Election-time Vacations

During the Kenya presidential elections, Jimmy and I are leaving the country. We will be traveling in Ethiopia for one week with Alias (Jimmy's friend from Nuru) to meet his family, see the Blue Nile Falls, and the Ancient Monasteries. Then, Jimmy and I are off to Cameroon for a week to visit my friends, the Foupouagnignis and relax at the beach. We are looking forward to our next adventures and will share lots of pictures when we get back.

The Cultures of Sharing and Saving

From  2/20/13:

One of the most difficult cultural differences for me to deal with is the emphasis on sharing versus saving. Growing up, I was taught to share explicitely, but implicitly was the notion of personal ownership. Sharing something usually meant playing with it together, for mutual benefit, or loaning it out for a short period of time before getting it back.

In Cameroon, I remember the sharing versus saving conundrum being an issue with food. Pop tarts, which could compete against twinkies for outlasting the apocalypse do not go bad. I could put them in the cupboard and save them for another day. I was always afraid that one of my Cameroonian friends would open the cupboard though. In their culture, food is there to be eaten and shared not stored and saved. My fear is evidence that I knew of this implicit rule, but the fact that I hoarded the pop tarts anyway showed the strength of my own cultural practices and my inability to change (e.g. learn to share).

In Kenya, I have better learned to balance these opposing cultural forces through duplicity. When I travel to some city that actually has a store, I buy two packages of cookies, one for sharing and one for storing. This works fairly well for food. It is, however, a little more difficult with shoes.

I tried applying the culture of sharing to my last (and sadly demised) pair of flip flops. They were kept by the front door and people would borrow them and return them to their place. Though, progressively developing thorns and mud, the shoes finally started falling apart. Again, I tried to apply the culture of sharing while trying to extend the life of the shoes. I washed them, pulled out thorns, and duct taped (okay, that is more US engineering, but the theory is still the same) the straps back on. The problem with shoe sharing is that increased frequency of usage makes saving nearly impossible. Duct-taped engineering solutions are unfortunately short term. I finally gave the old shoes to the little kids to intentionally finish destroying and bought a new pair of flip flops and instituted a “share only in emergency” policy.

One such “emergency” occurred recently when my housemate, Stephan, needed to use the latrine but found his own sandals gone from their typical door-side location. Earlier that day, he had shared them with our neighbor (who is notorious for misplacing keys, soap, shoes, and consideration for others). Our neighbor had said he needed to use them to take a bath, but failed to bring them back. After one week of “emergency sharing” my own sandals with Stephan, I was feeling culturally ansy. I suggested he use my phone to call our neighbor and inquire about the missing shoes. The neighbor, hurt and disappointed by Stephan’s unwillingness to continue sharing his shoes assured him that he would return them; however, he also told the rest of the family about Stephan’s poor character and inability to share. Now people are even asking me to teach Stephan to share better. How am I supposed to do that?

You may think that pop tarts and shoes are silly concerns when it comes to cultural differences. These are just small anecdotes, but their implications are vast. Take the efforts of development organizations to teach people how to save money. This concept in itself is antithetical to the sharing values indicated by the shoe issue. If someone has enough money to put it aside and not use it at the moment, they are selfish for not sharing it with their neighbors. What if saving that money, the family could use it during the next drought? Maybe their child gets sick and their savings could pay for a doctor and treatment. Now, that family who is planning for an uncertain future is ostracized because their neighbor has a school fee to pay now. Shouldn’t they share what they don’t presently need?

If I share my shoes not, I will help someone without shoes to also have shoes now. Inevitably, the shoes will not last as long though and then we both will not have shoes in a few months. Can I watch someone else suffer so that I can pay rent next month or help them now and struggle myself in the future? I’m not sure I can find some sort of compromise or middle ground, but inevitably both cultures (and my own guilt) will look down on my decisions from one extreme or the other. Should I share or save? Can I manage both?

Pictures of me and the "kids"

I've been trying to load these pictures since December. Here goes!

Stephan and Peter

Peanut Butter the Goat

Kenyan Education System

It is really funny that what reminded me that I hadn’t updated my blog in a while was the threat of another teachers’ strike. Luckily for the students, along with Jimmy and I and our respective attempts to work with schools here, the strike was canceled when the government realized that they better pay the teachers what they had promised last year.

I am currently in the next town to the west hanging out at a restaurant with my computer. My house was connected to the electric grid a few weeks ago, then one week later the transformer in my neighborhood blew. Now, there is no electricity anywhere near my house and I don’t think they will fix it anytime soon. I went to the town below the hill where I live, but they told me the building where all the stores rent space didn’t pay the power bill last month so there is no power there either. Anyway, so I’m now camped out at this nice restaurant drinking cold soda and enjoying an excuse to escape into attempted anonymity. Anyway, the television is on here and there is a special program about education in Kenya on. How fortunate for me. So, while I work I am listening to politicians talk about education in Kenya…Definitely worth a laugh.

The Obama administration, and several other foreign dignitaries, made speeches congratulating the Kenyan president on having “free,” “compulsory,” primary education. The Kenyan government explained how much this means to the students here who have the opportunity to attend school. Now in program evaluation we know there is a difference between what is inside an accepted proposal and what actually is implemented. When the politicians describe “free” primary education, they mean that students can go to public primary schools here without paying school fees. This contradicts the crying child whose public school fees I just paid last week so that he wouldn’t get caned (beat with a tree branch). One student here added up all of his “school fees” that he has had to pay for public school so far this term and jokingly informed me that if he paid an extra 20 shillings (the cost of a small bottle of soda) he could have paid for private school. When the politicians describe “compulsory” education, surely this doesn’t mean the same thing as when Jimmy and I show up to a school where students have been “sent.” Students (often more than 75% of a school) are frequently sent home for things like lack of school fees, tardiness, answering questions incorrectly, or general cheekiness (a.k.a. behavior problems or boredom). My question to the politicians, how do you plan to evaluate and enforce free, compulsory primary education? So far, I would say that it is not working as well as intended. 

I won’t even talk about secondary education. Though, if anyone would like to pay school fees for an orphaned child here, I know a couple who still need help. You can pay through a program at the health clinic that is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care (http://www.vnhcsb.org/employees/). I think the school fees run from about $35-50 per year so it really isn’t bad from a US perspective. Here, it is ridiculously hard for families to afford though. It’s a short term fix that can help a student out now, but in the long run the government really needs to work on distributing funds and evaluating schools better on their progress toward affordable education.

Since I cannot fix everything (even though I thought I could in high school), it is back to evaluating programs where my reports will be read and changes will actually be made, albeit on a much smaller scale.