Five Pangea members visited a number of projects in East Africa in early July, 2007.  For the first time, we visited several projects that we hadn’t yet funded.  Obviously, we wouldn’t be funding in this part of the world if there wasn’t a need.  And the need is great.  Nevertheless, there is room for optimism.  There are a lot of positive changes, both small (successful individual projects) and large (HIV medication is becoming available).

     
            With Omeko Women's Group                      With Honored Elders at Rabuor Village

July 3.  We met with four people from the St. Margarita Development Project.  They’re from a town on Lake Victoria, and we have provided them with farming equipment the past two grant cycles.  Their program started in 1986.  At that time, people had to leave home at 3am to get water.  This is normally women’s work, but the path crossed a game park and men with weapons provided safety against animals.  The girls were too tired for school. 

Their response was to dig eight shallow wells by hand, the first wells in the district.  With this success, the local government decided to provide wells in other towns. 

HIV education has became an important part of their mission.  ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) are now available for HIV-positive people.  With their resources limited and preconceptions hindering their impact on adults, they’ve decided to focus instead on the children.  Sounds like a triage approach where they are focusing on where they can do the most good.

Their new initiative for their community is education.  There are few job opportunities open to those with only a primary school education.  Costs for secondary school and college sound small by our standards (roughly $500 per year), but they exclude many qualified students. 

Schoolgirls in East Africa Center

Next we met with the Movement of Men Against AIDS in Kenya (MMAAK).  (We did not fund their proposal.)  This is a support group started in 2001.  They focus on “positive masculinity.”  They try to encourage behavior change and a more enlightened view of what it means to be a man.  For instance, they try to get men involved with the care of the sick (normally women’s work) and improve their optimism.  They also work on reducing poverty and gender-based violence.  One ongoing problem is complacency—HIV infection rates have been going down but some places (Uganda, for example) is seeing rates go back up. 

HIV+ status remains a stigma (though less so here in Nairobi).  Employers can still be reluctant to hire HIV+ men because of the increased insurance cost.  Some leaders (pastors, legislators, etc.) are coming out either as HIV+ themselves or in support of people who are.

MMAAK has 20 to 25 men per support group, with a full- or part-time staff of 14 (plus volunteers).  They work in five provinces and, when you count direct and indirect clients, HIV+ or not, they affect a total of 3000 people.  They are affiliated with similar groups in the countries surrounding Lake Victoria.  All services are free.

Woman and child at East Africa Center

 On July 4 we flew from Nairobi, in the south-center of the country, to Mombasa on the southern coast.  The coast of East Africa has a long history of trade with Arab countries.  Zanzibar, just off the coast of northern Tanzania, is almost exclusively Muslim, and the mainland coast has a large minority Muslim population.  We saw mosques and women with head scarves as well as Christian churches and religious slogans on buses.  It was interesting being in a place with such a public display of competing religiosity that nevertheless seems to have been strife-free for centuries.

We visited the East Africa Center.  In 2006, we funded a health clinic to add on to the already-existing school.  The EAC has bought a big piece of land nearby and plans to gradually move its operation there.  The health clinic is planned to be one of the first buildings at this new location.

East Africa Center classroom

East Africa Center: women and children celebrate in a clearing nearby

View of the village from the top of the EAC office

 July 5.  We visited Harvest of Hope (not funded by Pangea), a five-year-old school with 50 K-primary students and 150 high school students.  The school is free to needy students.  The buildings themselves look as if they were designed with a school in mind, but in fact the classrooms were built as chicken coops and the meeting hall had been a stable.  A small organic farm provides both income and work experience.  

Harvest of Hope classroom. 
Visitors are greeted by the students in turn standing and introducing themselves.

This is the retirement project of Dr. Ezekiel Okemwa, a former oceanographer.  He’s driven because he lost five brothers and two sisters to AIDS.  In the Mombasa area, 30 to 40% of students are HIV+, and drugs (pot and heroin, for example) are also a problem.  Superstition and spirit beliefs are still an obstacle when trying to get across the HIV health message.

