Samantha’s Kenya Blog

Staff from the Co-operatives for Development programme are often working aborad on international projects. They will use this blog to keep us updated on the work they are doing!

Stories from Kenya

22nd July 2009

Greetings from Kisumu!

On Saturday I was given a lift to Kisumu by one of the Finlays drivers. It was a pleasant drive but the transition from high, green, cool, wet Kericho, to low, drought-ridden, dusty, hot Kisumu was quite obvious. We passed deep river beds with just a trickle of brown water in the bottom where people were trying to fill containers for drinking water, and pools of stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, again with people trying to fill water containers and to wash (I think most of them were cleaner than the water itself). Kisumu itself is almost a city so has nice hotels but I was advised not to stay in them since there has been a series of robberies in them lately. I therefore spent the first couple of nights in a very basic hotel before I went to stay with a farming family again.

My hostess, Pam, from the Sweedish Co-operative Centre (SCC), met up with me in the evening and we went for dinner and then onto a local live music event in a big corrugated iron shed in a field with a couple of her friends from SCC. It was a nice evening and the sort of thing that I certainly wouldn’t have found on my own. Pam and her friends looked after me and we spent most of our time just sitting and chatting.

On Sunday, Pam arranged for a guy she knew (George) to take me around Lake Victoria on a boat. I saw lots of different birds and a group of hippos. It was very pretty apart from the fact that you could see that the water level was a lot lower than it should be and the water was brown and green from sewage and algae. Not the natural wonder it once was! In the afternoon we bought a big Nile perch from a fishing co-operative (I didn’t mind buying Nile perch as they’ve been eating all the local fish in the lake and destroying biodiversity), and went back to George’s house to cook it with his sister and neighbours. They showed me how they prepare fish and ugali the traditional way over a stove made of three big stones and firewood. It was very tasty.

On Monday I was taken to stay with a lady called Yunia and her family. Before SCC started working in the area, she was growing sugar cane but barely making enough money to make ends meet. Sugar cane takes 18mths to 2 years to mature and the price is very low and unstable so it’s very difficult to know if you will make enough money to survive. SCC ran courses in her area showing how farmers could diversify into other crops such as mangoes, passion fruits, butternut squash, vegetables etc, and how to intercrop with tree species that have numerous uses such as medicinal, fuel wood, timber, enhancing soil fertility, providing shade for delicate crops etc. Yunia’s husband had died but luckily he had left her (and his other two wives and all his sons) some land. This is unusual because normally land just goes to the sons. She became a star student and implemented all the things SCC was teaching. She became leader of the local farmers’ group and a few years later, was elected as the first female councillor in her area. She even runs her own business and has created employment for others on her farm and in her business.

She has gone on to inspire others to follow in her footsteps and is starting to change attitudes towards women. Women have historically just been expected to stay at home and manage the household. Men generally have not been very good at saving money to invest in projects to improve family income, but tend to spend it as soon as it comes in (eg on alcohol). The communities are now starting to say that women make better leaders than men!

I spent the night in her house, helping to cook and playing with the grandchildren and even had a proper bed to sleep in (luxury)! Unfortunately only one of her sons has followed in her footsteps and is doing really well for himself. I was honoured when I left because she gave me a gourd they use for fermenting milk in. Apparently it is the best gift they give to visitors in that culture.

SCC came to collect me on Tuesday to take me to see some of the other projects they have been working on. We visited other farmers that have integrated agroforestry into their farms and who have learnt sustainable land management techniques from SCC. They are quite passionate about planning trees to stop climate change because they are already feeling the effects of it. Drought is a huge problem here at the moment and even some of the alternative crops they have been growing have failed due to lack of water. It is quite humbling to see someone who has so little, planting trees to stop climate change when many people in the UK can’t even be bothered to switch off the lights or unplug their mobile charger.

I’m in the SCC office gathering documents about their programmes. I’m heading back to Nairobi in the morning where I will have meetings with the Co-op College people before I head back to the UK on Friday evening.

18th July 2009

Hello from Kericho!

This week I’ve been working with a colleague from the UK Co-op College, a couple of people from the Kenyan Co-op College and the Finlay’s tea people to develop training materials for the smallholder tea farmers that currently supply Finlays. I came out here in January to talk to the farmers and to hear about their lives – how it is hard to afford to send their children to school, most of them don’t have running water, they can’t afford to buy much meat and so on.

In collaboration with the other project partners, we developed a plan to help the farmers form into co-operatives, to get Fairtrade certified and to help them to diversify into other crops that might have a market in the UK through the Co-op Group food stores. The idea is that this should help to give them more control over their lives and more bargaining power. It should also give them a more stable income and a way they can work together to save money and get training to make their small farms more profitable. It also helps to cut out middle men who rip them off.

My role this week has been to work with Stirling from the UK Co-op College, and Caren and Dismus from the Kenyan Co-op College to develop the training that the potential members of the co-operative will receive. The training will help them to understand what a co-operative is, how it might help them, and what they will need to do if they want to form one. We’ve also developed the training for the future board members and put together a detailed timetable for the work we’ll do with them. The aim is to set up five co-operatives, one in each district that currently supplies Finlays, and hopefully to reach 8,000 farmers or more over three years.

