Kosimbo Women's Clinic

In June and July a team from Global Footsteps visited a volunteer run health clinic in a rural part of the Kisumu region of Western Kenya. The clinic was set up by a widow, Margaret Kawala, who wanted to make access to basic medical care easier for widows and orphans in her remote home village. Kosimbo volunteers managed to build a very basic medical centre, dig a borehole to gain access to fresh water, while also contributing to the building and running of the local school. When our team visited the project seemed to be operating well. But the need for more work and resources was clear. The health clinic needs to be open more often, the school needs books, pencils, uniforms, teachers and computers and more boreholes are needed so that people don't have to walk miles to fetch the dirty water of Lake Victoria.

Since July conditions have become more difficult for Kosimbo and life has become harder for the people of the village as a result. Crucial funds from the Kisumu Rural Community Development Fund have been diverted to other projects. Because of this and some other more troubling, deeper, cultural reasons Mrs Kawala has found it increasingly difficult to keep the project alive. She recently sent me the following email:

morgan,

how are you. i have not been myself for the last four months and was almost giving up on kosimbo widows group.
it has taken me a while to realise that this project was started with a purpose of helping the widows and our orphans.
It also took me time to realise that very few people appreciate a person interested in development and especially if the person is a woman and a widow . But this has given me the courage to be a stronger person and work hard for kosimbo to be able to improve the lives of the widows, ophans and needy in our community.
since i have not communicated for sometime, im not sure of the plans you have for kosimbo. i will give you an update after your reply.

thank you

margaret

On December 12th Global Footsteps is screening a documentary made during the June/July Global Venture. The Kosimbo project is featured and we will be giving a fuller update on the latest developments. You can get a sneak preview on youtube

Kosimbo is crying out for help and support, but more than anything it needs recognition. Kosimbo is in many ways a pioneering project and of huge value not only to those directly benefiting from its services, but also as an example for other villages to follow. Please send messages of support to Margeret and her team via: kosimbo@yahoo.com

Global Footsteps is an inter-cultural linking and sustainability charity. We very much encourage anyone who would like to travel to Kisumu to volunteer with the Kosimbo project. Whatever your skill set there will be huge amounts of things you can contribute.

Please email us on globalfootstep@googlemail.com for more details. Projects like Kosimbo need support from partners in the richer parts of the world, please offer what you can even if it is only kind words.

Email from Karianduri School

While on our Global Venture to Kenya we visited Karianduri School in the Rift Valley. It was a special place to be and is one of the enduring memories of the venture. I have just received a very nice email from Karianduri headteacher, Anam Echakari, which I thought I'd share with you:

Dear Morgan,

Thanks a lot for finding time to be with us. It was such a great pleasure and privilege to have you in our school. And for the brief moment you interacted with us you lit our hearts with hope and confidence.

When we look at the world around, our hearts writhe and groan in pain. The devastating effects of global warming and the impacts of climate change have wrecked and altered the course of lives for scores.

Food security, water security, vanishing habitats, rapid spread of diseases, escalating carbon emissions and shrinking water levels is an is an eminent sign that our planet is under siege.

From a tiny remote village remote in Africa to the modern and sophisticated city in Europe, we are all under threat of extinction ! And unless, there is a concerted effort by all and Sundry to reverse this phenomena, we and those who will come after, may not have a place to inhabit.

Thanks a lot for what global footsteps is tenaciously doing to alleviate these global challenges by sharing knowledge and information and offering practical solutions to some of these endemic problems, I am confident that communities will essentially be transformed the ruined live & livelihoods be restored. This may involve huge sums of money, but what will finally be achieved is priceless.

We are joining your caravan as we go round the world campaining by playing an active in tree planting initiatives, carrying out environmental education communities respond with tenacity.

We have already started a tree nursery that we expect to generate 10,000 seedlings annually. We are also in the process of recycling waste paper as a mitigation measure against waste.

Thanks a lot for your kind donation of Kshs. 2,000. This will go towards purchasing tree seedlings . This of course will be a footstep that you will be able to trace even after a very long time.

I wish you all the best in your endeavours!

Thanks a lot.

Anam Echakari

Donating £20 to a school to help them plant some trees does feel a little bit like, as Sean Locke puts it, turning up to an earthquake with a dustpan and brush, but it all helps and if we all give it a bit it adds up! If you want to get some money to Aman's school please contact globalfootstep@googlemail.com and we will ensure it gets there.