The pastor shows us his materials. 
Dr. Okemwa is on the left, and Chris, Jerry, and Allan are on the right.

A women’s group packages snacks for sale. 
Harvest of Hope sponsored women entrepreneurs like these.

The students are a mixture of Christian and Muslim.  During the assembly, we heard a Christian prayer from the pastor and a Muslim prayer from the teacher of Muslim studies.  But the school promises no proselytizing.  After touring the classrooms, we were guests at the “high table” and treated to songs from students.

Caution: there’s a really steep hill ahead!

Later that day, the adventurous among us toured a snake farm with a spitting cobra, a green mamba, lots of harmless snakes (which the proprietor draped around our necks), chameleons, and a three-foot monitor lizard.  The proprietor told about one show he did where through inattention he put his hand in the wrong cage and was bitten by something poisonous.  He chose not to go immediately to the hospital—that “ruins the holiday mood” in the audience, he said.  He also said that the local people are very superstitious about snakes.  They conclude that he must have black magic to be able to handle snakes (which can’t make him very popular with his neighbors).

The drive from Mombasa to our hotel was on the worst roads of the trip.  It can be worrisome being in the front seat and seeing the car coming at you weaving drunkenly from shoulder to shoulder—at least it is until you notice that your driver is doing the same thing, to avoid the potholes.

We stayed at the Mnarani Beach Club, less than a mile from the ocean up Kilifi Creek.  Though called a creek, it was wide enough to be a river.  Looking across the resort’s infinity (vanishing edge) pool, down the creek, to the Indian Ocean was a peaceful view.  And yet we heard that the old fort just up the river had been a gathering place for slaves.  It was hard to imagine ocean-going ships sailing down that river loaded with slaves, perhaps less than 200 years ago.

Beyond the infinity pool, the Indian Ocean beyond the peaceful mouth of
Kilifi Creek—down which slave ships traveled from the nearby fort.

July 6.  We flew from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with a stop in Zanzibar.  Dar es Salaam means “abode of peace” in Arabic.  Dar was the capital until about ten years ago.  Now it’s Dodoma, near the center of the country.  We occasionally heard the Muslim call to prayer during our stay in Dar. 

Mosque in Zanzibar, seen from airplane

July 7.  Hearing that Mama Rhoi’s One Stop Center (a 2006 grantee) wanted to have a barbecue, we brought some American outdoor games: horseshoes, a Frisbee, and two small footballs.  (Getting the heavy metal horseshoes and stakes through security at the Nairobi airport was a little challenging.  “See, it’s a game.  You throw these curved things at the stake….”) 

Woman and child at the celebration at One Stop Center

It was quite a culture clash seeing Tanzanian boys and girls, some in Muslim headscarves, try to master the games.  But everyone had a good time.  There doesn’t seem to be any experience in this culture with throwing sports.  And we only noticed afterwards one difficulty in learning these games—Frisbees are thrown backhand, horseshoes are thrown underhand, and footballs are thrown yet another way. 

Children try to figure out horseshoes

Chris brought some a BBQ spice rub for the beef and Jerry did the grilling.  (There were comments of appreciation afterwards that we had gone to the trouble of bringing a chef all the way from America.)  There were no utensils, and to conform to African custom we had to remember to eat with our right hands.

This was the celebration at the end of a weeklong training seminar (in which we did not participate).  There was an awards ceremony afterwards, with many speeches. 

Men at celebration

The One Stop Center is a school, and Rhoi tried to explain the complicated and unhelpful relationship she has with the local government.  They use her school as the model shown to dignitaries visiting from the World Bank and so on, and yet they are not supportive.  Her buildings are already much better than those of the typical school, and yet they’re apparently not up to code and she must tear down and rebuild some of them.  (We’re not construction experts, but they looked pretty good to us….)  The attitude seems to be: Why should we help when you have as much money as you want from rich Americans?

The children and grandmothers sat in front of desks at the celebration. 
The desks seemed to be for the parents. 

