End of AfID placement - my thoughts

While the experience is still fresh in my mind, I'm noting down my thoughts on the experience of doing a project with AfID.

What do I think of doing an AfID project:

From the perspective of the volunteer - absolutely amazing
In terms of the benefits to the community/organisation - really good

What's good about AfID from a volunteer's perspective

• This is my sixth time doing a volunteering project abroad, but my first time with AfID. Never before have I felt so satisfied and happy about the contribution I've made to the community I've been living with.
• Living and working alongside local people gave me a perspective on local life and culture that would have been impossible as a tourist
• Lots of flexibility about where to go and what to do
• The local people seem to really appreciate that you've travelled so far to help
• I found this the best imaginable education in how development really works. For me it drew out the issues of psychology and politics that might be the real drivers behind the success and failure of a project.
• Good value for money (Compare - AfID £695 (or less for concessions), gvi £695-£1490 depending on length, i-to-i roughly $1000 - $2000)

What's good about AfID from the perspective of the host organisation

• The short-term nature of the placement worked well for me. It's great for reinforcing the fact that the placement should build capacity among local people; this is a much more sustainable form of development than if I were doing work for the school. (However I wonder whether it could be a double-edged sword - see below)
• AfID's strategy of sending people with established skills and experience is, in my view, excellent. It meant that I could be really useful.
• The choice of skill to focus on (namely financial management) was, in my view, a good one. For example, in my placement, if no budgeting had happened, the organisation would probably have spent more money than it had and hence gone into bankruptcy. So while other areas of management would also have been useful, this one helped save the school.
• By helping to up-skill, and not providing capital, AfID was contributing to real development. Helping local people to become better at running organisations themselves is much more valuable than any handout.

What could be improved about AfID from the perspective of the host organisation

• The short-term nature of the placement is only OK if someone in the partner organisation has the skills and willingness to absorb the knowledge being imparted. For my placement, the person keeping the continuity of knowledge was the Teach A Man To Fish rep Jamie, but she will probably be gone in 6 months. I don't know how carefully AfID checks that this aspect of things will work. (In fairness they might be checking this - I don't know)
• In my view, organisations could benefit from support in many areas of management. Isolating just one area (financial management) could be inadequate. My experience in my placement suggested that some HR issues need to be sorted before financial management can really work effectively in that school. I recognise that AfID is a young organisation; trying to branch out into several disciplines at once might be a touch too adventurous at this stage. However I would recommend it for the future. I think that following backgrounds may be relevant:- charity trustees, school governors, HR professionals.
• I think it's important to ensure careful matching of volunteers to placements. For my placement, I was actually (in my view) fairly well matched. I'm not sure whether AfID is doing enough about this at the moment (maybe they are). But I worry that a volunteer with a small amount of experience in only one or a few areas might end up trying to support a partner on things that they don't have experience in.

This blog post has ended with a number of (possibly) negative-sounding things. I'd like to reiterate that my view of AfID's model is extremely positive, and I will be definitely be doing this again.

Day 14 - departure from Ondati

Incredibly, this was my last day in the village. My sense of time whilst in the village has not been entirely sane, and it seems like a very long time that I've been in village now. But it still seems surprising that end is now here. Everyone was very sad to see me go, and asked me to stay in touch and to come back next year.

Cyprine (the cook who gave me my Luo name - Ochieng) hugged me warmly. Bwana Chairman insisted on getting my email address. The Director promised that he would continue to study the budget closely. Joshua wanted me to text when I got to Kisumu and asked to pass his regards to my parents when I saw them.

David and Justus, two employees of the Kisumu-based NGO Africa Now, gave me a lift back to Kisumu. We more or less passed by Mbita, which is a Millenium Village, but didn't get to stop there. Shame - we ended up talking about it a lot, and since I now understand community development much better, I found this interesting. Maybe one day I'll come back - who knows...

Day 13 - market day

In the morning I sat down with Director Joseph and made sure that the finalised budget was written up.

