Empire ... or independence ?

(The views expressed in this entry are entirely my own; I have no wish to suggest they are the views of the HATW charity.)

I first went to Kenya over 40 years ago. (Goodness ! Was it that far back ?!) We went out a few years after independence to be teachers, sponsored by the British government as part of their aid package for a newly independent country. We certainly didn't know what life had been like for the African population before independence, but read widely about the lives and work of District Officers, missionaries and settlers. Mzee Kenyatta was president, and his book 'Suffering Without Bitterness' together with that by Oginga Odinga, 'Not Yet Uhuru' were required reading about the struggle, armed and political, for independence from Britain, and I am certainly of the view that countries of the old British empire should definitely have been granted independence.

(There is a 'but' coming !)

But what did we plan for, hope for in the future of these countries before giving them their freedom from the British apron strings ? What did we do wrong, what could we have done better ? This is a question we often ask ourselves of the way we bring up our own children ... could we have been better parents ? Could we have been better planners, administrators, guardians of Kenya and all the other African countries that have gained freedom ? I have to say, I think we could ... but that is only being wise after the event, just as when our children act or behave in a way that shocks or dismays us.

So back to when we first went to Kenya. The African population (I'm talking about Nyanza Province here, for that was where we started out) ... the Jaluo were by and large peasant farmers, hard working, happy but poor. Children went around in cast off European clothes, often in rags and with bare feet. The adults too often wore shabby or torn clothing, and had no shoes ... but in a hot country, bare feet are more pleasant anyway ! People appeared to have enough to eat, growing maize, beans, green vegetables, bananas, paw-paw and so on. They had been influenced for half a century by missionaries, both Anglican and Catholic, and were god-fearing people, but with undertones of the old indigenous religions still there. Sending their children to school was the ambition of every family, and if money was tight, then the oldest boy was sent; the rest of the children stayed on the puodho, (the small farm). That child, if he was clever and the family had money, progressed to secondary school and then maybe even to college to train to be a book keeper, a nurse, a teacher ... and at that point, moved to the city. Given time and influence, he could even end up in a government job.

So the few became wealthy ... and the majority stayed poor. The divide had begun. Then came HIV/AIDS. The city dweller had a wife in the city, and when he returned to his ancestral home, had a second wife there. Perhaps there were other liaisons too. It is said AIDS came into the country firstly along the main east-west road, spread by the lorry drivers going up from Mombasa through Kenya, and into Uganda and Zaire on their nightly stop-overs ... and thus it got into the population.

Meanwhile, the majority of influential jobs had been filled by the first wave of educated Kenyans. Still more children were leaving school ... to what end ? They drifted to the towns and cities looking for non-existent work; shanty towns sprung up, like Kibera (as seen in the recent film 'The Constant Gardener') and Banana Hill in Nairobi, and Pandipieri in Kisumu. AIDS started to kill people. Parents died; uncles and aunts (who traditionally looked after orphaned children) also were ill or dying, and dozens of children were left in the care of grandmothers who just couldn't cope. Thus there became the dreadful phenomenon of street children ... and this is a problem all over Africa, all over the developing world.

So what could 'Empire' have done ? This is something I'm struggling to find an answer to; I fear the simple answer is going to be the same as when our children grow up and leave home ... we have to let them go to make their own mistakes, and they have to find ways of dealing with mistakes themselves ... but we need to be there to help when we can, and this is what the various charities and NGO's are trying to do ... but oh ! Its hard when you see the children you have loved ... and the country you also loved, getting into a mess.

Glue ...

I've borrowed todays entry from another blog ... this is one of the problems we will be seeing in Kisumu ...

http://africaaction.typepad.com/justafrica/2009/07/african-street-children-inhalant-abuse-in-kenya-.html

"The glue bottles and the children holding them up to their faces are a common sight in big Kenyan cities. Walking in a high fog, these children hold on to their bottles with their teeth, keeping the poisonous fumes close at all times. The thick orange glue stains the rims of filthy bottles, cans, mouths and noses.

Glue is a drug of choice; cheap and easy to get, it quells hunger pangs and keeps the cold at bay. One child reported that it gave him the courage to eat garbage. The fumes are highly addictive and the effect almost instantaneous. On the other hand, the glue carries with it a high risk of brain damage, respiratory infections and other diseases that will almost certainly remain untreated on the streets. The children get hallucinations and delusions, lose their appetite, lose weight and can even die. Instances of paralysis have been reported in children who have used the glue either for a long period of time or in large quantities. This paralysis can be reversible if the children immediately stop sniffing; otherwise the paralysis will travel to the respiratory tract, causing death. In Kenya, children as young as five have been reported using glue. Street children scavenge, beg, steal and prostitute themselves for the ten cents it takes to buy a hit from the women who sell it from large barrels."

