A Brief Intermission

At the risk of disrupting narrative flow, I'd like to call attention to a pair of powerhouse retrospectives featured in the Sunday NY Times.

• The first is a look back at Michaelangelo Antonioni's career, and L'Avventura in particular, through the eyes of Martin Scorsese.
• In the second, Woody Allen gives a personal account of his encounters with Ingmar Bergman in true, but sincere, Woody style. He reveals Bergman to be somewhat more down-to-earth, and funnier, than one might imagine.

If you've already sat through my sentimental reminiscing, you should do yourself a favor and take it from two guys who know what they're talking about.

Further recommendations on the subject: Scorsese made a documentary a few years back called My Voyage to Italy. It's about his own personal experience with Italian film, both classic and obscure. The scope of his knowledge is borderline obsessive, and his attention to detail is well beyond that border. To hear the man talk about film, though, is absolutely riveting, and his enthusiasm is contagious.

That Man Ombima (Pt. 1)

There’s really no convenient place to start, so I’ll just start in the middle.

I brought Ombima his first computer last week. Ombima is the manager of the FSA in Luanda, a little market village about 15 km north of the equator. We like to joke that he’s also the clerk, cashier, loans officer, and security guard. You see, the previous Luanda manager was involved in an auto accident while carrying the monthly excess cash from the FSA vault to the more secure link bank in town. This was in January. The bank’s cashier was also involved in the accident, leaving the loans officer the sole remaining employee.

That’s where Ombima comes in. The FSA’s board of directors – a group of various community members, most of them retired teachers and headmistresses, who make key decisions for the bank regarding staffing, loan disbursement, etc. – hired Ombima in February to assist the loans officer in her daily operations. He was originally hired as a cashier but, as luck would have it, the loans officer proceeded to take a maternity leave a few months ago, thrusting the yet-untested Ombima into the captain’s chair. If that wasn’t enough, his own wife is now currently 6 months pregnant with their first child.



I found him in these dire straits during my initial round of visits to the FSAs back in June. The Africa Now vehicle dropped me off at Luanda en route to its primary destination that day in a neighboring community. Prior to this, I’d been vaguely warned by Anthony, the programme manager, that Luanda was the most troubled of the FSAs, based on the monthly financial statistics received (or not received, as was the case with Luanda). This information was not elaborated upon and no other news was forthcoming. I'd have to see for myself.

Ombima greeted me warmly upon my arrival, his grinning face framed by a nappy goatee, his voice low, bouncing and gravelly. He was more than happy to tell me about his FSA; he seemed genuinely proud of what was happening there and gave no hint of any troubles at the bank.

Looking back on it, I suppose it struck me a bit odd that he was working all by himself. But this was my first month in Africa, after all. Surely, things were different here. Allowances had to be made, and I wasn’t about to let my preconceived notions of what a bank is “supposed to be like” interfere with what I encountered here on the ground.

And my initial suspicions were put to rest as Ombima proved himself to be more than competent in his role. An accountant by training, his tireless work ethic and unfailing optimism came off as almost naïve at first. Didn’t he realize that he was working at the weakest link in the FSA chain? Yet he kept talking about the steady progress he was making, going so far as to predict that Luanda would be turning a small profit this month.

His plans were modest, informed by his accounting background, but it was their sheer simplicity that won me over and convinced me that the bank was finally in the proper hands. Forget hello, Ombima had me at “initiate a monthly expense budgeting plan”.

He was currently in the process of updating records (by hand) that hadn’t been properly kept for over a year, and he had started to keep track of all the FSA’s expenses, a novel concept for Luanda. This was all standard operating procedure for an accountant like Ombima, almost second-nature - in short, nothing earth-shattering. The biggest obstacle on Luanda’s long road to resuming anything close to normality?

“I think we will really start to see a change once we get electricity.”

Come again?

“You see, it’s difficult when I have to stay late to update the books. I can’t work as late as I’d like, it gets too dark.”

No, no, I understand why not having electricity would make things difficult…. But you’re a bank. A bank without power. Without lighting. A bank in Africa, practically on the equator, without an electric fan.

“Yeah, but we’re only waiting for the transformer to come from Nairobi.”

Oh, well that’s a relief. How long has it been?

“Now, it’s been about 8 months.”

Oh. And so the plot thickens, the pages of the Development 101 textbook come to life, and the secret word of the day is: “Infrastructure”. Our hero realizes the limitations of his usefulness in the face of bureaucratic incompetence and learns the true meaning of “African time”. What will become of the stalwart accountant and his newfound sidekick, the Sunburned Skeptic?

Be with us next time for:

“You Can Account on Me”

OR

“Banks for Nothing!”

