One Village At a Time » Human Rights

What Next? Let Me Know

Susan — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:02:32 +0000

I know that most countries are born of blood. No one cedes territory easily. I guess the French were happy to get paid for Louisiana, but by and large it’s fought over and someone wins. The war in South Sudan breaks my heart. For so long the north and the south have been fighting, and last summer it looked like South Sudan, the newest country in the world would make it.

Being the realist that I am, I didn’t really think they were going to break from the North without bloodshed. I’ve seen people slaughtered in Africa over tribal issues. This isn’t even just tribal: it’s oil. Yeah, goopy, precious oil that the South has. The North, though, has the pipelines and the military. A situation poised for a showdown.

Wherever there are valuable resources in the poverty stricken countries of Africa some do very, very well. But the farmer, the pastoralist, the small businesswoman selling tomatoes or beans on the side of the road, the child chasing a chicken in the middle of the road, these are the ones slaughtered in the fight over the resources. Today’s Washington Post has some particularly poignant photos of the South Sudanese caught in caves, hiding from the bombs and planes flying overhead. I am glad that I can read an American paper that talks about this tragedy. Usually I have to go to an African one. I have put a link to them at the bottom of this blog.

I write today out of sorrow, out of frustration, out a question when or why. I have promised to be only a raindrop and do the small thing that I do, but when do we evolve upwards towards a better being. A patient of mine asked me a similar question today and I tried to answer it. Frankly, I don’t know. I wonder about folks like me, whether indeed we make a difference. I wonder if we shall ever stop fighting over our God, our tribe, our best interests, our resources. And I wonder if anyone cares about the innocents caught in the crossfire. If you do, leave me a note. Let me know what you think. Where to next?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-sudan-civilians-are-trapped-in-conflict-over-oil/2012/05/01/gIQAUX6buT_story

It Began With Lillian

Susan — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:10:09 +0000

It began with Lillian really. I fell in love with her, her courage, the dignity of her mother. And I fell in love with being able to give in a way I could see. Lillian was part of our first project. I had one donor, $4000 and was feeding 22 children. I thought I was really doing well. I knew all the kids names and families and how they were doing in school. Lillian was a special case because her AIDS had finally been diagnosed.

Lillian contracted HIV at 13months due to a transfusion. She was sick off and on for years without a diagnosis. Finally as she was practically dying her mother got her tested and indeed she was positive. But there was hope, since Lillian was enrolled in a drug protocol so she could get the drugs. I loved bringing her a new dress and her family news that a minister would help with their bus fare. Yes I did.Her story is in the link below.

And the I was the problem. Giving is an interesting human phenomenon. We do it for so many reasons: for recognition, for our faith, to feel good, to be praised and noticed, the list goes on. And I was doing it, though somewhat noble, because I felt good about it. It became too personal. And in the end it was a bit of a fiasco. Much of the money we sent over there was siphoned off, the kids weren’t being fed, and furthermore I found out that we could feed a lot more in schools.

Moving to a school based program allowed One Village to feed more kids effectively. I still didn’t have the protocol down well. I still didn’t have community contributions as I had wanted, and it was still an I.

Then the new board arrived. They were bright, connected, great ideas and wanted part of the organization. And by the grace of God I let them in. (So many ED’s disempower their boards and make them yes men). One helped me find a partner through Kiva, another helped get a fundraiser off the ground, someone kept the books properly, and 8 years after Lillian we had a program that runs smoothly, is effective and helps communities turn the corner.

So why am I writing this? Because I hope someone will read it and know that you can do a small thing and make a difference. But if it’s not about you and you join with others then the small thing becomes bigger . And if you can put down your ego the chance of learning and growing is beyond your imagination.

Having a Baby Shouldn’t Kill You

Susan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:33:12 +0000

Imagine finding out you are pregnant and then wondering if it will also kill you. That’s a cold hard fact where I work. Never has that been more true in Kenya than now. Healthcare is not great to start with. You all remember the broken leg story of Mama’s in November. Broken equipment, long lines, filthy mosquito netting, used iv’s and on and on.

Yesterday the Nation Posted this article about a woman in labor who went to one clinic that couldn’t help her, then being taken to another where the nurses were on strike…mother and newborn died in the streets. Yes healthcare workers have gone on strike and to add insult to injury the government has just fired 25,000 of them as if that’s going to help.

