Images of Kibera 2

Images of Kibera

Tell me Congratulations

Today I graduate
with a Masters in International Development
from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies
at the University of Denver.

I hope they will mail me my degree.
:)

I recommend - The End of Food

I'm reading The End of Food by Paul Roberts.
And I think everyone else should too.
It is soooo interesting - I can't believe how little I actually know about where the food I buy in the grocery stores comes from - and how many of the big food brands are actually owned by the same companies.

It is especially interesting to me since I am from an agricultural area and have family in farming and ranching. This book addresses how little of the money we pay for food in the grocery stores or restaurants actually goes to the producers of the food.
I'm now super excited to get home and talk to my grandparents to find out more about what is going on.

Anyway, its fascinating.

PS - after you read this you will probably never be able to eat processed food again. Just a warning.

The Great Jerrycan Trek

Ok, so I have to give a disclaimer:

I don't really believe in handing out stuff when I travel to other countries. When I travel places, I can tell when groups of white people have come before me bearing gifts, because I get mobbed by groups of children chanting whatever that gift was ('give me a pen!' 'give me candy!' 'give me money!' etc.) In other words, it sets an expectation that seems to be something like this: when white people come here they give us things.

This is upsetting. Not just because it is hard to build relationships with people when they are expecting something from you right off the bat, but also because it builds on this idea of the 'great white hope' - the idea that white people come and hand out things, give money, fix whatever problem is at hand. I don't want to be that or do that.

That said, we decided as a group that we wanted to give something to the women that we interviewed that would help promote health for their families. Each interview lasted almost an hour and it was pretty intense. The women gave us their time freely, even though they had dozens of other things they needed to be doing, so we felt that giving them something small was the least we could do. We did not tell anyone that we were giving them anything (in other words, we were unwilling to 'bribe' people to interview us) and we didn't give anything out until the very last day that we were in the field.

We also thought through exactly what we wanted to give.
We all agreed it had to be something sustainable (not something like food or something else consumable - we wanted it to be something that would help the families out long term), and we wanted it to be something we bought from the community in which we were interviewing to support local business.

And the verdict was....... the Jerrycan.

Jerrycans are the tools women in Kibera use to collect and store water:

They are actually old cooking oil containers that have been washed out. Each one holds about 20L of water. And most of the families we interviewed only had a few, which limited the amount of water they could collect and store each day. In light of the fact that there is SEVERE water rationing in the Nairobi area these days, this meant that they were often not able to collect as much water as they needed for their families.

So............... Sadique trekked us over to the Kibera market:

And introduced us to this man (the Jerrycan man, if you will).....

And he hooked us up with 48 Jerrycans.

Yes, 48 Jerrycans. And even though they look nice and yellow and light, they are actually quite heavy, even without water. There were 8 of us, so each of us carried 6 back. I tried many different methods of carrying them, but this was the only one I could come up with that worked:


And we trekked back, about a 40 minute walk, to where we had done our interviews. People laughed uproariously at us the entire way, and we laughed right with them... I mean, we looked pretty ridiculous.


We then retraced our steps and handed them out one by one to each of the women we interviewed. And when we woke up with sore arms the next morning, we had DEEPLY more respect for the women who haul 7 or 8 of these full of water back and forth to their house every day.

Tiwi Beach, Kenya = Fabulous Vacation

The vacation away was everything we could have hoped for.

For anyone thinking of going there:
We flew from Nairobi to Mombasa ($114 on Kenyan Airways). Our favorite cab driver in Nairobi called a cab driver to pick us up at the Mombasa airport and he drove us the 25km south (across the ferry first) to Tiwi beach (it cost 2500 Ksh). Though the distance isn't far it still took about an hour and a half to go from the airport to Tiwi.

We stayed at the Maweni Beach Cottages for 8000 Ksh/night (approximately 100 US dollars - we split it 4 ways) - I cannot recommend the place enough. It was perfect for us - secluded - beautiful white beaches, swimming pool. It was a self-catering cottage but we didn't know that we would have to bring our own groceries as the nearest market was quite a ways away. However, there was a great fruit/souvenier stand where we bought lots of mangoes, oranges and bananas for lunch each day. Breakfast and dinner we ate at the restaurant on the property.

Ok, let's focus on how fabulous this truly was.......

The view from our cottage:

Our front yard:

Laying on our private beach:

Walking to our beach (just a few steps from our back yard):

Our cottage:

Glorious Vacation Coming Up!

To celebrate the end of our fieldwork (or at least the biggest phase of it) and to generally keep ourselves from going COMPLETELY crazy in Nairobi, the girls and I are taking a fabulous weekend away. We are flying to Mombasa (tickets were only about $100!) and staying in a cottage for a few days at Tiwi Beach.

To put it all in perspective, these are the conditions that we have been working in for the last month and a half:

And THIS is where we will be the next several days:

I cannot think of a time I have been more excited for a vacation. I mean.... seriously.

Last day of interviews in Kibera

We are so excited that today we will complete our household interviews in Kibera.

These are my ladies - our research team. From left to right - Kelly, me, Renee and Katie.

Not that I won't miss our welcoming committee... :)

Masai Mara National Reserve - Wildebeest Migration

I'll trade you that broken mirror for this paper crane.