Monday in Kisumu

We spent the whole of Monday in Kisumu meeting various people, below is a report

Monday 6th July

The first appointment on Monday was a meeting with the Mayor of Kisumu at the town hall. Howard had collected letters from the Mayor of Cheltenham, Lord Surgener and Lord Nigel Jones and we passed them to the Mayor. He very graciously received them and presented us with a Kisumu plaque for us to pass onto his counterpart in Cheltenham. He was encouraged by the letters we had delivered and told us how happy he was to see people connecting at a grass roots level. He did, however, tell us that he was disappointed that Cheltenham seems to have fallen behind its other linked cities in Germany, Sweden and the USA. He hoped that the links between Kisumu and Cheltenham will be revitalised at a Civic level in the future and will write to the Mayor of Cheltenham to express this optimism.

After our meeting with the Mayor we headed in an old seven- seater Peugot matatu to Kisumu airport. We had an appointment with the Meteorological department. We were hoping to get some insider opinion on the impacts that climate change is having in this region. We spoke with the Deputy Provincial Director for Meteorology – Berike Arera. He was very cagey not allowing us to record the conversation, he explained that he was only willing (or allowed) to discuss the data collected in Kisumu. He could not talk about climate change or long term trends and even though we pushed him quite hard he would not speculate on what the weather might do in the next few years. They are not involved in prediction.

He did explain to us however the traditional pattern in the weather here. Kisumu is almost on the equator, but this does not mean the weather is the same all year round. The weather here is affected by weather patterns in other parts of the world as these effect the winds converging or not at the equator, winds that bring in moisture from the Indian Ocean. Kisumu usually has a Long Rains season during April, May and June during which it can expect to receive around 50-70mm / day of rainfall. It then has a Short rains season in October and November. The temperature drops a little during these periods, at all other times it is hot and dry. Arera told us that in recent years there has a dramatic reduction in rainfall during both of the rainy seasons, he said that last year was below average and this year was lower again. This is a big concern as this is not a part of the world that copes well with drought conditions. When there is little rainfall crops fail and people get hungry, it is as simple as that. All around Kisumu we have seen evidence of this, there are fields full of failed Maize crops and the news is full of stories about predicted shortfalls in other crops.

Our day on Monday ended with a dramatic thunderstorm which lasted for around 2 hours bringing much needed rain. The wise residents here collect rainfall from their roofs when it falls. They use this ‘grey’ water to flush toilets and water any plants they may have in their compounds. Aby’s host, Michael, uses this water for his paper making business. This was the first serious rainfall we have experienced since we have been in Kenya, it was certainly very refreshing.

CADIF Kenya

This update is only two days old, so not bad by our standards! CADIF is a fantastic project and I hope we will be able to form strong links with them. Please read on:

Wednesday 1st July

Before heading to Kenya I connected with CADIF Kenya a community capacity building project based here in Kisumu. We spent today with them and although the situation within which they operate is desperately difficult, what CADIF (Community Aid Development Fund International) are doing is truly inspirational. I’ve been sat here for 1 hour trying to write about what we saw, learned and heard today. It is incredibly difficult to do it justice. Instead I will hold back until I have worked through the audio and video footage, written materials and photos we gathered today. We will make a short film about it and strengthen our links online and hopefully in person. For those of you aware of the project we are involved in in Bangladesh (Curry With Love/ HRA Foundation) I can tell you that we now have a link with a similar project here. CADIF are helping to rebuild a community on the margins of Kisumu and people who are truly on the margins of life. The community they work with is a slum on the very edge of Lake Victoria, in fact when floods come it is in the lake. Nylenda They are not doing it solely by raising money to provide short term aid; they are working WITH the community to create long lasting change by training people. They close the gap between education and the knowledge and practical skills needed to run businesses and this helps people to work their way out of one of the worst slums, Nylenda, in Africa. They train people in urban agriculture and agri-business. We were shown a training centre they had built with mud, straw and timber in which they train people how to recycle rice straw to grow mushrooms. They spread awareness of safe sex to help bring down the prevalence of HIV in Nylenda (24% of people there have HIV, much of it as a result of prostitution). They go far beyond simply promoting abstinence and the use of condoms, one of their volunteers, John, is trained in psychotherapy, he helps women who have contracted the HIV virus to deal with it psychologically. At their centre a few hundred metres from Nylenda they provide ICT training and simple business planning advice to encourage young people to be entrepreneurs while crucially helping them to gain the practical skills and knowledge needed to start and run their own business.

