to do it thoroughly, you have to make things happen yourself. Aileen got her masters in Development Communication and before here, she used to design posters and come up with strategies on how to communicate information to illiterate and poor people. Considering they has a problem with doing exactly that, you'd think they'd find Aileen really useful. But instead they have her doing other work, like website stuff, when that isnt her specialty, she doesnt like doing it, and its for a website no one looks at. Go figure.

But that meant it was easy for me to ask for her help in coming up with a plan to make sure my videos get to all the right people and also make sure that we make other materials, like posters, for distribution to the people "on the ground".

After we did that, priced out what posters would take to make, I nervously pitched the idea to the man funding me. I HATE asking for money. Anyway, I think he said yes, but he was in such a hurry to leave on a business trip I couldnt really tell.

So we've been going forward with our planning and creating, whether he's paying or not. Sometimes you just have to go ahead with things and try your best to push them along. Because asking here can mean at least a week of waiting for answers and then there is probably some useless paperwork after that.

So yesterday I met with this American women who started a youth magazine business here called Young African Express. She had worked for the USAID for 10 years and then left when she realized they funded the wrong projects and weren't making an empact. We had fun ragging on the incompentency in the international NGO's here.



One thing she said summed it all up very well.
"Somewhere we lost the way because now development sustains us, we don't do sustainable development."

She has gotten some corporate and NGO sponsors to fund her magazine which she distributes to poor rural schools. To distribute one year's worth subscription is only $5, at one magazine a month. These schools usually have no textbooks, paper, pencils. Students just crowd into a little mud room and listen to a teacher lecture. There are usually 50-100 students per class.

So her magazines are very useful because they have environmental and health information, cartoons and stories, and even instructions on how to make things (like a compost bin or weave plastic bags- that are littered all over the place- into baskets). School even give them as rewards to students who do well and often do the activities in the magazines as school/class projects.

So I am designing with her 2 posters to go in 2 of her magazines. One on the "thirsty tree" issue and then another on the benefits of bamboo. One side will be a drawn, colorful representation of these ideas (ie, even an illiterate person will understand the message) and the other side will be a story and then facts so that they fully understand.

She says that her hope is to go into making television and radio shows, since most of what is on is American, S. African and Nigerian soap operas and music videos. I slyly interrupted with "I want a job after I graduate!". Not sure whether her "sure" was genuine or not, but I'll have to track her down in a few years to see.

A date

So its almost half-way through Ramadan. It feels so good to have actually made it this far, because it actually is a struggle in the beginning to train yourself to not get frantic when your body is hungry.

Better yet, learning what hunger feels like really makes you empathetic. Especially here where so many people go hungry, daily. I usually feel HUNGRY at least once a day, usually around 2:00 in the afternoon. Then its hard to concentrate. But its like running, you push through it and the hunger fades within a few hours and you feel fine again. Even stronger then before. And thinking clearer.

I guess most religions in the world (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) all speak of doing fast for the health and mind. I wonder why we stopped doing it? Maybe we love food a little too much?

Coming from a person that loves to eat... I have to say learning to control bodies and desires, is maybe what the US lacks the most. My collegue Aileen says, "if you can learn to control your body's hunger, you can learn to control any part of yourself, because it is the stronger and deepest urge". Maybe this is why it is so fundamental in many spiritual practicies. Anyway, I highly recommend it.



The traditional way to break fast (break fast= eat something small after not eating all day, then you are supposed to pray out of thankfulness for food, then you eat a proper dinner) during Ramadan is with a date. Probably because dates grow all over the Middle East.

I decided to try the tradition and bought some fresh Iranian dates.

Ng'ongo (licking in Luo... but if said like a ? means How are you?)

In this little colonial town (by which I mean, it was the land of the British and still is huge mansions on huge plantations largely owned by whites) outside of Nairobi is the Giraffe Sanctuary.





Apparently these giraffes were saved from something, although "what" they were saved from exactly remains a mystery. Some of them are endangered species of giraffes.



There you get to feed and pet giraffes.

You can even have them grab food from your mouth, but I didnt get enough encouragement to try it myself.



Look at their huge heads! Eyes! Tongue!



Actually their tongues are really long and useful. They can wrap it around twigs and then pull them off trees.




Apparently Wathogs and Giraffes like each others company in the wild and the the Giraffe Center.

