Kenya by Candlelight

It has finally started to rain this evening. May is supposed to be the end of the first rainy season, but so far I have been told there has been very little rain. The farmers and the animals will certainly be grateful that the skies are starting to open up. Of course the onset of rain often means the loss of electricity for short (and sometimes not so short) periods of time. On the upside we ate dinner by candlelight and it looked quite festive with our wine bottles full of distilled water the table.

The agenda for this week is to get reacquainted with and to learn what is new since my last visit…which translates into attending a variety of meetings. Two of them today were about the Orphan and Vulnerable Children program. The OVC is an initiative to strengthen the capacity of families and communities to care for orphans and vulnerable children through prolonging the lives of those HIV-infected and providing psychosocial, educational and economic support. The program started in 2005 and strives to help the children in their own settings which hopefully allow the children to learn, socialize and address their challenges within their own environment.

A pilot program has been started with the WFP to help feed OVC’s at four locations. The basic system is being put into place and we will be visiting the sites to help staff become familiar with the assessment and recording procedures. Hopefully, later this summer the Community Health Workers, Social Workers and Nutritionists will be able to have community meetings for the guardian’s and caregiver’s to help education them on why it is important for the children to be measured for growth three times a year (proof that the program is working so that it can be expanded and we can feed more children) and how to cook foods to receive the most nutritional value. Part of what I will be doing while I am here is providing input on designing an exit strategy for the program that allows the children to learn how they can sustain themselves without support from the food program.

While we waited for the car to be returned from a tire repair I was able to catch up with two of the social workers that I spend a lot of time with on my previous visit. The social work department as grown tremendously and I was greeted by many new faces saying Karibu (welcome). Before long we were on our way to Mosoriot for the second OVC meeting. For those that read the entries from my previous trip this was where I helped mud the walls for the women’s shelter (which is now being used) and where we attended the Merry-go-round, a group of women who came together to form a maize co-operative and share the profits. (Yes, this was the group of women who said that the Kenyan men would find me useless because I was in my forties and had not produced babies.)

When we returned to Eldoret the final meeting of the day was regarding ideas on how the Family Preservation Initiative might better reach and serve clients, particularly those in rural areas that do not have money to travel into Eldoret for training. FPI works to empower client’s ability to secure income through agriculture opportunities, business training (consulting and microfinance) and handicraft training at the Imani workshop which is now fair trade certified.

The FPI program has also recentely added a restaurant and catering service called the Cool Breeze Café located on the farm behind the AMPATH building. It definitely provided a cool and shady spot for a bit of respite before I took the familiar red dirt path back to IU house. As the day comes to an end I have had a glimpse of the new, the familiar and the many challenges that still lay ahead in Kenya…but it all looks good by candlelight.