Heartbreakers

December 18, 2011

This week has struggled to live up to the excitement of last week, but it had a few highlights of its own.

The first part of the week was pretty eventless. Monday was Independence Day, a national holiday, and Tuesday Francis went to Nairobi, so we stayed home and got a little bit of work done on our report.

In-between studying there was time to play with the cat - here seen just before crawling through the window

Wednesday it was back to work. We helped Francis count the beneficiaries of the food distribution we’ll be doing sometime in the next two weeks. And quite frankly, I can’t remember what else we did.

Counting

Thursday brought another matatu challenge – although this time in the morning. We had actually managed to get out of the house before 8 in an attempt to make it to the office for 9 and not 9.30 like the last couple of times. As usual, we were approached by several salesmen at the station, but as none of the vehicles were close to leaving, we decided to just go with the cheaper one(cheap = 70  KsH or the equivalent of less than 5 kr. The expensive one is 90 KsH). We boarded and both took up reading while we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And – you get the point. An hour and a half later we gave up. Francis were to pick up a representative from a Spanish partner organization at 11 and as the clock approached 10 and only one other passenger had come along since us, we surrendered to circumstance and called Francis. He sent a driver to pick us up and we were probably only 20 minutes late to the meeting point with the Spaniard, Alex.

The city council(I think) of Madrid has donated around 15 million KsH to ours and another branch of Action Aid Kenya and Alex was there to see projects and talk about the budget, so most of the day was spent visiting projects. We only tagged along for two stops before we went back to the office and the rest of the group jetted from project to project. When they returned, we spent about an hour listening to them talk about the budget and no, it was not boring. It was actually interesting to hear how they talked and how the donor might want one thing for the money donated, while Action Aid, or Francis at least, might want to spend the money a little differently.

Friday, we spent the day in the field. Francis took us to two different orphanages to see that part of the community – places where the inhabitants can’t care for themselves. As you know by now, kids are irresistible to me and the group of energy balls we met at the first one was no exception. At the Lipela Childrens Home they house around 55 kids between the ages of 2 and 18.

Some of the kids. Francis on the far right.

The kids are either orphans or destitute, meaning that they have been given up by their parents as opposed to the parents dying. They receive most of their funding from private donors primarily from Denmark(total coincidence by the way). But times are tough and they will be receiving some supplementary feeding and food aid next week, which is why we went to see the place. We got a tour of the compound, which actually looks pretty good. The younger children sleep in bunk beds in dorms while the older ones share rooms two or three per room. They have a lot of outdoor space and try to be as self-sufficient has possible with a couple of cows, some chickens, goats and rabbits. In addition, the kids each have a piece of a garden where they grow the usual variety of vegetables. The orphanage will then buy the vegetables from the kids which allow the kids to have a bit of saving.
After the kids had sung us a song accompanied by dance, we hung out with them for maybe half an hour, just trying to converse with maybe 10 words of English they knew.

Doing song and dance

I’m constantly amazed at how little they need to be entertained though. First of all, they really want to just touch you – the white skin is so strange to them. Secondly, you can do a lot with your hands. Doing patty cake(you know, where you clap your own hands together then the other person’s hands and so forth, usually to some sort of rhyme/song), tickling, fist bumping and whatever else you can think of. Also, the camera can entertain them for hours on end. For a good while they just wanted me to take pictures of them and then I let them take pictures of each other. The result: 200 pictures of kids and random blurry elements around the room.

From left to right: boy who's name I didn't get, Esther, Lucy and Esther

Taken by one of the kids

After Lipela, we drove to a school that serves as both an orphanage and a day school. The place is run by a priest that Francis has known for 20 years. He, the priest who’s name I can’t remember, was orphaned himself at a young age and in his adult life wanted to do something for kids going through the same he went through. So he started this school where they take in street kids from all over Kenya.

The compound with the chapel in the middle

He has 180 kids all-in-all, with a 165 of them being residents. Out of those 75 will attend high school in the new year, which is a large financial burden for him as there are no one else to care for them. In addition, food prices has gone up lately and it makes it hard for him to make ends meet. They have a farm and some animals which get them some of the way, but they need water for irrigation from a borehole they can’t afford to have a pump for. Listening to him tell his story was a little heart breaking. He really just wants to help these kids, but sometimes feeding them only happens “with the grace of God”. Imagine trying to care for 165 kids, feeding them, clothing them, sending them to school – it cannot possibly be an easy task.

Is God up there?

When we got back to the office, we had a good talk with Francis about the challenges to humanitarian aid. It’s a long, long discussion that I won’t bore you with here, but I will recommend the book War Games or Crisis Caravan(it’s the same book) by the Dutch author Linda Polman. It’s essential reading for anyone wanting to work in the aid industry. Francis is great because he doesn’t hesitate to be critical if he thinks something is wrong.

Saturday we spent most of the day studying before going to town around 3pm to meet Teresia. We wanted to talk to her face to face in an attempt to figure out how to spend the last half of our internship. She is incredibly understanding and we feel very comfortable in her capable hands. We talked about different options for January, but it’s a long story, so I’ll let you know how things develop when I actually have something to tell. Anyway, we talked to Teresia and then went with her to the lodge that her and her husband own on the outskirts of town, the Kongoni Camp. Her husband runs it, almost by himself, and it’s a truly gorgeous place. If you ever come to Nanyuki and need a place to stay, stay there! Or just go to eat, the prices are totally acceptable and the variety excellent. We have yet to eat there, but we will at some point for sure.

Sunday: studying.

That is it for this week in review.