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.