Community Day – St Anthony’s home for mentally handicapped children

After a weekend of relaxing – no, I didn’t do the very long day trip to Lake Victoria  The poor guys that did were exhausted when they got back, and the van had broken down too! – Monday morning saw us go to St Anthony’s home for mentally handicapped children.

Run by Father James and his team, the place was miles away down a very bumpy set of roads, hard to reach and hidden away.  Mental disability is not seen well.  Many in lesser educated areas see it as a ‘curse’, though there is a drive to change these mindsets and not to hide the children away.  The ‘home’ was a collection of tiny, ramshackle buildings were the children ate and slept.  It was hard to see, they truly have nothing.  The staff, a house mother always on site, were angels.  Truly.  The children go to school for half a day each day, at the local school next door in a special class.  They proudly showed us the school, and some showed off their counting and word skills.

For a group of children who spoke some Swahili, and a group of IBM CSCers who spoke English….well we had a lot of ‘conversation’ going on!  We spent a lot of time playing catch, and skipping, and running about and playing football.  The highlight of the day were the handpuppets that Virve and Luigi had brought with them.

Let me explain about some of them – Joseph, who has muscular dystrophy and the biggest smile.  We played football together, I helped him to kick the ball and we laughed a lot.  Carol – who didn’t have much facial expression but when we played with the ball, she could throw and catch better than me! (Note, those that know me know I am useless at that!)

The child who made most impact on me was Sarah, who is mute and has never spoken.  She is withdrawn and the teachers said she does not smile.  Well – guess what, check out the picture below…..this little girl smiled.  A lot. The hand puppets were such a hit!  You know if I achieve nothing else in my time here, then my work is done.

Sarah with the puppet that really brought a smile to her face. Wasn't long before we had her running around and playing catch as well

Another little lad who had clearly had challenges, struck a chord with me.  The way he shook and his eyes moved – I asked the teacher ‘Does he have epilepsy?’.  The teacher was surprised and asked me how I knew.  My darling mother had epilepsy as long as I can remember – the difference was that with medication widely available in the West, hers was (mainly) controlled.  One lad after dancing around in a ring with me, sat on my knee and kept staring at me and saying the same words.  I asked the teacher, ‘what is he saying?’ – “He thinks you are an angel” came the reply. Right behind me on the wall was a picture of an angel, with long blonde hair and pale skin – cue breaking heart all over again.

I’m so proud of my team, in a week’s time we’re going to meet Father James in the town, and go with him so we can buy for the school some mattresses and blankets.  This is the most effective way rather than just give money.  GO TEAM IBM!!!!

Community Day – Edgarton University

Friday saw us at Edgarton University, and holding some sessions with the Computer Science students.  A topic close to my own heart.  The turn out was fantastic, bearing in mind it was volountary.  We looked relaxed but cool in our Smarter Planet t-shirts.

The CSC Boys smartly modeling our team Smarter Planet t-shirts

Me and the IBM Smarter Planet banner we had on stage

We ran a number of sessions on key trends (I did BAO): BAO, Social Analytics, Cloud…..and then focussed on on soft skills and innovation.

I kicked off with a classic to introduce soft skills – how may legs has the elephant got?  This brought forward a number of answers – but in short, the point proven – people see things differently and we need to embrace this and work with it.

The students were attentive, passionate and really wanted to do something with their lives.  A fabulous campus – a hell of a lot better than good old Pompey Uni as those of you who went there with me will know – very green, maintained and a great environment to learn.

Well done the students, well done team, and well done IBM and DOT.  I have to see the CSC team really came into their own here.  I’ve discovered I could do this kind of thing all the time.  Some of them thought it was ‘cool’ that I was a woman doing what I do with the technical background and Computer Science BSc.  Cue new contacts and facebook friends.

Community Days – New Life Africa International

Community Days are part of the IBM CSC programme.  It gives the team a break from work, lets us connect with initiatives in the area that we can help with and shows more of IBM’s social responsibility.

Thursday 16^th was a day to remember. We went to the New Life Africa International School.  This was set up by Leif and Susanna, a Danish couple who came to Kenya over 17 years ago.

http://www.newlife-africa.org/en/

The morning saw us go to the new Nursery that has been opened up in ‘London’. Nakuru.  Quite different from the London I know and love!

