Uniting the Blind

Posted by: Helen

In the last post about my work here in Nairobi, I introduced Kenya Union of the Blind (KUB) and explained that despite my lovely colleagues, I was itching to get out of the office, meet our members and see our work on the ground.  The story continues at 7.45am on a Sunday morning in February...

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My phone is ringing. I stare at the phone wondering what day it is, and why an unknown number is calling me. I take a guess, and answer it. I've guessed right; it's my boss, Jackson, our CEO at Kenya Union of the Blind.

Helen? It is Jack. It is unfortunate that I didn't call you yesterday, but we are going to Embu. Today. You said you wanted to join a trip. Can you come?

And so it was that I found myself heading into the office before 9am on a Sunday, with 60-minutes notice.  Grumbling about poor communication and zero planning, and wondering where exactly Embu is, I sat on the matatu secretly pleased that after 8 months, I was finally joining a field trip. All I know so far is that we're visiting a branch, and distributing some materials about HIV/AIDS in Braille and Large Print but living in Kenya has prepared me to expect the following: delays, confusion, unexpected wonder, madness and a lack of regular mealtimes.  So, I’ve packed patience, tolerance, my camera, and a lunch.

 

KUB vehicle: ready for the off

I arrive at the KUB compound at 9.30 to find our logistics guy (and driver) Ken tinkering with the KUB vehicle.  He hands me an (unbearably sweet) tea and says we’re leaving in ten minutes.  And we do, to my shock.  We drive out along the Nairobi Eastern bypass.  Ken tells me here is where I should buy my land and build my house, close to the newly tarmacked road and opposite the airport land, This is where money can be made, he counsels.  I laugh and rebut the regular assumption that I will remain in Kenya, marry a Kenyan, and build a house; I’m having a great time.  It’s feels good to be leaving Nairobi in private transport, as the fields and houses rush past.


We are picking up our boss, Jackson, in his home town of Thika, a town on the rise thanks to its proximity to Nairobi, improved roads and large industrial areas.  We arrive at 10.30 and wait on a main road for a full hour, watching people walk by in their Sunday best.  I sneak a bit of my sandwich lunch. Jackson arrives, having mistaken our location when Ken called an hour ago.  They show me the compound of Thika School for the Blind as we leave town - Kenya’s leading school for the visually impaired, and the almer mata of many of my KUB colleagues.  We’re back on the Thika highway at 11.30am. 


The (New! Vastly Improved!) Thika Highway is a ‘Vision 2030 flagship project’ which means that it’s supposed to be a symbol of ‘Modern Kenya’.  I know it’s a little dull to bang on about roads, but it’s an ENORMOUS construction project spanning hundreds of miles, with eventually 4 lanes in either direction.  It’ll be the biggest road in East Africa, built to ease the epic jams.  They’re basically building the M1 so it means a lot to Kenyan business, and the economy.  And it is, inevitably, being built by a Chinese contractor (and yes I know my post on China in Africa is long overdue…).


Driving past paddy fields in a rice-growing district, past mango trees in fruit-basket county, we arrive in Embu at 1.30pm, and drive to the Naivas supermarket.  Jack and Ken pop in to get lunch while I sneak a bit more of my bread and cheese.  Then we sit in the car, on the side of the road outside the Naivas eating ground nuts, ‘cake’ (I wouldn’t call it that) and drinking ‘sodas’.  (Kenyan love fizzy drinks, I must have drunk more coke in Kenya than in the rest of my life combined.)


So where do we go now? I ask, To the branch, I’m told, and off we go.  The road is much worse here, and Ken has good fun careering across the road in search of tarmacked patches.  We’ve been driving for 30minutes outside Embu when I think, so our meeting is not IN Embu town then, huh?  I wonder where in Eastern Province I actually am?  Only now do I remember I have google maps on my fancy new phone and hit ‘My Location’.  We’ve driven past Embu and headed south.

