Kenya - IDP Camp Pt 1

Jambo!

Firstly, apologies for this delayed posting – Ren and I have finished our volunteer placement at the IDP Camp and have been enjoying some relaxation time at the beach in Mombassa. Because we haven’t written in quite some time, we’ve broken down our IDP Camp experience in to the sections below – We hope you can make it all the way through to the end (That’s where all the good photo’s are)!

1. Introduction/Arriving at the IDP Camp



After an in-depth volunteer training and induction program (visiting an animal orphanage and hugging a doped up cheetah), we left the comfort of Nairobi with our co-volunteer Carol (65, USA) to head off to our placement – The Ebenezer A Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Kikopey. From the main highway we could see the flapping canvases of the ripped UN tents and groups of camps across the Rift Valley - what had we got ourselves into?

Arriving at the IDP Camp was a true shock to the system. Pulling up to the office (a tin shed) we were immediately overrun by 50 or 60 world vision poster children - barely clothed, filthy with the standard snot encrusted faces and customary beautiful smiles! All of the kids were shouting “Mzungu, mzungu” (white person, white person), arms outstretched, demanding to be picked up or played with. After a short time the chorusing morphed into their favorite English string of words “How are you, how are you, how are you?”. Little did we know these words would come to be the most repeated of our time in Kikopey. It is fair to say we fell in love with many of these little terror children at first sight.





The adults were determined not to let the official welcome be derailed by the real camp bosses – the kids - so we were whisked into the shed for an overview of the IDP situation and the needs of the people. It was quickly apparent that the situation in the camp was multilayered, complex and dire. There were so many fundamental needs like food, housing, running water, electricity etc. But, because of the psychological effects from the 2007 election violence, the community found it hard to focus on the big picture beyond a day-to-day need to survive. Instead much of the community was at loggerheads with each other and there was a distinct feeling of mistrust amongst the IDP’s.

Understandably, each individual was more focused on their individual needs rather than what the community could achieve together but, how were we going to work on ‘community development’, the program we chose? We were surprised to learn that the community’s number one ‘need’, as identified by the Committee Members John and Samwel (Yes, SamWEL) was actually a projector and movie screen! Talk about the cart before the horse - Electricity?

We left that day scratching our heads and went to meet our new family.

2. The Host Family





During our placement we were housed with an elderly lady named Mama Teresia along with her team of housemaids, friends and boarders. Teresia lived alone in a small house on 12 acres of land adjoining the camp. In addition to Teresia, our family for the placement included: Mary – Our IDP cook and eventual host; and Bonfoice, Mama Simon and Simon – Family trio of boarders and religious nut jobs (More on this later…)

House - The house was a 2 bedroom stone construction with a tinned roof, rendered walls, concrete floor and glass windows and included a small kitchen and living area. Our bedroom was about 4m2 and therefore could only fit a small table and bunk beds - Ren was on top every night. There was also no running tap water or electricity. In lieu of IKEA canvas prints and Chinese silk tapestries, the entire house was covered wall to wall with doilies –The things grandmas use when serving tea and scones. But, surprise surprise, we were never served scones!

In addition to the house, Teresia also had a row of timber huts for boarders (single room, concrete floor, one window), a timber cooking hut, a water tank and separate washroom and squat toilet – You should see our aim. Enthused real estate agents would describe the ‘estate’ as ‘Quaint and rustic!’. As you can imagine it was all very basic, but it did the job and certainly made us appreciate home.





Food! Most days started around 6:30am when Mary our IDP cook would arrive. For breakfast we’d normally have toast and eggs with a banana and orange. Then we’d head off to the camp or on various errands. For lunches and dinner we had a variety of beans, potatoes, cabbage and our favourite dish ugali. Ugali is an east African staple – Ground up maize beans, boiled in water, and served as a solid but, soft and tasteless lump. Alone, ugali is appallingly bland however, eaten with a vegetable like spinach or tomato and it is actually quiet enjoyable! Mary also specialized in chapatti and French toast or as named in Kikuyu toast mayi (toast egg). The food, thanks to Mary, was definitely a hidden surprise in our visit as we expected things to be a lot worse!

