"Sangalo Rocks" is a massive boulder pile at the top of a hill, visible from the road leading from Bungoma to Kakamega. Sangalo is also one of the sites in Bungoma where we grow passion fruit, so it's somewhat appropriate that I saved this excursion for my last week as well.
A Kenyan man stands on top of one of the rocks - gives perspective on their size! (don't worry, Mom, I didn't climb this one)
Andrew leaps from one boulder to another... the fate of One Acre Fund is suspended over the chasm... Jake, Lukas, & I atop one of the boulders. Yes, I'm barefoot.
As I stare my final week in Kenya in the face, I'm finally doing a lot of things that I always meant to do and never got around to. This weekend one of those things was going to church.
Lukas and I arrived in the middle of a 5 hour long service and left after less than 2 hours. Preparing for the worst (I'd heard tell of exorcisms and speaking in tongues) I was surprised at how normal it seemed, how enjoyable it was. A little more evangelical and energetic than what I'm used to - at times it felt more like a dance club than a church service - but not so different from the Baptist churches I have attended in Madison. The prayer was also intense; rather than a silent prayer, the 5-10 minute long prayer sessions just featured everyone chanting their prayers to "Baba Wetu" (our father) with instrumentals and singing in the background.
Maybe the most remarkable thing about the service was that although the congregation totally filled the big barn-like church building, there were 2 other equally crowded and loud churches within listening distance. It really resonated (ha, ha) with me after reading about what a destructive impact Belgian Catholic priests had in the perceived ethnic divisions that led the Rwandan genocide; it's quite clear that the missionaries before and after the British colonization left a long-lasting mark on Kenyan culture as well. It's hard to believe that a religion could spread so quickly and pervasively, and remain so firmly rooted in local culture after the disappearance of its proponents. (Maybe this is why China won't allow tourists to bring multiple Bibles?)
As I was marveling over the strength of their collective conviction, I realized that before coming to Kenya I hadn't even realized that people in rural Kenya would be Christian. Much less had I realized it would be a definitive force shaping their everyday existence! Which prompted a list of pieces of "common" knowledge that I must remind myself I did not know before February of 2009...
One goat is worth 4-5 chickens (depending on the size)
Grafting plants can result in the strongest, most resilient root system and sweetest fruit
Swahili is a mix of Arabic and Bantu languages
The first throw on a frisbee field is called a "pull"
Typhoid and malaria aren't any worse than Western diseases, if you can afford the treatment
Maize seeds should be planted 25 centimeters apart, in rows 75 centimeters apart, for maximum yield
One goro-goro is about 2 kgs
One bag of maize is about 90 kgs
Indigenous African cows can be identified by their humps
A bucket bath requires less water than flushing a toilet
All the decent Kenyan coffee goes for export
Shampoo and conditioner for African hair works just fine for mine, too
One bean seed should be planted in a hole half as deep as your hand with 1/3 of a bottle cap of fertilizer
Hakuna matata really means "no worries"
Throw-away clothes in the US are recycled and sold at Kenyan roadside clothing stands
People can speak 3 or 4 (or more) languages and still be poor and minimally uneducated
3 pm: Meet with Kisaka, the director of Soko hewani (agricultural market show on West FM, where we would appear), and Patrick, our field director. When Kisaka's father visited the office and I broke out my the few Kiswahili phrases in my small repertoire, they convinced me I should go on air as well, broadcasting in my mzungu accent.
4 pm: Make final revisions to script and print three copies. Practice saying "project coordinator" in Kiswahili.
5 pm: Kisaka calls - there is a problem. Or rather, a couple problems. First, apparently in the past we had a couple farmers lodge complaints with West FM about some of the seed we provided. Second, three different representatives from One Acre Fund had already gone to West FM headquarters to negotiate pricing for an ad. (REMARKABLE considering I told the single Kenyan staff member I worked with not to do this...) When our staff visited to inquire, the West FM crew had requested that we first take care of the seed issue. Unfortunately, no one from OAF followed up - not about seed, not about ad pricing. Conclusion: There was no way they would let us go on air for free, even on Soko hewani.
5:30 pm: I get in touch with the manager of West FM, Shakira. She confirms: there is no way we can go on air unless we pay. Director's decision.
5:40 pm: I speak with the director. He is busy - in the car on the way to the Bungoma office. So, I get on a boda (bicycle taxi) and go to the office myself.
