saturday, 25/10/2014

Kisimani.
Since I arrived in Kenya, I’ve been hearing this name whispered with a certain degree of respect and awe. A remote settlement on the savannah reachable only after a long drive through an unfriendly dry landscape. The stony track visited more often by hyenas then by humans has welcomed our indestructible pickup with a thousand bumps. The journey felt like a storm on the sea unless there was no wind at all and the sun couldn’t help greeting us with its long arms.

So we drove through completely barren terrain which might be as well called a no-man’s land. And all of the sudden, in the heart of this desolateness, we passed by few shacks roofed with straw, then we got hit by a loud sound wave of excitement produced by a group of children and this is how we entered a tiny village of Kisimani.

Despite being immediately encircled by the whole population of the village who wanted to greet us or to just have a look at a rare in this area phenomenon of a white person, what struck me there, was an immense sense of tranquility. Yet, the village was in a little chaos caused by our arrival, it beamed with calmness of a place left on the verge of the ever-noisy and speedy track of modern civilisation. There was no electricity and no running water whatsoever. Neither were there shops nor something which would remind the villagers that there was a highly consumer society outside the savannah. And what mesmerised me the most was the complete absence of litter.

All across Kenya there’s a plethora of waste. In fact, all developing countries I’ve visited face serious problems with litter. Cans, bottles, tires, plastic bags and a whole range of other strictly unwanted objects pile up in towns and villages across the third world.

In Kenya there are virtually no companies which would collect the rubbish. There are few and far between firms doing it in Nairobi although very narrow in scope as only affordable by the rich. The great majority of people are left alone with the unavoidable products of their consumerism.

So am I. As there is no way of throwing trash into a container which would be later emptied by a dustcart, one has to either dump it somewhere along the road or burn it. I was recommended to burn my rubbish and had real difficulty torching it owing to its low flammability. I was lucky enough to obtain help from a random passer-by. The young man must have perceived my incapability of firing the little pile of rubbish as a thorough retardation for the reason that he only used some 10 seconds to set the fire (whilst I vainly tried for at least 10 minutes). So it burnt:

So it burnt, firing in my head the necessity of reducing the number of rubbish produced by my tiny Kenyan household. It’s hard due to every product being wrapped in double layers of plastic as if it was a sign of prosperity and modernity. Sellers seem to be proud packing a single item into two or three plastic bags. Development is apparent through the incessant availability of products many of which strike with the logos of western multinationals. For people living in towns, it became impossible to avoid these products. Commodities are less and less usual on the town markets and it’s supermarket chains such as Tuskys or Nakumatt that welcome the freshly born Kenyan middle-class to do their daily shopping. At the same time nobody welcomes tones of rubbish created through the lifestyles of the consumer part of society.

I could put forward a hypothesis that perception of rubbish is different where it is relatively easy to dispose it then in places where one has to struggle to get rid of it. In Europe, human relationship with rubbish is not very intense - we use a product and we throw the packaging away to a dustbin. It does not require much effort. And most of all, what has been used, vanishes from the European eyes quickly and forever. In Africa one gets challenged by the waste. Just as I was. What I have produced, I have to deal with. And whichever way to do it I choose, it carries a stinky load of responsibility. It is not remote abstract trash issues I read about like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or dumping first world’s toxic electronic waste in Nigeria, it is an away-from-keyboard issue, here & now, unbearably tangible, intolerably ubiquitous, my own personal rubbish to burn.

But what really counts as rubbish? When do products end and waste begin? Things that I would consider as trash are still used by many Kenyans until they are completely not utilizable.

Human relation with trash seems to depend on culture in which waste is a social construction. Being socially constructed, human-waste relation has a dynamic nature which assumes endless emergence of new meanings and practices. This creates hope that future generations, who have already solved the waste production problem, would only analyse archaeological evidence of waste created by you and me longing for knowledge about the forgotten civilisation that wasted itself in a trash deluge.

Meanwhile in the litter-free zone of Kisimani:

At the end, a little digression on waste and development: it seems that the economic growth in China can be well measured by the increment in pollution. Have a look: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/pollution-in-china-photographs#7

saturday, 18/10/2014

Last week I visited a family of four children and an almost blind grandmother. After children’s parents had died, it was their uncle who was legally ascribed the ownership of their land. As soon as he learnt that, he sold the land and disappeared with the money leaving the children dispossessed from their house.

