Saturday, January 11, 2014

A Little Bit Here and a Little Bit There Won’t Hurt – Will It? 

Today we had our usual greeting celebration with the widows and orphans.  We arrived at the church building we always use at about 9:30 AM for an 11:00 AM start.  We unloaded the truck we hired and got our gift bags and other things arranged by the scheduled start time.  Much to our surprise, about 20 widows were already there when we arrived getting the fires and some of the food ready.

Miracle of miracles, the meeting started on time with nary a straggling widow.  That’s a first to be sure.  The “dignitaries” present included the village elder, the sub-chief and his brother, and the pastor of the church.  The joint was packed; 48 (we expected 47) widows and total orphans plus 85 or so orphans.  Everybody loves this day because they get to eat,   The widows and total orphans also get our gift bags.  Luckily we brought exactly 48 pairs of shoes (like Tom’s shoes) along.  The other stuff (other than the bags themselves) we bought locally, so we had a few extras.

The meeting/celebration started promptly at 11:00 AM, another minor miracle.  The widows prayed and sang before the sub-chief said hello to the group and encouraged everybody to work hard because the government was “behind them all the way”.  He was out of there by 11:10. 

The village elder gave a pep talk and the pastor had some words of wisdom to share.  Connie, the CLOUT program director for Kasavai, acknowledged the accomplishments of the widows and formally passed on their plea to us to increase our support of education.

Sandy emphasized the quality of pre-school education the children can get for free at the play school with our two qualified and compassionate teachers.  I assured the widows that we would continue to support all the current programs as they are now defined.  And I informed them of our newly initiated four-year program to assist high school graduates with funds for technical and vocational training.  This was received positively, to say the least.

Break time found us eating mandazi (fried dough), boiled eggs, and bread which we washed down with traditional light tea.  We also passed out reading glasses after individual “exams” using a Reading Glasses for Dummies eye chart.  Nearly every widow seemed to benefit from reading glasses at 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, or 3.0 power.

More singing and praying by the widows was mingled with poems, singing, performance, and speeches by the children.  It’s a long day.

Finally, we handed out a goodie bag and a small cash Christmas gift to each widow and total orphan, 48 in all.  Then everybody had a very big lunch prepared by the widows.

We pay for this shindig and the reckoning was now upon us.  The total cost was 19,790 shillings.  That’s about $235, or less than $2.00 a head.

Sounds cheap, and it is, except it turns out we had paid the sub-chief and village elder each 500 shillings to come and do the job the Kenyan taxpayers are already paying them to do, watch out for the welfare of their constituents.  But, a little bit here and a little bit there won’t hurt – will it?

Which Reminds Me

I don’t know the difference between graft and corruption.  I guess graft is a sub-set of corruption.  Kenya’s new (2010) constitution abolished notoriously corrupt provincial governance (7 provinces as I recall) in favor of county governance in the 47 newly formed counties.  This was meant to bring the government closer to the governed, but I have been told repeatedly that what it did was simply devolve corruption along with governance, giving 47 county government leaders and their minions a chance to get their hands in the till instead of just 7 provincial leaders and their minions.  But, a little bit here and a little bit there won’t hurt – will it?