Quick note from Italy

Not much time to write, only 10 minutes left on the card, which may come as a relief to the folks who just check out the site for pics. After a bit of an ordeal with overbooked and accidentally canceled tickets I made it to Italy in one piece and more or less on time. It is such a culture shock to be here. Great food, beautiful buildings, white people everywhere! The culture here is incredible and I had almost forgotten how much I love Europe. Why is there not a Peace Corps Tuscany? It is great catching up with my parents and a little weird knowing I will be back in Kenya for another year and a half before I know it. My project started picking up a bit as I was about to leave though. I got a bit worked up about how slow things are going and spoke to everyone in a meeting last week. Unbelievably, it actually helped. We successfully finished the sweet potato training by teaching another 65 farmers last Thursday and Friday, and the village boards are out in the field now. Thus, things are coming along a bit better than the last time I wrote. I actually realized how much I enjoy my site now that I am away and I am looking forward to getting back and watching things further develop.

So I will update again soon. I cannot believe how fast this Internet connection is! I have cards and a few small gifts to give my parents for some friends and family back home, so although I did not have enough money and packing space to get gifts for everyone some of you should be expecting packages soon. I will get the rest later!

Frustration with the Network, an Agricultural Trade show and a trip to Eldoret

Not an extremely eventful a week but here's a quick recap: Perhaps the highpoint was finally balancing (more or less) the finances for our Network. It was a huge ordeal but now things are in order and it should be a lot easier to keep them that way. I also noticed from the newly balanced budget something that I had expected all along: We are currently spending about twice the amount we are getting monthly from the FAO, and as a result we have just a little over a year left before our money runs dry. Also, there's little we can do in terms of cost cutting since we are running at a bare minimum as it is. Thus, the only way to keep the network operation long-term is to start increasing our income generating activities. My goal is to bring this network to self-sustainability before I leave, and I'm starting to realize that I really have my work cut out for me. The volunteer before me put everything into place and got the ball rolling, but he did it with plenty of outside funding from the UN. It seems I'm now left responsible for something much more difficult to accomplish. People are much more willing to work with money coming in from an outside source. Now that the network is being weaned off outside funding, I'm seeing a potentially big problem. I've mentioned this before, but out of our 10 network officials I'd say there's about three that actually do anything beneficial to the network, and the rest seem to just be in it for the money they get for travel expenses and attending meetings. In these meetings, most of the officials talk plenty about getting things accomplished but do nothing. Most Kenyans are very non-confrontational, so this issue isn't really being addressed, but something needs change if the network is going to survive. I'm afraid it might be left up to me to shake things up a bit, which I'm not looking forward to, but I didn't come to Kenya and leave so much behind just to see things fail.

So back to my week, we had about 30 visitors come visit the Network from India. As I mentioned, our network is considered the golden child of all FFS networks in Africa and visitors are always coming from all over the world to see how it operates and model their networks after ours. Our network officials told these visitors, as they do all the other visiting groups, of things we are supposedly doing: We are generating income from renting sweet potato chippers to the farmers (the money never makes it back to the network). We are updating village boards with the latest agricultural prices on a regular basis, so farmers are aware of pricing and have some leverage again middle-men. (the village boards, no matter how many times I've pleaded, are still sitting in storage). We are maintaining a crop database to provide buyers with information on what we are growing, which in turn allows us to sell crops at harvest time at a much better price to larger markets. The commission we get for setting up the commodities exchanges is going back to the network. (There has only one trade in the history of the network and it didn't work out. The database isn't being maintained because the information is not coming in from the field) Etc. Etc. Etc.

So I'm a bit frustrated right now, because there's so much talk and so little action; so much that can be done and needs to be done and isn't being done. I guess if things were running perfectly I wouldn't need to be here though. I have a meeting scheduled soon to discuss these issues and I hope things improve soon. The Sweet Potato processing grant money I applied for is coming in July and I'm worried that we'll be making the same kinds of lies about things we are not actually doing with that money as well unless things change.

The rest of the week was spent preparing for and attending an agricultural trade show in Kakamega. Our network was in the show and we demonstrated various value addition techniques, hybrid breeds of bananas, and ways we are supposedly (but not really) assisting the farmers with market information.

At the trade show I had a chance to walk around to all the different booths and displays, and I found some very promising cash crops. I also purchased some demo seeds for various cash crops and will have some of the more motivated farmers in the network grow samples in order to see if the market demand is really as promised.