The Origins of Affluence

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at UC Davis, has a doozy of a theory about the roots of the Industrial Revolution and, by extension, the increasing disparity in the wealth of nations.

Prior to the 19th century, all advances in food production efficiency had been offset by the resultant growth in population, which absorbed the increased capacity. This is the basic idea behind the Malthusian poverty trap.

Dr. Clark's thesis, to be published next month in a book titled "A Farewell to Alms", posits that it was not a change in the institutional settings, as has been traditionally taught, but rather a change in attitudes which set the stage for the Industrial Revolution. Clark sees the spread of what are nowadays considered middle-class values - namely, a strong work ethic, a penchant for saving, literacy, and non-violence - from England's wealthy classes into the lower ranks of society as the principle reason for England's unprecedented wealth accumulation.

The book seems set to cause quite a stir, and I can already see the oncoming tidal wave of academic backlash in the near future. Very Jared Diamond-esque. It does appear to raise some intriguing points, though, as evidenced by the NY Times review:

"Many commentators point to a failure of political and social institutions as the reason that poor countries remain poor. But the proposed medicine of institutional reform “has failed repeatedly to cure the patient,” Dr. Clark writes. He likens the “cult centers” of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to prescientific physicians who prescribed bloodletting for ailments they did not understand."

Love and Death

As I sit here writing this, the rain pounding sonorously off the corrugated steel roof outside my office, a pensive mood overtakes me. The office is emptying out for the day and a serene quiet is replacing the droning din of workday bustle, a quiet which somehow endures, in bold defiance of the deafening raindrops. It's been a while since I've written about Kenya, either privately or for public blogging consumption, but that will have to wait just a little while more.

This post comes with a warning to the faint of heart and anyone with an aversion to artsy-fartsiness. It's only hope for redemption is that it's sincerity might be recognized.

This morning I woke to the news of Ingmar Bergman's death. I was informed by the CNN ticker chugging its way across the bottom of the screen, drifting over my bowl of banana-laced Wheat Flakes and breaking into my sleep-clouded consciousness. I've just now learned that Michaelangelo Antonioni has passed away as well. That's two giants of film in one day. I'm still holding my breath. These things have a way of coming in threes.

Upon hearing this new, I was filled with that dull sensation of loss you experience when somebody famous passes on at a ripe old age; I didn't know either of these men personally, after all, and they weren't the least bit aware of my existence. Nor are their deaths particularly tragic. They may have played their chess matches more skillfully than most, but in the end Death will have us all in check-mate.

Yet for me, and undoubtedly I'm not alone in this, the news resonates on a deeper chord. If you've lived life to a sufficient degree of fullness and depth, you have encountered a few artists who may have shared a piece of themselves with you, created something that has connected with you more intimately than anything you've experienced in your everyday waking life.

Now, I won't think any less of you if you've never seen a Swedish film in your life, and maybe you could care less about some old Italian guy you've never heard of. Come to think of it, I hope you don't disown me after reading this. But for me, movies (or film, or cinema, or what have you) have greatly influenced my life and shaped the way I see the world. It's difficult to make it through adolescence unscathed when your best friends in 8th grade are Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. And that might be why I find significance in these deaths.

For a while there, living through movies was better than reality. It was an escape from the world I walked through each day, which to me was a mundane, flat, and generally uninteresting existence. At the same time, a serious, oftentimes foreign film could open my eyes to the beauty of even the simplest, most commonplace aspects of life.

Curiously, here in Kenya I've rediscovered an appreciation for movies as a means of escape - there's arguably a greater psychological need for escape here than there ever was in upstate New York. There are two cinemas in town that play second-run summer popcorn flicks for around $3 a pop, and I don't think I've ever gotten so much enjoyment out of these dumb, flashy movies as I have here. Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shooter, Ocean's 13 - I'll watch them all, and with an uncritical eye. Criticism is superfluous and finding fault is completely besides the point, something I've only come to understand during my time in Kisumu.

Late night TV is blissful - after 12:30, there's a channel that plays Turner Classic Movies straight through till dawn. A lot of atmospheric '70s horror and sci-fi (like Coma and Poltergeist). The other night Antonioni's Zabriskie Point was on, and I stayed up, riveted, until 3:30am, then caught a few hours of sleep before getting up for work at 6:30. The film is a super dated hippie movie advocating free love, bad acting, and The Revolution, with a soundtrack featuring Pink Floyd and the Dead. I found myself mesmerized, though, like I was watching it for the first time. The last time I can remember getting so sucked into a movie late at night on TV was watching Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D when I was around fifteen, and falling asleep on the couch as the sun was rising.