We set off after late lunch (rice and beans as usually). By “we” I mean my two coworkers - Agata who was to assess the conditions in which the family was left and Kimathi who is the local coordinator of the project and the interpreter. This time I was on duty as a driver. The mission was exciting enough as I drove an ancient toyota along an untarred rutted track up and down through the hills. We parked at the football pitch by a primary school hidden between the miraa trees to find a teacher who would show us the way to the children. Once he jumped in the car, we literally hit the road with our low-suspension. After getting repeatedly stuck on bulging roots, hopelessly trying to make our way up a steep narrow gully, we seriously regretted not having a four wheel drive vehicle. Whether it was the Almighty or mere Coincidence, it kept watching and eventually blessed us with letting us successfully reach the distant shamba.

We threaded through the scrub of miraa trees to find ourselves entering a small piece of land surrounded by a fence made of barbed wire. There were some women working on the land plowing the ground. They greeted us not very exuberantly. Some ten steps away stood a little house which was our goal.

Thinking of a house I have quite a clear picture in my head which was greatly influenced by my nursery teachers as well as the buildings surrounding me while growing up in quite a big town in the very heart of Europe.

No wonder that in the beginning I found Kenyan houses somewhat bizarre. Most people I have visited live either in simple shacks made of branches, foliage and big linen bags or in mud huts covered with a tin roof. From time to time, one could observe wooden sheds with roof of sheet aluminium. Brick houses are rare but they happen here too. They look like from a fairytale - colorful, with a red roof and a blue chimney.

The house we approached was a little wooden bower. Although it used to be home for two adults and four children, it only consisted of one tiny room with two bed-like constructions covered with linen bags instead of mattrasses. Now the house was about to be demolished and the children were given only few days to find somewhere else to stay. The grandmother showed us the graves of the parents. They were both buried just in front of the building. The pile of soil resembled graves only thanks to two crosses made of planks. The situation of the children was rather dramatic. Besides considering how we could help them, we started reflecting upon the inhumane behaviour of both the children’s uncle and a certain rich lady who bought the land and ruthlessly decided on evicting the family.

The story of the sold land may be compared to what is going on with the land in Africa in general - the so called land acquisition or simply land grabbing. The phenomenon can be described as a venture for businessmen to acquire arable land in the southern hemisphere, lately very aggressive in sub-Saharan Africa. As the population of the Earth is growing, so is the demand for food. Food is predicted to become increasingly scarce and, given that, the prices will constantly increase. Thus, investment in land seems tremendously lucrative. This is why cash-rich governments, speculative funds, multinational corporations and pension funds joined a brutal race for buying or renting on long-term basis arable land in Africa. The agreements are usually signed in secret between either different governments or governments and private units. And it is millions of hectares that are handled over to investors for little or no money at all. The corruption and nepotism are often hidden behind the deals which allude something about bringing jobs, technology and overall development in the region in return for getting the land.

In the story of the visited family specific persons may symbolize different actors on the scene of land grabbing. The rich lady obviously plays the agents from the faraway wealthy country acquiring the land. The uncle is a government selling out the land for personal profits. The children and the grandmother are the people of an African land who were not informed about what was going to happen and who now have to bear the consequences of uncle’s (government’s) irresponsibility and greed. Sad enough, land grabbing is as true as the visit Agata, Kimathi and I payed to the family of four children and an almost blind grandmother.

Read more on land grabbing: Liberti, S. (2013). Land Grabbing. Journeys in the New Colonialism. Verso: London, New York.

PS. Previous week found me busy visiting schools and children at home, evidence of which will you find below.

