Melting pot

I don’t think I’ve ever before been in a place where it’s 10 at night, I’m sitting completely still, typing on my computer and sweating like I just ran a 10 km. race. OK, so the 10K thing might be overstating it, but I seriously am sweating.

So, no sooner had I written that we had given up on Isiolo before things changed. At a slightly perchance meeting with Teresia’s assistant Elizabeth, she asked us: “So you’re going to Isiolo on Monday?” We looked at each other and both did a weird little laugh followed by “No, we don’t think so.” But long story short, everything had been arranged for us to go that following Monday, being Monday the23rd for those trying to keep track of the dates, for the last two weeks of January. While waiting for something to happen, we had pretty much already set up going to Western to look at the floods, but we quickly decided that having waited for Isiolo for two months, it would be silly to give it up now that the opportunity had finally presented itself. 

Charlotte entertains the daughter of Cecilia, a woman associated with ActionAid in Kieni

Apparently that Tuesday was some sort of blessed day because not only did we learn that we could go to Isiolo, I was finally lend a hand in my search for a new internship for February and March and we got a go-ahead on the food distribution in Kieni. While we rejoiced in the fact that Isiolo was coming up, we spent Wednesday preparing for the two major food distributions with Francis. The Thursday and Friday would be dedicated to the School Feeding Program while the following week, where we were away, would be for general food distribution.

Kids pay attention to either the off-loading or me at the first school

Thursday we headed out to four different schools with the foods. The food is suppose to last them for 20 days and consists of beans, maize and vegetable oil – essentially all you need to make a good batch of githeri. Even with only four schools it was a quite tiring effort – especially because a couple of wazungus really attract some serious attention from primary school kids.


Charlotte waves goodbye to a group of kids

Friday had an ever tighter schedule as we had ten schools to visit. But Francis ran the show excellently and we managed to only be around an hour late when we finished - even having taken the time to take group pictures at almost all the schools.


A young child looks on as Francis talks to the kids



Charlotte tries to direct the kids in preparation for the picture

There was a big difference in the ways the schools were managing. One school had managed to collect enough money from the parents to purchase and ‘install’ an energy-saving stove as well as supply the school with a fair amount of food storage. However, another school was suffering from a severe lack of funds and conducted four different classes in an old, run-down UNICEF-tent that was ridiculously hot at 2pm. I can’t for the life of me imagine how the kids could possibly concentrate in there.


Inside one of the three rooms in the UNICEF tent

We had a good time tagging along for the distribution and even though it was too bad that we would miss the GFD that we had spent weeks waiting for, we were excited about Isiolo.
To finish the two months we spent with Francis in style, the three of us went on safari on Saturday at a large conservatory just outside Nanyuki, called Ol Pejeta. A gorgeous place with large plains and Mt. Kenya as a towering back-drop, we spent most of the day driving around under a burning sun. I think I applied five layers of sunscreen throughout the day. But we saw the zebras, the giraffes, the gazelles, the warthogs, the butts of the elephants, the rhinos, a mostly submerged hippo, chimpanzees, buffalos and spent a good hour searching for a lion that had been spotted close to one of the watering holes(didn’t find it though).

Being the good man that he is, Francis had agreed to take us to Isiolo on Sunday and while we packed and waited for him at the house, I got a call from one of the Danish girls running the volunteer and intern programs at Daraja. She called to inform us that two of the volunteers had been in a serious traffic accident in Mombasa the previous day and unfortunately, one of the girls had died while the other was in stable condition after a night of surgery. They had been on a motorcycle that got hit by a car. Although we didn’t know them, it was still a disheartening message to receive.  I obviously feel terrible for them and their families. On that day we were very happy to be going to Isiolo by car rather than a questionable matatu.

We arrived in Isiolo around 6pm at the home of our new family consisting of John and his wife Mama Chantal as well as a couple of house guests in varying degrees of family relations. They have two more kids, but they are in boarding school and we have yet to meet them. In addition Mama Chantal is 9 months pregnant and we’re half expecting a new family member everyday when we get home from the office.
Isiolo. How to describe this town? HOT is the first word that springs to mind. It is 90km north of Nanyuki, but the temperature seemingly rises proportionally with every kilometer. But it’s also very colorful. The population is a big mix of tribes like Turkana, Borana and Somali so faces have different features and clothes and jewelry an array of colors. We are approached differently here than in Nanyuki where white people are a much more common occurrence than here. People stare a lot here, but are not as aggressively approaching as in Nanyuki. Nanyuki caters in large part to the large white population where Isiolo is Kenyan, complete with street vendors and garbage burning in the streets.

Two Turkana women

Monday we went to the office only a 15 minute walk away. It is nice not to have to deal with the hassle of the matatus in the morning. After we arrived, Enrico who is the team leader/boss arranged for us to sit down with all the relevant people who are working in our field of interest here. We had a good meeting where people presented themselves and their respective programs while we tried to imply that we would like to have a sense of it all during our two weeks there. When the meeting finished we more or less attached ourselves to Jamlick who works with the FFA (Food for Assets) and GFD (General Food Distribution) programs. He tried to set it up so that we could go and observe a food distribution in the area that afternoon but after a while he came back and said that the distribution was taking place in an area where security was a bit of an issue. So we said that it was fine not to go and instead we ended up going home.


