Getting to know Kenya
A week with Kenya’s leading social innovators
Last week Jo and I got to visit the people and communities Just Peoples supports in Kenya, thanks to a generous travel grant we received. We were shocked, heartbroken and inspired in almost equal measure by what we learned along the way. From an urban slum in Nairobi to a Maasai village in the remotest part of the country, we met people born into severe environments doing brave and innovative work to improve the opportunities available to their communities. Ultimately we were in awe of their abilities to solve problems, and blown away by their kindness and humanity.
We kicked things off in Nairobi with a workshop with all our Kenyan project leaders, as well as two more from Tanzania and Uganda.
Our first site visit was with Beth who creates low-cost, quality water filters and provides them for free to people who drink dirty, contaminated water. She took us to her workshop and showed us how she makes the filters; it took about five minutes to make a filter that can purify 10 litres of water in about 20 minutes. We then visited people in the nearby homes who had previously received water filters, but when we got there the filters were gone. The people explained that their parents in their rural hometowns were drinking water much dirtier than in the city so they had given them the filters. Beth explained to the people that even though Nairobi’s water comes out clear from the tap, it’s highly contaminated and still needs filtering. Still work to be done. Even so, it was a good distribution method to get filters out into far away places that desperately need clean water.
A local family use Beth’s water filter in their store.
Beth then showed us her latest invention-in-the-making: a high-tech beast of a machine that creates water out of thin air. That’s right. It sucks in air and collects the condensation, and then filters it into drinking water. Beth’s prototype can filter 500 litres of clean water per day. When it’s ready it’ll be donated to a children’s hospital in the driest part of Kenya where they frequently have droughts and no drinking water. Refreshing stuff.
Beth stands in front of her water-creating machine, with a 500-litre tank of clean water on the left.
The following day Liz picked us up in a safari jeep and took us five hours out of Nairobi into Maasailand. Liz is a physiotherapist with Maasai roots who fights stigma against people with disabilities in Maasai villages where disabilities are seen as curses and disabled people are kept hidden away inside their homes. The two days we spent out there left us, and our driver, speechless. We initially met a group of women who gathered with their kids who all had varying disabilities, in a communal hut, so we could give out treated mosquito nets to protect their kids from the malaria outbreak they were facing. One grandmother had walked six hours with her grandson on her back to collect her two nets. When she received the 2kgs of cornflour, 2 kgs of rice, 5 kgs of sugar and 2 litres of oil that Liz had also brought her, she put it all in a bag on her head and walked six hours back home. The 10 other women had all travelled similar journeys to get there, and Jo and I wondered if the mission was worth the hassle. But Liz explained that the commitment the women showed by bringing their disabled children to receive protective nets is a positive sign that they’re starting to care for them, and they now feel confident and unashamed to be seen with them in public. And receiving food parcels at a meeting specifically for disabled people shows them that these kids are special and important and worthy. And that does so much to change perceptions of the children and lead to them becoming accepted members of society. We have so much to learn!
Liz (right) hands out mosquito nets and food parcels to Maasai women and their children who have disabilities.
This grandmother walked over 20km to get a mosquito net for her grandson.
Liz then took us to a remote village where we met a man in his 70s who had 10 wives (yes, ten) and no idea how many children he had - culturally Maasai people don’t count their children - but he estimated around 40. One of the man’s granddaughters, Anita, who was married at age 12, was getting treatment for her daughter Esther who had delayed growth milestones. I thought Esther was 6 months old, but she was actually 3 years old. Liz explained to us that Anita, like all girls in the village, had had female genital mutilation (FGM) as is the custom when she was nine years old. Undergoing FGM then being pregnant at age 12 before her body was fully ready, led to complications at birth which caused her baby to have delayed growth milestones.
