Kenya Report #0 To all, I returned from Kenya this afternoon, having had a great time. I hope to write a fairly long description of my experiences there in the next day or so. If not, I will do so in about a week. I paid 80 shillings (about $1) to send an email, but it apparently failed to get through. Here it is. I sent it 24 May. --Ed ------------------------------- Edwin J. Kay, EECS, 19 Memorial Drive West, Lehigh U, (204B Packard Lab) Bethlehem PA 18015 (610)758-3623 EJK0@LEHIGH.EDU FAX:(610)758-6279 ^"zero" Web page: http://www.lehigh.edu/~ejk0/ejk0.html Dear All, I have a fleeting chance to send some email, so this letter will be a bit scattered. We flew to Amsterdam, arriving last Sunday morning, and then we flew to Nairobi in the afternoon, arriving around 8 PM (the time difference is seven hours). We stayed overnight in the Methodist Guest House, which caters to Europeans and is very nicely appointed. The next morning a school bus took us to Meru, which is about 180 miles from Nairobi. Despite some Lehigh information describing Meru as isolated, a "dual carriageway" (British for divided highway) goes all the way from Nairobi to Meru. In Meru we dined with the schoolmasters and the schoolmistresses of the various schools to which we are contributing computers. After dinner, the students were paire with a host families (usually a schoolmaster or schoolmistress), with whom they are staying. Let me say immediately, that all of the Lehigh students are doing just fine and are enjoying their visit immensely. Whenever I see them they are all smiles. We originally hoped to have the computers cleared through customs and brought here on Tuesday, but we have had trouble getting clearance for the computers. We only got clearance this morning (Friday), and we hope to have them here this evening. Meanwhile, the students have spent time at their respective schools, trying to help with problems with the computers previously donated and with computer instruction. Meanhwile, I have been touring "in the bush," visiting all the schools, trying to assess the condition of previously donated computers and to assess to what good use the computers have been put. Succinctly, conditions variably considerably, depending mostly on the degree of isolation. A few of the schools are, indeed, isolated, accessible only by barely serviceable dirt roads. A number of the schools depend upon generators for electricity. Yesterday we had free time. The Lehigh students toured some "touristic sites" in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, I spent some time at Kenya Method University, where the wife of the schoolmaster with whom I stay is a student. They brought me there in the morning to see the university and showed me the computer lab. I ended up staying for the day and installing a bunch of free software I had with me. It turns out that the software was on their must-have list. One of my reasons for coming to Kenya was to understand better my experience in Cameroon. How much was particular to Buea, how much to Cameroon, how much to Africa, how much to the third world? I have not the time for detail (which I hope to provide later, probably when I return), the much of what I learned about Cameroon applies to Kenya. I felt tremendously complimented when one Kenyan said to me that I seemed to be quite comfortable here. I think that is true becaue of my having lived in Cameroon. I had intentions of finding out from Peace Corps the status of the Kenyan program, with the intention of finding some PCV's if there were any here. I had a suspicion I would find them if they were about. In some sense, I found them. Chris Harris is posted to a school which adjoins one of the schools to which we are giving the computers. The computers are housed at his school because it has electricity while the other school does not. Chris has been giving very good assistance to his school and finishes his service in July. The other two PCV's in Meru stay a few hundred meters from where I stay, but they left for the states on Wednesday for vacation, so I never got to meet them. Janice, please forward this to Donna Goldfeder. I apologize for not sending private email and for not being able to call. I get fine chop. I shidown wit Mr. Muchai and Dauphin. Dey get two pikin dem. Two girl dem, 9 and 4. I walka plenty fine. Ashia. You were right, I am enjoying the stay immensely. Kenya Report #00 From HelenO32@aol.com Thu May 31 16:49 EDT 2001 Received: from nss4.cc.lehigh.edu (root@nss4.CC.Lehigh.EDU [128.180.39.1]) by genie.eecs.lehigh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA28306 for ; Thu, 31 May 2001 16:49:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from genie.eecs.lehigh.edu (genie.eecs.lehigh.edu [128.180.98.9]) by nss4.cc.lehigh.edu (8.11.2/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f4VKnQT64522; Thu, 31 May 2001 16:49:26 -0400 Received: from imo-m06.mx.aol.com (imo-m06.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.161]) by genie.eecs.lehigh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA28299 for ; Thu, 31 May 2001 16:49:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: from HelenO32@aol.com by imo-m06.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v30.22.) id x.f6.abbeec6 (15864) for ; Thu, 31 May 2001 16:48:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from web36.aolmail.aol.com (web36.aolmail.aol.com [205.188.222.12]) by air-id06.mx.aol.com (v77_r1.37) with ESMTP; Thu, 31 May 2001 16:48:33 -0400 From: HelenO32@aol.com Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 16:48:30 EDT Subject: From Ed Kay in Africa To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Unknown (No Version) Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Status: X-UID: 55 Content-Length: 3002 Status: RO Dear All, This is another quick message after some frenetic activity. After much negotiation with various custom officials, we were able to bring the computers to Meru. Until then we were marking time. Then the pace changed completely, and we spent 15 hour days trying to assemble functioning systems, check out their software, loading some (free) software, and grading the systems. Then we started to distribute them. Among the more interesting problems we had to deal with was the incompatibility between the American and Kenyan electical systems. The former is 110V-60 cycle, while the latter is 240V-50 cycle. Most of the computers can run as either, so long as you have them switched appropriately. If you do not you produce a small explosion which destroys the power supply. When assembling 100 or so systems, that mistake is inevitable. We also know from personal experience that the same mistake with an incompatible monitor is more spectacular. Yesterday, from 11 AM until around 3:30 the Meru school district had a "launching ceremony" to celebrate the receipt of the computers. In anticipation I thought I would find this "tedious." In actuality, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The highlights included a speech by Tom Schultz (the Lehigh parent who is the driving force behind our visit), who spoke in