Adventures in Kisumu

So I love Kisumu. It's a great little city/big town and where I am going to be spending about a month. It actually reminds me a lot of Poughkeepsie - same general size and the same atmosphere as well. I had a really good meeting with the organization I want to work with too - Kick Trading. They are a Fair Trade company who work with a lot of artisans in the area making things from recycled materials. I will leave my description of their projects, history, etc for a later entry when I actually have worked with them a little bit and know what I'm talking about. But I do want to share the story of my first days working with Kick.

I showed up on Monday morning about 11am, completely unannounced. This actually, is not rare in Kenya. It's not considered rude to just show up at an office and ask for a meeting. And it's actually a little more efficient this way. If you schedule a meeting, the other person might not show up, might be late or might forget about it. But this way, you are in the office and they kind of have no choice but to deal with you. Anyway, like I was saying, I show up and meet with the 3 main office staff members and tell them about why I am here and what I want to do. And they were so awesome, and totally open to having me work with them. But the asked me if I could come back at about 3, because they were busy setting up for a meeting. They told me that there was a group if buyers from Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) coming at 3, and if I wanted, I could sit in on the meeting. For those of you that don't know, TTV is a big Fair Trade store with stores all over the US and Canada. They're a big name in FT, so needless to say, I was a little excited about the meeting. So I headed out of the office and over to the Kiwanis compound for a few hours...

Perhaps I should talk about why and how I ended up at the Kiwanis Compund. Leah, the S.I.T. coordinator for western Kenya, is a member and has some official position in the local Kiwanis club (she might even be the president). The compund is around the corner from Kick, and while she was taking me to the Kick office, we stopped by to say hi and so that I could meet the people at the compound. They were all very nice. She told me about a feeding program they do for about 50 school kids who can't afford lunch, and said that I should come over to help out after my meeting with Kick. I agreed, and actually looked forward to it. So, when I had about 4 hours to kill before my meeting, I went there. It is an amazing place. They have a small resturaunt, the feeding program, as well as a reduced price lunch for about 50 other kids, a small micro-credit program for women, weekend activities (extra classes, music lessons, etc), and are looking to start a nursery school in the next year or 2. As if all that wasn't amazing enugh, they are also working on a project to make re-useable sanitary napkins for girls. There are a lot of problems here with girls missing school for a week during their periods becuase they can't afford pads or tampons, you can imagine how much this puts the girls back. So they are working on prototypes now, and are looking to have them ready and to sell for about 30 shillings (about $0.50). They are also looking to get the idea to an organization who can mass produce them for cheap, because as my tour guide, Rachel, said, they don't want to keep this a secret - they want as many girls as possible to be able to use them. I was really impressed by the whole compound and its definitely somewhere that I am planning on spending a decent amount of time at during ISP. There are 2 foriegn volunteers there - one American and one Canadian, and they and the rest of the staff was so welcoming and nice. Working there will be a great break from the stress of ISP.

So after helping out there for a few hours, I went back to Kick to find that the buyers were stck in Kisii (About 2 hours away), and wouldn't actually be in the office until 8:30 the next morning. I asked if I could come back then, and they were very happy that I was able to come back. I got up very early the next morning, to give myself some time to get lost. But, incredibly, I made it there without a hitch. I got there about 8, and helped them set up chai and cookies for the group, and got to know the staff a little better. The group showed up at 8:30, and at that point had a short breifing about Kick and a Q&A session. It was great for me because a lot of my questions were answered as well. Then we took a tour of the area where most of the artisans do their carving - and it was really interesting. The buyers were all really interested in taking pictures and talking with the artisans, and I couldn't help but think about how voyeristic the whole thing was. I think that that's going to be an issue that I have a lot of problems with during ISP - am I just here to study these people or is what I'm doing actually going to benifit someone? Anyway, all the people were really nice and really interested in what I was doing. One woman even wants me to email her my paper at the end! They were touring Kenya and Uganda on a learning tour - to visit the places where their products come from. One of the women I was talking to said that after these tours, the sales of products from that area of the world always increase, sometimes enough to pay for the trip itself. I learned a lot from the meeting, and was really happy that both parties allowed me to be there - it was a really encouraging first day. After the TTV people drove away, I worked out some of the details with the Kick staff, and as I was leaving, Issac (the manager), told me that when I came back he'd have some work for me to do - this made me even more excited. I don't want this to be just a one way exchange - I want them to be able to get as much from me as I am going to get from them, and his comment showed that he agreed with that, despite us never having talked about it. So between Kick and Kiwanis, it looks like I am going to be very busy during ISP! Just the way I wanted it!

I realize that I got so excited about talking about my meeting and ISP, that I left out another very crucial part of the weekend that I want to share before wrapping up. We got there on a saturday afternoon, and since offices were closed the next day, we did a little site seeing. We went to the Kakamega rainforest about 1.5 hours north of Kisumu. We had some troubles getting in - the security guard was a major bitch and wouldn't give us the student price since we didn't have a letter from our institution to verfiy we were students. So instead of paying the $3 student price, we had to pay the $20 tourist price. We were not happy about this to say the least. But we all payed and agreed to let it go and enjoy the forest. We walked around for about 3 or 4 hours, first to a little water fall, and then up a huge hill to the top of a viewing point - it was amazing. Just green for miles and miles. It was a really tough climb (we didn't actually know there was a real path until after coming down, so we just hiked up the side of the mountain...harder, but much cooler), and we were all dripping by the end, but it was so worth it. And since what they say about a picture being worth 1,000 words is true, here you go:



With that, I'll close out my Kisumu adventure, at least for now. I am heading back there in about 3 weeks, so there will be a lot more detail to come about Kisumu, Kick, my ISP and I'm sure lots of other things as well. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for all the comments - I love reading them!