MCC Kenya partners

We’ve had a good “summer” of relating to MCC partners in our work, so here are some more pictures of what types of activities we’ve had going on in the last few months.  

We took the 6+ hour drive out to western Kenya, around Kisumu, in early July to pick up one of our SALTer’s who was headed home after his 1 year term.  He’d been living in a small town south of the Nandi hills.  Here David is with our family at a school site supported by MCC.  There is a Generations at Risk (HIV/AIDS) project here, as there is at a number of places in western Kenya.  Cristina comes here regularly to work on finances with the organization; this was the first time for the kids and me to visit.

The area has suffered from some conflict recently as two tribes (Kalenjin and Luo) have been at odds with each other.  MCC is responding to emergency needs in this region as some communities have been displaced by the conflict.  Everybody is watching for interethnic conflicts as national elections approach next year.

The Kenya Mennonite Church is strong is this part of the country, in general the area along Lake Victoria is where early Mennonite missionaries went. Lots of denominations had missions in Kenya, and tended to focus on different areas of the country. MCC in Kenya works closely with the Kenyan Mennonite Church on a number of projects.

Back in Nairobi, we are starting to use bacteria tests in our urban Nairobi, both to test water that is used for drinking, and as a way to incorporate student learning about WaSH principles,  Here at Mukuru, WaSH promoters Irene (center) and Dennis (right) direct students in a testing exercise.

Herine and Jean at Mathare testing water from their taps.  The school gets water from city pipes, but the pipes are often cracked and leaking, so the city water can be contaminated (hence the need to treat it with SODIS before drinking)

Driving to Mathare always means negotiating through large herds of goats.  

Mukuru has taken the wonderful initiative to spruce up the school a bit with plants.  Here some hanging pots by the office.

The worm bucket at Mukuru has been going for some 6 months and looks good - lots of worms and compost!  Teacher Martin is in charge of the worms (and the environment club in general), good job by him.

Part of their initiative is to have a school garden.  I was so pleased to see it growing well, providing some greenery in the school plus veggies for the kids' lunches!  They have a vision for having plants in the school, a notion which I fully support.  It's clear that our environment affects our behavior, so a green, clean environment will boost the mission of the school.  (As an aside, see the podcast "Evolving a City" on how to encourage communities to work for a common good, one of the many interesting On Being podcasts).  

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Late July brought a week of leading several learning tours of people from North America.  First was a group from Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB), mostly of various Canadian religious leaders, that we took to Kitui to see SASOL projects.  The group was in country to see how CFGB can advocate with the Canadian government for continued support of agricultural development.  MCC works closely with CFGB, including with the current large conservation ag project.

Pigeon Peas, a staple crop in the region which has done well lately.  The crop is unique in growing and producing for several seasons.  This is one of the drought-tolerant crops being promoted in Kitui.

The group meets with Akunuke, one of the many self-help groups that SASOL has trained.  The group has done many activities, including planting various new crops using CA principles, doing a demo farm, practicing table banking to provide loans to members, and various other initiatives.

SASOL director Mutinda (left) and community organizer Elijah (right) talking with the group.

Alex and Evan came along, here Evan looks at Dolichos Lablab, one of the cover crops being promoted to keep soil covered.  Mulching is tough in the region, since termites rapidly eat it up, so cover crops are a better option.

Sorghum, another drought tolerant crop being promoted.  Sorghum was traditionally a staple food in Kenya, but had been eaten less in recent times.  It's interesting how the diet has shifted to maize over the last century or so, and not clear all the reasons why.  One is probably birds, the Quelea is a small finch which is actually the most abundant bird on the planet, and comes in flocks devestating crops.  Maize has a covering which protects it from the birds, whereas sorghum and millet do not.

The summer break for the kids means we've been able to make visits as a whole family, which has been great.

The farm we visited was Julius Masango's, here with his family.

We went to visit a sand dam with the group.  Here Alex and Evan take the chance to wander off and explore the countryside a bit.

