Nairobi

The stories on the streets here and the headlines around the world are daunting. The law trimming back collective bargaining in Ohio seems even worse than Wisconsin. The banks and servicers managed to scuttle another foreclosure avoidance program which would have used $1 billion to bridge losses of income and has not accepted one single application yet. Yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac figured out a way to pay themselves princely sums and not much has changed on that account either. A bunch of folks led by Wider Opportunities for Women put together a more realistic budget and established that single or with families people are miles away from meeting their basic financial needs even with a job: a single person would need $30,000 about double minimum wage for example.

Here in Kenya more than year ahead of the elections politics is all the talk from the street vendors to the cab drivers to the NGO crews, expats, and casual observers. The best news is that many do not expect the post-election violence to repeat itself at least at the same level of intensity. The bad news is that most seem to not expect there to be much change in the gridlock, corruption, and indifference in government. Parties are assembling lists, but the programs are hard to distinguish and the campaigns most seem to think have more to do with hope than with change.

This would be tragic of course. A problem which has occupied days in our organizational planning for ACORN Kenya has been the need to construct new schools in Korogocho. While we met about this at length yesterday afternoon, Drummond Pike, my Paladin Partner would search for information on whatever topic was at hand on the computer. One of the first items he pulled up on this issue is the fact that the United States and United Kingdom had both suspended aid grants for $7M and $9M respectively for new school construction in Kenya because they had no confidence the money would actually be used for schools rather than simply ripped off. Many simply pretend there is a solution by believing the problem of equity and justice does not exist. At breakfast I read in a Kenyan business magazine a glowing puff piece on the 5600 “scholarships” to secondary schools being offered annually by Equity Bank and the Mastercard Foundation based in Toronto and others. Their strategy was to look the other way about the problem dealing with the masses of school children and hope that they could craft an elite program for the top 5% of the students who tested out of primary schools so they would be able to go forward. Depressing!

Since Paladin Partners were committed to our professional development program for Judy Duncan and would soon be leaving her for another several weeks to work with ACORN Kenya’s staff and leaders, we tried a different tact for a change. Years ago when as a boy I lived in Denver, I would hear comments that you could live hard in Denver, because you could look at the Rocky Mountains along the western horizon and always feel there was hope and a future. Early Friday morning we headed out for the a Kenyan National Park less than 10 kilometers away. We drove in through green forest cover and were quickly in the savanna. Looking at rhinos, lions, giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, and more, we would sometimes see the entire city down the ridge as the two worlds of Africa meld together. Nairobi or Denver? Doesn’t solve the problem, but reminds us why it matters.

We have to do better.