It’s been quite a tiring week but the accommodation and Finlays hospitality have been lovely. When not working in the evenings, we’ve been able to sit on the veranda overlooking Finlays conservation area with its Vervet monkeys, White Thighed Hornbills and a myriad of other bird life. The night before, we were invited for dinner at the house of one of the directors of a US Army medical research programme out here, looking for malarial and HIV vaccines as well as diarrhoeal disease cures. They do some amazing work, and when I asked if the vaccines would just be for their own troops, they assured me that there would also be programmes to roll them out to the local population.

I’ve managed to restrict myself to one page this time so I’ll leave it there. I’m off to Kisumu this afternoon, on the shores of Lake Victoria. I’ll be working with another of the Sweedish Co-operative Centre’s programmes next week, learning about agroforestry and how it can help avoid soil erosion and flooding in rural areas. I’m hoping to get another chance to stay with a local family too.

13th July 2009

On Saturday a full on presentation committee arrived to take me to the village where I would be staying – a guy from Finlays called David, a driver and another Finlays person called Evalyne as well as a leader from the village. They drove me to the village (about an hour down mostly gravel roads and rutted mud tracks) and presented me to Sophia (in her 80s) and her whole extended family!

The home I was to stay in consisted of three small buildings – a central wooden house consisting of a small living room and a little adjoining bedroom where the husband sleeps when he is staying with that wife (he has two others); another small house where the young men of the family sleep and a round, mud hut with a single room which doubled up as the kitchen and the room where the women and some of the girls slept. In front of these was an open area with a wooden bench, on which bowls were put for doing washing up (they had piped water to a tap nearby, from which they collected enough water for washing up and cooking). This area also served as the social gathering place since it was generally nicer there than inside.

Laid out down the gently rolling hillside behind these dwellings was their farmland, or shamba. The view was stunning – lush, green farmland, dotted with lots of small dwellings and trees. It was divided between maize, vegetables, tea bushes and grazing for cows. Chickens wandered in and out of the plants as they pleased.

We were invited into their home for tea before my “presenting committee” left me. It all seemed a little awkward and formal to start with because Sophia didn’t speak any KiSwahili, let alone any English (the two national languages), just the local Kalenjin language of their tribe. Still, once the others left, I joined in with washing up and then with shelling some beans for lunch and everyone seemed to relax a little. They arranged for various members of the extended family who spoke English to be around so I could chat with them.

I spent part of the weekend being shepherded around the homes of practically the whole village because I was such a novelty that had to be shared around and were most upset if I didn’t stop to take a cup of tea with them. The rest of my time though was spent trying to do some of the things they do in a normal day… …and generally failing, to their great amusement! Lunch was a stiff, dry, kind of dough called ugali made from maize flour with some beans and cabbage. Rebecca (Sophia’s “wife” – Sophia couldn’t have children so she took Rebecca and her children into her home), was busily stirring the ugali and I offered to help. I soon discovered that it was like trying to stir drying cement. Nowhere near as easy as Rebecca made it look!

A young girl called Jacqui, one of Sophia’s neighbours took me to her family home and showed me how they have to collect water from the river three times a day in big, 20 litre tubs which they carry on their heads. I managed to carry it about a third of the way up the hill, on my head, but got quite wet in the process! She also showed me how to pick tea and how to milk a cow – although again, my attempt produced tiny squirts of milk compared to the way it gushed out when my tutor did it!

The whole time we were followed by a herd of children of varying sizes and from all different families. Everyone seemed to look after each others’ kids and no one was worried about them running off or getting lost because they all knew each other and seemed to be constantly in and out of each other’s houses. One woman had lost her husband several years before but they explained that it was OK because they all look after her and make sure she’s OK. The pencils and school books that I gave Sophia were shared between all the kids who were around, not just her own grandchildren (she classes Rebecca’s children as her own).

They explained that many of the children were unable to finish school because they didn’t have enough money to pay the fees and even when they do finish secondary school, they can’t get jobs in the towns without a college diploma or a degree. The rural areas are therefore full of semi-qualified young people who no longer want to work on the land but can’t get jobs either. 80% of the population live in the rural areas and have small plots of land. Their children now get some schooling, but not enough to get jobs. It was this simmering frustration among the youth that contributed to the post election violence last year.

It seems that the education system is training them to aspire to jobs in the city but without there being enough jobs for them to go to. The school curriculum doesn’t cover good agricultural practice, or how to make farming profitable because “development” says that everyone should have the right to a “proper job”, i.e. a city job. The only way they would be able to afford enough education to get a “proper job” though, is if they were able to make their farming more profitable. Even an apprentice system where they learnt practical skills like carpentry would be a stepping stone but it doesn’t seem to exist. Alternatively, if farmers were paid decent prices for their crops, it might start to be seen as a more desirable way to make a living.

