Experiences in Recruitment for Queen’s Young Leaders Seminar

I have offered to run a session on ‘recruitment’ for the QYL programme but while it is designed for people involved in recruiting to a small organisation, it could also be useful for someone trying to join a similar organisation as an employee. I do not have years of experience in recruitment as I have only been an employer for four years and now I only employ about 28 people but during Xavier Project’s history people have joined our team through very many avenues, from just being my old friend to passing gruelling two hour interviews.

Here are a few things to think about before even starting the process:

1.       The golden rule of recruitment – make sure you like them.

This is by far the most important thing about choosing a new member of your team. It doesn’t matter how experienced or skilled the candidate is, if you think your personalities will clash it will not work.

 2.    Select on potential and not necessarily on experience

This is connected to the last point. If you really like the candidate and they seem to be keen then it is likely that they will be able to learn the necessary technical skills to do the job. What is more, employees will be far more motivated to learn if they are a little bit out of their comfort zone. In my opinion one of the most motivating factors for a lot of people is feeling that they are being trusted with a responsibility that is slightly too big for them, because they want to see and then prove that they are able to deal with it. Most people are also very motivated by learning new things and in the back of their mind they will be hoping to gain skills on each job which will make them more marketable in the future. Engagement in a role, as long as the employee is not seriously incompetent, is far more important than technical skill, because if they are skilled but not engaged they will not use their skills anyway. If they are engaged but not as skilled as they could be they will gain those skills quickly.

3.  ‘Interview’ them to be members of the organisation’s team not for a specific role.

One thing I have learnt to do in the last few years is move people around according to the best fit. In one case this even involved directors of two separate departments literally swapping jobs and leading a totally new team. There are several people in Xavier Project who have tried their hand at various jobs from HR to logistics, admin, operations and finance within the space of a couple of years. You may say this is only relevant to very small organisations, which is true to an extent, but having a full picture of the whole organisation is vital in really understanding the vision and I find that the people who have been pigeonholed less are able to get the bigger picture more easily. They are also the first ones to step in and help out when a key staff member is absent or needs assistance. These are the types of people you really need when you’re starting out so avoid those who will keep referring to their job description or contract and complain when as asked to do something remotely different.

With these thoughts in mind, here are a few tips for when starting the process for looking for someone:

 Be open to various forms of selection process

This is harder for a big organisation that has strict policies on recruitment etc, but when you are still small don’t feel you have to interview every time. This is particularly the case considering the last bullet point – it is not always easy to write a job description for what you are really looking for. For example, I have sometimes just needed an addition to the team who was a solid team player, with no specific background or skills who can work under pressure and deal with some very unusual challenges. How do you write a job description and then interview for that? As a result we have recruited quite a number of ex-volunteers/interns to the team. This has had two main benefits – firstly we know a lot more about the person we are recruiting, and secondly they may have at least some idea about the whacky job you are asking them to do, often for little financial compensation. Most interns and volunteers have no idea initially that you are watching their every move in case they are up for the job and this is another bonus because they are not putting up the facade they could easily pull off in an interview. It is obvious that you can really get to know someone when you are spending hours and hours with them in the work place, and most importantly you get to see how they interact in a team environment – something that is very hard to do in an interview process despite being such a crucial element of the job.

 If you have to interview.... be careful with the JD

If you are going to interview for an important position you need to get as many applicants as possible to give you strength in numbers. We had over 400 applicants for one job and in the end there was only one candidate we were close to hiring (and luckily s/he was outstanding). Had we been more unlucky we would have had to turn everyone down and start again, and if you are not happy this is what you have to do.

