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June 30, 2003
June 30, 2003
It’s 6:00 am. Can’t sleep. To many worries of work in my head. And can’t do much else so early in the morning as I am in a hotel in Nairobi. That means I can hear traffic passing on the road outside also and I am definitely not used to that. Very few cars passing by my house in the remote bush. So I’ve decided to write down a few of my concerns and then maybe I can doze a bit more in peace before I start my busy day of rushing around the city trying to get everything done.
Arrived in Nairobi yesterday after about 7 hours of travel. Stopped by at a friends to discuss some of the work we have in trying to market the meat product and tanned hides that the women’s group in Ngurunit makes. That is a challenge and I’m still trying to work out the best way to go about that. The main worries though concern the contracts for the two water projects that we finally secured funding for from the US Embassy projects grant fund. I have brought the signed contracts to submit to the coordinator at the embassy but have no idea if I will even get a chance. This whole terrorism issue is really in danger of affecting a lot of development and it makes me so sad that the actions of people that seem so remote from us can have so much impact on daily life. There have been a lot of threats in Kenya and it has affected a lot of lives. Tourism is basically non-existent due to all the travel advisories and I don’t know how many thousands of lives that depend on that sector for survival have been affected. The US Embassy is on constant state of alert and a lot of people are leaving and operations are affected by constant closures. I am really worried that the water projects will be delayed and the people who have been given so much hope by the contract signing will be disappointed. What can I do but pray that the situation stabilizes and everything turns out okay. I will go to the US Embassy today and if it is open, submit the contracts and see if we can start working on the project immediately as we have planned. I hope so. But, if not, we have already been trying for 3 years to get these projects accomplished so we will just continue to be patient and hope the delays are only a few more months. At least we have the promise of funds, now we can only hope that this whole terrorism issue doesn’t affect more innocent lives in Kenya.
One more thought that makes me so keen to get these water projects accomplished. Reuben came home Saturday after a few days going home to Ngurunit so see his family and livestock while I stayed with the kids. He was hoping to see one of his sisters who lives in a remote area on the way to Ngurunit. He passed by very early in the morning but found that she had already left at 4:00 am in order to take the kids (baby goats) to get water. The water source is miles away and she would be most of the day taking the kids to the water and back again so he had to give up meeting her this time. He said to me that sometimes it just hits him on how hard a life the people who live in the remote areas have surviving in terms of the issue of water. It is that issue and the hard life that I hope these water projects will address and help for at least some people in the remote areas of Northern Kenya. And if we work hard and the resources are available maybe eventually every area like the one where Reuben’s sister lives will have enough water that life becomes not so hard.
June 27, 2003
June 27, 2003
Today more paperwork. Writing proposals now. Need a little break from the tedious so will have a little light thought flow time. At the moment my concentration is taken up by the environment. How do we work on saving the environment around us and yet keep using it for the important needs in people’s lives? The sheer magnitude of the problem is sometimes daunting. And whenever I consider the issue of water and how to help people solve the problems related to that, the environment comes into the picture in a big way. I still remember one day a few years back walking to Ngurunit town from my house. A very bad drought had just ended and one of the results of that was an influx of Rendille pastoralists into the predominantly Samburu pastoralist Ngurunit area because the environment there was not as destitute as some of the outlying Rendille areas. It had been the only place for miles around near the end of the drought that any water at all could be found even if one had to dig 40 to 60 feet down into the dry river bed and then wait hours while water slowly seeped into the hole. It finally rained and things had started getting green and water was in plenty again. Most of the Rendilles had moved back to their traditional places North of us but a few were still around. One reason the Rendille areas get hit so hard by the droughts in terms of water is because of the general lack of respect for trees. Samburus live a bit more at peace with their trees and when they use them for fencing, prune off the branches rather than chop the whole tree down.
As I was walking, I came across a dry riverbed and as I reached the top of the bank, I saw a Rendille old man making the last chops on cutting down a whole tree. I rushed to try to stop him but was too late. Then I tried to ask him why he didn’t just prune it. Unfortunately I know the Samburu and Swahilli language but not Rendille. And being an old man, he had never seen the point of learning anything but his Rendille language. So we stood there arguing in words neither understood until the women in the nearby home saw the commotion and came out to see what was happening. One of them was a member in my women’s group and she was able to understand and translate. So, there I was trying to give a lesson on the whole transpiration cycle and show why trees were related to rain which was related to water and remind them of the last water shortage and how without trees, these shortages would get worse and worse. Quite funny I thought later, but very important. We often don’t realize how our personal actions on a daily basis in our own little world spaces affect the wider picture, sometimes on a very grand scale when all the actions of every individual add up.