Both Bergman and Antonioni lived long, full lives (they were 89 and 94, respectively), and their deaths shouldn't be mourned so much as their lives and careers should be celebrated. I won't bore you with obscure film trivia, but you've probably been affected by their work more than you think, if only indirectly. There's no way a Woody Allen movie, especially his earlier ones, would be the same if it wasn't for Bergman's influence. Love and Death is virtually unimaginable without the dour Swede (or Dostoevsky, for that matter, but that's another obituary). And, together with James Bond, Antonioni's portrayal of a fashion photographer in 1966's Blow Up, set in Swinging London, is basically the prototype for Austin Powers.

Sure, these guys are almost too easy to spoof. In exploring the dimensions of tragedy, strangeness, and absurdity in life, both Bergman and Antonioni took the craft of film-making to unprecedented realms, and I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed to understand the intention or purpose of their every shot. But the beauty of film is its open-endedness: an objective, unalterable image permanently committed to celluloid, which can yet be interpreted and understood differently by everyone who watches it. It's no less appropriate to laugh than to cry, and often your reaction depends on your own individual mood and circumstances, adding a wholly unpredictable element to the movie-going experience.

So, in closing, that's just a hint of what film means to me. Reflecting on the lives of the these two greats allows me to gain perspective on my own life. I'm not devastated by their passing, so much as I am mindful of my own influences and the roots of my creative aspirations. I promise to get back to Kenya the next time I write, which with any luck (and motivation) will be sooner rather than later.

Hold on, World

Yeah I'm still alive and I'll be serving up some delicious posts in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, this should sate your appetite for wicked stuff from Kenya.

Telling stories

The other night I’m hanging around with some guys from the neighborhood outside my friend Bob’s barber shop, which is really just a wooden shack on the side of the road in front of Bob’s uncle’s house. His uncle’s name is Jibs. Jibs is sitting with us, too. We’re passing time before I head into town with Bob and Moses, another friend, to catch the Primera Liga title match between Real Madrid-Real Mallorca, the night’s main attraction. Unfortunately, I’m the only Madrid supporter present in a haven of Barca fans – Ronaldinho’s big ugly mug is watching over us from inside the shack – so it promises to be a long night, regardless of the outcome of the games.

Moses tells me this is what they normally do in the evenings, just sit around and shoot the bull. Only he says it in a way that is just so much cooler than I could ever hope to describe it.

“Yeah, after work I usually come over here to find my friends. Then we just relax, sit around and tell stories.”

Telling stories. The casual way he says it is almost poetic, which is fitting because Moses fancies himself a poet. And the storytelling itself has an illusive, poetic quality to my ears, since it’s mostly conducted in Luo, the local language around these parts. This fact also ensures that I don’t contribute much to the conversation, but nobody here seem to mind.

The radio’s on and tuned to a Nairobi station, Classic 105, which plays these amazing blocks of early ‘90s hip-hop and pop songs in the afternoon, like “I Wish” by Skee-Lo and “Everybody, Everybody” by Black Box (a Jock Jams classic, you’ve definitely heard it). At night though, “Classic 105 Loooooves the ‘80s!”, or so the DJ insistently tells us between songs. Right now it’s MJ, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, and the crowd goes wild.

“MJ is the greatest, absolutely!” Bob exclaims fawningly, which puts me off a bit because Bob is this fairly jacked guy with a deep voice and typically reserved emotions. “Oh yeah, he’s sooo, so good,” Moses echoes. “Mike, do you like MJ?” I respond strongly in the affirmative. Come on, personal issues aside, who doesn’t love MJ?

In addition to being a poet, Moses is something of a rapper as well. He’s got a rap crew going with a few of his boys and they call themselves Watchtowers. I tell him I like that name. Moses also tells me he’s a fan of Nas, Common, and Erykah Badu (“I love the neo-soul,” he says). Moses is down with neo-soul. I’m down with Moses.

A guy on my left who I don’t know breaks out into a rhyme, spitting ill about blunts and ‘40s, which strikes me as strange considering I’ve seen neither during my time in Kenya. In fairness, though, I have seen a plethora of 50 Cent t-shirts around and there’s a matatu bus in town named “Biggie Smallz” (which is ironically plastered with Tupac decals). I’m considering writing a thesis entitled “Fear of a Black Planet: The Contributions of American Hip-Hop and the Thug Life Ethos towards the Perpetuation of the Neo-colonial Paradigm within an Urban African Context”. But I digress.

