But why?

I've been wanting to join in the Expat Blog Hop hosted by Tales from Windmill Fields for a while.  The way it works? http://www.windmillfields.com/ sets the prompt - the essay question as it were - bloggers all over the world go off and write their contribution, and then link them together with a special linky link on her page.  Then we read the blogs posted by others all round the world.  A potluck party or safari supper of a different kind.

This week her prompt is Why? - but its been a busy week here, and so in the end, I'm joining in with a post I'd written earlier.

Much of my job in career guidance is about supporting people to pose themselves wider questions. And about trying to ask clients better questions yourself.  Moving from the closed
'Did you do what you committed to do?' to the more empowering
'What do you see as your next steps? What do you see as the challenges?' 
So it's a bit ironic when you enter a futile rollercoaster tailspin in your own questioning. 
'WHY [in a plaintive whining tone] is it like this?'

Cat chasing her tail, two years into our Kenya stay, my current questions:
- Why were the three massive water storage tanks and water pump at the bottom of the garden, and the large storage tank at the top of the garden installed, but never plumbed into the key area where we use the water, the kitchen/washing machine?

Why has it taken me 18 months of increasingly harassed measures to actually follow the pipes to the source and deduce this?

Why why why, did the original plumbers - or their many successors - never draw this to my attention? 
It could have run like this. 
'Hello Mama, well the reason you have no water is because you are drawing from the mains, which has no pressure because there's a drought and/or you live at the top of the hill.  Yes you have four lovely full tanks, but they help you flush toilets, and have showers, they don't feed to the kitchen.' 
Two unspoken sentences, pregnant with potential.

Other good, but more vindictive questions, might be:
'Which genius came up with this flawed design?  Who was responsible for quality control?  Where, apart from with me, does the buck stop?' 
Futile questions. 'Brotlose Kuenste', 'breadless arts' as they say in German.  Don't go there.  Not worth the bitterness.

I'm in good company.  Friends regaled me with the tale of a posh executive housing estate in Runda near the United Nations in which each house floods when it rains.  One curious tenant eventually lifted up the grills on the storm drain in her back yard, to discover under the grill a shallow hole, just the size to receive the grill, - and nothing more.  Why would you fit a whole housing estate with the semblance of storm drains but no drainage? 
'Just because.'
Maybe it was a Friday, maybe their schedule was tight, maybe just because.

Another friend, recently moved in from Malawi, described the lengths she went to there, to demonstrate the inadequacy of her roofing to the roofer, who returned conveniently to work two weeks after the end of the rainy season.  She scaled the drainpipe, stood on the roof lightly directing a garden hose, while the roofer, drenched in the living room, was forced to acknowledge the stream of water down the wall - because, as it turned out, he hadn't cemented in or grouted the chimney.

It's not that I complete every boring task. There's the cardboard model of the Austrian cathedral which I was helping FirstBorn to assemble in a GoodMummyDay over the Christmas holidays. But having decided she is now able to use the stanley knife safely on her own, while I slope off to read a good book, there it sits, lonesome and incomplete.  There's the hay-bestrewn boot, remnant of the expedition two weeks ago to get two hay bales for the guineapigs. There's even, oh woe, the returned income tax return, waiting for me to find an envelope and stamp for the second time.

After a glass of wine I can often see the funny side. But not today. Today its just all too much.  Too many phonecalls cajoling plumbers. Too many attempts to communicate my elementary understanding of physics. Too many people seeking, I fear, to string out a situation and inflate the bill for another 18 months.

Respect

I'm not one for titles and subservience.  Ok, aged three I was dressed up in Welsh costume, held on shoulders for hours, and blew kisses to Prince Charles on his investiture tour round Wales. But that was many moons ago.  Aged 18 I worked for eight months in a German hospital, bemused at how in even the most trivial interaction with our head of department we needed her full title...'Frau Professor Doktor Schmidt, would you mind if I popped off to spend a penny now?'  And later, working with high flying German medical students, all with confident, imperious cut glass Oxford accents in this their second or third language, I used to have to lock myself in the store cupboard to do more deep breathing exercises to calm my butterflies after too long in this environment which, thanks to their voices, came over as far too rarefied for my comfort.

