Lessons from the coast

Kilifi: The haves and the have nothings.....

 

Last week I spent a couple days on the coast in a place called Kilifi. Kilifi is both a village and region - like a municipality encompassing an area of about 2,000 sq meters and a population of close to 1.5 million people with about 200,000 households. Many pastoral and fishers making up most economic activity but a bit of oil and titanium also help getting folks jobs.


I was here with Jake and Stevie (my kids) almost a year ago and we had the good fortune to swim in the beautiful Indian ocean, ride motorcycles on the beach, enjoy the night life, eat fresh fruit, devour fresh seafood grilled on shish kabobs with pineapple.... mmmmm - well you get the picture. Clearly from the picture above and beside  - it's not a shabby vacation area either. Coconut trees, warm breeze - all the stuff of an easy-peasy tropical living. So when Al Shabab is not terrorizing the region - folks come to spend their tourist dollars like  mad....but not right now.

So back to the coast now but rather than vacation, I came with a group of volunteers to help out around one of the schools for the weekend. This is a non - MSF related activity and the idea was to have a look at the school life of an Kilifian  grade 8er and see what that life would be well off the beaten track. Well there was a little beach time and fresh fish... but hey life needs balance - yes? Indeed!




 
 Somewhat tragically it was an 18 hours bus ride to the coast from Nairobi. It's really a 10 hour trip but with this and that... flotsam and jetsam, fits and starts it took a bit longer than expected. In a moment of utter and complete boredom some 12 hours in - my friend and seat mate Ksenia felt that trying lipstick on me might be a good idea. Doing a sexy runway pouty face is clearly within my wheelhouse though twerking and high heels are definitely off limits!

And a note on my Russian friend Ksenia. She is working for a major corporation in the HR department on a leadership development program that will no doubt serve her well. It will also - I'm sure,  serve the organization well. By moving staff around and exposing them to unique work environments you build the kind of capacity necessary for a successful global organization. And about Ksenia generally - she is a ball of fun in Russian package. Like those dolls one within another  - as I get to know her  - each new thing is refreshing and joyful. She is not only fun, smart and thoughtful but I can't think of many people I'd rather sit next to for 18 hours. This girl can talk al lot and about anything!!!!

My last blog focused on the living conditions in the slum at Majengo in Nairobi. I listed a number of "don't have's"  not really thinking about the impact it might have on my readers. I did receive a couple notes of appreciation for describing the realities of this kind  of life. It surprised me a bit as I realized that as an 18 month resident of Kenya - these scenes are all too common and no longer shocking to me. So my attempt today is not necessarily to "up the ante" but to continue to record my impressions...... and this school situation is a doozy! Even for a environment hardened 18 month veteran like myself !

We camped in the school compound and got to know the surroundings on the day after we arrived. The deal was to plant some trees - do some mentoring with the kids  - and donate a bunch of food to the village. A couple notes on Kilifi ...

• under 5 mortality is 100/1000
• school attendance 13%
• HIV 12% of the population
• Those on ARV's (anti retro viral) of the 225,000 infected - 11,000. so 10% under treatment.

The school itself looks pretty good. It's a dirt courtyard - clean -  with a block of cement buildings scattered about. The buildings looks to be financed by Rotary club...nice to see.

A couple "have nots" though; no running water - sewer (outhouses with squat toilets only)  -  no electricity (a little solar light) very few books - no real school supplies - 1 teacher in the room below for 93 students - 3 to a desk though built for 2 - and breakfast ... a boiled egg and piece of sweet bread. i suspect that held them to dinner of rice and beans.

So what about the kids? Unbelievably respectful and attentive. I sat in on the mentoring session and really enjoyed the experience. The kids on many occasions rose and spoke to different questions.. in a confident and very well organized manner. I was blown away by their confidence and presentation of their ideas.

So here's where I got a little unglued - if you look at the mural carefully you'll see a couple of common sense "do nots" ..... but the one that really concerned me was - avoid hidden places. This sign here - and elsewhere on the school grounds is to warn the kids from sexual predators on the site. Parents, teachers, older students?????? .... who are these predators? I have learned that the levels of rape and related sexual violence is off the charts here. So common as to not be even be remarkable. How did we get here?

In part it's due to corruption and fraud. My sense is that very few public officials are able to maintain and altruistic disposition in the midst of so many kleptocrats intent upon enriching themselves at any expense. Headlines like the one below are common....
All told it was a real eye opener and I'll take some time to think about how these kids can be helped. for almost all of those smiling faces above - this is the end of their education ... many of the girls becoming child brides within the polygamist community...and the boys...well they just go to work no longer boys..

The United Nations

 I was fortunate to be invited to attend the humanitarian Aid summit in Kenya hosted by the United Nations. The discussion centered on the localization of humanitarian aid in the region. Discussion was lively, intense and informative. I'm proud to be serving within this community .... which is responding to the needs of the environment in which we operate. Smart people - good ideas - but of course never enough.