So now, I am trying to promote more and more an environmental awareness and relate all of the individual actions in terms of the community members’ use of the environment around them to the short and long term consequences. The water cachement areas on the hills and mountains around almost every community in Samburu District have become alarmingly bare of the important forests and vegetation cover that attract the rain to fall and when falling, ease the run off flow to allow it to soak in and refill reservoirs and springs. Instead, more and more raging floods and erosion is being seen as the run-off rushes through denuded areas. Some of the effects of this are springs producing less, wells drying up faster during the dry season and lakes and water dams in the valleys being silted and reducing their depth to such an extent that the water dams store less water and the lake eco-systems are changing drastically, threatening the continuation of both wildlife and human activities. These include providing migration habitat for some birds and fishing enterprises for people. So, that brings me back to the sheer magnitude of the problems being daunting. But there is hope, and some projects here and there have had positive effects on the over all environmental situation and related water issues. So I continue to write proposals for the communities I work in and at the same time teach as many people I come across on my walks and in my work about the importance of the environment and the relationship with water and the access to this important resource.
June 23, 2003
June 23, 2003
It is a beautiful morning. Just sent the two women I brought with me from Ngurunit to go to Nairobi with some Columbian Catholic Priests who work in a town near by here. A friend I have in Nairobi who is trying to help women, and men, make a living out of bead work had asked me a couple weeks ago if I could send a couple women from the women’s groups I work with in Nairobi for training when I get the chance. Just before I went to Ngurunit, she called me and said she had made a plan with this priest near my area to bring two women from groups he works with for training at her house. She thought, as we both worked with Samburu people, it would be nice if our women could all come at the same time to be companions to each other in big, scary Nairobi. So, the timing is right and I was able to bring the women to Maralal, contact the priests and make the plan for them to carry my women with their women to Nairobi for the beadwork training. Amazing the logistics worked out. And easier for the women too.
Nairobi is a scary place for illiterate women who have never been further than the forests where they gather wood, fetch water and graze their animals. I was really worried I wouldn’t get a hold of Father John for him to take the women with him and then have to deal with getting them to Nairobi by public transport. That is a terrifying experience even for me sometimes and I am used to it! But, miracles of miracles, communication was made. As there are no phones between Maralal and where the priests live, I went to the Maralal Catholic Mission to try to get them on the radio set system that the mission has between all its stations. The Italian priest there said he would try to send the message but the signal couldn’t go direct because of a problem with having a mountain in between so he would send to another station that could than get contact with the Barsaloi station where the Columbian priests live. When I came back to see the progress, the message hadn’t made it through all the rounds yet, but then it turned out it didn’t matter as one of the priests from Barsaloi had happened by on his motorcycle for some other work. So I got to talk to him directly. I love it when things work out easily like that. I am constantly reminded that life here in Northern Kenya most often isn’t straight forward in getting anything accomplished and usually the only plan is that the plans will likely change.
So anyway, now the priests stopped by the house this morning and the women are off on their adventure. I’ll be going to Nairobi next week for some work and stop in to check on them. They are really excited to see all the new sites and get a chance at a steady income. They will learn the work and then come back to Ngurunit to teach their fellow group members the work. With a little luck, my friend will be able to secure a large market for the product, which are beautiful beaded dog collars. Already bought one for my dog though she is still too small for it. And one of the things I am most grateful for in all this is the closer connection I have made with other people who are as keen to help the communities of Kenya as I am. It is always good to be reminded I am not alone. Gives me hope to carry on trying even when the going gets tough. Now back to the paperwork which is very tough!
June 22, 2003
June 22, 2003
Reports. Reports. Reports. Not to mention tons of Proposals to write, revise, review and send. Paperwork. This is the one side of development that can really be difficult and take so much time. But that is in essence what my organization is really all about. Helping the communities deal with all of the paperwork necessary if they ever want to get any sort of assistance or let the world know that they exist and are important. About 80% of the women I work with are illiterate or have very, very basic literacy skills. Like being able to write their names and read numbers maybe. And in the communities I work with, men are often also in the same category. A few more have had a chance at education but not really enough to have much impact on the overall ability of being able to deal with all the intricacies of paperwork required for projects.