6:00 pm: Dr George, the director, arrives in the office. He finds me there already talking to Shakira, but asks her to leave the conference room, closes the door, and sits down at the other end of a long table. Our conversation begins... I empathize with his negative image of One Acre Fund, given his limited exposure. I tell him about what we do, explain that I am a volunteer, make clear that One Acre Fund serves small farmers and currently has no promotional budget - I'm not authorized to make any payments to go on air. Unfortunately, we have already told our 4,000 Kenyan farmers that we will be on air tonight. I actually get a little teary-eyed at one point, and after about twenty minutes I can tell he's starting to feel sorry for me.
6:30 pm: Dr George announces that he can tell I'm caught between "a hard place and a stone." So, it is okay, at least this one time, for One Acre Fund to appear for free. Not only that, but he adds that he is grateful that the issues have arisen because now we were able to meet and West FM and One Acre Fund could have a positive relationship going forward.
6:40 pm: I call Kisaka and tell him the good news. He is shocked by Dr George's decision, but also pleased - after all, it's his show that would be missing a guest speaker.
7:15 pm: Pick up Patrick and head back to the studio. The crew of West FM DJs gather in the studio with great interest as to how on earth I convinced Dr George to let us appear, and is it possible that a mzungu is going to say something on air in Kiswahili?!
8:00 pm: We're on air! After the stressful evening leading up to the performance, I'm feeling like I could do just about anything. Which is lucky, because the boundaries of my Swahili knowledge were definitely pushed. At the end of the few short minutes when they featured me ("Nafula" - my Bukusu name - in Bungoma, and "Amba" in the USA) I was shaking my head furiously to stop asking me questions. But I did okay, and Patrick did great. Apparently the DJ also dedicated a few songs to me during the evening.
8:45 pm: Home, at last, to hang out with Simi - who arrived during my crazy afternoon - and bask in my post-performance glory (and by "glory" I mean "relief").
Lucky me - I timed my adventures abroad to line up with national sports days in both of my host countries.
Sports day, or "National Olympic Day" in Kenya is, as you might guess, a bit different than sports day in China. Key observations in that regard: Kenya has much less nationalistic fanfare leading up to the event (check the parade photos from my "pink plastic skirts and AK-47s" entry in November), much higher athletic ability, and a much lower percentage of entrants wearing shoes.
It was a cool experience, seated with the kids from the orphanage we visited back in March. Like in China, my favorite part was the run. Here is where the second key difference becomes especially evident: unlike in Shenzhen, where my victory over a few hundred teachers prompted a speech about the need for Chinese people to work on their physical fitness, there is no way I could have kept pace with the Kenyan runners.
View into the bleachers. Where's Waldo?
Okay, that might be a stretch; I could have quite easily kept up with the female group (although maybe not wearing a skirts and no shoes under the hot afternoon sun...) but the guys race was really amazing. When the whistle blew, all the runners took off at about a 5-6 minute pace. The lone mzungu participant, Matt (who is by far in the best shape of our group), immediately fell to the back. Unthinkingly, I made a comment about waiting for the runners to burn out - there was no way they could keep such an intense pace for 6.2 miles.
I guess there is a reason why Olympic runners are Kenyan, which is something I should have considered before I made my quick judgment. Many of the runners did drop out (including Matt, after a couple miles, although he did put in a good showing for One Acre Fund) but the leaders kept the same pace throughout the first several miles. With 6 laps remaining, the leader suddenly broke out ahead, basically keeping a sprint. Closing up a race with 1.5 miles left is hardly a concept that works in my brain, but that's what he did; he kept the near-sprint for the last 6 laps. About 34 minutes for the first place runner (no official timer but I used my cell phone to estimate), with the next several coming in close behind. None of the fastest runners were wearing shoes. When I commented on this to Moses, the boy sitting next to me, he looked at me strangely and said, "Of course the fastest do not wear shoes. Shoes are heavy."
Video footage (yes, that is me screaming... embarrassing?):
Other breaking news: My roommate-to-be, Simi, who is on a travel grant around the world, is coming to Bungoma... tomorrow. Just in time for my radio show to air tomorrow night. She'll likely be here until Friday. More updates on that to come!