Its my background too. Quakers have a long and proud history of unruly defiance.  Believing that it matters to demonstrate that we are all equal in worth, all children of God, early Quakers were thrown into prison for refusing to doff hats to show respect to the King.  You doff your hat to God, otherwise not.  You call the Queen, Elizabeth Windsor and you show her the same respect as to the mentally ill homeless man, John Smith, on the street corner.  Of course hat-doffing is yet another custom which is less relevant nowadays, but I try to do my bit, telling our guards please to call me Catrin, not Madam or Memsahib. 'It's my religion' I add, to give it Kenyan weight. Of course in practice I'm 'you' or 'Mama' if they're speaking Swahili and think I can't understand.  But I think it matters - or at least it does to me.

So its interesting for me to learn of the experience of BigCorporate's student interns that I work with.  They are all highflyers, - top scoring girl and boy in their district at A level, - and each is given a well paid 18 month internship with BigCorporate, in their home districts, between school and university.  It offers work experience and they save half of their wages to help pay for their university studies.  A great opportunity, a foot on the ladder, I'd thought, but little more beyond that.  But now people know me better, they talk in greater depth.  One student told me how now, back in his home village, old men - the respected mzees of the community - bow to him.  He's 17 and only on work placement with BigCorporate.  But his exam success, his position in an office, the fact he wears a suit, well wow. 

And he's not the only one, others agree.  The wages earned by our student interns, generous, but not extravagent, have overturned family dynamics in many of their houses. They are now, for this 18 month period, the wage earner, the breadwinner of the household.  Not infrequently the first time a wage, rather than a handful of coppers from subsistence farming, have come into the household. They are the ones the community will turn to as the moneybags, the one who might be persuaded to buy a soda, to help fund this need or that project.  The student who frequently has never before had 500 Ksh - £5 - of their own in their hand is now earning more than a teacher in a state school.

Yes, in Africa, teachers are held in great respect. In Madagascar you bring your teacher, or your former teacher, a (live) chicken at Easter.  In Kenyan upcountry villages to call someone Mwalimu, Teacher, is to demonstrate great honour.  It's a respect for learning, - but for that learning personified in one human being. Or is it, here, respect for an access to money, a steady mealticket, a good gig?

It's not that I begrudge them their moments of glory, but it does leave me uneasy.  Uneasy that any society pays such inordinate respect as to bow to anyone. Especially to a sweet but spotty 17 year old.  I worked for four years in Brussels, administrative centre of the European Community.  For me it was a heady time, working in multicultural, multilingual, multitalented teams. Partying to salsa before it had reached Manchester, fado or toasting with brennevin. Everyone you bumped into was an expert on something - rocket technology, human rights in Albania, EU trade negotations in bananas and coffee.  But I bumped into many, midcareer, for whom the magic had faded. Who would really rather be doing something very different, back home maybe. But who felt they couldn't give up the very generous salaries earned at that time in the Golden Cage.

I've heard, though don't know if its true, that Eton, the UK school for the global teenage elite, have found a way round this.  Keen to recruit the best teachers, enthusiastic and at their peak, they offer a generous salary package. And keen to help those no longer at their peak to move on to enticing pastures new, they guarantee to make up your next salary to its former level for the three years after you leave them. So, if you feel teaching is no longer for you, or if you want to try your hand at honing that novel, Eton will supplement your garret earnings to encourage you to take the step, away from a disgruntled classroom and golden handcuffs, leaving them free to recruit someone new.  It matters that individuals feel they can step away from roles which restrict.

It matters too, I believe, that we validate more than just the position of power.  My first job in Brussels was as an intern with the Quaker Council of European Affairs.  We sought to lobby in the European institutions and NATO, to advocate, to research and coordinate on issues of interest to European Quakers.  The previous representatives, Nick and Ena, had been in post when Leon Britten, a fellow Brit, had taken up his post as one of the UK's lofty Commissioners.  Many had been the invitations he had received to welcome him to Brussels, from lobbying groups, from big corporations, - and also one from the Quaker Council.  When eventually he worked his way down the list, he came for a simple soup and salad lunch at our Art Nouveau offices. They had an interesting conversation. And Nick and Ena were interested in him and his doings.  Towards the end of the meal, bewildered policitian, he asked, 'Is there any agenda you wanted to bring to my attention through the lunch?' 'No, no, we just wanted to welcome you to Brussels. To make contact, to help you to feel at home.'  Naive, would say the corporate lobbyists.  But Leon Britten, so the story goes, really appreciated it.  Said this was the first time this had happened to him.  Human contact, valuing the individual, valuing more of them and their potential than the current, transitory, position.

