Posting 17: The End of our Kenya Travels

For his last field trip of the volunteer year, Don traveled to Turkana County during the week of October 26, 2015.  Turkana, the poorest region in Kenya, is located in the northwestern part of the country.    The Turkana are pastoralists. 87% of the population lives in poverty.  The school dropout rate for girls is 94%.  Don spent the week conducting a market assessment of a project that is intended to encourage girls, ages 12-19, to own small livestock. This would require an adjustment to cultural norms, as girls have no ownership rights in this region.

During his trip, Don met with government officials, animal health workers, micro-finance institutions, and villagers. He also toured a fisheries area in Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world. Buying and selling fish is another possible means of income for the girls. As you can see from the pictures below, parts of Turkana resemble a lunar landscape.

This is our last blog detailing our year in Kenya.  On November 14, we leave Kenya.  We will miss all of the wonderful people we have met and are fortunate to now call our friends.  It has truly been an adventure.  We hope that we’ve had a positive impact in the places and countries we’ve visited; we know that we’ve learned a lot. 

We hope everyone has enjoyed following our journey. We will return to the U.S. at the end of the year, after a well-deserved vacation.

Don meeting with villagers

A Turkana village

The Turkana landscape

Drying fish

Packing dried, salted fish for shipping

Posting 16: Ethiopia

At the end of September, Don and I went to Ethiopia for 2 1/2 weeks to work on a development project in the southern part of the country.  While in Addis Ababa, the capital, we attended the Meskel (Finding of the Cross) celebration, an Ethiopian Orthodox Church holiday, with over 250,000 people assembled in one of the central squares of Addis. The celebration includes the burning of a large bonfire. Smaller bonfires were also burned throughout the city. The hotel workers asked Don to participate in lighting the one in front of our hotel.  (See below.)

We worked in the Addis office for several days, and then traveled to southern Ethiopia (Arba Minch and Konso areas).  The NGO wanted to film a video about one of its projects, and asked us to interview a number of individuals and groups and recommend who should be included in the video. We traveled to some very remote villages and talked to the villagers about how the cultural changes brought about by the program significantly improved their health and livelihoods.  It was a wonderful experience. 

When we were done with our interviews, we traveled to the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia where we saw some very interesting tribes, including the Hammer and Mursi tribes.The pictures below speak for themselves.

We have now returned to Kenya and are back in the office.  Next week, Don will be traveling to Turkana, in the northwest of Kenya, to carry out field research on a project to help improve the lives of girls.  It is perhaps the poorest area of Kenya.

Two Ethiopian women at the Meskel celebration

The Meskel bonfire at the center of town

Don helping light the bonfire outside of our hotel

A scene at the Arba Minch market

Village hut in Dorze

Children surrounding Bobby in the village of Shilale

Bobby wearing a tribal outfit in Shilale

Visiting a water distribution point in Busa Kila

Elders of Watershed Committee in Turuba community

Market day in Key Afar

Market day

Don with members of the Hamer tribe

Mursi women and child

More members of the Mursi tribe

Mursi tribe

Mursi tribe

Mursi tribe

Posting 15: Corruption in Kenya

In addition to his day job at the NGO, Don became very intrigued with the endemic corruption occurring in Kenya.  It is systemic, permeating the entire society.  It is a frequent topic of conversation in Kenya.  The leading daily newspapers are often dominated by corruption-related stories. Don wanted to try to understand why this situation persists, and to try to determine if there is any solution. He researched the legal framework and talked to many Kenyans about their routine corruption-related experiences.

Aware of Don's passion, the Dean of Strathmore University School of Law (who has become a friend of ours) asked Don to be a guest lecturer on corruption at the Law School.  Following this experience, Don wrote an Op-Ed article on corruption which was published in the leading daily newspaper.  (See the article at: Zarin Corruption Article.)

In part as a result of this article, Don was invited to speak on corruption at the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) annual conference in Nigeria.  PALU is comprised of lawyers from across the African continent.  Don traveled to Nigeria during the week of September 20 and had the opportunity to meet many African lawyers.  He also attended the ceremony for the beginning of the legal year held at the Nigerian Supreme Court. With over 1,000 people and 100 reporters crowded into the court, Don got seated in the front row, center of the court.  A Tanzanian lawyer sitting behind him took some pictures on his cell phone, which he was going to email to Don, but when the lawyer stood up from his seat at the end of the ceremony, his cell phone was stolen!    

     

Posting 14: Update since June

We know it’s been a long time since we’ve posted a new blog, primarily because our day-to-day lives are pretty much routine (plus, we’ve been lazy.)  This posting will share a few of highlights of the past few months.

We attended two very interesting lectures: Richard Leakey, a paleoanthropologist, famous for discovering "Turkana Boy," and one of the leading conservationists in the world; and Jane Goodall, considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. 

In July, we were thrilled to have company from home. Diane, Pat, Lois and Michael spent two weeks in Kenya; one week on safari, the second week with us. During their stay, we tried to give them a taste of Nairobi— the Elephant Orphanage, the Giraffe Center, a tea plantation, various restaurants, and, of course, lots of shopping.  Towards the end of the visit, the six of us went on another safari in Laikipia, Kenya.  It was fun showing them around our second home, and they loved Kenya.  

