Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Kenya: Field Visits to Turkana and Kibwezi and a Special Meet-Up with Old Friends from Burundi

Abura, a project participant from Turkana

We seem to still be in a transition phase that has not yet allowed for any routine periods of leisure. Hence, it is still hard to get more than one blog out per month, but we are aiming to report on our activities every two weeks so we don't miss too many details.

Rebecca and I still need to adopt a 'divide and conquer' approach to our work and life here, especially when it comes to travel. We are close to but have not arrived at a point where we have visited every partner in our new role as Reps. While some are close by, at least 6 require extensive travel by plane or a long drive.

Generally, travel has been my responsibility, especially since most of the further partners are implementing health and food security projects, which are the program sectors I manage. In early November, after returning from Zambia, I had a plan to visit an agriculture and livelihood program in the Turkana region (in Northern Kenya) close to the South Sudan border. Our partner there, who is managing a foundation-backed grant is the National Council of Churches Kenya, (NCCK) which is a faith-based network that has quite a bit of influence as a convener for advocacy with the Govt. as they represent most mainline denominations. We have partnered with them to do peacebuilding around elections in the past. They also have a development wing that is implementing the project we are doing with them in Turkana.

I have been to Kenya on multiple occasions over the years, but never to Turkana. It is largely dry semi-arid land sparsely populated by pastoralists. It is also a region rife with inter-tribal conflict and driving on roads north is considered insecure due to occasional attacks on vehicles. (In places vehicles require a police escort.) Fortunately, there is an alternative. There is a small airport in a town called Lodwar which is about 2.5 hours from our project site. I booked a flight and made arrangements with our partner to meet them there and drive to the project area.

I was to be joined by my colleague William K. who is our peacebuilding coordinator but also manages this project since he used to work with NCCK and lives in Eldoret, a town northwest of Nairobi.

On the day of travel, things went as planned and I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon after leaving on a small local airline that flew to Lodwar once per day. It is a very small airport! I was met by William K. and NCCK staff and we drove in the late afternoon to a small town called Lokori.

As I said, I had never been to Turkana, and although there is a well-known giant lake in the region, we were not too close and the land was very dry with sparse acacia and baobabs. We would pass pastoralist communities from time to time. Honestly, it reminded me a bit of the Afar in Ethiopia the way the houses were constructed, but the people are more closely related to Sudanese than Somalis. Their dress is somewhat like Masai with a wrapped cloth 'shuka', but women usually wore a very tall thick necklace with layers of beads that gave the impression the neck was being stretched out and the shoulders pushed down. I had not even seen the Turkana tribe before.

We arrived in Lokori and stayed the night in a very minimal hotel that looked like only hosted visiting govt. officials and NGOs. The room was hot and had little water, but it did serve for the night. I welcomed a cold shower in the morning as hot water would have been unnecessary there.

We met our NCCK counterparts (Grace and Phyllis) in the morning and proceeded to the project site. As we drove to the area where we were going, I noticed that with the vegetation there was extensive 'Prosopis juliflora' an invasive species (mesquite) in Africa that takes over everything. It is extensive in Afar and apparently was introduced here as well.

We proceeded to a community in the village of Morulem where we met project staff, volunteers, and community leaders. We were greeted with traditional Turkana dancing when we arrived.

We heard many project participants and other community members and NCCK Team members who presented reports on activities, impact, as well as challenges and needs that there is hope the next project phase might address.

The project is located in a community where the govt. has 'settled' pastoralists to learn farming. They are very new to it but are benefitting from a large irrigation scheme put in by the govt. and large donors. There are several hundred acres divided into 'blocks, that are surrounded and fed by canals that are connected to a large seasonal river, so they have a water source for most of the year for growing. It is a unique project because it is benefiting from this irrigation scheme already in place, but working with participants who have never farmed before.

After the meeting, we proceeded on foot to a model farm (farmer field school) nearby that benefited from the irrigation scheme in the community. There, were many project participants who had been on a learning exchange and had brought back lessons learned and refined on the grounds of the farmer field school. We saw several agricultural practices that had been learned and adopted including planting in small basins (Zai pits) to conserve water, using furrows for irrigation, sack gardens, etc. The participants seemed very excited about using the techniques they had learned. All the farm volunteers are lead farmers who learn techniques in the farmer field school and then cascade the learning to their neighbors and others in the community. Since they farm next to each other in plots along an irrigation scheme, it is an effective way to multiply the learnings.