Sadly this isn’t an isolated case. When a girl reaches puberty she goes through FGM to prepare her for marriage, where she’s exchanged for goats and cows as her bride price. Child marriage leads to early pregnancies and girl motherhood, which is a cause of some disabilities in infants. School is out of the question for most girls as her value lies in her dowry and the number of children she bears for her husband. A man’s status depends on his owning a lot of livestock, children and wives. Liz told us that girls are ‘beaded’ when they’ve been promised to a man, so seeing a four-year-old girl running around with beads on her wrists and ankles, knowing what her destiny holds, left a sinking feeling in our stomachs.
Liz discusses sending girl children to school with a teenager mother and her grandfather.
Our driver Kaleb is also Maasai, but from a region that has embraced education more and is therefore more progressive. Kaleb had no idea such conservative villages still existed and he engaged with the elderly man to convince him to let the girls go to school - but it was a little frustrating, as a girl’s role as child bearer is deeply entrenched and a powerful man’s mind wont be changed on the spot.
After sensitive discussions we distributed the mosquito nets and left.
The next homestead wasn’t any easier. Benji is a five-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, and is Liz’s little hero. Two months ago she visited him and he was healthy, doing well and alert. But this time he looked frail and weak, lying completely still on a cardboard box on the ground. I had to look away because it physically hurt to see a human being in that condition. Liz asked what happened to Benji and his parents said that he was refusing to eat. Liz asked them to bring her some goat’s milk and she fed it to Benji who eagerly drank it. Benji’s 17-year-old mother had just had her third child and Benji had moved down the priority list as a result, and given that disabilities are not well understood in his village, Benji didn’t receive the nourishment he needed. This time Kaleb spoke to Benji’s father and said this was no way to treat a child. Being a Maasai man, Benji’s father listened to him and even seemed to agree. Liz felt that the message got through and the family would start to feed Benji as often as he needs it, along with the other children. Changing behaviour and long-held beliefs is an arduous process, but Liz and her team will never give up on Benji and the others.
Liz feeds a child as his mother and sisters look on.
Family members gather to watch Liz work.
As foreigners Jo and I stood quietly in the background during these visits, learning as much as we could about the culture and people. But Kaleb was deeply affected by what he witnessed and became motivated to do something. As a Maasai man who’d made it in Nairobi, the other young men looked up to him. So later that night Kaleb met with other Maasai leaders in the region and discussed what they’d learnt. They organised a men’s conference to inform Maasai men about the importance of sending girls to school, delaying child marriage and managing the number of children. The conference will encourage men to support and empower women economically, to benefit the whole community, as women will invest in better healthcare and food. They’ll also explain that FGM is not only painful and traumaitising for girls, but can cause infection, disease and complicated pregnancies. Fortunately a fundraiser that Jo introduced to Liz two weeks ago had raised $1,300 for Liz to spend as she saw fit, so the men’s conference is already funded and scheduled for next month. They expect 300 Maasai men to attend.
Maasai leaders discuss the upcoming men’s conference.
The next morning we visited a school Liz partners with that has agreed to accept children with disabilities so the other kids can become familiar with them and they can begin to integrate into society. The school has even provided a room for Liz to treat the children in. Hope is on its way!
Liz speaks to students at the school that now accepts children with disabilities.
The cook prepares ugali and beans for lunch for 120 students.
After a heavy but ultimately hopeful trip to Maasailand, we were ready for some light relief. And we got that with Charlot and Wesley, who are often affectionately referred to as Kenya’s Beyoncé and Jay-Z. They picked us up from Kisumu airport, and introduced us to Kenyan hip hop. Both successful social entrepreneurs in their own right, they’re a power couple with real presence. They took us to Charlot’s cook stove factory where she produces clean energy, safe cook stoves that replace the traditional open fire cooking method. Charlot told us how she was so nervous when she had her first ever Skype call with us as it was her first time speaking to potential funders from overseas. We instantly loved Charlot and her work so there was never a need to worry, but it was so cool to see how far she’s come since then. She’s now distributed over 10,000 cook stoves around Kenya, employing only single mothers who need an income to support their kids. She then took us to meet a saleswoman and cook stove users, and the evidence was clear: food is cooked faster and cheaper, children are much safer as the outside of the stove doesn’t get hot, and the homes get much less smokey. When we entered a village house where a woman was cooking with a traditional stove, my eyes immediately started stinging and my lungs were burning. The whole house tasted like fire and I couldn’t believe the family were going to sleep there. We quickly understood how essential Charlot’s stoves are.
