Kenyan Thanksgiving (Again)

It’s hard to believe that a year ago I killed the Thanksgiving turkey (for the first and last time) at the pastoral center in Kitui. Time flies and Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again. Since we weren’t on lock-down this year, I was able to celebrate with a US Embassy family in Nairobi. The food was decent, but unfortunately the prerequisite Kenyan house servants that do all the cooking, cleaning, and yard work for any given expat family have no idea how to make a true Grandma-prepared southern-style Thanksgiving. However, that’s an unfair expectation, because my Decatur, Alabama Thanksgiving is probably the most delicious meal of all time. The other three Peace Corps volunteers at the house were all from the North and, poor souls, they thought the food was fantastic, so I think I’m spoiled.

For dinner we had turkey, but no mushroom gravy to soak it in. Then there were green beans, but they were steamed instead of covered in sauce and topped with fried onion bits...far too healthy for the most gluttonous day of the year. The broccoli was boiled and unseasoned (as opposed to being drowned in Velveeta Cheese) and the mashed potatoes were white. That was the saddest part…no sweet potatoes covered in melted marshmallows. Still, anything beats an ugali Thanksgiving and it was great to be away from site and with friends for the holiday.

I spent three days in Nairobi and most of it working. On Wednesday I met with the president of the Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange. Between meeting with him and the branch manager in Bungoma a few days earlier, I made it clear that they actually have to do something for us if they want our membership fee. The plan is now to market our potatoes on their radio show in December. If this doesn’t work then we’ll give up on KACE, but at least we’re going to attempt something soon. I also went with KACE to Karinyaga millers, the company that was supposedly offering such high prices for dried sweet potato chips. The manager told me she learned that the sweet potatoes we are producing have been genetically modified, and it would be against God’s will for her to use them. Her religious beliefs on genetically modified produce would have been good to know two years ago, but she did tell us she was interested in purchasing as much grain amaranth as we could produce. Maybe I can convince the farmers to go through this all over again with another crop.

Even on Thanksgiving Day I had a meeting, but thankfully I was able to duck out around lunchtime. A previous Peace Corps volunteer named Jonathan has lived all over the world, and now he is back in Kenya wanting to set up a network called DrumNet. DrumNet, in theory, will link farmers to buyers to stockists to banks, all using cashless transactions and bank accounts. It seems incredibly ambitious but at the same time well thought-out and potentially feasible. His meeting included creditors, farmers, stockists, IT experts in charge of setting up the infrastructure (it will use text messaging on mobile phones to provide farmers with information), and a buyer. The first buyer is the largest producer of cooking oils in Africa, and the first demo crop will be sunflower seeds. The price being offered is not phenomenal but it is decent and Jonathan wants to use my Farmer Field School network as a pilot program. The Kakamega Farmer Field School network consists of almost two hundred Farmer Field Schools, each with between 20-30 farmers, a facilitator, and a bank account. With this system the infrastructure is already in place for what Jonathan needs for DrumNet to work from the farmer’s side, so I anticipate working with him much more next year.

I spent most of my spare time in Nairobi finishing up the proposal for the disabled groups and, thankfully because I never thought I’d see the day, everything is submitted and finalized. All that is left is for Peace Corps to agree to post the fundraising link online, and I pray that things will go smoothly from this point forward.

By Friday afternoon everything was finally out of the way and I decided to go to a craft fair I had been reading about in the Nairobi suburb of Karen. I heard it was a bit upscale and I was looking forward to finding some nice Christmas gifts to bring home with me. I knew there was trouble as soon as I arrived and a 250 shilling entry fee was required just to look around. Once inside the gate, tents were setup everywhere selling high-end crafts, and except for the occasional security guard or kiosk assistant there wasn’t a black person in sight. Karen is a very strange place. It consists almost entirely of old money descendants of colonial times, referred to now as “Kenyan Cowboys”, and I was surrounded by rich white Kenyans with British Accents. Most of the crafts in the markets were not even made by black Kenyans, but by wazungu, including framed pictures of Kenyan landscapes costing thousands of dollars and pottery costing hundreds. The worst part was that absolutely nothing was negotiable. There were a few things (but not many) that I had seen at the craft fair in Kisumu for a quarter of the price, and it was impossible to get them to budge. I did manage to buy one thing for my sister but that was about the end of my budget. The next time I go Christmas shopping it won’t be in Karen; even the supermarkets there double their prices just because they can.

