Thursday, 7 April

Yesterday, 12 April, marked exactly one week in Nairobi.  I promised I'd keep a blog about my journey, and hopefully share it with others too.  I have been writing, but the perfectionist in me felt the need to do some editing first.  Plus, I wasn't sure where and how to blog.  So I'm still finding my way round this blogger.com.  Apologies if I don't get this right to start with.  You are likely to receive my posts a few days after I have written them, as I'm in the habit of editing and re-editing!  Please comment as you wish. Let me know what you think.  If you find patterns of specific themes running through, please alert me to these.  If you want more information on any particular theme, please say so. If you disagree with me on anything, please shout quietly :). So here goes.

Thursday, 7 April

Today was my first day at my new work place in the slums in Nairobi.  It is a small local organisation, run by a local Kenyan woman.  I have been yearning for some time now, to engross myself in international development.   Now I’m here.   Sitting in the tiny office, 40 by 25 feet approximately, in the slums listening to the local staff tell me about their work, it feels more like local development though.  I don’t mean to simplify things but I begin to wonder what is so international about it ... apart from the fact that my life has taken me from Ghana to the UK  - Nottingham, Edinburgh, London - to Kenya.  As I speak to them, and use the phrase ‘international development’ to explain why I’m here, I suddenly realise it means absolutely nothing to these people who work to support their communities on whatever meagre allowances they receive, when they receive it. 

I begin to think that the idea of international development is just a way for some of us to feel self-important, to advance on our chosen ‘careers’, to give a different spin to life and ways of living that we don’t really understand, a different spin to things that really baffle us.  Sitting in this tiny office in Kibera I am rather humbled by how much work the local staff have put in, how much work they are doing for next to nothing, or sometimes for a pittance of allowances.  I understand the allowance for local staff through a past funder was Ksh4000 a month – equivalent of about £30 a month.  I really don’t know how they get by.

A little child walks in, about 5 - possibly a malnourished 5 year old who looks about 3.  He doesn’t speak a word.   Beautiful face, big eyes, absolutely sweet, thumb in mouth and of course equally filthy and dirty.  I look at him with more than just interest and some sympathy, but not pity.  I know there are many kids like him in places like Kibera, the world over, so my ‘sympathy’ if I can call it that, only goes as far as cooing at how beautiful he is, yet how sad he looks.  I feel it in the moment, only for a little while.  Eli, an Italian volunteer, calls him over, picks him up and sits him on her lap. I’m impressed.  I wouldn’t do that myself.  I wouldn’t have the guts to pick him up, for fear of catching something nasty and undesirable.   Eli buys him a mandazi (doughnut) and he scoffs it, as only a hungry little child could do.  I talk about him for a week after.  He’s a real cutie and I think I will get him mandazi myself the next time he strays in, but I’ll need to be mindful of other children walking in asking for mandazi.  Apparently, his mother has left him in the care of his older siblings (who are children themselves) so she can go off to work.  It still baffles me that here in Kibera, the need to work to feed one’s child(ren) is always at the expense of the child(ren)’s own safety.  Children are left to take care of themselves and while I can understand the need for parents to make money to feed them, what happens should something happen to them?  

Julie, my Director, is very happy to have me here.  I gather that it is not only as a result of my vast experience (compared to previous volunteers) which she hopes will be beneficial to the organisation, but also because I’m not only ‘from the UK’ (as I’m described here), but  I’m black African.  I don’t know if she feels that that makes me one of them, or that I will have a better understanding and grasp of issues, or that I will understand better the ‘African mentality’ that exists in some poor communities.  Somehow, I get the impression it’s a combination of these, but from the outset she’s been very impressed with the fact that I have a lot of work experience as well as skills that she feels will benefit her organisation.  She says the general attitude of people in Kibera  towards Muzungu (a white person) is that they are rich.  As a result since she began on the international volunteer programme, the presence of white volunteers at the office has generated more interest in the organisation, among people in the slums, as they think that it has come into money.  She said that despite the fact that I’m black, people are very curious and they would know one way or the other that I am a foreigner.  

I do wonder if their attitude towards me will be the same as towards a Muzungu once they realise I’m not from around here.  I had a brief insight into this.  As Eli and I, and one of the local staff walked to the cleaner’s home in Kibera to hand her the office keys, young Kenyan men idly sitting around all kept trying to speak to her.  It makes me think that I’m glad I chose to come to Kenya, and not go to Bangladesh where I would without a doubt stick out like a sore thumb!  But then again, in this context, ie in Kenya, I’m not sure which is best.    At the weekend,  I went out to the shops.   I wore a normal pair of shorts, just above the knee.  Somehow I attracted so much attention, mostly from passersby in buses and matatus, and occasionally from guys on the street. I looked around at what other Kenyan women wore and noticed how everyone was covered up from the knee upwards.  Naively, I thought that short dresses or shorts were not really ‘trendy’ around here.  I found out later that generally, if a black woman in Kenya wears anything above the knee, she is thought to be a prostitute.  However, if she is white, people understand that in the ‘white’ culture,  it’s OK to wear clothes above the knee.  Need I say anymore on this ...

Staff at this organisation have done a lot of work and they certainly have knowledge in their field of work.  But there still remains a lot to be done.  The only PC in the office is hardly used by the local staff.  The keyboard is temperamental and has a mind of its own, though when it does work, it’s perfect.  There is no internet security so the PC is ridden with viruses, evident when I connect my USB to it.  There is a USB to connect to the internet but I’ve been told it’s not working.  The organisation has a website but the annual fee has not been paid due to lack of funds so it’s been taken down.  There are no promo materials, leaflets, brochures etc.  Local staff retention rate is high – apart from one field officer who has been there for three years, others have been there for less than six months.  It is clearly difficult to retain staff due to lack of regular funds.   Still, there needs to be some system of continuity.  

I went to bed with three things on my mind and felt I had hit the jackpot – organisational development, project management and fundraising.  Sadly, not much brainstorming needed to figure that one out. Easier said than done.