5 month "in country" update - a Few random Thoughts on Kenya

Kenya - although the laws are in English, don't count on doing business in English.  Better get some swahili lessons in before you come.

Kenya IS Like the Wild West as we may have imagined it except with cars and motorcycles.  The cattle and sheep are grazed by the side of the road and may wander into the highway at any time. They even wander straight into the downtown district.  All sorts of domesticated animal is wandering the streets, goats, sheep, cattle, gorgeous Masai Cattle with their loose hides, back hump and smooth fur, geese, chickens everywhere - I don't even see them anymore.  In the lower districts of Nakuru, closer to the conservancy, the baboons will come into the streets and run across the roof tops.

The men along the Rift Valley Highway harness donkeys to truck rear-axle carts and haul water up and down the highway that crawls along the volcanic cliffs to plateaus, where villages are dry.  The water is RAW- often from an open puddle - no filtration, no sanitation, no treatment of any kind.

Kenya is FULL of metal workers.  Why? Every window and door opening has a steel door or grate due to the security issues of a poor nation - poverty breeds desperation, desperation breeds crime.  BUT, None of them use proper Welding MASKS.  They use SUNGLASSES.  Which is why although Kenya is full of metal work, many of the welds are crap due to the inconsistent application of the welding stick because the welder is working with his EYES CLOSED!!!  I wonder what the stats are on blindness in former welders???

Many of the Non Government Organizations (NGO's) working to improve living conditions in rural Africa are finding that installing systems like deep water wells (bore holes) without financial systems and mechanisms to maintain them often fail to be maintained.  What I have found is that while Kenya is rich in soil, rich in labor, rich in agriculture, it is not rich in cash money, which is what larger institutions like banks, power companies and county administrations must be paid.

I have been looking for opportunities to use my knowledge and talents to build a company around more sustainable infrastructure.  I would like to do a demonstration micro-enterprise project for an orphanage outside the Masai Mara conservancy which concentrates on children with special needs.  They take care of about 175 children including one who was found at the age of four in the Nakuru National Park after being raised by baboons.  Her name is Charity and she is now around seven, she still does not speak, she still does not use a spoon, she still has the mannerisms of a baboon and yet she is protected and sheltered by the other orphans in this place who have taken her under their wings collectively even though many have their own problems.  please find my fund raising page here and pass it around to the charitable souls you may know. -TF
http://www.gofundme.com/c9ojzs