This year a couple of young girls committed suicide because of their marks, and today I read that a headmaster killed himself because of the poor showing of the children in his school.
But instead of my describing it, here’s the article from the Nation.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/1300256/-/yxrxbrz/-/index.html

Now I remember

Last night we didn’t get settled until 6P. And it was the first time I could pee all day. Ah yes, I remember, no peeing until 6PM. You see there are no restaurants or gas stations on the road to Kisumu so there are no public restrooms, so there is just no peeing till you get to either KMET or the hotel. So it still stands, (or in this case squats)no peeing till 6P.

This morning we went to visit a site run by the PICD. This stands for Participatory Integrated Community Development. We went first to the river where women and children had been bathing and drinking for lifetimes. The stench almost knocked me over. It seems that the cattle also use the river and defecate in it. And when it is the long rains they often find bodies of people who have drowned. Africans do not swim.

The PICD went into the community and helped the people organize their own project. No money was donated initially until there was an action plan. Many women and some men got together and decided they needed clean water and they made their own bricks, got a $1000 grant, added their own money and built a water tank that holds rain water.

I wish I could show you the film of the river and the women, but see that’s the African thing. Francis insisted on using my old camera instead of the HD one and well….it didn’t come out. And Francis being both a man and an African man was having nothing of asking another person at KMET to help him with the camera until I begged him. Alas, too late to get the film of these women.

From there we did the Kenyan thing of filling up time doing really nothing. I visited the nursery school I had worked on last year. I found that they had not implemented the suggestions I had given them and it was frustrating. Then we went to this ceremony with KMET and UNICEF and a whole bunch of other people that went on in the hot African sun forever. This is the part I really am losing patience with. The endless speeches, the naming of everyone and their introducing themselves, then more speeches, to say nothing of having to watch children sit tirelessly and better than I in the sun. We didn’t get to eat lunch and by 4P I was definitely feeling it.

Today was all the hard stuff of being in Kenya. It is the endless waiting, organization Kenyan style (that means everything starts 2 hours late and goes on at least 2 hours after it is supposed to end). And what seems to this American mind like a total waste of my time. But they wanted me there and I do have good southern manners (well sort of…half way through I put on my iphone and listened to a story…oops)

At the end of the day I reviewed with Monica and the staff the impossibility of the plans they had made for the rest of the week. Nothing gets done in 2 hours much less a visit to our favorite school; the one who is graduating and going on to mentor another. So we’re going to be at it flat out for the rest of the time I am here.

Tomorrow is Malanga. This is the good part of what I do. Tomorrow you will meet Benta, the Iron Lady. Tomorrow you will meet Maloba the headmaster and the parents and children of a school which has excelled beyond all expectations. It is true that there will still be the endless speeches, but I am going home to the parents and children I love. So I will sit in the sun, and take the live chicken, and find out just how well they have done.

On to Nambale (the town) and Malanga (the school)! Hooray

Poverty makes people do crazy thing. Children are sold, and people overwhelmed by the need to eat will run up to a truck engulfed in flames to siphon off a little of the precious fuel that is not yet burning. And yes many will catch on fire, many will burn to death.

Often I am asked about whether I am worried about getting sick over there. I don’t think about it much. Whatever I get I figure can be taken care of when I get back home. But burns and automobile accidents are different. They can’t wait and the hospital and medical help in Kenya as well as all over Africa is so incredibly lacking that coffin makers are always just outside the hospitals. Hospitals are a place you go to die.

So I tell you this so you can know a little more about a life and a place you probably will never see. If you go to Africa you will probably go on Safari. You will never see the problem of Petrol

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenya+suffers+another+petrol+fire++four+dead+and+35+injured/-/1056/1240160/-/f0ta/-/index.html

As they gathered to enjoy the scooping in the hope of making a living –as they normally did when Kenya Pipeline cleaned its depot and released diesel into the river—there was an explosion and they all got burnt. Up to 160 are admitted in hospitals.

The rescue efforts were hampered by the poor access roads to the slums and disorganised rescue efforts as there was no command centre. At the scene, all the emergency services plus some volunteers looked lost as they stared at the uncovered bodies for hours on end.
Watch this if you dare…and then join us on Boston Common on Saturday at BGood and buy a burger/ save a child

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Target+politicians+not+youth+on+Facebook/-/440808/1151902/-/8k1v4k/-/index.html

Female castration is one of the most grisly events I have ever seen. I watched as a 2-year-old child, screaming at the top of her lungs was held by her mother, while the Mzee cut the clitoris and labia off. I couldn’t believe a mother could do this, but culturally it has been done for hundreds of years.

Kenya outlawed this practice, however tribes continue to do it.  Bungoma is a town not far from where One Village works. In today’s paper I read that circumcision by 3 of the tribes is getting too costly. It seems for a full ceremony, including the killing of 2 bulls a family must pay 52,000ksh. That would send a child to secondary school for 4 years.