In the afternoon I was taken to the market in Orea. I didn't time it, but it took at least half an hour (probably an hour) to get there, through a muddy path and crossing a small river that needed to be crossed by balancing on a wet tree trunk that bridged the river. Not only was the "bridge" quite slippery, but if you try holding onto the trees (which can only be reached at the start and end of the crossing) you discover that they have sharp thorns on them!

People make this journey because there are essentially no retail outlets in Ondati village. There is a very small trading centre, but any time I've tried to buy anything from the two small shops there, they've not had the toilet paper/biscuits/whatever that I've wanted to buy.

Day 12 - Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll

Thursday 25th Nov

To be honest, today involved no sex, no recreational drugs, and no rock 'n' roll.

I delivered a training session for the committee on financial management. The committee consists of 11 men and 2 women. The women have had no education, and didn't speak any English or Kiswahili. At the start of the training session I asked for someone to translate into Luo, but this request was refused. So the women sat quietly throughout the session.

DRUGS

So in a rough attempt to live up to the title of this blog post, I will talk about drugs (well - medicines)...

It being a religious community, most meals start with someone saying grace. If I'm honest, I never really feel truly grateful when I receive food - I've always lived in extreme food security. Even in the village, the family where I stayed were well off, and there was always enough food.

Medicines, however, were different. I came with plenty of paracetamol, ciproflaxin (possibly my favourite antibiotic!) malarone, doxycycline, ventolin, and elastoplasts. People around me in the village would have to travel for half an hour to get a government health centre, and that typically didn't have any medicines and required a bribe for what little was there. As kids around me made do with a leaf or a dirty rag instead of band aids, I really felt truly grateful - even guilty - for the drugs I had. It was enough to make me want to say a little prayer of thanks every time I took my drugs.

Day 11 - Last day of school

Wednesday

Today the school was closed. This involved getting the parents together and speaking to them a lot (in Luo - so I'm not entirely sure what was said!). Then the girls were gathered together and the highest achievers had their names read out and were asked to stand up. Although time was short, the headmaster insisted that the teachers also read out the names of those who came bottom of the class and get them to stand up as well. I'm sure they liked that!

This picture is actually from the previous day when the primary school closed.

Day 10 - Community meeting

Tuesday

TODAY'S MEETING

Today the committee presented the budget to the village community. The community are in a sense the owners of the school, so it was important for them to understand some of the key assumptions underlying the budget - things like whether a new dormitory would be built for the school, would it consist of Forms 1 and 2 or Forms 1,2, and 3, and would a new classroom be built.

So I was slightly surprised when the committee read out the numbers in the budget, and then chose not to explain the key assumptions to the community! I went over to chairman and asked why he didn't want to explain this any more, and he said that he was worried the community would not want to support the Harambee (fundraising event) if they knew the committee's plans. At this stage, I did not remind him that he claimed to be known for his transparency and accountability. I did not ask him why he disappeared from the meeting scheduled that morning when we were going to plan what to say to the community. I did ask him how he thought the community would react if they found out the committee's plans next year. He immediately changed his mind and explained the assumptions to the community!

INCIDENT IN THE SCHOOL

Later that evening (as I discovered the following morning) a boy from the village had turned up at the door of the girls' dorm. He claimed to be a millionaire who was going to give everyone money. The girls (who were described in today's meeting as "delicate") realised that he was up to no good and gave the boy a good beating! The alarm was raised and a mob turned up to protect the girls. At first they resolved to kill the boy (the death sentence is apparently the usual punishment under mob justice). However, the chairman decided that this was a bit harsh, so he was held overnight and then taken to the nearest court (at Pala) to be tried. I'm hoping that he won't be sent to prison, partly because (call me soft) I don't think his crimes seem all that bad, and also because Kenyan prisons are apparently truly horrific. I never found out what happened to him...

Day 9 - Attack of the Killer Ants

Monday continued with more day-long meetings with the committee. I was really pleased with their commitment and engagement with the budget-setting process. Sadly Joseph (finance worker and committee member) seems to have decided not to show up today, but fortunately everyone else (including the area chief) was really engaged. Some key decisions were made by the committee to close the gap in the budget.

