It has been quite a while since our last blog post and a lot has being
happening here in Khwisero. I am Kalen Ramey, one of the project
managers here this summer and I have really been enjoying being back
in Khwisero. It has also been really awesome to see all of the new
travelers getting to know the area, and to see each of the teams doing
amazing work. My team is stationed near Mundeku primary school as we
continue to work on the distribution line project.

This project is proving to be very complex mainly for economic and
social reasons. After so much work on the technical aspects of the
project in Bozeman this last semester it has been quite the switch to
come here and really look at the social side of the project. Every
day I feel like we uncover a new complexity. Our work thus far has
been on trying to improve community involvement and strengthen the MEM
committee. The MEM committee was created over the winter trip to
manage the project and is composed of members from each of the
sublocations: MUlwanda, Emutsasa and Mundeku.

These past two weeks we have been working our way around the community
attending barazas (community meetings) at each of the schools along
the route. Today we attended a baraza at Ebuyonga primary school. We
toured the school and got to meet each class, at which time the
students grilled us with questions about the US. Then we got the
chance to see the students perform the dances that they have done in
regional competitions, the dances were amazing. Watching them dance
was definitely my favorite part of the day. Then we had a chance to
speak with parents to convey to them information about the project. I
was especially nervous today because it was my first time speaking at
a baraza, but everything went smoothly and I was assured that the
speech was perfect.

This past week we also met with a couple potential contractors and
have been looking at the bids that were submitted for the project.
Hopefully the MEM committee will be able to meet with the contractors
again this week and then make a selection, so that Justin (our
professional engineer team member) will be able to assist with the
contractor selection and help finalize the designs before leaving Khwisero.

Unfortunately we have been unable to pin down the Member of Parliament
and get the CDF money that was promised for the project. At the
barazas we have been telling the community that our ability to
continue going forward with the project depends on two things:
community preparedness, and the arrival of CDF money.

There is definitely much work do be done still this summer, and at
times I am skeptical about how everything is going to be able to come
together. A project with as many complexities as the distribution
line I want to be sure that everything is set up so that the project
can last for years to come. That said, being around the students and
getting to meet them it is impossible not to want to pour everything
we can into this project.

There's lots of work to do still, but we're feeling pretty optimistic
and having an awesome time here in Khwisero. Thanks for reading!

H2O for Hope: Helping Hands in Helena

It’s not often that a pair of middle school girls decide to raise money for a non-profit. Far more rare is a pair that decides to raise $15,000, but that is exactly what Amanda Morrison and Eleanor Wintersteen have decided to do.

I know. Impressive.

After seeing an EWB presentation last year these two Helena Middle School students contacted EWB out of the blue and told us they wanted to raise enough money for a well. These two obviously have incredible determination, but what is more incredible is what they have accomplished since then, establishing H2O for Hope, an organization whose goals reach far beyond a single well in Khwisero. This group hopes to not only participate in our project, but also to convince other schools to aid EWB chapters and projects for years to come. Already another H2O for Hope group is forming at Helena High School, and together they will leverage community support in Helena for an organization based in Bozeman to bring clean water and sanitation to the people of Kenya. I’m pretty excited.

But, this group won’t accomplish their goals alone, so if you get a chance check out their blog at http://h2ogoals.blogspot.com/ or their facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/H2O-for-Hope/116598515050014?ref=ts. You can also contact them at h2oforhope@gmail.com.

It should be noted that this isn’t the only incredible group of people helping EWB-MSU around the state. Schools in Bozeman, Helena and Missoula have worked with us to hold fundraisers, work on projects and do pen-pal letters, and we are always glad to receive support from anyone young, old or in between. If you would like to get involved please e-mail us at ewbmsu@gmail.com.

Asante sana,

Joe

Education Day in Khwisero

On our team's first full day in Khwisero, we found ourselves
at the largest gathering I've seen there. Over 500 people, ranging
from government officials to teachers to schoolchildren in
multi-colored uniforms gathered on the fields of the Khwisero Primary
School to celebrate what I was told was "Education Day."

As near as I could tell, the event was intended to recognize the
district's best students, teachers and schools, based on scores on the
national exams administered to graduating primary school students
(eigth-graders, by our rubric).