But at the moment, I feel almost drowned in the sheer volume of the required paperwork. In a way this is a good sign. Most of the work is reports and plans finalizations. That means that a lot of proposals have been approved and lots of work is going on or starting up. I just spent several days trying to read complicated English language legal contract documents to meetings of people who had never been to school or out of their village and most don’t even speak the national language of Kenya much less English. Only their local languages. Even the translators had trouble with understanding the English. For that matter, even I had trouble with some of it. But it is required for the donors to have all the proper documents and such before they commit their money. So it is necessary we deal with it. Which, I have to keep reminding myself when I have paperwork coming out of my ears, makes my work of go-between very important in the process of helping the communities meet their goals for development. But it still seems funny in a way to have these really complicated, important papers all finger printed by the community as very few of them write. I see how they often think I’m crazy to constantly have some piece of paper for them to sign. After the contracts it is an endless stream of other papers: meeting minutes, cash vouchers, reports, letters. I mention I need some signatures and they dutifully hold out their thumbs for me to press it into the inkpad and then onto the paper.
That is only in the field. Now I am in the office sorting it all out. Getting it all written in the right format. And then work on sending it all to the right places. Tedious but necessary. So I will get on with it and know that someone has to do it if the communities are to benefit and continue in the positive direction for life that we have been moving in over the years. And after the reports, I continue to write and send more proposals so I can have more reports to write. That is development.
June 14, 2003
June 14, 2003
Yesterday was Friday the 13th but no bad luck. In fact it was an excellent day. Went to two community meetings. One with a group in Lebendera and one in Namare. They both went well even though I was worried a bit about the organization of the Namare meeting.
The meetings were about the community water projects that I was able to get funding for from the US Embassy. Amazing. Still can’t believe I pulled it off. The communities are a little amazed as well. I think they had given up on me. I have been going to meetings with them, writing proposals, taking pictures, sending letters and telling them to be patient for 3.5 years. And all that just to one donor, the US Embassy Ambassador’s Project Fund. It had taken 3 years to finally get the coordinator to come visit the two project sites with me in December 2002 and we all thought that was a major accomplishment. Then, it has taken 6 months to finally get an answer to the final proposal put in to the Project Fund committee for consideration. But despite delays, most likely Iraq War related, the money was released and our projects successful.
So at the meetings yesterday, both communities started working out the details of implementation and signed the contracts. I will submit the contracts to the US Embassy and the project will begin. Exciting. Still a lot of work to do but at least it is starting after many years of effort to get it going. It is really hard to get project funding from anyone for projects in this part of Kenya. We are very remote and most of the time the donors find it too hard to make the effort to come visit. They just aren’t often willing to spend two days traveling here and two days back with how ever many days in between to visit the projects. Too busy they say! A few times I get fortunate and convince them I am trustworthy and they should fund the projects I present without visits if they find it too difficult. But most donors won’t skip that step and then won’t agree to come. It is frustrating. But at least for now I was successful on getting the visit arranged and successful so the proposal was promoted and positive results forthcoming. Hurray!!June 17, 2003
It’s about 8:00 after a very busy day and Naiboku is already in bed. She really loves it here in Ngurunit where she has so many friends in the next door homes. I barely see her the whole day. Awake at 6:00 a.m. and off to play. It makes it easy for me though when I have work. I have enjoyed this ten days here with just her to care for and her brother and cousin at Maralal for school. We will be happy to get back to them though on Thursday. We have a new puppy to show them that Naiboku found at my sister-in-law’s and decided to take.
The work here with the women’s group has been satisfying and successful. I’m happy the technical expert Anne, who is also my good friend, was able to help us accomplish so much before she left today. And then have good chats about work and life in the evenings, with a few computer movies here and there. It was funny last night having to go finish watching Spiderman out in the car because the solar battery got too low and the computer battery also finished half way through. So I plugged the computer into the car lighter and we laughed about getting to go to a “drive-in” movie in the bush of Northern Kenya.
Anyway, the work this trip was experimenting on tanning hides. We had some camel hides we had dried when we slaughtered the camels for the group meat preservation work. Also had a sheep and a goat skin we wanted to try some things with. Preparing hides is incredibly hard work when done by hand, especially the big heavy camel hides. Each half weighed 15 pounds when wet. I am exhausted from helping the group women pull the hide back and forth over a metal blade for four hours under a shade tree to “soften” it in the last step for tanning. I parked my car nearby and blasted U2 best of 1990-2000 all afternoon. Of course the Samburu women didn’t get a whole lot out of the words but it kept me energized. Also at one point when I went into their house to check on some carpenter work going on, we heard laughing outside and when we looked out the window, 4 or 5 of the women were practicing their “american” dancing to the music. Really fun!
Anne had tried two different tanning methods this trip, one of which we have tried before with some success but difficulty with dehairing. So this time we tried a new method of dehairing and then the normal method of tanning we had tried before and the results have been so wonderful. Beautiful leather. I have samples of sheepskin leather and a camel skin leather to try for markets now. If that is successful, the women will have another option of income generation which will help their lives so much.