Kimeru, the language of the local tribe, and dances by the local schools and church groups. The dances were elaborately choreographed and set to operettas. The themes of the operettas were various moral messages, e.g., about the dangers of premarital sex, the dangers of female circumcision, etc. The music, lyrics, and cheoreography were all produced by the students. On a personal note, I have learned an immense amount in a short time, thanks to my investing two years in Cameroon. It has provided a lot of depth to that experience. I know that Janice and I will have prolonged discussions about what I have learned. I wish she had been able to come along. On Saturday we went to Mount Kenya. We climbed to MacKinder's Camp at 4200m (14000 ft), stayed the night and came down the next day. We were about 10 miles south of the equator and at 14000 feet, so we had a bright sun. That night it snowed lightly. Despite having backpacked in many locales, the scenery was quite unusual. The climb itself was not particularly steep but somehwhat rugged. The most interesting part was through a "vertical bog," which was a bog on a slant. There was no way around, so we slogged through. Although some of us were out of shape, we were all able to make it to Mackinder's Camp. We hired a guide who wently more slowly with two of us. All of us have been indiviudally hosted by local families and have had an in-depth exposure to African culture, for which all of us have been very grateful. The weather has been in the 60's and 70's, the advantage of the tropical highlands (we are at 5000 ft). (note: This was the end of the message as was given to me. Helen) Kenya Report #1 Dear All, I did not have an opportunity to write letters from Kenya for a variety of reasons. I will do so now, motivated in part by my personal need to write about my experiences there so that I can understand them better. The main attraction for my going to Kenya was the potential for putting my and Janice's experiences in Cameroon in greater perspective. I was right in thinking I would learn a great deal about Cameroon and Africa. In writing about my visit to Kenya I will first state a fairly straight- forward chronology. Then I will write a series of fairly extended essays about various aspects of my visit. In many of the essays I will compare what I saw in Kenya to what I learned in Cameroon. For me the trip started on Friday, 18 May, at 3:00, which marked the end of the final examination in CSc 109, which had about 55 students. I had to grade the exams and submit the grades before 1:30 on Saturday, when a Lehigh van would take us to Newark for the flight to Amsterdam and then to Nairobi. I finished grading the exams around 5:30 AM and was able to submit the grades around 6:15 AM. Then I got a few hours of sleep. During our 5 hour layover in Amsterdam (6-11 AM Sunday) we took the train downtown and took a walking tour of a very quiet Amsterdam, including a stop by the Ann Frank house. We arrived in Nairobi around 8 Sunday evening. We stayed overnight at the Methodist Guest House. The next morning we boarded the school bus from Gikumenne Girls' High School (one of the schools in Meru) and took the four ride to Meru, which is about 200 Km north of Nairobi on the lower slopes of Mt. Kenya. Tom Schultz, the organizer of the trip stayed behind to start the process of getting the computers through customs. The computers had been airshipped via British Airways, whereas we had flown on KLM. Each of us was assigned a different family who would host us for our stay in Meru. It would end up taking Tom Schultz until Friday to spring the computers from customs. One could conceptualize the problems of gaining clearance in terms of our being ignorant of the rules, but it is more likely that the customs officials created the rules as they went along in an effort to extract bribes from us. In the meantime, back in Meru, our hosts tried to find various ways to keep us busy. Most of the hosts were headmasters or headmistresses, so many of us ended up spending time at their schools. The computers arrived Friday evening. We spent time that evening and part of Saturday unpacking the computers, assembling working systems, and grading them so that we could equitably distribute them. Saturday afternoon (26 May) we drove to a private game preserve to view all sorts of wild animals (zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, ostrich, rhinoceros, etc.). That evening we ended up at a lodge at the base of Mt. Kenya. On Sunday, we drove to Met Station at 10,000 ft on Mt. Kenya. From there we started our hike up Mt. Kenya. We stayed overnight at MacKinder's Camp (14,200 ft). The next day we descended and drove back to Meru. On Tuesday and Wednesday we assembled computer systems at a central location, then we boxed them and took them to the various schools, where we reassembled the systems to be sure that they were functioning. On Thursday, we spent much of the day at a "launching cermony." We officially presented the computers to the various schools, and the various schools gave various dance and song presentations. On Friday we drove to Nairobi and then flew to Lamu, an island resort in an estuary on the Indian Ocean. This started the "touristy" part of the trip. The students spent much of the time on a tropical beach relaxing. I spent my time exploring the town of Lamu and the surrounding environs. On Tuesday (5 June) we flew from Lamu to Mombasa. From there we took minibuses to Amboselli National Park, a game preserve in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We stayed overnight at a very posh lodge. Early the next morning we spent a few hours viewing game. In those few hours we saw an amazing diversity animals, many in great numbers: wildebeest, flamingo, hippopotamus, lion, zebra, giraffe, elephant, buffalo, hyena, jackal. We then drove to Nairobi for a goodbye meal with our hosts from Meru and for a chance to buy souvenirs. Wednesday night we started our flight home. Kenya Report #2 Dear All, The following people participated in the trip to Kenya. Tom Schultz. Tom is the parent of a Lehigh student. He taught at Chugu High School in Meru in the early 70's and has returned to Kenya frequently over the years. Tom is the driving force behind last year's and this year's trip to Kenya. He has the notion that bringing many hundreds of computers to Meru's schools will transform the educational system and the economic conditions in Meru. Greg Schultz, Tom's 16-year-old son. Gwendolyn Schultz, Tom's 9-year-old-daughter (Ivy Schultz, Tom's daughter at Lehigh did not join us, because she was on an exchange program in Europe for the spring semester.) Heather, Tom's girl friend. Heather came to Kenya after we left Meru and started the "touristy" part of our trip. Helen Lakatos, who works for Lehigh University's Information Resources. Helen repairs computers and was an essential resource on the trip. Kim Luff, a Lehigh graduate student who also works as a Residence Life Coordinator (for McClintock-Marshall dormitory). Kate Collins, Mikhail Pappas, Ashley Johnson, Lydia Holiat, Jackie Narocki, who are Lehigh