Out of Africa

We finished our assignment in Kenya on Friday afternoon and started our journey back already the same evening. We had a few hours to spend before the flight, so Gerald and Stefano went to one of the rescue centers to spend some time with the kids, while Ruslana, Eva and I wanted to see the Karen Blixen museum. Karen Blixen, who is one of the most famous Danish writers, spent a good part of her life in Kenya. You may have seen her in the movie 'Out of Africa' which is about her life in Africa. She had a farm at the foot of Ngong hills and today that whole area - the south west outskirts of Nairobi - is simply called Karen.

Eva and Ruslana are tough negotiators and decisive women, so since they could not agree with the taxi driver on a proper price for our trip to the Karen Blixen house they decided that we should go by Matatu. Matatus are small jam-packed vans that the locals use to get around. They are very inexpensive, but in terms of comfort and security they leave a lot room for improvement. The ride was an interesting experience and we eventually made it to our destination, or so we thought. Instead of being in the museum, we had ended up in Karen Blixen's house, which had been turned into a restaurant and coffee bar. It was too late to try to get to the museum, so instead we sat down and enjoyed a good Kenyan coffe and the biggest slices of chocolate cake I have ever seen.

Less than 24 hours later I was attending my Grandmas funeral in Denmark. A lot of people had showed up and the whole family was there. Although it was no fun to carry the coffin out then I still felt that I had been through the worst when I had visited her in the hospital the week before. I had said my goodbye and now we were 'just' completing the journey with her. She left with dignity and in the evening the whole extended family gathered for dinner at my uncle and aunt's place, so for one last time - as countless times before - she managed to bring us all together.

Thorsten

Kenya calling

It has been a couple of long days as we have been preparing the end-of-phase-2-presentation and planned the work for Phase 3. Luckily, doing these two things is very much one-and-the-same process. Quite a heavy process, though. It entails the usual iterative discussions, post-it notes and drawing upon drawing on the white boards. Over and over again, a process that is so tiring when you are in the middle of it but which is the only way to bring the real problems to the surface and consensus to the group. It is always very nerving, because you constantly are up against a hard dead line. Afterward follows the relief from the pressure and the tiredness of having been going flat out for a period. It is all covered by a feeling of either joy or frustration depending on how it went. Today it went well, the clients (which is last year's MBA class) expressed their appreciation and we feel on the right track as we move on to the next phase.

Next phase is again called Kenya, starts Monday morning in Geneva airport and lasts for twelve days. We have planned the next rounds of workshops there. The focus is this time much less on digging up information and much more on finding solutions together with the people in the organization. It is three weeks since we left Nairobi and in that time Koinonia (the organisation we work with) has been working with the frameworks we gave them. We look forward to learning what they got out of those exercises.

We chose to order the abundance of information that we had obtained during our first Kenya voyage by first writing the information on post-it notes.....

....then ordering it in complete silence....

....until we arrived at a few overall groups.

Finally, we drew up how the different groups are interrelated and we had a good picture of how to approach the issues.

Next time, Nairobi!

I am lying here on my bunk bed at Shalom House after four very intense days here in Nairobi. I am trying to make up my mind about what I think of what I have seen. So far, I don’t really know to be honest. There is a lot to digest.
I guess what you automatically do when you see things that you cannot relate to is to anyway compare it to what you know. Comparing it to Europe does not make any sense. Comparing it to South Africa where we were only a few months ago or to Indonesia, where I used to live, comes closer, but still does not really hit the mark. Both of these countries are more advanced than Kenya.


The main questions that keep popping up in my mind is: Why? Why is this country burdened with such heavy poverty and so great social problems? I have met so many smart and capable young people the last few days, so many souls hungry to learn and to improve. So why isn’t it happening?


HIV and AIDS is perhaps part of the answer because of the way it rips families and communities apart. Kenya has the same problems with crime, corruption and climate change (there is a severe drought at the moment) that many other developing countries face. But it still does not add up. There is something missing in the equation. This country should be doing better than it is! Why isn’t it?


Tomorrow we are leaving Nairobi again, but only for a while. We will be back in three weeks to continue our work. Hopefully the impressions will have had time to settle by then.

Thorsten


Monday: Stefano explains some of the things we have learned over the past few weeks to the Koinonia management team. Afterward Ruslana went on to explain the framework that we are working with.


We split the Koinonia managers in smaller groups and asked them to fill in the framework for their own social projects or business units. They took to the task with great enthusiasm and quickly learned the concepts. Here Eva is overseeing one of the groups.

Esther, Ann and Helen working on their frameworks. The Kenyan women seem to be very strong and with important roles in both Koinonia and in the Kenyan society in general. Esther is the day-to-day manager of Koinonia. Ann and Helen each run one of the children homes.

Tuesday we went around to visit the social initiatives in Koinonia. Ruslana and Gerald are here getting a tour of the dispensary.

Wednesday we went around to all the so-called IGA’s (Income Generating Activities), which is NGO terminology for ‘business unit’. Here Stefano and Ruslana are learning how Harrison runs the computer school Shalom IT.

Today Thursday we then visited four other organisations to learn how they do the same things that Koinonia does. This gave us a lot of very useful input. Here we are talking to Father Sebastian – an Indian Catholic priest – who has been working in Africa for 20 years and now runs the Bosco Boys home in Nairobi. The place is both a home and a school for 300 boys, who all have been saved from a life on the streets of Nairobi.

Let’s not forget why we are here. This is two of the girls at ‘Shelter Children Rescue Center’, which we also visited today.

And here are a couple of the boys at ‘St. Paul’s Children Home’. The new Karate Kid has been found.

Eva is making new friends in the process.


Lea Toto as part of the Nyumbani program delivers health services such as medication, nutrition and counselling to HIV patients. They have an impressive 5000 patients enrolled in their programs now.

Kenyan’s are not without humour. ‘CAUTION – Driving School - Driver under instruction – In god we trust…….’


Stefano and Gerald battling with the mosquito net. Quite an entertaining event!

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons, that was the name of a very popular game when I was a child. You could get it both as a role play and a computer game. Somehow those words are coming back to life, but with a very different meaning.

The dungeons are the dungeons, nothing new about that. Generations of IMD students have shed their blood, sweat and tears down there. And it is all still there, at least it smells that way some times. :-) We are spending the whole day in study room 7 these days, trying to squeeze some of all the ambiguity out of our ICP project on Street Children in Nairobi. We have built up a frame work to help us understand how NGOs work and we have now started calling other NGOs to plot them into the framework and get reference points. That way we can much better understand how our organization, Koinonia, operates. These days we even have some additional help as Daniel Brosseau from last years class helps us fill in the framework. Daniel spent six weeks with Koinonia back in April and May, so he has a lot of the information we need. Now that we have created the framework and understand the NGO 'industry' better, it has become much easier to understand the situation in Koinonia. When first introduced to the project in May it seemed a bit overwhelming.


And what about the Dragons? Well, I was talking about our internal ones. Such as the fear of needles. Here we are yesterday getting our vaccinations for Kenya. Gerald takes it pretty easy, though.


We kept the doctor busy for more than an hour. It was no easy task to put together the vaccination 'menu' for a Malaysian, a Romanian/Israeli and a Dane that were going to Kenya. In usual Swiss style it all worked like clockwork, though, but came with a steep price tag.



It is late August and 33 degrees in Lausanne. The picture is even taken at 5 in the afternoon, so it has undoubtedly been even warmer earlier in the day.

Thorsten