 

We arrive 10 minutes later in the small town of Kiritiri, and pull up to the Baptist Church. About 30 local people have assembled in the two-roomed schoolhouse on the same compound. It’s 2.40pm, and they are ready and waiting.  I wonder when they were asked to gather.  Have they been waiting many hours?  When were we expected?  I suspect the Kenyan rules of ‘just come’ and ‘we will be there in some few hours’ have prevailed.  It’s vague and quite maddening compared to life back home, but it’s just the way it is here.

Here's the schoolhouse

We enter the tiny school room by ducking our heads and peering into the gloom.  Everyone is crammed onto little wooden benches in a room the size of my lounge, men, women and children. Hamjambo I say in greeting and many smile, some look up.  There are blind couples, partially sighted people, mothers of blind babies, blind teenagers and their families.  There are young children who guide older blind relatives.  There are ‘associate members’ who have physical disabilities and get around by leaning on a stick taller than they are.  But mostly the people are tiny, elderly and quiet.  I’ve rarely been around people who have quite so little. 


I meet the branch leader, Theresa, and am told we are here to open the new Mbera branch, a dream come true for these local people.  This friendly, smiling blind lady holds her white cane, and tells me that she has more than many.  Her job in Nairobi as a government telephone exchange operator provides a small pension in her retirement and she has bought land close by.  Her education gives her spoken English, confidence, manners and enough extra money to buy her white cane, the visible signal of her blindness. Most people here have none of those things.

Theresa and I

Jackson calls things to order and I squeeze onto the bench next to Theresa.  As expected, the meeting is mainly in Swahili, with shouting and singing, and all led by Jackson.  As usual, there are many introductions, and everyone loves to hear me say hello in Swahili. If visually impaired, people explain how and when they lost their sight.  The common mix of Swahili and English is called Sheng in Kenya, and I hear loud and clear: Nimeblind and Nimepartially blind (I have become blind, I have become partially blind).


The meeting moves into open discussion, and it soon becomes clear that most people are excited about the launch of this new branch in Mbera because they hope for big changes in their lives.  They ask for plots of land, for government benefits, for school fees and for Kenya to be ‘sensitised’ (be made aware) about the plight of the blind.  I know, and Jack knows, that in reality the KUB can do very little, but he promised to take their concerns to the board.  Without development professionals, a structure for winning and caring for big donors, and a well managed advocacy strategy, the KUB cannot hope to meet these expectations and in one year, with limited engagement, there’s only a pitiful amount I can do in my placement.


Now comes the distribution of HIV materials.  The KUB is a very handy organization for donors wishing to reach people that mainstream awareness campaign cannot touch.  Uniquely, we can reach a very marginalized group: the rural blind, and at the moment our major funders are interested in funding work to educate our members on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  With diseases like these, it’s in everyone’s benefit that the entire community know how to reduce their risk, what behaviors cause infection, how to get tested and how to care at home for someone who becomes very ill, so large print and Braille information are handed out on these subjects.  I’m not sure how many of the blind people here have ever learnt to read Braille, but they are delighted with this heavy gift.  Jackson accompanies the distribution with a short speech on HIV/AIDS awareness, Tunashida! he says (we have a problem) Tunashida, people reply, shaking their heads slowly and sadly.  He then announces that although sex is a gift from god, we must all use condoms.  And that was about it.
 

Everything you need to know about HIV and TB - in Braille.

As a bonus, The Bible Society of Kenya had given KUB some Braille Bibles to hand out, but due to the thick, bulky nature of Braille, this bestseller can only be bound book-by-book.  Realising we only had a glut of Mark and Romans, Jackson laughs nervously, We will spread the good news one book at a time!


The last part of the meeting is The Ken Show, and our Logistics Officer takes great delight in conducting the elections for the officials of this new branch.  He reminds everyone that in our Union you MUST be partially or totally blind to hold office.  To my great surprise, it seems that some people at the meeting genuinely aren’t sure if they are, and what they are, so Ken gives them a large print book and asks them to read out loud before ‘diagnosing’ based on their attempt.  I’m not sure if holding the book upside down means you’re blind or just illiterate but everyone seemed happy with this screening test.  Visually impaired Kenyans face real cynicism that blindness exists at all, because as an ‘invisible disability’ people could just pretend, in order to gather help, money, pity.


