Category: Musings on this World

It was at a barbecue in Nairobi’s posher neighbourhoods that I lost it.
We talked about the proposed security bill, actions of Police and Defence Forces and how Kenyans may never hear the truth about events like Westgate and killings of Muslim clerics if not for courageous investigative journalists.

Then, as if she intended to bring the conversation to a good end, the lady in her late 20s next to me says that “not all Muslims are bad”.

After weeks of feeling angry and helpless, I exploded.

“Would we ever even consider saying that not all Christians are bad? We know that Christian extrimists are funding an aggressive and dangerous anti-gay and anti-contraception movement.
Would the words ‘not all Americans are bad’ even pop up in our heads even after the recent CIA-report and Guantanamo?”

She weakly defends the anti-gay movement as less deadly and more convicted says that “we humans believe what our leaders tell us” and that it’s a “problem of the majority being uneducated”.

I tell her that I have little respect for giving up responsibility for our actions, for generalizations and for self-defeating language.
I ask her why not more people go to mosques to ask questions or if that’s scary to just google “what does the quran say”.

I can’t quite grasp this is happening in a country, a continent, where both religions where brought in from outside and have lived side by side for over 100 years.

She says “people” like short-cuts.

I feel like telling her about my Muslim friends, how bright, funny, hospitable they are. How some of them take their religion more and others less serious. How my Shia and Sunni colleagues got along extremely well despite millions of victims in related conflicts. How Somali-Kenyan youth are turning against the FGM practice. How the vast majority of those affected by “Muslim” extrimism are Muslims.
But I don’t. I feel alienated.

I’m still angry and helpless.
I’m looking for ways to make a difference.

Last week I wrote a blog post about child poverty in urban Kenya, my observations from years of community engagement in Mukuru and a few suggestions on what can be done. I got great responses on the text, thanks everyone! Keep spreading the link and sending me your comments.

In this post I want to dive deeper into the cost of providing a child with secondary education. The aim is to inform all who are interested and to document my experience for those planning to start this rewarding endeavour.

I’m going to show how incredibly expensive it is and how the current system affects especially vulnerable children (which I defined in the former post). Most of this will feel informative to foreigners and will sound familiar to Kenyans. Often though even locals are surprised at the cost and awful logistics around Secondary Education.

At the bottom of this post I’ll break down how providing a child with simple secondary education and extremely basic nutrition and clothing easily costs over 1000 USD (100,000 KES) per year (using 2014 data).

• Short-notice admission – Now how it works is that you get the admission letter from the Secondary School only mid January and the deadline for payment is around 10 days later. For vulnerable children in specific, this is challenging, as most donors and sponsors (local or international) will only start considering to support a child after seeing the letters.
• Distance – Cost of schooling in Nairobi is very high and the chances of being admitted to Nairobi day schools are lower, too. When submitting the list of schools they’d prefer to attend, our children therefore tick boarding schools in the rural areas. So most of our children attend schools between 4-10 hours travel away from Nairobi. I believe the emotional impact is high. Having lost parents and guardians when young and now deciding to live away from friends and trusted teachers who effectively brought up the child. Financially speaking this means they have to travel 12 times a year (to and fro for every of the 3 terms and in the half-term breaks). It also means that to attend the annual ‘parents day’ our volunteers incur costs, too.
• Transport costs – Gas prices tend to go up and down around high travel seasons in Europe. We all know this is an effect of the local market, not actually the global oil price. In Kenya traditionally around the christmas season the bus tickets get more expensive and this “tradition” has now extended to the opening and closing dates of schools. Since night bus travel has been outlawed in Kenya (at the point of writing), the prices have again increased.
• Inflation – When our first two kids were admitted to secondary schools in 2011, their fees were around 300 Euros annually each. Of course, there were additional costs of buying a school uniform and other items. Now fees have nearly doubled, also owing to increase in food costs and teachers salaries. While this is a natural turn of things, it doesn’t help low-income parents or guardians to send their children to school.
• In-transparent fees – Some schools’ fee breakdown includes things like “bus maintenance fee”, “holiday tuition”, “award money”. Rarely accountability is provided; we have yet to see a bus, any holiday tuition or the impact of an award.
• Additional expenses – The food provided in the schools is really basic and children are expected to carry some pocket money to pimp their meals (e.g. buy sugar locally for example for breakfast tea). You’ll also want to think of renewing clothing, getting additional books to support practice etc.