Bob goes inside to get a sweater before we leave for town (it’s dropped to 18°C - the winter temperatures here really bother the locals). I’m left sitting with Moses, Bob’s Uncle Jibs, and a few other guys. Jibs starts in on a rant about politics, not for the first time judging from the expressionless looks on the guys’ faces. They listen, nodding politely but not really showing any interest. The thing that hooks me, though, is that Jibs starts talking about the Millenium Development Goals as a matter of local politics. In case you don’t stay up on your “UN promises that have little-to-no chance of being achieved but allow world leaders to save face by smiling and slapping each other on the back after they sign the useless compact”, the MDGs can be found here.

There was originally some hope for the Goals, despite the UN’s poor track record, because they established a set somewhat realistic, almost measurable benchmarks that were to be met along the route to the ultimate eradication of extreme poverty (defined as living under $1.08 US per day – roughly the bare minimum for survival), along with specific measures to be used for their implementation.

Back to our story, Kisumu’s been tipped to be among the first batch of the UN’s “Millenium Cities”, a distinction that I hadn’t heard too much noise about locally – that is, until I started paying closer attention. (registration required, but it’s free)

The city still has a few hurdles yet to clear before the official title is confirmed, but Kisumu is extremely well-positioned to be a hub of East African trade and travel. It’s right on Lake Victoria, a location that is ridiculously central to all East Africa destinations, as well as a potential tourism boon that’s criminally under-utilised. The prime lakefront property in town is used as a carwash, with a bunch of fish “restaurants” (again, wooden shacks) where street boys wait next to your table while you eat, eager to shovel the rotting fish remains you’ve left on your plate into a plastic bag to be saved for later.

So Jibs is talking idly about these matters of local politics, which happen to coincide with international development objectives, but he’s spurred on because tonight someone’s actually responding to his allegations of government corruption and his oft-ignored prescriptions for change. His case is helped by the fact that he’s chosen this part of his evening to speak in English.

We talk about the much-touted success of Kenya’s free universal primary education, which has a few catches – class sizes are too large, teachers are poorly equipped. I say this is a step in the right direction, but Jibs thinks the politicians see it as a fait-accompli, since they’ve already included free secondary education in next year’s just-announced budget - before the kinks are worked out of the primary school deal. This is true, and there’s no obvious solution to the dilemma, yet there is another positive piece to this puzzle.

For the first time ever, Kenya has left out entirely all promised foreign aid from its budget-funding proposal. That means that the Kenyan government is setting itself up to pay for all of its ambitious development projects completely internally, through tax dollars and expected proceeds from privatization of parastatals. It means that the national deficit will grow as the state stretches its domestic borrowing to the limits, but it's also seen as a huge step towards self-sustained economic growth. The IMF and World Bank are no doubt enamored with the plan, and it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Bob comes back out after a while and we make our way into town to catch the kickoff at 10:00pm. Before leaving, Jibs takes me aside and earnestly tells me that he hopes we can talk again. He seems surprised that I'd taken such an interest in local issues, that I know the names of politicians, including Kenya's Finance Minister (Amos Kimunya, boo-ya!), and I assure him that the conversation wouldn't end there. I look forward to more evenings of relaxation and storytelling, I tell him. It's the truth.

It would seem that a bit of the old man has rubbed off on me and I’ve abused your poor blog-weary eyes for too long. You know it’s time to sign off when you’ve descended from MJ to the MDGs in a single post. Talk about going from Bad to worse. Ouch. I’ll be going now.

There's a shack in the back

About a week ago I moved into a glorified shack behind my office building, after a few weeks of doing the guest-house hop. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. Some perks of living at the office:

1) I don’t pay rent. This is important if you’re working as slave labour to begin with. (Yeah, I know. Africa. Slavery. Irony. Poetic justice. Too soon? Most definitely.)

2) I can roll out of bed at 7:58am and be dressed and in the office by 8:00am. If you’re at all familiar with my ongoing struggle against the evil forces of punctuality, you understand how crucial this one is.

3) I have access to free TV and internet, 24/7. It’s like staying at the Hilton (sadly, no pool or room service). More on the joys of Kenyan television later…

4) There’s a kitchen with a fridge, a tank of gas for cooking, and (sometimes) running water, so every day’s a campout! Which is great, as long as you ignore the giant roaches in your muffins and the ants (everywhere!) I’m in the process of making little ant-size chef’s hats to help make things feel more natural. And please, if you care about hungry people in Africa…I haven’t eaten anything but egg and cheese sandwiches all week…I’d do anything for a delicious steak. Nothing fancy, T-bone maybe, medium-rare. The address here is: Africa Now, P.O. Box 2514 Kisumu, Kenya.