Giving something back

(Wuok tich, piero ariyo g'auchiel due abiriyo ... I think that is Monday, twenty-sixth of seventh month !)

Several people have asked me why on earth I want to get involved with street teenagers in an African shanty town. Two main reasons !

I lived in Kenya for almost 11 years back in the 1970's, and have returned to Kenya and other parts of Africa three times since. Joseph was introduced to us as a boy wanting work; he was brought to us by a missionary who vouched for him, and we took him on to work in the garden. We ultimately paid for him to finish primary school, and then sent him to secondary school, and finally managed to find him a job in Nairobi in an antique auctioneers. He came back to us whilst at school every holiday to earn money, and we took him on many safaris; he saw the sea which was a great wonder to him, and huge herds of game animals in the national parks.

When we left the country his family whom we had got to know organised a massive party for us in their tribal home out in the 'wilds' of Nyanza ... it seemed wild to us, but it was his home ! They hired a traditional musician to play a nyatiti and we were highly honoured guests ! And it was an honour !

Then after about 16 years I decided to revisit with my two younger children; S. who had left Kenya aged six months, and T. who had been born here. Joseph had no hesitation ... he took three weeks holiday from work and became our driver, guide and guardian. He looked after us like family; he told all his friends I was his 'mother' ! His family invited us for meals and before we left, gave another traditional party complete with nyatiti player. We ate and talked and laughed a lot with them. The Luo laugh a lot !

Joseph and the Jaluo of Nyanza had given us so much over the years; they have so little, and we have so much. It was therefore with great sadness I learned from another African friend of Josephs death a couple of years after our visit; tuberculosis, probably HIV related. I tried to find his family in Alego by writing to everyone I thought could help me to trace them, so I could at least pay the childrens school fees, but had no luck whatsoever. They had 'disappeared'. With no father or money earner in the family, his children could even have ended up on the streets of Kisumu.

So that is one of my reasons for wanting to do this project ... to give something back to the Luo people who treated me and my family as their own; the children we will work with may not be Joseph's blood family, but they are his 'brothers'.

My second reason for joining this project is a Christian one (and I won't mind if you skip the rest of this entry !) I'm a Christian lay minister in the Church in Wales, and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say I'm also motivated by Christian principles to help those in need. 'Who is my neighbour ?' Jesus was asked ... and the answer is very clear to me ... it's those people I live amongst, who I meet when out and about, and those who have needs (for example, I visit a nursing home for the elderly every week)... they are my neighbours ... and when Jesus said 'Love your neighbour as yourself' then in Kenya I can do no other but live among the poor in the shanty town, meet them and try and help with their needs, even if its just for a month ... remembering they have to live in the shanty towns for years if not for life.

A little about geography and its effect on people

Lolwe from five miles away; Kisumu town in the distance on the extreme left of the picture.



Kisumu is a port on Lake Victoria which compared to many of the great lakes of central Africa is relatively shallow. Much of the margins of the lake are reed and papyrus swamps, with occasional sandy beaches kept clear by local fishermen for launching small fishing boats and canoes.

If you look carefully at the above photos, you can see small islands in the lake ... but these are not true islands - they float ! Storms in the rainy season cause huge 'lumps' of papyrus to tear away from the margins and float away, complete with nesting birds and even canoes that have been left tied up to the reeds. On occasions (certainly in the past when I lived there) huge 'islands' a mile or more in lengths blocked the port and had to be blown up to clear them !

(My apologies for the poor quality of photo's ... they are pre-digital era scanned colour slides - many have faded and are dusty so I have had to work on them).

Some of the Luo people are traditionally (in the past) fishermen. They lived in villages around the lake (as in the picture on the blog title). Living so close to the lake brought its own problems - millions of mosquitoes and thus malaria, and in the lake water, snails which carried bilharzia. Dysentery, diarrohea, tuberculosis, leprosy, elephantiasis were all major problems of the past ... and maybe still ... I will be researching this further. Now the main health issues are HIV/Aids (which killed my 'son' Joseph) and the problems associated with over-population, poor health facilities and poverty ... and those created by homelessness, over-crowding, unemployment ... Hands Around the World, other charities and NGO's are working to try and alleviate some of these, but its a monumental task.

We have to start somewhere ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A simple story:-
A boy and his father were walking along a beach by the sea. Rough seas had left stranded thousands and thousands of star-fish along the edge of the waves. The boy walked along picking them up one by one, tossing them back into the sea, but his father stopped him, saying 'What's the point of that ? It'll make no difference to them; they'll all die soon'. But the boy continued, saying as he threw each one back into the sea, 'It'll make a difference to that one ... and a difference to that one ...'