Teresia – Our relationship with Teresia was a weird one. Unfortunately, she couldn’t speak a single word of English and the Kiswahili we tried didn’t really work as she spoke only Kikuyu. I guess you could say there wasn’t much bonding going on. Coupled with the language barrier were of course our cultural, religious, and education differences! 65 year old Kenyan, Christian fundamentalist, grandmother seeks friendship with Australian, satan worshipping, backpackers to form lasting bond... We were starting to wonder why the hell our Kenyan volunteer organization placed us here!

As if the situation couldn’t get any more awkward, we then found out that Teresia had a long term cancer battle (of the foot?) and needed therapy and treatment. But, the most promising sign of the community helping each other was that Teresia’s church group had formed a committee to raise funds for her hospital bills - Go Kenya! Arriving home after our first weekend away we found that the committee leaders were going to join us for dinner and a ‘discussion’. After an excruciating 20 minutes of cheesy small talk we were asked if we would contribute to Teresia’s hospital bill, which was going to exceed 200,000 Kenyan shillings ($2,800 AUD). The shilling had dropped. We were there not to build a lasting bond, but to help out with bills!

In the end we told the committee that thought the idea was nice, but we wouldn’t be contributing as we were there to volunteer time not money, blah, blah, blah. Now, this might seem callous, but we knew our paid placement was contributing $500 USD a month direct to Teresia which is a lot of money in Kenya. No matter how many beans served or John’s appetite, there was always going to be a fairly positive margin.

The episode put a bit of bad taste in our mouth but, karma intervened and Teresia shipped out to live with her family in Nairobi for the rest of our placement. We ended up having the house alone - PARTY!





Mary – Mary was an IDP from the our camp that helped around the house and cooked for us. She was 19 years old and the eldest of 10 (!) children. Fortunately, her whole family did not live in one single tent, but were split across two plots. Mary was great to have around and could speak English well enough to hold a conversation and have a laugh! She explained to us the Kikuyu way of life including the arranged marriage process and polygamy. We constantly joked that we would bring her an Aussie husband – Watch out Gezza.

Bonfoice & Co. – Once Teresia left, our only company, bar Mary, was the family trio of Bonfioce, Mama Simon and the cutest kid in the world Baby Simon. He was 10 months old with a constant big smile. Simon made the house a happy place and we loved playing with him in the yard, despite him being covered in dirt, soiled and chewing on a DD battery! Ren and I adored little Simon and even thought about stealing him, but alas, we couldn’t find the right size bag.

The same loving adoration could not, however, be said of Simon’s parents Bonfoice and Mama Simon. They we’re OK people but, truly scary and weird in their religious beliefs. On several occasions, I’d woken during the night to what could only be described as a freaky chanting prayer with Bonfioce quoting some sort of scripture in Kikuyu (I imagined something like ‘And we shall seek eternal darkness through our submission to you, oh Lord, Satan…’ etc.) and then Mama Simon responding with a low-pitch grunt, similar to a tennis player. It honestly sounded like they we’re worshiping Satan whilst having an orgy! Again, they were OK people (during the day), but truly scary at 1:00am in the morning.

Anyway, after one too many sleepless nights, I decided to confront Bonfoice and see what the hell was going on. The following is a verbatim transcript:
John: So, Bonfoice, was that you praying last night?
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: It was pretty loud, mate. I mean it woke us up - we couldn’t sleep.
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: So, why were you praying at 1:00am in the morning?
Bonfoice: There was a devil.
John: Ahem, there was a devil?
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: Argh, why was there a devil?
Bonfoice: The devil come… to take Simon’s… (Bonfoice starts flapping his arms like a bird)
John: To take Simons… ‘soul’?
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: O… K…., but isn’t Simon teething – He’s got two new teeth?
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: So, mate, I think he’s crying because he’s teething. That’s what babies do.
Bonfoice: Yes.
John: But, there was a devil too.
Bonfoice: Yes.
As you can see from the above transcript, THEY WERE A BUNCH OF COMPLETE LOONY BIN PSYCHOS! In the end we thought ‘at least they were praying against Satan’.