The last two hours of our time with CADIF were spent at The Oasis of Hope Secondary School. The Oasis was set up by a friend of Steven Otieno (Founder of CADIF) who wanted to help orphaned children to get an education, CADIF was instrumental in making it happen. The school is situated on a flood plain right next to the main sewerage pipe serving Kisumu. When the rains eventually come the school is under 2 or 3 metres of dirty water, the land there was very cheap to buy. The Oasis has 250 pupils some of whom walk 15km a day to attend. Because there is so much to learn pupils are expected to arrive at 7am and do not return home until 5.30pm. The school has no electricity, no running water and no sewerage system. Classes of over 50 pupils are housed in corrugated iron buildings with no glass windows, a mud floor and a teacher armed with only a piece of chalk and a blackboard. For the children who can afford it lunch is cooked on site and cost 10 Kenyan Shillings. 10 Kenyan shillings is equal to about 9 British pence. Many of the children cannot afford this, they therefore go the whole day without eating hoping that whoever they go home to (remember they have no parents) will have something for them to eat in the evening. Steven told me that many do not even have breakfast. The situation becomes even worse when Kisumu suffers a dry period. When it is dry the supply of food drops meaning the price of it rises, this is when hunger becomes a huge problem. Kenya as a whole is suffering longer and more intense dry periods as a result of global changes to the climate.

I’ve now been sat here for one and a half hours and I need to get some sleep. There is so much more to tell about CADIF and I promise to expand on this as our link grows. Lastly I want to make the point that CADIF has only been running for 3 years, it has achieved an incredible amount on funds that have been raised by its volunteer staff through their own hard work. It has struggled to raise money from government and large corporate sources due to its small scale, we plan to help it to raise money and hopefully to raise money for it. I left 1000 Kenyan Shillings (about £8) of my own money with the director of the school, it will buy 100 lunches, it is not enough and I wish I could give more. The more money CADIF can raise the better it will do, we are aiming to provide opportunities for volunteers from across our network to volunteer their skills to CADIF to help it grow. Global Footsteps can make this happen and volunteers will be able to donate not only their time and skills, but hopefully also some money.

Environmental Education, Elsamere style!

Our last full day at Elsamere. Today St. Clare’s Secondary Girls School visited Elsamere. 55 girls in total arrived in two shifts (their 2 minibus did shuttle runs). It was great to watch Cliff Barkatch, our host, in action. Following on from a screening of ‘Born Free’ Cliff told the story of Joy Adamson, she was an inspirational woman. After that it was up to me to give a lecture on ‘Environmental Education’. I’d spent the previous evening frantically hashing together something relevant to say. In the end I talked about the need for us to explore the drivers of our behaviours, explaining how in the UK, our consumer obsessed society is driving climate change because of the over emphasis we place on the sign value of commodities. Climate change is observably having an effect here, now. We are on the shore of Lake Naivasha and there is clear evidence that the water level is falling. This is due to the extraction of water for agriculture, particularly to feed the 40 or so flower farms that flank the lake. While it is true that the flower farms are removing water too quickly in a classic case of ‘the tragedy of the commons’, the lake is also not replenishing itself because the rain is not coming. It is very possible that the droughts suffered in this region over the last two years are the result of climate change. This climate change is the result of the activities of Western cultures.

After a break for lunch and a boat trip, the girls gathered again in the main hall to be taught by Cliff about Natural resources. There is clearly awareness among the pupils of St Clare’s about environmental issues. They have developed a campaign of giving out green ribbons (similar to the ones used to raise awareness of aids and breast cancer) to encourage people to think about conservation and adaption to the changing climate. There is a large emphasis here on tree planting, to commemorate the visit of St Clare’s Cliff instructed a few of the girls to plant a tree in the grounds of Elsamere.

During the evening I headed out on a short bike ride, a mile or so down to the gates of Oserian (one of the biggest flower farms) and back. On reaching the gates of Elsamere I met Howard and walked with him up to the nearby township, in search of beer. Townships such as this have sprung up, completely unplanned, all around Lake Naivasha. Everyone was very friendly, the children, parrott fashion, all asked ‘how are you?’ as we walked passed them, not all of them were smiling and you can see why. The paths were rutted, sewerage spilled out onto the street, there is no running water and will probably never be any electricity. As soon as we left the main road we were met by Salom who enquired what we were after. ‘Beer’. He led us up through the very tight knit community until we eventually reached a small bar. We bought 6 bottles of Tuska and thanked him for his help before he led us safely back down to the road. When he’d met us he’d left his bike leant up against a shop front, advising me to bring mine with me. On returning he pointed at his bike saying ‘nobody will take it, I am a big man round here!’

Flower Farms

Below Alice Matthews writes about a varied Friday on the shores of Lake Naivasha

Friday 26th June

Surrounding Lake Naivasha, and Elsamere, are flower farms and this morning we had the opportunity to visit one. As the lake is decreasing, from lack of rain, but is still needed by the local people for their crops, we were interested in how the flower farms were using the water effectively. It seems slightly unfair that the farmers have thriving crops of flowers when the locals do not have enough water to grow crops, or feed themselves.