Today is International Women’s Day. In first world countries we can celebrate women’s accomplishments in government, in business, in education. These women have such good medical care that if they cannot conceive they have fertility specialists to help them. They have ultra sounds whenever it is deemed a good idea. Women here in the U.S even ask for extra ones if they are feeling anxious. Labor rooms are equipped with the latest equipment and the women have been seeing their doctors for months. Happy International Women’s Day to them.

But in Kenya and other 3rd world countries, women die on the streets while giving birth. There are not pre-natal checkups for the majority of them and surely no fetal monitors or ultra-sounds. Heck, right now there isn’t even a healthcare worker to attend the birth should they go into labor. There is no International Women’s Day for them.

So I sigh and pray that someone reads this and someone cares. I hope the work we do educates women and children, but I am disheartened because I know that the scarcity of real medical help for them is a long long way off. And 1 out of 10 women where I die may receive a death sentence the minute she knows she is pregnant.

Read this if you can: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Mum+baby+bleed+to+death+in+strike+horror+/-/1056/1361452/-/y4bndxz/-/index.html

Rude Shock for Kenyan Men

Susan — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:40:51 +0000

Today the world celebrates love and ignores the hatred. Today is Valentine’s Day. It is not a particularly important day to me. I think loving should be a year round event, but it does do a lot for the card and flower industry . Yesterday I was reading the Nation, as I do each day, and found this terrific article warning Kenyan men about moving to the U.S and marrying. The banner headline reads “Rude Shock for Kenyan Men”.

It seems that they are subject to our rules here. Tee Hee. Seems that they can’t beat their wives or children. Here we call the police. Cases were sited in the article of this terrible habit we Americans have of zero tolerance for beatings. And we really don’t allow the pangas either (panga=machete) It seems that a wife can dump her husband for a myriad of reasons and still get half the assets and the marital home. Again the tragic case of a man was sited whose wife kicked him out of the house for cheating and wound up with the marital home. Imagine!

The tone of the article is what irritated me. The tone was more of a warning to men than encouragement for women. There is an obvious outrage for our laws that I find sad really.

Until Kenya catches up with our rules about fair play for women they are destined to stay behind. Empowering women to work and keep their money is an investment in the family future. I believe that many cultural traditions should be kept and that we should not try to Americanize other countries. But a zero tolerance for beatings, and whippings needs to happen yesterday. The fact that it is so institutionalized in Kenya (and other African nations) that a newspaper is outraged by our rules shows what a long road the women still have to travel. And we need to support them in any way we can.

If you want to help go hit the donate button and give whatever you can.

Here’s the link to the article: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Betrayed+in+America+/-/1056/1324434/-/86kn61/-/index.html
Rude Shock for Kenyan Men

The tone of the article is what irritated me. The tone was more of a warning to men than encouragement for women. There is an obvious outrage for our laws that I find sad really.

If you want to help go hit the donate button and give whatever you can.

Here’s the link to the article: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Betrayed+in+America+/-/1056/1324434/-/86kn61/-/index.html

Who’s Going to Give Up Their Lifestyle?

Susan — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:03:43 +0000

We grew prize-winning roses in our backyard when I was a child. I pored salt down holes in the rock garden to kill the weeds. And then the gardener did the rest.

I was back in Virginia this weekend. I forget how riveting the countryside is. I got to the horse country during photographer’s light, and was stunned by how the hills and long white fences looked. The huge bales of hay stood stark against the brown stubble field. The cattle and horses grazed in large groups, unaware of my passing. Their skins glistened and their girth was a testament to good food. It truly was the definition of bucolic.

As I drove along, though, I couldn’t help but think of the cattle I see more often. These are the emaciated cattle of the Mara and of the roads that bump along the trip from Nairobi to Kisumu and Nambale. There I see a young Masai walking with a stick whipping the cattle to move along to greener pastures. A thin boy hopes to find somewhere that might nourish his flock. (I never see horses, though Zebra’s dot the side of the road.) The cattle look exhausted, and the earth is dry with dust twirling up in dust devils. How different these two worlds are.