London, but not quite like I am used to....!

This nursery has three classrooms, and caters for age from 3-6.  The children are all from families that live on or by the rubbish dump site, and make their living from what they find in the dump.  It’s heartbreaking.  The children are given a uniform, and basic education, warm food and learn English before going to Primary school, all paid for by the New Life Africa International.  They were excited about our visit and the number of cuddles given out that day was beyond counting. Even the real baby class of 3 year olds had learnt some nursery rhymes in English in front of us.  Really fabulous.  Some of them were fascinated by my hair as it was a strange colour to them and felt different.  At one point I had three little ones braiding it.

 

 

 

These little ones have been given a better start through this Nursery and I was proud to shake the hands of the teachers.  Some of our team members really came into their own, and there were more than a few moist eyes when we left.

The afternoon saw us head to the school itself: nursery, primary and secondary, boys and girls.  Plus a dress making school for women and a women’s crisis centre where a few women who have young children can be safe from the horrid things that have happened to them.

Talking to the children, the teenage boys were the same as any others – proudly ‘I’m 17’ and ‘I’m 16, but nearly 17’.  I really enjoyed talking to some of the girls about learning maths and science and why it’s important.  We must have looked like quite a collection of aliens as we walked around.  We were mobbed by the little ones and for me, for example, they wanted to see the difference in our skin colours, and practice their English.  We had a very generous lunch laid on by our hosts, and Susannah and Leif told us of the origins of the school and how it has grown – it takes in orphans, street children and those with very poor family backgrounds, often single parent families.  Children are sponsored all the way through to university if they do well – outside help is what keeps things going, and I have included the links to the school in this post and also on my right hand menu.

The day finished with a football match – the school have boys and girls teams – and the cheer that went up when the visitors came out to play was amazing!  The WHOLE school came to watch.  Luigi, Dave, Brooks, Krishna and Alex stepped up to join in  – and the rest of us were given chairs of honour on the touchline. The sweetest thing, when the heavens opened and it started to rain –  the children were covering us with coats and coverings so we kept dry!  We kept as many of them under the covers as we could.

Football match!

Happy little souls after a day with their odd looking visitors!

I don’t mind admitting I had a tear in my eye when we left.  What a place, and what hope these kids have from the fact they are there.

Flamingoes and the Nakuru IIEC

Sunday of a packed weekend saw us see…….flamingoes. LOTS of them. Lake Bogoria, truly beautiful. Almost like an oasis, in a strange place.

Flamingoes at Lake Bogoria

Further work and internet connectivity problems for the next few days. Inna being crazy and going swimming at 6am, and amazingly managed to drag Krishna along! Good progress on our work and me being me and the ultimate control freak, advance planning for the interim review next week and trying to align the plants. World domination next, I think.

Dave, Junko, Inna and I were made very welcome by the local Interim Independent Election Committee (IIEC) team for Central Rift, in Nakuru. We met the regional director, Mr Towett and also a fabulous lady, Mrs Sania, who was actively in the 2010 electronic registration pilot. The information we received was great and made me feel much closer to what went on in 2010.   They also gave us a demo of the electronic voter registration.

The Nakuru IIEC team with Dave and Junko

We also saw feedback comments from Kenan voters who saw so much hope even in the change to do that electronically, a move forward. We touched on the violence in 2007 …… truly unbelievable and so terribly sad.

A Kenyan custom, after our meeting our hosts were kind enough to take us for tea! Would you believe, round the corner at our hotel. Kenya tea is often served pre-mixed with milk which was fine for me but not for the team, but they drank politely! All in all a great meeting and excellent connections made with the local IIEC office.

Inna 'registering' to vote

My Team and other animals…..

Our first weekend in Nakuru, and we liased  with Jane a local tour operator for what ended up being a rather full weekend for more reasons than the obvious.