I really understand the allure and attraction of a steady, generous income. Of basking in positve regard from your community.  But it worries me how this could unduly influence the choices our young interns will make next.  If all of Kenya is your oyster, but some choices are so endorsed by the community, will the Brightest and the Best devote their energies to the trickiest and most intractable issues in this society, as the next generation of social workers, community leaders and teachers?  What courage would it take to step aside and opt for something less well regarded?  In UK we call it the rainshadow effect of the City. That highly numerate or scientific graduates opt in their thousands for the well-paid financial markets, rather than the alternative options using their specialist skills, - engineering, biotechnology, academic research, teaching.  People have to be free to make their own choices. But I, as a minority of one, will be talking up the benefit to the community of those who coach, who inspire, who pick up the vulnerable, dust them down and set them back on their feet, who 'send the lift back down' as they say in France. Not to coerce or cajole, but just to articulate alternatives, and to show that different individuals in society bow in respect to different professions - the choice is yours.

Change for Beginners, level 1

I was too bewildered to blog  - or indeed to do much more than grunt - when we first arrived in Kenya, but it was then that my impressions were most vivid.  Now 18 months in-country, I have just reread the letters I sent to friends in UK just after my arrival.  This is some of the first one, one month after I and the children had joined D, who'd already been here for some six months.
..............................................................

I suppose the thing about change is that it isn't phased, - Change for Beginners, level 1. This first month here has been demanding beyond. Partly linked to the start of water and power rationning the week we arrived and to the range of things to coordinate. But also linked to pent up needs from staff who had been waiting for me to arrive for the six months when D was here alone, and to the range of definitive answers creating precedents which people want, ideally now. On one hand I so understand it: people want economic security for their families, they want a clearcut yes that they can continue working for you, with a range of additional benefits. And in the mean time they need me to get them an electric ring (for lunch), a large thermos (for drinks for guards), a large alumninium ladder (to cut the branches shorting the electric fence), a set of overalls (extra large) and welly boots (size 10) – for gardener, 10kg of ugali (maize flour for lunches), 2kg of sugar (for tea), and so on.

So my first week was full of interesting little expeditions to find alumninum ladders, - so different from what one might be doing as a tourist, but a means to meet other bewildered expat wives on similar errands. Life starts so early here, so by 730 am people have already collared me to explain about the situation for school fees for their children and to request a loan, or the latest emergency needing sorting has happened. Really not a time of day when I’m at my best. Theoretically I know I just need to get organised and to manage the situation better, with an office hour when I have had a cup of coffee. Maybe two cups of coffee, extra strong.  But in practice its difficult, and there aren’t clearcut right answers. It feels like being the parents of hoardes of rather demanding teenagers, who want yes answers now to things which stretch your boundaries a long way.


So at present, because of the severe drought, we have power rationning 3 days/week – no electricity between 6am and 6pm. Though our days are preset, they do move without notice. There's no water at the house without water tankers, which need coordinating. And last week 'our' tanker got impounded by the City Council for 3 days though it did deliver a few hours after everything ran out. Plus the day when there were several very loud explosions in the garden, which I and L thought were gunfire and ran to barricade selves and children in the secure area. It turned out that one overhead power cable had touched another one running over our garden, creating a fireball. Big bangs, and shorted power for the road on a day when we had it. Sorted surprisingly quickly but very scary at the time.

And again we are very fortunate. We can afford water and it tends to arrive. L, our housekeeper, has not had mains water at home for 7 months. But what too is difficult is trying to manage demand for the water. We got a small tanker load last Monday and already, a week hence, we are nearly out. We have been flushing only when necessary, having only short showers, and I think CAN’T be using that much – and yet I so get that there are the families of L, R the gardener and the 3 guards who are also, I imagine, living from smuggled jerrycans of this water too. And I don’t want to be the employer who says ‘You can’t use the water we are fortunate enough to have.’ But I do want to say 'Only in moderation and for heaven’s sake we can’t get through 500 litres in a week!’