5) My own personal around-the-clock security guard. The Queen herself doesn’t have it this good…

So life here is good, nothing really to complain about. My living situation is ideal, my work is engaging, and the greatest thing about being on another continent is that all the stresses of my daily life back home just seem to fade away. Life becomes simpler, it’s easier to focus on doing things that make me happy, relaxed, free. I feel like I’ve been on holiday for the past month, which is nice considering that I have been on holiday for the past month. It may be winter in the southern hemisphere, but this is still my summer, after all.

My weekends are spent hand-washing clothes, wandering around town, lounging in cafés and reading. I usually pick up a newspaper on the way to the Grill House, where I get a pot of coffee, eggs, sausage, toast, the works, all for the equivalent of around $3 US. Sometimes I bring a book along and read for a few hours. So far I’ve ripped through Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty (inspiring and well worth the read, if you can get past the cringe-inducing title), and Civilwarland in Bad Decline, a collection of wicked short stories by George Saunders.

On Sundays I wander over to the Kibuya market, where I get my fruit for the week (I’ve also haggled for some pretty boss football jerseys). On my way back home I might pick up a cold Tusker (the local brew) at the Nakumatt in town, East Africa’s answer to Walmart, and then settle in to watch some football, of which there is no shortage on Kenyan television.

I’m realizing as I write this that my life here is pretty brilliant. I’ll get on with describing my leisure-time activities at a later date. For now, though, my bed beckons and I’m in no mood to refuse that siren’s wail. Until the next, we bid you goodnight.

We call it 'Riding the Gravy Train'

We’re sitting around a large wooden conference table in the back room of the Emuhaya Financial Service Association, where managers from 6 of the 7 regional FSAs have gathered for their monthly meeting. I’m seated next to Anthony, Africa Now’s programme coordinator and my boss for the next few months . He’s invited me to come along with him so that I might get a better feel for how the banks are run. Anthony’s the kind of guy who uses words like “unfruitful” and “vexing”, whose impeccable sense of style and neatness is clearly evidenced by his matching ties, and whose driving skills are politely referred to by his co-workers as “cautious”. He's a decent man, though, and I have a strong professional respect for him.

“Our position is clear,” Anthony says in his sharp, serious tone, each word enunciated with more precision than is perhaps necessary. “It is very clear. It is up to the FSAs, and the FSAs alone, to decide with whom they contract and with whom they choose to do business. If the managers decide – together, of course – that partnering with K-Rep is in their best interest, Africa Now will back that decision 100%.” The meeting thus far has been revolving around areas for expansion of the village banks; at the moment, the discussion is of the possibility of partnering with K-Rep, a major commercial bank in Kenya, for the benefit of management services. “However,” he continues, “if you examine the contract and find that their management fees of 15% - thats's 15% of income, mind you, not profit - is not to your liking at this time, then you must not be hesitant. Do not be afraid to speak your minds when dealing with these people, do not fear them!”

I search the eyes of the managers seated around the table, 3 men and 3 women, looking for a sign of their intentions. There’s not much to go by. A silent deference greets the flood of corporate jargon that makes up much of Anthony’s vocabulary. Blank stares fill the void left in the wake of his speech, a speech that might have been intended to inspire self-confidence but instead seems to have only served to intimidate. One thing’s certain: there’s now little doubt as to who in this room has the most experience when it comes to business matters.

Part of me wants to admire his willingness to talk straight business with the managers, despite their timidity. It is helpful – scratch that, essential – that they master the vernacular of the business and banking worlds; otherwise, there is little hope of competing with the large, well-established commercial banks of Kenya, banks that would be more than happy to take over the fledgling FSAs. After all, they’ve already accomplished the difficult task of creating a market for banking services in rural villages, and they’ve done so almost single-handedly. These managers have worked tirelessly over the past few years to educate and train first a banking staff, and then each of the thousands of shareholders, account holders, and borrowers who come to their banks, about the most basic principles of saving and lending, interest rates and late repayment fees, asset financing and fixed-deposit accounts. Now that the society has been exposed to these ideas and a banking culture has emerged, its not surprising that larger banks would want to enter the scene. And quite clearly, this is becoming an increasing threat to the still-vulnerable village banks that have only just begun to gain a solid footing.

To be sure, learning the hard way, school of the hard-knocks style is probably the quickest and most effective way of ensuring that a lesson sticks. Any of the orphaned, glue-sniffing street boys around Kisumu can testify to this. And better to get some tough love from Anthony before the FSAs are sent into the far-less-coddling jungle of the banking industry. Maybe I’m just too soft for the cutthroat corporate world. But something in me wants to yell out, “Stop! Slow down and explain yourself! Can’t you see they’re not retaining even half of what you’re saying?!”

