Kageno Kids-Helping Hands: Hands that Help: Who

Greetings from Kageno Kenya,

My name is Carlyla Dawson and I am the most recent addition to the Kageno team here in Kenya. I am from Colorado and will be volunteering here at Kageno Kenya for the next several months. I have been here for two months now and have been very busy, there are so many great things happening here. I have been getting use to village life and am feeling right at home, thanks to all the wonderful staff members and volunteers here at Kageno.

My two months here have been full of activities. I have visited Mafangano (Kageno’s newest site), gone on safari and traveled through Uganda to visit Kageno Rwanda. The safari trip was quite an experience. I have seen all the different types of animals in the zoo, but it is different seeing them in their natural habitat. The most exciting sightings for me were when we saw lions; they are my favorite kind of animal. The most exciting sighting was when we saw a whole group of female lions bathing in the sun. I think there was about twenty of them. We stayed in a tent camp right outside the Masi Mara gates and at night you could here lots of different sounds coming from inside the gates. The most recognizable sound was that of the elephant trumpeting, which actually kept me up one night.

In between the safari trip and my East Africa adventure, I have been busy with the KG Micro-Loan program, the Orphan Sponsorship program and the Kageno Baseline Survey project. The emphasis of the KG program is to empower the women in the fishing industry. The women here involved in the fishing are very poor and have trouble finding money to buy fish to sell. This forces them at times to beg for fish, which can be very demeaning and even sometimes abusive. Kageno has seen that this is a problem and for a long time has been trying to find a way to address this issue. The program will help the women by giving them the financial freedom to buy the fish they need. The women are very happy to have this opportunity that Kageno has provided them with. The first phase of the KG Micro-Loan and Savings Program is complete and the loan repayment is in its fifth week. We have a really great group of women and I look forward to keeping you updated on their progress as they proceed through the program.

The Orphan Sponsorship program is ongoing and there is always something new happening. We just finished doing our quarterly updates and are working on plans for various different activities in the next few months. It is nice to be involved with the children it really makes me feel at home, as I have two young nephews back in Colorado, that I am very close to and miss very much.

The Baseline Survey project Kageno is conducting is trying to set a baseline to use in the future to better determine how we have helped the community. It will also help identify things Kageno needs to address in order to better facilitate the work with the community. We are asking several different kinds of questions and are hoping by the end to have a better understanding of the challenges people are facing here. This week I have spent time going from house to house with the surveyors. This has been a very interesting experience, allowing me to see for myself what life is like living on Rusinga. All the people have been very welcoming and all seem happy to have a visitor.

The thing I am enjoying most about being here in Kenya, is I am able to see with my own eyes the things I have been reading about in books. I have spent many years studying and researching different aspects of International Development in Africa, but it is much different being here on the ground. Being here is really helping me to shape a better and more rounded perspective of the possibilities and challenges facing the future of development in Kenya, as well as the continent of Africa as a whole.

Our visit to Kageno Rwanda

The Kageno Rwanda site is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. There is quite a contrast between the beauty and the need. The village where Kageno is working is in the middle of the Nyungwe National park which is one of the oldest and highest elevation rainforest in all of Africa. It is amazingly beautiful, hugh trees. The village is one of three in the forest and is located in a valley 2 km down from the road. The road is like my driveway back in Colorado; only you get stuck in the mud not snow. The village looks like a partially abandoned mining site at first. But as you stay a while, you begin to see all the villagers coming to greet the visitors. The first priority for Kageno is to build a health clinic and pharmacy which if all goes well construction will start very soon. Second, they are going to construct an eco-tourism lodge for visitors to stay in while trekking to see the gorillas. It will be one of the only lodges in the park, at least for now.

Our visit was a very eye opening experience for me. All the people in the village came out to greet us, many children running after the car and just wanting to shake our hands. We also had a great opportunity to see the desperate need for our selves. We met a group working in the area at the guest house we were staying at, they were so happy to meet people from the organization constructing the clinic. Saying "the village has been praying for a clinic for the last twenty years". We were told many very sad stories about people from the village dying due to the difficulty of transporting the sick to the closest clinic 14km away. They usually are transported on a stretcher, up the 2 km to the road and then they have to wait for someone to pick them up and drive them another 30 min to the clinic. Many just don't make it.

We had the pleasure of meeting a girl that was saved by Rwanda Aid last week. Alavera was her name; she is a 16 year old suffering from epilepsy and would probably have been dead by now, if they hadn't found her last week. The pastor in the village told the UK director of Rwanda Aid about the girl when he was visiting the village. He then agreed to bring her back with him in the vehicle to their clinic. When he got her to the clinic, she only weighed 16 Kilograms and was too weak to even open her eyes. She had been having seizures 6-7 times a day and her mother was unable to get a hold of any medication for her. The mother has four other children and is the sixth wife, so she is basically on her own in terms of support for her and her children. She was trying very hard to care for Alavera, but it was just getting to hard.

