Goal Five

December 5, 2011

Today, I was reminded of the five goals of Newton Country Day that I learned by heart 10 years ago.

Did you ever have one of those moments where you lie awake in the dark in a strange place, listening to the sounds, taking in unfamiliar smells and thinking to yourself: wow, I can’t believe this is where I am at this exact moment in time. It may be a good feeling, a bad feeling or just…a feeling.

Isiolo is quite a noisy town at night. I woke up a few times, most significantly around 5am as someone was running down the street yelling. He was greeted(or something, hard to tell when they yell in Swahili) by other people yelling and yes, I did get a little worried there for a second. But when I had assessed the situation and concluded that I was not in any immediate danger, I went back to sleep.

The first clear blue sky we've seen in two weeks - morning in Isiolo

At 9(ex. African Time) the meeting began in the conference room of the hotel. Isiolo houses the regional headquarters for the northern Kenya Action Aid. In addition to the regional office, there are bunch of smaller local offices, or DIs, that report to the Isiolo branch. As mentioned, we are currently attached to the DI in Kieni/Naro Moru. This meeting was an end-of-year status for all the managers of the DIs. We spent most of the day listening to the reports from the managers on their projects, challenges and future plans.

I must admit that I no longer remember the Newton Country Day goals by heart, but the essential of them has somehow stayed with me, and especially goal five. Goal Five talks about personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom and I felt just like that several times throughout the day. Listening to the managers talk about their projects and their challenges I could almost reach out and touch the wisdom.

During lunch and after the official part of the meeting was over, we made attempts at networking, Charlotte more successfully than me but that can’t be a surprise to anyone. One of the other managers brought us on a tour of the AA office across the road from the hotel and we spent more than an hour talking to him about the system of food distribution, about how Denmark and Kenya differs significantly on aspects of welfare and about how good an organization Action Aid is.

I just want to share one project with you that AA has established. They have given representatives of various communities a cell phone, so that they can send a text to AA about things going on in community that AA should be aware of. It could be a security issue, but also about changes in the weather, problems with the food distribution or flooding. In addition, they can use the phones to get the current market prices on things like maize or milk. AA can also send them messages if they need to. For Katastrofe-folket: this is a kick-ass acceptance strategy.

A few random tidbits from a day of learning:

-          Fish farming(dambrug) is an up-and-coming industry in central and northern Kenya

-          Challenges to a certain project can include both the lack of rainfall and flooding

-          Abbreviations  of the day: DEC, LRP, SMC, FGM, CBO, GBRC, KPLC, PRO, CNL, 
       VAW/VAGS, PRRO, FDP, CBTD, BSFP, FFA, SFP, DNO, GFD, CP, KFSSG, DPSC

-          ActionAid has won the bid to do food distribution for WFP for the past 18 years

-          Elephants are afraid of fire

The future of our internship still has no concrete description, but I think we are both at a point right now where we just want to see as many projects as possible to get a deeper understanding of the way ActionAid does things and to see how it affects the communities. We prefer emergency operations, obviously, but the picture we are beginning to see is the one that shows the links between development and aid and how really, really important it is for every part of the emergency management cycle from mitigation to recovery. Hopefully, we can go on a food distribution later this week or maybe next week, but we will also go with Francis to see some of the projects the Kieni office has helped facilitate.

After a full day of learning, we walked to the restaurant.

A very random collection of a few essentials to internship and life in Kenya