The last photo pictures a tree which blooms only shortly before the rain. The locals call it "the tree of hope". Btw, the rainy season officially started yesterday with a sudden downpour at noon.

sunday, 12/10/2014

From development projects to the voluntourism

Recently I have met a woman working on a humanitarian project in South Sudan. She's constantly moving by a light aircraft between Juba and a small village north from the capital of the newest country in Africa. She's coordinating construction works of dwells and sanitary facilities for the people suffering from the effects of nearly constant war dating back to 1950s. It didn't take her long to express that the situation in South Sudan is thoroughly hopeless and that in her opinion as well as from the point of view of many other aid-workers the presence of international NGOs only worsens it. She seemed certain that the facilities and food aid provided by the UN and other organisations actually perpetuate the conflict. The food hardly ever gets to the ones in need. Rather, it feeds the troops or supports the pockets of the war lords. What is more, Sudanese people she met are not eager to cooperate with the NGOs at all. It is Kenyans, Ugandans and Ethiopians who come massively to serve as subcontractors of the projects since it is a relatively easy way to make money. The Sudanese are too occupied with the war. They are not willing to invest their energy in anything which does not guarantee an instant effect. The burden of temporality caused by the constant state of civil war has left a deep scar in the mentalities of the whole generations. Money counted in millions in western currencies invested in humanitarian aid may clear up the first world's conscience but definitely does not serve as a long-term solution for South Sudan.

The conversation by a cup of coffee in a nice hotel separated from the dust and trash piling up along the crowded road by a high and thick wall topped with a barbed wire is a good introduction to question the whole idea of "development projects". Much can be said about it as it is not too often that money invested in actions hidden under an umbrella term of "development projects" brings any kind of long-term positive change. Lets skip the discussion about the operational costs of running a project in Africa and focus on who comes to work here and what are the effects of this work.

I have observed four main types of aid-workers:

#1. The Idealist believes in a better world, world of equality and justice, where no-one starves or is mishandled. He or she has done a lot of social work for their local community, most likely supporting an NGO, before the time has come to leave for Africa, the most third of all known worlds. Africa seems to be a perfect habitat for the Idealist until she or he discovers that what they can do is just a drop in the ocean and not only has the Idealist to deal with the fundraising for the project back home (that's an easy task), the challenge is the customs at the place where he or she comes. Everybody wants the Idealist's help but no-one really wants to offer much cooperation or commitment in return. The learned helplessness has already spread here and the "white savior complex" seems to be impossible to overcome. It doesn't take long for the Idealist to turn into The Burnt-out.

#2. The Missionary also believes in making our world a better place but he or she does not give up easily. Having no other commitments and possessing a strong faith in salvation due to their work, they go on with the most impossible projects. Never loosing patience neither faith, they help anyone anytime spreading the learned helplessness among the locals and contributing greatly to the enormous population boom as well as the HIV pandemic and alcoholism. They often operate on big budgets and are supported by world-wide faith businesses. Another incentive for them is a slight chance of becoming a Church celebrity such as e.g. Mother Theresa. Their work, debatable from the distance, is salvation for many needy. Missionaries do the job of social security system which virtually does not exist in Kenya.

#3. The adventure-seeker is bored with his or her successful life in the country of origin. The parties are no longer fun and the town where he or she is studying does not have anything more exciting to offer. It's time for a gap year. Right in time before getting a degree and starting a proper career, a proper family (with a golden retriever!) and a proper middle-class life in general. The Africa will be something to tell the grandchildren about. Wouldn't it look nice in the CV? Together with a picture from the Maasai Mara and a couple of thousand of pictures of the local children. Why not go to Bali or Vietnam? Well, that's too in vogue which a true hipster shall not accept.

#4. The Businessman figured out pretty fast that development projects in Africa attract big money. It's not only me and you that have a picture of a starving black child in front of their eyes while thinking of Africa. And, ask yourself, who wouldn't like to help a poor African child? From single mothers, through school project groups ending at big international companies - there are thousands of people willing to donate for Africa. The only task is to sell a project in the most dramatic and authentic way. A couple of pictures of random ragged children from a slums would do in that matter. Then, you just come up with a nice name for the project and here you go! Success guaranteed! In case of any problems, remember that the justice system here is very responsive to material suggestions. And the Businessman as a born negotiator with undeniable charm should not have any problem in this regard.

Have a look here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pippa-biddle/little-white-girls-voluntourism_b_4834574.html

Who am I? Well, that's your task to figure it out!

PS. The Africa has welcomed me with a huge spider on the wall of my bedroom which reminded me that one cannot be self-confident and cynical in every situation. Incapable of killing the beast, I decided to make friends with the wild fauna of my flat. The spider's name is Tusk in honour of the former prime minister of Poland and the Kenyan beer Tusker.

PS2. I've almost forgotten I'm an aid-worker myself! Below three pics from the work-excursion to a newly built school in the bush.