Since the G20 conference was just held and twitter was atwit with people talking about poverty and hunger, I could not help to notice the contrast. And I wonder about all the news and all the talk from celebrities about the need to feed the hungry. How will we ever change the climate enough that Kenya gets enough rain when it needs it? And if we could change the way the people farm will it not also kill off their culture?
I read the articles from Millennium and Gates, but I feel saddened more than hopeful. They talk about green planet, saving the environment, and smarter planting to help the famine. I’m glad people realize that children need to be fed, that children are starving, it’s just that the folks who are ruining the environment aren’t really interested in giving up their lifestyle so a child can be fed.

And so in the end, I feel like Charlie Brown in class listening to the teacher going, “wah wah wah wah wah”. Any ideas out there?

Tell Me How to Seek the Compound I?

Susan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:57:34 +0000

School has begun in Nambale and Siaya. Our kids are back in school and a new year begins. I am so far away from them and yet they are with me every day.I see their ragged uniforms, I look down at their unshod feet, I cringe at the disease I see in their eyes and on their scalps. I tweet for them, I solicit donations to help get them fed, I pray for them and for all the adults I’m counting on to care for them. I’m also praying that their parents really take on this community feeding program and make it their own.

I am also readying for the naming ceremony of my latest grandchild. I am looking at Shel Silverstein poems to read and I am remembering my own children when they began a new year at school. How privileged they were. Not only did they have entire new wardrobes, but they went to private schools and private universities. Health concerns or food were never even thought of. Their father was a doctor at Man’s Best Hospital, and their mother was a great cook who could go to the store and buy whatever she felt like cooking paying no heed to sales or limits.

For me, it is trying to get the world I knew to know the world I know now. I just read Bill Gates letter for the Davos Convention. It’s really good (and I don’t like him very much). He has a bully pulpit and tons of money to get his ideas out. I no longer live that other life, and getting people to care about starving children continents away is a challenge. So tonight I think about all my children, the ones that I bore, the ones my daughters bore and all the ones over in Kenya. How do I meld the worlds and make the one that needs it the most a better place for the children who live there?

Over Their Head

Susan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:44:31 +0000

Remember Francis my driver? Despite the grenades going off when last I was in Kenya, he reassured me that El Shabbab was nothing. I can’t tell whether that was wishful thinking or meant to keep my tourist dollars over there.
Today I read an extremely cogent article by Ken Menkhaus of enough project.org. His best sentence is this: Intervention strategies that plan the war but not the peace will fail. That should by the byword for all countries.
It’s not just Kenya, but imagine of Bush had thought about planning the peace in Iraq or Afghanistan.
What is so wonderful about this article is that he painstakingly spells out the problems of Kenya’s incursion into Somalia. Now campers, I wish you would read the whole thing and indeed here is the link:http://www.enoughproject.org/files/MenkhausKenyaninterventionSomalia.pdf
But since I find that folks don’t like to read lengthy articles I’m going to give you the highlights
Kenya’s military capacity to wage war. Kenya’s military has very limited experience in direct combat, and, with the exception of some peacekeeping deployments, has never waged war across the Kenyan border. Some analysts worry that Kenya’s untested forces will fare poorly in clashes with Somali forces on Somali terrain. Related to this concern are worries that Kenya initiated this attack in the early weeks of the dheere rainy sea- son, when track roads become impassable and heavy military equipment gets bogged down. This is one of the reasons Kenyan forces moved so slowly in the first two months of the campaign. This gave many observers the impression that the Kenyan offensive was not adequately planned.
Unclear objectives. Kenyan officials have expressed divergent goals. They have at different points claimed the aim is to prevent Shabaab from engaging in cross-border abductions of tourists, defeat Shabaab, capture the strategic seaport of Kismayo, and to secure the border area.
Shabaab terrorist reprisal attacks in Kenya. Kenya is exceptionally vulnerable to Shabaab terrorist attacks. Shabaab moves freely in and out of Kenya, where the group does business, recruits, and engages in fundraising. A major Shabaab terrorist attack
in Kenya would have devastating consequences for Kenyan tourism and business. Observers have expressed alarm that Shabaab could make good on threats to take
the war to Kenya, and that Kenya would be less secure as a result of its offensive into Somalia. As evidence of this, foreign embassies have elevated security alerts for Kenya. Two grenade attacks in Nairobi, carried out by a professed Kenyan Shabaab member and recent convert to Islam, have amplified these fears. Shabaab leaders have implored their followers in Kenya to launch jihadi attacks in Kenya, a tactic that could produce “lone wolf ” terrorism in addition to planned Shabaab attacks. The actual threat may beoverstated, however, as Kenya’s value to Somali interests makes it risky for Shabaab to launch a major terrorist attack there. But the danger could grow larger the longer Kenyan forces stay inside Somalia.
Kenyan offensive as tool for Shabaab recruitment. Observers have raised concerns that Kenya’s military operation into Somali territory could work to Shabaab’s advantage,
by rallying Somalis against a foreign occupation, in much the same way that Shabaab enjoyed significant popular support when Ethiopia occupied Mogadishu in 2007 and 2008. Though Somalis are exhausted from war and are devoting most of their resources to assisting relatives affected by the famine, a sustained Kenyan military presence, with inevitable reports of civilian casualties, runs the risk of generating a new wave of Somali jihadi recruits and fund-raisers for Shabaab. The ill-advised public announcement of Israeli counterterrorism support to Kenya was exactly the kind of misstep that Shabaab could parlay into propaganda to turn the Jubbaland intervention into a jihadi cause.8 So far few Somalis and Somali Kenyans appear to have joined Shabaab in response to either the Kenyan or Ethiopian military offensives in southern Somalia; Shabaab appears instead to be relying more and more on forced conscription.
Prospects of quagmire in Kismayo. Questions have been raised about how Kenyan forces will fare if and when they take the city of Kismayo. In a crowded urban setting, Kenya’s military will lose some of the advantage it enjoys from its armored vehicles and heavy weapons, and will be more vulnerable to urban guerilla warfare and the use of roadside bombs. It could become bogged down in counterinsurgency warfare that Ethiopian forces and now African Union peacekeepers, or AMISOM, have faced in Mogadishu since 2007. There is reason to hope that local populations are so furious with Shabaab policies—especially forced recruitment and heavy taxation—that they will turn on Shabaab and prevent it from waging insurgency attacks in the town. But most communities in Somalia today are so fearful of reprisals that they are more likely to lay low and do nothing.
It’s a really good article folks.