From the farm school, we took a short drive to a warehouse built by World Vision in the past that still functioned well as a storage facility for community members who wanted to store grain. It was large and dry and the person working seemed to be keeping records. There were about several hundred quintal sacks of grain. Sorghum and maybe corn. People do save and sell some but this is not a formal market aggregation group and there is no coordination currently with local or outside merchants to purchase grain here. There is hope that this can be developed, especially if there is an increase in harvest.

From the warehouse, we visited a farm outside of town that had a very good irrigation scheme and a hand-dug well with a solar pump. This was also the site where a project-funded borehole would be drillled. We saw the borehole site and talked to the WASH engineer about logistics. NCCK is hoping the govt would do the drilling of the borehole for free, since this site is 2 kilometers away from the place for the planned waterpoint.The available budget is needed for pipes and a good solar pump.

After visiting the site of the borehole we went to the intake point on the river (seasonal) that feeds the irrigation scheme for the farm blocks where project participants practice farming. The water in the river was low but still feeding the scheme.

We then went and visited the farm blocks where the irrigation canals are working. We were shown how the irrigation scheme works with water channeled through different locks. We were also told that there can be conflict around water use due to people channeling water to their fields when it is not their turn.

From this visit, we proceeded back to Lokori where NCCK was doing a peacebuilding training for project participants. The training had started in the morning. We joined for lunch and stayed for the afternoon session.

I had a chance to interview some of the participants to ask how they would be using the skills they would acquire in the training.

1) An elderly farmer named Jonah who had lost an arm told us he hoped to bring blessing to the community, Christian values, and possibly to make peace with the neighboring tribe the Pokot who raid their cattle sometimes, and with whom there is active conflict.

2) A woman named Abura said she would use it to help resolve domestic disputes between husbands and wives, particularly around family size and number of children a woman should bear. (Incidentally, when I asked her how many children she wanted she said “The minimum only-no more”. I asked her what was considered the minimum. She said 5).

We returned to the hotel after our visit to Morulem and the next morning we headed back to Lodwar where I was to catch my flight in the afternoon. In the morning, however, the NCCK team along with MCC team met with officials from the regional water department. We arrived mid-morning and talked with the County Executive of Water Services.

We explained NCCK’s project to provide water to the Morulem community and the need for some type of public-private partnership with the county govt. to help drill a borehole—specifically to provide the drill rig and do the drilling.

The County Executive was very familiar with NCCK and very open to collaborating and agreed in principle to provide the drill rig for the borehole. We emphasized the need for completion within the project timeline and he agreed they would try.

We left it at that to be followed up by NCCK project staff in Lodwar. I was dropped back at the airport for a Thursday afternoon flight back to Nairobi. I felt it was a good visit and one more partner to check off my list of needed visits this year.

I got back Thursday evening and had a few hours with David and Rebecca on Thursday. I had actually signed up to go on a men's retreat with our church that went from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon that weekend in the nearby Brackenhurst retreat center. I did go the next evening as planned, with my banjo and overnight bag in tow.

In short, it was a very good retreat and an opportunity to get to know some men in our church congregation. There were about 24 of us. We had a bonfire Friday night, then did a Bible study about friendship and spent the rest of the day doing some really fun and funny team-building activities to get us to work together.

I finally returned home on Sunday for at least 5 straight days of no travel. Rebecca did end up traveling on the following Thursday to a Masai partner where they were doing a training for another one of our partners on setting up a 'VSLA" Village Savings and Loan Association in a community. It is a microfinance scheme that works very well to allow women and smallholder farmers to pool resources to be able to start businesses. It is a great counterpart to a livelihoods project where people are trying to earn some income from their farms.

One partner learning from the participants
of another

My own vacation from travel was short-lived as we had a scheduled visit from some of our MCC Canada Program Officers who work with our Global Affairs Canada-funded project in South Eastern Kenya (Kibwezi).