At one point later in the meeting Anthony makes reference to “The Four P’s” of marketing. I have a vague recollection of what these P’s stand for, but I’m not entirely sure just which P’s he’s talking about. I have a hunch that others in the room might be somewhat less certain. When nobody stops him for clarification, I swallow my pride and risk sounding very dumb, “Anthony,” I ask hesitantly, the first time I've raised my voice during the meeting, “what exactly are the four P’s?” He tells me. The four P’s, it turns out, are used to determine the extent of any potential new market, and they include: product, price, premises (or place), and promotion. Shame creeps in as I realize those many hellish hours spent in Bronfman have proven all for naught.

But then I notice movement around the table. Looking up, I see that every last manager at the table is writing furiously on their single scrap of note-paper, making sure they don’t waste this precious morsel of wisdom. All hail the Marketing Mix! It dawns on Anthony that the managers’ silence, which he had previously been interpreting as tacit agreement, might actually be that of confusion and embarrassed fear. He looks at me and I think I can see the exact moment of revelation as it crosses his face. He pauses for a beat, then looks away and continues:

“On the issue of marketing, there’s something else we’ve been working on. I didn’t intend to bring it up here, but Africa Now is currently in the process of developing a fresh-fruit processing center in the area. The idea is to set up an industry for dried fruit production amongst local farmers, who will then process and export their products. They will be able to obtain a much higher selling price than they are currently getting.

“I’m having trouble, though, finding a site to locate this drying center,” he explains. He asks the managers to survey their customers, who are mostly small-scale farmers, regarding the production levels of bananas, papayas, mangos, and pineapples in the area. They are then to report back on potential sites for a processing center that would be centrally located for maximum accessibility. One of the managers asks about the possibility of the FSAs investing in the venture themselves. “Well to be honest, I hadn’t given that any thought at all,” admits Anthony. “But it is definitely an idea worth looking into.”

As we leave the meeting and load into the Land Rover waiting outside the bank, Anthony asks me how I think it went. I tell him I found it interesting. “I think I talked too much,” he confesses. I ask if the managers had ever brought up the possibility of investing bank funds in a project before. “No, never. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard such talk,” he replies.

I’m a bit in awe of the whole thing: being witness to an industry, especially one that is so fundamentally engrained in the Western world, as it forms itself in the limited environment of a developing country is a bit surreal. Moving from a business model that earns income on operations alone to one which seeks out external investment and financing opportunities is a fairly huge step, and I think I’ve just seen the first seed of inspiration being planted in the minds of the managers. If I were to totally embrace the spirit of unabashed nerdiness that is running rampant through this post, I might follow up on that analogy by saying that I'd like to do what I can to add some water to that seed in the hopes that it will grow. Though on second thought, some things are better left unsaid.

Paving the highway to hell

Now that I’ve finished my third week of work with Africa Now, it’s about time I brought you, my faithful readers, up to speed on my most excellent adventures in Kenya. Admittedly, I’ve been slacking on the transcribing of all my deep and meaningful experiences here, so without further ado, I shall do my best to turn this mother out.

My first week interning couldn’t fairly be described as work; it was more of a whirlwind tour of all the many projects that the organization currently has underway. Beginning with the community water and sanitation project (COWASA), we - that is, myself and Dana, my comrade and fellow intern here (she’s also a fellow McGillian) - were taken around to sites in the Kisumu area where Africa Now has developed a number of deceptively simple solutions to problems of water management.

The great irony of Kisumu is that, despite sitting on the shores of Lake Victoria, the second largest body of fresh water in the entire world (after Lake Superior), the town itself is without clean, running water. There’s currently a massive public works project underway to install pipes throughout the city, but government initiatives are notoriously slow-going. The provincial headquarters for Nyanza, one of the largest buildings in town, currently sits empty and only partially completed, as it has for over ten years – a testament to the corruption of Kenyan bureaucracy. This is where an NGO works best – in cutting through the red-tape and focusing on solid, measurable improvements, it can take the first steps up the development ladder (to rehash a tired and inaccurate analogy – I think development is more like that damned rope we had to climb in gym class that burned like hell and painfully revealed my failings as a human being by they fourth grade) in the hopes that the government will soon get its act together and follow its successfully-proven lead.

Among Africa Now’s various projects aimed at facilitating access to clean water, it has installed these large concrete water tanks at many local primary and secondary schools, which are designed to catch rainwater run-off from roofs, storing it safely for the duration of the dry season; they’ve also built running springs in locations where stagnant, unsanitary groundwater wells once stood, thus providing a natural source of clean water to communities. Inevitably, all this brought out the IDS nerd in me, and I quickly bonded with Haron, Africa Now’s water technician and the engineer for all of these water facilities. He was given the unenviable charge of taking us around and answering all of my many hydrologically-challenged questions, which he did with enormous patience and often with frightening amounts of detail – for example, its undesirable to locate a new spring site in an area with too many eucalyptus trees, as their roots tend to soak up too much ground water; instead, banana trees are preferred for their more fibrous roots, which actually help to store water in the dry season. A masterful teacher and peaceful traveling companion, Haron earned my respect and admiration almost immediately.