This picture shows an approximate breakdown of costs for a child to start in 2015, quoted in Kenyan Shilling.

Every year in Upendo, we have at least 10 graduates who have good enough grades to attend Secondary School. We have been able to find sponsors for 2-3 graduates in the last 4 years.

Please get in touch if you would like to help in 2015! The costs are high but the outcome very rewarding. You can mobilize family, friends or colleagues to cater for a child together.

“And what happens to the others” you may ask. Every year we also have a couple of graduates, who are talented in working with crafts and have interests in learning tailoring, carpentry or other vocational skills. For example two girls started a 3-year tailoring course with an organization. If you would like to find out how to support our graduates in learning these skills and starting up a small business, we’re interested in exploring this with you!

Important tips for anyone thinking of sponsoring a child through your own effort (not through us I mean):

• Don’t do it without knowing the child or believing you have understood his or her situation enough to willingly give. A four-year commitment is ideal for the child. Spend at least one day with the child, visit their home, talk to the family, neighbours, teachers to cross-verify the basic information. If you are planning to be a “light touch sponsor”, you will need a trusted relationship with the close guardians. They will visit the child for parents day, they will discuss with the teachers and school nurses, the child will know them much more than she/he will know you.
• If you are very short of time, you can take a short-cut by talking to established institutions, like international NGOs or church-run schools (NOT private schools run by so-called pastors!) to point out children and families to you. Insider knowledge comes through trust. And trust is earned – often over time! Also remember that they might worry you could be unreliable or have second thoughts regarding the children under their care.
• Accountability issues. Often, numbers will change in the course of the year, the child might have a sickness which needs costly medication, suddenly a certain fee pops up that wasn’t discussed before. Always use your common sense, ask for written proof, ask for references and actually talk to them. Ask for photos and letters from the child, the scanned report card. If you’re abroad, get them verified from a third party on the ground.

Familienfest im Hochhaus in Sao Paulo

Der 12. Juni war ein Feiertag. Keiner sollte arbeiten in Sao Paulo, es sollte gefeiert werden. Ereignis war aber nicht der Brasilianische „Tag der Liebenden“ wie ich romantisch träumerisch erst annahm, sondern tatsächlich der Eröffnungstag der Weltmeisterschaft. Jenes Ereignis, was die Nation seit Jahren bewegt, was eine halbe Milliarde verschwendet hat, in einem Land in dem jeder zweite mit schlechtem Gesundheitswesen oder inakzeptabler Bildung oder Behausung lebt.

Meine Kollegen hatten mich eingeladen, am Grillen im Hof des Hauses teilzunehmen. Ein Rentner-Ehepaar hatte über 40 Hausbewohner zusammen getrommelt. Es wurde ab 13 Uhr bis spät in die Nacht gegrillt. Die Spielerauswahl war definitiv ein diskutiertes Thema, die Proteste und Korruption eher nicht.

Alle Generationen waren vertreten: Kinder tollten umher, schwangen kleine Brasilien-Fähnchen und aßen Würstchen aus der Hand. Junge Erwachsene saßen auf Klappstühlen und tranken Bier. Die Eröffnungsfeier wurde wenig beachtet. Mir wurde erklärt, dass die Hymne viele Menschen nicht anspricht, da sie sprachlich äußerst kompliziert aufgebaut ist und außerdem, aus dem Unabhängigkeitskrieg stammend, vom patriotischen Tod und der Gleichheit schwärmt.

Am meisten beeindruckt war ich vom Feuerwerk, was bei jedem Tor über der Stadt zu hören war. Eine große Tradition in Brasilien, wie mir erklärt wurde. Eine Nachbarin betrieb früher einen Feuerwerksladen und erzählte, wie Fußballfans ihr drohten, den Laden abzufackeln, sollte sie an die „falschen“ Fans verkaufen. Als ich von den strikten Regelungen zum Verkauf und der Verwendung von Feuerwerkskörpern in Deutschland erzählte, wurde ich (erwartungsgemäß) fassungslos angestarrt.
Nach dem Spiel erklärte mir ein älterer Herr im feinsten Portugiesisch, dass ich wieder kommen soll zum Grillen. Nicht nur ich, sondern auch meine Familie, Freunde und alle, die ich kenne. Herzliche Gastfreundschaft!