Our grant was to go to a four-mile-long pipeline to bring water to the school.  There is a well, but it’s too shallow and it is dry during the hot season.  Rhoi says that she will instead use the money for a different water project—a much deeper well with an electric pump.  A water tower will hold water for two weeks’ demand because the electricity is unreliable.

Rhoi mentioned a problem we heard elsewhere—graduates of her program don’t want to go on to the public school because they get fed here.

Older kids.

 (When asked if the hotel water was okay, Rhoi said, “Yes, but don’t brush your teeth with it.”)

July 9.  After a free day on Sunday, during which we explored local stores and tried to find a fast Internet café, we returned to the One Stop Center to see the Teens Against AIDS (2005 and ’06 grantees) and get a progress report on their 2006 grant.  True to its name, the organization is run by young people.  Construction on the Maasai preschool building is underway and it should be finished by mid-August.  The girls education workshop is planned for September.

They were pleased that we spent so much time with them.  Other funders have simply come in, taken a few photos, and left.

July 10.  We flew from Dar to Kisumu.  Kisumu is in southwest Kenya, on Lake Victoria.  Near the airport we saw an enormous grain silo—clearly this region is an important food producer.

Small members of a large audience at the Pathfinder Academy

We were given a warm welcome at Pathfinder Academy, part of Common Ground (2005 and ’06 grantees).  The students did lots of singing and dancing, with several different cultures and languages represented.

A number of groups from the Pathfinder Academy sang and danced for us.  This group has apparently won awards.  (It seemed deliberate that one group of girls had long hair and the other had none.)

Joshua Machinga basically stumbled into founding the school five years ago.  In short, there was a need so he built the school.  Pangea has funded a number of things here, including furniture like bunk beds, chairs, and tables.  A new energy-efficient and less smoky stove is in progress (that’s a big deal, given the extremely smoky kitchen they have now).  We also funded scholarships for 14 OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children). 

But it soon became evident that, successful and well-run thought the school is, Joshua’s true calling is biointensive farming.  He has a degree in that discipline, and he’s affiliated with Ecology Action (see his photo at their web site: www.growbiointensive.org/partners_main.html). 

Joshua shows off his seriously tall corn in the demonstration plot at the school

Did you see a book called Square Foot Gardening written about 25 years ago that recommended small raised beds, composting, crop rotation, and a wide variety of crops?  That’s similar to the approach Joshua uses.  The techniques won’t be surprising to an organic gardener, but they were fascinating to us.  Banana trees were planted in deep holes designed to catch and hold rainwater.  To keep pests away from the corn, napier grass (which attracts the bugs) is planted nearby.  To scare away pests, plant tansy (which looked to us like marigold) at the corners of each bed.  Since beans need something to climb on, plant them with corn so they can use the corn stalks.  Feed goats the plant waste; feed plants the composted goat waste.  And on and on.  Joshua pointed out more than two dozen staple crops and is experimenting with more.

He says he can increase typical yields fivefold while being more environmentally sensitive and sustainable.  This means that a family of eight can live on one eighth of an acre.  Running the school takes most of his time now, but he’s working to transition to farming.

Another ongoing experiment is to compress leafy plant waste into briquettes that burn like wood or charcoal.  This helps provide fuel without deforestation.

This is the press that creates the small cylindrical blocks of compressed leafy material

 (Seen on a truck in Kisumu: “Joyride Driving School”)

Little children are taught English early.  They all seem to be taught the greeting sequence: “How are you?” which must be followed by “I’m fine.”  Waving to children out the window is fun, and they almost always wave back.  Sometimes they practice their English, though imperfectly.  We were occasionally greeted by “I’m fine!” or “bye bye.”

Visiting local stores and markets was interesting when we had down time.  One store had a wide variety of solar panels.  A 100W panel was selling for roughly $500, and a 14W panel cost $70.

There are bull fights around here, but without matadors—it’s just two bulls fighting.

The rules for using this shower were strict: “First open tap to shower before switching on the heater.  After use switch off heater before closing shower tap.  NB: if not, the heater will blow up!”

