• Areas that had been greatly impacted by the violence were invited to identify people who could participate in conflict resolution training.
• From this large group of people, smaller groups of 5-7 people from different tribes were formed. After an additional 4 days of training to help these groups develop and work together, they were asked to go back to their areas together to engage their communities in dialogue / workshops / forums / etc.
• The most active and involved team members were brought back to Nairobi for 10 days of advanced training and will be sent back as official mediators

To put this into a bit of context, the task facing these mediators would be akin to bringing warring inner-city gangs together, except that these gangs have worked together in a deferential manner since colonial times.

The picture above is of the worship band playing at church. As usual the music was very impressive, especially given the mass of cords running everywhere to keep the instruments alive! We were asked to speak… but thankfully not to sing.

We have spent the first couple of days going to church and having meetings sorting out the purpose and goals of this trip. Things are a bit up in the air as there was no micro-credit pilot project, just a proposal. However, we have had the chance to meet with a lot of partners whom we support and work on projects with, but have never met before!

Without going into too many details to our discussions and some of the interesting questions that have been brought up, I thought I might pose a question for you to consider. Can you expect someone to utilize a micro-credit loan for entrepreneurial income generation if that person cannot currently even cover the basic necessities for life (i.e. they are starving, do not have water, cannot pay school fees, etc)? If the answer is yes, what activities can they reasonably expected to participate in (and how effective can they be) with the money they have been loaned? If no, how can you provide these basic necessities while still clarifying the purpose of the micro-credit loan and that it must be paid back, or that it is somehow differentiated from the subsidies you are also providing?

Just some “food” for thought…

We have arrived safely in Kenya after about 25 hours of travel time. We are staying in the Anglican Church Guest House (the guest house we normally stay in). The acronym of the guest house is “ACK” (Anglican Church of Kenya) and it is quite nice even if the acronym is somewhat misleading!

After sleeping off the jet lag, we have ventured downtown to buy water and pick up some Kenyan shillings. Some items of note are that the violence and unrest following the previous election are no longer evident at all in the city. There are also a lot more foriegn visitors now that peace has returned. The standard of living of those with money appears to continue to rise, with new cars everywhere, and presumably this increase has not also benefited the poor, only increasing the wealth disparity. Other than that, there is not too much to report. We will be going into the office today and to the Highrise Church in Kabira slum on Sunday.

Thank you everyone for the travel wishes and prayers. Take care.

Well, we are finally at the packing stage and are just preparing ourselves to leave. Thanks to everyone for all the best wishes and prayers, they are much appreciated. We will not have a laptop with us this trip, so updating of this blog may be somewhat sporadic; however, we will make sure to fill it in after the fact at the very least! The picture above is of where we will be visiting in Kenya and Uganda.