Four of our Victorious farmers look over a handout at their weekly meeting
Felix creates some homemade fireworks (think steel wool) at Jake's birthday party last weekend - which I more or less organized, despite my illness...
Lessons from typhoid
Sometimes when you're sick, it's better just to let yourself be sick - no running, no working, no being hard on yourself. Revolutionary.
There are nice hospitals in Kenya!! The one I went to on Sunday in Kisumu had a shiny white interior (not like the Bungoma hospital, with its crowded benches and "DON'T LIVE IN THE SAME BED WITH CHICKEN, DON'T EAT SICK/DEAD CHICKEN" poster) and got blood, stool, and urine samples from me before issuing a diagnosis. I haven't even given a stool sample in the US, and to be honest I couldn't be sure of a repeat performance... but the intimidation and skepticism in the eyes of the lab technician when he asked, "Really? You can't even produce a little one?" would help anyone through performance anxiety.
Medication isn't perfect: strong medication can be as poisonous as the illness itself, and the side effects might make it even worse.
I actually have about seven different projects in various stages right now: cost cutting, radio advertising, work visas, productive assets, motorbikes, pH testing, auditor. In a throwback to my elementary school days, when I used to explain my day to my mom in a one-sentence summary, I'll choose a few that are most update-worthy to paint you a picture of my work life.
1. Cost cutting
This project has turned out to be tremendously rewarding, mostly because the scope is so big it's taken me through virtually all of One Acre Fund's operations. I've become a near-expert on the passion fruit program: correcting all the relevant farmer databases (nice how that whole task fits into six words but consumed an impossible amount of my time), monitoring sales and deposits, collecting weekly data on harvest and payments, tracking and issuing bonuses for field staff who meet our weekly harvest target of 10 kg/farmer/week.
The most interesting recent development: Normally we select farmers for planting each season, train them on land preparation, and then during the rainy season provide them with passion fruit seedlings from our nursery and fertilizer inputs. This year over a thousand stems were destroyed by a hailstorm before being distributed to farmers - so in four sites, farmers received few or no seedlings, and the ones we distributed had 50% death rate because the plants were so fragile.
Having become the resident passion fruit go-to, this problem now falls under my jurisdiction. With help from our field director and approval from Andrew, we'll be providing our failed passion fruit farmers with free bean seed and fertilizer for an eighth-acre plot (standard size for our passion program) and asking for no repayment. (Normally our inputs are loans that are repaid at the end of the season with a portion of harvest; since this was our mistake we are allowing the farmers to keep all their bean harvest.) The bean planting is more central to OAF that the auxiliary special projects where I've been focusing, and it's exciting to source seeds and organize input delivery/planting training. I sort of stumbled into One Acre Fund's core operations - with three weeks left. Not bad!
2. Radio advertising
We're going on air! OAF will make its debut on a agricultural market program, Soko hewani ("Market on air") as a guest speaker on June 23 - free of charge. Next week we will announce the appearance to our field staff so they can encourage farmers to tune in. I'll also be meeting with Patrick, our field director in Webuye who is our on-air OAF representative (selection basis: 1. knows all about OAF; 2. speaks Swahili; 3. doesn't get flustered; 4. awesome voice). Then I'm meeting with the DJ to go over the script/prompts... And on Tuesday tuning in nervously to hear one of my projects actually going through to completion!
3. Motorbikes
Why haven't you heard about the motorbike program until now?? It's actually been a three week "borrowed" project from Lukas, who is currently in the US. It's been a notoriously hellish project for everyone involved, which actually makes it a bit easier to take over; anything that can go wrong already has and can't possibly be chalked up to my personal incompetence. ;) In principal, our drivers should bring our field managers to their work sites, spend the afternoon driving for cash, submit 300/- daily remittances, and pick up the manager again the afternoon. In reality, the picture is blurred by lots of accidents, arrested drivers, stolen bikes, missing remittances. What fun.
Side: As an illustration of just how poorly the program has performed, our April Fools Joke on poor Lukas was totally moto-centered. We explained the holiday to Tipo, the Kenyan staff who deals with the bike program, and arranged for him to call during our group dinner at the local Red Hat restaurant. The phone call came through: "Lukas, two more motorbikes have been stolen". Lukas went outside to answer, came back in looking near-tears, and without speaking to anyone asked Sean for a cigarette. Because of his visible anguish - understandable from a guy who just that week had been out visiting prisons trying to figure out where one of our bikes went - we yelled "April Fools!!" almost right away. And then provided him with an endless supply of beer and hugs. Maybe you had to be there (or know Lukas) but it wins my vote for best April Fools joke ever.
