MEP visit to Kenya
Fiona Hall MEP
In October, Practical Action took members of the European Parliament Linda McAvan and Fiona Hall to Kenya to see how European aid could be better spent on the people who need it most. Below, Fiona describes her trip.
Sunday 15 October
The queue for security at Heathrow's Terminal 4 was doubled up for several hundred yards outside the building. But I made it to the gate in time and so did Linda McAvan and all went smoothly to Nairobi where we were met by Adam from Practical Action and taken to our hotel. I slept soundly under a mosquito net despite the deafening croaking of bullfrogs outside.
Monday 16 October
Up early for the 07:00 domestic flight to Eldoret, flying over the fertile "White Highlands". Over breakfast we meet the Honourable Samuel Poghisio, MP for Kacheliba constituency in West Pokot and our host for the visit. On our drive north to Kitale, we pass dairy cows, bicycles carrying milk churns and swathes of maize awaiting threshing. After courtesy calls on the District Commissioner and the local Mayor, we move on to a very different part of Kitale - the Kipsongo squatter settlement.
The slum is inhabited by 3000 displaced pastoralists from the Turkana district, who moved to Kipsongo from the 1970s to escape drought and conflict. With support from Practical Action the people of Kipsongo had organised themselves to pump clean water into the slum and build toilets. The women were keen to develop income-generating schemes such as bead jewellery making, and were selling the vegetables they had grown so they could buy beads.
We drove north to Kapenguria, the district centre for West Pokot to meet the District Commissioner and Chairman of the County Council. We learn that 68% of the population of West Pokot live below the poverty line, rising to 82% in the north of the district. We were told it was a harsh area of steep hills and grazing lands, with little infrastructure, and where crops have failed in recent droughts, and soon we experienced this harsh reality for ourselves.
From Kapenguria, the dirt road twists precipitously to the Rift Valley bottom. At the border of Hon. Poghisio's constituency a stinger is laid across the track. This police check is a throw-back to when Kacheliba was the "forbidden valley", a border area of such insecurity that for some forty years it was ceded temporarily to Uganda and likewise 'off the map' in terms of infrastructure.
Dusk descends and from time to time a dikdik (mini antelope) is caught in the headlights. At Kenyao, Poghisio's car is waylaid by a group of singing women who have waited all day to meet their MP. They want help with their aloe business. They collect sap from aloe vera in the wild, a slow and painstaking process, and sell it to Somali traders. The price is very poor - 200 Kenyan shillings (€1.40) for 5 litres, even though this is a prized cosmetic ingredient. The women want to make their aloe sap collection more efficient and sustainable by establishing an aloe plantation, but the aloe seed is not germinating well because of a lack of water.
After Kenyao we suffer a puncture caused by an arrow-sharp fragment of wood and change the wheel by torchlight under the stars. The road deteriorates further as we cross a series of rock-strewn river beds, but at last we arrive at the mission lodge at Alale. Food has been cooked for us and we eat by electric light - solar powered.
Tuesday 17 October
Our first visit in Alale is to the half-completed district office. We are told how, in the months before the 1997 election, President Moi had visited Alale and been asked if he would create a special Alale district to get over the problem of the remoteness from Kapenguria. The President had agreed on condition that the Alale community build a district office to house the commissioner and his staff. At a huge cost in this poor area - one cow per household - the people of Alale had set to. But eleven years on the 28-room building remained empty.
Heading north out of Alale we pass a spot where surface limestone is quarried for cement. The sparkling white stone is broken up and loaded onto a 20 tonne truck. One truckful is 2 weeks' work for 10 people - for a single payment of 3000 Kenyan shillings, about €20. The stone is sold on the black market to a Ugandan cement maker over the border - the road is too bad to transport it south to Kenyan cement works.
We stop at a borehole, one of very few in the area. Herds of goats and donkeys wait to drink, but no cattle - they have been taken over to Uganda where there is better grazing, despite potential friction from other tribes. Young boys keep the animals under control.
At Nauyapong District Primary School we meet the lucky boys and girls who are in school. The school takes children from three pastoralist tribes in the area - the Karamajong, the Turkana and the Pokot - and has been a strong force in assimilating the three communities. In the three years up to 2001 the school had to close because of the security situation. But under a dynamic headmaster, the school had excellent results despite the difficulties it faced.
Children in uniform danced and sang for us, followed by girls in traditional costume with wide bead necklaces. Such necklaces are worn only by married women - these pre-pubescent girls had left school to be married off by their fathers, who after years of drought were desperate for the cows a husband would pay. I spoke to a girl of twelve carrying a baby. Early motherhood is not traditional in West Pokot - it is a recent phenomenon driven by the worsening environment. Waving pens the girls sang to us, "Take back your dowry cows! Now we have free education so I want to go to school!"