Life was certainly much easier doing this kind of thing just as a volunteer in Madagascar, rather than with a beautiful house and other peoples expectations. I felt much more positive after meeting the VSOs who do all the things against which I was warned fervently at the terrifying security briefing, unscathed.

So much of life isn’t about certainty.  I realise how much I depend on my friends to help me find my way when uncertain. Here right answers are hard to come by, just less wrong answers.  And one month in is very soon to meet proper friends to help talk through the issues and guide the way.

Much love to you and yours,   Catrin

Street names and structures

I had thought I was fairly at ease with organically developping, just busk-it situations, but 18 months in Kenya has shown me my GANTT chart project-plan, structure-bound shadow side. 

Filling in the employment forms at BigCorporate I was startled by the last section.  Please draw a map of how to get to your current address and to your permanent address in your village. Please include directions from Nairobi, and local landmarks.  Well, though not a great map drawer, I was ok with the Nairobi one. But decisions galore for the UK address - should I start at Heathrow airport, or at Welwyn Garden City train station?  Was this testing my visiospatial ability (as in a recruitment test) or was this so the security team could find me if I ran off with the office printer?  The latter I realised. But in this country largely without streetnames, you do need a personalised map to find someone again.

Picking SecondBorn up from a playdate some 30 minutes drive and at least 10 miles away through highly residential areas, I asked the hosting nanny where to go.  'Well, there isn't a street name, but basically you drive straight on from here on till you find the acacia tree, and then you turn right.'  Aaargggh, will I ever clasp SecondBorn to my bosum again? 

Friends give directions spliced through with potentially moveable instructions: 'Then you turn left at the house with diamonds on the gate. You know, just after the duka selling rhubarb.  You follow the road down the hill through the coffee plantation, and then turn where the matatus are being washed.'   My early days here were full of chatter-brain thoughts... what if all the rhubarb has been sold.... what if the matatus don't need washing today... and now I have settled into a more laid-back Kenyan 'unknowing', try it and see, coupled with a new wild U turn in my driving technique.

And 'Follow that taxi' isn't the useful catch-all it is in the films.  Many are the times that visiting friends have leapt into a taxi at the airport, and then had to phone for directions by installments as the taxidriver drove to the end of his mental map.  A bit like an airtraffic controller, talking in a difficult landing, one has the sense of visitors circling, getting closer, 10 minute gap by 10 minute gap, until at last they stagger in, scared and harrassed-looking.

It's not just for the foreigners that these things matter.  My mate K who helps out at two local remand and children's homes regularly returns with bloodfreezing stories of children lost and found.  Of pre-verbal children who've been lost and don't know their way home.  The homes don't have the money to advertise the child's location, so parents may search for several weeks till they find their child again.  And, sadder still, of other children who've been abandonned.  The dire impact of lack of - or poorly publicised - formal social security structures.  Another school mum who helps out at the local school describes the pressures on the kindly headteacher. 'I've got to find somewhere for this child to stay.  An orphan, arrived at school, but with nowhere to stay the night.'  And also the untold stories, of those families, themselves on minimal incomes, who scoop up a child in extremis and add her to their own brood. No fanfares, no fostering allowance, no forms filled in, but impressive, loving, long-term kindness.

Crossing Waijaki Way, the hell-for-leather Topgear dual carriageway is always taking your life in your hands.  To get to our local shops you have to accelerate down the slip road (avoiding three matatus stopped dead on the sliproad), and immediately cross three lanes of fast speeding traffic, to take the next right sliproad off, up a hill, doing a U turn to join the speeding fast lane of traffic in the other direction.  For one week last year there was a family, mother and five year old child, living in the corner of the right hand sliproad off the dual carriageway.  They sat crouched on the road, where anyone could hit them, on the passenger side for the oncoming cars, so a passing driver couldn't even slip them some money.  In the UK, seeing anyone doing that, let alone with a small child, I'd have phoned emergency social services.  And here? Well here I passed some money to a friend's housekeeper who walked that way twice daily, to pass on.  Hardly the same level of support.