Amy and Immaculate, who work out of the Canada office, arrived last Sunday evening in Nairobi. We met them Monday morning at our office and had them meet our team in the Kenya office. We planned to travel to the project site in Kibwezi (about a 3-hour drive) in the afternoon, have dinner with the partner staff and their board, then spend the next 2 days visiting different project activities.

James and Charles, who work directly with this project and I accompanied Amy and Immaculate on this trip. We left as planned on Monday afternoon and met the UDO Project Leadership for dinner as planned. We stayed at a modest hotel close to the project site.

The next day we went as a team to the landscape. This is a 'nature-based solutions' climate adaptation/food security project that has multiple facets including livelihood activities, conservation agriculture, reforestation, gulley rehabilitation, market linkages, etc. It also prioritizes women's empowerment in all of these activities as a cross-cutting theme.

It is hard to see it all, but we did start the visit by climbing up a steep rocky hill that overlooked the project area and gives an impression of the type of dry arid climate this project is working in. From there we each planted trees in an area that is being reforested, then visited a nursery to see the work they were doing. We heard about the kinds of trees they were planting and how many. In the past week, they had distributed 60,000 tree saplings to farmers to plant on their land. The project as a whole is aiming for close to one million over 3 years.

We also visited a training where farmers were learning about weed management (in the absence of herbicides) and visited several farmers to see their work in conservation agriculture and livelihood activities like kitchen gardens and poultry farming.

We ended the day with a debrief with the team and board that actually went until 9pm.

The next day we visited some of the beneficiaries of another UDO project that MCC had funded in a previous project cycle, to see whether activities, such as savings groups and CA were continuing sustainably beyond the end of the project. We were very impressed to see they were when we visited a VSLA group and a farmer who had a model farm with CA, fruit trees, terracing, fodder crops, and a farm pond. She also spoke very good English and talked extensively about how she is getting all her neighbors to adopt these improved techniques, and even has surplus seeds to share with them if they will try.

We finally headed to Nairobi in the afternoon and we got Amy and Immaculate to their hotel and I got home by about 3pm.

The next day we did another field visit to the MIDI project with the Masai. We were able to watch a 'share out' at a VSLA group that had been saving together for over a year. The 20 women had been saving weekly for 12 months, and borrowing and paying with interest to support their livelihood projects. At the end of the year, they were sharing out nearly $5000 by the end of the year, about a 30% profit over the initial investment from the many loans they gave. It was really impressive to see how well set up a savings group is and how it protects women from loan sharks who usually show up around the time school fees need to be paid and loan them money on credit by buying their harvest in advance at a very low price. Having their own savings groups creates a buffer when they are short on cash as well as providing start-up capital for new businesses.

On Friday Amy and Immaculate had lunch with our Area Directors and Rebecca and I. It was a very good visit and they had very positive feelings about our partners and projects. We invited them for dinner as a closing gesture, and they left the next day.

That covers, in brief, our work trips. Here is Rebecca's update on personal events:

I would have dearly loved to join Paul on his visit to the project in Turkana. Unfortunately, we have learned that it is very difficult for our program to keep functioning if both of us Reps are out of town. There are always financial transactions to push along. Staff who haven’t traveled appreciate weekly check-ins to guide their work. And that particular week, I was involved in a very special assignment recruiting a new group of young adults for the MCC exchange programs.

One of the strengths of the Kenya/Tanzania program lies in our ability to send out six and receive about four short-term volunteers every year. In the beginning of November, we screened more than 30 candidates who were hoping to serve with MCC in another part of the world. Some were applying for the International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP) program, where they would come to the US (and previously Canada before visa restrictions became too tight), serving in different MCC and Anabaptist-related ministries, schools, farms, etc. Others are hoping to be part of the Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network (YAMEN) program, where they go to another MCC country program to work alongside a partner organization in that country. Generally, these are Anabaptist-related partners receiving other young Mennonites from across the world, and it creates some really wonderful relationships, from Kenya to Cambodia, from Bangladesh to Kenya, From Tanzania to South Sudan.

This year’s candidates were overall of very high caliber and it was a challenge to screen them down to six. We held about 15 interviews over the course of 5 days, which was a wonderful and exhausting process! I worked closely with my colleague Nelly who is the Connecting People’s Coordinator for MCC Kenya. She is the primary support person for all the volunteers coming and going and essential in keeping us organized and on top of all the documents we need to review for each person’s file. It’s also very fun to interview together with her, to complement each other’s questions, and to hear her excellent feedback to the candidates at the end of each interview. We hope it is a good and nurturing process for the candidates who come in nervous and then see that we really want to know more about who they are as human beings, even if we are not able to give them a place in the program.

