Kitale - Common Ground Project

Hello from Kisumu, where it's a hazy day in the mid-70s. I hear it's hot in Seattle. Tuesday we left Dar es Salaam on a 5:25 a.m. flight (groan) and flew through Nairobi to Kisumu, where we met our driver Kennedy. We did a little shopping, and met with Rose Waringa, who heads a new organization named Precious Tears Initiative. Kennedy had nixed our plan to visit her site before driving to Kitale, so we had her join us for lunch to hear about her program working with orphans and grandmothers. It sounds like an interesting approach, so we arranged to go there at the end of the day today. After lunch, we drove 3 hours to Kitale, where we were greeted by Joshua Mashinga, the director of Common Ground. The children from Pathfinder Academy, the school run by CG, entertained us and presented us with a beautiful woven wall hanging of the Pangea logo. After a quick cup of tea, we went to our hotel, which is a golf club most assuredly built by the British. The facilities were straight out of the 50s...the shower has an on-demand heater built into the showerhead. You turn on the heater with a switch outside the bathroom door, but a big sign says you have to start the shower running first or "the boiler will blow up!" The club is too far from the center of town to walk there for food, but there is a dining room with very cheap food. This is a case of "you get what you pay for"--the chef must be British trained, because the food was bland and poorly prepared. Oh well. Yesterday we spent the entire day with Joshua, touring numerous community sites and meeting with quite a few self-help groups. Most of what we saw was centered around bio-intensive gardening, which is really effective. It increases yield by 5x, it emphasizes a balanced kitchen garden that will provide all the nutrients, and each group that is trained sees an immediate increase in health and revenue from their small farm. Joshua is somewhat of a renaissance man, who has incredible energy and must not sleep much. We feel that anything he does will be helpful to the community, but currently much of his time is absorbed by running the school. He wants to get out from under that, and we hope he can, so he can return to his passion. We talked with him about the future and about ways we might be able to help him leverage his time. All in all, a very impressive program and an amazing leader! Best to all, Chris