Despite all the difficulties though, the atmosphere was one of a warm, friendly community that do everything together. They do a lot of physical work in a day, carrying, cooking, tending the crops or livestock, but all the work is done together whilst chatting in the sunshine – the climate here is beautifully, warm and fresh. It might be hard, but in many ways it beats a lot of the jobs in the cities, in Kenya or in the UK. I’d rather have the variety of cooking, tending crops and looking after children than working in a factory from 8am to 6pm doing the same thing every day and not being allowed to talk or take breaks or go out into the fresh air…

Anyway, I’m now at Finlays and we’re working on the plans for the co-operative development project but I’ll save the details of that for another post since you’re probably wondering by now when this one is going to end!

7th July 2009

The Sweedish Co-operative Centre (SCC) are treating me very well. When I arrived at the SCC office on Tuesday they took me through a long, specially prepared presentation about all the work they do in the area. It’s really good stuff. They work with a group of struggling co-operatives for a period of three years, during which time they give members training in various things that will help them to improve their own situation.

For example, they have set up study circles, whereby a group of people get together regularly and decide what they want to learn about e.g. poultry farming. SCC give them some books and train someone from the co-operative to lead the group. The group leader then splits the topic down into manageable chunks and they go away and study it for a week or so then meet up again to talk about what they have learnt and to share experiences. In this way they are able to massively increase the skills and knowledge of the members at very low cost and they take ownership of their own learning.

SCC in Kericho have quite a small office – just three people, and they work through the government Co-operative Officers to help them roll out the programme. This is especially good because the government officers don’t have the funds to do this sort of thing on their own so they are encouraging them to become more active. They also train volunteers in each society to work with members on different issues such as gender, HIV and the environment. This also means that the skills stay in the area and the youth who are the volunteers find it easier to get jobs afterwards.

Yesterday we went to visit a Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) that they had set up and to talk to some of the people who had benefited from it. They set this up because after they had trained people in how to improve productivity from their farms, people were not doing it. When asked why, they said they did not have the money to buy the necessary inputs – seeds, fertiliser, more productive breeds of goat etc.

SCC therefore organised VSLAs. They trained someone to keep the books, two people to count the money etc. Anyone who joins then adds as much money as they want to each fortnight when they meet. This is recorded in their savings book. Once they have saved a bit, they are allowed to borrow three times that amount from the pot. They pay 10% interest and have to repay it within three months. All this money is then recycled into more loans. Because they all know each other, they are less likely to default on the loan. They also add a little money to a social fund, which is there for anyone who has an emergency such as the death of a family member. The emergency money does not have to be repaid and is awarded on a case by case, needs basis.

We met a couple of people who were members of the VSLA and it was amazing how much it had enabled them to achieve in a short time. One guy had only a few chickens, a couple of goats and some maize that was not very productive before the VSLA. With his first loan he bought some more chickens so he could sell the eggs. He repaid that loan and took a bigger one to buy a hybrid goat that produces milk. He managed to mate that goat so he got a kid and some milk and repaid the second loan. He took another and bought some fertiliser and some better maize seed and now has a really big crop of maize that he hopes to make enough money from to repay the third loan. In this way, each loan has enabled him to take another step up in his ability to earn a living.

All this is in less than a year. At the end of the year, they wind the fund up and redistribute all the money in the fund to people according to how much they saved. This means that they also earn huge interest on their savings which they get back and are able to invest in something else. The guy we met would like to build a bigger house for him and his wife since they were just living in a small, thatched, mud hut (although it is the neatest, tidiest mud hut I’ve ever seen!).

We attended their VSLA meeting where we saw how they each contributed the money they had saved and repaid their loans and how it was all counted in public in front of everyone so they all knew they were not being cheated. This sort of facility is the only access people in rural areas like this have to any kind of savings or banking facilities. It also enables them to build their confidence in speaking at meetings and in their own ability to save money.

In the afternoon we visited a dairy co-operative which SCC had helped to revive. The farmers were getting very poor prices for their milk but have now started to process some of the milk into a local fermented milk drink and into yoghurt so that they can earn more money from it.

Today we visited a coffee co-operative that had completely collapsed only 4 years ago. They were unable to pay the farmers any more than 2pence per kilo of coffee and so people gave up and stopped farming coffee. Then SCC came in and helped them to draw up a vision and a strategic plan, split into three month targets and they have managed to keep on track with these. They have repaid debts that the society had, reopened their coffee processing factory to remove the outer coat of the coffee beans and to dry them and are looking for better markets for their coffee. They are also training their farmers in how to produce better quality coffee. Now they are paying the farmers 20pence per kilo – ten times as much (although still only 10% of the price of a cup of coffee in the UK…).

Tomorrow they are going to show me some of their training materials and then on Saturday I will be going to spend the weekend with a tea farming family. The best thing is that they have really helped people to realise their own potential. They haven’t just parachuted in with lots of money and built things for them. They have helped people to do it for themselves which is much more sustainable in the long term.