students. Katie Collins, a friend of Kim Luff and a graduate of Penn State, who now works in Philadelphia. (Yes, there were two Catherine Collinses.) Karen Goldfeder, the daughter of Donna Goldfeder, who directs Lehigh's Career Services. Karen is an undergraduate at Boston College. While on the island resort of Lamu, I felt a little out of place, because I am not a tourist and because of the age disparity between me and the students on the trip. Instead of joining them at the beach, I spent my time exploring Lamu. Lamu is the oldest town on the Kenyan coast, dating from around 1400. To twist a metaphor, it is a maritime crossroads. It is predominantly moslem, but the inhabitants don't seem to take their religion too seriously. On the one hand, almost all the women wear black "bui-bui's" which cover them from head (often including the face) to toe. On the other hand, the daily calls to prayer enlist very few adherents; the mosques were mostly empty. This is in very strong contrast to my experience in Ngaoundere, Cameroon. There, Friday call to noontime prayer drew tens of thousands and brought the town to a standstill. Lamu is on an island, and cars are essentially banned. I saw one which belongs to the District Commissioner and a second which belongs to the Army. I also saw one motorcycle. Transportation to and from the island is by dhow, which are wooden sailboats with a lateen rig. The dhows are built on the island and require a great deal of maintenance. The seams are sealed by pounding cotton into the seams and then covering the cotton with shark oil. This must be done every six months or so. Transportation on the island is by foot or by donkey. There are donkeys (and donkey poo) all over the place. Cars would be useless in any case, because the streets of the town are extremely narrow; standing in the middle of most streets I would be unable to raise both arms out to the side. Lamu sits on the water, with a road running along a seawall. Immediately behind the seawall are upscale hotels (including the Lamu Palace, where we stayed), restaurants which cater to the hotels' occupants, and many government buildings: the post office, a museum, the tourist office, etc. One block in from the seawall is the town's main street, which is lined with a great diversity of commercial establishments: groceries, hardware stores, dry goods stores, etc. On the other side of this street is a residential district of very poor buildings. It was frequently difficult to tell whether a particular building was occupied or abandoned. All of the buildings were constructed of stone and cement and appeared to be hundreds of years old. At the Lamu Palace I had a fairly intense conversation with Jackie Rance, the director of economic development for the company that owns the Lamu Palace and a number of other properties on the Kenya coast. Jackie is a black from London who has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics. She came to Kenya two years ago and has been unsettled by the experience. She explained to me that she comes from a well-educated family (her father is a clinical psychologist) and has always felt that she has had to over- achieve because of the subtle racism in the UK. At the same time, she has always felt a mild sense of inferiority, which only pushed her to strive that much harder. When she came to Africa she thought she was coming to a place where she would be more comfortable. Instead she found a culture which she viewed in some ways to be inferior, thus evoking the stereotypes which she had been fighting against all her life. When I was in Cameroon I vaguely sensed some of the same reactions among the black Peace Corps Volunteers. It certainly seemed true to me that American Blacks have much more in common with Americans than they do with Africans. One (white) Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon vigorously disagreed with me when I stated this. Jackie, on the other hand, agreed with me. She was dismayed that she had more in common with the people of the UK than with the people of Kenya. When I explained to Jackie why we people from Lehigh were in Kenya, she questioned me closely about the likelihood that we had done any good by bringing computers to Kenya. Would it really change anyone's life? Would the computers be put to good use? Would not some other kind of aid or help be more effective? How would we know we would be doing any good? When in Cameroon I puzzled a great deal over the question of how to aid developing countries. Various kinds of aid often gets diverted because of corruption. In Cameroon, during the construction of a large building complex at the University of Dschang, the rampant corruption led to the diversion of most of the $70 million of USAID money from the project. In response, the US closed down all USAID activities in Cameroon. I explained to Jackie that while waiting for the computers to arrive in Meru I had visited around 10 of the schools which received computers last year to assess the computers' condition. At the same time I assessed how well the computers were being used. I saw quite a range of outcomes. At one of the schools it was obvious the computers had not been used. It may have been too inconvenient to use them, because the school depended upon their own generator for electricity, and they only used the generator sporadically. At many of the schools, one of the donated computers was being used in the principal's office for administrative purposes. At some of the schools the teachers were trying to teach themselves how to type and how to use the various software packages. At most of the schools there was scant evidence that the students had access to the computers. At a few schools it was obvious that students were indeed using the computers. Beyond what I saw at the schools, there was some evidence that the presence of the computers was having some of the effects that Tom Schultz hopes for. The schools in Meru have hired a person to help repair their computers. This person is quite well trained and serves to spread expertise among the schools. I also met a person from Nanyuki, a nearby town, who ran a small software company. Among the software packages they had developed was one tailored to the adminsitrative needs of the local schools. The person arranged to meet me, because he thought I had some influence over the purchasing decisions of the Meru schools. Jackie asked me to summarize the success of the donation of the computers by giving a number to quantify how many schools were using the computers as intended. I said 70%. It was only a guess, but it still seems reasonable. Jackie thought that 70% was impressive. Kenya Report #3 Dear All, For my homestay in Meru I was placed with Muchai Merwithania and his family. Muchai is the principal of Kaaga Boys' Highs School. His wife, Dauphin, is an agronomy student at Kenya Methodist University, a fledgling university in Meru. The Meriwthanias have two girls, 5 year old Maureen and 9 year old Lynnette. I found out at the very end of my stay that the Merwithanias were a bit wary of having an older professor staying with