Below - is a guy shot and killed in front of the UN as we walked to our cab. He foolishly attacked a soldier wielding a machete. He was dead before he got his arm up - undercover and uniformed protectors emerging from every shadow and crease. I heard he took 12 bullets in seconds. sheesh!!!

Thanks for reading -Layno!!!!

Majengo - now that's a serious slum!

How can we treat one another like this much less theses kids?

I stood with our intrepid little volunteer team (not related to MSF activities) just inside the door of the school surveying the single room that constitutes the entire school. It was jam packed with about 180 kids packed shoulder to shoulder cheering enthusiastically!  The program is a victim of it's own success being created by a very determined woman who felt the need to do something for these kids.
For our part - we would be cleaning for a few hours and then helping feed the kids their lunch. A lovely day cleaning and then sharing lunch and an opportunity to massage my "white guilt" that is hard to ignore when face to face with real poverty. Just like earth day cleanups I had experienced in Canada in years gone by.

Well not exactly the same....

Majengo is arguably the worst of the worst. High levels of violence, ( we witnessed 4 incidents) which is in itself terrible but think of these living conditions. In this slum, one can buy sex for as little as 50 cents.... likely with an underaged youth and without protection. And the following...

No running water
No toilets
No electricity
No sewer
No access to adequate health care
No police service
No......... and the list of "don't have" goes on and on.

I have to share that as we reached the school - the rallying point for our activity - I was overcome with guilt from a number of perspectives. First the very real chance of being exposed to TB in that crowded room... being cut and being exposed to HIV.....  Cholera or being attacked .... . Lastly - that as a global community we should be able to fix this! Oh and the fact that I did not want to do it - period... I was at the outer limit of my gag and run reflex.

Nevertheless we jumped in and for the next hours brought wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of garbage from the slum to the entrance. We were joined by a couple hundred community members, mostly kids from the school who jumped in and helped out.  Of course bags of shit are a large part of the cleanup. Most people crap in a bag in some private area and then throw it when dark enough to hide their shameful yet unavoidable activity. The sewer, and main "area of concern"  is a small steam that runs down the center of the main pathway.

That nasty job complete it was time for lunch. I joined an assembly line and helped prepare the dishes of beans and rice.   So - I thought, when would they kids eat again... it may take a village to raise a child but my gosh - no child should be raised in this village. But are there options?  It's easy to point to  Save the Children or maybe UNICEF and demand explanations. Or the government of Kenya... and expose their shortcomings. However, large organizations have trouble addressing this kind of situation - with huge amounts of donor funding burned up through administration of programs. it's hard to maintain funding streams when the dollar cost benefit is so hard to show. It's hard for governments to address these sorts of problems when there are so many.

However! It reminds me of the story of the guy walking on the beach and comes up to another man  throwing sand dollars into the water. When he asked the guy what he was doing the guys  says he's saving these sand dollars from the sun as they will surely die. The first guy responded by pointing out that there were thousands and he can't possibly make a difference. As the man threw another into the water he smiled and said - "It made a difference to that one".

South Sudan

I was back in South Sudan this week working with the Supply team to ensure that we (Nairobi) are doing all we can to make sure our response is as quick as possible and with the highest possible quality. I was both inspired and impressed with the sheer determination to make supply work well in such an inhospitable environment. In what has become a ubiquitous symbol of reliability - the trusty MSF hardtop land cruiser and no fucking guns sticker conspicuously affixed. South Sudan continues to be a tinderbox with more fighting breaking out in the outer regions. With the opposition no longer in control, the opposition continues to fracture mostly along tribal lines. Though even within tribes there is a further disunity. The rise of hate speech is an eriry reminder of the Huti & Tutsi 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Thank for reading - Layno!

...And now for a good ole' cup of Joe....

Kenya Arabica in Kiambu 

 

I have -  for as long as I can remember - bean fascinated with coffee. It has bean a constant companion in my life appearing when needed to calm - slow or accessorize moments in life. "Hmmmm - I think I'll have a coffee and think about that" ...  should be my epitaph. I believe "Lets go for coffee" was my high school vision statement.


While  I've now been in Kenya for 18 months, I'd still not gotten to the root of coffee plantations in Kenya... a place where Arabica (the best quality variety) grows with reckless abandon. Kenyan coffee is among the most sought after in the world given almost perfect growing conditions.The occasion required a road trip to Kiambu - near the Tea plantations described in an earlier blogged excursion. You perk along for about 30 minutes uphill from the city and as before to a startlingly pretty place.

The tour takes you through the process of making coffee. From growing the bean to perking a pot! A couple points to make.. the bush grows in 2 parts. Current harvest on one side - and new growth on the other. Once the new growth is 3 years old... the process reverses and the old part is cut back. I thought that was interesting.





