In my experience, a volunteer organization's ability to help others hinges on its organizational structure and culture- its formal leadership, informal leadership, meetings, etc. Most groups really focus on the formal leadership and hierarchical decision making, at the expense of mentorship, consensus building and the input of the least powerful.
Many people claim that mentoring volunteers and getting their input takes too much time. In our Engineers Without Borders chapter, which has a membership of 40+ persons, it seems like that idea only holds up in the short term, if at all. In the mid term, including others and taking the time to build trust with them saves the organization many meetings, headaches and drama. In the long term, it takes less time and produces better results.
Intuitively, the emphasis on formal structures e.g. president, vp etc. running the whole show, and hierarchical decision making makes a lot of sense to many volunteers. It takes most people many volunteer hours to realize that hierarchical decision making is not a very efficient model. It prefers the loudest voices and the people who are most privileged in this world. It causes many organizations to lose the skills and volunteer hours of those who don't have the loudest voices or deepest pockets. Thus using it as the m.o. of an organization that aims to serve poor people in Kenya doesn't make much sense to me.
The problem is that there are not a lot of well-known alternatives to chose from, especially when it comes to running meetings for organizations with a large membership. This summer Quinn and I came across this handbook "On Conflict and Consensus," at a bookstore in Philadelphia. Most of it fits with the lessons about running a volunteer organization that I've learned from volunteering with EWB. We'll see how it goes. We are hoping to be able to try it out in EWB this fall.
http://www.ic.org/pnp/ocac/
wandreilagh.org/consensus.pdf for a free copy in PDF form
Monday, August 16, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Restaurant Review: Haandi Udupi, Indian Food, Westgate Mall, Nairobi
Haandi Udupi is an Indian restaurant in the food court of Nairobi's Westgate Mall. I had never visited a Kenyan food court before. As soon as we arrived, waiters from each of the food court restaurants raced over to us and handed us about 10 laminated menus. We were in it for the Indian food, and Haandi Udupi had a very extensive menu. Northern Indian, Southern Indian, Indian that I'd never heard of. Five pages of it, all with their authentic names and no English translations. It overwhelmed me and all I could remember was that paneer is tofu-like cheese. Quinn and I both settled for vegetable dishes because we thought it would be safer to experiment with veggies than meat.
Vegetable Korma (pictured in front of Quinn)
Vegetable Chaana
2 orders of warm, crispy, buttered naan
2 large passion fruit juices
---------------
1,000 ksh approx. $12.50 USD
The food was served on tidy white plates, and I was in Indian food heaven.
Cultural Norm
-----------------------------------------------------
This is an angry post.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time in Kenya. e.g. I'm standing in line, putting in my dinner order at the hostel in Nairobi. I've been waiting in line for five minutes. Some guy walks up to the counter. He has a crumpled bill in his hand. I am just about to open my mouth to tell the waitress what I'd like for dinner, when he extends his money to the waitress and she promptly stops paying attention to me. She takes his order. I look at him, momentarily surprised that he’d budge in line. Frustration wells up. The scenario is all too familiar. He did such an obvious job of budging. I stare at his face, trying to make him look at me, trying to make him uncomfortable. He won’t meet my eyes.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time in Kenya. At first, I wondered whether I was missing something, perhaps there were details in the systems for buying or ordering food, bus tickets, groceries etc. that I did not know about because I was a foreigner. I noticed that none of our male, Kenyan partners budged in front of us, in fact they were very courteous. Then, I started thinking about whether the guys who budged in line were simply jerks. You know- jerks, just like the American version. People who, for some reason, nature and/or nurture, consistently behave in rude ways.
A couple weeks ago, after being in Kenya for two months, I was standing in line to buy airtime for my phone. A twelve-year-old Kenyan boy of Indian descent used the small size of his body to get in front of me and cut me off. Budging in line, I soon realized, is a cultural norm amongst many Kenyans. So is treating women as second-class citizens. It's a complex topic that I'm only familiar with of because of these frustrating scenarios. I apologize for the oversimplifications- I'm annoyed! For the moment, all I know is that many females, such as the dinner waitress who took the guy’s order, are also implicated.