them, because they thought I would be fussy and demanding. Their fears were allayed soon after my arrival. Like many Kenyans, the Merwithania are highly religious. They belong to the Kenyan Methodist Church. Their days start and end with prayers. All of their meals start with grace and end with a prayer. They often invoke the name of God in their discourse. To some extent this is also true of public life in Kenya. Meetings usually start and end with prayers, etc. I think of the homestay as far and away the best part of the Lehigh students' experience in Kenya. It provided a unique insight into the Kenyan culture. For me that benefit was not as substantial, because of the many similarities between life in Kenya and life in Cameroon. At the same time, I got a good glimpse of the life of a schoolmaster. Muchai has complete command of Kaaga Boys', which has about 500 students, most of them boarding in the school's dormitories. Aside from the dormitories, the school campus has about six classroom buildings. Each building has the same design as the ones I saw in Cameroon. The design is dictated by the tropical environment. Each classroom building is long and narrow, one classroom wide, so that it is readily cooled by any passing breeze. The "hallway" between rooms is an external walkway sheltered by an overhanging roof. Whereas in Cameroon, the schools were made of wood, the schools in Meru are all made from a local sandstone which is extremely durable but easy to work into building blocks. The cheap labor made thes blocks very inexpensive. In place of the plywood boards painted black that I saw used for chalk boards in Cameroon, the Kenyans put a layer of cement on the building blocks and used a special paint which, when applied to the cemnt, created something that had the look and feel of the slate chalkboards we have in the US. Despite having many things to take care of at school, Muchai very graciously acted as my chauffeur, making sure I was able to attend the various meetings which were scheduled for me. In between, he tried to attend to the business of running Kaaga Boys'. In the process I developed a great deal of respect for Muchai's administration of Kaaga Boys'. The high schools depend upon the goverment to provide part of the costs of running them. The money is not always forthcoming, but the schools do the best they can. Muchai would like to have the money promised by the government, but is undeterred by the lack of funds. Both (the Anglophone part of) Cameroon and Kenya inherited the British system of education. In Cameroon students attend six grades of primary school, then, if admitted, forms one through five of secondary school, then, if admitted, lower and upper sixth forms, and finally, if admitted, three years of university. One moves on to the next level by passing a national test and earning the corresponding certificate: the peculiarly named "school leaving certificate" after primary school, the O-Level GCE (ordinary level general certificate of education) after form five, and the A-Level GCE (advanced level general certificate of education) after upper sixth form. These tests are quite demanding so that only about 10% of Cameroonian students make all the way through the system. In my discussions with Muchai, I did not ask about all the details of the Kenyan educational system, but I did learn that until a few years ago Kenya had the same grade structure as Cameroon. Then, by Ministry of Education edict, the country adopted what they call the Canadian system: eight years of primary school, four years of high school, and four years of university. However, they did retain the national examinations. Thus, at the end of high school one has to pass the test for the KCSE (Kenya certificate of secondary eductaion). It too is difficult to pass, although I did not ask what the pass rate is. At the University of Buea, the failure rate in many course exceeded 35%. When the faculty, as a group, reviewed the distribution of grades in each course, they used a rule which stated that only when more than 50% of the students failed a course would the faculty discuss in detail the high failure rate. In such cases, the instructor would explain why the failure rate was so high, and the discussion would move on to the next course. I was puzzled by such failure rates. It struck me as a great waste of resources, both those of the students and of the faculty. Either they should be more selective in admitting students to the University of Buea, or they should be more lenient in grading the students. It seemed that the Cameroonians were oblivious to this waste. When I was telling Muchai about the high failure rates for the Cameronians taking the national exams and for the students at the University of Buea, he muttered under his breath "mass wasting." This struck me as a slang term under wide use, indicating that the Kenyans were well aware of the waste of resources. I questioned Muchai about the meaning and currency of the term "mass wasting," and he confirmed what I suspected. This convinces me that the Cameroonians understand full well how wasteful their system is. One evening, while relaxing with Muchai at a local restaurant, Muchai introduced me to a drink he calls the Shandi. It consists of Tusker, Kenya's national beer, and Sprite. It sounds pretty strange but it tastes quite good. The sweetness of the Sprint completely smooths out the taste of the beer. In Nairobi the night we left we dined with members of our host families. As Muchai and I shared a Shandi, I somehow thought of my and my brother Steve's cocktail waiter days at the 5 o'clock club at Salisbury Beach. One of the drinks we served, Segrams 7 and soda water, was called a Presbyterian. I think the name "Presbyterian" is highly regionalized, perhaps only to the Merrimack Valley. In any case, I think the drink was called a Presbyterian because it would be mildly illicit for a Presbyterian to have an alcoholic drink and the drinker of a Presbyterian could joke that he or she was drinking ginger ale. Without any of the above explanation I told Muchai that where I came from the Presbyterian was the name of a drink, and I described the drink. I then suggested we rename the Shandi the "Methodist." Muchai immediately understood that both drinks were attempts to cover up their alcoholic nature. Kenya Report #4 Dear All: Although Kenya and Cameroon are both third-world countries, I believe that Kenya is more developed. I have not been in Cameroon for four years, but it is unlikely that the differences I saw were simply due to the passage of time. Below I record various impressions that reinforce my notion that Kenya is third-world but more developed than Cameroon. Shorly after my arrival at Jomo Kenyatta airport, I was traveling through the outskirts of Nairobi as we headed for the Methodist Guest House, where we spent the night. Between the airport and downtown it is highly industrialized. Much of the industry is quite modern and well maintained, with some of the logos on the large well-lit signs quite familiar, e.g., the logo of Hewlett-Packard. If you did not look carefully