Book Review: It’s Our Turn to Eat

It’s Our Turn to Eat is a book written by Michela Wrong about John Githongo.  John helped lead the Kenya branch of Transparency International, and in 2002 when Kibaki became president was invited to participate in the government by advising the directly advising the president on how to fight corruption.

During his time in State House (the president’s office, where John’s office was also located), it came to light that the government had continued to sign contracts with companies that had not bid on the contract for “nearly three and a half times as much as the lowest bid.”  In all, there are 18 of these contracts were estimated by the auditor general to be worth a total of $751 million.  Further, they the contracts specified that they be paid using irrevocable promissory notes to ultimately unknown sources. 

6 of the contracts were signed during 2003-2004.  During this period the foreign aid to Kenya was $521 million.  Another comparative statistic is that the money paid on the contracts “would have been enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with anti-retrovirals for the next ten years.”

John Githongo used a wire-tap to record conversations of ministers and high-level government officials talking about the corruption they were participating in.  He started to get threats from the top of the government on his life, prompting him to take political asylum in Britain and release his evidence from there.

This man dedicated all of his energy into trying to stop Kenyan corruption.  He released the evidence to newspapers and offered it to the Kenyan government several times.  In return, nothing has changed.  None of the officials implicated have been prosecuted.  Instead, the same officials continue to steal.

Another Peace Corps volunteer wrote a blog article about How Does Corruption Affect Volunteers.  In it, he cites an article stating that the British government is withholding $30 million that was supposed to go towards education because of evidence that officials in the ministry for education are stealing the money.  That is money that could send students to school, improve classrooms, bring electricity to schools, or provide hygienic toilets for the students.

Library Project

I can tell that English is the most difficult aspect of school for my students.  All of their course work other than kiswahili is in English, yet most of them did not really start learning English until grade 3, 4, or 5.  I have been trying to encourage them to read for fun to help them improve their comprehension, but it is difficult when books are so rare and coveted.

That is why I talked to the chairman of the constituency development fund about getting money for our school to build a library. 

Aside: The constituency development fund can be compared to pork-barrel spending, except that here is is directly accounted for in the budget and each constituency is allocated an equal amount of money.  In my opinion it is capable of being a much more functional system than writing spending clauses into unrelated bills.  That is, if it is used properly and if money is not skimmed off of the top through corruption.   

Now our library is almost complete and I have also been fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a multi-school book donation project that has been developed by my good friend and “neighbor,” Matt Palma, as well as two returned Peace Corps volunteers.

They (and now we) are working with Books For Africa to bring an entire container of books from America to Kenya.  The container holds about 20 thousand books, and each school will keep approximately five thousand.

Now the library structure is almost complete and the books are slated to arrive around the end of June or the start of July.

Commenting!!! - Settings May Have Changed

I think that I just changed the setting on the blog so that it will be 95% easier to comment. It only took me about a year to stumble upon the area where I change the settings.

I may never have conclusive evidence if I failed, since no one will be able to comment about how difficult it still is to leave comments.

How to Be Idle

There is a book titled, How to Be Idle. I think that it is supposed to be a joke, and honestly I have never read it. A Peace Corps friend of mine has it though and she told me that one of the suggestions is to take tea for an hour.

The other day I was supposed to show up for an end of term staff party at noon. I showed up at 1pm. The reason: As I was leaving my house someone invited me for tea and I took tea for an hour.

How should I interpret this? The thing is, I showed up to the staff party an hour late and I was the fourth person (out of ten) to arrive. If taking tea for an hour is a way to be idle, what about taking tea for two hours?

As I was walking to the party I kept laughing at myself. These days I have all but given up trying to adopt Kenyan culture, but it looks like I have been here long enough that I am unconsciously doing it.

Weekend in Chuka

I have come to realize that left to myself, reading tends to be more enjoyable than cooking or cleaning.  I still love cooking, and I can actually enjoy cleaning, but it turns out that what I love most about these two things is doing them for other people.  It turns out that I am more likely to visit a friend and cheerfully clean their stove than to clean my own, and I am certainly more likely to appreciate cooking a complex meal when I am sharing it with another person.