The process of nominating, seconding, voting, counting and declaring takes 90 minutes as Ken keeps the energy up through the elections of: Chairperson (Theresa, natch), Vice chairperson, Secretary, Vice Secretary, Treasurer, Vice Treasurer, Organising Secretary, Women’s Committee Leader and Youth Committee Leader. Phew.  I am now very hot, very thirsty, increasingly bored and with a totally numb backside after 2 and a half hours on this thin wooden bench.  Also I can’t imagine that the people squeezed into this room have regular opportunities to wash with clean water and soap, or so it seemed to me.

The Ken Show

As I watched hands rise into the air to vote again and again, I wondered what we could actually do for these new members forming a KUB branch.  I wanted to visit a branch to see the real people our organization exists to help, but now I’m here, I struggle to see how exactly we can help these members, and those in the other 40 branches who need so much.  Their challenges are just enormous.  And then it hit me.  These people are united.  On the wall in my office proudly hangs the KUB’s Vision, Mission and Values.  I’ve often parroted the phrase, ‘we exist to unite and empower our members’ without really seeing the power behind that unity.  These people have been brought together by the KUB and are united by their shared challenges.  Those with visual impairment in Kenya are ignored, abused, and seen to be cursed.  They are poor, uneducated, invisible.  But here in this smelly room there is hope, joy, laughter, friendship, access to information and an organization that unites them.  I now see how valuable that is; the KUB unites the blind, and that ain’t nothing.

I look across the room to the young mother with a baby, the doctors say he is blind. She’s definitely younger than me, and I wonder what happened when the child was diagnosed.  The vast majority of women you meet with disabled children are single mothers.  Disability is a curse and it’s the women who are blamed, what have YOU given birth to?  The women Dan and I meet through our work are those not willing to abandon or lock up their child, but want to seek help. Often the men disagree so they leave.  I doubt this woman knew anything about blindness until recently, but here she is making new friends and learning that he can grow up to be a strong and educated man.  She and I can hope for that, because KUB exists, it’s leaders are blind and it talk about blindness proudly, disability in not inability, nothing about us without us.  Leaders, members, united.  Kenya’s national motto is the same as its first president’s social policy: Harambee, Pull Together.  And with massive social challenges and an enormous lack of resources in Kenya, maybe pulling together is all that’s left.

Well that, and per diems.  Once again everyone queued up excitedly at the prospect of travel expenses / free money.  How many attendees just came for the money at the end?  Do they really believe in Unity or is that my ideal? 


After three long hours of sitting still, everyone started to leave and the level of energy rose dramatically.  There was a lot of excitement, unity, smiles.  People wanted to meet me, shook my hand and asked me questions.  They talked about their hopes for this new beginning, this new branch.  I like to think it wasn’t just because they all had money in their pockets.  But would it be bad if that were the case?

Happy members

 

Theresa was interviewed by the local radio, who covered the launch.

At close to 6pm, Ken, Jack and I pulled out of the church compound and headed back to Embu.  They wanted me to sit in the passenger seat, so that I could see the nini (the what) out of the windscreen.  The nini turned out to be the long, slow, sillouetted rise of Mount Kenya in all her glory with no clouds to cover her peak, Bastian: the highest point in Kenya.  There was also a kick-ass sunset.  By the time we’d left Embu it was properly dark, and the only clues we were back in mango country in mango season were the handful of fruit stalls still open on the side of the road.  Shall we?  says Jack, and Ken pulls in to a stall where the lady served us through the van window. Trying before buying, I slurped into the best mango of my life in the light thrown from our headlights.  Tasty mango juice ran through my fingers and onto the ground as I leant joyfully out of the window. Having inexplicably treated us both to our body weight in mango and watermelon, Jack announced the shopping stop over and we headed south down the Thika Highway.

Mt Kenya, to the right, do you see her?

Three hours later Ken has dropped me at our flat and I’m struggling up 5 flights of stairs in the dark with a watermelon and 10 mangos.  I almost fall through the door.  It’s 10pm.  How was it?? Asks Dan, handing me some dinner, but I’m too tired to tell the story. I’ll blog about it, I promise, but today I learnt about unity.