Christey and Jo with Charlot (bottom) and her team outside her cook stove factory.
Jo and Charlot chat with Millicent (centre), a cook stove saleswoman.
On a different note, at one of the houses we visited, we met Barack Obama! Born in 2008 in the hometown of the former president’s father, he’s one of many young boys from the region born that year with that famous name.
Barack Obama’s family now use Charlot’s cook stove inside, and the traditional open fire (on the right) when cooking outside.
Later that day Beyoncé and Jay-Z dropped us off to Akinyi’s office where we met Teresa, the seamstress who empowers women through teaching them how to sew. Akinyi then provides the women with sewing machines that Just Peoples’ supporters fund, as well as business training, and they start their own businesses. The women receive the sewing machines as loans and when they pay them back, the next machine is provided for another trained woman. Akinyi took us to see the newly self-employed seamstresses at work and as they juggled breastfeeding, talking to clients and sewing, they seemed genuinely happy. We also visited the nearby fish market, where we’d been told the women previously earned a living by selling sex in exchange for fish to feed their families. The joy of their new safe and profitable livelihoods was apparent. We flew back to Nairobi that night and remembered the pride we saw in Teresa’s eyes as her trainees succeeded, and in the eyes of the seamstresses themselves, who knew they’d made it.
Self-employed women hard at work.
Teresa (centre) couldn’t be happier about the success of the women she trained.
The next day we had our last project visit and charismatic Douglas didn’t disappoint. The Mathare slum is home to more than 500,000 families and there’s no sewerage or running water. Douglas took us around and showed us the house he was born in, made of mud with cardboard windows. We saw people queuing for the only public water source with 20 litre containers coated in mold. Kids, chickens and dogs ran around while people got their hair braided, sold vegetables and second-hand phones, hand-washed their clothes, or just sat down. The only toilets in the whole place are in the centre that Douglas built for local children who need a safe space to be. Douglas’s learning centre is an oasis in Mathare, a clean, colourful, spacious institute equipped with computers, books and Lego. His philosophy is to teach the kids to be creative, innovative problem solvers so that when they likely drop out of school to work, they’ll have learned skills for life that can get them through the toughest situations. Douglas had the same upbringing as his students and worked extremely hard to put himself through school so he could have a better life. When he got where he wanted to be, he went back to his neighbourhood to give opportunities to the next generation that he never had.
Douglas stands in front of the house he was born in.
Keen students create and learn with Lego.
Jo and I played Lego with the students and were impressed with how curious, skilled and engaged they all were. Comparing them to our own kids who also love Lego, it was clear that playing and learning in this way is an opportunity that every child deserves. As Douglas showed us the library he set up, we broke the good news that we’d found a funder for his project. He literally jumped in the air when we told him! It was the best feeling to be able to say that we can support him to buy educational STEM toys for the kids to fuel their interest in learning and inventing. With only 21 early childhood development schools in all of Kenya, kids from slum communities barely get a chance to get a basic education let alone learn about science and technology. Douglas said “global challenges need local solutions, and visa versa”. The vice versa part is so true; his students are trying to navigate a very difficult environment, and will be learning to create solutions to issues that affect all of us. Douglas is giving savvy kids the chance to become innovative problem solvers, and we’re excited!
The global leaders of tomorrow.
Jo and I left Kenya feeling a mix of awe, sadness and excitement. There are big problems that Kenyans face, and a long way to go before everyone is safe, healthy and educated, but wow, the people working to create opportunities - through water purification, behavioural change in tribal communities, clean energy, STEM education and job creation - are so innovative and talented that the standard of living for thousands of Kenyans is constantly being raised. It was a real honour to spend time with such great humans and see the impact their hard work is having on their communities, and it’s a real privilege to be a part of that journey.
Exhilarated, inspired, exhausted. Thanks for having us!