After the presentations we heard (on that first day when we visited our (UUMC’s) working group, Samaritan Liliaba), the orphans all took us back to where their harvested produce was laid out and we helped sort potatoes into two categories: those large enough to eat, and those too small, but perfectly good for planting.  (These potatoes, by the way, looked pretty good, kind of like Yukon Gold: yellow and thin-skinned.)  There was no sorting for the beans.  I wish I could have brought some home to cook and share, but, you know: U.S. Customs is SO picky about bringing in agricultural products.  (And I’m glad they are.  One kudzu species is enough, thank you very much.)  The sorting was quickly done (there were about 30 pairs of hands doing the work), and I’m sure it was more or less ceremonial, but I think it was important that we get our hands dirty.

Erika had brought some videos she recorded of our VBS kids singing and of the Cotton Patch Gospel, which she showed to our working group (in shifts).  While she did that, I handed out the postcards we had made for the group.  (In retrospect, I wish we had not done those things in parallel.  It maximized efficiency but it was kind of low-ceremony, and I think a little more ceremonious presentation would have been good.  Oh well, lesson learned.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

Then: lunchtime.

Continue reading The Rest of Our Samaritan Liliaba Working Group Visit →

I think I found a better way to share these photo spheres.  The photo spheres I took on this trip were casually done, and people were moving around while I took them.  When they get stitched together, sometimes there are two parts of image that overlap, but one part had a person in it and the other part didn’t.  In that case, you’ll see a sort of ghostly half-image of the person(s).  You can click on an a picture’s caption to get an image you can pan around in.

(Update: I discovered that Google+ displays photo spheres without me needing to do magic stuff with Google Maps to get them uploaded.  Here’s the link: Same photos, viewed via Google+.)

(Original post: Today we visited our Working Group!)

At the time of our trip, the exchange rate was approximately $1 for 100 Kenyan shillings (abbreviated KES, or Ksh).

The business shops or stalls are more like 6×8, not 8×12.

When you go on one of these trips, you really need to bring a notebook.  There are a LOT of facts and figures and names thrown around, and you can’t remember them all.

Bad grammar when I said “nursing them” (vague antecedent, or whatever it’s called).  I was referring to the orphans’ necessity to nurse their dying parents, not their siblings.

The kids we met were older but: they are the heads of their families, which may include other orphans who are too young to be treated as the head of their own family.  I think the typical ZOE family has a head who is 16-19 years old and maybe three younger siblings of younger ages, sometimes down to 3-5 years old.  We only met the family heads; not the entire families.  ZOE working group meetings consist of only the family heads, not the entire families.  These meetings are places where decisions are made, such as what group project to work on, which family (or families) to help over the next week or two, whether to repossess a family’s IGA equipment, whether to loan a family enough money to start an Income-Generating Activity, etc.

Relief vs. development: I had earlier said that ZOE does not provide food to starving children, only training and seed money for them to pull themselves up by the own bootstraps.  That was wrong.  In an emergency, ZOE will provide food for a family.

Utensil-drying racks: “Utensils” refers to all their cooking and eating utensils.  The racks are made of scrap material they scrounge up, and can be as simple as four stout sticks stuck in the ground with chicken wire on top.  The compost-sweeping-up-and-burning and the utensil-rack-building both serve as evidence that they are making efforts to better their circumstances, and helps determine whether they receive future assistance from their working group.

Speaking of effort: I have mentioned that the working groups work together on a group plot of land, to grow crops; and that they also undertake a group project.  This is great for building community, and to have meetings (ZOE actually strongly encourages them to hold their meetings WHILE working, instead of while sitting down, because (a) they get stuff done, and (b) sitting down can negatively affect attitudes and energy levels). However, any student of history knows that relying entirely on collective action can lead to problems with slackers, which is why there are also individual plots of lands, for which individual families are responsible.

So, it was deathly blazing hot in Chapel Hill when we left.  Africa’s even worse, right?