Die WM ist im vollen Gang. Die Menschen haben sich damit abgefunden und bauen sie eben in ihr Leben ein. Viele meiner Freunde sprechen sich gegen FIFA‘s Klammergriff und die Geldverschwendung aus und haben trotzdem Stadion-Tickets erworben. Die Präsidentschaftswahlen stehen im Oktober an, es besteht Wahlpflicht.

This Saturday night out in London I’m following the invite of a friend who’s tagged along some other folks.

I meet them in a restaurant, after introducing himself he says that he likes my earrings. I was wearing the red ones, obviously with matching shoes and hand bag.

He’s 1.86 m or so, the perfect skinny, a cool hair cut and is well dressed.
We leave the restaurant and queue outside the club where we’re hoping to watch a concert of the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.

He runs a tech startup in London and tells me of the expansion and VC raising plans. He offers chewing gum. Intelligent guy, witty and well mannered.

After passing some high touch security checks we head in and unrequested he gets me a drink. He’s from Manchester. Explains the accent, I think!
The crowd moves to the music and so do we. It’s getting full, several hundreds of guys in their twenties are here waiting for Conchita to sing a few cheesy love songs. Everybody here has a story and many moved countries to find the space to live their story.

People want to be close to the stage and keep pushing forward while the club fills up and the AC does her job.
Is it the anticipation to rise like an eagle? That the heart will go on?

He dances, I dance, the crowd does. Suddenly a guy chats him up, quickly they laugh and talk like old friends. Then they start kissing.

And nobody cares, cause this is Heaven.

I live in the South West of London and due to frequent travel I get to spend an hour or so a month with a minicab driver on the way to the airport. Minicabs are pre-booked rides in someone’s personal car. They’re cheaper and somewhat more comfortable.

My last four drivers were Indian, Pakistani, Afghani and Somali.

The Indian gentleman had moved to Tooting in the 70s and told me about the days when they played football on the main road on Sunday, because there was little traffic and Sundays the shops were closed. An Indian granddad sharing stories about social change in London.

With the Pakistani driver I had a conversation about the political conflict. Pakistani and Indians are just the same people he says. Inside India there are more Muslims than in Pakistan. For him visiting his family which is spread around both countries is easy because he uses the Pakistani passport for Pakistan and the British one for India travel. He will soon retire from driving a minicab, so he needs to start investing in Pakistan for his retirement. He’ll definitely go back, the weather is better and the food. He says my company should expand to Pakistan and he’ll do free market research for us there!

I learnt about a prayer app from the Afghani guy. As in London the mosques aren’t allowed to project the prayers over loudspeakers, many Muslims use an app singing the prayer for them. As we were relatively stuck in traffic jam, he watched a 20-minute live news show from Kabul via Youtube. “See, Kabul: No problem all fine. I go every 4 months.” I was also shocked by an incredible level of racism. “Why you go Africa? Nothing there but animals and black women!”

My favourite guy was today’s Somali family father: His three brothers live in Norway, Sweden and Mogadishu. His mother lives in Mogadishu but he flew her to Nairobi for medical treatment two months ago and stayed with her for two months. He loves Mombasa and Eastleigh. His wife speaks better English than him and she studied at an Italian university in Mogadishu. Most Somali women in London don’t care about learning English and he thinks it’s a problem. He also hopes that Somalia will be safe one day and his son who now studies medicine but moved to London at the age of 1 will be able to go back and work in the new hospital built by Turkish Aid. His son asks him why Somalis of the same look, religion and language kill each other and he doesn’t have words to explain it to him. All Somalis hate the Al-Shabaab, he says. We want peace. His views on the dictator who ruled Somalia before ‘91 were insightful and he explained me the five spikes of the star on the Somali flag. He recommended me a Somali restaurant in our area. “Problem in Africa is always that military is corrupt and look for their advantage. Right now we need African troops in Somalia but soon they should leave and we build our country.”

Asia and Africa’s brains and hands driving cabs in London. Wounded souls from conflict-torn countries telling stories of multiple passports, hard work and new beginnings. Polished Mercedes and airline miles. Racism and hopes. The dream to live healthily with family and friends. It shows in many different ways, but mainly a big smile.