Category: Kenya

‘Forgotten Kenya’ and famine in East Africa

A few years ago I did some work (see “In ‘Forgotten Kenya,’ mobile classrooms follow in nomads’ footsteps”) with the Aga Khan Foundation (East Africa) and one of their partners, Education For Marginalized Children in Kenya, in North Eastern Province in Kenya.

This is the area hosting the Daadab refugee camp, where countless stories of famine and devastation are coming in anew. When we came in August 2009 to visit pastoral families in the region, there was drought and hunger, but it was nowhere near the scale it is today. I donated what I could afford to the World Food Program yesterday. The Canadian government has also promised to match donations made by Canadians:

The federal government announced Friday that it would match donations by individual Canadians who give money to eligible, registered, Canadian charities responding to the famine. The matching funds will apply to all donations made during a 10-week period, retroactive to July 6.

For a more in-depth analysis of the famine, check out the CBC here; for photographs from the area, see the Atlantic; and for a look at the causes of the famine beyond the traditional rhetoric of drought, see the Washington Post and the CBC. Donations are a short term answer to a humanitarian disaster; but much more is needed to develop a long-term, sustainable response to this recurring crisis.

National shame.

Would a similar gesture towards Uganda, Kenya also shut-down this source of “blame”? What kind of impact would this have? From “The Importance of National Shame,”

Mr. Cameron seems aware of this effect. This week, he began a bridge-building mission to Pakistan by acknowledging that the crippling Kashmir dispute between New Delhi and Islamabad was the fault of Britain’s extremely ill-judged act of partition: “As with so many of the world’s problems,” he said, “we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”

It was both noble and clever. By putting a period on the end of that sentence, he helped render obsolete the timeless Pakistani habit of blaming every national failing on Britain’s perfidy. That’s now been admitted. It’s time to face the real problems.

Continued.

 

icc in kenya: bad news?

Over at Opinio Juris, Julian Ku highlights an important passage in the ICC pre-Trial Chamber’s recent approval to investigate crimes against humanity in Kenya. The opposing judge highlights that going ahead would:

… broaden the scope of possible ICC intervention almost indefinitely. This might turn the ICC, which is fully dependent on State cooperation, in a hopelessly overstretched, inefficient international court, with related risks for its standing and credibility. Taken into consideration the limited financial and material means of the institution, it might be unable to tackle all the situations which could fall under its jurisdiction with the consequence that the selection of the situations under actual investigation might be quite arbitrary to the dismay of the numerous victims in the situations disregarded by the Court who would be deprived of any access to justice without any convincing justification [emphasis added].

This is an important statement considering the difficult position the ICC already finds itself in. For more highlights follow the link to Ku’s post. Here’s a short article in the Daily Nation (Kenya) and from UN News:

[Kaul] concluded that there was no reasonable basis to believe that the crimes in Kenya were committed in an attack against a civilian population pursuant to or in furtherance of a policy stemming from a State or an organization, which he said was required by Article 7 of the Statute.

But, really, what are Kenyans to do? The courts are corrupt; the police would never offer adequate protection, easily bribed; Kibaki and Odinga will repeat the same buy-votes-incite-violence methodology in the next elections; the TJRC is a joke. If this is not the ICC’s place [in this particular case] to step in and protect those harmed by a State where there exists no other legal recourse or protection, who’s is it?

of back.

Back on the West Coast to the tune of tsunamis and earthquakes. Mother in kitchen making coffee and clanging dishes, three German exchange students, occasional other-sibling telephone calls, 6 km run with seemingly endless hill, wet forests and moss, noisy rivers, excitement over tomorrow’s hockey game, big fir trees. I was also firmly told to hand over my computer for several of the ten days I will be here to engage in ‘relaxation.’ A longer post incoming on the transition out of Nairobi. New projects, more fieldwork, less kidnappings.

from mobile schools.

These students have transferred from the Garunley Mobile School to the Abakore Primary Boarding School in Abakore Town, North Eastern Province, Kenya.

Aden Ali.

Fardosa Abdi.

Ubah Mohammed.

Interviewing the students was a challenge. While I had a translator, my presence was alarming/surprising/disconcerting. I only got through the basic questions (age, favorite subject, future profession, class ranking) – which really reveal very little about a person – before realizing that my intrusion was not really warranted. The pictures were taken for the organization who might be profiling their mobile school transfer students.

abakore nursery.

Education for Marginalized Children in Kenya funded this early childhood development center at Abakore Primary School. I would consider this good working conditions for children in Kenya: there are tables and chairs, some light, lots of books, and space.

garunley mobile school.