On Friday night there was a Peace Corps party at the Upper Hill campsite and I had a good time meeting the new volunteers and staying up about six hours past my normal bedtime of nine o’clock. The next day I took a miserable 12 hour bus ride back to Kakamega and caught up with one of the primate researchers from the forest. We are making tentative plans to go to Masai Mara (The Serengeti plains) next weekend with a woman I met in Kisumu who has some extra room in her Safari bus and agreed to take us along free of charge. We’ll see what happens, it’s been raining basically nonstop lately, which is strange given that this is supposed to be the beginning of the dry season. Weather permitting things will work out and I’ll have some great pics to show when I’m home over the holidays.

A Volunteer Visit and a Stakeholder's Meeting

I’m sitting by the pool at the Golf, the local overpriced tourist hotel in Kakamega. Notebook computer in my lap and a beer on the table, I’m just trying to relax and gather my thoughts a bit. This last week has been busy. Between my poultry project, the wheelchair fundraiser, and working with the farmer’s network it’s been pretty much nonstop lately.

First some good news: My bike is back! Things are so much easier now that I am peddling myself around. The bike mechanic at Peace Corps overhauled everything and replaced almost every part, so I’m hoping it will get me by for awhile without any serious problems.

Last weekend I visited my Peace Corps friend Maria. She lives outside Kericho, the tea-producing capital of Kenya. She lives the quintessential Peace Corps experience. The trek to her house involves a 40-minute matatu ride from the nearest town followed by an hour-long walk on an eroded path into a valley. The path is so bad that even bicycles can’t use it, and during the rainy season it is almost impossible to use even by foot. It’s all downhill to her house, and her rustic wooden cabin is nestled at the base of an amazing green valley filled with colorful birds. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve been in Kenya, and there’s really not much I can put in words to describe it. I’ll post some pics soon although they won’t do the view much justice either. She lives without electricity or water, and gets most of her food from her garden or from the cows and chickens that are being raised by her neighbors. Maria lives in balance with her surroundings and I felt at peace with myself while I was there. It seems to me that often times the materialism and wastefulness in Western culture does more to complicate people’s lives then to make things easier. I sometimes fear that the culture shock of going back to the states will be far greater than the struggles I faced adapting to life in Kenya.

Because Maria lives so far from other volunteers and it’s so difficult to take the path back to the main road, she’s become a part of her community in ways most volunteers have not. Her closest friends are Kenyan, she’s been invited to nearly every house in the valley for chai (tea), and she speaks the best Swahili of anyone in our group. While many of the volunteers are unhappy and meet every weekend to drink heavily, gossip, and complain, Maria is truly content.

The last week was productive. I have the proposal drafted for the Wheelchair fundraiser and hope to drop it off at the Nairobi office on my way to Thanksgiving dinner with an embassy family next week. I also had a chance to schedule some big meetings and make connections that I hope will really help Kenyan farmers. One of these is with the president of the Kenyan Agricultural Commodities Exchange. His organization is supposed to be linking farmers to markets, but despite all the international funding they are receiving to achieve this they have done nothing, as far as I can see, but acquire a list of small-scale producers wanting to sell their crops. I want to sit down with the guy, discuss what KACE is actually doing to help farmers, and see if there is any reason to continue paying an annual subscription fee for their services. KACE also provides daily price updates on what different crops are selling for at various markets throughout Kenya. The prices are high, but the problem is that these are the prices that brochures and traders (e.g. middlemen) are getting. The farmers continue to be paid bottom-dollar.

We had the first annual UN FAO FFS stakeholders meeting in Kakamga last week. Representatives from Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya were in attendance, as well as several of the big fish from the UN FAO headquarters office in Rome. I had a chance to talk with some of them, including a Danish marketing consultant named Esban. I spoke to Esban about some of the struggles we are facing with marketing in the network, and he agreed that a big problem is that so many NGO’s try to assist farmers but do not really understand the market. I told him about my experiences with the sweet potato and we came up with the concept of “NGO-promoted Production Driven Marketing”, meaning that organizations are telling farmers what to grow without actually bothering to see if the prices they have been quoted or the market is realistic. I see this time and time again. There is a historical trend of farmers being promised the world, investing in a certain crop, then finding the market has bottomed out, leaving them worse off then when they started.