This is an angry post.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time in Kenya. e.g. I'm standing in line, putting in my dinner order at the hostel in Nairobi. I've been waiting in line for five minutes. Some guy walks up to the counter. He has a crumpled bill in his hand. I am just about to open my mouth to tell the waitress what I'd like for dinner, when he extends his money to the waitress and she promptly stops paying attention to me. She takes his order. I look at him, momentarily surprised that he’d budge in line. Frustration wells up. The scenario is all too familiar. He did such an obvious job of budging. I stare at his face, trying to make him look at me, trying to make him uncomfortable. He won’t meet my eyes.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time in Kenya. At first, I wondered whether I was missing something, perhaps there were details in the systems for buying or ordering food, bus tickets, groceries etc. that I did not know about because I was a foreigner. I noticed that none of our male, Kenyan partners budged in front of us, in fact they were very courteous. Then, I started thinking about whether the guys who budged in line were simply jerks. You know- jerks, just like the American version. People who, for some reason, nature and/or nurture, consistently behave in rude ways.
A couple weeks ago, after being in Kenya for two months, I was standing in line to buy airtime for my phone. A twelve-year-old Kenyan boy of Indian descent used the small size of his body to get in front of me and cut me off. Budging in line, I soon realized, is a cultural norm amongst many Kenyans. So is treating women as second-class citizens. It's a complex topic that I'm only familiar with of because of these frustrating scenarios. I apologize for the oversimplifications- I'm annoyed! For the moment, all I know is that many females, such as the dinner waitress who took the guy’s order, are also implicated.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Medical School- The Numbers, The Facts
I am in the process of applying to medical schools. This morning, I discovered something interested when reading a NYtimes article called "Getting Into Medical School Without Hard Sciences." It turns out that Mount Sinai in NYC, one of the med schools I applied to, offers medical school slots to students who studied liberal arts during undergrad, didn't take hard sciences and didn't take the MCAT. The part that fascinated me- The leaders of that Mount Sinai program just produced a peer-reviewed study that shows their "liberal arts" students perform as well as students who stressed hard over the MCAT and organic chemistry.
Here's the study:
"Challenging Traditional Premedical Requirements as Predictors of Success in Medical School: The Mount Sinai School of Medicine Humanities and Medicine Program," by David Muller, MD and Nathan Kase, MD. Published in Academic Medicine, 85:5, August 2010.
Although the metrics of success could be expanded a bit, I think the study is very useful.
I earned my B.A. from McGill University, and took premedical courses at Montana State after I graduated. It's always been hard for me to believe that the students in my class whose lives revolve around their statistics on paper (GPA, MCAT score etc.) were going to make good doctors. I still believe in learning the fundamentals of science before going into medical school, just because when I switched from mostly liberal arts to premedical courses it took me a while to get the hang of how to learn scientific concepts. But the study fits with my intuitive understanding of what makes a good physician. My self-bias about the study is huge because my own statistics on paper are not competitive with many of my peers, yet I'm pretty sure that I'm going to thrive in medicine.
This is what my application would look like to people who are focused on just the statistics:
Cumulative GPA: 3.41
Science GPA: 3.39
MCAT: 26 M. i.e. 9 in verbal, 7 in physical sciences (general chemistry + physics), 10 in biology (biology + organic chemistry), and M in writing (scored w/ J-T, low to high).
This is more like what my app might look like to people who look beyond the statistics and/or understand what makes them:
1.) I went to an undergrad institution where arts classes were usually challenging
2.) Ever since the summer after I started at MSU I have worked as a caregiver, day and night shifts
3.) Engineers Without Borders has been just as much of a time commitment for me as my premed classes. When I'm sitting in premed classes, many of which are taught by rocks of professors who are often symptomatic of a broken feedback loop in which they are completely clueless about the mediocre quality of their teaching skills, it's so much more tempting to throw myself into the kind of work that I will be able to do in medical school and beyond- directly helping people.
4.) I decided to move back home with my parents for the first year of my premed studies. That saved money but costs me a lot of time and energy, as living there is a lot of emotional work.
Here's the study:
"Challenging Traditional Premedical Requirements as Predictors of Success in Medical School: The Mount Sinai School of Medicine Humanities and Medicine Program," by David Muller, MD and Nathan Kase, MD. Published in Academic Medicine, 85:5, August 2010.
Although the metrics of success could be expanded a bit, I think the study is very useful.
I earned my B.A. from McGill University, and took premedical courses at Montana State after I graduated. It's always been hard for me to believe that the students in my class whose lives revolve around their statistics on paper (GPA, MCAT score etc.) were going to make good doctors. I still believe in learning the fundamentals of science before going into medical school, just because when I switched from mostly liberal arts to premedical courses it took me a while to get the hang of how to learn scientific concepts. But the study fits with my intuitive understanding of what makes a good physician. My self-bias about the study is huge because my own statistics on paper are not competitive with many of my peers, yet I'm pretty sure that I'm going to thrive in medicine.