We left Habaswein early in the morning. The sky was that eary gray before the sun burns off the clouds. We first stopped for liver, chapati, stew and tea, a tyical breakfast in the region, before driving back to Abakore and on to the Garunley Mobile School. Fortunately, Garunely was not far outside Abakore so we spent only about 20 minutes bouncing on cracked and pot-holed land before seeing a herd of goats. Loud honks from the car drew attention and we were met by the mwalimu, or teacher.

To learn more about mobile schools, I would suggest reading my first article at Toward Freedom. This meeting was more of a follow-up to look at other aspects of the school rather than the basic details. Through a translator, I spoke to a member of the School Management Committee (the community members who govern the school) and the teacher.

New developments in the mobile schools include government registration. Gurunley, now official, benefits from a feeding program. Mind you, most of the food was stuck at the World Food Program hangers since they only release food to certain key people and not directly to an approved community member. The school also needs to increase enrollment from 19 to 30 to ensure they benefit from full government grants: vaccinations, potential water services and a steady feeding program. All these are necessary to ensuring the school continues during droughts.

Classes usually happens for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening so most of the kids were away in the bush taking care of animals. None of the children are vaccinated and many were sick. When we left the family, we took one girl and her mother to the dispensary in town. A fairly decent outfit considering how rural the area is – they now also have two medical students from Nairobi on internship.

The SMC member was pretty clear on his interest in having the children of the community educated. The main reason, aside from education “being the best thing you can give a child,” was that he wanted a better life for his children. This struck me as interesting. When the schools were first introduced, most families were wary that pastoralism would take a back seat to education. The schools were accused of being there to erode local cultures and “Christianize” children.

While the schools function around the pastoral clock, the children are supposed to leave after a year and transition into mainstream schools in Abakore and other towns. So, it seems that parents are admitting to a drastic generational change which will definitely mark pastoralism over the coming two decades.

twitter: not just a dating tool.

From my latest on World Bank:

In Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace, Pierre, a young noble, does some philanthropic work in the Russian wastelands. His projects complete, he is thanked profusely by the women, peasants and priests, whom he thought he had benefited. Satisfied, he returns home full of self-worth. However, it soon becomes clear that Pierre had not helped anyone. In fact—working without cultural context or experience—he has aggravated the situation.

The moral of this story—in the context of 21st century development—is perhaps “plus ca change, rien ne change.” The results of developmental efforts today do not seem to be all that different from the 1800s: corruption, bloated governments leeching off donors, lack of social accountability between government and people. The list goes on.

Arguably, many of these problems could be fixed if donors adopted more of a “bottom-up” approach: giving recipients more say in donor targets, funding and project development.

Fortunately, as ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) becomes more sophisticated, the development field has this option. Combined with social media and access to technology, particularly Internet and cell-phones, we have new development tools that encourage and allow beneficiaries to participate more actively in the development process.

Take Twitter as one example.

Continued.

part I: following the mobile school.

We left for Habaswein from Garissa in late afternoon with a car stocked full of water and fresh fruit. You know Garissa is behind you after leaving all black asphalt. The make-shift road is made of sand tracks gutted by bus, lorry and car tires. And the roads are always “busy” – tall buses precariously bouncing along the sand tracks, always about to tip over. Lorries leaving clouds of gray smoke behind them as they churn into Garissa to drop their wares. Most other cars you pass are stamped with the logo of an NGO or local government body.

Within the first twenty minutes, we have stopped to hand out water to two little girls. They must both be under thirteen and watch me with wary eyes. The youngest one is not wearing a headscarf, her red flowered dress flapping in the wind and her head covered by thick wiry black hair. They must be taking care of animals nearby, but not close enough to walk into town. Gedi tells me: “We are handing out water to vulnerable girls.” Always disconcerting hearing development speak in a real situation. While perhaps vulnerable, the girls are most likely fine – their family living off the road nearby.
An hour into the drive, we stop so Gedi and Hassan can pray. I walk over to the watering hole, a large expanse of water where camels are drinking in turn. Pastoralists are living near the watering hole, their makeshift homes set up under the few trees. I take a few pictures of the water, but I am soon stopped by a Somali local. He gets into an argument with Gedi, who later explains that most people in the region listen to the Somali BBC broadcast and have developed the idea that – since the American invasion of the Middle East – most wazungu are spies, soldiers or something similar.

Otherwise, the drive is uneventful. The road turns from thick red sand to pale gray and pastel. The countryside is greener than the last time when I traveled during the peak of the 2009 drought. The low bushes have green leaves. Occasionally, there are patches of grass growing out of the hot sand. The road is in equally bad shape as before, but now with a hint of previous rain where mud has dried into walls shaped by tire tracks.