Empowerment Not Aid

Susan — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:29:37 +0000

I have an ongoing problem with the millennium projects. I know they are the darling of Jeff Sachs and countless famous and important people. However, there are a couple of projects in Kenya where I work. The first one (and no campers I am not going to name it lest I get blackballed from the international community), is a feeding program and farming. When I visited it in 2006 the claims of success were astounding. But that was 2006…it’s 2012 and the Millennium Projects are finding it difficult to leave.
See they came in like a swarm of bees, told folks what they needed to do to improve their crops, gave out imported fertilizer, gave out nets for mosquitos and assumed that everyone would continue to do well. No…the community never owned the project. What Millennium has done in countless ways is to continue the culture of” donorism” thinking they could change attitudes by just showing people the right way to do things.
There is another project (and I’m proud to say it’s in Kisumu) where the people owned the project and guess what. The French who aided the villagers are able to leave. Until the Intellectual Powers, the World Powers, recognize the need to change attitudes first poverty will continue because people will continue to be dependent on donors who always leave.

Here’s the full link to the story:

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol25no4/millennium-villages.html

Lions and Tigers and Grenades..Oh My!

Susan — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:24:40 +0000

I’m trying to remain calm as things keep blowing up in Kenya. We so need to get the new program off the ground and it has to be in November, since in December the schools close and then open in January when it gets launched.
The news, however, is not encouraging coming out of Kenya. And I’m wondering how you prepare for an explosion. I wrote a guy in my church who is an EMT about what kinds of things I should think of. I figure a tourniquet or two would be good and probably some powdered sulfa. Yeah, my mind is thinking that way.
All the work I have ever done in Africa has been a walk of faith, and I’m guessing this is just another one of those times where God has upped the ante. But I must admit for the first time ever, I’m scared. Probably that is a good thing.
So keep the faith y’all and watch for updates.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Man+arrested+with+13+grenades+in+Nairobi+/-/1056/1261742/-/2bfveiz/-/index.html

Scalawags

Susan — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:29:40 +0000

I have commented several times on the corruption of the Kenyan Government. Perhaps you’re not aware of the trials going on in the Hague, but since they involve the Vice President, Treasurer, and Uhuru Kenyatta (whose after was first president) you should want to know. They are being tried for crimes against humanity. And they are scalawags and devils one and all. Check it out.

http://www.nation.co.ke/ICCLive