Since most of my blog followers won't be too interested in budget-setting details, I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post focusing on the wildlife that I live with. A key concern when I stand outside in the evening is the killer ants. (I don't think anyone else calls them killer ants. Me? Overdramatise?! Never!) On the weekend I was talking to my parents when I had to abruptly end the call to take my trousers off and beat ants off my legs. They bite, and while one bite is just a harmless sting, the ants seem to come in packs and being bitten by several dozen of them is definitely worth avoiding. I'm told that these ants have been known to kill a snake or a dog by eating them alive. I don't think they've eaten a human before, but I'm not willing to let me the first!

The latrine and the place for bathing are adjacent brick structures some distance from the houses. Here are some animals that I have shared my shower/toilet with (sometimes I might not be sure because I'm generally there in the dark)

Spiders - including one in a cocoon
Bees and wasps
A bat (once - briefly)
Mosquitoes
Grasshoppers

My toilets at work ask users to leave the toilets in a state that they would expect to find them - I wonder if my expectations will be appropriately set when I get back to the office?

Day 8 - The Man With the Key is Not Here

Apparently there's a book written by a peacecorps volunteer entitled "The Man With The Key Is Not Here". Great title - I'm sure anyone who's tried development work has at some point been in that position, and it was how I spent most of my Sunday, as Jamie and I tried to get her computer charged at the solar charging unit in the school. We sat and read in the staff room, which is quite a pleasant hut with a thatched roof.

Day 7 - Church

I didn't take any pictures on the day I went to church; I don't think anyone would have taken offence, but I thought I'd stay on the safe side. I took this on another day.

Religion is very important in the village. From what I've seen of Africa, it seems to be very important in Africa.

On Friday night, I asked Daoudi (one of the grandsons of my host family - he's about 18) if he liked church. His face - his whole being - was transformed with the thought of church: "Eh! I love it so much!! I love it too too much!!" I asked him what he liked about it, but he just said he liked everything.

So I was intrigued to see what was in store. Wild exciting gospel singing? Preaching delivered by charismatic demagogues?

Church mostly consisted of sitting quietly while someone preached in Luo (which I don't understand) or the congregation sang in Luo (so I couldn't join in). If I'm honest, the whole affair was perhaps a touch more plain than I had imagined. The benches were not quite uncomfortable enough to cause physical pain (always worth looking on the bright side!). I sat quietly, read the bible when the preaching happened, and largely wished that I had the freedom of one of the chickens that had wandered into the church and strutted across the stage as the church elders preached. At least it only lasted 3 hours!

On the way to church, I asked Daoudi (my church-loving friend) about his future plans, and what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a policeman, and he was going to pray to God to make him rich. I asked him if there was anything that was important in becoming rich apart from praying to God, and he couldn't think of anything. Even after prodding him by suggesting hard work or intelligence, he agreed they were relevant, but praying to God was most important. I wondered how much of that fatalism was underlying the culture that I've seen in the school's management. Is the absence of any budgeting in the past because the committee always thought the school's future was more in God's hands than their own?

Days 5 and 6 - Budget meeting

A budget-setting meeting. The people visible in the picture are (left to right) me, Joseph (the Director), George (the Treasurer), Charles (the Chairman)

On Wed afternoon, just after I last blogged, a chance encounter occurred between me and a few other senior people in the school's management committee. Standing beneath the shade of a tree as the sun set, Bwana Chairman suddenly seemed to take the idea of setting a budget incredibly seriously. Given that the school has never really had a budget before, this is a remarkable turnaround. I guess it could be attributed partly to knowing that I ( frequently referred to as "Mr Sunday/Sunjoy/some other mispronunciation, finance expert from UK") will be gone after only 2 weeks. And there's also good old fashioned rational argument (you're meeting the parents next week - how will you know what next year's school fees will be unless you've created a budget?)

Much to my pleasure, the work of creating a budget was taken very seriously over Thursday and Friday, with the dedicated attention of a subgroup of the school's committee. At the end of that process, a summary of the budget was as follows:

Budgeted 2011 Income: 2 million Kenyan shillings
Budgeted 2011 Expenditure: 5 million Kenyan shillings
Amount of reserves at start of year zero

Needless to say, this is not good! As we were going through, I could tell we were heading for a disaster of a budget, but I thought it valuable to let the committee create this budget as a first draft. The budgeting sub committee agreed that drastic measures were needed to make the budget reasonable again, but were unwilling to do this without the rest of the committee, so the changes were left for the committee meeting that was going to happen on Monday.