you might think you were somewhere in the US. If you did look carefully you would then see that Kenya is still in the third world, but that Nairobi, like most large cities, has some features of modern, western cities. Nairobi betrayed both sides of its nature in its cars. There were enough of them so that Nairobi had substantial traffic problems during rush hour. But the vast majority of the cars were old clunkers, held together with string and bailing wire, and emitting voluminous pollutants. Kenya has more paved roads than Cameroon, and they are somewhat better maintained in general. On the other hand, many of the roads are "all-weather," which is a euphemism for dirt roads. Dirt roads commit the venial sin of emitting great clouds of dust and commit the mortal sin of eroding in the rains. This latter sin is a major problem in Meru's locale, because the land is quite hilly. Consequently, during the rainy season dirt roads become streams, and the resulting water often creates deep gullies in the roads, sometimes making a given road impassible. Meru had a few paved roads and many dirt roads. There were also some roads that used to be paved but have been neglected so that the pavement is in the process of disappearing. On the plus side, I did see some work being done on the repair of some of the roads. I don't know how much of Kenya is electrified, but I think it is more electrified than Cameroon. One need only go a few kilometers off the paved road in Buea to find villages that have no electricity. This seemed to be untrue of Meru. We went to schools that were many 10's of kilometers off the paved roads but had electricity "on the grid." On the other hand, a few of the schools got their electricity (sporadically) from their generators. The telephone system in Kenya is better than that of Cameroon. First, almost all the schools we visited had telephones. Second, many of the people we stayed with had telephones. Third, there were a reasonable number of pay phones, and they functioned. In Cameroon, the pay telephones were a joke. They must have functioned once, but no longer. Now that they no longer function, thieves have stripped off all the valuable parts. The first few days I was in Meru I was not really paying attention. Then one morning, while out for a run, I saw a pay phone, and I was incredulous. I stopped, walked over, picked up the receiver, and was thrilled to hear a dial tone. In Cameroon, whenever we traveled between towns by bus, and the bus came to a stop for some reason, swarms of vendors would surround the bus and try to sell the occupants food and an incredible array of goods. Need a calculator? Need a watch? Need a roasted yam? Buy it through the window. In Kenya I saw practically none of this. I speculate that there were few vendors because there are better ways to scratch out a living in Kenya. I am not sure whether this has anything directly to do with development, but Kenya has a thriving dairy industry, while Cameroon does not, aside from, strangely, a yogurt industry. During colonial times some Dutch had a thriving dairy herd in Buea, but after independence the herd slowly disappeared. Milk products would be of great benefit in Buea for the prevention of some nutritional diseases, but it apparently would not be economically viable. At least around Meru and and between Meru and Nairobi (a distance of about 240 Km) there was daily evidence of the dairy industry. Numerous individuals would take stainless steel milk containers to distribution points each morning. In Kenya the accommodations at hotels and restaurants catering to (western) toursist were absolutely first rate. Although they had an African ambience, the Lamu Hotel and Amboselli Lodge (in the Amboselli game park) were as well appointed as a fancy Pocono resort. This reflects Kenya's having the one of Africa's most advanced eco-tourist industry. In contrast, Cameroon, which has great potential for eco-tourism, has not made any serious attempts to exploit its touristic sites and provides decidedly second-rate accommodations. Buea, because it is the jumping-off point for climbs up Mt. Cameroon, a mountain as interesting and formidable as Mt. Kenya, should offer good, western-style lodging but does not. The Mountain Hotel, a few hundred meters from where Janice and I stayed, must have been first-rate 15 years ago, but is now shabby, if not downright seedy. It is the only hotel in town that pretends to cater to western visitors. In developing countries, where resources are quite scarce, the inhabitants have great skills in improvising. I saw this both in Cameroon and in Kenya. I give three examples, the first which I learned in Cameroon and brought to Kenya; the latter two I saw in Kenya. (As a thrify New Englander -- "Use it up, wear it out, make do, do without" -- I am especially appreciative of improvisational conservation of resources.) We brought to Meru a number of printers, some of them dot-matrix, others inkjet. But what do you do when you run out of ribbon or the ink cartridge is empty? Ink cartridges are available in Nairobi, but the price is hefty, roughly what you would pay here but in an economy where $2 got me an excellent meal. In the case of ink cartridges, you simply have to pay the price. In the case of ribbon, it may be difficult or impossible to find the right replacement in Nairobi. The solution is quite simple. Insert carbon paper (which is omnipresent in Kenya) between two sheets of paper and insert the sandwhich in the printer. The first page will be unmarked, but the second page will have a (carbon) copy of the information being printed. Muchai, my host, drives an 80's vintage BMW. At one point it was very difficult to start, which Muchai diagnosed as carburetor problems. One evening, on the way home, we stopped at a garage to have the carburetor repaired. The mechanic quickly dismantled the carburetor and pin-pointed the problem: worn gaskets on small spring-loaded shafts whose function is a mystery to me. Ordering replacement gaskets is probably impossible, but if it is possible it would take months. Instead, the mechanic fashioned replacements out of the cardboard from a matchbox. Four layers of matchbox cardboard was just about right. The carburetor's performance was markedly improved, although I assume the cardboard will deteriorate rather quickly and will soon have to be replaced again. In powering the computers we (and the Kenyans) confronted two incompatibilities. First, our computers and monitors run on 110V-60 cycle electricity, whereas Kenya has 240V-50 cycle electricity. Second, our computers have American-style electrical plugs, whereas Kenya's electrical plugs are British-style. The typical power strip in Kenya has a British plug and universal outlets which accommodate American-, French-, and British-style plugs. Many computers have a switch which allow the computer to be run either at 110V-60 cycly or 240V-50 cycle. Many monitors will run in either system without any changes at all. At one point we were dealing with a monitor and a computer each of which would only run at 110V-60 cycle. We had a transformer that