Ewiki Yo Emihung’ano (Week of Meetings)

This week has been awfully busy for me, particularly due to the lack of staff currently within our organization. From Monday through Thursday, I had to attend at least one meeting each day, on several different issues.

Most important was our own internal meeting on Wednesday, when we held the full Board of Directors meeting I had requested. During this meeting, I formally introduced myself to the board members and stressed my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer both within the organization and the community as a whole. I then took the opportunity to give a speech, based upon my own observations and discussions with staff, regarding the present state of the organization and how best to move forward.

I was pleased by the response I received from the board. There is an acceptance of the challenges faced at this current juncture and a willingness to make the necessary reforms to improve the daily operations and the sustainability of the organization. Although we still need to work on the specifics, I believe that the will and commitment is there to move this organization forward and continue the great service it has always provided the community.

Because of the optimism that I feel regarding the direction of the organization, I have been willing to, only for this short period of time, take on a larger role in management of daily operations than I generally feel comfortable with.

I have made it clear that any work that I do should be in an advisory role only. I can only accompany and assist staff in the work that they do, in order to teach skills and build capacity. But given the current challenges, until the organization does make additional hires, I find it necessary to represent the organization in order to maintain its good name within the community.

When possible, I have been taking Wilfrida, our office assistant, with me to meetings. And following the meeting on Wednesday, board members have also availed to accompany me at more important meetings within the community.

On Monday, while waiting at the Bunyala District Ministry of Agriculture offices for training on Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease, which was scheduled to begin at 9AM, a CHEW (Community Health Extension Worker) named Charles arrived, insisting that I join him at that moment in speaking to a couple of local primary schools as part of Global Handwashing Day.

It was about 9:45AM. The agricultural training, I felt, took priority, and I had already committed myself to it. Austin, my former counterpart who has now left the organization, had attended previous training on the disease, and our organization is likely to have a substantial role in subsequent efforts in the future.

But with 10:30AM approaching, I finally decided that I wouldn’t spend my service waiting around for people who can’t keep time. I called Charles, who fortunately hadn’t yet left for the school, and told him that I would like to accompany him.

Students at Mudembi Primary School look on as one of their classmates demonstrates how to properly wash hands using a tippy tap.

We then were able to visit two local primary schools. My role was very minimal. I simply introduced myself, talked a bit about my work, and implored them to listen to the good advice the local health officers would give. They loved hearing me speak their language, but beyond that, I was simply there for support.

Charles is a CHEW, a volunteer who serves as a link between the local health facilities and their surrounding communities. In order to do his job well, he finds that he often must use own resources, including transportation. Many nearby schools did not participate in Global Handwashing Day simply because not all CHEWs are as giving of their own resources for an unpaid job.

The information he and other local health workers gave during these sessions were spot-on, and involved much of the same information I had worked to disseminate in Mali. I really enjoyed the experience, and Charles and I plan on working together in the future.

After we finished at the two schools, I returned to the district offices to find that the training still had not yet taken place! I had to wait around for thirty minutes until the training finally got under way around 1PM. This training was then followed by our final meeting on preparations for World Food Day.

Our district hosted a local World Food Day event on Tuesday at a nearby farm identified as incorporating progressive farming techniques. My host organization had been invited as a stakeholder, and again due to our limitations with staff, I had been involved in each of five planning meetings over the past few weeks. In fact, my host organization was the only stakeholder that attended every meeting; such is time management in Kenya.

The Budalang’i Usawa Women’s Group left me very impressed after the event. I had heard much about them when asking community members about active local organizations during our travels throughout the district, and therefore was anxious to meet with them.

They had about ten different stands, where members (which does include some men as well) explained their work including uses of local plant material, improved agricultural practices, food processing, improved ‘jiko’ (cook stoves), behavior change and risk reduction, and outreach to vulnerable groups such as orphans and vulnerable children and those people infected with HIV/Aids. I have talked with them about partnering for work in the future, and plan on attending their meeting next Thursday.

During the event, organizations and government ministries were encouraged to provide a demonstration or exhibit. Given the current deficiencies in our organization, we found it somewhat daunting to present anything. And the board chairman actually suggested that we do without. But I felt that as a stakeholder having been fully involved in these meetings, it was important that we present something, however small.