Esban and I spoke for awhile and he wants me to act as an in-country marketing researcher to better understand profit margins for various players throughout the supply chain. He wants me to go to open air markets, talk with brokers and traders, and basically try to learn what they are paying, their selling price, what their expenses are, and how many channels the produce goes through from the farmer to the end user. It’s surprising this has not been done before, but middlemen and market brokers often act like a cartel, in that they lock down prices and keep outsiders from getting into their business. I think this is also why KACE has been failing in assisting farmers. If a farmer were to take his produce to an open-air market himself he could very well find he would be unable to sell his crop without first going through one of these brokers. This leads me to think: Why can't the Network itself function as a broker to the farmers, thus giving them better prices? I have been told I will meet some resistance in trying to get pricing information, but since I’m a mzungu I doubt I will be perceived to be as much of a threat. Esban is also willing to give me an expense account for paying people off for information, traveling to the markets, etc. He even wanted to pay me a bit, and I haven’t decided whether to take him up on that since technically I’m a volunteer and Peace Corps would throw me out if they found out. So basically, I get to be a spy, which is pretty exciting. I think my alias will be that of a research student trying to gain information on Kenyan markets for my graduate thesis, while secretly working to overcome a sinister cartel. Very James Bond like.

Another big fish I met is the FAO representative for Kenya. Our farmers have been well trained in Sweet Potato value addition and between the 10,000+ farmers in Western Kenya there is the potential to produce literally tons of nutritious, vitamin A rich flour every month. The problem is there is really no market for it. Meanwhile, the World Food Program, another division of the UN, is sending massive amounts of relief food to refugee camps and starving people throughout Northern Kenya and neighboring Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Wouldn’t it make sense and be a win-win situation for everyone if this food was purchased from local farmers? Since, in theory anyway, the intention of these UN programs is to pull people out of poverty and improve their lives, it seems reasonable. However, this is not the case. The food comes from the United States. Is it also heavily subsidized, to the point that is more cost- effective for the UN to purchase a shipment of maize or grain from the other side of the world, then ship it across the ocean, then to buy locally. How is the US helping the world with this approach? Or maybe that’s not their intention at all. It seems that buying produce in-country would be a good starting point for a self-sustainable infrastructure that the local government could eventually take control of.

Anyway, I was able to convince the FAO representative that perhaps a small portion of the multi-billion budget of the World Food Program could go to local farmers, and he agreed. Although a date is not confirmed, he has committed to go with me to a meeting with the Kenyan head of the World Food Program and try to make a case. I hope for the best.

So that’s about the latest. Oh, I also finished putting all the network crop information into a database so now I have an idea of what farmers are growing and when it will be ready. I hope to use that to make a case for assistance when I meet the KACE president next week. All in all things are going well, but just as I was thinking I was finishing up on so much I’ve stumbled across these huge new projects. At least keeps things interesting. By the way, I’ll be home in just a month now!

Why I Love My Bike

I submitted my poultry project proposal for the Wake Up Women’s Group on Monday. The good news is that it has the full support of the guy in charge of funding grants in the Nairobi office. I just hope it can sneak through the system without being flagged, since Peace Corps Volunteers aren’t supposed to be working with poultry due to the threat of bird-flu. Since bird flu in Kenya is nonexistent and I’ve been told that the guy that gave approval has the final say, I’m hopeful things will work out. I should get a definite answer by the end of the month.

I don’t have my bike this week and it just reinforces just how important it is to me. Whereas I’d normally be peddling myself, I’m stuck on boda bodas, matatus, or walking on foot. I hate boda boda because I have to rely on someone else peddling me around. Cycling back and forth to work is one of my favorite parts of the day and sitting on the back of a bicycle while the boda boda guy is talking about how much he hates his job, and why can’t I take him to America, isn’t my idea of a relaxing way to start and end the day. Then there’s the hassle of matatus. A great way to find yourself in a bad mood is to hang around the matatu stage for awhile. First there’s the touts. They shout things like “hey White man! Get in here!” and usually try to grab your bags and even physically pull you into the vehicle. The only problem is that there are about 10 vehicles all waiting to go to the same place, and the most persistent touts are the ones trying to pull you into an empty matatu, which inevitable means an hour-long wait. I’m on to that now and push my way through the touts and pull my bags away from them as I fight my way to the matatu that has the most people in it and will be ready to leave soon. I don’t understand their system, as everyone loses. Each matatu sits idling half full instead of just starting with the first one to arrive, filling it up, then moving on to the next. This is what they do in Uganda. It’s much more efficient without ten matatus with the “every tout for himself” mentality of literally pulling people into empty vehicles.

