Thursday, July 7, 2011
Hello All,
It has been a week since we left and this has been the first time we have been able to write an E-Mail. We have been too busy every day and too tired at night. We were in the air or in airports for three days with the exception of a few hours in Istanbul where we “relived” our wonderful experience of living on the Hippodrome. We arrived at 2 a.m., worked our way through customs, got our visas, traveled to the Maji Masuri office, and hit the sack at 4 a.m.
On Saturday, we moved to our home, within a short walking distance of the office. The home is in a middle-class walled compound called an “estate” which is protected by a gate and guards. We have our very basic bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom is a bed, a chair, and a rack to hang clothes but no bureau, tables, shelves, etc. so we are pretty much spread out on the floor. We put up our mosquito netting every night and take it down in the morning.
We have a flush toilet! It works well except when there is no water pressure at which time we fill the back of the toilet by bucket. There is no ((and there will not be any) hot water so we heat the water on the stove. There is no shower or bathtub so we mix the cold water with hot water in a bucket and take daily bucket showers at which we have become pretty good. We are paying approximately $240 a month for our room and $30 a month for such things as our laundry. We have just had our laundry done by a young lady who lives in the house, who washed the clothes in a bucket in the backyard and hung them out to dry.
The food situation is better than India or Kenya because Susan is cooking the dinner and we are eating western food! We are buying our own food but because refrigerator capacity is extremely limited, we are eating variations on hamburger and pasta.
The family is very nice. It consists of a husband, Robert, who is a minister; a wife, Lillian, who has a data entry job; and Lisa, a two and one half year old who is going on ten – very cute, vivacious, full of life, wild and crazy – sets the tone for the entire house. In addition, there is a young lady, Ajir, who takes care of Lisa and does the household chores. And, there are two young men, one going to college and one who has a job, who are close friends of the family. And, there are two other volunteers, one from England and one from New Zealand. So, there are just 10 of us sharing the two bathrooms and one kitchen – all cooking different food!
Starting on Sunday, and for the last five days, we have visited the various Maji Mazuri sites, spread out over Nairobi. It is a bigger operation then I expected. It is impossible to describe the programs in detail (we may try later),
In Nairobi in Methare, the slum area of 400,000 people, the projects consist of a primary school called Headstart (K through 7) for 150 children; a micro finance program for 250 women; a computer training program with 10 computers; a program of activities for 50 primary and secondary children outside of school; and a tremendous program for 50 college age youth.
Not far outside of Nairobi is an orphanage for 50 children extremely handicapped, mentally and physically.
In the country, about one to two hours out of Nairobi, they have a developed a 36 acre site that includes a school for 200 primary and secondary students, some from the Methare slum who now live on the campus and some from the surrounding Masai community who return each day. It also includes a large farm and a brand new clinic to serve the entire area. Lastly, they operate a primary and secondary school for 320 students in a completely different location outside of Nairobi in the country. Every program is of a very high quality and is having a significant impact on the lives of literally thousands of children.
Kenya has one thing in common with our experiences in India and Ghana – the traffic and the roads. Some roads are decent, most are not. The traffic pollution is oppressive. The traffic is so heavy and so uncontrolled that it takes a very long time to go anywhere. It takes over an hour to go 10 miles to the slum area and nearly two hours to get out to the country projects. Unlike India, Kenya, or Nigeria, we are taking public transportation – an unbelievable experience.
The primary mode of transportation is by matatu, a vehicle that holds 14 passengers all crammed very tightly together. There is a driver and a “conductor”, who collects the money and who bangs on the side of the vehicle to tell the driver to stop or go to let people on or off. There is LOUD blaring music on every matatu. Lesson: Do not sit in the front seat near the speakers. Each ride costs from 20 shillings (20 cents) to 40 shillings (40 cents). On the road is every vehicle for itself – sort of like bumper cars. The driving challenges are made greater by pedestrians dashing at every small opportunity to squeeze through and between, cars, trucks, and buses. Yesterday we passed an accident were someone had just been hit by some vehicle. Police were on the scene so I think the person on the ground was getting help. The other type of vehicle we take is a 22 passenger bus which is only slightly more civilized.
There are approximately 10 other volunteers working at Maji Mazuri at the moment. Now that we have seen all the sites, we are all going to have a meeting with the staff tomorrow morning and everyone is going to decide what he or she would like to do and which site they would like to work at based on the volunteer's skill and the site's needs.
Tune in tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Hello Again,
We have had our organizational meeting. For the next two weeks, most of the Cambridge students are going to interact with the students at the various schools. The activities will include everything ranging from playing with the preschoolers and helping the primary school teachers to playing soccer with the high school kids.
