Kenya Trip

My wife Barbara and I recently completed our trip of a lifetime. We were part of a team of eight volunteers representing Pontotoc County Habitat for Humanity who traveled to Kenya, Africa to assist Kenya Habitat for Humanity build a house for a family displaced from their home in the after-elections violence in 2007. Three of our group were volunteers from Chicago and five were from Pontotoc. The Pontotoc five were Keith Thomas, Mattie B. Wilson, Gloria Fitzpatrick and ourselves.

2011 marks the 20^th anniversary for Pontotoc County Habitat for Humanity, and since for most of these 20 years our affiliate has sent its tithe to Habitat for Humanity International designating it be used in Kenya, it seemed right for our local affiliate to send a small group to help with a build in Kenya.

We worked hard for an entire week building not one but two houses. A foundation for each had been laid prior to our arrival, so we began by pouring the concrete slab. I should add that all our work was manual labor, no electricity for power tools, not even a hand operated cement mixer. We raised walls of mortar and lava rock quarried from the side of a mountain and delivered to the job site. We built wooden trusses using handsaws, hammers and nails and added a tin roof. We left the finishing work to the stone masons and their assistants which they could easily complete in a week. So, by now there are two families enjoying the fruits of our labors.

What horrid conditions these displaced families have endured since 2007-2008. They’ve lived in tents made to last up to six months, which after more than four years are largely in tatters. Their water source is a storage tank supplied by the government. Animals such as goats and poultry are kept in pens beside or inside their tents. These animals supplement their diet with fresh milk and eggs and an occasional meal with meat. All cooking is done outside the tent over a charcoal fire. Bathing is accomplished with a small bucket of water, also outside. Yet for all we viewed as foreign to our sensibilities of decent housing, they manage to keep themselves respectably clothed and relatively clean under the most adverse conditions.

This particular camp of displaced persons consists of approximately 365 families living as a community. Habitat for Humanity and other organizations have made it possible for most of these families to move into permanent houses each on a 50’ x 100’ plot of ground. The houses are all about 325 square feet; imagine something smaller than a two-car garage. The houses are partitioned into three rooms, one for sitting, and two for bedrooms. Thus, cooking, bathing, and use of toilets are all done outside the house.

They call their toilets, Long Drop, as the outhouses sit above a twenty-foot-deep pit. We were all happy that we didn’t get to participate in digging one of the pits. The pits are covered by a concrete slab with a trench and two holes, one hole for the vent pipe and the other for excrement. The squat area is enclosed and utilizes roughly half the slab. The remaining half can later be converted to a shower area.

We felt good with our work accomplishments and our hosts bragged they’d not ever had a group of eight or less volunteers complete two houses in a week. We were frustrated, though, by the lack of decent tools with which to work and lack of mechanization to reduce the amount of manual labor required. It was as though the government of Kenya prefers to maintain a labor force in a pre-industrial revolution era.

After completing and participating in the dedication ceremonies for two houses, we spent our remaining time in Kenya sightseeing and on safari. We found ourselves experiencing two extremes, one of impoverishment and one of luxury, the former being the camp of displaced persons and the latter the plush lodging of the Serena Lodge on the Maasai Mara game reserve. Personally, I’ve not stayed in many American motels that meet the standards of the Serena.

Our four safaris over a three day period were quite memorable, and the pictures we brought back will keep those memories vivid for years to come. Other tourist-type attractions such as the Karen Blixen home (book and movie Out of Africa), the US Embassy memorial park commemorating the terrorists bombing that destroyed the embassy and took the lives of more than two hundred people, along with souvenir shopping, and dining in Nairobi rounded out our stay.

Each of our team returned to America with a renewed appreciation for all things American, our foods, our freedoms, our form of government, and especially all those can’t-do-without, labor-saving devices. We left some of our belongings to the disadvantaged and displaced persons at the camp, and we left some of our money, enough to build two more houses in Kenya. And, for the immediate future, Pontotoc County Habitat for Humanity plans to continue to send its tithe to Kenya.