Silver Lining Project Kenya 2008-11-05
Silver Crew: Graham Dodridge
I awoke to the harmonies of 400 African voices drifting across the early morning mist from The Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul parish in Kaplong. The Reverend Fr. John Siele was holding court with the schoolgirls of Kaplong High, resplendent in their smart blue jumpers, pleated skirts and knee high ‘Persil white’ socks. My flight into Nairobi and the five hour dusty, bumpy drive across the Great Rift Valley to the west into the district of Sotik the day before was now a distant memory.
Through the gaps in our makeshift ‘boys dorm’ I could see the trees glowing orange on green with the intense early morning sun. We were in an area that was the epicentre of post-electoral violence a few months earlier in which 1,200 people lost their lives and a further 350,000 were driven out of their homes. Kofi Annan brokered a power sharing deal and so tensions were eased – the national press was full of talk of recriminations against those politicians who stirred up trouble as well as Obama’s Presidential aspirations which have now come to pass. The terrible violence seemed a world apart from the peaceful serenity of this humid and warm morning. The violence had caused many countries including the UK to impose travel bans and so we were the first build team into Kenya this year – We were made most welcome.
We were surrounded by schools whose gates opened at 7.00am for many hundreds of cheerful playful youngsters. We the ‘Wazungu’ (white people) made a curious and compelling attraction – compounded by the offer of sweets and balloons and we soon came to know our regular visitors; Victor, Peter de Brown, Dominic, Immaculate and Fancy – All with broad white toothed smiles, grasping hands and very few with shoes on their feet.
Encamped in the church classroom, we were being looked after by Heidi, Eunice and Salina, all of whom had left their own families for two weeks to tend and cater for us. Cooking over a wood fired stove in a flu-less room and washing clothes at the pump is a full-time job These kind women even slept in their smoke filled kitchen on skinny foam pads; little comfort from the harsh concrete floor, in order to be able to deliver our breakfast. This is the African way I kept being told and our smart concrete built long-drop and solar showers were luxuries I did not immediately appreciate. A solar shower is a plastic bag one fills with water from the pump and then lays in the burning sun during the day for a hot shower after work – A real reward following a day mixing concrete, bending steel and breaking rocks.
I had joined a team of eleven to build a house for a family that had long dreamed of a red brick abode. Their current home built of sticks and mud with a tin roof looked much the same as the house we were building, but it of course had no damp course, foundations or stability and needed constant repair. Looking at the green patch of ground there seemed little prospect of our building a house in two weeks and the weather conspired against us with unseasonably heavy rains despite the fact we were in the middle of the second rainy season of the year. As the days passed, however, so the shallow foundations gave way to walls of orange, and concrete lintels and the lack of clear direction rolled over for a more organised team approach. We bought and used brightly coloured plastic buckets to ferry concrete to lay the slab and formed chains to move bricks with ant like team cohesion. Guided by a gentle and pleasant local builder (fundi) called Sam we dug, mixed and carried in support of his further team of ‘brickies’.
We took a couple of afternoons off to visit local markets, schools and a tea plantation. In the evenings we entertained ourselves, sneaking contraband back to base for our local guardian John and ourselves to mix with lemonade. We played cards and dominoes following our evening meal. This invariably involved rice, a meat based gravy, stewed beef, greens and fresh cut pineapple.
The team comprised a former Yorkshire coal miner, whose constant good humour, mischief making and hard work drove us all on and a young Indian currency trader from West London with beautifully presented long dark hair and an endless supply of sweets for the children. Mikey (special forces) whose farther was a Royal Marine Commando camped it up with an endless supply of beautifully laundered and pressed camouflaged outfits and high white T-shirts. He was a dichotomy of hard work and fashion tips. Then, Russell Crowe’s image in the form of a brooding and considered town planner from East London. The team was diverse but we all got on, united by our common goal.
Kenya, nine tenths land locked, is boarded by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south and Uganda to the west. It touches the Indian Ocean for 250kms to the South East and touches the Sudan to the North West. 1000 kms from head to toe and 750 kms across it’s middle, dissected by the Great Rift Valley and the equator.
One morning I took a walk and came across a brick works. Bare feet and hands, clay moulds and baking sun. The wet clay is shaped in a form and laid in the sun to dry. Straw covers to prevent rapid drying and cracking. A team of two will make 2000 a day, enough for half a small house. Periodically a pyramid will be built above trenches which run for thirty feet underneath. Fires are set in these trenches and burn for three days firing the bricks, which turn from slate grey to brilliant orange. It was at the brick works I met Erik in a grey woollen Man United hat, smoking a cigarette. He greeted me with a pale smile and we chatted. Now in his early twenties he had lost his father at the tender age of eight and his mother two years later. He did not know what caused their untimely deaths. He had had no schooling, had no job and very little in the way of prospects. The local nurse back at base camp had indicated that there was a particularly high propensity for suicide among the young disaffected males in this area.
Further along the track I met Augustine. At 68, and a former military man, he fondly remembered the colonial past pre 1963. He welcomed us back to his mud hut for Worridge (African gin), yet more contraband but this time by the state. Woody and less bitter than English gin it certainly warmed the chest.
On Sunday we attended church, packed to the rafters. The local MP spoke to the congregation and joined us for tea afterwards, flanked by her armed escort. Dr Joyce had taken the reigns of power from her sister who sadly died in an air crash in June. An impressive, smart woman she told us that water management was the single biggest issue to deal with and anything we could do to help would be most welcome. Back at camp that evening we noticed that the 10,000 gallon tank next to our compound had no guttering feed from the roof so the next day we drove into town to buy guttering and find a man for the job. Matty arrived the next day and ‘hey presto’ sorted. This quick fix to a simple problem became a metaphor for much we observed along our travels. The line between "you’re guests and don’t interfere, it’s the African way" and "thanks for your help we need all the help and advice we can get – we’re desperate", became very blurred.
It is clear to me that what Africa has in abundance is manpower and what it needs to do is harness this through better organisation and education. On the other hand, so long as the land can sustain the people against improved health, the modest and simple way of life they have offers many enviable qualities.
To view more of Graham’s photographs from his trip please click here.