• ·         Give yourself time. From posting the job description to having the hired employee in the office will never take less than a month, and often can take two months. You need about two weeks or more for the job to be live on-line, a week for organising the interview, and then the successful applicant will need to give his or her notice.
• ·         Before you send out the job description, make sure you have worked out all the platforms where you can promote it in advance so that it is posted everywhere at around the same time.
• ·         Set up a new email address eg jobs@.... Because otherwise your inbox will be spammed
• ·         Think of ways to filter people out, for example, DO state the salary or at least the salary bracket with 10% variation on each side. This is to avoid someone excellent getting into the interview and then turning down the job because the salary is too low. If you want to renegotiate the salary downwards later because you think you pitched it too high this is not a problem and in my experience the applicants have always accepted.
• ·         Find other tricks to filter, for example, say in the JD that the applicant must explicitly state why they are interested in working with refugees (insert orphans, mobile technology, algebra etc) then when you receive the applications go CONTROL F ‘REFUGEE’ and if they don’t even mention the word don’t read any more. It may sound crazy but in Kenya for a job working with refugees over 80% of the candidates did not mention the word ‘refugee’ in their cover letter (tip for cover letter writing right there).
• ·         The best way to get around this is to set up your own application form, but there are pro’s and con’s to this. It is a lot of work and some websites and agencies might not post them so you will get fewer applications and could maybe miss some hidden gems. 

  The Interviews

Try to dedicate as much time as you can for the interviews. People can surprise you at interview and contradict your expectations of them from the CV and cover letter. If it is a position that you feel really strongly about spend a few days interviewing, this might mean covering 12 – 15 people but it will be worth it to get the right person.

• ·         Get help interviewing. This might be a neutral person or a colleague, but it’s best not to have someone on the panel who will be managed by the successful candidate because it could create uneasiness in the future.
• ·         Give very clear directions and the number of a receptionist etc because people WILL get lost and will be very late. Some will be very early and you can swap them around in that case.
• ·         Allow two hour slots per interview. This is so that you can have a break between each one, because if you interview well they will be draining. Also, an hour goes quickly and you may easily find you go over if you are enjoying it and also if you still need more time to really get to the bottom of something.

When the interview kicks off the interviewee will be nervous. Of all the people I have interviewed there have been very few exceptions to this and that usually meant they didn’t care. With this in mind it can be good to ask a fairly generic question that lets them loosen up. From here on in I recommend that you turn it into a conversation. If you interview well you should try and pick something from what they said in the last answer to move on the next questions, and if not make it clear that it is a definite progression to a new topic (“OK let’s move on to some management questions”). This style will enable the interviewee to relax and open up a lot more than if you ask jolted bullet point questions. Don’t feel constrained to keep to the prompt sheet, let the interview take its own course and let them reveal what really motivates them. In the same vein, make sure you respond positively to their answers – I cannot see any benefit at all in intimidating them and making them feel uncomfortable, even though I know a lot of interviewers do that.

• ·         Make notes make notes. It can be hard to do this and may seem austere, but you WILL forget what they say if you don’t. By the end of the day your mind will be a mush.
• ·         Discuss each candidate immediately after each interview with the other panellists. This can be interesting to see how first impressions can differ but you will also remember those discussions a few days later when making your final decision.
• ·         Then prep up properly on the next candidate before they come in. You will already you feel you know them because you had to short-list them for interview but remind yourself of the crunch questions and the areas of their experience which you want to know more about, and which they will probably want a chance to highlight. 

When the whole process is over, go back to point number one at the top and follow your instincts – your brain will be telling you all sorts of unravelled logic but when you finally make that decision you will not know exactly how you got to it, but make the call and be confident. Tell them you want to offer them the job but that you would like to talk about it in person. Only when it is all tied up should you go and reject the other applicants. Remember that for some people they are interviewing you while you are interviewing them and they may not yet be 100% set on the job so don’t presume that they will take it.

Rejections

One thing I have always done is email each of the other interviewees with an individual message explaining that they did not get the job but stating something that I enjoyed in the interview. This has gone down well and is good easy PR for your organisation as well as being the right thing to do. Then I have written a copy and paste message for the other hundreds who didn’t get invited to interview at all and asked a volunteer to log on the jobs@ email and send it to every single applicant with their name at the top! (I hope none of them are reading this and finding out that it was a copy and paste!) That is an unusual thing to do but it doesn’t take that long and is very well appreciated by people who might have had big hopes of getting the job.

