Update on the job, etc.
Ok, I'm in town and have some free time, so here's the latest. This weekend was relatively uneventful. I spent Saturday lounging by the pool at the Golf hotel with my friend Mel, who is a Canadian volunteer from British Columbia. She's leaving next weekend after a six month stint in Kenya and we had a good time doing basically nothing but reading and jumping in the water when it got too hot. She's throwing a big going away party on Friday so hopefully I'll have something interesting to write about soon.
It was nice to veg and do nothing Saturday because things have been ridiculously busy at work, and a meeting was even scheduled for Sunday. Naturally this meeting turned into an all day affair. The meeting was scheduled for 10. I was assured it would actually begin at 10:00 "mzungu time" after halfway joking that I wouldn't show up until around 11 so I wouldn't be the first one there. So I got to the office on time and of course people didn't start drifting in until after 11. I'm not falling for it again. The meeting actually started around 12:15 and was still going strong without a lunch break in the late afternoon.
Although Kenyan meetings are among my least favorite part things, but we did get a lot accomplished yesterday. The first thing we learned was that the Ministry of Agriculture, for some unknown reason, has decided to relocate and rearrange all district and extension officers. This poses a bit of a problem in that we have a good relationship with one of the officers who has done a lot for the network and is working with us in getting the funding for our grant proposal. Also, the extension officers, whose jobs are to be in the field working with farmers, spend their days in the office next door to mine lounging around and chatting. I've never seem them actually work but are a fun group nevertheless and it's shame they are being transferred somewhere else. I spoke to my supervisor in town about the relocations and he seems confident that it should not affect the Kakamega FFS Network or the grant proposal too much, but we'll see.
Other than that we are working on getting five commodity boards placed in various villages throughout Kakamega District. The plan is to use these boards to list the prices that crops are selling for in markets throughout Kenya, so farmers have some leverage in selling and will hopefully be able to get higher prices. The plan is to update these boards weekly and we plan to do that by sending a text message with the latest crop prices to shop owners who will place the boards in front of their stores. The organization that will provide us with the latest crop prices, as well as help us find markets, is called KACE (Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange). They are headquartered in the nearby town of Bungoma and I have a meeting scheduled with them on Thursday to renew our contract and discuss potential markets for various crops the farmers are growing.
I also discussed the discrepancy in finances at the network meeting and will be going to the bank this week to get a printout of all transactions since the account was opened. I'm still working on getting this worked out but hopefully it will happen soon.
Finally, I managed to get in touch with the contact for the free wheelchairs in Nairobi and I have scheduled a meeting with him next Tuesday. I've gotten a lot of feedback from volunteers and if we will be able to get the wheelchairs from him it appears we will have no problem in distributing hundreds of them.
Oh, and I just finished a book called "Zanzibar Chest". I highly recommend it and hope that at least someone reading my blog will check it out. It's by a Reuters correspondent from Kenya, and among other things he discusses his experiences in East Africa over the past twenty of so years. Some of his descriptions of Somalia and Rwanda were really difficult to read, but I found it a very enlightening book.
So that's about it, lots coming up and I'll keep everyone informed.
It was nice to veg and do nothing Saturday because things have been ridiculously busy at work, and a meeting was even scheduled for Sunday. Naturally this meeting turned into an all day affair. The meeting was scheduled for 10. I was assured it would actually begin at 10:00 "mzungu time" after halfway joking that I wouldn't show up until around 11 so I wouldn't be the first one there. So I got to the office on time and of course people didn't start drifting in until after 11. I'm not falling for it again. The meeting actually started around 12:15 and was still going strong without a lunch break in the late afternoon.
Although Kenyan meetings are among my least favorite part things, but we did get a lot accomplished yesterday. The first thing we learned was that the Ministry of Agriculture, for some unknown reason, has decided to relocate and rearrange all district and extension officers. This poses a bit of a problem in that we have a good relationship with one of the officers who has done a lot for the network and is working with us in getting the funding for our grant proposal. Also, the extension officers, whose jobs are to be in the field working with farmers, spend their days in the office next door to mine lounging around and chatting. I've never seem them actually work but are a fun group nevertheless and it's shame they are being transferred somewhere else. I spoke to my supervisor in town about the relocations and he seems confident that it should not affect the Kakamega FFS Network or the grant proposal too much, but we'll see.
Other than that we are working on getting five commodity boards placed in various villages throughout Kakamega District. The plan is to use these boards to list the prices that crops are selling for in markets throughout Kenya, so farmers have some leverage in selling and will hopefully be able to get higher prices. The plan is to update these boards weekly and we plan to do that by sending a text message with the latest crop prices to shop owners who will place the boards in front of their stores. The organization that will provide us with the latest crop prices, as well as help us find markets, is called KACE (Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange). They are headquartered in the nearby town of Bungoma and I have a meeting scheduled with them on Thursday to renew our contract and discuss potential markets for various crops the farmers are growing.
I also discussed the discrepancy in finances at the network meeting and will be going to the bank this week to get a printout of all transactions since the account was opened. I'm still working on getting this worked out but hopefully it will happen soon.
Finally, I managed to get in touch with the contact for the free wheelchairs in Nairobi and I have scheduled a meeting with him next Tuesday. I've gotten a lot of feedback from volunteers and if we will be able to get the wheelchairs from him it appears we will have no problem in distributing hundreds of them.
Oh, and I just finished a book called "Zanzibar Chest". I highly recommend it and hope that at least someone reading my blog will check it out. It's by a Reuters correspondent from Kenya, and among other things he discusses his experiences in East Africa over the past twenty of so years. Some of his descriptions of Somalia and Rwanda were really difficult to read, but I found it a very enlightening book.
So that's about it, lots coming up and I'll keep everyone informed.
posted by KenyaJoe at 6:04 AM
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