I'm pleased that we managed to create a budget based on (moderately) decent assumptions in such a short space of time. Big credit must go to Jamie for this - she's the representative of Teach A Man To Fish, and spent some time going through some financial records before I arrived.

Update

Sorry to all blog followers - you've not heard anything from me for a while. Getting access to electricity and internet is challenging in the village.

So much has happened since I last blogged! A huge amount of hard work has happened since then, and without it I'm sure that the school would have folded at some point within the next year or so. As things stand now, it looks like the school will (probably!) survive!

The family where i stay are telling me to bathe now (what are they trying to say?!? :-) so I'll have to stop just now, but I'll try to fill in what's been happening over the remaining few days soon.

Day 4 - talking to the finance worker

Wed 17th Nov

My life is settling into a routine. I wake at around 730 in the mud hut where my room is. A mud hut might sound difficult. If i make any noise then I will wake the other two boys who live in the other rooms of the hut. There's no electricity (my head-torch is a godsend!). It's pretty cold at night (although not now that Ben - one of the sons - kindly fetched me another blanket after I mentioned this). But the mud hut has its advantages. I've not had a single mosquito bite since I've arrived - apparently the mud puts off the mosquitoes.

I change my clothes and go to the main building of the family's house for 8am. They have breakfast ready for me and Jamie, who is the representative of the UK organisation Teach A Man To Fish. She is also here to help the management of the school, but not just looking at the finances. We get chastised for not eating enough.

I then use the pit latrines. I find the buzzing of the flies my favourite part!

Then we walk to school. It takes around 20 minutes walking through mud paths and usually getting a few kids shouting "wazungu!" (Swahili) or occasionally "odiero!" (Luo) and coming and holding hands with one or both of us. (One of them is pictured here) Jamie tells me that the word mzungu comes from the Swahili word for traveller, and "odiero" is the name for a type of bird that is very clean. (Infer what you will about hygiene around here!)

In the evening we come back to the house just before nightfall (we're close to the equator, so it's just after 6pm every day). The family have hot water ready for us to take a bucket bath, and then we eat - usually something involving ugali. Afterwards the family like us to stay in the living room and chat. Unfortunately conversations with them are hard to maintain, because someone will typically interject with a new (or possibly a continuation of the same?) conversation in Luo. Every now and then I'll start a new conversation with them in English, but it normally doesn't last long. Then I'll walk through the dark towards the mud hut where my room is, possibly fighting off any ants with my towel (they climb up your legs and they bite) and go to sleep.

Today I have mostly been talking with Joseph, whose main role is the agricultural expert to help the school's projects, but who also does the finances. We found the only quiet space we could to hold our meeting - the store room. We still did have people wandering past and interrupting, and the yellow boxes in the background contained beehives, and the bees would buzz around us and occasionally settle on a limb, but otherwise it was fairly quiet! He seemed to really appreciate having time invested in thinking about his career, and to receive the coaching that I was giving him. We made a plan that will - I hope - help both Joseph himself with his career and the effective functioning of the school's finance processes. Since the school's HR is as good as its finances (i.e. not very) Joseph has no boss nor any support. He seemed happy, but I hope Jamie can do something to improve the HR around here so that he - and other staff - can get better support over time.

Day 3 in Kenya - community meeting

Tuesday 16th Nov

Today there was a community meeting; that is a meeting for the community to come together to discuss issues relating to the school.

The meeting was scheduled for 11am, with members of the school's management committee expected to be there at 10am. Unsurprisingly there was nobody (neither management committee nor anyone else) there until noon, and not enough people to start the meeting until 130pm. I think that picture was taken at about 1230.

This might sound like an atrocious waste of time; I remember having worked in companies back in the UK where colleagues would lament the fact that meetings often started 2 minutes, or sometimes even (shock! horror!) 5 minutes late. But I found it valuable - it gave me a chance to wander around the school and meet people.