The other experimental method Anne tried was based on the Native American method of smoking and using the brains. This would be cheaper and not involve chemicals, though the chemicals we use are the most environmentally friendly ones we could find. Unfortunately this time it didn’t work very well so we will have to try again another time. We have learned though that failures are also successes in terms of learning how not to do something. I remember how last November our attempts at camel and goat skin tanning resulted in about 15 rotten, stinking skins because of several mistakes. This time around we didn’t make those mistakes and now we have some beautiful tanned leather. So even the mistakes taught us how to be successful. I always need to remember that principle. Nothing is ever completely a failure. One just needs to look for the positive points and learn from it for next time. Well, I’m off to bed now too as my computer battery has run out and I don't want to use my house solar battery too much like last night. June 20, 2003
Got back to Maralal today after 12 really good days of work in Ngurunit. It was so beautiful there with the recent rains making the river flow up to the town. It was starting to dry up slowly up the mountain but still flowing past the women’s groups plots. We went up the mountain a bit one day to swim in the pools and water falls up there. So beautiful and peaceful.
The trip back yesterday was good but had the same difficulty when leaving of having too many people who want a ride. Transportation is one of the big problems from Ngurunit, both for people and for ways of transporting things to market. My car yesterday was full of goods for sale from the women’s group and people needing to get places. Too full. Then the roads are so bad that the where and tear on the vehicle is too much sometimes. And still I left behind 5 other people who wanted to go for various reasons but no room. Some will end up walking for 2 days to Baragoi or 5 days to Maralal. Some of them, especially the women, will end up waiting around for a vehicle to ride in and might be waiting 2 or 3 more weeks. The roads are so bad a transport business can’t make enough profits to make that route profitable. So private and project vehicles, which are scare, are the only means. Difficult.
But the7 hours it took to reach Maralal was eventful. At one point a cheetah suddenly jumped out in front of us and ran in the road. I stopped and the cheetah stopped and stood there looking at us, then slowly walked into the bush. We watched it as it walked away. Naiboku really liked it. Thought it was a big cat. Which in a way, it was, I guess. Very beautiful. Later a gazelle ran in the road in front of us a while. Naiboku liked it’s white rear. It was a big one for that area.
A couple hours from Maralal, we met a tourist vehicle that had gotten 3 flat tires. Stopped and helped them with an air compressor I had. They were getting exhausted from pumping their little bicycle pump up and down a million times. I love meeting the interesting people on the road. I talked to the driver, from a Kenyan tour company, to try to organize some market for our meat products and promote them also to come to Ngurunit more. I find a lot of breakthroughs in my work for the communities comes through ‘chance’ meetings on the road or in cafés or shopping.
It is good to be back in Maralal with Reuben and the boys. Naiboku was happy to see her father, brother and cousin again and Loiweti and Polisan happy to see us. Someday, we will be able to have all the things we need, like communication channels and good schools, so we can all live there all of the time and not always traveling back and forth. But the travel is fun too so life will go on as is for a while. Even if a bit tiring.
June 09, 2003
June 9, 2003
Arrived in Ngurunit yesterday (Sunday) after leaving Maralal on Saturday morning and staying the night in Baragoi along the way. I hadn’t stayed over night in Baragoi for almost two years since we moved away from there in October 2001. Usually we just pass through from Maralal to Ngurunit since it is only a six hour drive and it is nicer just to eat lunch there and make it to our own house to sleep. I stopped over in order to look for some people I have to interview for this gender project evaluation I am doing for ITDG.
I remember that when I used to live in Baragoi, we always had water problems during the dry seasons. People would spend hours and hours looking for water. The wells in the dry river bed running through town would dry up completely. Several times when the only bore hole machine would break, we would have to drive 20 Kilometers (14 miles) to the next town down river where there tended to be more reserves in the sand and fill up as many water containers as the car would carry. People who didn’t have vehicles really suffered.
Because of these memories from the 6 years I lived there I am so happy now after interviewing some of the people for the gender project. They told me about an ITDG project of building sand dams in the riverbed. They said it was very hard work because first they had to dig very deep trenches across the river bed. Then stones were collected and a wall built in the trench. After that they filled up the hole again to bury the wall. 5 dams like that were completed with one more to go next time the river dries a bit.
But after doing all that work, they were all so happy now because they say water is now so much that everyone is planting gardens along the river banks and the wells produce plenty for everyone. One person in town told me that they can even get fresh kales in town to eat. I know they were never available before and all vegetables had to be bought in Maralal 100 Km (70 miles) away. The wells didn’t reduce water output hardly at all during this last short dry season and every one expects the water to last easily during the present long dry season as well. It is so cool to see a project that has produced such good results. Gives me hope to carry on with different projects I am working on. Especially the water ones.
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