Day 2 Training

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

We woke up and prepared for the second day of training. We had arranged to meet Steve at the center of town at 9am, even though it was way past Manyatta, arguably the largest slum in Kisumu, where we were going that morning. We had hoped to walk the whole way, but were running low on time and so walked part of the way and then caught a matatu. We arrived and found no Steve. We stopped in at some of the electronics stores that we had heard about to find some adapters and perhaps a photo printer to help us to better use the donations that we have. Unfortunately, they didn’t have what we were looking for, although at each store they would recommend we go to another store that also didn’t have what we needed. We waited for over an hour for Steve, even though he had told us when we arrived there, “I am coming.”

He finally arrived and picked us up. We stopped off down the block so that he could take care of some business at the bank. When that was done, he drove us to the Tuungane satellite community center in Manyatta. Victor was waiting for us there. He leaned over and whispered, “and why are we so late this morning?” We tried to explain as the youth that had been waiting for us for so long began to move chairs into the room and the pool table to back of the room.

We began. When we asked the participants whom they considered their community to be, most talked about the people in their neighborhood, often referencing the sharing of resources. One girl responded, “my enemies.” When we asked about the issues and challenges facing them, we got similar answers to those that we had heard from the other two groups, although they did suggest that we break up the issues by category: social, political, and cultural. They also brought up incitement, describing it as when politicians get the community riled up about an issue and incite the community members to protest. They also were the first group to bring up tribalism, violence, and corruption.



We began the exercises. We decided that it would be more appropriate for Victor to escort them to take pictures with the digital camera. Later, Victor mentioned that the pictures were almost all staged scenes depicting the issues, rather than more representational or symbolic images. Sara found that when audio recording the interviews, the language barrier seemed to be more obvious than with the group from the day before. Alexis was taken into the boys’ bathroom to take a picture posed as if they were peeing. They apologized to her about the smell. We weren’t able to get very far on the exercises because of lack of time.

We came back to the center and found that the electricity was out. We were concerned because that meant that were unable to recharge our equipment. Instead we took a nap. When it was time to leave, we piled into Steve’s car and headed for Liberty Secondary School. Steve and Victor had told us that Liberty had a reputation of not being a very good school academically, but in a former project of Abila’s, the “It’s Our Lives” debates, Liberty had beat Kisumu Girls Secondary School, much to everyone’s surprise.

We waited in a classroom to be shown where to go, still feeling groggy from the nap. We were taken past a room that seemed to contain nothing other than husks of corn and a chair and shown to a classroom with outlets.


We plugged in while we waited for the students to finish their exams. Alexis took some photos as students slowly trickled in. When enough students were there, we began our presentation. Suddenly more students began to flow in, on top of what already seemed like way too many students for what we had planned. Sara winged it again.

After asking about community and the issues and challenges facing them, Sara asked if anyone could share a personal story that illustrated one of these issues or challenges. Many of the students had trouble moving away from hypothetical illustrations, but one young man told a personal story about his experience with peer pressure and smoking banghi (marijuana), which made the others giggle. We encouraged this kind of storytelling. A girl shared a story about a young girl who is a neighbor of hers who was raped, the girl ended the story, illustrating the negative effects, by stating that this young girl is now scared, particularly of people in trousers. The electricity went off during the workshop and rain began to pour down outside. When we had run out of time, a teacher apologized to us for the disorganization and asked us how many students we would like to have the next time. We replied that we wouldn’t want to exclude anyone who had attended the first meeting, even though the huge number of students made it almost impossible to do any exercises.

Alexis took a number of pictures of the students and allowed some of them to use her camera. There were instantly students all around her, wanting to take and have pictures taken.


Two girls, Mary and Gloria, carried our backpacks to the gates of the school for us as we marveled at the beauty of the sky as a very light rain fell. The girls left us there because they are not allowed to walk through the market in their school uniforms because of the many temptations there. We bought some items at the market and then left Steve at the main road. Victor escorted us part of the way home and then instructed us to take a matatu. When we alighted from the matatu at our stop (Posho Mil), we were struck by the beauty of the sky. It was like nothing we had ever seen. One side was blue and the other was orange. Alexis couldn’t stop taking pictures of it as we meandered home.

We arrived home to find that we were still without electricity. We made dinner and went to bed. When the electricity did return, we knew because the radio had been left on at a very high volume.