After the show I left for Eldoret, where I am working with Adrienne on getting a youth group established as a registered CBO (community based organization) that is wanting to do community outreach work. Things went well and now officials have been elected and subcommittees are being formed to evaluate various needs in the villages and start working towards ways to help. Today I am meeting an agricultural officer in Eldoret concerning a potential market for Passion fruit and then I'm headed back to Kakamega. That's about all for the latest.

Italy in just one week! I'm really excited about it.

The latest and greatest and new and improved BIGGER pictures!

The last week has been productive, with plenty of time spent on Sweet Potato Value addition training for the farmers. The training is a good thing because its the first step towards the goals of the grant proposal I worked on several months ago. I was recently told by a contact in Nairobi that we have cleared the final hurdle in being approved for the funds and the money should arrive in July.

Now from the training, about 80 farmers are experts on drying chips for creating flour, and also making juice, chapattis, cakes, donuts, sweet potato onion bites, greens (from sweet potato leaves), etc. In fact, I had basically become a sweetpotatoarian for the last week and it’s nice to finally have a breather, but training for even more farmers will continue again in a few weeks. Things got a little shaky with Rhoda, who is a sweet potato value addition expert from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. She has a reputation for being very slippery but I finally convinced her to lead the classes. She gave us a long and detailed list of the exact materials and ingredients she wanted to have and because this is Kenya there were some issues in getting the entire list of items together in time. Luckily, with some last minute panic purchases and the quick assembly of a proper drying rack, we were able to keep Rhoda happy and complete the course work. Habakkuk compared Rhoda to “riding a bicycle with trays of eggs on the back”, in that you have to be very careful with every move you make around her. He’s absolutely right and I think the analogy is hilarious. I really get along well with Rhoda though. I have a lot of respect for African women living in a male dominated society that don't take any crap. She’s not a pushover and doesn’t put up with people wasting time or doing things in a way she doesn’t agree with. Furthermore, she’s very intelligent and her opinion is respected enough that she can get away with it.

After our training we had a visitor from an FAO employee working in Mali. The Kakamega FFS network has become a benchmark for other Farmer Field Schools, and, for better or worse, much of our time is spent showing visitors around. She was a Dutch women named Susan who has lived in Mali for the past few years and she gave me the contact information of her boss, who is living in Rome as the supervisor for FAO West Africa. He was in the Peace Corps and is an American and I am very excited about the opportunity to meet him. More on that in a moment.

Life in Mali is very different from Kenya. According to Susan there is about a 20% literacy rate and the poverty is even more extreme than here. From what I gathered Mali consists of many nomadic tribes living in a scorching hot desert so they have a valid excuse for being so poor. Using irrigation and teaching proper farming practices, Susan is helping reduce the level of poverty in Mali, and her job sounds very tough and rewarding. We showed Susan several field schools and there was the usual singing and dancing and lots of sweet potato products to eat. As usual I had garland placed over my neck as a “guest of honor”. The novelty has definitely worn off.

Next week will be cram-packed with visitors yet again. On Monday there will be nearly 30 people from India who have flown to Kenya just to visit the Farmer Field Schools here, and it has been a challenge to find ways to handle such a large crowd. On Tuesday we have visitors yet again as well as a Loans Committee meeting, followed by an Agricultural Trade Show Thursday and Friday. Hopefully I can actually use Wednesday to catch up on a few things.

Now back to meeting this FAO supervisor. The FAO headquarters is located in Rome, Italy. My parents had initially planned to visit me in August. Unfortunately, things came up preventing them from making it at that time and last month they informed me they could possibly arrive in May instead. Soon afterwards my sister, who has just graduated college, decided she wanted to come as well. May was the only month that would work for everyone, but by then we were very short on time. Tickets, vaccinations, passports, visas, and the costs of last minute travel became an issue, and my parents decided to visit me next year (with more adequate preparation time) instead. Meanwhile they want to see me and celebrate my sisters graduation, and I will meet them in Rome for a week. While there I’m also going to visit the FAO headquarters, which works out well because I don’t have to use as much vacation time, since part of the trip is work related, plus I will meet people who may prove useful if I decide to make a career out of what I am doing now. I can’t say that at this point in time my long-term aspirations are geared toward agricultural sustainability work in third world countries, but then again I’m not sure what my long-term aspirations are and it’s always good to keep my options open.