We see a LOT of terrible things when we are researching in the slums. Like open sewage, everywhere. Flies, goats, pigs and small children eating the same stuff.

Most of the time we just walk through, keep moving toward wherever we are going.

But sometimes, I can't deal.

We see kids playing with all sorts of terrible things - like open sewage lines (like this picture below) or rusty nails, or knives (we saw a 2 year old sucking on the end of a knife the other day)... and so on. There are SO many kids there is no way to intervene with all of them, and even if you do, their parents don't seem to think it is a big deal, so as soon as you leave, they will probably go back to playing with the same things again.

Some of it is cultural. We are definitely paranoid to no end in America, it is true. We over protect, over sanitize, over medicate our kids. Buuuuuuuut - there is an extreme on the other end too, and I'm sorry but a 2 year old running around with a knife in its mouth is simply a disaster waiting to happen.

A few days ago when we were waiting to interview a family, we saw a little kid (probably just over 1 year old) sucking on a shard of broken mirror. I lost it. I just could not stand there. To make it worse, every once in a while he would pull it out of his mouth and wipe his face, running the sharp edge of the mirror only millimeters from his eye. I tried not to look at him, but we kept standing there... and I just could not deal anymore, so I squatted down, smiled and asked him if I could see the mirror. He (thank you Lord) handed it over to me, and I quickly popped it into my purse.

Crisis averted.

But then his lip started to quiver and his eyes got really big.

And my heart broke.

So I frantically started looking for a replacement toy in my purse.... toilet paper? bottle of purel? sunglasses?

Then I saw a scrap of paper and had and idea.

I quickly folded a paper crane (thank you to whoever taught me that trick), and handed it to him.

His eyes lit up and he scampered off to play with his new toy.

Good trade.

Making a doll from sewer scraps... or something to that effect.

So there's been a delay in posting.
I wish I could say that it is because I've been so busy implementing our project that I just haven't had time.

Truth is, I hit a low.

Like a LOW low - as in, looking at plane tickets home low.

I have been frustrated with projects I have worked on before, and I've seen projects really struggle. But this has been a whole new level for me, and truthfully, I am just exhausted and disillusioned by it. If you are one of my amazing friends who is wondering why I have fallen off the face of the earth, this is why (Estelly, I'm talking to you).

I won't go into the details for a couple of reasons - first of all, its too long of a story, and second of all, there is a part of me that really really really hopes that things are going to turn around, change for the better, some miracle is going to happen or... something... and I don't want to say anything to stop that from happening.

But this struggle is part of the story of this kind of career. Its written about in hundreds of books. Any development professional will tell you that its the norm rather than the exception. This work is the opposite of glamorous. People get cynical. 100s of projects fail for every one that succeeds, and even the ones that succeed can be twisted to show that they also fail in a way. Its a pessimist's dream come true.

But I'm not a pessimist.

So its kind of hard on me.

And I want to see the light.

And think that what I am doing is going to make a difference, even if its really really small.

So today, I am going to go to the Masai Market, and bargain with some sellers.
And eat fabulous Ethiopian food in celebration of my friend's first wedding anniversary.
Book tickets to the beach for a weekend away.
And get my optimism back.

Then I'm going to laugh at all of this. And set a new goal, and work towards it.
Because I think that's what you have to do to survive.

The girl in the picture above made her own doll out of scraps from the sewer in the slum. She sat on the ground while all of the other kids were clamoring to have their picture taking and patiently tied her doll together.

If she can make something fabulous out of scraps from the sewer, so can I. ;)

IRIN | In-depth | Running Dry: the humanitarian impact of the global water crisis | KENYA: Kibera, The Forgotten City

IRIN | In-depth | Running Dry: the humanitarian impact of the global water crisis | KENYA: Kibera, The Forgotten City

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Call us Nancy Drew

So, funny story (its actually not funny at all).

We came to Kenya to study the usage of 8 water and sanitation facilities in the Kibera slum, and then plan a hygiene education campaign based on our findings.

All sounds good.

Except...
The facilities don't work. At all, really.

As in, there are buildings, but some of the toilets aren't hooked to sewage, the ones that are have construction problems, and there is water rationing in Kenya right now, meaning that water is only available at the facilities once or twice a week.

All of this sounds like something that would be obvious to see, but it has taken us about 3 weeks to get to the bottom of it, because everyone we have talked to has a different story.

Every day we are discovering a little bit more of the picture, and right when we think we have an idea of what is going on... we find out there is a little bit more to it.

We are, once again today, back at the drawing board.

So we're going back to Kibera today, again, to do a little more detective work, talk to a few more people, try to figure out why the facilities aren't open.

We have renamed ourselves Team Nancy Drew.

I'm sure something interesting will come out of all of this.... I'm just not quite sure what that will be yet.

Meanwhile, did I mention that there is a water shortage in Kenya?
PROBLEM.
Read this article.

Carrying Water home - Mathare

One of the questions that we are examining is whether people contaminate their water in between the time they collect it to the time that they use it to drink or cook with. I think this video is a good illustration of the answer to that question.

FYI - the current community toilet facilities are dumping directly into this river, along with all other garbage/sewage from the community.

Mathare Day 2, continued

We weren't the only ones taking pictures - these guys filmed us for about 15 minutes straight. I can't blame them, we do look a bit strange wandering around there.

Children playing in sewage

A front door