When the sun sets in the evening, it is a hot red ball dropping from the sky. The sun never sets faster than in Eastern Africa. If you look away, you miss risking the climax as the sun falls behind the horizon and leaves streaks of pink and red in the dimming sky. Another jeep races us on a parallel road, kicking up clouds of dust.

We stop in Abakore, about three hours from Garissa, to meet with local point persons. It’s about 8 p.m. and the sun has set. The sky is now a myriad of stars splattered on black. The chai restaurant we always frequent is run by a mama and her many children. She’s the most successful woman in town and her children are clearly ambitious and well-educated. The oldest daughter speaks clear English and will start business courses at a nearby college in May. The mama’s restaurant is also powered by solar power, boasting two of the few light bulbs in town. Other restaurants are open, picnic tables with tea thermoses flickering under paraffin lanterns.

We drink hot cups of sweat tea and wait for arrangements to be made. We need to find out where the pastoral family we have come to talk to, Gurunley, is staying. We also walk over to Abakore Primary School to meet with the headmaster to clear a visit in the morning. There is a lot of protocol in visiting these regions as you do not want to step on anyone’s feet. We successively bump into the local chief and other elder figures. Our visit concluded we drive another hour to Habaswein, a nearby town with decent lodging, for a good night of sleep.

in garissa.

During my second day in Garissa, I facilitated the communications/documentation component of the workshop. Despite my foreign accent – i.e. too fast to comprehend despite all efforts – the partners were engaged and interested. Of course, in an attempt to truly prevent any dozing, we sent everyone out “into the field” to find a story. The overall goal was to help people understand that there is a story in even the most normal environments and that they should be recorded diligently for communications purposes. While I think the overall lesson was a bit lost, Godfrey and I stumbled across Mzee (a nickname) who was working as a welder.

This area of Kenya is sometimes hostile to mzungu intrusion, so I spent most of my time taking pictures and catching bits and pieces of the conversation in Kiswahili. Mzee was a mobile worker, part of a class of workers called, in a loose translation, those who work under the sun. However, Mzee told us that he was now of a different class as he was using a mobile welding machine and sitting in the patchy shade of a tree. He was trained at the North Eastern Province Technical Institute and makes about 15,000 Kenyan Shillings a month, about 200 CAN$.

Other shots of Garissa include the unbelievable amount of filth that covers the city and the expansion of new high-range real estate. The Almond, a famous local hotel, boasts the same clean lines and Southern Californian feel as the photo below.

m&e in garissa.

In dusty Garissa for a week. The Nomad Hotel, admittedly, is nothing like Garissa. Fancy you have to go all the way to “Forgotten Kenya” to find a nice place to sleep with regular Internet (albeit slow), good prices and a lot of quiet, quiet space these days.

I’m here for a workshop on Monitoring & Evaluation, Communications, Reporting and Documentation. Basically, two days of information on all that paperwork that people find awfully boring and typical of development. Surprisingly enough though, I am not falling asleep but finding the information quite interesting. I suppose that’s my analytical “now where is development really going wrong?” side.

Apparently, unbeknown to me, results-based monitoring & evaluation is a new concept. Godfrey, the facilitator, said it was introduced by USAID (go figure). Here’s an example of a results-based monitoring & evaluation process:

Input: Girls’ Forum (staff, funding, trainers, kit with tampons and khangas etc.)

Activities: Train teachers in Girls’ Forum model, train student forum leaders

Outputs: Improved attendance among girls

Outcomes: Increased performance and retention

Goal: Increased access to education by marginalized

The traditional monitoring and evaluation system would have stopped at outputs. Donors would only have wanted to know that the kits were delivered and that a certain number of teachers were trained. That’s it.

Above, we look at the bigger picture. While the bigger picture is definitely not deeply changed within five years, perhaps this type of reporting system means we’re on track to analyzing data behind change instead of making decisions based on politics or anecdotal data.

If you’re asking yourself what on earth monitoring & evaluation is, it’s basically a process that allows you to see how an organization affects its environment. You choose “key performance indicators,” such as # of girls who finish primary school, and find a baseline number. As you implement something like the Girls’ Forum in that school, you see if those numbers change. You also use a control school (so one where there is no Girls’ Forum) and compare variances. Of course, there’s nothing foolproof. You compliment this with in-depth focus group discussions and surveys to see if – perhaps – positive variances can be attributed to a certain activity.

Well, at least this is my very basic understanding.