Giraffes are gentle and peaceful.

The world's end can never be reached
by means of traveling through the world,
Yet without reaching the world's end
there is no release from suffering.

Therefore, truly, the world-knower, the wise one,
gone to the world's end, fulfiller of the holy life,
having known the world's end, at peace,
longs not for this world or another.

-Buddha, "The Connected Discourses of the Buddha"

Ramadan

Ramadan officially began on Sunday. Ramadan is the Muslim month of fasting and peaceful activity (no eating, drinking, unpeaceful behavior from dawn to dusk). In addition you are encouraged to pray more intensely and the month is supposed to be a time of self-reflection that brings you closer to god. My housemate has been dating a Muslim guy for several years now and has been celebrating Ramadan together with him for years. Since she was doing it and I think that the practice of fasting (which Islam actually says is a continuation of Jewish and Christian tradition like Lent) and increased prayer would do me good, I am practicing Ramadan too.

It is interesting that fasting is supposed to make you more patient and humble. I wonder if this is why Americans (who are generally more than well feed) are known for being so the opposite of these traits? Not completely true, but an interesting thought....

Anyway not eating all day is pretty hard, especially the not drinking water thing, because I drink a lot. But already I feel commraderie with my housemate and her boyfriend and 1/6 of the world that is fasting and praying at the same time as me. No, I’m not converting to Islam. But Rachels tells me that people are very happy to find a Westerner that even knows something about their practices and culture, even more so practicing them. And that is sad, because not all Muslims are fundamentalists or terrorists.. just like not all Christians are Nazis, Crusaders, or abortion-doctor killers. Like most conflicts, the conflict in the Middle East is a political issue not a religious one, although religion is used as propaganda by both sides. There are millions of Muslims here in Africa and Asia that live is relative peace alongside each other and other religions. In fact according to the Quran, Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all “people of the book”. Basically the Quran says for Muslims not to persecute Jews or Christians because they all believe in the God of Abraham. However it does say that when you or your people are being oppressed, then jihad (basically fighting back against oppression) is noble. This is where things get messy and political. But it is important to note that Islamic fundamentalist groups use images of Western oppression as propaganda for jihad, to help move their political agendas. I am not an authority on these topics, these are just my observations. Since I don't see the conflicts between our cultures letting up any day soon, I figure learning more about it all is the very least I can do.

here's a funny article about the topic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/09/27/idiots_guide_to_ramadhan_faith_feature.shtml

Hell's Gate

Went to Hell’s Gate National Park this last weekend. Hell’s Gate is one of the few parks where it is safe to camp out in a tent because the only dangerous predator there is the cheetah, which are shy of humans. It was great to be outside, especially hiking alongside zebras and giraffes.



You have to zoom in the pictures to see the animals.



Even though its been a while since I climbed, my feeble arms kept me climbing all day. I've never climbed so much and such hard stuff, but it felt soo good to get to the top!






Check out the view we had from our camp!

Another interesting aspect of the trip was the group I came with. I recently found out about the Moutain Club of Kenya, which is mainly a group of internationals, ex-patriots, and very few locals, which organize trips all over. The trips are cheap, so I think the main reason less locals are part of it, is that climbing rocks to the top isn't part of the general fun for most Kenyans I know. But in general the group was very interesting to talk to and was from all over: S. Africa, Japan, Sweden, France, Indonesia... Most everyone worked for international aid organizations, the UN, or as businessmen. Anyway I was driven to the Hell’s Gate by this Spanish guy, who is a development economist for the world bank. We had an interesting conversation on the way, especially when I asked him if he thought the work he did actually made a difference or if he thinks he sold out to “the man”. Most the time he thinks he sold out. For example, he told me he is working on a $16 million project right now for water and sanitation in N.E. Kenya which he said 95% of the money will go to international administrators, analysts, researchs, blah, blah, blah and only a tiny fraction will go to the actual project. Grrrr.

Aileen says that the UN staff and other big orgs pay the staffers so much because international donors want to pay these people more because they think they are suffering by working in Africa. I dont know if its true, but like I said before they make entirely too much money to know what to do with here.

Too much conversation, a little more action….





On the lighter side of things check out the baboon that raided our campsite in the early morning. Later when we were leaving, someone left the van unattended, and he came back, jumped inside, and ran off with a bag of sugar. I hope he's ok now...