Susan is starting off working at a Maji Mazuri program called Headstart. It differs from Headstart in the US because the school serves children from toddlers to eighth graders. This school has 300 kids all crowded in a very small space located in the Mathare Slum. The baby classes as they are called may have 30 children per classroom measuring 10 ft by 16 ft It is designed to give them all a “Headstart” that is prepare them to compete in the opportunity to continue their education after secondary school. It is competitive in the sense that 8th graders have to pass a very tough test in order to get into high school and high schoolers have to pass a very tough test to get into college. The attrition rate is very high at both levels and if the students do not move on to the next level, they are pretty much destined to live a life and have occupations that reflect their educational level. We happen to be here at the end of their school year and everyone at each top level is studying very hard – the pressure is tremendous. The government pays for primary school. Kenyans must pay for high school and college themselves.
Susan is also involved in “Mavuno” a micro-finance program which Maji Mazuri operates in the slum called Mathare (400,000 people). The essence of the program is as follows: Five residents (most, if not all, women) of Mathare form a Group and borrow money from Mavuno to start a joint business. Each woman receives five shillings
(approximately 5 dollars!) to start a business, such as a vegetable stand, a sewing business, a shoe store, etc. They must then pay the debt off every week until it is paid off. If the Group is successful and current in their payments, they may borrow a larger amount (10 shillings). If they continue to be successful, expand their businesses, and pay off their loans, they can borrow up to 50 shillings (approximately $50). There are currently about 250 women involved in 50 active businesses and the number is growing.
We have seen two businesses that are part of the micro finance program. One was a woman who has a stand in Mathare selling fresh vegetables. The other business is a restaurant also in the slum. Susan had the wonderful opportunity to have lunch there. At first, the tiny building looked uninhabitable but once inside, we found ourselves in the kitchen where there were two rough wooden tables with benches. The proprietor was very welcoming and served a delicious Kenyan meal.
We participated in a fascinating Mavuno meeting yesterday. Mavuno, the name of the microfinance program, has never had a written “Constitution” or set of written rules and regulations governing and describing the organization. So the staff is writing one. The Kenyan “team” is made up of a couple of young, recent college graduates, who are staff members, and three or four very street smart young people who know how the program is, in actuality, working. They had already done some preliminary work on the documents. Susan and I and three other volunteers (one a recent graduate with an Economics major from Cambridge, another a young lady from China, working on her Masters in social work, etc.) were invited to join them and contribute our ideas. Twelve of us sat around for four hours in a dark, cement block room with no water and little lectricity, etc. and “banged out” a very good second draft of the document. The team will review the document again on Friday. These twelve people, all of whom actively participated, were from four continents and we all worked together on a common successful task. It was wonderful!
Paul is not a teacher. Paul is not a social worker. Paul is not a farmer. Paul cannot play soccer with Kenyan high school students. Maji Mazuri does not happen to serve old people. What can Paul do? Of course, pick up garbage:
Maji Mazuri has a very effective garbage pick up program for high school and college age young people, all of whom have grown up in the slums. The leaders of these two programs called the Youth and Teens programs are also from the slums and are people who have come up through these programs themselves. These leaders are truly remarkable folks. Their overall competence, maturity, intelligence, leadership skills, mastery of the English language, etc. after having been born in and grown up in the slums, is truly hard to believe. The Youth and Teen programs includes a lot of information programs designed to help young people grow up in the slums without doing drugs, getting pregnant, stealing, etc. and maybe move out - a very hard thing to do.
They have also started a modest slum clean-up program. The city does not pick up any garbage from the slums. Therefore, most garbage just piles up. In addition, since there are very inadequate toilet facilities (four central locations for 400,000 people), there is a lot of waste from this source also flowing down polluted trenches to a very polluted “river”. The young people have handed out garbage bags to several dozen slum dwellings and every Saturday, they pick up the garbage bags, put the garbage bags in wheelbarrows and dump them along the main road. It is illegal to dump the garbage on the road and there are fines involved, so the young people dump the garbage at “odd hours” and since the city does not want so much garbage on the main street, they pick it up.
The young people also take shovels (three) and rakes (four) which are used by a dozen or more people to clean the garbage out of the polluted trenches so the sewage can flow down to the river. Last Saturday, along with a number of other volunteers, Paul became a full-fledged garbage man for about three hours. He was particularly good on the rake. (We volunteers are going to buy some more wheelbarrows, rakes, and shovels for the young people).
The people of the slums are very appreciative of the program and it is providing a very good example for others to follow. It is, of course, a drop in the bucket when you are dealing with a slum of 400,000 people but Maji Mazuri and the young people are to be highly commended for their efforts in very challenging circumstances.
Tune in again some day, if you wish.
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