I’ll be teaching the reporting, communication & documentation section tomorrow. I’m much more comfortable in this field, though I may want to realize that the Somali mzee has never heard the word “social media documentation.” Debating whether to drop this from the presentation.

today’s bulletpoints.

Today’s funnies (this is what my mother thinks they might be):

1. Java House in the Nairobi Airport is spiking my drinks. This earns the waiter another 100KSH.

2. Being Attention Deficit Disordered, I often forget the marvels of Kenya. On the highway today, we drove past a Maasai herding cattle. Wind blowing his purple shuka (tune in romantic African safari song), sunset, and a fabulous dozen head of cows. A backdrop of metal factories and new housing developments.

3. Project Diaspora has shaken my debate cells. I really do not agree with this post on aid organizations and LGBT, but, after further consideration, I will write about the “Globalization of Values” for the World Bank’s You Think on Friday.

4. Sometimes planes start boarding two hours before boarding time. Sometimes one hour. Sometimes five minutes. Here’s to hoping Java House won’t wreck my judgment.

5. I keep thinking the guy next to me on a very fancy Apple (nicer than mine by far) is wearing purple jeans. But, no, it’s just the lights under the counter. Though, he is drinking hot chocolate with his friend. You rarely see Kenyans imbibing anything other than Tuskers in bars (hooray! – I agree). Oh and he speaks French. Swoon.

6. Driving through the police block today, the taxi driver clearly paid off the policeman. But I asked him whether or not he had and he said “Noooo….” What’s the point of hiding this from Westerners? Ah, reputation. My former taxi driver would explain that the poor police lady had spent the night on patrol and needed a few extra bob for chai. I liked this explanation much more (and agreed with it) than the blatant, “Whaaat?”

real threat?

Welcome to Nairobi:

It is impossible to tell how much of this is braggadocio and how much of it is a legitimate threat. Either way, Nairobi is a very, very easy target, notwithstanding the U.S. Embassy bombing of 1998. Security at possibly high-value targets is perfunctory at best. Security guards are underpaid and treated poorly, and would be susceptible to bribes. Weapons are easy to come by.

You hate to be alarmist on stuff like this. And Kenya’s government cynically muddies the waters by cynically crying wolf about non-existent terrorist threats in what would seem to be a play for more aid from the West. Yet there have been some worrying indicators lately that something might be brewing. The news that police found a mortar shell on a bus raised a few eyebrows, for example.

Yup. Concerns over Al-Shabaab violence are growing. Back when I arrived in July, rumors were that the big shopping mall, Westgate, would be the first target.

from southern italy to kenya.

The main workshop I will be attending (providing pre-registration works) at the NMC First Youth Meeting for Sustainable Development (check Twitter next week, #NMC) will be on the impact of forced migration. This applies to the recent race riots in Southern Italy, as well as to the recent riots in Kenya.

The anti-immigrant violence followed a riot on January 7th when 100
African farmworkers rampaged through Rosarno, uprooting traffic signs,
burning cars, terrifying inhabitants and clashing with police. Those
disturbances were prompted by an apparently unprovoked attack by white
youths who shot and injured two of the farmworkers. But there was far
more to the migrants’ fury. Church leaders claimed that many local
people were sympathetic to the itinerant farmworkers, but there is also
evidence that plenty were engaged in systematic harassment. Rosarno is
in Calabria, the toe of Italy, a lawless place at the best of times. It
is a fortress of the local organised-crime group, the ‘NDRANGHETA.

I’ll try to dig some useful lessons from the mass of information I will be absorbing. Unfortunately, solving the prejudice against foreigners in already poor countries starts with the economy and unemployment – and we know how hard that is to fix (not to mention sorting out the country in conflict issuing these migrants).

I guess the most we can hope for – pending government and religious leaders speaking out – is that Kenyans, no matter how uneducated and poor, will keep their heads on straight and understand that violence in their country, especially linked to Al-Shabaab, will not further their cause. Like the post-election violence, it will chase off investors and continue the bad reputation Kenya already suffers from.

an after thought – nairobi riots

As an after thought to the previous post, I do not think Kenya is in danger of sectarian violence – Christians vs. Muslims – as other areas in Africa, say Sudan. However, I do think that the continued migration of Somalis into the area, especially an urban center like Nairobi where have and have not is highly concentrated, will disrupt the region. Somalis, seen as foreigners, are a good target for a whole series of frustrations that Kenyans are facing: high unemployment, poverty, limited housing, and so on. Anyways, this is nothing new, but as we saw yesterday, the situation is perhaps worsening. While the press is busy with Haiti, which deserves as much attention as possible now, I hope local press, BBC and Al Jazeera keep this issue on their radar.