A Dramatic Turn...

On Wednesday, June 27th, all of the 31 members of our Peace Corps Kenya training class received our site announcements. We received a packet in a brown envelope, with the region and our name written in marker. Going into the day, Dave, my fellow Mali evacuee, and I fully expected our sites to be the most inaccessible, water deficient sites. But we soon found that this would not be the case.

My packet said ‘WESTERN.’ I opened it to find that I will be attached with an organization working in Bunyala and Samia districts in Western Kenya. A Peace Corps Kenya staff member helped me to locate my new home of Bunyala Port on the map. It is very close to the Uganda border, right on, or seemingly in, Lake Victoria. The strip of land upon which the port town is situated is apparently so thin that it entirely falls within the blue area of the map.

At the moment we all quickly glazed over our respective documents, more anxious to compare sites and see where our colleagues were placed. The organizational description was fairly vague, and the item that most caught my eye was under ‘cultural norms/practices to be noted,’ it said ‘Sports (Boat Racing, Tug of War, Wrestling, and Traditional Dances).’ That sounds kinda awesome.

As for Dave, well he was placed at a site to the East along the largest wildlife preserve in the country where he will work with ecotourism, conservation, and tree nurseries. So our expectations of placement turned out to be very wrong.

But it wasn’t until later that I read my packet in full, and found this:

COMMUNITY DESCRIPTION
Please describe briefly your town/community: history, population, weather patterns, interesting facts, etc.

Bunyala District of Busia County is predominantly occupied by peasant farmers, fishing and basketry for their socio-economic activities for their livelihoods and is currently faced with perennial floods that occurred on Sunday 04th December 2011 causing devastating effects as it sent the communities of Bunyala Central, Hajula, Bunyala south and parts of Bunyala East and West locations running for their dear lives.

The flood occurs after River Nzoia burst its banks and dykes that were made to protect the waters from spilling over to communities and sweeping away houses, livestock, household properties and poultry.

Bunyala District has population of 66,723 with 15,245 households (according to 2009 National Census). As the flood waters continued flowing through the seven broken sections of the souther dykes, over 24,538 people were sent packing to the makeshift camps that are dotted in the 3 registered camps and 16 other temporary camps around the marooned villages, schools, Rukala health facility, market centres and others stayin on the top of the dykes and along the Ruambua-Mau-Mau road. Those who remained in the marooned areas and around submerged villages are guarding their properties for fear of theft.

Ooof. Well that is one hell of a ‘Community Description.’ My first thought was that, this does not sound like a description of a Peace Corps post, where the organization primarily focuses on imparting skills to a local population, in a generally stable environment, in order to enable them to develop sustainably. This sounds more like an emergency response post, more a job for the Red Cross or the Army Corps of Engineers.

It certainly sounds like there will be plenty of work for me to do, but if conditions are really that dire, what effect can I really have?

These people have just suffered through an immensely traumatic experience within the past 7 months. Based upon the numbers noted above, 37% of the population is now living in emergency camps, certainly in much worse conditions than they are accustomed to.

From my experience in Makili, my village of service in Mali, I am used to living and working in a poor community. But the major difference was that they had sustained that same lifestyle for hundreds of years. They were not thrust into a condition poorer than that which they are familiar. The villagers of Makili were among the most pleasant, jovial, fun-loving people I have ever met. And they made my experience there not only tolerable, but more enjoyable than I could have ever imagined, such that leaving was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

In the Bunyala Port community of Kenya, my fear was that due to the disaster and the temporary housing, the atmosphere could be downright depressing. It is one thing to help such a community as an emergency response worker, during a limited duration. But living in such a community for over a year, I feared, could be severely taxing. More importantly, the community could be so fractured, like a refugee community, that their capacity for sustainable development could be severely limited at this stage. Who has time to form committies and raise funds when their primary concern is survival?

I spoke to a few Kenyans about the situation. My host-father told me that the area floods all the time, it is always in the news. They are accustomed to it. Another Kenyan told me that the flooding is certainly a curse, but it is also a blessing for the community. Once the floods retreat each year, the soil is left so rich that the farmland produces a remarkable harvest which easily surpasses the surrounding countryside. It is this reason why the people of the district have never relocated.

Finally, I spoke with my APCD about the site and voiced my concerns. He told me that the community does suffer from annual flooding, and this past year, the floods were especially bad. People in the area have long been settling atop dikes along the riverbanks. Over the years, these dikes have thinned due to erosion. Therefore, when the flooding became especially bad this past December, the majority of the dikes actually collapsed in the middle of the night and families struggled to survive.

Since that time, the government has undertaken a major project to repair and strengthen the dikes. He assured me that the community is very much intact, and will be a welcome and enjoyable place for me to spend the next year. Apparently the ‘Community Description’ was translated from a local language, and was likely not intended to be that dramatic.

So after learning this additional information, I am anxious to begin work at my new site. I expected a completely different experience from Mali, and it appears that this is what I will have.

Basically, I am moving from a site in Mali where the scarcity of water was the biggest problem, to a site where the abundance of water is the biggest problem.

What I didn’t expect was that my site in Kenya could actually prove to be more difficult and taxing than my site in Mali. Everything I have seen thus far in Kenya has been significantly more developed and similar to America than Mali. But the tragedy in December and the considerable challenges this community faces going forward will make Bunyala District a much different experience. There certainly are needs to be met, and I hope that I can help make a difference in beginning to meet them.