Our work has involved lots of travel throughout Kenya.  Areas we wrote about earlier in the year that seemed so extreme became commonplace.  Don spent a few days in West Pokot, helping to launch a new initiative that would help young girls (ages 12-19) own goats.  Girls in that region own nothing and have no means of livelihood.  In preparation, Don became a “goat expert,” learning about various kinds of goats, livestock markets, purchase and sales prices, and the animal health network.  He will be traveling to Turkana, an even poorer area, later this month to help expand the program there.

During our stay here, we’ve also experienced certain “life-events” (good and bad) with our Kenyan friends.  One sad incident will always stay with me.  One Monday, I had interviewed a 25 year old young man as the possible subject for a video we were working on.  He was the owner of two successful businesses (not an easy accomplishment for a youth in Kenya), engaged to be married, and as nice as could be.  That evening he and his fiance were killed in a car accident (all too common here.)  I attended his funeral with some co-workers.  

Shortly after, we experienced the “good life-event.” We attended a co-worker’s wedding.  We enjoyed the joyful singing and dancing, but, again, we couldn’t understand much of the ceremony as the minister spoke Kikuyu (the local tribal language), which was then translated into Kiswahili.(the national language.)  Then, he switched to English, and the translator repeated it in English! During the sermon, the minister preached that the Bible sanctions marriage between one man and one woman, not one man and another man -- nor one man and two women (a common practice in Kenya.) 

In August, we again flew home for a very special occasion – our daughter Jenna and her fiance Dustin’s wedding in Nashville, TN. We got to share this important event with so many friends and family. It was a fun weekend and a beautiful affair.  We couldn’t be happier.

As soon as we returned to Kenya, I had the fun opportunity to work with professional photographers from our US office and Kenyan co-workers to film footage in Central and Western Kenya for a video on our main program.  I learned a lot about the prep, interview and filming process.

Posting 13: Back in Kenya

After returning from a wonderful visit with family and friends in the US, we quickly jumped back into the Kenya world.  My first week back, I traveled to the Kenyan tea country (Nandi and Kericho), visiting tea plantations.  The landscape was incredibly beautiful; it looked like rolling rows of thick green velvet.  I toured a tea factory, learned about the tea producing process and returned with a variety of flavorful teas. 

The following week, Don and I ventured to Central Kenya.  There we visited various youth groups to learn about their burgeoning businesses – poultry farming, manufacturing banana powder and chips, and managing a sanitation facility for the town. While there we were fortunate to stay at the Treetop Lodge in the Aberdares National Park.  The lodge was made famous by the young Princess Elizabeth who, while staying there, became queen when her father, King George VI died on the night of 5th Feb 1952. What made this safari experience unique was the watering hole that surrounds most of the lodge, which attracts various animals including elephants, rhinos, warthogs and wildebeests.  Large windows allow residents to watch the animals from just about anywhere in the lodge, including one’s bedroom and the dining room.  Plus, if you wish, the management of the lodge will notify you during the night when specific animals roam outside.  Fortunately for us, we saw each species before we turned down for the night.

A Kenyan tea plantation

Tree Top Lodge

A view from our bedroom in the lodge

Enjoying the game drive

Posting 12: Uganda, Week 2

Don and I left Kotido and drove an hour on a bumpy, dirt road to Kaabong.  Don conducted another 2-day training session for the business community; I again worked with the staff on writing stories.We had our own hut on the NGO compound's grounds, but we shared an outhouse, a sink (filled with bugs) and a non-working shower (we resorted to using buckets) with everyone else.  The bugs were so bad one evening that we put our hoodies on to protect our hair.

While in Kaboong, we drove an additional hour north to the very end of the dirt road in Uganda to the border of South Sudan and met with the Ik tribe.  While living in the area for a long time, they had recently been re-discovered by anthropologists.  One evening, Don visited a kraal where approximately 3,000 cattle are kept together for security purposes.

See the pictures below of Kaabong, Uganda.

Members of the Ik Tribe

Ik women and their children

Ik hunters

Bobby chatting with members of the Ik tribe

The kraal

Kaabong town

Kaabong town

Selling shoes in Kaabong

Afternoon alcohol consumption

Kaabong town

Kaabong clothing store

Kaabong men

Post 11: Uganda, Week 1

We started our trip on Sunday, April 12, roaming around Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Early the following morning, we started our journey up to the Karamoja region.  It was supposed to take 10 hours by jeep, but due to unexpected delays, we had to spend the night in Lira.  We arrived in Kotido, our first destination, on Tuesday morning.

While in Kotido, Don prepared for and conducted a two-day training seminar to the local businessmen on preparing business plans.  The businesses ranged from veteranian drug distributors, sellers of certified seeds, cooperative financial institutions, general merchandise stores, and farmers. I taught staff how to write stories highlighting the accomplishments and successes of the program.  On Saturday, we traveled to the town of Abim, where we observed the formation of the local chamber of commerce.  Don made the closing remarks of the meeting.

Throughout the week, we travelled around the area to get a sense of the community and the living conditions.  The manyatta's below are small communities housing members of the same family, including the father, several wifes, daughters with their husbands, etc.  Layers of huts are surrounded by tighly woven wood fences, with extremely small entrances for defensive purposes--to keep out and/or defend against cattle rustlers.  The cattle live in the center of the manyatta, surrounded by the huts.

Below are some of the pictures of what we saw.

The local livestock market

Negotiating the sale of a cow

A local leader

Don's training class

The local market

Kids at the market

Local chief

Drawing sorghum to make alcohol

the drugstore

Entrance to a hut in a manyatto (village)

One of the huts

Children of the manyatta

The center of town

Main street in Kotido