The good fight

As a generally un-social(not asocial, just un-social) person, spending a whole day with strangers can be quite tiring.

As Francis had to go to Isiolo Tuesday to close accounts before the end of the year, we were left to our own wits. In the process of writing our report for school, we need to talk to some of the locals and conduct a few interviews and we seized the opportunity to get some of that done while Francis was out of town. When we were at the trenching a couple of weeks back, we met Mr. Kibe, a knowledgeable and talkative man, and as we opted to be with someone we knew when we were on our own, we arranged to spend Tuesday with him.

Kibe

So Tuesday morning we headed to Chaka, a small although busy town about 20 min. on the other side of Naro Moru towards Nairobi. When we got there and couldn’t see Kibe anywhere, we called him and after some of the usual language confusion(especially when on the phone), he told us to find a guy on a motorbike that had been told where to take us. Being the only wazungus around, the guy on the bike had an easy time finding us and we got on. Now, Charlotte has a license for a motorbike whereas I never in my 27 year old life have been anywhere near getting on one. But here it’s a very common thing, especially in the more rural areas, that motorbikes are used as taxis. They usually travel fairly small distances, like from town to home here in Nanyuki and they cost a third of the price of a car taxi. In addition, they fit anywhere from one(obviously) to four people. So anyway, we got on the bike and I held on for dear life. I told Charlotte to write in her blog that I was amazingly cool and brave, although that might be a bit of an embellishment. I didn’t panic though and to the driver’s credit he did drive fairly slowly. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I kept worrying if we were going to fall over in every turn of the road, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it. It was kind of nice to feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face.

The ride was problem-free and we made it to Kibe’s house completely safe and sound. Kibe himself was all smiles and welcoming gestures. It’s really quite amazing to feel so welcome in the home of someone you’ve only met once before.

Kibe's house. Bulding to the left is the kitchen.

He took us to the house, we met his wife and a couple of his kids, had some tea and were then placed in the kitchen with his wife as she roasted maize on the open fire. Maize is generally a very hard, dry and not particularly tasty experience, but it definitely benefited from the heat of the fire. The more intentionally crunchiness was a welcome change. Once we finished the second helping of maize, we were served mokimo, another local dish. Its basic components are mashed potatoes, beans, maize, onions, something green(maybe spinach), spices and probably other things as well. Now, mokimo is really quite nice – the only problem is that you get full very fast and you are always served huge portions. When you, as I, have never been the biggest fan of mashed potatoes, the second half of the portion tends to be a bit hard to get down. Well, down it went and we were then served sugar canes outside as the chairman of the water project came by and greeted us. With a little practice, I’m sure that we would make excellent sugar cane eaters, but at this point we are still rookies and not very graceful in our attempts. You bite of chunks of the cane, chew it to get the juice and then spit out the remainder of the cane. The juice itself tastes like, oddly enough, liquid sugar and it is a delicious treat. We did have to decline seconds though however adamantly Kibe insisted we had more. After the sugary treat, Kibe gave us a tour around his humble piece of land. He has quite a variety of things. First of all, they have the mandatory maize, potatoes and other household necessities. Then he has a field with a lot of different plants like figs, bananas, lemons, oranges and a courageous attempt at a couple of apple trees. In addition, he has a fairly large greenhouse not made of glass but more what seemed like white tarps. Inside were grape vines and cherry tomatoes a plenty. To make a bit more money than from selling what little extra produce they might have, Kibe has a small plant nursery.

It doesn’t make him rich but it helps earning money to put the kids through school. And when I say small, I mean small, nothing compared to what I’m used to from my days as a hard working youth at the local plant nursery. This place probably couldn’t even fit a tractor.

The plant nursery

After way too much food and the tour of the premises, we got down to business and went to the house to conduct our interview. We had only just sat down and explained our intention, when his wife announced that lunch was ready. Charlotte managed to politely convince her that we’d do the interview first and then eat later, hoping that the 30 minute delay would help speed up digestion and leave room for more. When the interview was over, we gratefully accepted another meal, this time consisting of boiled potatoes and bananas in a kind of soup with vegetables. Delicious as it was, I started feeling sick towards the end of it and had to get my water to help me get it down. I had simply had way too much food at that point, but not wanting to be rude, I forced it down and it managed to stay there.

Kibe tried his best to convince us to stay the night as he had somehow gotten the understanding that this was the agreed upon arrangement. But as we were unprepared for that big a commitment, we politely and apologetically declined. We did however agree to go and see the water tank the community stores its water in, so we ventured the one km down the road and into the forest. Along the way we attracted the local kids and once we reached the tank, we had a tail of maybe ten kids after us.