Locals negotiate the price of a cow at the local cattle market


The rest of the week brought a mix of field trips and frustrations. We went to visit some of the FFA programs, saw the other half of the GFD that we missed last time around and observed the beginning of a supplementary feeding program (SFP) distribution.

The SFP targets pregnant and lactating women as well as children under 5 in an effort to fight malnutrition. The women and children come to a center, get measured

and weighed

and receive various kinds of training in health and nutrition issues. 
On Wednesday a communication team came up from Nairobi to take some pictures and do some interviews. With them was a tall, white man who I initially made out to be German or Dutch based on his accent, but on Thursday he introduced himself to us in Danish. Turned out that Søren is a communication consultant (or something to that equivalent) at ActionAid and has lived and worked in Kenya for three years. Having vented our frustrations to him, he brought us along for a short field trip later that day to take some pictures for a before-and-after feature. We didn’t do anything other than tag along, but at least we got out of the office.

Jamlick shows us the records while women are measuring rice for the next recepient

We managed to convince them to set up a meeting for us with the WFP who runs most of the show in the area, so we went to see them on Monday morning. My hidden agenda for asking for a meeting was to ask them if there was any way they would take on an eager Danish intern for a couple of months. The meeting itself was very informative and interesting and Simon, the head of office, brought us along to a meeting on nutrition afterwards. Although that meeting too was interesting, it did go for 3+ hours without a break in a very hot room, so I did lose concentration a couple of times. As for the internship, it was not exactly enthusiasm I sensed on their faced when I asked, so I decided to not pursue the issue further. If I had had more time, I think I would have fought harder but since I brought it up two weeks before I would potentially start, I did not feel comfortable pushing. In addition, the UN is very cautious on security issues and so international staff is not allowed to go outside a 5 km perimeter of the town, which would be a bit impairing as most of their work is done in the field. I could maybe see a way around that actually, now that I think about it, but for now the UN will continue to be an unobtainable mirage on the horizon.

WFP acts as a facilitator for Drew Barrymore who is personally funding a school in the greater Isiolo area.

Nonetheless, we asked to sit in on another meeting between the ChildFund, Action Aid and WFP the next morning at 8. Before we left the AA office Monday we made arrangements for a driver to take us to the WFP office in the morning. Everything went according to plan Tuesday morning and we got to the WFP at a little to 8. First of all, they seemed rather surprised to see us and as the minutes disappeared, it became increasingly apparent that no one was going to show for that meeting. Simon seemed to feel sorry for us and asked if we wanted to go with him on a monitoring session. With no hesitations we accepted the offer and ended up spending most of the day with him. We went to two schools where we filled out questionnaires for monitoring purposes. Maybe our standards are quite low at this point, but it was pretty awesome! He tasked us with filling out the questionnaires which felt like we finally had an actual assignment for the first time in two months.

Out and about with the WFP

On Monday another mzungu had turned up at the office – again on a brief visit from Nairobi. Hannah works with the emergency operations manager and over a burger and a beer/soda on Tuesday night(side note: feels really good to know there’s somewhere in town to get western food!), we exchanged “war stories” from life at Action Aid and she had a lot of good advice as to how I approach the next two months when I get back from Nairobi in a week’s time.

Although we’ve seen some interesting things during the past almost two weeks, the most time was spent waiting. On the up side I almost read an entire 550 page book, but on the dominating down side, much of it amounted to a great waste of time. I think our expectations were too high really, but I guess we thought that coming to an office filled with people and projects there would be a chance that someone would put us to work. We have had many debates between the two of us as to why no one seems to care and for the most part I think it’s a cultural thing. During the internships we’ve been through at home, someone has always been responsible for us and it just does not work that way here. So when not even “give me something to do” seems to work, frustration levels rise. Everyone had told us before we left that we would have to take a lot of initiative ourselves which I think we were also prepared to do, but it is really not that easy. How do you take on a project when you don’t speak the language, don’t have means of transportation and have no tools with which to approach a project? As said, frustration really began to set in and these last couple of days we’ve just given up. Charlotte leaves next week and after seeing her off in Nairobi I’ll come back to Isiolo to work with Action Aid for the remainder of my stay. On Sunday we go to Nairobi to take a three day safari before Charlotte flies out on Thursday. Right now I am looking forward to the break. I need to get away for a little bit and clear my head. I am fully intent on coming back to Isiolo to take the bull by its horns and I am confident that the last two months will be what I want them to be. This last paragraph might sound very pessimistic, but we have talked a lot about it and neither of us even remotely regrets going in the first place. We have gotten a lot out of our stay and although there are things we now know we could have done differently, we have also been affected by events out of both ours and Action Aid’s hands. So we blame no one but are ready to offer lots of advice to anyone wanting to perhaps do the same.


OK, this last bit sounded like I was going home next week, but we really are coming to a bit of an end now with only a week till Charlotte leaves. It will be strange being here alone, but as I said to one of the women at the office the other day, I am good at being alone, so I’ll be fine. Although, she did look like it was the saddest thing anyone had ever said…