The second instalment of our CEO Geoff Coleman's blog from Kenya
Tuesday 10th May 2022
Today was a later start and my first duty was to meet the rest of the team who were landing at Kisumu Airport just after 10:00. Crispen, our driver, arrived promptly at 09:25 to pick me up and we had a quick trip to the airport where we had time for a cold drink before Norma (our finance manager), Naggib and Andrew (two of our trustees) joined me after their overnight flight.
After getting the team checked into their rooms at the hotel I was then able to leave them to rest whilst I joined the Kisumu team at their humble office on the outskirts of the city, to discuss their ideas about how they were planning to use technology and in particular social media to reach out to the young people that were a key focus of their activities.
The high percentage of young teenage girls who get pregnant in Kenya is incredibly depressing, especially in the more rural areas. This small but important fact is key to the spread of HIV among this population group. There have been many programmes to try and tackle this and whilst some of them can justifiably claim to have some success, the numbers remain stubbornly high.
That is why Elizabeth, our Country Director, is taking a new approach and this exciting new team of young IT and Social Media professionals will be the spearhead of this operation.
After spending several hours with them going through various tools and strategies that they might employ it became clear that many of our ideas when we came together on Friday were going to be generated by this team. Whilst it is good that we have some older members of the team with hard-learned experience in the field, this battle is not going to be won through simple face-to-face learning and relationships.
We need the perspective of a younger generation that sees things very differently and we need to engage the people that we are trying to reach where they are at… and where they are at is increasingly online. Clearly, we will still need the traditional approach, because in some areas young people can’t afford a mobile phone and data package. That said, increasingly they can. With the appearance of a second-hand market for cheap smartphones, fuelled by the West’s insatiable desire to continually upgrade, it means that you can now pick up a smartphone for a few dollars and with the evolution of mobile money in Africa, it has become a necessity rather than a luxury.
We took a late lunch together at one of the many cafe sites that will cater for large groups which inevitably leads to some amusement from the Kenyan Team as I am a vegetarian and such things are strange here in Kenya. After choosing an interesting meal of beans that was truly delicious I was well fuelled and ready for the rest of the afternoon.
One of the gifts I brought with me on this occasion was two Wi-Fi range extenders. Whenever we have Zoom meetings with the team here it is always problematic and the primary reason is the Wi-Fi coverage within the building itself. Hopefully, this small, cheap solution will transform their working and conferencing capabilities.
And then it happened! Power cut… I mean, when you get a power cut in the UK it’s a big thing, right? Well not here in Kenya. The power went out at the office and everyone just carried on. Obviously, the computers, projector, lights, fridge - everything that used power, was down, but it just doesn’t bother them. Life goes on right? Sometimes I think that we could learn a thing or two from other countries and communities that don’t have anywhere near as much as us.
I left the Kisumu Team to re-join the UK Team back at the hotel where we spent a couple of hours at the local Indian restaurant. We had a good opportunity to go over some of the priorities for the week as well as look at some of the challenges that were faced by Mildmay Kenya. It was not too late when the jet lag began to show on some of the team members and it was off to bed. Not all though! One of our group (mentioning no names but his initials are NC) was determined to stay up to watch an important football match that was showing. What the English will do for their football is really unfathomable.
Tomorrow the team splits with most going into the field and Norma tackling the Mildmay Kenya accounts. Time to sleep.