The Ninth Month

This post is starts with a 'Hello!' to my Grandad, Ron Trenchard who is an avid fan of this blog.  Thanks for following our adventures Grandad, we're looking forward to seeing you in the summer, and celebrating your 95th birthday in October with all the family x

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Last year, I mentioned to Allys that things in my placement at Kenya Union of the Blind (KUB) were OK, but very slow going.  No-one seemed very interested in working with me and whilst lots of activity had been promised, nothing had yet materialised.  ‘That’s really normal Helen, don’t worry, my placement was the same.  But wait until the 9^th month, that’s when it all kicks in!’.



Allys was right on the money, because as month 9 arrived this year, several projects came to fruition, and I found my skills suddenly in demand.  These past few weeks I’ve found myself in situations that have really felt like VSO volunteering (at last); this is how I thought it would be when we first applied.  The work has taken me to beautiful western Kenya, a scruffy Rift Valley hotel and Kenya's biggest slum.


If you're at all interested in my work , read on for the highlights and photos of three very different places....

It all started in Teso District, Western Kenya

VSO agreed to fund a visit with my colleague to Western Kenya.  My plan is to produce some case studies, so the organisation can explain to donors how it makes a difference in the lives of real people.  I was going to interview members of a very successful KUB branch.  Teso is a few miles from the Ugandan border, and a 9 hour drive, North-West of Nairobi.



People here are more likely to have a visual impairment because of poor sanitation, lack of education about hygiene, few doctors, a fast road to the border that creates accident victims every month and a warmer climate, ideal for the insects which spread infections that damage the sight of local people.  Women, who are mostly responsible for housework and raise children, are most at risk.  It's a common story that poverty leads to disability, and disabled people stay poor, as job opportunities are scarce in a community still so frightened by disability.

Alex

Despite all this, charismatic local KUB Chairman Alex Ekirapa has built a network of small groups in Teso District that have started income generating projects to improve their lives, together.  I found that people had real hope and joy in the work that was being acheived, and complete trust in Alex to link everyone together and keep the ideas flowing. As a totally blind, independent family man, Alex is an awesome role model to the community, who would traditionally have simply hidden their blind children.  I met a father who Alex had persuaded to send his blind son to school.  Having not thought his son could be educated, the father agreed when Alex found a place for him at a special school.  The son went to school for the very first time aged 17, and is loving it.

Interviewing Jacqueline, who is the star pupil at Alex's
school for partially sighted women farmers; they learn how
 to grow crops for food and cash

Jacqueline

More interviews: this blind lady leads a community
chicken-rearing project, so I was gifted with
 a live chicken.  Seriously.

Next up I went to Nakuru Town, Rift Valley



My boss strides into my office one day and says he thinks I'm a good facilitator.  He's asking me to design and faciliate a workshop in Nakuru Town for our new HIV outreach work, as the regular programme team are elsewhere.  The session was to address the problem: how can we make HIV Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centres (VCT) more friendly to those with visual impairment?  I know next to nothing about these issues, but I thought, why not?  I'll give it a go...


A note on VCTs: they are a very common sight in Kenya, a part of life.  They are places where you can be tested, and know your HIV status, and receive all the counselling and after care you might need, regardless of result.  You see a lot of VCT tents by the side of road, and more permanent ones in clinics and office buildings.  We even saw a Valentine VCT on 14th February, covered in love hearts: 'Know your Status - find out TOGETHER!'  Kenyans are urged to visit, to know their status and learn to reduce their risk of infection. 


The trouble is that VCT staff don't know what to do if their client is blind.  Some think that disabled people don't have sexual desire, so why would a blind person need a VCT?  Others are just unsure how to handle the test for someone with visual impairment, as in a VCT you see and read the chemical results yourself.  Having a sighted guide is therefore essential - but VCTs are places of extreme confidentiality, so what to do?

The Nakuru workshop was attended by both blind people, and VCT staff together in an effort to sensitise each other on the challenges involved.  Feeling very much like I was winging it (the central skill of any VSO volunteer) I was hoping strong faciliation and a good group would get us through the four-hour session and calm my nerves. 



I decided we'd start with testimonials: people would tell their story and talk about the challenges.  It worked really well, and people spoke very honestly.  A few shocking stories were told: a Community Health worker admitted she thought all disabled clients must have been raped, and a blind lady who'd been a nurse before she lost her sight told us 'abortion was our policy with pregnant disabled women 30 years ago - but we've come so far, we can change more people's minds.' 





I led them in some group work, working on solutions to the problems discussed, and by the end we had volunteers (from both 'sides') to join a working party to lobby locally on these issues.  I was really very proud, and my colleagues were sure the format would work in other regions as the projects is rolled out.



And last week I went to Kibera slum in Nairobi

I know my Development colleagues would call it an 'informal settlement' but the folks who live there call it a slum, so forgive me.  Dan has written about working in Kibera, but this was my first visit.

I've been supporting the work of KUB's Kibera branch all year, and it's been a real pleasure - Chairman Joseph Kiongo is persistant, energetic, hard working and appreciative.  Together we wrote a small proposal to fund training of disabled people in Nairobi's slum areas and it was funded!  We mainly needed bus fares and lunch money so that people with so little would be motivated to attend.  Networking with other Disabled People's Organisations, Joseph gathered a band of five facilitators (all with disablities themselves) to train KUB members and others with disabilities on Starting a Small Business, Keeping Records and starting a Revolving Fund (microfinance) group.  He'd warned me to come wearing wellington boots.

Once I'd arrived, my first job was to help Joseph find some of our members who were lost on their way to the training hall.  Shouting 'Uko wapi?' (where are you?) into his mobile before striding off through the slum, all I could do was follow. Kibera is never a nice place to be, but it's rainy season right now and the place is really flooded - the famous railway line that runs through the slum was a foot under murky water.   The only way I can describe it is through film images: a Jewish ghetto in Eastern Europe in the winter of 1940; the dockside dwellings in Shakespeare's London.  Kibera is always overcrowded but in April it's mud, filth and flood beneath the overwhelming population. The KUB members we found were all stranded before a flood, clutching their white canes, waiting for us to show them where to step next (up-turned railway sleeper, jerry can, large stone).  The questions screaming in my brain was how do you usually get around? how do you live? when you fall who helps you?? but I didn't ask them - just a cheery Mambo! and off we go, guiding them to the training room, a small tin hall packed with people on thin wooden benches.

Energetic Joseph, leading a warm-up

The trainees were all very pleased to see a mzungu in their midst and all looked up as I gave the 5 minute speech about KUB and VSO, that Joseph had asked me to give 2 minutes earlier.  I spoke in English and they all listened politely.  The rest of the training was in Swahili. They don't all know English, Joseph explains.  Of course.

Group work

Our facilitators

The faciliators were all great, delighted to be given the opportunity to speak to other disabled people about what can be acheived if they work together.  Even being told: you can start a business, have your own income and play a part in society, was a big message for some of the folks in the room.  It was very satisfying to see the results of a proposal and meet those who benefit from our work.  After the training all of us trouped back through the floods to have a lunch of cabbage and ugali, squeezed into a tiny slum cafe.  It felt like such a good day.