 (Sign on a primitive-looking store: “Dot Com Berber [sic] Shop”)

We visited one of Joshua’s farmer groups (all women in this case).  They greeted us with song.

Chris shows the farmers a photo of themselves

We visited this entrepreneur, embroidering outside

Around the walls inside her house we saw the typical photo of a
deceased family member (on the right) and a Bible verse (middle).

July 12.  After a second day at Common Ground, we saw the Bar Sauri primary school, part of the Millennium Promise program (see more on the school at www.millenniumpromise.org/site/PageServer?pagename=mv_1sauri).  The program’s goals, roughly stated, are to see what happens if a third world community is developed without money or staff (approximately 50 in Sauri) being a limiting factor. 

Sauri is in the third year of the five year program so one big question is what will happen in Sauri when the resource level drops.  The primary school is working on income generating activities such as growing plants that the students can tend and sell, but it’s hard to imagine any income from that coming close to what the school is currently receiving.  (Another big question, if Sauri is successful, is whether and how to apply the same resource level to the tens or hundreds of thousands of other communities in the developing world.)

The big story at this primary school (grades one through eight) is that out of a regional group of 385 schools, its ranking went from 195th to 2nd.  How did they do it?  Was it a focus on computers?  books?  teachers?  classrooms?  No—it was a hot lunch each day.  The hot lunch both nourished the students as well as provided an incentive for them to show up at school each day as the availability of another meal was not guaranteed.  This simple message of the importance of calories and a well-rounded diet was clear at a number of projects.

Sauri schoolgirls with lunch

Speaking with the headmaster of the school, we also learned that a successful primary school in a well-funded Millennium Village has a chronic shortage of teachers and books.  One teacher might serve one hundred students (we observed students standing in long lines to review their work with a teacher) and there is about one book for every two or three students in the basic subjects and one book for every ten students in more specialized subjects.  The result is that students have a limited ability to do homework and the teachers are able to cover much less ground than they potentially could.  So, despite the huge gains at the school related to the feeding program, it is evident that this second ranked school still has a lot of room for improvement.

After Sauri we visited a village served by Rose Waringa’s Precious Tears Initiative.  The Precious Tears Initiative uses grandparents and other elders to form a community-based network of support for orphans, allowing the orphans, even as heads-of-household, to remain in their own communities.

This girl sang and pantomimed a beautiful song lamenting the loss of her mother
in various everyday (but essential) parts of her life.

The visit began with a welcoming song from the grandparents and then we stopped by a nursery for 20-30 children.  The single-room building was small (perhaps 150 square feet) but was decorated with age-appropriate posters, handmade dolls and toys, etc. so felt like a very comforting environment.  In fact, many of the kids were napping on a blanket on the floor when we visited.

Nap time…

The nursery room was donated by one of the households in the village and we toured the rest of the farm.  They had a couple of goats housed in a raised pen that was similar to the ones we saw elsewhere and allowed the droppings to be collected for fertilizer.  One of the goats was donated by the Heifer Project (or was an offspring of a goat donated by them), which was one of the few times we saw the direct impact of one of the large NGOs.

The visit concluded with story time for the children and personal stories from the community members about how they had been impacted by HIV/AIDS.  Particularly touching was a poem written and recited by a young girl about how she missed her mother during each of the daily routines (waking up, getting water, making breakfast, cleaning the home, etc.).

We crossed the equator

July 13.  Back in Kisumu, we met with GWAKO (Group of Women in Agriculture-Kochieng) Ministries.  This was an interesting group that drills wells.  In their almost ten years of operation, they’ve completed 97 wells. 

They have 20 people on staff and an annual budget of close to $200,000.  They provide about 30% of their budget with their own income generating activities, including an Internet café and a printing press.  They stressed that the community must approach them, not the other way around.  This eliminates the chance that they force a well on a community that isn’t prepared to maintain it.

Well head.  The wood lattice keeps animals out of the pump area.

They get 50 applications per year for wells but are only able to drill 15 per year.    They currently have a large backlog of well requests made over the past few years and work to prioritize this backlog so they can maximize their impact. 

