Uganda Trip

I am very happy to mention that I was in Uganda with Nourish International in conjunction with the Full Belly Project from 23rd May to 31st May 2007.

When I boarded the bus to go to meet fellow Spring ‘07 Starting Bloc fellow, Joel T. of Nourish International, the 14 hour ride on a dusty inter-country highway was least on my mind. I was thoroughly excited to be seeing more of Kenya and Uganda, which would let me be a more engaged East African citizen as well as a better representative of territory which i have actually visited.In retrospect, I realize that the uncertainty of public transportation pales in comparison to the learning that being on the road affords you each time you set off. I certainly feel that my time in Kenya and Uganda enriched me thoroughly.

The meeting with Joel arose from a blog conversation we began soon after the Spring 2007 Starting Bloc Conference where we found a shared interest in sustainable development in Africa. I was headed to Kenya to pursue a summer internship with a girls’ rehabilitation centre and he was putting the finishing touches on a Nourish International/ Full Belly Project trip to Iganga in Uganda. From an early meeting on the outskirts of Kampala, the lead co-ordinators of the project sought to teach and share about the technology and the work ahead of them for the summer. I began to appreciate this unique partnership that had brought a non-profit technology firm to work closely with a growing student organization in Uganda.

“The Full Belly Project 501(c)(3) is a non-profit organization that designs and delivers simple agricultural machines to people in developing countries around the world. This project teaches people how to build hand-operated machines with common materials. Our material of choice for sheller parts is concrete because it is inexpensive, widely available, easy to work with and has a very long service life. ” reads a portion of the FBP website.

 

This organization has come a long way from the basic Universal Nut Sheller of Jock Brandis, and over the last three years, this organization remains committed to the idea that machines for sustainable agricultural development are within reach. I remember hearing of youth projects that potentially worked to solve a farm problem, but the efforts of these people were often curtailed by lack of finances. I am very excited that this group is planning to help increase the productivity of the nut shelling business and transform the communities where peanut shelling takes place.The Universal Nut Sheller is a machine that Jock Brandis invented to remove the husks from nut -based products and is a great contribution to the new wave of open source technology which is the new frontier in fighting global poverty. The universal nut sheller, as the name suggests is a is one machine which the Full Belly Project is developing for post production processing of produce with removable husks at the grassroots level.

The Full Belly Project project on the Full Belly project piqued my curiosity.

• hand-operated

If you have ever lived in a developing country you know that there is hardly any money to buy a gallon of diesel to run a machine. This bespeaks the fact that most machines I grew up observing had a fuel tank somewhere that never got full, and you got sent on errands every other day that involved going to the petrol station for a jerry-can of diesel. The sheller is hand operated and easy to learn and use.

• inexpensive

If you do not need to pay for this, it brings in more money. If you need to pay for it, I would love to know how much, relative to the income levels of the people in the village, this device costs, and whether there is any way to offset these costs through local rotating credit schemes. The fact that the machine is not a handout ensures that production will always be sustained by proceeds from sales, which happens in a functioning market. This was the key sustainability selling point, and the presence of a local production facility enhances the price reduction.

• widely available

How easily available is this device. Can I go to a hardware store and order it? Are there distributors willing to stock the product and keep the price low. I guess I have to ask these questions somewhere. How are people getting to know about it. Is there an indigenous radio station that it would be cheap to advertise the device or community meetings to introduce the product to the community? All these questions began to be answered as the production facility was first built then sales of the machines began.

• easy to work with

I think that the bulk of the easy to work with category deals with language instructions, use by people with disabilities and who trains them. If I had a wish I would dream of a machine that did not involve flying in a team of experts to teach. I believe that the adaptability of the nut sheller is dependent on training of trainers and implementing a system where the trainers can receive remote education by extension. Indeed, although the machine’s fibreglass moulds were shipped in, the rest of the production was from local materials. Currently, there are efforts to try and make the moulds out of readily available plastic and further reduce the cost of the finished product.

Visit
For the short time that I was in Iganga and in the greater Uganda region, I received a warm welcome from the whole team, and i thank the group for enfolding me in the heart of student-led sustainable development, the initiatives of college students at their prime, supported by organizations which believe in their ideas.The group was composed of students from UNC, Duke and ECU who spent six weeks in Uganda. We had several decades worth of work experience and a number of college grads amongst us, as well as quite some enthusiasm. It was a rather large group and team dynamics repeatedly got tested on every aspect of the project. I had not been part of such a trip before and it was clear that there lay another challenge in ensuring that people worked equally on all aspects of the project.

We stayed at the Red Chili Inn in Kampala, which is a backpacker outpost in Kampala. I learned a whole lot about the people leading the project and their commitment to from evenings spent over Ugandan staple ‘matoke‘ and conversations on work and other interests in the group. When we left the city, we took a ‘boda boda‘ (small vans used for public transportation) together to Iganga and I stayed at the Najja Complex, a town lodge owned by our local contact family in the town, with the group for three days. Iganga is a major truck stop to the interior of Uganda and the main feature about the center was its main street, which was part of the major highway network.

