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.

New on World Bank.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.