The importance of these wells is hard to overstate.  The one that we visited provided water to people whose nearest water source had been six kilometers away.  The pump they use is a public domain design called the Afridev hand pump (a schematic is at www.uppumps.com/afridev.htm).  This pump can bring water up from wells 50 meters deep, and we found it very easy to use.

Women’s groups are the usual focus because the areas of water and food security are the domain of women in this culture. 

Why you should teach your kids how to drive yourself…

While shopping in Kisumu, we saw someone with a John L. Scott real estate t-shirt, complete with a 206-area code phone number.  In the markets were lots of similar clothes, apparently all used.  It seemed as if the local clothing and textile market had a hard time staying afloat with the competition from Western cast-offs.

(The Imperial Hotel, where we stayed in Kisumu, was hosting a conference titled US Customs and Border Protection.)

July 14.  We next visited FOCODEP (Friends of Katuk Odeyo Community Development Program).  The community was brought together to start FOCODEP because of an erosion problem.  Deforestation means more runoff after rains, and they showed us a shockingly deep gully caused by the runoff.  It was maybe 30 feet deep and had advanced a couple of hundred yards in the previous four months.  And this was just one part—in total, it’s several kilometers in length.  The road had been bisected by the advancing gully only a few months before, and the replacement road was about to be.  Standing at the cliff-like leading edge of the gully, it was hard to imagine what it must be like during the rains.  The terrain wasn’t all that steep where we stood, but large hills stood nearby.

They are planting fast-growing trees in the area to try to reduce the runoff.  One smart feature is planting trees that have an additional use such as providing goat fodder with its leaves or providing fruit or nuts.  This helps reduce the temptation to cut down the trees at some future date.

(A short time ago, they had approached the land owner on whose land we stood to ask permission to plant trees in the hope of stopping the advance.  He refused.  With the gully rapidly eating into his land, he is now finally on board.  If only he’d seen the light sooner!)

A really big gully.  For scale, notice the herder (wearing red) in the upper middle
and the animals to the right.

World Neighbors (http://www.wn.org/) was our host on this visit.  They are funding FOCODEP (Pangea has funded neither program).  World Neighbors is based in Oklahoma City, is more than 50 years old, has an annual budget of $7 million, and is secular.  Its approach is interesting in that (1) they mostly provide advice or consulting rather than material and (2) they want to be out of a community, with any improvements sustained by the community, within five years.

We visited the home of Ms. Ogogo, another FOCODEP beneficiary.  She is an HIV+ widow with four children at home.  Her home is on a hillside, and water is a steep half-mile round trip (or more) away.  Nevertheless, she is growing tree seedlings for sale, has a new raised goat pen (goat milk is preferred to cow milk for HIV patients and fetches twice the price), and has a substantial garden.  There’s a lot of water to fetch, but she has access to ARVs and is healthy.

She also has a wood lot with fast-growing trees, despite cultural mores that women should not grow trees.  World Neighbors would like to see everyone self-sufficient in wood to reduce the need for additional deforestation.  And she raises chickens and is building a chicken coop.  (There was a vague reference to catching termites to use as chicken feed—that would have been interesting to see.)

Twenty-two percent of the population in this area is HIV+, but this percentage is dropping.  With so many negative changes in the lives of many HIV+ people, it was great to see someone whose recent changes were positive.

In the late afternoon we drove to the Rabuor Village Project (2005 and ’06 grantees).  We were greeted by a group of 30 or so local women.  Loyce Mbewa was our host. 

Rabuor nursery school

There was much singing, interrupted with individuals standing up to tell their stories of how the program had helped them.  The Rabuor Youth Group is new—primarily young men (with a few young women) are starting money-making projects such as poultry and a tree nursery.  The involvement of the young men is encouraging as a generation of men has been lost to AIDS and much of the progress in Rabuor (and elsewhere) has originated from women’s groups.

Women entrepreneurs welcome us to Rabuor

We toured some of the many sunflower fields that our grant had helped encourage.  As we walked around, we visited with several people.  In their houses, the sequence was similar: handshakes, prayers, mention of how many children the matriarch had lost, talk of the upcoming harvest, and so on. 

