Our Goals for 2009

From Baba Mzungu

As regular readers of this blog already know, we have several projects just waiting to be started up, but with the food crisis gathering pace in Kenya, I have had to juggle the priorities about a bit.

We have our plot just outside Kisii, a particularly fertile corner of Kenya, which is doing nothing worthwhile at the moment. We are going to start our River Cottage project here.

Our priority at the moment must be to produce food. With luck, we will be able to produce a surplus which can be sold.

We have a band of kids who are more than willing to work, but as most are 9 to 12 years old, and the soil is never really dry as it rains all year round in Kisii, I can just imagine the state they will be in after a short while, digging and preparing the soil for planting - filthy!

So, we need a means of letting them clean off afterwards. Needless to say, there is no tap water at the plot and the river at the edge of the plot is down a 1:5 path, so carrying up enough water to wash of half a dozen muddy kids would be a big effort.

So, we need water collection off the roof of the existing hut and anywhere else we can find. Then, behind the hut we can build a simple shower with bamboo screens.

All this can be done at a minimal cost, and falls in quite nicely with another project title, Scrapheap Challenge.

There is a UK charity in Kisii who gives out gardening tools to "worthy causes". I just hope that an orphanage trying to grow its own food will be considered a worthy cause!

Food Crisis in Kenya Pt. II

Courtesy of Daily Nation 12/1/09

Kenya to declare food emergency

Here we go again!!

The BBC reports that the Kenyan Government is to declare a national emergency due to drought.

President Mwai Kibaki's government warned that nearly 10 million people - more than a quarter of the population - were at risk from food shortages.

But even where food is in reasonable supply, prices have already shot through the roof during the past couple of months and we are struggling to feed our kids, despite the fact that Kisii is situated in one of the most fertile areas of Kenya, supply and demand, I suppose.

Food shortages are believed to be caused also by suppliers hoarding, forcing the prices up - some people are willing to make a quick buck out of other people's suffering - not just in Kenya, but the world over.

We need help to buy food and also to get the River Cottage Kenya farm up and running. I am sure that we could be self-sufficient by this time next year with a little help.

Can you help us? Do you know someone who can?

Shifting target? Or just expanding?

This was originally posted on my other blog, but as it relates to KCIS work, I have copied it here:

I have been approached by a businessman in Cameroon to shift the malaria-control project to Cameroon. He reckons that he could find financial backing for the project, and that is tempting.

But I can't do that. My loyalty is with Kenya. Kenya is my love, my mistress. Kenya is my second home. So, when the project gets off the ground, it has to be in Kenya.

But, that is not to say that when it is established and I have proven to myself that we are on the right track, I will not expand to Cameroon [or Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi ...]

I am a bi-lingual English/French speaker, so communication will not a problem in Cameroon, and I am not against helping Cameroonians (is that right?) or any other people, wherever they are, but they have to accept that Kenya takes priority.

Or am I looking at the problem with blinkers?

Volunteers

After the resounding success of Amy's visit last year to Twiga Children's Home, Kisii, we are happy to see that we are receiving enquiries for this Summer - two, so far.
It is so good for the children to meet people from other countries and cultures, to help them to speak English, and just generally see new faces.

Frustration

I may have decided that 2009 is going to be THE year for KCIS, but it hasn't started well.

My plan was to visit Kenya at the beginning of this year, and had set the departure date at 6th January.

It is now the 8th, and I am still in a cold, wet, foggy UK, and the prospects of travelling to Kenya are not good in the short term.

This has been brought about by the economic downturn/the UK Government totally trashing the UK economy [delete, one, depending upon your point of view], which caused my son (he with 5 dependent children) to lose his job, just before Christmas.

So, I have had to bail him out with money that had been put aside for my trip.

On top of this, work has been a bit slow for me too, so cash flow is almost stagnant.

Not a good start to the year, but I am still feeling positive. After all, it is only the 8th January. We still have 357 days for things to go right!

This Is Our Year

2009 is going to be the year that KCIS makes a difference.

No, we haven't received a large legacy, nor have we been offered financial support from a deep-pocketed benefactor (not that we need a lot of money to make a difference).

But I have decided that 2009 is going to be our year. I have been working on the theory of our projects for nearly a year now, so it is about time I out them into practice.

So, what is it that we are trying t achieve?

We are not trying to change the world, but, we do want to help to reduce the incidence of malaria, we do want to find ways of increasing crop yield, we do want to show that water can be purified without expensive equipment or chemicals.

And I am pretty sure we can do it - in such a way that rural communities can benefit without costing the earth.

[NB - a farm worker earns about $1 a day. We want to offer the above at a cost that these people can afford.]

To make all this happen, we need funding. We are not begging for money, although if someone out there wants to bankroll us, we will not refuse. We have set up a business based in Kenya, that, if successful, will fund our projects, or at least, get them moving. Once we can show that our projects work, then maybe people will take us seriously.