Wilfrida, my co-worker within my host organization, explaining to a community member the services we offer on land rights.

So we simply manned a small booth with information on land reform and land rights. Being that neither Wilfrida nor I are particularly versed on this issue, we were only able to talk in generalities and refer people to our office for more assistance.

Kids from the nearby Budalang’i Primary School entertaining the crowd during World Food Day. The appeal of Hip Hop culture has no bounds. The boy on the left rapped in ‘olunyala,’ the local vernacular, as the other boys did their best to pop-and-lock.

On Wednesday, Wilfrida and I joined other stakeholders who had been trained on the Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease in touring the perimeter of the district by vehicle to search for incidence of the disease. We found one plant that had potentially contracted the disease, which is a ‘marriage’ of two viruses that spreads rapidly and proves fatal to infected plants. It has already decimated maize crop in other nearby districts, significantly affecting food security, but luckily does not seem to have made its way into Bunyala District as of now.

Members of the Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease scouting team inspecting a maize field in Lugale Wednesday for signs of infection.

On Thursday, Opillo, a board member of our organization who has been heavily involved in flood management issues in the past, joined me at a Stakeholder Workshop, facilitated by the government and the design team, tasked with designing a new flood protection scheme for the district. This design team included a representative from a British engineering consultant

The design team presented a proposed design, involving both the construction of new dykes and structures, and the rehabilitation of existing dykes, in order to better prevent and mitigate the effects from flooding in the future. The World Bank is funding this project.

The meeting was the second in a series of meetings intended to educate the community on the progress of the project, while soliciting feedback from the community. The first meeting came in April, as part of the assessment phase of the project. Information from this meeting was then used in the design process, leading to this last meeting. About fifty people were in attendance.
The meeting lasted all day, and I do agree with much of the people in attendance that it should have been at least two days. Feedback was taken from the community, but the time felt a bit cramped.

I find myself in an odd place, as a civil engineer-turned-volunteer at a community advocate organization. During the presentation, I found myself in agreement with the conclusions reached by the design team, and very trusting of the same design tools, such as water modeling, that I had used on countless projects myself in the states.

But Opillo, and much of the community, did not accept the assertion that such computer modeling could possibly account for the complexity of issues, including climate change, being experienced on the ground.

Opillo, a board member of our organization, joined me on Thursday for the flood protection meeting. He implored the design team that they must take global environmental changes into consideration, and also raised several specific design concerns.

The community raised several good points which the design team will certainly take into account when refining their design, including proper drainage of standing water through the dykes, facilitating movement of people across the river, and extension of dykes to protect additional communities.

But I am finding that much of the distrust from the community emanates from many significant missteps made in the past during dyke construction and rehabilitation projects.

The dykes were originally constructed through a World Bank project in 1961, and have since suffered from lack of maintenance.

John, the chairman of my host organization, has just handed me several old newspaper clippings highlighting many points of contention ever since the ‘El Nino Rains’ of 1997 began a long cycle of semi-annual flooding due to dyke failure, followed by the patchwork attempts of the government to repair the dykes.

The organization actually started in 1999 as the unified voice of the local community after they perceived that their concerns were not adequately being addressed.

Since that time, they have lobbied the government and the World Bank to embark on proper repair of the dykes, and eventually, the construction of an entirely new set of dykes. There have been several attempts at repair, generally after subsequent flooding events. But throughout the past 13 years, the organization has made many allegations, appealing to both the government and the World Bank that dyke repairs had not been undertaken properly and that money earmarked for such projects had not been appropriately spent.

My host organization therefore deserves much of the credit for the current dyke project being undertaken. They were able to convince all parties involved that these dykes are too old and fractured to effectively protect the community, and that a new flood protection scheme must be constructed moving forward.

This has been one of the major avenues through which my host organization has been able to build itself into a formidable community-based organization, through their hard work and perseverance in dealing with the most critical issue facing their community. Times have become tough, and the organization must make some significant changes in order to sustain itself into the future. But I am willing to keep doing what I can as we sort things out. This week, it has involved a lot of meetings. But the issues being interesting and vital has made it worthwhile.