The impact of AIDS was clear, but so was another quite different aspect.  Loyce (who has lived in the US for several years as she has completed her degree at the University of Washington) said that, by comparison with the warm and interconnected Kenyan society, America seemed to her a very lonely place.  The contrast with the stereotypical American, driving from house to office and back and too busy to interact with his neighbors, was clear.

(Barak Obama’s father came from a town less than two hours’ drive from here.)

We saw lots of sunflower fields

 July 15.  Loyce gave us some insights into the local Kenyan (specifically, Luo) culture.  Traditionally, a young person has a lot of advisors besides parents—older cousins, aunts, and uncles take on much of the parenting responsibility.  When a young person steps over the line or has a problem, it’s often one of these advisors who helps out.  But AIDS has disrupted this network -- as tough as it would be in America, it’s tougher here to lose a member of one’s extended family.  Children grow up missing a vital cultural element, but this loss is often unnoticed by Western eyes.

Loyce wistfully talked about how the hills were covered in forests when she was little. 
You can see the patchwork of fields, recovering forest, and bare areas on this nearby hill.

We stayed at Loyce’s parents’ compound.  Being given a glimpse of life in a Kenyan home—fires to heat bathing water starting at daybreak, rainwater collecting in cisterns, solar panels charging batteries for lights in the evening, neighbors pitching in to help with the extra workload of guests, hand washing ritual before meals, traditional foods, and so on—was quite a treat.  Perhaps the most startling aspect was seeing a Maasai warrior, armed with bow and arrow, whose job it was to guard the compound at night.  (We guessed that was just when there were visitors.)

On one of our walks through the area, we stopped by the primary school that many of the students attend after they have completed nursery school.  The difference between the schools is stark—the primary school is in terrible shape with crumbling walls and broken chalk boards.  In some rooms there are no desks so the students have to sit on dirt floors.  Loyce said that the transition from the well-appointed nursery school to the dilapidated primary school is difficult on the children and some have dropped out as a result.

This is the school that the kids graduate to.  It looked like a movie set for a war picture.  This is one of several buildings in the compound, and this is a representative view—they were all this bad.

 One of our contributions was a manual seed press to extract the oil from dried sunflower seeds.  We gave it a try.  The press works well, but it’s a slow process.  It takes four to five kilos of seeds to make one liter of oil (which sells for about two dollars), and they can make about 30 liters per day.  Electric wires have been strung past the school and should soon carry power.  Last year, we committed to an electric seed press once electricity is available.  This press should increase production speed more than tenfold and more efficiently squeeze oil out of the seeds. 

Several of us had to give the seed press a try.  Dried sunflower seeds (in the bag) go in the triangular hopper (top-right of photo).  The handle (left) is raised and lowered to press the seeds.  The spent seeds go into a wheelbarrow on the far side, and the oil (which still needs to be filtered) goes into the green bucket.  This will be much faster with an electric press.

Loyce was also hosting three people from Slum Doctor (http://slumdoctor.org), based in Bellingham, WA.  They raise about $200,000 per year, mostly from local individuals, and they fund six programs in East Africa, including the food program at Rabuor Village nursery school. 

We walked past neighboring fields, guided by a young man from the Youth Group.  This is one of the farmers.  As is customary, she invited us in for a prayer and a chat.  I imagine that anyone would feel welcome, but being supporters of Rabuor, we felt especially so.

Girls washing clothes and getting water at a stream

July 16, our last day.  We went to the nursery school to watch the children begin the day.  The teachers began with the Lord’s Prayer, some gospel songs, and some student-led poems such as an AIDS-awareness song that highlighted the indiscriminate nature of the disease (AIDS kills soldiers, AIDS kills teachers, AIDS kills parents, AIDS kill religious people, and so on).  The kids’ English was a lot better than our Luo.  Some kids wore uniforms and some didn’t, but all looked healthy and happy.

Rabuor children begin their day