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Life can feel pretty intense when everyone you work with lives in the same area too, especially when practically every chat or phone call relates to work too. It is a real discipline for all of us to make sure we can switch off at least occasionally. There is no doubt for all of us - whether wazungu (Europeans) or our local colleagues that getting away for a short time can help greatly with relaxing. Therefore This blog update is written with a big thank you to Katie McDonald who we first got to know at the University of Southampton. She's teaching at St. Andrews School in Turi, close to Nakuru, and has allowed us to stay at her place while she's been away. We're looking forward to seeing her this afternoon and catching up on what each have been up to over the last few months.
Whenever asked to describe what we've been doing whilst in Kenya it's always easier to identify something tangible as evidence. From that perspective we've had a good quarter!
Becky's workplace, DMCC, is now on the verge of being officially classified as a hospital, having been just a dispensary when Becky joined the team in May 2010. Many more services are up and running, with children routinely being treated for club foot, the oxygen cylinders in use when required, and medical outreaches beginning again. A recent highlight has been the recent development of the (previous once every 4 month) eye surgeries to be a monthly, in-house service run with our own equipment in our own eye clinic, supported now by just a surgeon and two nurses as locum staff.
Mike's now been able to visit several of the 9 completed boreholes which are already being well used by the communities around them. The first phase of the community education in sanitation and hygiene has produced some excellent results by training local leaders, and plans are being discussed at present to continue and extend the water, sanitation and hygiene programme into a second year. Work in other teams is gathering momentum as well, with opportunities for funding being explored for a range of other programmes across IcFEM's 12 departments, a milestone in itself given the work that has been going on for months to develop the action plans and work programmes to reach this point. The expectation is that the scale of work that IcFEM is running will be greatly increased by a year's time, for which the foundation has been laid over the past few years.
This highlights the biggest problem we have with our current work, in that the tangible evidence doesn't really show where most of our effort is directed. The most encouraging aspects of the last quarter are in seeing our colleagues take responsibility for new things, start to use and apply knowledge they've picked up, and establish systems that ensure that things will be stronger in the future. Our investment of time and effort is deliberately focused upon training and equipping others, and this doesn't look particularly impressive in photos! A key reason why we wanted to work with IcFEM was that the organisation is consciously focused long-term, and locally-based and run. Like everyone else we enjoy getting stuck in and seeing tangible results, but we'll get far more pleasure from seeing the work that is done by the core team over the next 5-10 years than worry about what we can do ourselves now.
On a more immediate note it's also been striking recently to see evidence of the vulnerability we all face due to the climate. Our house is strategically set up (thanks to Dr Simon!) with guttering and 3 large water tanks, yet due to the extended dry season we're now running low on supplies of our own water. Like many others living around towns we have access to other sources of water, yet it's been a reminder to us of how people in rural areas are so exposed to the climate. Naturally, it's encouraging to be able to contribute towards that situation through the creation of new water sources, but we've glimpsed something of the need which exists for many more similar projects. Our personal livelihoods are not fully dependant on the success of the harvest, but since this is the case for many around us we are hoping the rains, once they start, are consistent enough to produce a good harvest since 'the hungry season' is not far around the corner.
We've got plenty to keep us busy over the next few weeks, with wheelchair distributions planned for the end of March (thanks to our partner organisation Wheels for the World), new pilot projects (including hopefully creating a first play area after Easter), and a great deal more fundraising work to accelerate the introduction of new programmes. Exciting times!
As always, thanks to those who have remained in touch, whether by phone, e-mail, post or other means. We look forward to sharing more news of our progress here soon, and will pop some photos on this blog too to give just a flavour of what's been going on.
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