Being busy during the school term, I have only really visited Matt, and usually have only gone away from my site for one night at a time.  During the same time period, I have found my house getting dirtier and my meals getting simpler.  This has been common for me towards the end of the school term.  Teaching has now finished though, and I hopped on the bus with Matt to visit a Peace Corps volunteer in Chuka.

Chuka is a beautiful 3 hour bus ride from Maua.  It is literally on Mt. Kenya, although much below tree line.  The area where she lives is as pleasant as she is and features cool rivers twisting and turning through deep canyons that are leading them off of the mountain. Although the rivers are big by Kenyan standards they are mere streams by American standards.

While we were there we ventured downhill to the river, which included a 100m+ elevation change.  I felt so energetic, that I jumped and ran down the steep grade.  The weather was so beautiful, the place peaceful, and the company warm.  Maybe I should mention that I just reread Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, which has kindled a little of the zen lunatics playful outlook inside of me.  It felt great getting out to a place where no one was watching me so that I could shed my fear of conforming to Kenyan norms and let these feelings flow from me without inhibition.

When we got to the bottom we found a beautiful, clean, and quiet river.  AND, there were not any other people there! which is amazing, considering that at every other river I have been to in Kenya I have had the company mothers washing clothes.  This river, as you can see in the picture, is far below the rim of the valley, which is where the road and houses are.  Inside of the valley there were only crops, and being on a  Sunday all of the farmers were in church.

Matt and I waded through the river and hiked cross country to a waterfall that I had seen as we were descending.  Then we came back to the river, and finding that there was still no one around we decided to swim!  It was more like wading, as the river was only a few feet deep, but we took off our shirts, and were free! 

I meditated on a rock, letting the sun dry my back, and I remembered how it feels to have absolutely no worry in the world – it felt GREAT!

I need to remember that there are appropriate ways to be free even when I am around acquaintances or people that I do not know.  Heck, I already stand out quite a bit, a little laughter and jumping around cannot make the one mzungu stand out too much more.

I returned to school on that high note, tired, sun burnt, and ready to be with my students; but also ready for the term to end so that I can meditate more and figure out how to keep the energy and the zest with me.

Science Congress

For all of this term I have been working with a few groups of students on science congress projects.  Science congress is the Kenyan version of the science fair.  There are several categories that students can register projects in, including physics, chemistry, agriculture, and home science.  Within each of these categories they can prepare an exhibit or a talk. 

Originally I was supervising exhibits for biogas production, solar water heating, solar water distillation, refrigeration using clay pots, and energy saving jikos (making wood fires that burn less wood).  All of these projects were progressing, but in the final days three of the projects dropped and we went to the science congress with the solar water heater and the solar water distiller.  Additionally, another teacher advised a mathematical exhibit on construction of a mathematical tool – something like a protractor, ruler, and compass all rolled into one.

At the science congress they asked me to be one of the judges for the physics exhibits.  It was great getting a front row seat to all of the presentations in this category.  Among the 17 projects in this category was an automatic urinal flusher, a wheel with a light for measuring distance, FOUR different solar water heaters, a homemade bicycle pump, and a homemade record player.  The record player was the most exciting until the students revealed that the motor they used did not turn at the correct speed to produce music. 

From our three projects, the mathematical tool placed third (one spot away from advancing to provincials), the solar water distiller placed fourth, and the solar water heater tied for ninth.  I am immensely proud of the students.  They all learned a lot and having our last project rank ninth out of 17 in its category was very respectable.  Last year the school did not even go to the science congress but after their experience this year all of the students said that they were going to work even harder on their projects and go back next year.

It is difficult to hold a competition and have every party walk away happy.  This year was no different, with claims from my students that they should have placed second and advanced to provincials, or that the judges were generally not fair – luckily they were not talking about me because I did not judge any of their projects. 