Now you’re ready to get hiring.

Nairobi x13 ZOOM

In 1963, the population of Nairobi was 350,000. It is now estimated to be 4.5 million, ie 13 times more populous. Nairobi has its unique flaws that revolve around crime, poor sanitation, overcrowded living conditions, terrible traffic, lack of reliable water and electricity and others – in order of severity in my opinion. They are all connected and congestion coupled with inadequate opportunities make up some of the reasons behind these flaws. However, Nairobi functions as a city and while some issues continue to get worse, like crime, other aspects like traffic and electricity are improving.

Nairobi in 1963

 Nairobi’s explosion in population was the result of rural – urban migration that has continued unabated since independence and really since Nairobi began in the late 19^th century.  And the only reason people have been coming is because of jobs – this is still where the jobs and opportunities are to be found. Nairobi has youth unemployment of 40%, but it is impossible to monitor the informal economy and we know that slums in Nairobi have a domestic product of millions of dollars a day. Nobody is really from Nairobi, and even people who have grandparents who were born in the city claim that their real home is in the countryside. As a result, there is no feeling of animosity from an ‘indigenous’ population who feel that the land of their forefathers has been invaded by foreign tribes.(It also means that nobody feels responsible for looking after the place but that is another story). Occasionally, there have been pockets of Nairobi that have been the scenes of proprietorial clashes between two tribes such as the conflicts in Kibera in the 1990s and the post-election violence in 2008 but for the most part different tribes have lived side by side without any explicit concern for groups of economic migrants moving in as neighbours.

That is because people are aware that the migrants are an opportunity as much as they are a challenge. If the commonly believed myth was true that there is a set quota of jobs in any one country or city then clearly over 90% of people in Nairobi would be unemployed – leaving only the original 350,000 people with the original jobs that were designed by some master plan. The economic migrants have come to look for jobs but unwittingly they have created jobs at the same time. Those who really want to work have found a way to do so and their energy has spurred Nairobi’s economy and the economy of Kenya as a whole.

It is easier to make this argument in Kenya because a detractor cannot say that these economic workers have been a drain on the welfare state – you pay for what you get in Nairobi with very few exceptions.

With this history in mind I am surprised that many Kenyans feel threatened by the presence of refugees in Nairobi. If anything, refugees are even less of a drain on the state because they don’t qualify for the very few benefits that Kenyans enjoy on the expense of the tax payer. So if they are living a sustainable lifestyle in Nairobi they must by definition be contributing to the economy – they are not taking away anyone’s job. Those who feel that their jobs are being taken by refugees should look at all the other Kenyans the same refugee is supporting by successfully surviving here.  What is more, the estimated 80,000 refugees living in Nairobi make up less than 2% of the population. If you are one of the 350,000 Kenyans who was living in Nairobi in 1963 then I can understand you complaining about the massive explosion in population, but why target your concerns at this 2% and not the other 90% who have joined you since independence? The only difference is the nationality on their passports in every other way they are exactly the same – yes they look different, but Kenyan tribes can look different; they speak different languages, but so do Kenyans from all parts of the country. Their influx has been no more dramatic than an influx from Western Province or Nyanza.