I should probably mention that Kenya's national exams make the SAT
look like child's play. Everyone seems to take them extraodinarily
seriously. Results, along with students' names, are posted in public,
and the scholarships awarded to high-achieving students are often the
only way they can afford to continue their education.

The event's secondary purpose, it seemed, was to give all manner of
local politicians a chance to speak. It's probably fair to say that
public officials give far more interesting speeches in Kenya than in
the US. One middle-aged woman in particular spent a good half an hour
ranting about female students being forced to drop out due to
pregnancy (sometimes caused by their male teachers).

Being educated makes you more beautiful, she said, which I thought
summed things up rather nicely.

It also nicely underscores how important education is to the people of
Khwisero, and the reason we were asked to bring our project there in
the first place. When it comes down to it, knowledge is the only thing
that can carry the child of a struggling subsistence farmer out of
poverty, the force that propels Africa's long, often-halting struggle
towards development, and the most effective way I've heard of to
empower women to take control of their lives.

And that, in essence, is why a bunch of college students from Montana
are here in Africa. Beyond and despite the cultural novelties,
day-to-day discomforts and new friends, we can only hope that, when we
return to America, it will be at least a bit easier for Khwisero's
children to obtain that education.

Eric

Returning to Khwisero

ulembe--hello and welcome once again. For those of you who don't know
me, I was the project manager on our winter assessment trip and am
returning to Khwisero again this summer to, along with fellow returner
Kalen Ramey, manage our continuing work on the MEM water pipeline
project.

This is my third trip to Kenya, and it's amazes me to think about how
much I've learned since I first set foot on this continent just under
a year ago, how much this experience has taught me about everything
from engineering to teamwork to community development to simply
holding a conversation from someone who comes from a culture half-way
around the world from my own.

At the same time, though, I'm painfully aware of how much my fellow
teammates and I don't know, especially as we embark on a project as
socially and technically complex as the distribution pipeline. For one
thing, we don't whether the grant money promised to the project by
Khwisero's Member of Parliament, without which we cannot afford to
move forward, will come through this summer. For another, we're not at
all sure whether the community itself is ready for the project,
whether its members truly support the effort, and whether they will be
able to overcome the age-old tribal divisions that could tear the
management structure necessary for the project's long-term success
apart. All that, and so much more, remains to be seen.

As a result, we find ourselves returning to Khwisero with more
questions than answers. Which is perhaps for the best--far too many
past aid projects have entered Khwisero and communities like it with
set agendas and answers, carrying in detailed plans without being
ready enough to listen and learn. Within EWB-MSU, one of our goals is
to be different in that sense. Which means, if you ask, I can't tell
you right now whether we'll be able to help the community build the
pipeline we've planned this summer.

However, my teammates and I can and will take the time to tell the
story as it unfolds over the next several months. If you'd be so kind
as to follow us here, of course.

Asante,
Eric

Home Again!

Home. Well home-ish. We arrived last Saturday evening to Bozeman after only three flights home: Nairobi to Brussels, Brussels to Chicago, Chicago to Bozeman. A seamless trip back to the states, though a bit miserable for me, as I was recovering from some interesting African bug that hit me like a sack of rocks when we arrived in Nairobi on the evening of the 13th. My energy has been up and down since getting back, but I feel rather good right now and am excited about it, mainly about having an appetite again.

After travelling to Africa for the first time last summer, I now have a vague familiarity with the burden of returning home with more than a fair share of emotional and intellectual dilemmas. I heard a remark yesterday that it’s great to return to a country that uses purified, potable water to flush its toilets. An enormously cynical remark, but one that is accurately indicative of the challenge that faces many: the assimilation back into a culture that we’ve been raised in for only two decades, but one that has permanently shaped us. A general response by many is a reassurance that we’ll “adjust,” but it’s hard to balance the fact that we do flush our toilets with the same water that we’re working to bring to thousands in Western Kenya, an issue that ultimately eclipses, though affirms, any personal dilemmas in priority or validity.

So with this in mind, I find myself, once again, sitting back in an attempt to take an objective look at what is going by. Class has already started, which is priority for nearly every one of my peers. I’m able to overhear how stressed everyone already is from two days of class which equates to a brand-new routine for many and how everyone’s break was “too short.” Agreed. Though after attempting to understand only sliver of what it means to live in a developing nation, and devoting a significant portion of waking hours to a project that attempts to create a better life for those who are purely less “lucky” than all of us, I am left with a deep concern for “those whose greatest expression of humanity is the newest cellphone,” as Nicholas Kristof put it last fall when he spoke to MSU.