went from 240V to 110V, and it had only a single American style outlet. Thus, we could only plug in one of our two 110V items. We could not use the power strips, because they all had British plugs. Or so I thought. Then one of the Kenyans produced a wire with an American plug at one end and a British plug at the other end. Now this looks weird. No, it looks useless. But is is quite useful. The Kenyan plugged the American plug into the transformer and the British plug into the power strip. This made the power strip live. At the cost of one outlet, the other five now could be used for 110V electricity. Of course, the power strip's plug was not plugged into anything and presented an electrical hazard.... Kenya Report #5 Dear All, In this letter I will talk about dress, food, and various customs. In Meru, the people wore western clothing almost exclusively. This is in contrast with the people of Buea, almost all of whom wore traditional clothing say 10% or 15% of the time. The rare person I saw in Meru who had non-western clothing usually was wearing the West African garb I was used to seeing in Cameroon. When we traveled to the Amboseli National Park, a "game park," we saw the Maasai. They dress almost exclusively in traditional garb: the men wear a long bright red cloth wrapped around the waist and then thrown over one shoulder. The difference between the way the Maasai and the Meru (the people living in Meru are members of the Meru tribe) dress reflects a general difference about the way they live. The Maasai seem to be clinging to their traditional life style in lots of ways. Traditionally they were nomadic herders. They continue to be herders but are much less nomadic. In addition to dressing in a traditional style, they still go about armed with a spear (akin to our stereotype of a Texan packing his shotgun in the rear window of the pickup) for self- protection. The one Maasai family we visited lived in small mud huts. The Maasai wear lots of metal jewelry and still create large holes in their ear lobes. (In doing my homework before the trip I read that the Maasai men traditionally would take the stretched out ear lobes and wrap them neatly over the top of the ear. This made me sufficiently alert to observe this in a Maasai who was at the Lamu Palace Hotel, probably hired by the hotel to provide some local color.) I came away from Kenya with the impression that the Maasai, in adapting the least, had a more contented life in Kenya. A few days ago we invited the Keims over for supper, because Kurt is an Africanist at Moravian College (although presently dean of the faculty and not teaching). He says that the notion that scholars dispute the notion that the Maasai have been unaffected by modernity, that they have accommodated to western culture in many ways, that they essentially market the appearance that they are hewing to tradition, e.g., the Maasai demand money for any pictures you take of them. The food in Meru was much more like the food in the US than the food in Cameroon. The few traditional dishes I ate were composed of ingredients that are commonly eaten here. Of course, there was more reliance on tropical fruits, but none that I ate were very exotic: banana, papaya, pineapple, etc. There was much more emphasis on meat in the diet, perhaps because Kenya is more developed than Cameroon. Almost every meal had some meat or poultry. The meat was more varied, however. In addition to beef, goat and lamb were commonly served. One interesting dish consisted of mashed potatoes and banana. It struck me as an unusual combination, but it was quite good. I have already commented on the great abundance of milk. The Kenyans serve tea on almost any occasion. It is usually heated in the morning and kept in thermoses, ready to be served at a moment's notice. One day I traveled around to about 8 schools. At some point on each visit, the headmaster or headmistress would bring out a thermos of tea and offer us some. I am not a tea drinker, but was able to respond with good manners, because the Kenyans serve the tea mixed with about 30% milk. In Cameroon Janice and I always boiled our drinking water. When traveling, we always bought bottled water. Cameroonians, by and large, drank the local water, which was supposedly treated. In Meru, at least, most of the people do not trust the local water, so they boil their drinking water. That made it easy for us to get good drinking water. Just as in Camerooon, the meal itself does not usually function as a social occasion for the family, although there are some public meals that do serve a social function. Thus, families do not usually eat together. In Cameroon most everyone I knew was at least tri- and usually quadri- lingual. Their first language was their tribal language, their second language was pidgin, their third language was either French or English, and their fourth language whichever of French or English was not their third language. I can say roughly the same thing of the Kenyans. Their first language is tribal, the second Swahili, and the third English. Pidgin is the lingua franca of West Africa, while Swahili is the lingua franca of East Africa. The English spoken in Kenya is quite different from that spoken in the US but strikingly close to that spoken in Cameroon. This made communication very easy for me. In Cameroon I initially had many confusing discussions because of the differences in semantics, idioms, and pronunciation between American and Cameroonian English. I skipped that phase in Kenya. I simply reverted to a vaguely Cameroonian accent and use of language. Kenyans, just like Cameroonians, start almost any social interaction with a greeting, usually in the form of a handshake. This is a subtle social convention. In the US, we have many interactions where we do not greet people. When I went to the bursar's office the other day, I went to the counter and simply waited for someone to serve me. When someone approached I immediately initiated the business transaction. In Kenya and Cameroon, this would be unbearably rude. I should start by saying hello to the person, asking how they are, and (provided there was no counter in the way) shaking their hand. Somewhat for my own amusement, since my return from Cameroon I routinely greet a person before any interaction. It catches many people off guard, because for many interactions our customs do not call for such a greeting. I remember when we first moved to Portland OR that I was confused by what I thought were the over-friendly clerks who greet the customers, unlike the clerks around here who often seem to ignore the customers. Saying goodbye in Kenya also calls for handshakes. With large groups of people, this can get clumsy. Report #6 Dear All, This report has no particular theme; I am picking up the odds and ends. Depending home many ends I talk about, this may be the last report. Some of the hand signals I learned in Cameroon served me well in Kenya. The most interesting of these are two signals for asking someone to "come here." Just as in Cameroon, the American signal for asking someone to come here (holding the hand up, with