Oh, I almost forgot. I just finished a very interesting book called “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. In 400 pages, it basically sums up the entire history of human development over the past 13,000 years and does a fantastic job explaining why societies have developed into the “haves” and “have nots” that we see today, while disproving any racial theories. I highly recommend it to anyone who might find this kind of thing interesting. A really good fiction I just finished is “Life of Pi”. It’s about a kid stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger, a Hyena, a Zebra, and a Baboon. I want to sit down soon and tally up all the books I’ve read since I got here before I start forgetting. I think I’m averaging over a book a week now.

So that’s enough rambling. To make up for it here’s some pictures from the last few weeks:

Here I am at the entrance to Crater Lake park with two PCV's, Shelia and Adrienne. It may appear that we started here from the pic, but our guide tried sneaking us into the park from the lake and we had to walk back to the gate to pay the entrance fee

So there is wildlife in Kenya if you know where to find it! In Crater Lake game park you can walk right by it without being in a vehicle. How cool is that? The long-necked animal in front is called a Giraffe, those stipey horse things are known as zebra, and I forgot what the ginormous antelope-type animals in the back are called.

A typical view from the park. I have about a hundred pics but I'll spare you with just a few.

Here we are in Sweet Potato training learning to cook greens (surprisingly tasty) from the leaves of sweet potato vines. That's Rhoda with the brown cap amd elephant print dress leading the class.

Here's another pic from the same day of training. Here we have the potatoes chipped and they are being dried on a rack before being ground into flour.

IST, Naivasha, and Sweet Potato Training

In Service Training couldn’t have happened at a better time. I was getting pretty tired of the way things had been working out lately and it was fantastic to be able to catch up with my Peace Corps friends and take a break in Nairobi for a week. Also, I managed to start stop being sick about the time that training started, so I’m feeling much better now.

We had our IST at a convent in a really nice part of Nairobi called Karen. Karen is named after the woman who wrote “Out of Africa”, which I thought was a really boring movie. Maybe the book is better. Anyway, while in Karen we walked from the convent to the ritzy colonial lodge Karen stayed at the turn of the century. It’s amazing how much things have changed since then. The area surrounding the lodge was once full of game, and Teddy Roosevelt even stayed there for a hunting safari where he killed hundreds of Elephants, Lions, etc. Now the surrounding area is paved and covered with businesses and large houses. Karen seemed more like a Colorado resort town then a Nairobi suburb. We went out to a bar one night and it was not what I expected at all. There was not a single Kenyan in the place. Instead it was full of wazungu wearing designer clothes and buying plenty of expensive drinks, and there was a DJ mixing bad 80’s music.

Anyway, IST was productive. During this time I got plenty of resources on applying for Grant money to fund small projects, as well as information on HIV/AIDS education, various small projects, and leads for collaborators and facilitators willing to assist with initiatives at our sites. On a side note it’s a bad idea to put 40 PCV’s who have been living in the bush for the past five months in a convent. The compound was beautiful and really relaxing, but the sisters were not too happy with the volunteers. The first night, when several groups of volunteers stayed out past one in the morning, a nun brought everyone together to tell us that we had to be in the compound by 10:00. The next night everyone did as she said and did not go out. Instead we stayed in the Gazebo on the compound but apparently made too much noise. It turns out she didn’t just want us in the compound by 10, but asleep as well. As a result, without any warning or setting any ground rules beforehand the Nun declared that Peace Corps was never allowed to stay at the Convent again. We all found it very unfair because we weren’t out of control or anything. Regardless, we got to hear lectures from the Country Director and several other people about the way we behaved, although they only heard the nun's side of the story and we didn’t know we did anything wrong until it was too late.

So being banned from a convent was an unpleasant part of our training but all in all it went well. To be honest I’m glad we are banned from a place where we have to be as quiet as church mice and in bed by 10. Hopefully Peace Corps admin will do a better job planning where we will stay next time.

After IST concluded nobody went back to site. A lot of people went to the Upper Hill campsite, but I wasn’t up for heavy drinking, which our group has unfortunately become famous for. Instead I went with two volunteer friends to Hell’s Gate National Park. The park is located near Naivasha, which is where the volunteers had training until just one year ago. It’s an incredible place and so much better than Kitui I can’t even put it into words. Regardless, I think Kitui has its high points as well. After staying there for training anywhere else they post us in Kenya is a huge improvement, whereas I could see people being more let down with their site if they trained in Naivasha first.