The living there was new to the group and took many of the inconveniences of living in rural Uganda in good stride. I was reluctant to return to Kenya, where my own work was beginning, and I plan to keep in touch with my contacts from the Uganda trip and get more involved in real projects on the ground.

Cheers
Sunshine

Images from the trip( Photographer: Ashley. Z)

Lights in their Community: A Collection of Interviews of Kenyan women

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
Hellen Keller

In a country such as Kenya, where the majority of the women are illiterate or semi-illiterate and where a mere handful complete school, there are a disturbing array of problems facing the women in our homes and communities. The main thought across the country is survival, and undoubtedly the reason why so many pairs of feet find themselves walking to market at the crack of dawn. Often, the few who are educated fail to connect with their sisters who are not. We may blame busy schedules and, in my case, geographical distance, however, while we are away, there are unique sisters back home holding the country together by their might and determination to survive. This project is intended to preserve their stories and share them with women overseas and at home to honor their resilience and ensure that we never forget their sacrifices.

This past summer, I was trained as a web developer and acquired a broad array of experience in web development and in particular, multimedia applications. During the training, I worked on sponsored projects to document the renovation of a landmark building on campus, partnered with another student to learn how to produce quality video and other multimedia presentations. Thrilled with my new found skills, I am eager to combine them with my interest in urban studies and document women in the communities I grew up in back home. I have a few disposable cameras and a notebook or two to start off this project. I hope to meet more women and share their stories as I travel in East Africa.

I heard about the tireless work that women in indigenous communities are doing in Kenya and realized that more people need to hear about them to promote cultural understanding and community partnership at home and abroad. I was born at the tail end of the first United Nations’ Decade for Women, and reaped the benefits of the initial goals of equality, development and peace because more young women such as me went into start school. Growing up, there was little resistance if any to my education, as both my parents wholly encouraged me to attend school and excel at studies.

As the second generation of women in my family to pursue higher education, the barriers to progress such as early dropout by peers and the inequality as I moved to the next level became apparent to me. I watched as witty, intelligent girls, many without role models or supportive families fell behind and even left school entirely. Most recently, as I prepared to leave Kenya for further studies abroad, I visited many of my relatives’ homes and met many girls from surrounding villages who had no such plans to study, although they definitely held the ambition close to heart.

Amidst the women who wished me a safe journey in my home city, I saw the wives who were raising children whose fathers squandered whole salaries on illicit liquor and girls who were barely in their teens picked coffee all day while their brothers studied at school. I had mixed feelings about leaving my country with these contrasts. I realized, that the point of leaving was to marshal my resources into being an effective ambassador for Kenya and give the world an accurate picture of women and progress in African homes, such as mine. With this project, I hope to compel people on both sides of the camera to work to a better understanding of how to survive adversity through real stories show how these attempts engender lasting change in a community.

Follow my words and pictures as I share the women’s lives and their stories.

Twana Twitu(Our Children) :A Kenya Initiative

For those of you who have an investment dollar available, Nzeluni location in Kenya’s Mwingi South district of Kenya is home to Twana Twitu, a local organization started by Mwende Edozie and community members. Twana Twitu (our children) exists to empower orphans and their living communities through interventions such as medical, nutritional and psychosocial support, access to education and micro-enterprising development. So far Twana Twitu( Our Children) has enabled 224 orphaned children to both succeed in and contribute to the world.
The age of handouts to Africa is gone, and we are well into the era of sustainable enterprise to alleviate poverty. Twana Twitu project exists to enhance food security and reduce livelihood vulnerability in the drought-prone and marginalized Mwingi South district. Already, Twana Twitu has six separate self help initiatives on the ground, including chicken rearing, hybrid goat keeping, kiondo (basket) and mat weaving and pot making (ceramics).
I agree with the Twana Twitu’s commitment to creating location-appropriate income generating activities (IGAs), and facilitating low cost sustainable approaches to food, nutrition, agro-income security and sustainable agriculture. For a rural area in Kenya, a solution that effectively combats poverty and household vulnerability is an investment that will definitely create the lasting change that many similar communities wish to see in the future.

Updates on Kenya, Summer 2007

Greetings to regular readers and newcomers to projectsunshine. Thank you for your support so far, whether via email or comment on the site. I am back in Kenya for some time. There are so many exciting summer possibilities in Kenya, as we mount an election watch too. I look forward to sharing much more about my travels and work with you. Next week sees me travel to Uganda. Many of those who know my East African roots may not know that Uganda is the one part of this great East African Federation that I have not visited until now. I am visiting a project that I have blogged about previously, in which Full Belly Project and Nourish International are part of, helping smallholders get the most from their peanut product.
My warmest regards to you.
Sunshine.