Nairobi to Kisumu

Leaving Nairobi, friends and host family included, was very hard to do. Eight weeks with seeing my friends everyday and seven weeks living with my host family was an amazing time and it was coming to an end. Orientation was hard to leave just because we were all getting to know each other and it was weird knowing that we were not going to be with each other every second of every day. Leaving Nairobi was even worse. We were just getting used to and familiar with our families and the city and now it was time to leave. Looking back on the program guide, one week of orientation, seven weeks of classes and six weeks of an internship sounds so easy. But there is a lot of shuffling around and getting thrown into new environments with new people. I think the hardest part for me was just coming to the realization that a good chunk of the program was over. After our internships, we had a week of exams and then it was really over. I have enjoyed every second of this program and home now feels like a distant fantasy land. If leaving orientation and Nairobi was this difficult, leaving altogether will be quite a challenge. I’m not looking forward to that.
There are eight of us out of the 24 that are living in the Kisumu region. Four of us are in the city and four are on the outskirts. We left for Kisumu on Sunday morning and arrived there around 4:30. Jane took us to a restaurant across the street from the bus stage where we would meet our families. My new host mom, Mama Gift, arrived after we ate to take me home. It was about a thirty second walk. I am a fan of our location. There is a large estate of houses called Railways, right next to the city center. My new family consists of Mama Gift, Baba (Father) Gift, a three year old boy named Praise but we call him Junior, a 10/11 year old girl named Gift and then two older cousins, Daisy who is 18 and Otieno who is around my age. It is very common in Kenya for the parents to be called Mama and Baba + one of the child’s names. It is a lively house to say the least. Junior is a lot of fun. I was telling Keith, 17, and Carrey, 15, about my new family a couple of weeks ago. I told them I had a three year old brother and a 10 year old sister, “Not much different than you two.” Mama Gift is a teacher at a local private school and Baba Gift is a sales rep for a local radio station. Kisumu is a little bit hotter than Nairobs (Nairobbery is its nickname) but it has since cooled down quite a bit as the rainy season approaches. It’s still hot though. After a painfully bureaucratic process of security my internship, I ended up getting an internship at Victoria Boda Boda and SACCO (Savings and Credit Co-Operative). We had tried many other places before Victoria because it is a little ways away from the city but we either never got answers back or they made up some BS excuse. As we later found out and confirmed from higher sources of which I am not privy to know their names, I was believed to be a spy. While I like the title of being a spy, it didn’t work out to well. Corruption is on every level of business, public and private here. They were worried about an American spy coming in to check on their finances. While it is quite funny, it is also disturbing. This is supposed to be money for the poorest of the poor to help develop their lives. Victoria is a cooperative society which means there is nothing to hide. The money in the pool comes from all of its 1200 clients. There is no outside money or capital of any sort to be filtered away into someone’s pocket. Victoria has savings accounts and shares accounts. The savings are for saving and the shares accounts are for loans. As a member of the society, you are to contribute a minimum of 23 shillings, (about 27 cents or so USD) to your account (ie the big pool) six days out of the seven day week. While this doesn’t always happen for various reasons, Victoria has grown enormously in Kisumu. Many years ago (I have no idea how long ago) it was started as a cooperative society to give loans to parents so they could buy their kid a bike to go to school. Good schools in the outside communities are far and few between which leaves people less likely to go to school. Bikes also improve their quality of life as they can get places faster (grocery store, hospital, you name it). Since then they have expanded into a full micro finance institution. They give asset loans for houses and such, school loans, bike loans and what we call a biashara boost loan. Biashara means business and these loans are for micro businesses. So what have I been doing? I’ve joined the road warriors. We’ve been traveling around the outside rural areas of Kisumu to collect payments, run workshops on savings and loans, answer questions and to hear the members complains and comments. A cooperative society is not like a regular bank. Banks have outside investments. Victoria big pool of money only comes from the small contributions made by its members. With that said, only a certain few people can have access to a chunk of the big pool at a time. Some loan requests get delayed for months and those people get very upset. Last week I went out to a rural area where we met a youth group of motorcycle and bike taxis. They had been asking for loans to by a new motorcycle to replace a bike for a few months. The delays keep coming and that’s the nature of a SACCO. One man, about my age, came up to me, and made a passionate plea in Luo. I don’t speak a word of Luo so my coworker Nancy translated for me. Since I was from the rich USA, the man wanted me to give him a word of encouragement and reason to keep fighting to stay alive. I asked Nancy to repeat that again in hopes that I had heard it wrong. Nope. If you know me well, I am seldom rendered speechless. I always have something to say. After getting over the initial shock, it took me another 80 or 90 “Mississippi” to think of something to say. I told him that he had made the first step to bettering his like by wanting more and that Victoria will help him get there. “You just have to be patient.” Hardly inspirational words but he was satisfied. It is hard to be patient though when a good portion of your daily income is not going to food but is going to your savings. A big problem I see here is that some people are satisfied with their current living conditions. Living conditions of which we would find just plain awful. Wanting more is the first step and it was encouraging to see this youth group want more.