Saturday saw us up early and off to Lake Nakuru National Park, searching for some of the Big Five.  The Big Five are: Elephants (not at this park), Leopards, Lions, Rhinos and Buffalos.  On arrival I saw one of the loveliest things I’ve seen, with the sun coming through the mist and trees at the Park.  We spent the day 6 in each bus, one we nicknamed ‘The Professionals’ with all the photos they took, zooming around to find the rare animals and taking our time over the others.  Here are a selection of my snaps – we were lucky enough to see lions and a leopard!!

So lovely through the trees at Lake Nakuru

What are you looking at in MY neighbourhood, huh?

He really didn't move at all, well, if you weighed 2 tonnes you'd think twice...

Some very strange animals

After this we went to the Menengai Crater near Nakuru.  The crater itself took my breath away, absolutely enormous like a giant basin that gods had scooped out.  However the most staggering thing…..was actually seeing the parts of the town along the road to the crater.  A real eye opener.  What I would have thought were makeshift accommodations and buildings were actually permanent structures.  This does not even count as poverty in some parts of Kenya but was eye opening.  Where as Kenya is making some fabulous progress there are still some basic challenges that need to be addressed.

The honeymoon suite and painting the town red-ish….

Well, I would not call this a fabulous hotel, but our home for the next three weeks anyway.  Electricity up and down, but only out momentarily and flaky internet.  Minor challenges and to be expected!

Our makeshift meeting room – the honeymoon suite  – as the hotel messed up the conference room booking.  We spent  large part of the day getting to grips with our revised statement of work, and some great ideas developed.  I can’t share them here, tis top secret – all will be revealed!

After a nuts few days…..the team decided to paint the town if not red, but a mild shade of crimson.  Off to Taidies we went for food, drinking …. And well, it seems a team of CSC IBMers can show the locals how to dance.  I had a rather good compliment from a few people both team and local…”Girl got moves!”.  Blush.  Thankyou.  Most importantly, a great experience to relax in a team of Kenyan, British, Japanese, South Korean, Canadian, German, Indian, Finnish and Chinese.  You don’t find that every day….

Meeting Dr Ndemo

After starting with a very early morning alignment call, our meeting with Dr Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry for Information and Communications, finally came.  What can I say.  What an amazing character and such a credit to Kenya.  Passionate about improvement, straight talking, eloquent and truly inspirational.  A pretty good trick, he remembered everyone’s names and where they came from.  Funniest comments of the day when asking about other countries’ approach to e-voting…..Luigi (Italy): “Don’t even go there, all our Prime Minister is worried about is his party life!”, Brooks (China) “Not really any point as there is only one party!”

He went straight from our meeting to do a long tv interview about the launch of the Open Government programme – open data in government.  Great to get his insights and confirm our direction and we left on a real high.  Please see his interview on Kenyan Television here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYQUuVuwwmc

Off to Nakuru after that……..Luigi and I made some room in the Matatus for everyone else plus all our bags, and drove with Alex Mutungi our DOT co-ordinator.  We had a very quick turnaround to get back into formal clothes for a meeting with the District Commissioner when we arrived.  As we were told…”You do not go to another man’s house and simply open his refrigerator”.  Couldn’t have put it better myself.  “What is IBM?”  Was is question…..a down to earth reminder that not everyone knows who we are.  A very interesting map of the post 2007 election violence on his wall too, which he kindly talked about.  Nakuru grew a lot after this terrible time, with many thousands of people displaced and orphans created.  Nakuru suffered a lot in the post 2007 election violence due to it being such a cosmopolitan city in Kenyan terms, with many tribes in the one district.

With Mr William Kangethe Thuku, District Commissioner for Nakuru

Post 2007 election violence hotspots

First lot of presentations!

So here we go. The main reason we’re here. Team 1 up first, to do the KENET (Kenya National Education Network) presentation. We were surprised at the amount of attention and the number of people in the room including the Permanent Secretary for Education. A great audience and a very keen and interested one. Luigi, Brooks, Virve and Andrea stepped up and did us proud – GO TEAM! The whole thing was filmed and many offical pictures taken. The Kenyan education system wants to make much more use of it’s existing network to both help future graduates/students but also save cost on bandwidth. This is a very powerful set up and needs to be made better use of. Hence – the team!

http://www.kenet.or.ke/index.php/en/component/content/article/1-latest-news/242-invitation-to-the-launch-of-the-kenetibm-corporate-service-core-team-project-on-july-4-2011-1000-1100-at-kenet-training-room

We made the internet too!