the palm facing the signaler, with the index finger and thumb pointing up, and the rest of the fingers folded, and with the index finger motioning toward the signaler) is a quite rude way of demanding "Come here now!" To ask someone politely one makes what we would characterize as a female way to say hello (hand held up, with the back of the palm facing the signaler, and motioning with the hand by folding and undfolding the fingers). It is remarkable that much, or perhaps all, of the African continent shares this signal but not our continent. Because there are so many dirt roads, the African environment is very muddy or very dusty, depending on the season. I have read in history books how muddy and dusty the frontier in our country was, but words have no way of conveying how muddy or dusty it can get. When I confronted this kind of environment in Cameroon, I was overwhelmed, in part because doing anything about it seemed so fruitless. Why clean and polish my shoes today if later today they will be hopelessly muddy or dusty? Africans react very differently. They are meticulously clean much or all of the time. When Muchai chauffeured me around to various schools "in the bush" his car was encrusted with red dirt. (The night the carburetor was repaired, the mechanic dumped an astounding amount of dust out of the air filter.) Each night, a handyman would scrub the car clean, knowing full well we would be back on the dusty roads the next day. When I first entered Muchai's home I knew enough to remove my shoes. The next morning I found that Muchai had polished them at the same time he applied the daily polish to his. He ended up saving my shoes from turning a permanent red, as he continued this generosity daily. The division of labor between the sexes in Kenya is less clearcut than in Cameroon, although it is there. Just as in Cameroon, I saw (only) women lugging big bundles of wood from "the bush." In the food market, however, I saw some (but not many) male vendors of fruits and vegetables. I saw as many headmistresses as headmasters, although the headmistresses typically led all-girls schools. The headmistress of Kaaga School for the Deaf, one of two such schools in the country was a female who succeeded a male head- master. At one point, I and Muchai (headmaster of Kaaga Boys') visited the headmistress of Kaaga Girls' High School. The grounds of the school campus were meticulously kept, almost overdone in the way Lehigh's present campus grounds are. Her office, was extremely well finished, with paneling and fine cabinets of native wood. Their computer room was spotless and especially free of dust. I ask how they kept it so clean, and she responded that they wash the room daily and go out of their way to keep the room free of dust. I knew that the condition of campus depended not only on her industriousness but also on a lot more resources than were apparent at other schools. Without asking Muchai the preliminary question of whether Kaaga Girls' had more resources, I asked why they had more resources. I knew, of course, that all Kenya's public schools depend on both government funds and "school fees" (tuition). He responded that most families paid their daughters' school fees before paying their sons' school fees. Thus girls' schools are easily able to collect the school fees, while the boys' schools were forever chasing after school fees. Indeed, despite there being about six weeks to go in the school year, I witnessed Muchai negotiating with two different parents over late school fees. This is a minor detail, but in Cameroon it was extremely common to see men and women carrying things on their head. At a typical taxi park I would see some girl carrying a tray of packages of peanuts for sale on her head, I would see a man carrying a tray of watches and calculators for sale on his head, etc. In Kenya, it was rare to see anybody carrying anything on the head. It should be no surprise that one bargains for things in the market, although this seemed to be less common in stores in town, where things seemed to have a fixed price. Just as a meal in this country is an excuse for social interaction, bargaining in Africa is an excuse for social interaction. Thus, it is rude for me to accept the first price offered. We must haggle. The seller must tell me that the article is extremely valuable, hand-made, and difficult to part with (for less than thrice what it might be worth). I must tell the seller why I don't want it, can't afford it, and how defective the article is. (Some of my bargaining offended some of the Lehigh students, because they felt I was insulting the seller, as well as exploiting the seller.) On the night we left Nairobi I had an especially pleasant (and drawn out) bargaining session with a vendor of various items designed for the tourist trade. I and the woman both understood that the social interaction was almost more important than the sale. In the process I learned that both Kenyans and Cameroonians affectionately call a woman in the name of her eldest child, so that Janice is known as Mammy Gwen and my friend in Nairobi is known as Mama Eric. I did all right in terms of price as well. I had a hot water shower at Muchai's (in contrast to my two years of cold showers in Buea), thanks to an ingenious device we would be well to copy. It would save us hundreds of dollars (and many gallons of oil) per year per household. In the largish shower head (about the size a pint jar) was an electric heater that produced instant hot water. Before stepping into the shower I would throw an electrict switch to turn it on. I would turn it off upon leaving the shower. Most compounds (walled cluster of one or more houses) have night guards. One of the guards for the compoundt of the headmistress of Kaaga School for the Deaf was armed with bow and arrows. It turns out that this is fairly common. The guard is able to attack in the dark without his victim knowing where the attack is coming from, given the lack of noise. The banking system functions better in Kenya than in Cameroon. I had no trouble changing dollars into shillings at the bank. It took me about 30 minutes, including a wait in line. In Cameroon I never tried to change dollars into CFA Francs at the bank, but I do not think I would have been successful in Buea. Indeed, everyone I knew would change money at a local store at a hefty discount or with my friend Hans Njohjam, who was treasurer of the Presbyterian Synod. The second time I changed dollars into shillings I used an ATM machine in Meru. The transcaction was as quick and simple as at the machine I use at 9th and Broad. Today I saw the bank statement for that transaction. There was no fee of any sort, and I got the exchange rate for that day. I may change my mind, but I intend to write one more report, describing in detail what the project actually did in Meru. Kenya Report #7 Dear All, In this last report I will describe the some of the details of our work in Meru. Recall that it took us five days to get the computers through customs. Tom Schultz and Helen Lakatos visited numerous government officials in Nairobi trying to