The farm that we visited was a ‘breading’ farm, which means that it creates new types of rose and then gets royalties from people who plant crops of them. They change the colours and strength of scent of the roses by mixing existing types together. Each new batch of flowers is given a number, which the farm keeps, and a name, which can be used freely. We were told that they have a watering system that only gives the flowers a tiny amount of water, enough to survive on. Any extra water is collected back up, topped up with fertiliser, and fed back to the plants. It is an efficient but expensive system that was in use, and although other farms, and Lake Nivasha, would benefit from it, most cannot afford to install it all in one go. Unfortunately we were not shown where the waste water is put, outside some of the other flower farms are ditches of dirty water.

The working conditions in the farm seemed good, although we were only allowed to visit one of the many plant houses, and although it was hot the workers seemed relaxed and the place was very clean. It is likely that not all of the plant houses are as pleasant. Unfortunately the wealth from the flower market does not seem to be making its way to the locals, only the owners (there were two expensive cars in the drive). The closest village to the farm was made of corrugated iron ‘shacks’ and was highly underdeveloped. Apart from the farms creating jobs for local people, they appear to have little interest in the area, or the protecting of its resources.

On leaving the flower farm, Cliff was keen for us to see a local snake farm. The place was not quite as we had expected and consisted of a few huts on the side of the road, but at 100 shillings each we couldn’t complain! The owners had caught many species of snake from around Nivasha and Aby and I were allowed to hold a small one. They also got out a Python and were keen for us to touch it. The Kenyans seemed to be more scared than the English! On the drive back to Elsamere we saw many giraffes on the side on the road, some of them were incredibly close. There were also warthogs and zebra. We noticed that some farmers have started to dig irrigation ditches from the lake, which is disliked by the locals, and Morgan and Howard interview Cliff about the effects.

Karianduri Primary School

This afternoon we visited Karianduri Primary School that is situated on a slope overlooking Lake Elementatia in the Rift Valley. On the drive there we saw one of several hundred refugee camps set up by the Red Cross to house families forced from their homes during the post-election violence in December 2007. Anam Echakari, head teacher at Karianduri later told us that up to 30,000 people are still stuck in these camps, surviving off rations from the Red Cross. There are regular outbreaks of diseases such as Cholerea and conditions such a Pneumonia during rainy periods. Fortunately for the inhabitants of these camps the ‘long rains’ which usually fall in Kenya between Marc h and June have failed to arrive in the intensity that is usually expected. This, however, is unfortunate for the region as a whole as was exemplified by what we learned and saw at Karianduri.

Karianduri is a rural primary school, children walk up to 7km to attend, in total there are around 500 people in the school, crammed into classes which vary in size between 30 and 70 pupils, many sitting tightly together at small desks. Karianduri, is fortunate to be led by a forward thinking Head teacher. Anam Echakari is a tall young man in his thirties, he dresses very smartly and carries a great deal authority in his school and in a positive and caring way. Following training at Elsamere and his own awareness of the acute environmental problems of drought, desertification and deforestation that effect this region, Anam has made it his mission to promote environmental conservation, not only in the school but in the entire community. The failings of the long rains are of great concern here; dust is continuously thrown up from the land by vehicles, animals, humans and small gusts of wind. Anam told me how difficult it is for people to grow crops here and graze animals, hampered not only by the lack of water, but also by the more serious impacts of soil loss.

The environmental education delivered by Anam is very much in the category of mitigation. The children here need to learn how to cope with the impacts of climate change, it is directly effecting them today and will only worsen as the impacts of global warming continue to reek havoc on fragile impacts such as those found here in the rift valley.

Aman has begun a project of tree planting on the land belonging to the school, he plans to grow a ‘forest’ of around 20 yellow barked acacia trees for each class in the school. The Yellow barked Acacia is native to the region and will help bind the soil together on the slopes surrounding the school and slow down rainwater run-off. Aman continuously reinforces the need to do this amongst his pupils encouraging them to grow trees on the lands surrounding their home. Listening to the pupils, it seems that the message is sinking in. Cliff, our host at Elsamere, promises to bring the pupils from this school to Elsamere to further their environmental awareness, it can only be a good thing!

In the UK the impacts of climate change seem a long way off, either into the future or in some far off land. Standing in this school, seeing the efforts being made to preserve life here by a committed and passionate teaching staff, brings both emotions of hope and despair. As I walked away I was fighting back the tears as the realisation that the future of this dramatic and beautiful place is not really in the hands of those who inhabit it. Climate Change will force them away from here, taking with them the wildlife, the lakes, the traditions, the languages and eventually the memories. They will do their best to cope and survive here for as long as possible, as will the rest of Kenya, but the sadness, for me lay in the knowledge that their fate has been pre determined by centuries of Western industrialisation.