Updates!

Succumbing to digital peer pressure, finally a new post from the blogger you hate to love! Many things have been happening, but the main reason my posts are so infrequent is the lack of coherence between my different tasks. My mission has always been to find one big project here in Kenya to commit myself to, but unfortunately this has proven to be difficult. Let me therefore give you people a chronological overview of my doings during the last two months.

The last message was posted after my visit to Maseki. After this, and a couple of days in Nairobi, me and Nelie went to Coast. Here we visited some projects in Kwale district, and Mombasa town. In Kwale we had our first encounter with a working community bank, and I was happy to see that by means of this system the people had unified themselves and have been able to direct their combined forces at starting new businesses and community projects such as orphanages and schools. Afterwards (+-3 days) we stayed in Mombasa for a day or two, after which Sieb joined us (after just coming home from Sudan) and the three of us set of to Bamburi for a small week off at the beach. Eating fresh fish; drinking some beers; sleeping and burning at the beach; the usual.

Once back in Nairobi we reported back on our trip (leaving out the beach/beer/fish part), and for the next two months it was just office work for me. Besides helping out on the incidental IT problem here and there, I have been working on a proposal to include a Fair Trade branch within CIVS. The idea is to found a company that can export handmade ornaments and decorations to the European Fair Trade markets (think Worldshops etc.). I have been working on this proposal for a small while, but it is all still very experimental.

In addition, I have created two websites from scratch that will be online soon. One for Marianne Center, which is a school / daycare center for mentally handicapped youngsters. Nelie co-founded the Marianne center and asked me to help her out with the website.

The other one is for Agenda Africa, the NGO that is being ran by my good friend Tonny. Agenda Africa is the founder of the Nairobi Girls Academy, the school where I have been teaching. The website was only the beginning, since nowadays I try to commit myself more to Agenda Africa since Tonny really seems to be passionate about his work there. We have been over finances and management issues together, and soon I will start writing grant proposals in the hopes of getting some outside funding.

Lastly, two Board Members of CIVS, both Dutch, arrived in Nairobi last week for some assessments. They asked me to join them for their tour through Nyanza / Kisumu. I went there last wednesday by night bus, and arrived just in time to enjoy the sunrise over the beautiful lake Victoria. This doesn't make any sense, since lake Victoria lies in the west and the sun rises east, but at 6am I tend to be very tired so I might have romanticized the spacial sun-lake alignment a bit in my memory.

We traveled around visiting projects all Thursday, and by nightfall I was extremely tired so I found myself a nice hotel (my bosses' was a bit to decadent for my Jan-Peter funded wallet) and went to bed immediately. And by immediately I mean after two hours since no travel experience is complete without drinking a few cold Tuskers in a local pub.

Thursday I received a disturbing message from one of my good friends in Nairobi, who found his father on the floor in the morning, apparently having had a stroke during nighttime. That day I decided to fly back to Nairobi to hang out with the poor guy for a bit. My effective stay in Kisumu was therefore only two days, but I am planning to go back.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone who has been sending me funds. Of course you will be most thanked once I get back, but for now please accept my humble digital gratitude.

PS For those interested, have a look at http://www.agendaafrica.org [content still under construction]