From Nauyapong School we drove back along the dirt road to the village of Nasal where the community had been waiting for us for several hours, the men under the shade of a spreading acacia tree, the women in a group apart.
Men and women in turn articulated the problems they were facing. Many of their cattle had been sent into Uganda because of the drought and were being stolen in frequent raids. The remaining cattle were sick and they had no access to veterinary medicine or advice. They had tried planting maize but the crop had failed because of the drought - they needed advice on drought-resistant crops and how best to plant them. They only had wild leaves to eat (a handful was thrown on the ground to show us) but some were poisonous unless boiled, and water was short - the nearest borehole 6km away.
After joining in the dancing and receiving traditional gifts (intricate bead necklaces for the women and stools for the men) we were taken to see the village, with its distinctive mud-roofed huts - these give much more protection than thatch from the fire-raising of passing raiders. Each wife has a separate hut, with built in mud bed platforms and fireplace. Two toddlers were fighting with sticks - lads are the same the world over. The women showed us how they laboriously ground corn by hand between two stones.
Wednesday 18 October
After many farewells at the Alale guest house we set off on the long journey back to Nairobi. Camels in twos and threes cross the sandy track. They are increasingly popular animals in West Pokot as they can survive drought better than cattle. It is not long before we suffer our first set back - the land cruiser's drive shaft hits a rock on the dry river bed and snaps. Being four wheel drive it manages to keep going, but as the track heads steeply uphill we find ourselves blocked by a jack-knifed articulated lorry. To either side lie jagged ravines of bare eroded rock. There appears to be no possible path around, but somehow, the combined manpower of a dozen cooperative local drivers and passengers succeeds in manhandling the other vehicles, even the limping Land Cruiser, around the obstacle.
We made it back to Eldoret in time for the afternoon plane to Nairobi.
Thursday 19 October
A day of meetings today. In the morning we visit the European Community Delegation Office, where tight security reminds us that Kenya has been the target of terrorist activity in the past. We meet the head of Delegation and some of his staff and talk about the next (10th) EDF (European Development Fund) for the period 2008-2013, the needs of drought-stricken rural areas, and the issue of corruption. In the afternoon we take part in a round-table discussion involving the EC delegation, a number of the Kenyan Government civil servants and representatives from lawyers and other civil society groups in northern Kenya.
The key issue under discussion is how to get resources into less favoured areas such as West Pokot and Turkana. Poghisio reminded the meeting that there was not one inch of tarred road nor one kilowatt of mains electricity anywhere in his constituency.
In the margins of the meeting we had some interesting one-to-one conversations. Lawyer Beatrice Askul told me about her ambition to become an MP - unheard of traditionally amongst the Turkana - while Samuel Poghisio spoke with a doctor about treatments for kala azar (viscera leishmaneosis), a disease of the spleen spread by sand flies. A scourge in West Polcot, kala azar is a disease largely neglected by western medicine. Poghisio wants the Kenyan government to register a generic treatment drug made in India and costing a quarter of even the subsidised price offered by the big pharmaceutical companies.
Friday 20 October
For our final day, a public holiday in Kenya (Kenyatta Day), we travel with representatives from PELUM (Participatory and Ecological Land Use Management) Association to meet some small-scale farmers near the town to Thika. PELUM is one of Practical Action's partners.
We first went to see how a group of local farmers have banded together to get a ripening chest for bananas, so that they can control the readiness of fruit for market. Then it's off to the organic farm of Grace and Boniface Muli. Here we are shown the wide range of crops being cultivated, from several varieties of spinach, to beans, bananas, maize and oranges.
The lushness and fertility of the small holding is in contrast to the dry land of the neighbour next door - Grace has been able to benefit from a micro credit scheme, which has enabled her to pipe water onto her land from a nearby canal, constructed by prisoners of war many years ago.
We are invited to a delicious lunch prepared by Grace and fellow members of a local farming group with food produced on the farm. They say goodbye to us in the traditional manner, with an extemporised song and dance, a warm farewell which was a characteristic end to a week in which we had experienced so much friendliness and hospitality.
Read Linda McAvan MEP's account of this trip
Photo gallery
View more photographs documenting Linda and Fiona's visit to Practical Action's project work.
For more information, please contact Adam Musgrave adam.musgrave@practicalaction.org.uk
Link: Fiona Hall's website