In addition to the water sites, I’ve also visited a dairy goat research center - dairy goats, as opposed to dairy cows, being more cost efficient and practical in impoverished regions, as they require much less grazing land and can produce relatively large quantities of milk; a bee-keeping farm that raises honey to be distributed and sold through major regional supermarkets; a community training session on good governance, which was run more like a university lecture than the PTA-type meeting I was expecting; a number of fishing communities on Rusinga Island (about a 3 hour drive from Kisumu along the banks of Lake Victoria); and last, but certainly not least in my mind, I’ve been to see the village banks.












These are functioning, operational banks that are open for business in small rural areas, each run by a board of directors composed mostly of women from the local community. Most are being actively, enthusiastically used by locals to hold their sometimes-meager (yet all the more important) savings. In addition to encouraging savings practices, the village banks, or financial service associations (FSAs), also allow community members to take out small loans that can be used to help sustain or grow business operations. In addtion to the basic saving and loaning services offered, the banks provide villagers with the opportunity to open accounts to pay for school fees, to become shareholders (which entitles them to receive dividends and vote on bank policies), and to hold pension accounts. Though the principles of micro-finance may seem a bit dry when you read them out of a textbook (or in a blog, for that matter), seeing them in action, completely changing the way entire communities behave with regard to planning for the future and expanding their farms or businesses, is both inspiring and somewhat overwhelming.

Yeah, I’m a huge econ dork; but perhaps more pertinent to this discussion, I’m also generally a cynic when it comes to the possibilities for improvement and development in the poorest areas of the world. Africa, with its chronic underdevelopment and perpetual excuse-making, be it corruption, culture, or colonialism, is particularly inviting of this cynicism. But these banks look to be a bright spot on the bleak landscape of development policy-making. That’s not to say that they are the single solution to the troubles of the developing world (the “magic bullet”, as Jeffrey Sachs would term it), and they certainly have their fair share of issues to deal with, but that’s what I’m hopefully here to help with.

It's such a relief to feel as though there’s something I can actually do here to make things a little better. It seems almost too easy when working in developing areas to get mired in good-intentions, and ultimately do little in the way of making effective progress. Looking back on my attitude before coming here, I very much feared the worst and accepted that my trip could well be a waste in terms of tangible results (though certainly not in terms of gaining personal experience). That said, I’m genuinely encouraged by the potential for improvement that my time in Kenya appears to offer, and hopefully I’ll be able to do something worthwhile with my limited knowledge and, yes, with my good intentions.

Hey white boy, what you doin' uptown?

I’ve been in Kisumu for around two weeks now, and what a fortnight it’s been. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this place: not the heart-skipping scenery I see every day traveling outside of town through the Rift Valley, nor the sight of so many people (so, so many) who make their livings hawking their wares on the street or in corrugated steel shacks adorned with hand-painted advertisements, nor the feeling of being such an extreme minority.

Even if I get used to this latter point, nobody else here will let me forget what color my skin is. Mzungu is Swahili slang for “white man”, a somewhat derogatory term, but as any Caucasian who’s been to East Africa can surely confirm, it’s interpretation is totally context-specific. Most often it comes from the mouths of the uninhibited; the sufficiently inebriated, or kids under the age of 12 - either breathlessly uttered with dropped jaw as our vehicle passes them by on the unpaved, pothole-ridden paths (euphemistically referred to as roads here), or else screamed at the top of the lungs as we pass through the front gate of a primary school, setting off a chain-reaction chorus from the littl’uns, who you’d think were flocking to see a three-eyed albino with a bad hair day rather than two fairly unimpressive university students from Canada. Teenagers might mutter it while rolling their eyes or spit it out insultingly, while older men and women just tend to give confused stares, either remembering their manners or else too startled to say anything. I’ve never been as big a deal as I am here, and, ironically, I’ve never desired more to just blend in and be able to observe, unnoticed and unbothered. But them’s the breaks, I suppose.