This is what my application would look like to people who are focused on just the statistics:
Cumulative GPA: 3.41
Science GPA: 3.39
MCAT: 26 M. i.e. 9 in verbal, 7 in physical sciences (general chemistry + physics), 10 in biology (biology + organic chemistry), and M in writing (scored w/ J-T, low to high).
This is more like what my app might look like to people who look beyond the statistics and/or understand what makes them:
1.) I went to an undergrad institution where arts classes were usually challenging
2.) Ever since the summer after I started at MSU I have worked as a caregiver, day and night shifts
3.) Engineers Without Borders has been just as much of a time commitment for me as my premed classes. When I'm sitting in premed classes, many of which are taught by rocks of professors who are often symptomatic of a broken feedback loop in which they are completely clueless about the mediocre quality of their teaching skills, it's so much more tempting to throw myself into the kind of work that I will be able to do in medical school and beyond- directly helping people.
4.) I decided to move back home with my parents for the first year of my premed studies. That saved money but costs me a lot of time and energy, as living there is a lot of emotional work.
Monday, July 19, 2010
"Are We Getting Each Other?"
After spending two months in Kenya, there are still many things that I don’t understand. A lot of that probably comes from the language barriers. I don’t speak Kiswahili, Kenya's national language, or Kiluhya, the local language in Khwisero. English is Kenyans’ third language, and western Kenyans use English on a daily basis. However, they don’t get many opportunities to practice making full sentences in English with foreigners. Western Kenyans often use words in Kenyan English that mean different things than those in American English and vice versa.
If I think I understand what someone says, it becomes easy to think that they are always “getting me,” too. Especially because I am the white person with American English and as such the Kenyans sometimes assume that I have better communication skills than them. Upper-level education often makes students think they need to speak in complicated ways and use ivory tower words or silly analogies. So it is not always true that westerners have better communication skills. Have you ever noticed how so much of a college education is learning the language of your particular discipline? Or how each discipline uses slightly different vocabulary to explain the same concept? Because I'm not an engineer and a lot of our projects include lots of engineering and engineers, I often notice this trend when students throw engineering vocabulary at Kenyans, stuff that even I would not understand without access to the internet. 'Cantilever' anyone? The truth is, even though I am trying to be more aware of it, I do it too, except with medical words.
For the most part, the EWB volunteers who have been working here in Khwisero for a while, myself included, are improving at speaking simply and clearly. It’s critical that we do our best with that because it’s a little bit embarrassing for some of the Kenyans to admit they don’t understand. All of those opportunities for lost communication can lead to disastrous results. My personal strategy to minimize that is to explain myself to most western Kenyans in at least two different ways, speaking carefully and using as many Kenyan language-isms as I can. I also ask questions that allow me to check we are “getting each other.”
Here are some western Kenyan English-isms:
“Are we together?” Do you understand what I’m saying?; Are we on the same page?
“Pick” pick me up; take me; take an item
"Isn't it?" Correct?; "non?" in French
"Slowly by slowly" Gradually
"Are you just ok?"
"I am just around" I don't need any public transportation
There are other funky differences, which seem to be a combination of differences in word choice and sentence construction.
e.g. If I wanted to say "Would it be ok with you if we pay the invoice for ballast on Monday?" I would say "I was thinking I will be able to pay on Monday. Is it possible?"
(Photo by Katie Ritter)
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Article: "Half the Women in [Nairobi] City Slums Abused"
The Nation (Nairobi)
Kenya: Half the Women in City Slums Abused
Walter Menya
7 July 2010
"Nairobi — For women and girls living in Nairobi slums, violence comes in every form and from every direction. More than half are scarred by physical, sexual or psychological violence, according to a new report released on Wednesday.
The ever-present threat of violence has left the women too scared to leave their houses to use communal toilets and bathrooms, says the report by human rights group Amnesty International. The available pit latrines are few and far between. And they come at a cost.
The report, Insecurity and Indignity: Women's experiences in the Slums of Nairobi found that perpetrators of these abuses range from youth gangs, intimate partners, family members, employers to government security personnel.
The study was conducted in Kibera, Mathare, Korogocho, and Mukuru kwa Njenga slums between November 2009 and February this year. "Women in Nairobi's informal settlements become prisoners in their own homes at night and sometimes well before it is dark," Amnesty International East Africa researcher Godfrey Odongo said. The situation is compounded by the lack of police presence in the slums.