Once in the matatu, the driver revs the vehicle, lurches it back and forth, and pretends like it’s about to leave for sometimes a good half hour before actually going anywhere. This is one of the tricks they use to fill a matatu, and it can really drive you crazy as you sit in the back, hip hop music blaring, jerking back and forth while the driver acts like he’s about to leave. Another trick they use is done with “assistant” touts. These are the guys that don’t really have a job so they bum around the matatu stage all day, hoping to get a few shillings for helping fill matatus. They do this by sitting in matatus, making them look full. Once people start getting in they slip back out again and move on to another. It’s a clever scheme but I’m on to it. Anytime a matatu is full of younger looking guys in ratty clothes, it’s a good sign that they aren’t actually going to travel anywhere. It’s best to keep your eyes out for mamas, older men in dress clothes, and children, as this is the demographic that will actually be traveling instead of coercing you into an empty vehicle.

Fed up with bodas and matatus, I’ve walked long distances a few times this week. It makes me appreciate how nice it is to go flying by people on a bike, tuning out “mzungu!” and “give me some change!” and the like. On foot you really can’t get away but I’ve learned to look right through people when they harass me...it’s all part of adapting cross-culturally.

So, in conclusion, I miss my bike and want it back. The derailleur broke on a trip out to the rainforest last weekend and I sent it to Nairobi for repair on Monday. The next day I received a phone call. It was Peace Corps wanting to know what I did to tear it up so badly (basically every component is worn out), and telling me how expensive it will be to fix. They weren’t very nice about it. They don’t understand that I live in the rainiest, muddiest place in Kenya and cycling through dust and mud day in and day out takes a toll on a bike. Most volunteers leave there bikes in storage for two years, never use them, and bring them back looking like new. I tried to explain that I actually use my bike rand I miss it and want it back quickly, but I think the message was lost on them, the cheapskates.

Otherwise things are on track and moving. I can’t help but feel cautiously optimistic that all the hard work from year one will start paying off in year two. The wheelchair project is well underway, and I’ve even tentatively found a good market for dried sweet potato chips for the farmer’s network. There’s an NGO making flour for AIDS orphans in Nakuru that claims to be willing to pay 60 shillings per kg of dried sweet potato chips. Of course, the guy that found us the market wants his cut, and I think I was able to talk him down to a 2% commission, which isn’t unreasonable. That leaves more than enough to take a small commission for network operations as well and put plenty of money into the farmer’s pockets. I should have a definite answer on where things stand this weekend but God willing we have finally found a crop that will bring the farmers out of poverty and sustain the network without outside assistance.

Last weekend I went to Eldoret and had a dinner party with some Peace Corps volunteers and medical students from Indiana University. IU has an extension campus in Eldoret, where IU med students work at a training hospital in collaboration with Moi University for two month stints. The IU house, where the students live, is a palace complete with a huge kitchen and an endless pantry of nearly every kind of food you can imagine. I heard a tear-filled story from one of the med students about how they ran out of fresh coffee, and they were forced to drink instant for one day and it just about broke my heart. We made chicken parmesan with steamed green beans and it was one of the best meals I’ve had in Kenya. The next day I cycled to the forest to visit a Peace Corps friend and catch up with some of the primate researchers working out there.

All in all things have been good lately, but on a sad note one of my dogs died yesterday night. Kuja, my favorite little puppy, hadn’t been eating lately. I scheduled a veterinarian visit for tomorrow but it was too late, and I found him dead on my front porch this morning. He was my buddy, but since it’s Kenya and medical attention for animals is hard to get (especially for dogs) I didn’t allow myself to get too attached. At least Wewe, the bad dog that eats mama Nora’s chickens, is still around.