We were even able to help the family by transporting the youngest child back with us to the clinic. The mother and Alavera were both at the clinic, but the mother was very concerned about her youngest child who had to stay behind. The director knew we were going to the village, so he asked us if we could try to find the child and bring her back with us. After a lot of asking we were finally able to find the girl and bring her to the clinic. It was really a great feeling holding this girl on my lap, knowing that we were helping her and her family. When we arrived at the clinic you could just see the joy we brought her mother and sister. Alavera was looking strong and was finally able to hold solid food down; she had not had a seizure since she arrived at the clinic. The sight of Alavera brought so many emotions to me. This girl was so small and so sick, but had the biggest smile. When we walked in the door she just reached out her arms to hug us and thank us for bringing her sister. And to show her appreciation she sang us her favorite song, about how she was going to play her guitar in heaven. It was the hardest thing for me not to start crying, instead I had to just hold her hand and smile knowing that she was going to be ok.

This story is just one of many powerful experiences I am having over here, each and every one just reaffirms that I am truly realizing my dream of helping people around the world. I feel so fortunate to be here and to be able to make a difference in so many people’s lives.

BELOW PHOTOS
View of Kageno Kenya from the Water
KG(Micro Loan) Program Pilot Group
Beautiful Lake Victoria
Mafangano Fishing Village
Road to Banda Village, Rwanda
Banda Village Kageno Rwanda
Banda Village Girl
Banda Village Boy
Banda Village
Banda Village Kids
Banda Village Kids Greeting

More on Andrew Gerber...
1. How did you find out/ become involved in MBAs without Borders?
During the past year I was getting my MBA from Purdue University in the US through joint studies at GISMA Business School in Germany. I had been down to South Africa (Limpopo and Mpumalanga primarily) on two previous short-term trips to observe and help in disadvantaged communities, and I decided to make another trip during a break in the MBA program to see how my future career path and the development sector might intersect... After a great trip, I returned to Germany  and found an email from the career services department listing new MBAs Without Borders positions... and the posting with Kageno in Kenya sounded like a perfect fit. I applied, and within a month ended up here on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria.

2. Please can you tell me a bit about your experience and the actual project you're involved in?
My undergraduate degree is in Information Systems Management, and I did a Master's program in Rhetoric & Public Address. (Both in the US)  After that, I worked in Europe, managing IT for 7 manufacturing plants in a group of companies. When the opportunity came to meld all of my experience and studies together through Purdue's MBA program in Europe, I leaped at the chance.
I am working with the community, local staff, and volunteers to shift Kageno Kenya to a sustainable source of funding. Kageno Worldwide is starting their second project in Rwanda, and so I'm focused on  building capacity in the local income generating activities so that the project can continue as Kageno Worldwide expands to other needy areas.
Specifically, I'm working with the women's group that takes water  hyacinth, a destructive weed that blocks ports in Lake Victoria, and produces crafts. We've secured an initial order with Tuskys, the #2 retailer in Kenya, to produce an initial order of laundry baskets, and  pending our successful delivery of that order, they have promised additional orders which should lead to an income stream that could potentially cover up to 100% of the operating costs of the project within the next year.
I'm also working with the fishing industry, starting with Kolunga Beach where we're located. The industry has many problems and so we're working to see  what we can do to effectively restructure the marketplace to ensure fair access to the market.
Additionally, I'm working on drafting a forward-looking business plan for Kageno Worldwide and also for Kageno Kenya. Each day I'm using  different parts of the body of knowledge that I gained from my MBA, and there's definitely no boredom.

3. What has been your hardest challenge yet?
I think the biggest challenge for me has been to let go on many  issues. Thankfully, I'm very often rewarded to see the locals I'm working with rise to the challenge. My role here isn't to do things, but to grow capacity and work with people to ensure that anything that  is accomplished while I'm here continues in the future.

4. How has the project changed you as a person?
After living and working with the local people here on Rusinga Island for 2 months (and with 2 months left to go), I think that the project  has profoundly reinforced the importance of empowering the disadvantaged members of a community in a problem solving approach to the problems they face.
Living in a local mud house here has also shown me that the standard  assumptions we make about our needs are often inflated--while I look forward to having running water, a microwave, and a flush toilet again, I do fine with chlorinated lake water, a propane burner, and a latrine. I think it's been a healthy experiential "reset" of my  expectations and needs.

5. Where to next?
I'm always up for a challenge and enjoy a lot of variety in my working environment. I will most likely pursue management consulting, either on my own or by joining a consultancy. I'm pondering where in the  world I will head to next, with South Africa being a very attractive location, providing both a vibrant and rapidly growing economy together with a desperate need for creative development solutions.

Andrew on boat in Lake Victoria with Alphonse, Kageno Kenya's project director.