There was an interesting dynamic at this group's sand dam.  They welcomed us despite being several hours late.  While things happening on "African time" is usual, they made special note of our tardiness.  SASOL staff said this is something relatively new.  One member interpretted this as a more recent sense of empowerment by villagers, due in part to government devolution (a shift in power from the national government to the more local governments where power is felt more directly by the people; "devolution is the most beautiful thing to happen to Kenya" said one staff member) 

Water from the pump well at the dam.  This makes water collection easier, and (perhaps) cleaner.

Bottomed out, the bus got hung up in a sandy ditch.  An hour of help from locals finally got us out.

Several group members pass time practicing their pastoral skills, singing hymns with children that gathered for the spectacle of a bus-full of white people getting stuck.

Alex and Evan stayed in the truck to avoid the attention of dozens of curious Kenyans, but didn't entirely escape it.  Here they peer through the back door at novelty of the white kids.

I helped with a second learning tour the same week, this one a group with FRB (food resource bank).  We visited projects with MIDI (Maasai Integrated Development Initiatives) based in Ngong, just outside of Nairobi.   

First stop was down in the rift valley at the base of the Ngong hills, where we visited a farmer, Damarus Nadupoi, who received MIDI training and went on exchange visits to other farmers. In working with farmers, one runs across the occasional farmer who is exceptional in their willingness and ability to improve their farming techniques. In the terminology of community work, these are “early adopters”. Damarus was one of those farmers, and we were all very impressed by her work. As with most people, she works with a self-help group, hers was “Inyuat o duaat”. This helps to support her (for instance, through participation with table banking activities) but also is a help for the other self-help members as she encourages them to make similar changes.

Alongside the cornfield she has fodder trees, here Lukena.  This legumous tree helps the corn field by fixing nitrogen, and also provides foliage which she dries and mixes with grass, which means she saves money on protein supplements for the cattle.

Water is the biggest challenge in the region.  Here MDI is helping Damarus with a large storage pit.  She paid for digging the pit, and MIDI covers purchase of a heavy plastic liner.  Roof water will be collected and shunted to the pit for use on her vegetable gardens.  At the moment she hires a truck to bring water from Ngong twice a month, filling a plastic tank.  

A small garden with a plastic liner conserves water and produces vegetables for her. The trees on the edge provide a windbreak, and will make her yard “look smart”.

Damarus looks over the records of milk production. MIDI and other organizations have encouraged farmers to start keeping records so they better know what works and what doesn’t. She has an improved variety of cow that produces 10 liters of milk, compared to ½ liter with traditional cattle. MIDI has a program to promote improved breeds, they own improved varieties of zebu bulls that farmers can rent to sire better cows. Along with semi-zero grazing (feeding baled hay and rotational grazing), she was able to sustain milk production through the 2014 drought, whereas neighbors had to make the trek to Machakos or Tanzania in search of water and grass.

Her farm activities started by earning money through beadwork, a common activity for Maasai women. From the earnings, she bought land and started her production.  We saw this at each stop, "beadwork is in our blood" said one Maasai woman.  They all mention that they have no place to market the work, though.

So Damarus obviously had a wide range of activities she’d adopted, that make hers a diverse and resilient farm. The usual question is why others (or everybody) in the region don’t run their farm in a similar way, and that’s a hard question to answer. Risk is part of it. There is risk in trying out new techniques – maybe they won’t work out and one will be in worse shape than sticking with traditional methods. Farms like this illustrate clearly how getting a bit of increased income (for example, from the beadwork) leads to more activities, which leads to more income, etc. It’s also clear that the farm is designed for resilience – she knows how droughts can destroy livelihoods, and has a farming system that can withstand those droughts. While she didn’t talk about climate change, it’s obviously the type of adaptation that will be needed with changes in weather patterns.

Back on the Ngong hills, we visit a group that has instituted sack gardens as a way to conserve water. This group was interesting because it illustrated how some Maasai are embracing fairly drastic changes in lifestyles. This group of Maasai moved to the area when a drought hit their traditional area hard, killing all their cattle. Since in traditional Maasai culture, cattle define the person, this was a major blow – “when we lost the cows, we lost everything”. The community decided to make a big change, and move to this fertile area that had just opened up for agriculture. Positioned on the crest of the hills, it is cooler and wetter than down in the rift valley. They started growing crops, with the help of MIDI training. According to them, now they accept that growing and eating vegetables makes for a good life. “Even without a cow, life will go well. Even without cows, our future is bright.”