get approval for the release of the computers. An interesting "catch-22" about the process had to do with the daily accumulation of demurrage fees for storage of the computers in customs. These fees were accumulating so rapidly that it could soon cost more than the computers were worth to retrieve them. Luckily the process stopped fairly quickly. While Tom and Helen were chasing around Nairobi, the rest of us were in Meru. Our hosts had the problem of keeping us occupied while we marked time. One day, everyone but me (who spent the day at Kenya Methodist University, where I met with various officials and installed free software on their computers) did some sightseeing. I don't know all of the details, but the group visited a tea plantation and its processing plant and also visited some historic buildings. Another day, we spent part of the day at a meeting of all the headmasters and mistresses as they tried to thrash out the details of how they would pay for import duties and for computer peripherals which we were not providing, surge protectors, power strips, transformers, and the like. I am not sure whether the Lehigh students understood how lucky they were to see how decisionmaking is carried out in Kenya. I found it fascinating to watch them struggle, in a democratic fashion, with the difficult problem of deciding how much (scarce) money each school would provide and how much of the equipment each school would get. The crux of the problem was the need to have all of the 30 or so schools provide the money in order to spread the financial burden, but to have only about 15 schools get the benefit of the computers, because only that many were in the position to take advantage of our largesse. The remaining schools hoped that they would benefit in subsequent rounds of this project. On another day, while the Lehigh students were spending time at the schools of their respective hosts, I visited about eight schools to assess how well the computers donated last year were functioning. In a sense, I was conducting an inventory. In another sense, I was determining how well the schools were taking advantage of the resources the project had brought them last year. For me it was a quick education in how well or how poorly a school could be run. The better schools were better in every way. They were neater, cleaner, better maintained, and the students appeared to be getting a better education. For example, I mentioned previously that Kaaga Girls' was exceptionally well maintained. At the same time, they gave clear evidence they were making good use of their computers. Their computer room was spotless. We walked in unannounced and found a bunch of students busily working. At the other end of the scale was a school which, from the outside, looked poorly maintained. Their computers were locked in a dusty room, and their was scant evidence they had ever been used. When the computers finally arrived Friday evening, we unloaded them all in the Chugu High School Library, which had been emptied of all its books and shelving. I think we had about 140 monitors, cpu's, keyboards, mice, etc., but few of any systems were intact. So, we took one of each, component assembled a system, tested it out, checked its software, added some of the free software we brought with us, and graded each assembled system as A, B, or C in quality. Of course, we started to collect various malfunctioning components which either were donated damaged or were damaged on the flight to Nairobi or in the school bus which transported them over very rough roads; Chugu is about 5 Km from the nearest paved road. Each functioning system was then put back in boxes and labeled. We also had perhaps ten printers of various vintages, some dot-matrix, some inkject, some laserjet. We tested them as well and developed procedures for installing them on the computers, realizing it made more sense to install a given printer on a given computer when we brought the computers to specific schools. Saturday morning we continued assembling systems, stopping around noon. Then we all drove to the lodge at the base of Mt. Kenya for our outing on the mountain. We returned to Meru Monday evening. Tuesday morning we continued to assemble computers, load software, test printers, etc. Around midday, we formed a team consisting of myself and about half the group. We loaded about 30 systems onto a school bus and then headed down barely passable dirt roads to various schools on the outskirts of Meru. The first school was getting computers for the first time. Our team of 7 descended on the room where the computers would go, had the school's students unload four systems, and then attacked the boxes in pairs. Each pair assembled a system, got it running, while I ran around from pair to pair to help them in any way I could. Once a few systems were running, we started showing the students and staff, who crowded around, how to use the computers. While all this was going on a reporter and cameraman from Reuters were filming the flurry of activity and interviewing some of the participants. It took perhaps half an hour to get all the computers running, along with a printer. We spent another half hour or so instructing, but then we tried to leave for the next school. Good manners dictated otherwise. The school had prepared a meal for us, so we had to stay for a (quick) meal. This scene was replayed at four other schools that day, er, day and night. We tried to nicely turn down offers of food and drink at each school, but were not always successful. At our last stop, Nkubu, around 8:30 in the evening (a few miles from the equator, it had been dark from 6:30) we unloaded our treasure in the dark and had some difficulty finding our way to where they wanted us to set up the computers. The room was quite long, with windows on both sides. On one side, where the view was good, about 400 students gathered outside to noisily watch us do our work. Meanwhile, the group left behind at Chugu High School had pretty much assembled and tested most of the systems. The remaining systems were constructed out of cannibalized parts, a process which went much more slowly and was handled by a technician and a school teacher from Chugu High School. On Wendesday, we spent the early part of the day at the "launching," a ceremony where we officially gave the computers to the schools of Meru. Afterward, the various schools brought vehicles to Chugu high school, where the rest of the systems were distributed. Then we formed two teams and headed in different directions to install the systems at the various schools. My team, at least, saw the same kind of frenetic activity as we had seen on Tuesday. On Thursday, we finished installing systems and instructing in their use. Early Friday morning we all tearfully bid our hosts farewell, took a bus to Nairobi, and then flew to Meru. A final note. The reporter and cameraman from Reuters produced a five minute segment on our project. They sold the segment to the national TV in Kenya, and we all appeared on the national news. As far as I know, no one was able to get a tape of our doubtless stellar performance.