A lot going on

So Nairobi manages OK with a 2% population of refugees and a 90% population of economic migrants, and yet I believe that Nairobi is the worst case scenario of what could happen if we were more liberal about migration worldwide. Nairobi has faced challenges that would be easily avoided by the majority of countries that migrants are heading to. Since independence the city has been poorly managed. Corruption has been a key ingredient in keeping people in poverty and allowing crime to escalate, and poor economic policies ensured that Kenya as a whole had a stagnant economy for a long time and a shrinking one throughout the 1990s. Desperation pushed people to live in conditions that are not fit for humans and the slums with all the challenges they brought were able to sprawl unabated. But with a few steps forward and a few steps back Nairobi is evolving in the right direction. Just to give a few examples: thousands of youth every day are moving through the slums developing better sanitation, de-polluting and building infrastructure under the National Youth Service; Kenya Power and Lighting Company are providing legitimate power to the slums on a pre-pay basis while electricity output is getting closer to meeting demand; slum regeneration projects starting on the peripheries of slums are transforming whole areas into lower-middle class neighbourhoods; the Chinese are developing the roads and I believe noticeably taking the sting off the huge increase in car ownership in the city that inevitably leads to congestion. The city has a dark side but the hopeful Nairobi spirit is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Nairobi functioning (courtesy of chelipeacock.com)

If this is the worst case scenario is it really that bad? Let’s stop the fear mongering over migration first – more on other positive benefits later.

Solidarity - Xavier Project's Core Value

At Xavier Project we are proud that refugees form the core of our team and our decision making processes...  It sounds like a statement from a page on our website. Which it is. But what does it really mean when we say that? It is actually untrue that we have more refugees than non-refugees on our payroll, (only just). But we don’t consider the staff on our payroll to be the only people in our team. Everything we do relies on the co-operation of the refugee community and I should go further than that to say that everything we do relies on the inspiration of the refugee communities we work with.

It still sounds a bit like the website - but then I did write most of it.

 In February on our annual retreat we decided as a group of 26 that our core value should be ‘solidarity’. That’s it – just solidarity. I was excited when we settled on this because everything seemed to click together, but since then I have been trying to work out how we should express it. I suppose the reason you have a core value (or a set of values) as an organisation is to try and determine what defines you, and even what makes you stand out from other organisations. Otherwise it is just lip-service. What is the point in celebrating a core value of ‘honesty’ as a charity or an NGO, or even ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ – isn’t that what we are all meant to exhibit? What is more, in 2008 there were plenty of NGO’s who were displaying honourable core values and they were doing a fairly good job, so why would Xavier Project come along with the same core values and expect to be an improvement? Therefore, we shouldn’t conceive our core value of ‘solidarity’ in a way that everyone expects – ‘we keep the best interests of our beneficiaries at heart’, or ‘we do needs assessments to find out exactly what refugees want’. Instead we need to have a radical interpretation of ‘solidarity’ if it is going to be what defines us and makes us different.

It starts with attitude. Refugees come to Kenya and Uganda as functioning decision making people who want to control their own lives but in many cases they are herded like animals with limited freedoms. They have no democratic representation and as such have minimal influence over sweeping policies that determine their futures. These policies are often made by very few people who have little understanding as to what it means to be a refugee and these people talk about ‘durable solutions’. These durable solutions, which include repatriation, local integration and third country resettlement, are elusive – maybe there’s a lack of will somewhere along the chain of cause and effect. Maybe it’s just a lack of understanding. (sound-bite alert) In the end the only people who will put into effect these durable solutions are refugees themselves. What is clear is that if refugees are left in the dark as to the reality of their situation, and have no voice to express it from their perspective, they will be no help in finding the durable solutions that we are all want.

This may sound so obvious, but why is it that refugees still have almost no say in the policies that affect them and even worse, do not even understand the realities they face as refugees? I may sound patronising, but we have put it to the test. In May we asked over 300 refugees across Kampala and Nairobi whether they expected to be resettled in a third country and over 90% said yes they would be. But between Uganda and Kenya less than 1% of refugees are resettled every year. So their expectations about one of the key durable solutions is wildly inaccurate – can it be so different for the other two?  That suggests that the interventions carried out by all the agencies here are on thousands of ‘blind’ beneficiaries who have little idea of what is going on - the herding metaphor becomes relevant once again.

An attitude of solidarity would not let this happen.  Refugees need to be aware of their situation and need to have a voice to raise their concerns and express their ambitions both from the perspective of human dignity, but also from the utilitarian perspective of achieving durable solutions.