Two Doug Neufeld's!  Always good to have a spare one along...

This is probably the first time I've personally met somebody with the same name as me, it was a pleasure to spend the week together and become friends!  

Speaking of spares, thank goodness for a spare tire.  Driving on the rough roads, we had the left rear wheel suddently fall off entirely!  Fortunately it was low speed, so no real damage done.  A bus full of army engineers on the way to a training camp decided that helping (or watching) the wazungu change a tire was a more promising way to spend the morning than the training camp, so spent some quality time with us.  The carried machine guns with them, I suppose to make us feel safe (?)

Glitch #2 (or 3 or 4), after fixing the tire we try to catch up with the group on a back road visiting a sand dam.  We follow tracks down an entirely wrong road, who knows where in the middle of the rift valley.  No cars or people in sight...

Five hours late, we show up for "lunch" (5 pm) at the Maasai self-help group we intend to visit.  They graciously hosted us late in the day.

Visiting Paulina Noso's first house, not sized for big wazungu!

Profits from the group's activities allowed Paulina to move from this house to a larger mud house, then to her new cinderblock and metal roofed house.  This is a major step up for her.

On the way to visit a house, we run across 10 giraffes roaming the open range.  Wild animals are still common sights, and are one of the challenges identified by groups.  Giraffes are less of a problem, although they can eat maize, they don't bother the lower stuff like vegetables.  Elephants are a bigger problem, about once a year they pass through.  "Forget about your maize" when they come, we're told, they wipe out a crop in 15 minutes.  Hyenas can feed on sheep and goats.  So while it's fun to see wildlife, it's true they make living in some areas challenging.

Ann is the MCC staff person in charge of this project in Kajiado county, here with James.  The sign says "Empowerment: Never do for someone what they can do for themselves!"  MCC projects with 25 self-help groups in the area are solely for training; groups pool their own money for the projects they implement.  They have accomplished a lot, and this gives them a sense of pride and ownership in their projects that is better sustained in the long run.  Still, it is challenging, as many are used to receiving "handouts".

Groups envision what they want the community to be by drawing maps of their current and hopefully future situation.  The top drawing shows "just a boma" (household enclosure), where they are burning trees for charcoal.  At the bottom they have a diversity of activities, livestock and agriculture, a hardpan for water collection, kids going to school, beekeeping...a wide variety of activities they want to do.

Rules for self-help group meetings.  Notice the 20 shilling fee for phones ringing in a meeting, and the 100 shilling fee for being absent without apology!

The "Ololepo Mpopong" ("place where the cow produces milk") group is in an area that is less rocky and has better soil, so they've set up a garden.  They had no idea how to grow crops before getting training, and now have a large production for consumption and sale.  It's hard to overstate how much of a change this is for Maasai, who are traditionally herders.  "When drought comes and kills the cows, we will have food.  We hadn't known anything about farming, but see that it is wonderful and we are not going to retreat from farming."  The chairman, Daniel Tumanga, has given his land to the group for this garden.

Lots and lots of onions, produced for sale.

A shack for the night watchmen, needed to keep zebras, giraffes, etc out of the garden at night.  Notice the Maasai man on his cell phone.  Even the most traditional Maasai now have phones, and they are critical for organizing projects like Ann's self-help groups.

Water is always the major limiting factor in this region.  Here they made a pit storage for water.  Water is taken from a pipe which brings water from 30 km away, next to the eastern escarpment.  So this group is fortunate to have some access to water, whereas others often walk tens of kilometers to get water.  

Power lines are new from a geothermal plant in a nearby national park, taking power to Nairobi and Mombasa.  There were survey markings nearby for the new standard gauge railroad also--that may change things a lot in the next year or two in the region.

Agnes Matura, one of the outspoken, inspiring and articulate Maasai women from the group.  "Before this training, Maasai women were like children, they just stayed at home witing for men to bring them things.  Now we realize that we are people.  These are all new things to us.  With just a push, we can go very far."

Ann proudly shows her sack gardens at her house (barely visible under all the kale), which she uses as a demonstration garden.  She had livestock, poultry, maize grown with CA, watermelon...an impressively diverse yard that was built up in only 1 year!