Travels

Day Five – Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Today began with an early morning flight to Eldoret. Eldoret is a small city located about 200 miles northwest of Nairobi. 

Upon Arrival, we headed into the slums surrounding the city. Our destination was the Jamii School. Started 5 years ago by Basilus and his wife Esther, the school now serves over 400 students in the surrounding area.  The school itself looks a lot like the homes in the surrounding neighborhood: simple wood posts and limbs for the structure, and corrugated metal for the walls and roof.  Despite the conditions, the school is a haven for its students.  It’s a safe place for them to come together, and learn, and for some, it’s a guarantee for a daily meal they might not otherwise get. The school is crowed, though. In some of their classrooms, there are nearly 60 students, and they’ve a projected need for at least 3 more full classes of 45 students.

Despite the conditions, it’s clear both the students and teachers are extremely dedicated to being there and learning and teaching. In fact, on national exams, the students at Jamii are outperforming the students at the elementary school serving Eldoret town.

To address the pressing need for more space, the school has purchased a site a few blocks away, twice as big as their existing property. Though they ultimately plan to build a permanent two or three story structure on the new site, the immediate need is for enough semi-permanent structures on their new site to allow them to transfer all their classes to the new site, so they can stop paying rent and begin work on the permanent building. We spent the next few hours going over options for how best to phase their work, and how best to invest the time and resources for the semi-permanent construction.

Days Three and Four

January 28-29, 2013

Our primary meeting for Day 3 was with David Gatende, Deputy CEO at Davis & Shirtliff.  D&S is one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of solar panels, wind generators (domestic scale), and solar hot-water panels, and bore-hole (well) equipment in Eastern and Central Africa.

David, and members of his staff explained to us the state of the solar industry in Kenya (note: all new homes are required to have solar hot water), and shared what the most appropriate systems for our project would be. It was interesting seeing such a forward thinking policy applied in a developing country, when it is such a challenge to get similar policies considered at home.

Day Four.

We began the day by heading south to Langata.  There is a large government housing project here, that houses almost 10,000 people. This project, called NHC Langata court, is located directly adjacent to Kibera, the second largest urban slum in Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera). Estimates, widely varied, put the population of Kibera anywhere from 107,000 (2009 census) to 2 million.

From here we continued on to our first appointment, a meeting with Patrick, a retired pastor who now runs Oikos-Kenya (part of the Hope Teams International group). Patrick’s group is working to address the many issues facing the displaced youth in the area, abandoned or orphaned as a result of the ongoing AIDS Epidemic.

Though the original purpose of our meeting was to see if our housing concept could be adapted to Patrick’s site, it became clear during the meeting that they would need a different solution.  Though we didn’t end up providing a new solution for Patrick, we were able to sit and review the design they used for their existing building, and make some recommendations on how it could be easily modified to meet their evolving needs.

Kenya Day Two

January 27, 2013

Our second day in Kenya began with a drive out to Tala, to visit the Upper Manza Community Center. The UMCC began in 2007 in an effort to bring clean water and community identity to the area east of Tala. At the time, the Upper Manza region consisted of scattered residences, with little or no services provided, and little or no sense of identity. The most important of these missing services, was clean water.  In 2007, 35 members of the community formed a committee, and began a project to address these needs. Now, 6 years later, they have succeeded in procuring and installing, by themselves, a well, pump, tank and distribution system. Through this system they provide clean, fresh water directly to 356 homes in the area. Their new Community Center also provides a meeting space to discuss community issues and plan future initiatives, and also a testing ground and model for projects community members can execute on their own (for example, they have a model and drip irrigation system, that can be easily replicated on an individual level).

From the UMCC, we visited the site of the temporary clinic for the Kangundo Project. One of the primary services the Kizimani Organization provides to the Kangundo Community is an annual medical examination. Doctors from the US, and Nairobi, visit the Kangundo site for 3 days, and during those 3 days see nearly 1,000 people, for whom access to medical services is difficult or impossible.

One of the next steps for our team, in Seattle, will be to help finalize a quick design for this site, as they will start building here in April, with the goal of having this clinic up and operational by August.

Day One in Kenya

Saturday, Jan 26, 2013

I spent today with Nelly and her Husband Nick. They manage Kizimani's projects locally.  We started by viewing another school project, recently done, in the Nairobi area. The project, “New Dawn”, is a high school serving an impoverished area adjacent to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Nairobi.  The juxtaposition of the two neighborhoods is quite striking.  On one side, you have all the residences for the members of all the foreign embassies, many at 5,000 – 7,000+ SF.  On the other, a slum, with shacks cobbled together from found materials, with no power or running water. However, the New Dawn project is a beacon in this slum.  Completely supported through donations, the high school serves 160 students from the surrounding slum, and sees 25% of those students qualify for admission to the state university.

The construction for this school is different from what we’re looking at. Made from donated shipping containers, the project is a great example of using available resources in an innovative manner.

The school was constructed in 2 phases.  The first, completed in 2006, was made of four shipping containers. The containers were arranged, two by two on the first floor, with the interior panels of each pair cut out, and the seams of the adjoining containers welded together.  The removed panels were then used to construct the exterior walls of the second story classrooms. The result was a wide classroom, that seats 40 students.

The second phase was a little different, each classroom on the 1st and 2nd floor was still made of a pair of shipping containers, with the removed panels used elsewhere in the project. But the changed how they finished the interior surfaces, and actually left a gap between the containers, and in-filled that gap with wood construction, that allowed for all the utility routing to be concealed. 

The project was a great example of applying lessons learned from one phase to the next.

We spent a fair amount of time going over some of the construction techniques used. Even though this is a different construction system that what we’re proposing, New Dawn is a great indicator of the methods, systems and materials at our disposal.

What was also remarkable about the New Dawn campus was how they used every square inch of their property.  They grow greens and onions on site, in both an open field and a green house. The have 3 cattle for milk production, and they use the manure to provide bio-gas (methane) for the kitchen.  The have to purchase beans and corn for the kitchen, but all the other ingredients for the school meals are grown on site.   

Though we’ve discussed the possibility for growing food on our site, and integrating areas for it in our site design, it was great to see an example already built and up and running.