The work of charities and volunteers may only make a difference to a few among the millions all over the world who need help, but it DOES make a difference.

A lesson learned about volunteering

Daughter #3 is possibly moving house soon, so I'm spending a lot of time helping with 'doing up' their house before and if they sell.

Today I offered another days painting, probably in their kitchen. But although I like painting walls, when I got there, they weren't ready to be painted. So it was wallpaper stripping upstairs, which I DON'T like !

But it was a lesson well learned ... "when you volunteer for something, it may not be what you expected or hoped to do, so get on with what does need doing !!" And after several hours of getting off very tough wallpaper, I was still able to paint one of the walls in the kitchen, so that was alright !

Hands around the world ...

"Our hands around the world may get grubby and blistered, they may need to hold a sick child or comfort a grieving parent, they may be asked simply to hold the hand of another, but there is always more to these hands than practical help alone."

Dholuo - the language

When I applied for the project, I mentioned on my application that I had lived and worked among the Luo people in the past, and knew some of the language. I do hope that wasn't the only reason I was accepted !

Dholuo is a Nilotic language, i.e. spoken by peoples who originally migrated into Uganda and Kenya from the Sudan and along the Nile. The official languages of Kenya are Kiswahili and English; there are also many other tribal languages spoken apart from Dholuo, for example, Maasai, Kikuyu, Luhya, Somali ...

So I have managed to find a language guide on the internet, plus vocabulary, both of which I have down-loaded and printed out. Now I'm walking around the house muttering to the cats 'Uthi nadi ?' hoping they will reply 'Wathi maber !'

I'm trying to remember and practice the things that Africans always want to know about you; who you are, where you come from, your family, etc. That's easy ... I can chat on about my children ...
'An gi nyathindo ang'wen. Kayo, L. Akoth; nyathi ariyo - J. Atieno; nathi adek - S. Adhiambo, gi chogo, T. Obong'o. Nyathindo oromo !'

(So what did I say ?) "I have four children. First born, L, born in the rainy season; second child J. born at night; third child S born in the afternoon; and last born, T a son amongst girls. That's enough children !"

Interesting ... childrens Luo names traditionally recall the time of day, or the season they were born, or their place in the family, or to remember someone who died as they were born. And girls names begin with an 'A', and boys with an 'O'. That's odd, you may think ... why does the young man pictured on the right have what must therefore be a womans name ? (It starts with an 'A'). Because he was born the day his mothers sister died, so he got her name, Adhiambo !

Tomorrow I must work out and practice things about who I am, where I come from, what I do/did.


And I'll maybe write a bit about the history of Nyanza ...

The charity ... and its work

'Hands Around the World' is a charity involved in various third world projects, with the motto of the charity being 'Giving a hand, not a handout'. I like that; it reminds me of the saying I first heard in Africa 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a fishing net and you feed him for life'.

Our parish had for five years supported a girls school in West Nile, Uganda, and we raised money for them and had seen classrooms built and teachers employed. But when our commitment was concluded, 'Hands Around the World' (HAWT) sent out a team to build another classroom, which they did in February of this year.

HAWT have done work in India, Brazil, and West and South Africa, as well as other projects in Kenya. Volunteers with all sorts of skills or none ... doctors, teachers, physiotherapists, technicians ... are sent out to do unpaid voluntary work for a month or longer, AND have to raise funds for the project in order to do so.

(The lady who told me I'd have a nerve asking people for sponsorship in order to have a months holiday in the sun ... just had no idea what 'charity' means ... )


I'll write more in future entries about the project, the Luo people, my preparation, fund-raising ... but in the meantime, have a good look at the charities web-site ...
http://www.hatw.org.uk

Accepted as a volunteer !

Dear Friends,

Today the realisation of this project is slowing sinking in.

Just a week ago I saw a short piece in our local paper, about a project in western Kenya where I once lived, in Kisumu to be precise. They were asking for volunteers to go out for four weeks next February, to work on building a carpentry workshop for homeless teenagers, so that they can move on from street living, to learning a trade and basic employment.

Unfortunately, I hadn't seen the article the week it was published, but a week later ... and the date to apply had already passed ! I dithered and wondered until I thought 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' and phoned the organiser. Bingo ! She said to come and talk to her about the project ! So I did; she talked me through it and gave me a sheaf of papers and forms to fill in. It looked like this might be on !

I'll write more about the actual project later, but suffice to say I filled in the forms about me, and gave two forms to friends to complete as my referee's. The third form I left with my doctor, for obviously at my great age I had to be reasonably fit !

I've waited and prayed about this all week ... and yesterday, came the answer ! ACCEPTED !

No wonder I couldn't sleep last night ... like a kid on Christmas Eve, I was so excited !

More to follow ...