July – August Blog.

Good things come to those who wait......

This entry really is the proverbial game of two halves. First I endured a frustrating two weeks waiting for money to arrive in order to begin the first two agro-businesses. It seems that the Kenyan bank account we are using to send the money from the UK went into meltdown, and decided to keep the cash in limbo for a fortnight. It is hugely frustrating when you have everything in position to push on, but are held back by problems out of your control. This meant I spent two weeks racking up hotel bills in Kisumu, just waiting for the money to turn up and each day being told “it will definitely be here tomorrow”. Still for every cloud, I believe is how the saying goes. Whilst waiting in Kisumu I met a very nice Australian woman who gave me a book to read, three cups of tea, saying she thought it was a bit like what I was doing in Ondati. I thanked her and began reading.

The following day the money turned up so Justus and I flew off to the village to begin work on the two businesses we had intended to start the previous week. We met the committee who had been working hard during my prolonged stay away to adapt a disused chicken hutch within the school compound into a temporary grain store. They had done an excellent job; plastering the walls, inserting a heavy duty steel door [left over from the primary school construction], and building a raised platform to keep the grain free of damp and rain water.

Oria market, the biggest in the area, is held each Friday, about an hour away, and it was arranged for us to buy the grain there. On Friday, I woke up a little excited at what lay ahead, and ate my breakfast reading my new book [a rarity since I have been in Kenya]. The story is a good one concerning Greg Mortenson’s failed attempt to scale K2 [the 2nd largest mountain in the world], and his stumbling, lost, into a small village in Pakistan. Inspired by the hospitality of the people and the hardship faced by the local students, he promised to return and build a school. This he duly did, and has since dedicated twenty years of his life to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book is good, and I can sympathise with many of the problems he has faced. On this particular morning, I was reading a chapter about luck, and no matter how much you plan and prepare for things, at times, you will just catch a lucky break which, in retrospect, you can’t see the project working without.

At about ten o’clock Washington arrived and we walked together to the school which was on the way to Oria. It was then that he told me about our problem for the day. “I don’t know how we will get the grain back tonight”, I was surprised and said that I thought we had organised a cattle cart, “It can’t come today. The driver is elsewhere” he told me. We discussed various options; motorbikes, donkeys, taxis, but all were deemed unsuitable. We sat down underneath a tree and remained motionless for a few minutes, until I broke the silence asking “what’s that?” We both looked up to the track at the end of school compound, and saw a seven tonne truck roaring into view. Now, you must understand my surprise; in the six months I have been here, the only six tonne truck I have seen was the one I arrived in to deliver timber and iron sheets for the school roof. Washington jumped up and waved frantically at them. The conversation went a bit like this. “Hi, what are you dong here”, “we are going to Homa Bay, and we got a bit lost”, “oh, its that way, but before you go could you help us bring some grain back from Oria”, “ok”, “great”. I think the spirit of Greg Mortenson may have been lending us a hand that morning.

We arrived about an hour later and I was told to hide; “if the people selling the maize see you, the price will be very high”, the Director told me. Thus I spent a day skirting the edge of the cattle markets, watching a Christian redemption service [lots of singing] and trying not to look too shady when I passed out money to the members of the committee who were doing the purchasing. The idea was to fill up 100kg bags, but the exercise was made difficult as all purchases were to be made in weights of 2kg, as is the norm. With lots of bargaining and me safely hidden out of view we managed to buy just over a tonne of grain in seven hours. The only problem was the slightly higher cost than expected, we bought the grain at about 55ksh per 2kg measure, when last Friday’s market had seen the price as low as 45ksh. If we hadn’t had the problem with the bank the previous week then we could have perhaps done even better. We didn’t get it unloaded back at the school until well after dark, but, all-in-all a very successful day this Friday turned out to be.

Our good fortune and increased productivity was evident again the following week. We finally managed to get the school registered as a Community Based Group with the council in Homa Bay. This is one of the key stipulations for being able to send the money directly to the school bank account, thus negating the problems of the previous fortnight. Registering as a CBO has been incredibly arduous, but now, hopefully, the matter has been put to bed after five and a half months. As well as that we have booked a tractor to come to the school for the 31 August, in order to prepare the fields for the Napier Grass. The tractor will arrive from Awendo and plough the four acres in just one day [it’s cheaper than a cattle plough too, which is an unexpected bonus on a tight budget]. The Director has located the Napier Grass seeds as well, so I am hopeful that we will get the grass planted before the rains come- expected anytime soon. Then, at the end of the week, Friday, we visited Oria market again, and made another purchase of close to a tonne of grain. Which, this time, we successfully transported back to the grain store on Wilson’s cattle cart.

Finally, the school closed, bringing an end to a successful first term of Ondati Girls Secondary School. I was extremely pleased, and proud of how far the project had come in such a short time. But, it seems I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. The local chief, at the end of the twice annual, week-long prayer meeting announced his happiness at the progress of the secondary school. On the back of this he called a general meeting in the village the following week and declared that the community should donate bricks, timber labour and any other resources they could to the building of the second school building. At the end of the meeting he declared that he hoped all the local girl’s would be sent to the new school when the new intake begins in January. His enthusiasm was mirrored by the community themselves, who promised to help in any way they could. It is incredibly rewarding to see initial ambivalence turn to genuine excitement and community ownership. The chief had previously been unenthused by the idea of a girl’s school in Ondati, whist the fact that the local population have been promised a road, a health centre and a secondary school for over forty years, means they can be forgiven for thinking “I’ll believe it when I see it”. Now with the school tangible and classes running successfully for the first term, the population are beginning to get behind the project in a big way.