Here there's rarely someone to reliably refer things on to. Uncover a problem and its all yours, till solved.  I was chatting to a Kenyan friend recently who works in education.  He described children phoning him regularly at midnight to tell him their problems and difficulties.  'I do my best, I try to help, but in the end I have to focus on the things which are happening when they're in my care.  The rest, well I could spend all my time on this alone.'  A loyal, dutiful Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.
And then there are the policies which MEAN well, which seek to do good in this land without reliable computerised systems, but which don't seem to get their focus quite right.  BigCorporate has an employment policy which blocks staff from relationships with or marriage to another staff member.  It's ostensibly to prevent collusion or fraud, - but is near impossible to enforce I'd guess. Friends talk of partners who are married, who have children together, but arrive at work separately and use different surnames, to maintain the single fiction.  Surely more risky to have policies under which many people have something minor to hide, than to incentivise honest openness, and to monitor behaviour?

I've been trying to open a business bank account, and again, the banks' attempts to keep their funds squeaky clean are tortuous.  One bank, - which insists on a major balance kept in the account and refuses overdrafts - insists on an introduction from another business account holder at that branch.  Surely if I were a pirate or a money launderer, this wouldn't really be a problem, I'd guess I'd have a money launderer friend who would help out.  But as a relatively upstanding foreigner, with bank accounts here and in UK, but who doesn't really want to use school mum friends to underwrite a business account, well no, nothing doing.  You can't use the funds in account 1 to guarantee account 2, you have to have a letter from an account holder.  Hard to see how this protects anyone, but there we are.

To here's to street signs and social workers, credit checks and rhubarb sellers.... and to those exemplary Kenyans, who go out of their way to help others, in the absence of the labour saving tools and formal state-sponsored support structures we have in the West.

On a Rant

Some days just don't go well.  Rather than moaning (much), here are my list for new inventions/training programmes needed to dramatically enhance the quality of life of a minority of one.

1. Tougher eggboxes.  Ideally made of cardboard.  We live on a hill, on a road with speedbumps (at least 20) and potholes (countless).  Every third box of eggs is shattered before it makes it through the door.  And our chickens are frequently broody and so home production is sporadic.

2.  Carpark attendants who tell you before you queue and go through the major 10 minute security check/bomb check that the carpark is full.  Full carparks here mean doubleparked everywhere, nightmares to inch through. But the bomb-checking-guards are very conscious of their status 'Its not my job to tell you there isn't any room' they've told me more than once (including today).

3. Valuing regulars.  Private functions trump everything here.  Today we arrived 20 minutes early for our tennis lesson, - after 30 minutes drive in full sun - to find that a wedding do is being held there too. Fine.  But all the parking for miles around is either taken (in the tennis club) or prebooked for them (elsewhere).  Hard, in tennis shorts, to convince anyone you're going to a wedding. Had to cancel the lesson in the end.  It happens too in my regular coffee haunt.  Room for all for 50% of the time, until there's a corporate function, when, without warning, regulars are begrudgingly allocated a tiny bench in full sun, being blasted by the jargon from the Audi Sellers Africa Convention or whatever.  I understand I'm not always flavour of the month, but why not put up a notice a week in advance, so we can plan ahead.  Why not PRETEND you care for those tired old boring faces who pay the monthly standing orders?

4.  Parking attendants who (I sense a theme here) 'help' you park by standing in the space you are trying to reverse into, in your blind spot, making wheel turning gesticulations to encourage you.  This one makes me see red. I know they're TRYING to be helpful.  It feels partly as if they're saying 'Oh the little woman doesn't know which way to turn her wheel.' They do do it for everyone.  It seems to just be me that it infuriates. 

Of course, because they don't have driving licences themselves, they are also wildly overenthusiastic in the size of the parking places into which they think you can fit a family car. And when you demur, they just do the wheel turning motions all the more, as if your hesitancy is just scratching your head trying to remember, 'Now do I turn the wheel left or right to get in there...'  Shameful admission, I have, in rage, shouted 'Have you GOT a driving licence?' at one bumptious young man, probably day one in the job, and keen to be very, very helpful, unfettered by reality.

5. Thinking for others, putting yourself in someone else's shoes.  For me it's a basic and key skill in driving.  'Is that car trying to pull out? Let's pull over to give them room.' 
'If I park here, will the others be able to get out?' 
'If I stop here, in the middle of the road, how will the other cars behind me get round me? Might there be somewhere I could stop that won't inconvenience them?'