The meeting seemed very positive to me for two reasons
(a) around 20 to 30 people showed up, and the committee considered this a low turnout
(b) they openly challenged the management committee about embezzlement of funds. They observed that the school had received over 2 million Kenyan Shillings (c 120KES = 1 GBP - this is quite a lot of money) in donations, and wanted to know where the money had gone. Having had problems with embezzlement from a previous headmaster, this is a reasonable question. But more importantly, I see that the community cares about the school.

I addressed the community at this meeting, and explained my role. I asked them whether they would like accountability and transparency in the school's finances. Needless to say, I had waited until after I knew what all their questions were, so I already knew that the answer was yes. I explained to the community that I will do everything I can to help achieve this, but if it happens, it will be because of the hard work of Joseph (finance worker), George (treasurer), and Charles (chairman), naming them and indicating them visually. As I paced the stage of the shady grove where the meeting took place, I saw the pleasure in the eyes of the people as I said this, and the delayed reaction from those who didn't speak English and waited for the Luo translation; and when I got the applause and cheering, I knew I was hitting the right notes. The community were clearly happy.

I feel good now - I have deepened my understanding of how people relate to each other in this part of the world, and used that understanding to set and agree priorities with the key staff in a way that will clearly engage and motivate them. To achieve this so quickly at home would be hard, but the open communication culture here has made it quick, easy and efficient.

Day 2 in Kenya - travel to Ondati

Monday 15th

Imagine your bedroom is in a nightclub, the window doesn't have any glass, the walls don't go to the ceiling, and the music is played until 4am... In the Luo culture, if someone dies, then all the family comes to stay. There may not be enough space for people to sleep, so music is played until the early hours (loudly) to entertain the guests, and also as a sort of Harambee to get the local community to contribute to the costs of the funeral (which may be enough to bankrupt the family, who may have just lost the breadwinner). I was staying at the house of someone called Rose last night, and her neighbour had just died. So we didn't get to sleep until late because of the noise.

This might sound awful, especially since I was already ill and hadn't really slept on the plane the night before. But actually I liked it - partly because I really liked the music - but mostly because it was one of the many things that communicated to me the very community-oriented feel to the local culture, both with regard to life events and with regard to money.

Later that day, about 6 to 7 hours after leaving Kisumu and travelling on a mixture of matatu (a bit like a bus) and piki-piki (back of a motorbike), I arrived in Ondati village, covered in dust and partly caked in mud. The picture is an attempt to depict just how gross my legs were after having been dunked in puddles a few times. I think it's one of those things you just have to feel! The local people were very happy to see me, welcomed me to the village, invited me to join the tail end of the committee meeting that the school was having at the time, and then asked me to say some prayers to finish the meeting.

First day in Kenya

My first day in Kenya was much as I would expect for an exotic country -

my flight to nairobi arrived late, my experience in nairobi airport was chaotic, and I am guessing that the place where i'm staying tonight will have loud hip-hop and reggae music until the early hours of the morning because some people nearby are celebrating a funeral (and I don't think they'll be interested in the fact that I didn't get any sleep in the plane last night!)

I would be disappointed if things were any more orderly! lol

I have not yet arrived in Ondati village because of the delays to my arrival. Jamie (who is my contact in the school) has a contact in Kisumu who put her up for the night and is happy to have us stay tonight as well. Which is most kind of her. I'm expecting to get there tomorrow, when I will meet the family I will be living with.

Jamie has kindly let me use her computer today - not sure how I will work out future blogging - not sure how much blogging will be possible in future because of power issues in the village. We'll see...

Pre-departure blog post

On Sat 13th Nov 2010 I will fly to Kisumu to do a project via AfID supporting the financial management of a small educational establishment in rural Kenya. More info can be found at http://www.afid.org.uk/partners/ondati-school-girls

Any friends or family who happen to have come across this blog should be warned that I have no idea how much - if any - internet access I will get while I'm out there, so I might not end up writing anything in this blog while I'm away. We'll see...