What I’m left with is an affirmation that I’m on the track that I want to be on, one that might not be for everybody, though to some extent I think that everyone here is obliged to some level. Peter Singer, a famous contemporary philosopher put it pretty clearly, “if one can act without sacrificing something of equal of greater moral worth then one ought to.” I’ve been raised in food banks and helping with homeless feeds as my mother has devoted her life to helping the less fortunate in some way, as she understood what it meant to be poor in America. I don’t.

And in a more shallow sense, when it comes down to it, bouncing around in the back of a Kenyan matatu, avoiding police checkpoints (avoiding having to pay bribes/fines) is much more exciting for me than a night in Las Vegas or a 15’ cliff drop. Maybe I’m arrogant and self-righteous, I’ll take that, but I’ll defend the fact that there is more out there than the “newest cell phone.”

Thank you all for reading and following our trip. Apologies for not writing more (we had to walk about six miles for electricity), but I hope that if anything our writing helped to articulate what it is that we do: at the very least, providing clean water and sanitation at a few schools in another developing nation, at the most, catalyzing community development and offering a deserved opportunity for students to actualize their inordinate potential.

Until the summer,
-M

Catching Up

1/11/10
My apologies—we’ve gotten a bit behind in our blog posts over the pastweek or so. Things have sped up enough on the ground here that we’vebeen keeping ourselves too busy to write as much as we’d hoped.

We’ve held two community listening sessions and managed to officiallyset up our management committee (which is calling itself the MEMUWater Pipeline Project—more on that later). We also completed ourGPS-based route surveys for the distribution system and visited everyschool we’ve worked at to check up on their management committees.

On Sunday, Joe, Hilary and I journeyed over to Eastern Khwisero andsurveyed around Ekatsombero Primary School, where geology kept us fromdrilling a well last summer. At present, we’re looking at twodifferent alternatives for providing water to the school—putting aborehole in at a nearby government office and piping water to theschool, wiring electricity down to the local spring and pumping waterup from it. Unfortunately, it looks like both options have some majordrawbacks, so we’re going to have some challenges to deal with there.

Beyond that, things are going well, though we’re finding (as weexpected) that we don’t have nearly enough time tomorrow (our last dayin Khwisero) to do everything we’d like to do. Joe and I did manage tomake time to have Nellie, Jackson’s wife, teach us how to cook, but wehad to give up plans to buy and slaughter a goat for a final meal.

The following few posts will be things I sketched out on paper in freemoments, but haven’t had the chance to type until now. Hopefully thesomewhat backward chronology isn’t too confusing.

Keshterre Bosei (Good afternoon to all),

Eric



A Tough Day, 1/5/10

I had one of my more frustrating days in Kenya today, or rather, thisafternoon. Things started out well enough, with a series of positive(if not particularly interesting) meetings with assorted localgovernment officials. However, things took a definite downhill swingafter we arrived at Emwaniro Primary School for what we thought wasgoing to be a meeting with the committee that would be overseeing theproject.

Unfortunately, for nearly two hours, almost no one showed up. Themeeting had been scheduled for 1 p.m., but, about 3 p.m., we foundourselves sitting around waiting for the remaining two-thirds of thecommittee, at which point we decided to start as best we could.

To make things worse, my communication skills seemed to be on hiatus,as well. As I tried to communicate our plans for deciding where tobuild water distribution points along the pipeline route, it seemedlike I wasn’t getting anything in response except blank stares fromthe community members. I tried asking Jackson to explain things inSwahili and resorted to drawing a picture on a chalkboard in anattempt to clarify things, but seemed to have no luck.

I eventually gave up and tried to move on to another topic, workingwith Matt to facilitate a discussion about the committee’s structure,but that didn’t go much better as we found ourselves effectivelygiving a presentation instead. Eventually, it became clear that thingsweren’t getting across because the group we were talking to didn’tconsider itself the project’s management committee so much as itthought of itself as the precursor whose job it was to form themanagement committee.

At that point, it started to rain and the racket of droplets on theroom’s tin roof effectively ended the meeting. Without too muchregret, we agreed to try again after a community listening sessionlater in the week.