Nope.  Cool and dry.  Our smoking-hot-solstice-sun-at-23.5-degrees-latitude season is actually Kenya’s winter (we were pretty much on the equator), such as it is.  Plus, we were on the side of Mt. Kenya, which is one of the largest (in diameter) mountains in the world, and whose peak is above 17,000 feet..  One night, the temperature went down to 59 degrees.  We all had fleeces and sweaters and we used them.  Even during the day (when it did get hotter), there was always a breeze blowing and when we were in the shade, it was the perfect temperature (and who can object to the sound of wind in trees?).  Our elevation in Maua was right about 5,000 feet.

Eat your hearts out, Chapel Hill. :)

I have now uploaded, captioned and organized (in Picasa) all the pictures and videos I took with the exception of individual presentations.  I’ll upload them later, when I find a way to blank out last names, since this is a public link.  Also, as time goes by, I’ll add pictures taken by other people.

They are here: Pictures.

Morning meal:

* Sweet potato chunks, peeled and boiled or baked. I don’t really know whether they were boiled or baked.  These are not the orange ones we know, but a yellow sweet potato that has the same taste).

* Arrowroot chunks, boiled.  This is a very dry and starchy root and has kind a of mottled look that most thought looked like sausage.

* A cut of pork that’s a cross between ham and bacon, called “bacon”.

* Fried eggs.

* Hardboiled eggs.

* Cereal, in the form of pressed cereal cakes that fall apart in contact with milk and soak it up.

* Sausage links

* Coffee or tea (but not the Kenyan tea which I had the pleasure of drinking once (in the airport in Nairobi, of all places), and tastes like the chai you get in Chapel Hill coffee shops).

* Fresh fruit, including bananas and papayas.  There were always bananas, at every meal.  Good thing I like bananas. And these were very flavorful.

Lunch:

The working groups usually provided soda, bananas and white bread.

Evening meal:

* Frequently, squash soup.

* Usually some kind of savory meat in sauce, chicken or beef.  Once, goat. 

* Always fish. 

* Steamed vegetables. 

* Mashed potatoes and/or rice. 

* Hard biscuits.

* Coffee or tea.

Once, we had “green grams” (or “green grahams”, I don’t know how to spell it) that the third year group had given us as a gift.  They are a tiny, bright green bean, and are the most expensive bean the orphans can produce. They were utterly delicious, kind of like green lentils or black-eyed peas.

We definitely did not go hungry.

Inside Samaritan Liliaba’s church

Inside Judy’s house

(I’m not entirely sure this works. Please let me know in comments.)

Helping to sort the crop yield

Today (Tuesday) we visited a first-year group (and experienced a tremendous hassle trying to exchange $20 for Kenyan shillings at a Barclay’s in town).  The group lives in a fairly dry and dusty area about 30 minutes from Maua.  The area is just beautiful, but it’s the terrible beauty of inhospitable land.  The soil is a dramatic red and VERY rocky with igneous rocks embedded in it.  The group didn’t get enough rain in the last growing season, and I think they were discouraged.  They certainly weren’t as vibrant as the others we met.  Their stories were sad, partly because they are still ongoing.

Continue reading Today: Visited a First-Year Group →

Today was the last day of our outreach to the working groups.  Tomorrow is an “us” day.  We’re going on a safari.  There’s no telling what the wi-fi situation will be, but I can’t imagine it being much better than here at the hotel (and that wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped).

I have just uploaded another longish half-baked blog post which I will have to expand on later.  Between the availability of wi-fi, jet lag and just plain being busy here, I have not been able to blog as much as I’d hoped, BUT there will be more posts, either as I travel or when we get home.

(Oh, this is fun: as I type this, sitting in the courtyard of the guest house, under an umbrella, it’s starting to rain a little bit, in spite of the fact that this a dry season.  Hopefully it won’t drive me indoors.)