6. Taking turns.  Watching German driving lessons, learners learn to filter in, first a car from the left, then a car from the right, one at a time.  I should find a German friend to share driving prejudices here.  But in Kenya the rules are:
'Watch the nose of the car, do what you like. Do what works for you.  Push right in.  Size is power. If you have bullbars and a GK government numberplate, you rule the road.  Block the three lanes of traffic who have just stopped to kindly make way for you. Stop right on the sliproad onto the 50 mph dual carriageway to let out your passengers. Take your time. Don't use mirrors or switch off the indicator which is giving a wholly misleading impression of your next move.  Who dares wins.'

Here's to calmer driving conditions tomorrow.

PTA Difference

Today was the meeting of the school Parent Teacher Association where we decided which charities we'd be allocating money to this year. And as we each presented the projects from our year group's charities, the difference in material circumstances between UK normality & Kenya became so visible.

The children's home 5 minutes down the road, visited by my mate K today. It's the dry season, and their well is exhausted. They are spending money they would have used for food to buy water at present.  Please could we help deepen their well?

The project run by a mum at the school, an eye doctor, to offer eye tests to 200 Nairobi streetchildren, and then provide probably up to 25% with glasses, made from frames/lenses donated by the school and community.

The local school opposite the children's school.  540 primary aged children and 7 teachers, two of whom are the Head and her Deputy. A third of the children are orphans.  We pass these children coming to school and walking home each day.  We exchange greetings, but our lives are so different.  I remember once opening the boot to our car as a group of tots walked past. I'd just done a grocery shop, not much, two carrier bags full of vegetables.  Carrots, potatoes, onions, bananas - locally grown vegetables - overflowing.  The children crowded round, open mouthed. 'Look, look, look.  Look at all the food she's got there.'  Beyond their wildest imaginings that one person, one family, could buy that much food at one time, could have enough surplus in the kitty to buy more than they need for one day.   Chastening.  Last year our school changed the uniform and some mums delivered cast-off uniforms and outgrown shoes to them.  Today they reported back on the looks of pure delight on the faces of those children - orphans first, then the rest - who received a new hand-me-down set of clothes.  We're planning a welly boot and umbrella collection for them before the rainy season.

Kamili, the mental health outreach charity, set up by a mate and fellow school mum.  Mental health is nowhere near the top of the government's health priorities, yet the need is dire.  Some clients walk from Lake Victoria, some 150 miles away, for the monthly clinic and medication.  The story of one woman, both of whose brothers were schizophrenic. Untreated schizophrenics before the advent of Kamili, wearing her down, regularly throwing hard-earned food and clothes into the cesspit.  And now, one year on, how her brothers, with access to medication, can dig the shamba, even earn some money.  And how the woman herself has blossomed in relief.

A second children's home, with which SecondBorn's class was twinned last year.  A group of us had given money each month to help meet the food bill. A Friend from our Quaker meeting in UK had sent them £60, which had paid for chemotherapy for a child with cancer.  Their dilemma then, how could they take the money meant for food for all to pay for medical treatment for one?  The home sent their apologies today. They hadn't managed to put together a project plan yet, they were knocked for six that the child who had had cancer is ailing again.  Oh, the dreadful hand to mouthness of it all.

Even the KSPCA has more serious issues here. Yes, we'll be funding food and shelter for 10 stray dogs for a month. But why does it matter here? Not just because life as a stray dog is no fun for the dog, but also because scavenging dogs spread disease. The stray dogs in Ongata Rongai, 30 minutes drive away on Nairobi's outskirts, have rabies. And scavenging dogs, whether rabid or not, are more likely to bite passing children, spreading other diseases too.

And the hard choices. We, a wealthy school, are in many cases the lender of last resort, the national clearing bank which could underwrite a major project.  Is it better to fund one hearing aid for a profoundly deaf child, so that they can go to school, or with the same money, to fund glasses for 50 streetchildren?  Who else would fund the hearing aid? Yet think of the benefit for 50 children.

So, if we have children, if our children are clothed, fed, have access to water, have a parent alive; if they have the glasses they need, or access to healthcare when in distress, well then, by the standards of the majority of the world, we have everything to be grateful for, and much that we owe to others less fortunate.