Sorry about how downbeat this post is. It certainly isn’t the mostexciting thing I’ve ever written, but the truth of the matter is thatdays like today are part of the reality of development work (if not anyhuman undertaking). The challenges we’re facing in Khwisero are veryreal, from communications barriers to days when our project simplyisn’t the most important thing going on in the lives of the peoplewe’re working with (as it wasn’t today—most of the school headteachers were off at another meeting talking about the results ofKenya’s national tests).

I’d be lying to say I’m not frustrated this evening, but I’ve come tothe conclusion that all I can do is ask myself what I’ve learned (tospeak slowly and use simple ideas when I’m trying to talk across alanguage barrier, for one thing) and get up and try again tomorrow.

One bad day certainly isn’t enough to derail the project and we’ve hadenough good ones in the past couple weeks that we are certainly doingbetter than we could be. But still, today wasn’t much fun.
Eric



MEMU is Founded, 1/8/10

It’s official: we’ve managed to facilitate the formation of the MEMUWater Pipeline Project Committee, the group of community members thatwill oversee the construction and, if all goes well, operation of thedistribution system. (If you’re curious, MEMU is short for Mundeku,Ematsasa and Mulwanda, the three sub-locations whose residents arecovered by the project. We swear we had nothing to do with how funnyit sounds; the decision was left entirely to the committee).

This is a huge step forward for us, since the committee will need tocarry out much of the preparatory work for next summer’s constructionwhile our American team returns to Bozeman to take our spring semesterclasses. Specifically, they’ll need to acquire grant money from theKenyan government and select a contractor for the project (with thehelp of whatever guidance we can provide from the US).

In some ways, that’s a lot of responsibility to hand members of anAfrican community (as it would be for members of any Americancommunity, for that matter), but we’ve come to the conclusion it’snecessary, since community responsibility is quite possibly ourproject’s most important value.

Khwisero is quite literally littered with the remnants of failed waterprojects—crumbling ferrocement tanks, exposed, broken pipes, rustingwater kiosks, some on the other side of the road from where we plan toplace our own project. At a recent listening session, a communitymember even asked us why he should bother to hope our projectsucceeds, since he’s served on committees for so many projects thathave collapsed.

Jackson (our local coordinator, and himself a community leader)responded before I could. He explained that the common factor in pastfailures was poor leadership, ranging from apathy to downrightcorruption—things that we can avoid if we can manage to properlyengage the community and do our job right creating a managementcommittee.

As usual, Jackson, is dead right, I think. He’s a local farmer whoseformal education consists of local secondary school and a handful oftraining seminars put on by assorted NGOs (he’s also worked on severalprojects before taking on a key role in EWB-MSU’s efforts). In hisanswer, he underscores a pair of fundamental truths about our project:

First, in relative terms, building a pipeline is easy. Creating thecommunity management structure to make it last isn’t. I’ve certainlyspent a lot of time over this trip (and the months leading up to it)worrying about the nuts and bolts of the project—everything fromsurveying to my woefully inadequate understanding of hydraulics—but,when it comes down to it, the community organizing is where our mostimportant work lies. To repeat one of EWB –MSU’s organizationalclichés: this is a social project with technical aspects.

As an engineering student who finds nuts and bolts (and GPS units)fascinating for their own sake, it’s oftentimes easy to forget thattruth. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some ofthe groups that came in here before us did.

Second, the knowledge and leadership ability to make this project doesexist in this community—Jackson is just one example. The stereotypicalpoor, uneducated African farmer stereotype really doesn’t apply hereat all, and I’m finding that very often the people we’re working withare much better than I am at understanding what needs to be done anddoing it. At community meetings, I’m finding that the more I shut upand let Jackson talk, the better things seem to go.It’s those realizations that give me hope that this project really ispossible. We—EWB-MSU and our local partners—certainly have our workcut out for us. Nonetheless, I’m starting to believe we can reallymake this project happen.

Eric

Matt

Long-walks in Kenya result in seemingly inordinate amounts of time for reflection. On one such six-kilometer walk back to the compound I thought about the relationship that I have with the Inyundos, a retired Kenyan man and British woman who have lived in Kenya for decades, which I met last summer when I was in Khwisero.