We are also very happy to receive four volunteers each year. If you know of a young adult from North America who is finished with University and interested in a year of service, learning and discipleship, please urge them to apply for the Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program. Somehow, we are finding that fewer North American young adults are interested in this kind of international experience, but we hope that the rising generation will see the benefits of leaving their comfort zones to grow in new ways. We know that many young people have energy and skills that would help our MCC partners a lot. We especially would love to welcome teachers, agronomists, and people with skills in media/communication.

https://mcc.org/get-involved/volunteer/salt

HS boys relay team got 2nd
in the KAISSO league

On the personal front, David has really been stretched in this new school, especially by joining the swim team. It’s been a ton of hard work, with swim practice after school four days a week. He found it incredibly difficult at first, but then grew in his endurance, able to handle 2000+ meters of hard swimming each day. There were only six high school boys on the Rosslyn swim team, so each one of them needed to train hard, and compete in lots of events in each swim meet. David rose to the occasion and actually ended up swimming quite well in backstroke and freestyle events. While Paul was away, he had one all-day swim meet at the International School of Kenya, which included about 8 schools and lots of very competitive swimmers. In the end, he came away with two second-place medals for individual events, a bronze, and two medals with his relay team. Actually, their boys’ 200 freestyle relay team was truly amazing to watch, as they were able to get their collective time down to under two minutes by the end of the season. And I loved seeing David enjoy the camaraderie that only comes with working as a team together with Martin, Jack, and Jyun. It was a long day, but I was rejoicing that I get to be a parent with a kid on a swim team. It is such a privilege to have David be part of his new school.

HS boys relay team

The swim team wrapped up last weekend, with one final shorter swim meet. Afterward, the swim coach hosted us all for a celebration dinner. He and his fellow coaches very thoughtfully made award certificates, personalized to each and every member of the swim team, about 30 kids. It was wonderful and affirming to witness their hard work and good spirit.

On another note of school events, we were able to attend the Rosslyn Theater Production of Emma yesterday. It was delightful and so well acted and produced. We were very impressed with the quality the students brought to their drama in every aspect from technical theater to costumes to the direct acting, which required a lot of comedic timing. The direction was superb with many unique moments of staging, culture and dance brought to the script.

Swim team celebration

David was marginally involved in the set and props crew – he got permission from the swim coach to miss one practice a week (some weeks!) to put his toe into working with the theater kids. He was welcome to help break down the set after the play and then join in the cast party afterwards – a fun time of jumping in the pool, eating pizza and lots of deserts, and then having a time for the seniors to share their reflections on the experience of being part of the production. He’s hoping to try out for the musical coming up next season, and I think his exposure to drama so far really encourages him.

Burundi reunion

We were grateful for one other very special event in November: we’ve discovered that quite a number of families we knew in Burundi 10-12 years ago have now relocated to Nairobi. On one Sunday afternoon, we all gathered in the spacious garden of Ben and Kristy in Karen to finally have some time to catch up and reminisce. They even rented a beautifully appointed tent for all of us. We have so much in common still with this group of families, even though we were not all very close in Burundi. But we had important points of connection with each of them and were so glad to share our memories of each other and of Burundi. We went to church at BICC with Severine and Dave, Priya and Rich; we shared weekly morning yoga and brunch with Stephen and his wife Laura, and I sang in a small ensemble with Stephen; we were in “English Club” together with Kristy and Heather, trying to help our anglophone kids be able to spell in their mother tongue, after being in Belgian school all day! And a few of us women were part of a Bible study together at Libby’s home. Most of the men work for International NGOs doing development work, another point of continued connection. Ben remembered the crazy folk dances we used to host at our home in Bujumbura. Our kids were all too young to remember each other much from the past, but they got along well as they re-met each other again. After so many rounds of transition, leaving and uprooting, it was very nurturing to have that time of integrating of past memories shared experiences. I’m grateful a few relationships come full circle, when so many parts of life have changed.

Bonus photos: