Engineers Without Borders at MSU

Before writing this I always regretted not getting the macbook pro as it had the backlit keyboard feature that would be ideal for Kenyan nights, a kerosene lantern though is quite a bit cheaper and works equally as well. After a few slow days in Khwisero due to holidays, weddings and rain I was finally able to get more than a few kilometers away. I went to visit an acquaintance from last trip named Jill Inyundo. Jill is an odd sort, who we first met while I was walking down the dirt road from Emwaniro Primary, one of the schools that had received a borehole. After being in rural Western Kenya for two weeks you become pretty accustomed to being gawked at as you’re the only white person that some people have seen before, and if they have seen a white person that person was rarely seen walking. As I was nearing my turn off I notice a grey-haired seventy-year-old white British woman driving a small SUV my way. This was Jill. We were forewarned of her before we left, but none of us had met her. She invited us to her house, lectured us for hours on everything from international aid to local politics to religion. We learned a lot and I kept stopping back to visit her and her Kenyan husband, Weboko, who sports trousers nearly up to his armpits and a salt & pepper beard. The couple had met as students at London University and then married and moved to Nairobi where Boko was an economist and Jill was an English teacher. They had two boys, with whom I have been corresponding via email over the past months. They both live in the UK and are deeply involved with African aid projects directed out of Britain. I met one of them, Boko, the youngest, his wife Sarah and his two children, Abbey and Moses, for the first time. Sarah is Ethiopian and moved to the UK, I believe, at a young age and attended Birmingham University where she met Boko. Abbey, age four, was cruising around the house in a pink tutu and Moses, at 14 months, was toddling and drooling about. Boko and I were able to chat for several hours about the nature of foreign aid, local issues, and some of the projects that we have planned, one of which is a fellowship program. We are looking to get more young Kenyans involved with our project as we recognize that, despite our lack of fiscal resources, we have vast technical and social networking resources that would be incredibly valuable to any youth who is willing to work as hard as our current Project Coordinator Jackson. During our listening sessions last summer Jackson and I were faced with questions about the discouraging community issue of unemployment and it’s subsequent effects on the youth of the area who turned to crime or drugs without anything better to do. We promoted the idea of apprenticeships as something of an immaterial value that could be given to the youth when finances were scarce, essentially providing an advantage to leverage in ascertaining that rare “good job,” while at the same time catalyzing local involvement. Boko, a marketing executive had some helpful recommendations and we plan to have a process in place by our departure. A rather busy day, I’m sun burnt for the first time in a long-time and am going to finish my tea then retire under a bed-net. Qwahara Mano.

-M