I haven’t had much in the way of extended family growing as my closest family consists of: mom, dad, my little brother, my grandpa and uncle. To make matters worse, I haven’t really found a “home” as we moved away from my parent’s hometown, Lincoln, NE, when I was six-years old. We lived in Mukilteo, WA for three years, a small ferry town on the coast of Puget Sound and then we moved to Denver, CO, and lived in a suburban hell about seven years. After spending the rest of elementary school and middle school in Denver I saw myself attending Arapahoe High School in Denver and then, (ironically enough) Montana State University, as a family friend had attended MSU and my biggest love at the time was snowboarding.

Several weeks before high-school was to start I found out we were moving to Helena, MT, which was a little different from the suburban Denver that I had gotten comfortable in. So, we get to Montana a week before High-School starts, providing no time for adjustment, but rather an exponentially increased anxiety for me, as you can only imagine any freshman feeling, but picture a city kid fitting in with what he initially perceived as being Hickville, USA. I eventually began to feel at home as I tried out for the football team (a sport I had never played before) and discovered that fly-fishing was closer than ever before.

Now as I’m walking down a relatively foreign dirt road to visit this relatively foreign couple I find myself feeling a relatively foreign sense of belonging. I’m the only white person to be seen and I don’t speak much Swahili or Luhya but the hospitality would attract any foreigner.

When I arrive at the Inyundos I’m greeted by Evans, on of the young-Kenyans they employ to run their small farm. Jill is sitting on the porch and is eager to criticize my tardiness. Jill is not so kindly referred to as “abulunga,” which means “cruel” in Luhya. Jill is harsh, which is why I like her so much. She is inescapably British, as the grey haired, 5’5” 72 year-old often prefers mincemeat over Ugali, a local Kenyan dish. Yet she has been in Kenya for over forty-years and has a masters degree in Anthropology from London University (where she met her husband Weboko); she understands the roots and current Kenyan culture better than many Kenyans and speaks fluent Swahili, but no Luhya, out of respect for the community. After explaining why the “tea party” movement in American is illogical, the differences in British and American healthcare and the merits of Montesorri education, I spend the rest of the day discussing the complexities of the work we are doing on the ground here in Khwisero.

Jill is a wealth of knowledge as she has seen innumerable aid projects come and go, including one of her own. Jill and Weboko started the Khwisero Water Development Project (KWDP) after two healthy young boys died of dysentery after drinking from one of the local springs in 1996. After protecting many springs in the area (a method that mitigates erosion and contamination) and promoting various development projects over the years, the Inyundos and their KWDP staff now just manage a small demonstration farm that includes hybrid-dairy, diverse crops as well as tree and fish farming.

What Jill and I really discuss is the need for community buy-in and ownership of a project in order to ensure its sustainability. Earlier in the trip, Hillary and I were discussing a Western example of this community buy-in that we face. If a student pays for her schooling or another works for his money, she is more likely to study harder and he will most likely have a higher value for what he earns than someone that is given the same thing. What is necessary in aid projects like ours is for a group like EWB-MSU to come in and essentially subsidize the cost of development but not to just hand something out. We want the community to own the project and know that we are working with them in order to secure a healthier future for their children.

Jill went off to make me lunch (left-overs) so Weboko and I chatted about the nature of African Polygamy, which he saw as another social epidemic. African leaders like Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, just married his fifth wife, and is telling Africans that polygamy is traditional, tribal culture and as a result, most African men have several wives yet are incapable of supporting the large family that inevitably results. Weboko is about 5’10” and has broad shoulders, very skinny legs and a white beard. He was a professor of Economics at Kenyatta University in Nairobi before he moved back home to Khwisero with Jill, who taught high-school in Nairobi.

What I find in this couple is a sense of family that I never had growing up. I had a small close family, but what I am finding with my time in Kenya is that I am almost subconsciously ending up with family members through my studies and travel in Bozeman and Khwisero, two places that are very literally worlds apart, yet home for me. George Metcalfe and Deb Wahlberg, a couple in Bozeman has taken me in, in an identical fashion, as I met them through EWB, and they have assisted in preparing me for my work in Kenya as both have extensive experience after being involved in African Aid for decades. I consider them and the Inyundos as close as I consider my family, which it apparently takes a walk down a long Kenyan dirt road to realize.