Women especially find solace in flying toilets -- plastic bags used to keep human excreta overnight before being thrown away, creating yet another health hazard. With few toilets and bathrooms, and the state of insecurity, women bathe in full view of their relatives and children. Nicoletta Kambura, 40, and HIV-positive after being gang-raped in 2006, does laundry in Eastleigh estate for a paltry pay of Sh100 a day.
The women who took part in the study said the violence within the confines of their home was the greatest threat. The perpetrators include family members and their spouses and partners. An official of a non-governmental women's legal aid centre in Kibera says they receive up to 10 cases of domestic violence every week -- mostly women beaten up or raped by their spouses.
Surprisingly though, survivors of the physical sexual abuse at home -- and whose names we have changed in this report to protect their privacy -- saw nothing wrong with it. "Although my husband often beats me up, I just have to stay because I am married. I do not report it because police will simply tell us to reconcile," said Eunice.
The women also keep these abuses under wraps because they lack faith in the justice system and the male-dominated police force. When a women steps out of her house, more violence awaits her. Youth gangs rape, mug and beat up women mainly because of their gender. Some are targeted for their ethnicity.
"Women survivors of violence said they are vulnerable throughout the day," the Amnesty report says. The report further indicts government security officials. In the few instances that slum dwellers get to interact with government security forces, mainly to quell riots, they often commit sexual abuses and other human rights violations.
Jane, who lives in Kibera, says the period following the disputed 2007 presidential election was the most traumatising. She testified before the Waki Commission investigating the violence. On December 30, 2007, when violence broke out, eight Administration Police officers deployed to restore calm raped her, leaving her unconscious.
"The police presence turned out to be a nightmare, which haunts us to this day," recalls Jane. At work, women complained of low pay, physical, psychological and sexual abuses. Wangechi of Korogocho said: "My employer locked me up in his house, while holding a knife, to rape me. Luckily, someone heard my screams and he let me leave. ""
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Half%20the%20women%20in%20city%20slums%20abused%20/-/1056/954076/-/130ceg4/-/
Kenya: Half the Women in City Slums Abused
Walter Menya
7 July 2010
"Nairobi — For women and girls living in Nairobi slums, violence comes in every form and from every direction. More than half are scarred by physical, sexual or psychological violence, according to a new report released on Wednesday.
The ever-present threat of violence has left the women too scared to leave their houses to use communal toilets and bathrooms, says the report by human rights group Amnesty International. The available pit latrines are few and far between. And they come at a cost.
The report, Insecurity and Indignity: Women's experiences in the Slums of Nairobi found that perpetrators of these abuses range from youth gangs, intimate partners, family members, employers to government security personnel.
The study was conducted in Kibera, Mathare, Korogocho, and Mukuru kwa Njenga slums between November 2009 and February this year. "Women in Nairobi's informal settlements become prisoners in their own homes at night and sometimes well before it is dark," Amnesty International East Africa researcher Godfrey Odongo said. The situation is compounded by the lack of police presence in the slums.
Women especially find solace in flying toilets -- plastic bags used to keep human excreta overnight before being thrown away, creating yet another health hazard. With few toilets and bathrooms, and the state of insecurity, women bathe in full view of their relatives and children. Nicoletta Kambura, 40, and HIV-positive after being gang-raped in 2006, does laundry in Eastleigh estate for a paltry pay of Sh100 a day.
The women who took part in the study said the violence within the confines of their home was the greatest threat. The perpetrators include family members and their spouses and partners. An official of a non-governmental women's legal aid centre in Kibera says they receive up to 10 cases of domestic violence every week -- mostly women beaten up or raped by their spouses.
Surprisingly though, survivors of the physical sexual abuse at home -- and whose names we have changed in this report to protect their privacy -- saw nothing wrong with it. "Although my husband often beats me up, I just have to stay because I am married. I do not report it because police will simply tell us to reconcile," said Eunice.
The women also keep these abuses under wraps because they lack faith in the justice system and the male-dominated police force. When a women steps out of her house, more violence awaits her. Youth gangs rape, mug and beat up women mainly because of their gender. Some are targeted for their ethnicity.
"Women survivors of violence said they are vulnerable throughout the day," the Amnesty report says. The report further indicts government security officials. In the few instances that slum dwellers get to interact with government security forces, mainly to quell riots, they often commit sexual abuses and other human rights violations.