My team’s presentation went well. Sadly our main sponsor was not there, and we could actually have given the presentation out to the attendees. Two walked out for a bit to do other things, and I kept smiling while fuming inside but hey…this is the way it goes sometimes. However we were side swiped by the fact a competitor I will not name publicly was already on site and had been working for 3 months on the same thing we’ve been asked to do.

This is the part that makes me proud to be an IBMer and to have the great team around me of Dave, Junko and Inna.  Post our meeting, we raised this as a concern with the ‘relevant parties’ as we are professional and regardless of the fact it’s another company, it’s more to the point that it would be a less value-add activity to just repeat. The end game is that Kenya benefits. We prepared a concern summary and suggestions for moving forward this evening.  Lets see what tomorrow brings. Positive hat on!  ‘Sitkeys’ as Inna would say in Finnish.  I have found that both us Brits and the Finns are equally determined.  As are the Japanese and Canadians!  What a team!

The great thing to take away is the sincere passion for improvement and change in Kenya. It’s very addictive and people we have been talking to are massively positive.

And then the real work began

A great meeting this morning with our Digital Opportunity Trust team, Muriuki and Alex, joined by their CSC Tanzania DOT representative, Phillip.

Muriuki explaining Kenyan dynamics

Alex in full swing

Luigi and Andrea discussing

Junko giving presents from Japan to Alex and Phillip from DOT

Sunday morning, we had the ‘Kenyan Education session’. The most amazing thing for me to learn was of the population demographics. 80% of the population are now literate, and 80% or so are with a mobile connection. ICT – Information and Communications – is a huge focus in Kenya as part of the Kenya 2030 vision. To hear how there are challenges along the Western border with Somalia – refugees, migrating populations looking for water/grazing – and those far north who are isolated…..and do not feel ‘Kenyan’. Interestingly particularly in the western areas that the very challenges I describe above, stop the progression as in an area where there is conflict, organisation are reluctant to put infrastructure in. By this I mean better water supply, education and even ICT.

The positivity the Kenya DOT team told us about the new Kenyan constitution was addictive. For example, the president said that ‘X’ was to be the new Minister of Justice. The new constitution does not allow this and Civil Authority for the first major time, said NO. A new and independent non politicaly aligned Minister for Justice was announced 2 weeks before our arrival. Much progess. However, with an outside head on, Inna (IBM Finland) and I raised the question…’How does the nation know about it’s rights, the individual Kenyan, how do they understand the constitution.’. The answer was not completely clear, and of course had some possible holes…..but it was still progress. Each MP takes the constitution back to their area. And for the first time it is translated from English to Swahili. This still leaves multiple languages in Kenya not covered, but you have to start somewhere, right?

So after stopping for lunch at a local crocodile park/children’s nature education centre / restaurant (truly, that’s the description) – well recommended called the Mamba Village near Nairobo, we encountered a troop of school children.

First off here are some photos of my fabulous team and our chauffeurs for the day as we sat for lunch. (still at this point waiting for Junko and Xiaochuan to join us).

Inna, Virve, Sugandha, Andrea, Krishna and Robert

Lynn, Dave, Hwa Young and Raphael

Secondly, the children were very smiley. The little girl with braids was sweet and I was chatting with her parent’s who were having lunch.

The school children from the locally Catholic church sponsored area – lots of schools and places to help people to be fair, regardless of my thoughts on religion – had a day out learning about nature and getting their faces painted, they were very surprised when the ‘odd looking people’ – that’ll be us, said ‘Jambo!’ and waved at them. They flocked for pictures.

The thing that struck me most, was that these children have so much less than the children I see at home and the children on the plane I mentioned in a previous post, crying as they had to turn their ipods off on the plane, yet they were so happy, smiley and wanting to do high 5’s. Children are children are children. These little ones made us all smile today. They loved to see the pictures on the screens of the cameras after they were taken. At one point, Inna and Virve were lost in the midst of bundles of children as they clamoured to see themselves on the screens 🙂