Coffee "cherries" are harvested 2x per year. One harvest is 40% and the other about 60%. The cherries are hand picked in an unbelievably labor intensive process and then the berry is then crushed and washed and ends up in this sluice thing where the actual "magic" happens. Its here that the beans are graded for size and density,. That's it! How big and how heavy. I somehow expected something more sophisticated involving mass spectrometry and an anti-gravity machine with laser beams... but it's simply the ones that float farther down the sluice are less heavy and so a poorer grade. Then - after drying -they are sorted by size. AA being the top grade. That's it!

So in large measure the growing conditions and roast determine the character of the final product. I just expected it to be more complicated. Global warming is now threatening to change all this...my much loved Arabica is in trouble.... even here in Kenya where pests not seen before threaten the entire industry.




Another threat to the industry has been Kenya's mismanagement of the resource.  Interestingly - coffee is hardly consumed in the country. While some "Starbucks-like" chains are trying to change all that... only 99% is exported. The British always said to the Kenyans "Coffee is for selling and Tea is for drinking" .... what the British didn't say was that coffee marketing boards that strip the money from the farmer and line the pockets of regulatory authorities was likely a bad idea. Coffee production has fallen from about 130,000 metric tons in the late 80's to around 50,000 metric tons today. The great processing plants from downtown Nairobi have been converted to potato chip factories ending an era that was once a symbol of national pride. Shame that....

One of the world's largest Refuge camps is closing.

Representing MSF was Liesbeth Aelbrecht (pictured in the center) who addressed the concerns the imminent closure of Dadaab will have from a medical perspective. She did a masterful job advocating for those who's suffering needs to be addressed.

I attended a panel discussion this week where the imminent closure (mid- November) of Daddab was being discussed. If you don't know about this  - and a surprising number of people do not - Daddab is a refuge camp in Kenya close to the border of Somalia. It's been in existence for 25 years... meaning, in part, that there are young men and women born in this camp who have spent their entire lives there. It is the largest in the world.


The ink not yet dry on the Kenya constitution, the government of Kenya is continuing with  a "voluntary" repatriation of the Somalis in the RC. Is it voluntary? Hardly. Is it illegal?... most likely. Close to 500,000 souls by the way..... and for the diabetic who needs insulin and knows he or she will not get it...or the others with chronic disease being forced to take residence where the possibility of adequate health care is near zero, the future is must be terrifying. The aspect of their future prospects horrified me - but so too did the near certainty of sexual violence and forced servitude to terrorist interests. Cruel and unusual punishment? Absol-fucking - lutely!

So how about integration into Kenya.... well .... not so fast. My uneducated guess would be that half the population of Kenya does not have adequate access to health care. Many - nothing at all. So Kenya doesn't have all the solutions.... and the fact that this situation has persisted for 25 years is unconscionable. I do despair that our brothers and sisters from around the world sit by and sip lattes while discussing their short game on the links unaware and unprepared to intercede. Heavy - fuck ya - but it's real.

Anything goes on a Kokotenny

I'm always surprised by the what can be packed on a Kokotenny. Essentially, it's a car axle and wheels with a platform built on top. A couple handles on the front and an old car tire at the back on the bottom and you're ready to move shit. The tire is for stopping. The guys who move these are not only strong as an ox but able to balance the weight in such a manner to get down hills and up the next. It's not uncommon to see the operator with his feet off the ground and only the tire dragging on the ground stopping the Kokotenny from careening wildly into cars and people. Sometimes tricky to get around in traffic... they are a part of the special and unique complexion of Nairobi. They are loved and hated... but mostly hated. 

Thanks for reading - Layno!

(This was purchased for South Sudan and will soon be on it's way. It'll be used to pull hardtops (Land Cruisers) through the mud and move water on a trailer we also purchased for the team serving there.)

Ahhhh - the south of France....

Bordeaux and the coast!

MSF Logistique in Bordeaux, France

Medecins Sans Frontieres  maintains 3 supply fulfillment centers in Western Europe. These facilities are then generally "associated" with an expertise or logistical advantage for the organization allowing us to respond to emergencies more quickly. As I am learning - the business of planning for worldwide emergencies is about redundancy stacked on top of more redundancy - and planning for the unimaginable and unknown. How does one plan for an earthquake in the Western hemisphere and at the same time war-wounded in the middle east? How does one use planning and unknown in the same sentence? And - we have to ensure that we can arrive without any delay as the penalty for showing up late is of the highest order. MSF does this as well as any organization and some say better and best. All of this while remaining grateful and mindful of the donors who in a generous and trusting fashion, commit their funds to our care and discretion of use.