The city of Kisumu itself is quite small, more a town than a city really, though I still haven’t been able to get my bearings downtown due to the incessant swarm of people on the streets. You can’t ever stop to look around and orient yourself, as you’ll instantly be picked out as an outsider, a tourist, a potentially dupable customer with shillings to spare. It’s overwhelming, but moving around gets a bit easier with each trip I make into town. I’ve been living in various guest houses since I’ve arrived, though I’m making efforts to find longer-term accommodation soon; once I do, I’ll begin feeling better orientated to my surroundings. Already I can feel that I have a tentative grasp on the multitude of social, political, and cultural differences and divisions to be found here. But the process is slow, no doubt about that, and I’ve decided that sometimes its best to just sit back, soak it all in, and accept that, at least for the time being, I’m just along for the ride.

Suburban Discontent

The following are my last thoughts before coming to Kenya, which I never got a chance to post. Much has happened since, and it feels like they were written years ago; nevertheless, I submit them here for your perusal. I'll post more about my life since I've been here as soon as I have the time to write. I promise.

From May 21, 2007:
My last week home has seen a strange transition in both the content and pattern of my thoughts. Maybe stange isn’t the right word. Interesting. Psychologically noteworthy. The first few nights back in suburbia were relaxing and peaceful, if totally mundane, affairs. Hanging around the house (such a sterile off-white! so antiseptically clean!), lying in a hammock, reading and eating and realizing why I don’t have television in Montreal (Dancing With The Stars, anyone?) With all this unstructured time on my hands, it doesn’t take long for me to revert back to my old high school form. By my second night I feel the teenage angst seeping back into my veins, running through the wires and corrupting the spirit. My thoughts turn toxic and decidedly unproductive. Evenings are the worst; I sit around, my eyes glaze over, reading the same sentence of Go Down, Moses five, six, eleven times as my mind wanders to thoughts of a city where creative impulses are nurtured, not quashed, and eccentricities embraced, not feared. A city where all the flaws and problems and hardships of life are right out in the open, raw and on display for anyone to see; where such filth and grime coexists with the glitz and glamour of Montréal nightlife in a bizarre symbiosis that is fascinating to watch from my third-floor balcony on Avenue des Pins. I look out over the brightly coloured roofs of Plateau Mont-Royal and my senses are stimulated to the fullest degree. In this moment, my body is on a couch in upstate New York, my eyes are trying to focus on 19th century Mississippi, but my mind is caught up in a Montréal dusk-dream.

I am never more enthralled by Montreal than when I’m in Delmar, NY. Here, my family’s 2-story colonial is across the street from a mirror-image of itself, as if East Poplar Drive itself acts as the mirror, reflecting not only physical structure but its occupants’ very aspirations, values, and preferences for vinyl siding. Here, Poplar is about as far removed from Pine as can possibly be imagined, and the naming of streets after trees seems perverse in both cases. [Sidenote: I remember a book from when I was growing up, about a man who moves into a plain, cookie-cutter neighborhood and builds a house that’s brightly coloured and shaped like a boat. All the neighbors are outraged, incensed by his unconventional taste. They take their complaints to him in turn, but one by one, the man convinces his neighbors to redesign their own houses to better match their personalities, and the whole town becomes a brighter, better place to live. Moral of the story? The world needs more boat houses.]

In spite of all their seemingly vast differences, though, my lives in Montréal and in New York both share in all of the luxuries and conveniences that living in the modern Western world entails. Before I drag myself into a bottomless pit of clichéd middle-class pseudo-philosophizing, I will just say that the next few months will be witness to a stark break with all that I have known in life thus far. I’ll be in western Kenya for the summer, in the city of Kisumu working with Africa Now, an NGO that specializes in enterprise development amongst impoverished, often rural, communities. What does this mean? I’m not sure, exactly. I expect to work on micro-finance projects that deal with the establishment and growth of village banks in rural areas, where it is difficult for large, commercial banks to access a profit margin sufficient to make opening a local branch worth their trouble. But even my specific tasks are uncertain as of yet.

My intention is to learn about global development in action, on the ground, in the field, with eyes wide open to all of its various successes and failure. In particular, my interests lie in examining the prospects for small-scale business growth in impoverished areas of the world. More importantly, I’m at long last venturing outside of my secure North American bubble of clean water, shopping malls, SUVs, and the like. I can’t say I have the vaguest idea of what I should expect, despite the hours of training, preparation, and cultural sensitizing I’ve already gone through. This is for the best, I’ve come to realize, and I’ll continue to resist my urge to form baseless expectations for my trip as my departure date nears.

And so I’ll do my best to keep this updated for anyone who’s interested in following my experiences, though ultimately this is more for the benefit of my own thought-organization and reflection. I promise to keep tree-hugging and granola-munching to a minimum while I’m gone, and I should be across the pond and a world or two away (I’m going to the third one, apparently) the next time I’m heard from.