In the past couple weeks, I've worked with Tipo to collect daily remittance data, hold driver meetings in two of our districts, and establish a trial "token" system to reward our best drivers. The remittance data collection is frustrating; we have about 20 drivers with a ridiculous turnover rate because so frequently drivers fail to remit, and most of the new drivers don't get the proper training or even know what is on their contract. We attempted to address this, along with their other complaints, during the driver meetings.
Yesterday in Kakamega our meeting ran over two hours, and more than an hour of this was simply listening to driver complaints. I diligently took notes and addressed each concern, but had to raise my eyebrows at a couple of the issues raised (e.g., "the field manager's husband is jealous of me driving his wife to work and if he is there he won't let her get on my bike").
I've enjoyed attempting to tie up loose ends of the program, but the problems are pretty deep and pervasive so I won't be too sad to hand it back over to Lukas when he returns. After all, I did get a forwarded email just this week from our Chwele bookkeeper that began, "Dear Lukas, The motorcycle program in Chwele is failed."
Here's hoping law school is half this educational (or entertaining).
It's 8:30 am, and I'm sitting in my bed in my pajamas typing up results from the productive asset survey, when I hear a chicken in the hallway, and then see it appear in my doorway. The scene unfolds: the chicken ducks into refuge under my bed, and I lean out from under my mosquito net and gather a few shoes, which I throw under the bed, hard, one at a time, to encourage its departure. The chicken is squawking loudly and indignantly; I'm yelling at the chicken ("This is my BEDROOM, chicken, have some respect for my privacy!") and I can hear our guard laughing outside my window.
Finally I get out of bed, put on pants, and chase the chicken into the hallway, where it has been leaving an especially large amount of droppings during the past few days - a fact that does not increase my patience with it. I get back into bed, and then I can hear Jake's cat hissing, and there it is, in my kitchen, having a face off with the chicken near the sink. I shoo them both out, and when they are gone they leave in their wake a trail of chicken shit and a single egg.
* * *
Rewinding another 12 hours, I finished Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen last night. Here's a look at page 253: (warning - take a deep breath and get into serious mode; this is not exactly suitable for a chicken-story follow-up)
There was in my time a law against bringing a wagon or cart on the roads without a brake, and the wagon-drivers were supposed to put on the brakes down all the long hills of the country. But the law was not kept; half the wagons and carts on the roads had no brakes to them, and on the others the brakes were but rarely put on. This made downhill work terribly hard on the oxen…. I have many times seen the carts of the firewood merchants which came along the Ngong Road, going to Nairobi the one after the other, like a long caterpillar, gain speed down the hill in the Forest Reserve, the oxen violently zigzagging down in front of them. I have also seen the oxen stumble and fall under the weight of the cart, at the bottom of the hill.
The oxen thought: “Such is life and the conditions of the world. They are hard, hard. It has all to be borne, -- there is nothing for it. It is a terribly difficult thing to get the carts down the hill, it is a matter of life and death. It cannot be helped.”
If the fat Indians of Nairobi, who owned the carts, could have brought themselves to pay two Rupees and have the brakes put in order, or if the slow young Native driver on the top of the loaded cart, had had it in him to get off and put on the brake, if it was there, then it could have been helped, and the oxen could have walked quietly down the hill. But the oxen did not know, and went on, day after day, in their heroic and desperate struggle, with the conditions of life.
For all of my life up until now, when I ask where someone is from, the response "Africa" has always been good enough. As if it is a big homogeneous region (or a small city?) with a unified history. Or as if that part of the world was beyond subdivision for further comprehension.
Can you imagine a French person saying "I'm from Europe"?!
If someone is from New York City, I might ask "which part?"- I've only been to NYC three times and I have a good enough idea of its layout that I can associate most locations with at least some major landmark. I guess that's why "Africa" was always good enough: it was a pretty blurry picture anyway, and a pretty good chance I wouldn't even know which language was spoken in the country, its colonial history, the capital, where to find it on a map.