As a judge and a teacher I believe that the two physics exhibits that are advancing to provincials deserve to go.  Unfortunately though, I also saw first hand how carelessly the judges assigned points to our solar water heater.  Basically, on the score sheets the other judges did not fill in marks for seven or eight of the points out of the total 50 points.  It is not that they marked a zero, they just did not mark anything.  Upon reviewing the sheet, the points that they did not assign were for simple aspects of the project such as having a visual aid and stating the mode of presentation, both of which my students did.  If these marks were included in the total, our solar water heater would have placed fourth or fifth.

I do not know what the judges motivation was.  It was odd that the other score sheets produced by the same judges had the majority of the marks filled. 

Regardless of whether the group should have received fifth or if they deserved the ninth place position that they got, everyone from our school is very proud of them.

 

Below is a picture of Joshua and James waiting to give their presentation on their solar water heater.

Tea Zone

This Sunday I went up to visit the home of Mr. Gitonga, the mathematics teacher at school.  It is located in the tea growing zone, which is separated from the miraa growing zone – where Athiru is located.  The separation is mostly along contour lines as the tea requires a cooler climate. 

As we climbed up the hill behind his house on foot, I noticed how quiet and peaceful the area is.  There was still an occasional drunk, but even in the market place there were fewer young men loitering around than in the Athiru market.  As we climbed and began to see the patchwork of tea farms I started to realize that one difference is the population density.  The tea farms tend to be 1 to 3 acres, compared to the miraa farms, which tend to be 0.2 to 0.4 acres. 

With miraa, someone can survive on 0.4 acres, not well, but they can be able to afford simple food and illicit home-brewed alcohol.

Aside from the population though, the general behavior is different.  Later I was talking to another teacher who told me that around Athiru the primary school children work from 4-6am every day before school on miraa farms.  In that two hours they are able to earn around 100 Kenya shillings, which is the same amount that someone earns picking tea for an entire day.  This relative easy access to money in the miraa zones leads to a significantly higher dropout rate.  In fact, out of 200 students that start class 1, it is common for only 10 to finish class 8.

As we climbed higher, Mr. Gitonga told me about how the British had taken the land by force during colonization, but had required that Kenyans buy it back from them upon independence.  The Kenyans that purchased the land were the ones who had a little money, were business oriented, and had shares in the factories that processed the tea from white settlers’ farms.  The Kenyans that did not have the money to buy land or to pay the taxes that went along with selling tea settled in the lower areas such as Athiru.

As we reached the top of the hill, Mr. Gitonga pointed out the experimental fish ponds dotted into the corners of the tea farms.  Apparently a foreign government is giving Kenyans money to build fish ponds.  They have a sum of money allocated to each farmer, with included instructions and and materials list.  The farmers receive money to pay laborers, buy cement, and then get little fish to start the venture.  From the top of the hill, it is apparent that none of the ponds are lined with cement.  The imagination is the limit on where this money has gone.  From past experiences and from talking to more informed people the situation probably looks like this: the foreign body gives 100 thousand Kenyan shillings for the project.  This is a lot of money if you usually make 2 thousand KSh per month from tea.  An arrangement is worked out with the Kenyan authority on the ground.  20 000 is spent on labor to dig the hole and lay piping for water.  The rest of the money vanishes.

This is not particular to any particular region.  These stories are prolific.  My favorite is called the “Goldenberg Scandal.”  During Moi’s regime, they wanted to provide an incentive for individuals to export goods.  There was a man who allegedly imported gold from another country, and then exported it from Kenya, claiming the right to receive the government subsidy.  Eventually someone talked, and it came out that the gold never existed in the first place.  This man simply paid off the customs authorities to fill out claim form after claim form.  In total, he is estimated to have made billions of shillings off of the Kenyan government in this way.  No one ever kept track of the documents, and it is unknown exactly how much he made.  At the very least, he made enough to build the Grand-Regis hotel, which was estimated to be worth 7 billion shillings.

The real punch-line of the story is that the man responsible suddenly became a born-again Christian and is now a nationally renowned preacher with his own spot on national TV.

These thoughts accompanied me throughout the day, but regardless of the pessimism they created I was very joyous to be in the company of such a good teacher and good friend.