Overall our home stay was great. We could have had a loving little family unit that we formed a lasting bond with but, then we wouldn’t have half the stories. Praise the devil!

3. The Community

The camp was a devastating place like no other and every family had a story to tell – mother with HIV, 6 kids and a husband killed in the violence; family with 11 children who lost their home and businesses and all live in 1 tent; family who heard their neighbors being raped and killed and managed to escape, etc. In our half of the Ebenezer camp (split due to political tensions, hence the ‘A’) we worked with 81 families, comprising of 259 kids, 73 Women, 69 men and 19 elderly (evidently your sex is irrelevant when you get old!). Each family in the camp had roughly a 120m square plot of land (regardless of the number of family members) where they had their UN tent erected on. Most of the families used the remaining plot area as a shamba (farm) where they grew maise, beans, tomatoes etc. Unfortunately, the land at the camp was very, very dry and was essentially a huge dust bowl not conducive to agriculture.

The Kenyan government (Perhaps the most corrupt in Africa) sends food rations of rice and beans once every 2 months, which only feeds a medium sized family for a week. John and I had the experience of scooping out these rations into whatever container each family had (plastic bag, bucket, hands) on our second day. This was done under the scrutiny of every camp member to ensure no one got extra. Certainly one of the most vivid memories of camp was watching the IDP’s scrape together and pick up the stray grains on the dusty ground. Needless to say it was a stressful undertaking for all, especially the IDP’s.

Paradoxically, there was everything and nothing to do at the camp. Nothing on a daily basis except entertain the kids and EVERYTHING on a long term basis – food, water, employment, community development etc - which requires long term volunteers and bucket loads of money! Items like water had been addressed by other volunteers, but damaged Government piping had stopped any flow. Everything was an uphill battle. It was also difficult to decide what area to focus on because the camp was only temporary until the Kenyan Government gets around to resettling the IDP’s to new land (Each IDP is supposedly entitled to 2.25 acres). Note, it has been over 3 years since these people lost everything – How temporary?

To decide which project we would implement we needed to interact with the community to get their thoughts and ideas - so a big camp meeting was planned. We had come up with several project ideas to benefit the whole of the community equally and proposed them to IDP’s – Community run shop (selling beans, rice) to solve food issues, new tents/permanent housing, and School Upgrade Project. It turned out that the biggest stumbling block in assisting the community was the community itself! To cut a very long story short our beloved business plan of an income generating, self sustaining, community rice and beans shop was vehemently opposed (despite us being the financial backers) because the IDP’s believed other community members would steal the stock and or money. Another point of contention was that the Government food rations could be cut off if they thought the IDP’s were providing for themselves and that the community was making a profit. The tent idea was not agreed because the IDP’s were sure they would be resettled earlier than other camps if they stayed in the tents. Their view was ‘Perhaps you could buy each family a goat instead?’.

Frustratingly the community had an inane ability to talk themselves in circles of mistrust about previous grievances done to each other. Some people stole chickens, some people didn’t tend to the tomatoes, and this pearler - No one wanted to cook the donated and FREE porridge for their OWN frigging kids (!) because ‘why should we work for free?’. The general attitude of the IDP’s was very difficult to work with!

This was not the only meeting we would have during our time at camp. In the end we witnessed IDP’s come to blows (whilst nursing a baby), nonsensical screaming and pure dissent between the IDP’s. Often meetings would have to be rescheduled for another day until everyone calmed down – Most days we were left wondering how we could help the community if they weren’t interested in any project that involved working together.

In the end we decided to focus our time, money and energies where our first genuine joy in the camp came from: The Kids.

Please open Pt 2 to continue...
(Apologies for taking up so much time!)