So that's one good thing I've come upon here. Africa is no longer some obscure region, tucked just off the globe. I read about conflicts now and I can envision them, place them (and I read the Economist articles about Kenya being on the brink of self-destruction, and wonder - seriously?! I'm just a couple hours from the worst of the 2007 post-election violence and everything seems pretty okay - but that's a different subject entirely). It's like I discovered a whole additional room in my house, which I always knew was there, but just disinterestedly never bothered to turn on the lights.
And I'm finding out that my high school friends from "Africa" aren't really just African at all... They're Eritrean, Nigerian, Somalian. It's embarrassing to admit that - to see something you should have seen all along, and face up to your own long-term ignorance. Why am I compounding my embarrassment by posting all of this on my blog? I don't know. To fully acknowledge and then move past it, maybe. In public. :)
Feeling smug? Test your African political geography here. (Study up, I'm challenging you all to a duel when I return!)
After a couple weeks of feeling pretty crappy and two home malaria tests that came out negative, I decided this afternoon that a hospital visit was probably appropriate. Diagnosis: Not malaria, this time, but typhoid.
So what does that mean? I got a shot that looked alarmingly big. (Conversation with this nurse: Me: "This looks like a shot for an elephant!" Her, somewhat disdainfully: "This is a shot for a baby. This is the smallest needle we have.") I also got a couple weeks' worth of pills, and the knowledge that at least what was making me feel so crappy before has a name and a cure.
One sentence I never thought I'd say: "Well, at least it's just typhoid."
Another three-day weekend, as yesterday was a Kenyan holiday => another fun weekend trip.
On Friday afternoon Andrew, Paul, Jake and I took a One Acre Fund van across the Malaba border to Jinja, Uganda. Ironically the woman who stamped me out of the country was the same one who had asked me for a bribe the previous week (and then sang "Don't break my heart" when I refused). If she recognized me this time she didn't let on.
Among the activities that filled our 60ish hours in Uganda:
Eating Chinese food at Ling Ling. It wasn't great, but it is Chinese food in Africa, so all things considered it was more than passable.
Kayaking. Jinja is the headwaters for the Nile, where it sources from Lake Victoria, and while we avoided the rapids it was still a pretty surreal place to be out on a kayak... I also enjoyed our Ugandan guides, who started out calling me "little chicken girl" (I'm sure this is a compliment) but by the end told me I was the best kayaker of the group. All that practice in canoes growing up...?
Swimming. There was a tidepool (with a relatively strong current) where we swam at least once each day.
Reading. I finished another book (Beloved by Toni Morrison) and started a new one (Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen).
Staring at fellow mzungu in disbelief of their existence. Getting increasingly nervous about reverse culture shock...
Sleeping. Since I've been averaging about 4-5 hours/night (not sure why, but I absolutely cannot sleep in Bungoma) it felt really, really good to catch up.
Finally, Monday afternoon, I came back to Bungoma to sleep in my new bedroom. (!) Mostly as an attempt to deal with my sleep issue, I decided to move into one of the houses up the hill. Since Lukas, my soon-to-be housemate, is currently in the US, I have the whole place to myself. Living in luxury in Bungoma, Kenya... :)
And today, back to work. My fifth-to-the-last week - the remainder of my time all fits on my forward-looking work plan! - and I have a feeling I'll be living these last 35 days in fast-forward.
View on the Nairobi-Bungoma matatu ride. In addition to beautiful scenery like this lake view, Paul & I saw zebras, impalas, warthogs... Like a discount safari with a dual purpose!
Last week, during another field visit to Victorious:
Overlooking her maize fields
Field officer Henry, surveying rows of recently planted passion fruit
A little mtoto (child) in front of the hut, ready to feed the cattle
Henry noticed I liked taking pictures of homes, and asked if ours looked different in the US. Pretty broad question, so I answered simply, "Yes." He replied, "Oh - Are your roofs made of aluminum?" Pretty straightforward question with a vastly complicated response. -- Reminded me my mission trip to Nicaragua, where one of the boys was incredulous that Americans have "houses for their cars." Sometimes hard to believe that all of this can fit on one planet...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain
A Kenyan man stands on top of one of the rocks - gives perspective on their size! (don't worry, Mom, I didn't climb this one)
Andrew leaps from one boulder to another... the fate of One Acre Fund is suspended over the chasm...
Jake, Lukas, & I atop one of the boulders. Yes, I'm barefoot.
Farmland
