Rural Kenya

Quite a lot has happened in the last 6 months; I clearly need to blog more often, but of most interest has been my work trips to Kenya where I'm currently implementing a new project.

Back in February during one my trips here I went on a chartered UN flight (who knew they had their own airline, though not their own planes...) to a county in North-eastern Kenya called Mandera. Actually we went to Western Mandera landing, quite literally, in a field. A big, fairly flat, field, but a field none-the-less. Apart from grass, the only thing around was a fence around the field and not a single sign of an airport, or even landing strip. Landing to be greeted by several 4x4s from the local police force and our government hosts, we spent several hours visiting the local hospital and a clinic 2 hours away.

It was a fascinating visit to one of the poorest parts of Kenya, and one with some of the highest maternal and child health issues in the world. It is a very barren, sparsely populated, very dry, area (at least at the time i visited) with most of the population breeding a few animals for their livelihood and they eat a lot of meat there (in fact we had meat for breakfast as well as lunch). Many live in temporary huts that can be moved with the seasons. There was a mobile phone signal in the town near where we landed but that was not very stable and didn't go much beyond the town... once we left the town and drove past many smaller settlements we were truly unconnected.

The local hospital has been getting some investment but unable to hire trained staff willing to live there, so it still struggles to offer critical services like surgery (or emergency operations for mothers with pregnancy issues) in its theatre - the next closest hospital is several hours away. At the clinic we held a discussion with around 150 community members, gathered around a tree, and with local elders and tribal leaders leading the conversation (and also translating into the local dialect). It was very interesting indeed.

In the local village we saw the one little shop that had a solar panel connected to some large batteries and was charging several simple phones (there was also a weak mobile signal in some parts of this village); in the clinic we saw the "ambulance" which was a three-wheel motorbike with a bed on the back. All around us we saw the local people with their animals, and many of them using the animals to carry water from the (newly built) reservoir.

With such an inhospitable climate and poor geography, this is not a place with a bright future, but there is hope that they can at least have better health care, and since Kenya devolve more power and money to its 47 counties, we hear of increasing investment in public services and infrastructure from the government, in addition to the support from the UN and other charitable groups.

On another trip I went through Mombasa to a beach side resort where a major tech conference was taking place. I didn't see much of Mombasa but I briefly saw the port (since a taxi driver got lost on his way back to the airport), and experienced the ferry crossing (which really instead be a 2 minute drive over a bridge, but instead is a 20-minute ordeal waiting for, loading, crossing and unloading an ancient ferry across several hundred meters of river). At the resort an hour south, I saw some incredible beaches, but also suffered from the insane humidity.

The conference was better than most I have been to with some good updates from the government on all the key areas of work, and served to provide accountability to the conference participants on how the government was doing towards its strategy and goals. I was on a panel discussing universal access (i.e. how to ensure everyone can get access to phone and Internet services) amongst other things. I didn't participate in the pre-day playing golf that was very popular is a key networking activity in Kenya I am told.

One of the areas my project is working in is called Lamu County (not in Mandera, though that was interesting to visit in case we wok there in the future), which is on the coast and has its population on several islands as well as part of the mainland. On the island where the county capital is, there are no roads and transport is by boat around the island, by foot along the coast or through the island. Goods are carried on donkeys or, on the couple of paved paths, on large wooden wheelbarrows/pushcarts.

It is a pretty town, and the islands are picturesque; the mainland even has a few national parks but the transport is awful--taking boats of course can be expensive and slow and the condition of the one main road on the mainland is so bad that  our 4x4 broke down twice. The road was so bumpy that during 4 hours in the car, my fitness tracker thought i had walked 20,000 steps!

The area is one of the oldest settlements continuously inhabited in the area i believe, as a large trading and fishing community on the coast of East Africa, though much development has passed it by. A new, large, port is supposed to be built there soon and that has meant the main town on the island has finally been connected to the electric grid, and other islands are being electrified too (the mainland part has some grid electricity too).

We visited a number of health facilities as part of the project I am working on and spent a lot time on the road and in boats. But it was also a hugely interesting and very productive visit. It is crazy though that the whole county only has a permanent population of a couple hundred thousand people (with maybe another hundred thousand or so temporary residents from neighboring countries/counties) which is similar to just one part of the town in one of the suburbs of Shenzhen where i live. Indeed, the Huawei HQ has 60,000 people working there alone. Of course other parts of China (though not on the coast) are like this and Mandera too, especially in the Western parts of China.

It is fascinating to get to spend so much time in Kenya and by working there get to understand it better; the comparisons with China are of course difficult to make but still interesting. Looking at Kenya as a whole there are more relevant comparisons to China: Much of Kenya's economic activity is concentrated in just a few major cities; there are a couple of very successful industries in Kenya (such as flowers, tea, tourism); Kenya is a regional leader in technology and a pioneer in Africa for many things... lots of parallels with China's own development and its role in Asia!

More to come on this from me in the future, I am sure.