Ok  - small sidebar so I can "geek out" on my love of transportation and logistics..... First, and surprisingly, I have been in T&L since 1991 so have 25 years of looking at this stuff and thinking about how it works. Generally speaking "minimizing time in transit and cost" are the King and Queen of T&L. Quicker and cheaper!!

But not so much in the world of emergency medical aid. The Layno - inspired drawing beside shows a need for other factors equal to and necessary to operate in this different context. Cost while important, is hidden and a last thought. Quality, is separate and apart from the other competing variables like a sole dictatorship rather than King and Queen monarchy..... implicit to the T&L strategy is the understanding that the massive infrastructure supporting the delivery of aid is wasted if the end product is of poor or questionable quality. Quality is the benevolent dictator!

All of that said - it means that our fulfillment centers need to have additional capacity (room for expanded operations) and redundant systems for "when the next emergency" comes along. MSF does this amazingly well and the team at MSF Logistique have heaps of experience and know-how. Logistique is the largest of the 3 centers with staggering volumes of medical aid passing through it's doors daily. Brussels and Amsterdam house the other two.

Bordeaux with the Garonne River at my back and super - cool old buildings under a cloudy sky

While there for work anyway - why not take the weekend and explore Bordeaux and the coast a bit. Through recent travel I've learned that with google maps and public transport you can see most cities for a very reasonable cost. Get on a bus....and just don't get off! Voila - a 2 euro tour of the city. On this occasion the driver was obviously deeply concerned and asked "Mais Monsieur  - Ou va tu?"  Where are you going? I just shrugged and smiled  - he did the same......


The city is fantastic both practically and historically. Like Paris or Brussels or so many cities of Europe it is simply beautiful.The shopping is as good as it gets, the fashions amazing to watch and food everywhere.

I got the sense that Bordeaux is a very practical working city as well. Housing prices have been rising steadily, jobs are available and people are busy. Public transport is simply put - a triumph. The combination of streetcars, buses and metro can get you anywhere in a snap. There's a hustle and bustle to the city nicely combined and strong sense of purpose and identity that only the French seem able to maintain. Of course I worked on speaking French while there but despite my humble French Canadian roots have not yet found the key that unlocks fluency.

Each new speaking opportunity comes with a now all too familiar sense of dread. Inevitable I manage a greeting and request in what I hope is flawless French - only to get a response in English or a blank stare. Ahhh to speak the language of love.

  Cite du Vin

 It looks more like the head of a golf club. But in fact - it is a world-class museum inspired by the love of wine and the need to tell the story. Bordeaux is the undisputed wine capital of the world and this new museum (3 months old) tells that story in a way I have ever seen before. All about wine, it takes the most modern concepts of multimedia presentation and cleverly combines it with the worlds oldest celebratory drink.

Max constructing a perfect ""dog"

In the slide above, there is a dining table set for 8 guests. One of the guests (a hologram) is an internationally acclaimed wine expert. As one of the other guests at the table, you can choose from a number of prepared questions. He or she then answers the question in a "dinner table discussion" manner. This was among a number of truly remarkable exhibits within the building. I highly recommend a visit to this remarkable facility.


And while I learned a lot about wine in the region and around the world - I confess I found the museum difficult to navigate and often crowed to the point of being agitated despite there not being that many visitors at the site. My thinking was that the building satisfied the architect and the planners narcissistic tendencies rather than future audiences. I'm not saying that we should view "art" in a square box but the needs of the viewer and the presentation of the exhibition should come before the building.:)

I'll also cop to my guilty pleasure of a good hot dog. At a roadside stand, Max (above) took 10 minutes to heat the bun and "build" a memorable hotdog eating experience!

Arcachon

 

Located just 50 km from Bordeaux the Arcachon basin sits on the Atlantic and really is the perfect weekend getaway. It features all kinds of shops, great french food and truly stunning scenery. The day was warm and very pleasant for September. I enjoyed walking the city and beach before stumbling into the "old town" and exploring the cobbled lanes and hidden shops.

I really don't know a lot about wine finding the subject to be sort of an endless mass of information that I just can't get my head around. I understand the basics but really don't get the details. I do however - know - when I am drinking really fucking good bottle of wine and confess to "over drinking" while in Bordeaux.

With a goodly amount of guilt I do now confess to drinking a bottle of wine on each of the three days I was there ending unceremoniously with a 2 hour snooze on the beach after the bottle to the right. It was thoroughly enjoyed it with  a dry sausage and Camembert sandwich that even the Gods would envy.

On a rocky point in the company of a couple fisherman and numerous seagulls I drank a 15 Euro bottle of wine and watched the boats come and go. Thinking back - I also confess that I have had few days so peaceful and enjoyable as that afternoon. The snooze - later - in the warm sun on the sand  - a perfect conclusion to a warm day on the beach in the south of France.




 







Thanks for reading - Layno!