Kibe with some of the kids that followed us

It took some convincing, but I managed to follow Charlotte up the questionable ladder to the top of the tank from where there was a nice view.

Kibe and Charlotte on top of the tank

Although Kibe tried to the very end to make us stay, we got on our way and headed back to Nanyuki.

Another day another group of new people. Wednesday Francis had arranged for us to interview a group of village elders at a small village. We spent almost an hour in conversation(via Francis’ translations) about subjects like early warning systems, how they used to preserve food 50 years ago and poverty. It was a fascinating study really as the oldest woman was around 87 and has seen a lot in her life time. I really wanted to ask more about life doing the time of the British rule and their views on white people today(the British was not particularly nice to the Kenyans), but we could have been there for hours then and it would have been off topic. We finished the stay by visiting their little local “museum” to see how they used to grind maize into flour and how they used to sleep.
On the way back to Naro Moru we passed  by the land owned by Francis’ family, so we stopped by his mother’s house, had mokimo and planted a tree outside the house he is building for himself.
It was an interesting day, but man, one gets really exhausted after a day like that.

With Thursday came the first part of the food distribution. Three orphanages in the area were to receive some food to get them through Christmas. The two of them I introduced you to in the last entry, but we started with a new one, Kids Alive. The compound was really quite gorgeous and had been built by a white man some decades back. The buildings were fairly well maintained and the dorms somewhat spacious.

The dorms at Kids Alive

In addition to running the orphanage of about 80 kids, the organization also runs a school just outside the gates and a small clinic. The school and the clinic also benefit the surrounding community.

The headmaster shows us the school

The orphanage tries to sustain itself to the best of their efforts by running a couple of small farms that supplies them with household necessities as well as produce to sell. They have been affected by the drought like most everyone else and while they wait for their crops to grow, they received the food from Action Aid and their donor, the county of Madrid.


Setting up for a picture at Kids Alive

After an extended tour of the grounds, we were running far behind schedule(we had also been forced to wait for some of the food, as the supplier was running late), so our stay with Lipela was cut short. We did need to take pictures of the kids with the food and the sign for the donor, so after we had done that and Francis went to get the formalities done, we handed out candy for the kids and tried to keep them away from the camera this time around.

We finished the long but good day with the priest. I cannot stop saying how amazing I find this guy. He cares so deeply for his kids and he is so humble and appreciative that I was ready to spent all the money I pretend I have buying him food, school supplies, a windmill for the borehole or whatever else he could possibly want. After the mandatory picture, the kids sang us a song and we said a prayer.

The priest(in the green jacket) and the kids left at the home during Christmas

Even though we really didn’t have any part in the whole food aid, I couldn’t help but feel good after a day in the presence of inspiring people who fight the good fight to provide a better life for the kids who have no one else.

I feel like I must end on a bit more educational note when it comes to the issue of food aid.
What I’ve really come to understand and learn in the past month or so is the fact that food aid should really be avoided as much as possible. Food aid is not sustainable and it encourages dependency.
It is becoming an increasingly contaminated issue because the easiest way for NGOs to raise money from donors is for the immediate aid with pictures of starving children and dead or emaciated live stock. But food aid is not necessarily very helpful, and in the long run it seems much more costly than providing sustainable solutions. People need water, land and live stock – then for the most part, they are self proficient. That drought occurs is an undeniable fact, but there are several things that can be done to limit the consequences; re-forestation, irrigation, early warnings, information just to mention a few.
 Of course there can be times when food aid is necessary, like at this time after an unusually long drought, but dependency on food aid is a curse.

Food waiting to be loaded onto the truck

I have learned that it’s important to consider who you support when you donate money to organizations working in developing countries. I recognize the fact that sometimes emergency funds are necessary for disaster situations that couldn’t have been predicted, such as earth quakes or tsunamis, but drought in the Horn of Africa is not a disaster that came out of the blue. What is important now is to get people back on their feet. It is so far from sustainable to just provide food and not development. There are ways to provide food as well as development like we saw in Isiolo, where the community only received food after they had worked to create irrigation for their land. As mentioned on several previous occasions, I am becoming a big fan of the work Action Aid does because they seem to really get the point.

It’s not an easy task to go from aid to development because politics and money permeates the system. But I think we owe it to the developing countries to be conscious about how, when and where we choose to help.  Because they do still need help, it's just a question of finding the right way to do it. There are many, many aspects to this issue and for those of you who are interested in learning more about the challenges that aid faces, I recommend two books: War Games/The Crisis Caravan and Dead Aid.