Jane, who lives in Kibera, says the period following the disputed 2007 presidential election was the most traumatising. She testified before the Waki Commission investigating the violence. On December 30, 2007, when violence broke out, eight Administration Police officers deployed to restore calm raped her, leaving her unconscious.
"The police presence turned out to be a nightmare, which haunts us to this day," recalls Jane. At work, women complained of low pay, physical, psychological and sexual abuses. Wangechi of Korogocho said: "My employer locked me up in his house, while holding a knife, to rape me. Luckily, someone heard my screams and he let me leave. ""
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Half%20the%20women%20in%20city%20slums%20abused%20/-/1056/954076/-/130ceg4/-/
Friday, July 2, 2010
PETA Would Not Approve
Quinn and I are currently volunteering with Engineers Without Borders at MSU in the Khwisero District of Western Kenya. This is my second and his third time volunteering here.
Before I traveled to Kenya for the first time I heard the story of "The Kitten at Francis' House." Francis was the informal head of our Kenyan team at the time. In other words, he lived in Khwisero and he was the person who hosted us and facilitated our work. One day during dinner at Francis' house, a new kitten paid the EWB travel team a visit. The girls on the team exclaimed about its cuteness and someone started feeding it under the table. Soon, the kitten lost its table manners and started meowing and asking for food at every meal. The feeding schedule continued. Unfortunately, the ladies of the house saw the aggressive kitten as a nuisance. One day when everyone came for dinner, the kitten was gone, never to be seen again.
There is a cat at the place we are staying now. At first, I thought it was just your typical underfed Kenyan cat, meowing for food. When I picked it up a couple weeks ago to put it outside, my hand ran across its enlarged nipples. That's when I realized the cat was female. The next day, I heard a tiny meow coming from the corner of the dining room. As I approached the source, I came across a kitten whose size barely managed to match its miniscule meow. It was white with black and tan spots. It staggered across the floor, as if it had just learned to open its buggy eyes. Since then, I have met two of the cat's other kittens. I have also discovered that Renee, one of my travel team members, had been feeding the mother cat large chunks of Ugali, the local cornmeal staple. I have had the same urge, but I know the story of "The Kitten At Francis' House." Renee does not know the story, or is more optimistic than me. Renee grew up in Trinidad, with parents who cooked food specifically for their domestic animals. She returned home last week, so I don't know whether she has noticed that the ladies who cook for us are constantly dragging the mother cat out of the house, trying to keep it outside while we eat. Today one of the ladies picked the mother cat up by the ear, and flung it outside.
I feel bad for the animals of Kenya. There is the puppy at the neighbor's house whose ribcage and pelvis are visible. There is the kitten who roamed the market underfoot yesterday, only to be kicked when a man realized he had stepped on its paw. (Afterward as it limped across the concrete floor I came close to looking for a legal loophole that would allow me to bring it back to the U.S.) Impoverished Kenyans tend to value animals for their products and services, but little beyond that. In a country where so many children and adults are struggling to eat, I am starting to see why.
Human beings tend to underestimate how much their environment impacts their thoughts and behaviors. Of course, I believe that our nature impacts us too. But the older I get, the more I think about how the environment causes individuals to become who they are. For example, two weekends ago when our EWB group visited the Kakamega Rainforest, we came across a very angry person. He was a matatu conductor. (Matatus are the overpacked public vans that criss- cross Kenya, providing transportation to just about anywhere you might want to go.) The matatu conductor is the one you talk to when you want to ride on the matatu. When you are renting out a whole matatu like we were, you negotiate a rate with him. The matatu conductor that day ended up not being much for bargaining, and he tried to make us pay an exorbitant white person price. He had hate in his eyes and a bad attitude in his speech. Renee was doing the negotiating, and when the conductor didn't like her knack for bargaining he turned to Quinn. The conductor's words and expressions said something to the effect of "This woman is nothing to me. She is a piece of shit. I only want to negotiate with you because you are a man and she has me cornered." Quinn told him that Renee was the boss, so he'd have to negotiate with her. As I think back on it, I wonder what kind of situation the conductor grew up in, and what lead him to being abnormally rude. No doubt, he came from a very competitive background. In a place like Kenya, where most people are struggling just to live, I now understand how poverty can make you mean. Poverty can change people. Poverty can alter how people see the world and rationalize their surroundings. Sometimes it can even ease or erase the guilt of punishing the tiniest of kittens.
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