It seems that while the threat of AIDS is one reason they may slow it down, the real reason is that it’s too costly. While I wish it were because the girls are mutilated, I am well aware that changing customs anywhere in the world is not something that happens over night. So I guess I’m glad the cost of female castration has gone up enough that the Sabaot are considering stopping the tradition.

To read the full story here is the link: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/Circumcision+proud+tradition+faces+the+cut++/-/1070/1133200/-/13vnqqbz/-/index.html

See, most of Africa is rural. People live simple lives. Education is very important to them it’s true. But when the girls finish their education they have to marry someone from their tribe or at least someone from their country. Oprah is educating girls to be unfit for South Africa. One school cannot change the values and mores of hundreds of years. What happens after these girls finish high school? Do they get scholarships to colleges? And what happens to their siblings? And whom do they marry; as most girls want to do. Surely they cannot marry men who were brought up in traditional schools or even the private schools that only cost a few thousand to run.The girls will either have to forget their schooling and settle down or leave the country. If they leave the country Oprah will have helped take some of the best and brightest girls from the very place which needs them the most. And if they stay, there’s no promise that they will fulfill the destiny Oprah had in mind.

And that’s the problem with Oprah. The School for Excellence is about her, her vision, what she wanted for the few girls she might help. It never was about Africa anyway.

I guess I’m showing my age . Yesterday after doing the grocery shopping Sister Sledge singing “We are Family” kept running through my head. Ah the Disco Years. I realized  after a hectic week of working with so many people on One Village activities that that is what we are. We are family.When I started OVAAT back in 2002 we were far from that. I was OVAAT and the burden was pretty great. I would lie awake nights wondering if I could find donors to carry on supporting the few children we were feeding. I did the fundraising, tried to get the word out and did a terrible job of making a website. Board members came and went, there were hurt feelings, petty squabbles and board members shied away from actually getting their feet wet. Something happened in 2006. The stars aligned, the work took on a different scope, and the family began to coalesce. Soon we had folks who wanted to raise money, who wanted to work on the website, who wanted to get more sponsors. The Board became a group of amazing people who came together gladly. And I guess, to be perfectly honest, I let go of OVAAT and shared it with everyone. Everyone’s opinion counted and ideas flourished and people not only worked on the Board but also became friends. It is 2011. We are on our fourth Harames. We have a research committee, a fundraising committee, a marketing group, a website group but most important of all is how everyone cares about each other. When Alyssa didn’t make the fundraising meeting because of a sick child, I got lots of messages asking how her son was. When I wanted our new web designer to be able to come up here from Kentucky with her husband, one of the guys working on the website offered to pay for the husband’s ticket. We are more than friends now, we are a family and One Village at a Time is our child. We want the very best for this special being. We want to see it grow and develop and reach towards the sky. We want to protect it and make sure that if we are not here that the next generation will follow up and care for it. We do this freely with no pay except the incredible experience of watching OVAAT grow up. As for me, when I spoke to the Board last week, I cried. What I had hoped for and dreamed about these 9 years was a reality. We’re there. We have a successful model we can roll out across Africa, and I knew it was because we are family. And I am so very, very grateful .In my mind now, Harambee isn’t just a fundraiser; it’s a family reunion. Get on board people, it’s a great family and all are welcome!

One of my favorite things

(Barbara Kingsolver). However the conversation turned to things that we needed in the field. Namely sphygmometers and speculums. These are two of my favorite things right now. So Dr. D starts telling me that I can get them cheap on ebay.

Before I know it, after he’s drilled a hole in the bone of my upper jaw, we’re taking x-rays and surfing the net. He gets right down to business and sure enough you can get sphygmomanometers for a song on eBay. He thinks speculums might be harder cuz they may be restricted, but no you can get those in lots for $30 plus postage. I am, of course, over the moon.  No longer will our community based health workers have to try and feel around in a woman after a botched abortion, she will actually have an instrument to help her get there. And oh joy; she can check the prenatal blood pressure of a woman so that she might have a shot of not dying from pre-eclampsia .I wasted no time once Dr. D sewed up the gaping hole, in racing home to get on eBay. Score!!

Favorite thing that always needs spell check

Today I went back to get the stitches out, and I’m raving about the speculums. I even got some more donated so we’ll have at least 3 dozen in the field. I then tell the doc how it’s difficult for the health workers since they don’t have lights but have to hold a flashlight in one hand. Ok, so my doc is clearly an Internet shopper of Olympic proportions. He informs me that he has a headlight that he uses for lots of things, including reading in bed without disturbing his wife. Seems it wraps around your head, runs on a couple double a batteries, and blam! He’s back on the Internet showing me the different kinds I can get on Home Depot. Wow, they sell for $14. Imagine the changes we can make with a headlight and a speculum and a blood pressure cuff.

So now you know a few of my favorite things…sphygmomanometers, headlights and speculums oh yeah.