By Cadet Myers Jordan
After studying for the spring semester in both Argentina and Peru, my school funded me on an academic-style trip to Kenya. The Star of the West Foundation is a program at The Citadel that sends cadets to various countries over the summer to participate in programs that they either join or plan. I proposed a plan to visit a small village on the outskirts of Kitale in order to learn and subsequently teach small business strategies and ideas.
Kenya is on the east coast of Africa and is bordered by Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. I would compare the location of Kenya in Africa both horizontally and vertically to that of South Carolina in America. Kitale is a small town less than sixty miles from Uganda in the vertical middle of Kenya and on the Western border. Western Kenya is mountainous, so I lived for a little over one month above six thousand feet.
I traveled directly from Peru to Kenya (without returning home). I flew from Peru to Argentina, from Argentina to Johannesburg in South Africa, and from there to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. There I met Benjamin Hall, a friend from school whose parents are missionaries in Africa and now live in a town called Eldoret, which is about two hours away from Kitale. After staying with his family for one week to be briefed and to acclimate to the atmosphere, Benjamin and I moved to Kitale for three weeks.
While there, I worked with an organization called The Mustard Seed. The Mustard Seed is a small group of members of the African Inland Church of Sinendet congregation that deals in microfinancing and small business entrepreneurship. The group consists of twenty members who act as security for one another as individual members take loans for one hundred to six hundred US dollars. They also provide counseling for the members to ensure that the business endeavors are successful. My job was to visit everyone in the congregation, both the members and non-members of The Mustard Seed, and learn how some have succeeded and others have failed; this allowed me to eventually give advice according to the trends I had recognized. When visiting the members, I was able to see what they had done with their loans: many purchased dairy cows, many planted one or two acres of corn, some constructed greenhouses, others dug fish ponds, etc. I was able to see what their
struggles had been and then share with others how not to face the same problems. With non-members of The Mustard Seed, I merely informed them of the potential benefits of joining such a group, and encouraged them to action.
Most Americans would consider Kenyans to be fairly lazy—they only own two acres of land, which is primarily used for farming corn—so they work for a couple hours each morning before relaxing for the remainder of the day. This is, of course, only lazy from the American perspective—to the Kenyans it is merely a way of enjoying a simple life—they would laugh at us for working so many hours every day. Only the rich have electricity and running water, and only the upper-middle class and above enjoy permanent houses. The rest live in mud homes made from a wooden frame and a mixture of cow dung, mud, and straw as the “cement”. Only recently have tin roofs been introduced—before this the Kenyans used thatch roofs for their ceilings. I visited approximately forty-five homes and was both impressed and fascinated by the various forms of architecture and styles of living.
My final week in Kenya was the point when I finally began to teach more than I had learned. I first had to spend the first two-thirds of my trip studying and learning the prices of various products, amount of risk and labor required, and the potential profits behind all the various investments. On my last full day in the village I was able to teach a seminar about everything I had learned and what recommendations I had for the people of the village.
The biggest advice I had to offer was teaching them a cost-benefit approach to farming and living. I explained that value was the quotient of benefit divided by the cost (value=benefit/cost). Many families wasted an entire half-acre of land by using their yards for pasture for sheep or cattle. I explained that they could make their farms more efficient by planting several avocado, mango, or banana trees in the area, each of which take up little ground space but have a high yield each year. Instead of the typical Cyprus tree, which is sold after ten years for firewood at the price of twelve US dollars, I recommended these fruit trees which would yield close to three times this amount every year. I also taught about ideas such as budgeting, planning, risk, reinvestment (many live year-to-year on loans and never actually become independent of the banks—they take out a loan at the beginning of each year and repay it every harvest), and other ideas
that are very simple to us, but novel concepts to Africans.
I was able to learn more than I would have ever imagined in Kenya. The best way to learn a culture is to sit down and talk to someone who is a part of that culture, and I was able to do this with dozens of people! They taught me a new way of looking at life and business—especially the value of relationships and the importance of never being too busy to sit down and have a short conversation with any friend you come across. Although five minutes is an invaluable amount of time in the American culture, the people of Kitale taught me that this five minutes can be best spent nurturing a relationship, because these relationships are some of the most important things we will ever possess in life.
I also was able to learn a slightly different lifestyle. Taxis were dirt-bikes, pets were small malnourished mutts (we adopted a mutt puppy while in Kitale), and women were expected to do all the household chores and men never were to lift a finger. As a disclaimer, Benjamin and I cooked and cleaned almost every meal we ate and washed our clothes in a bucket in the yard, so I unfortunately was not quite this so spoiled. We also had unreliable electricity that usually went out whenever it rained (which was all but two days). Most dinners were eaten by the light of a lantern rather than that of a light bulb. Our showers consisted of a bucket of warm water (which we warmed on our two-eye propane stove, our only cooking device) and a coffee mug. We would have to dump water on our heads using the mug, soap up, and then wash the soap off using the same coffee cup. Our toilet was an outhouse with an eight inch rectangular hole in the concrete called a
longdrop—I believe no further details are necessary. Overall, life was much more rugged than that to which I am accustomed to, but not at all unpleasant. I recently took my first real shower in about a month, and am now looking forward to returning to America where I don’t have to kill mosquitos that carry malaria before going to bed and where I have the comforts of home!