To Blog or Not To Blog

So it appears that I have not mastered the art of doing cool things AND blogging about them. But combination of events and influences has made me realize that I really should be putting more priority on blogging, and you should too! Everyone has an internal dialogue of what they're experiencing and what they're learning from it. So why should this dialogue be internal? In the words of Jessica Colaco, "Start a blog, people." We all have something to say and we all love something to read online to avoid work, right? The run down of my life and project in the last month or so:

Kenya's proposed constitution passed! It was a historic and momentous event in Kenya and I was happy to be here. Now Kenya has the political infrastructure to mitigate corruption, address historic injustices dating back to the colonial age, redistribute land more equitably, stand up for human and civil rights, and govern more efficiently and effectively. Of course, implementation still has its issues, but I believe this document lays the groundwork for progress. For a more detailed and professional opinion, check out this article on the Afronline blog.

The Solar Training and Construction with KCYP was a grand success! After closing of school for an August vacation, twenty one physics students spent part of their holiday learning about solar technology. Kibera Community Youth Program has been building and assembling solar lamps and installing solar panels since 2004 and conducted a solar training with our girls. In this training they learned about solar circuitry, climate change, marketing skills, and best of all, they learned to assemble solar lamps. The girls lit up with excitement as they saw their education create something so useful and applicable to their day to day life. In Kenya, school curricula are usually lecture and memorization based, rarely as interactive and hands on as what we did during this training. The difference in teaching style was hugely successful, the girls were energetic and engaged and proud of their new knowledge. I myself was too busy taking pictures during the building session and got started on my lamp later than most of the girls. I couldn't work for more than 2 minutes without a girl showing me "that I was doing it wrong", taking the soldering iron out of my hand and doing it for me. This unwanted help was hugely frustrating because I selfishly wanted to build a panel too, but it was also incredibly heartwarming to see that the girls were so proud of their knowledge that they would show the teacher how its done.

I restructured the marketing side of the solar project to ensure profitability. After some extensive market research, I found that though there weren't competing products within Kibera, there were some other products on the market-- products that were cheaper, tougher and more versatile than the study lamps we were building. It was only a matter of time before these competing products came to Kibera and put my girls out of business. So we changed our structure: the lamps the girls have built will be kept at the school for girls to take home to study at night since many of their family homes do not have electricity. Meanwhile, the solar girls will be developing a co-curricular Junior Achievement solar company that will be partnered with two solar businessmen in the region: Joseph Nganga and the Sun King Lantern and Raju Prasad and Thrive Energy Lamps. The company will sell and rent a variety of highly reputable solar lamps and work with KCYP to install full size solar systems.

Thank you so much to the 

Davis Foundation 100 Projects for Peace Grant 

for funding this endeavor!

A partnership with Jude and Bernadette Ndambuki of the Help Kenya Project is in the works! The Help Kenya Project is a phenomenal NGO that transfers donations of computers, books and other materials from the US (Westchester, NY) to Kenyan schools. They have donated to hundreds of schools all over rural Kenya and hope to add KGSA to this list. In addition to donating computers, Jude has a Laptop Reward Program that offers a free laptop to university students that commit a certain number of volunteer hours at Jude's schools. Jude and I will be arranging for two laptop students to work at KGSA over the next year. One will be a computer science student responsible for teaching the girls basic computer skills, and the other will be a business or engineering student responsible for leading the solar girls Junior Achievement company. With this long-term, local leadership, I can be sure that the solar company will not fizzle out and die after I leave Kenya.

I went to the G-Kenya Google Conference and it changed my life. The GKenya conference made me wish (again) that I had a degree in computer science. The conference was all about increasing Africa's web presence by encouraging local developers to create locally relevant and accessible content. Americans tend to look at the developing world as some place that's behind the ball, some place that will eventually "catch up to us". But really, here in the developing world, the possibilities are much wider. The internet culture of Africa has yet to be established because things are just beginning: the cost of internet access is dropping, the number of internet users is skyrocketing. It is the time for African businesses to ride this wave, get online and make some money. Check out this video of the entrepreneurship panel session that concluded the conference.

ADAM VISITED! and it was spectacular. Most of the visit was busybusybusy because we were in the last few days of my grant funding and had to tie up loose ends with the project. During this time, it was great to have a partner to see things in a new light, meet people in a new way, help me brainstorm and implement the details of my project. Then since no trip to Kenya was complete without either a safari or a beach, we opted for the latter and spent a few days on the coast eating fresh fruit and fish, relaxing, snorkeling and having an amazing time. This travel led me to see a whole new brand of poverty. On the coast, the rich European tourist and the landless, jobless, uneducated poor clash creating a dynamic almost more desperate than Kibera. More on this later...

I went to a Makers Faire 2010 and got psyched about income generating projects. What exactly is a Makers Faire? I was wondering that too when I arrived, originally told it was a solar conference. It was an event with booths and speeches from different innovators or groups around Kenya that had something they had "made". This was anything from arts and crafts, to web applications, to solar lamps, to income generating projects. I was most interested in the latter and stumbled across some groups that build bio-fuel jikos (stoves) to replace kerosene cookers and groups that build machines to press bricks to allow more sophisticated building rural areas or urban slums. I also heard about Kibera News Network, a youtube news channel straight from Kibera, trying to broadcast beyond the doomsday-biggest-slum-in-the-world press that usually makes it to the western world. Check it out!

I went to a Teach a Man to Fish workshop about sustainable education. Just walking to the school like any other day, I realize that KGSA is hosting a workshop by Teach a Man To Fish, an NGO promoting a 3 part philosophy of sustainable education: 1) schools should have interactive, hands-on learning 2) schools should be coupled by income generating projects that integrate the community, students and staff and 3) schools should become self sufficient through these income generating projects and not depend solely on government or donation funding. This really echoes the philosophy at KGSA as Abdul and the other administrators are pushing for the seed capital to start different projects that will fuel KGSA's running costs. This event was great to network with other Kenyan educators and to meet the famous Jamie, another member of the KGSA volunteer family that I have heard about but never met.

What now??... My return ticket technically says October 1st, but I'm not sure I'll be ready to pack up and leave in 15 days. I think I need more time to really get things solidified with the solar project. We still haven't done any marketing or solidified the rental procedures. We haven't started Junior Achievement business training. Jude and I haven't selected the university students that will be overseeing our computer lab and solar initiative. And on the other hand I'm tempted to take the ideas from the Google conference, get my hands on some web development skills, and go into business getting Kenyan business on the web. Jude is also really interested in taking the solar project to another level. Both of these would be something new for me... but I am at the most risk-safe point in my life right now. Just graduated, no job, no family... why not? But of course I miss home, I miss my family, I miss not being a foreigner, I miss not being called "Msungu", and I miss all the cushy comfort of a 9-5 job with paycheck. After all, whether I leave in October or later, eventually I will leave. So maybe it would be best for the sustainability of the solar project if I just hustle to get the leadership in place and push them to get the solar project fully initialized. Thoughts?

All in all, I have much more to say about all these things, so stay tuned for more!