We arrived in Naivasha from Nairobi in the early afternoon and stayed at a place called Fisherman’s camp. The first thing we did was take a boat across Lake Naivasha to Crater Lake game park. This park and the nearby Hell’s Gate park are the two of only a handful in the country that allow people to walk around without being in a vehicle. Once we made it across the lake to the park we were almost immediately greeted by three giraffes hiding behind trees. I thought this was fantastic and took tons of pictures. However, as we walked past the trees the landscape opened up to broad, open plains teeming with game. It was absolutely incredible and for the first time I felt like I was in the Kenya I’ve seen on National Geographic. Herds of Zebras, Giraffes, Impalas, and Gazelles covered the landscape. There were also huge Antelope looking things (I forgot the name) that are apparently the largest in the world. Beyond all this were monkeys running across the plains and Hippos on the lake shore. I never expected to be so close to such exotic animals and it was amazing to just walk by a Zebra heard or a sleeping giraffe as opposed to snapping pictures out a car window. The park features a large crater, which has a soda lake set in the middle. To be honest it was a huge letdown compared to the game we walked through. The lake was more of a large, stinky puddle than anything scenic or worthwhile. Late in the evening we made our way back to the campsite. The only issue was the boat motor. For quite sometime we could not get it to start, and meanwhile the hippos, which the guide assured us were “f*ing crazy”, saw us in the boat and were slowly swimming closer and closer. Thankfully the motor finally caught and we left the shoreline before being attacked by hungry hungry hippos.

Back at the campsite we slept three deep in a two person tent and I think maybe I pulled off a solid hour of sleep. The next day we rented bikes and went to Hell’s Gate National park. Hell’s Gate was equally amazing. The landscape was beautiful, like a tropical Wyoming or Montana. Huge rock bluffs jutted out of the ground and as we rode our bikes through the parks Zebras, Giraffes, and Baboons watched us curiously from the sweeping green plains.
About a mile into the park we saw people rock climbing and we stopped to watch. It didn’t look to difficult and all the safety gear was there, so after an invitation I ended up climbing a rock face and Adrienne, one of the PCV’s I went to Naivasha with, climbed as well. After the climb we continued on our journey and made our way to a river cut deep into the rocks. We left our bikes and hiked through the river valley. The river was fed by hot springs and we stopped and soaked ourselves under an amazing hot spring water fall. After a long day of hiking and biking we went back to the campsite, and left early the next day for Eldoret. The original plan was to climb nearby Mt. Longinot as well, but we decided to save it for another time. On the way to Eldoret we stopped at a prehistoric site we saw in a travel book that was just off the main road. It was called Hydrax Hill and was basically just a circle of rocks. There was nothing too interesting about it except it was the remains of stone huts from thousands of years ago. We had a picnic at the top of the Hill and had a great view of Lake Nukuru, which is full of pink flamingos, so it was worth the stop.

In Eldoret I had a chance to catch up with the puppy I gave to Adrienne. Adrienne made the mistake of leaving it in the house for the entire week she was gone, and she trusted one of the people at her compound to let let the puppy out and feed it. The puppy appeared to be well fed but it apparently forgot to be housebroken while Adrienne was gone. The house was a mess and it look awhile to get the smell out and everything back in order. The Kenyans on Adrienne’s compound insisted that it become an outside dog and I think Adrienne was inclined to agree.

The next day we met with a recently founded church group of young adults Adrienne has started working with and we tried to convince the group to get tested at a VCT center for HIV/AIDS. VCT’s are all over Kenya and available for free, but the stigma of AIDS is still preventing people from knowing their status and getting tested. We also polled the group for what they are wanting to do together and determined that they are interested in community service work. I’m assisting with getting the group registered as a CBO (community based organization) and we will work with the group to try to get them involved in several of the potential projects we learned about in IST. These include grants available for water sanitation and doctors willing to set up an “eye camp” where free eye care and glasses are provided. I also hope to teach some farming as a business classes with the farmers in the group.

So I made it back to site on Sunday and met with Habakkuk in town. We finalized getting everything together for our Sweet Potato value addition class, which started yesterday. The class is going well and I am in town today getting certificates made for the participants. The Kenyans I have worked with love certificates and I’m certain the majority of them will be hung proudly on walls and kept forever.

So that’s all for now, I need to get going. I’ll write again soon and hope to post some of my pics from the last week in the near future.