But how do we adopt this attitude and display solidarity in practice? Before we even get onto activities (of which there are many – just look at our workplan) there is the question of approach. Once you consider refugees as the owners of their futures the conception of an NGO changes quite drastically. Rather than being an authority we become simply a vehicle for all of our stake holders. Primarily, these stake holders are the refugee communities we work with, but you could also say we are a vehicle for our supporters, whether donors, volunteers and other aid agencies so that refugees can use their generosity and energy to their advantage in the most efficient way. If we are going to be an effective vehicle we must be accessible to all these stake holders. For the donors, this is where the clichéd values of transparency and accountability come in and for the refugees this is where the values of visibility and approachability come in. I was reminded of this no more clearly than the other day in one of our Tamuka Hubs when one of the members stood up and addressed the group, asking why more organisations could not be approachable and offer an environment where refugees could come and ask any questions, share their burdens and share their dreams. It was relieving to hear that we are succeeding in this approach where many others apparently aren’t (waiting rooms, security questions, never-ending queues, computer-says-no etc etc), but we must hold onto it and enhance this quality.

 His colleague a few minutes later commented that it is vital that NGO staff really understand the challenges of being a refugee -he was hinting that often agency staff don’t seem to care.  This is where our full time refugee employees have been so helpful (shout-out to Rinaldo, Alex, Anna, Sandra, Frank, Sam, Patricia, Pascal and all the rest) but the point is that empathy goes beyond hiring refugee staff. We are all able to empathise with refugees and share their hopes and fears and this is an approach that must start with the right attitude. Again accessibility and empathy are vital in working with refugees from the perspective of human dignity, but also from the utilitarian perspective of achieving durable solutions.

This attitude and approach may not seem radical but it will take a culture change for them to be fully adopted. There is another vital approach though that goes beyond empathy and is more testing to the existing culture. This is the approach of sharing. We cannot honestly have an attitude of solidarity, be accessible and understanding if we do not share our lives with the people we work with. Sharing resources is difficult and not always possible, but if our lifestyles are excessively different from the people we are working with our ‘solidarity’ will not be honest. This idea is best expressed by our staff alumnus Stephen Windsor in his blog on the same topic (https://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/) which I would definitely recommend reading. But the easiest and most effective aspect of sharing, yet surprisingly the most radical, is opening ourselves up to the people we are working with. We have weaknesses, we have quirks, we are individual people and we need help from refugees too. We want to learn about and respect refugees as individuals so we need to reciprocate and not close ourselves up behind a wall of faux professionalism. Being as open with refugees as we would wish them to be with us is where we will start a real partnership of mutual respect and the possible consequences of this are as obvious as they are numerous.

The next step would be to consider activities that are spawned and nourished by the attitude of solidarity when coupled with the belief that everyone has the right to equal opportunities and protection wherever they live and whatever their background (c’mon - that was taken straight from the first line of the home page...)  - but we can leave that for another day. 

St Vincent's

Kibera slum in Nairobi, often touted as the largest slum in Africa, sits in a picturesque valley that represents the rift between the hot savannah of the plains below and the rising foothills of Kenya’s highlands. Kibera itself represents the rift between urban and rural, rich and poor, and many other schisms that divide Kenya as a country. St Vincent’s Nursery is located in Olympic, and many of the children come of Gatwekera village in Kibera. These two neighbourhoods have a strong presence of communities that come from the mostly rural Western Kenya and as such many of these families characterise Kenya’s divisions as they have often been split in half so that one branch of the family can search for fortune in the city. This factor, and other strains that come with living in Kibera, often lead to dysfunctional families and children inevitably become the biggest victims of this knock on effect.  When 50% of the 800,000 inhabitants of Kibera are children, a potential social disaster is never far away.

Plenty of NGO’s have come into Kibera to try and make changes. Many view the nature of the slum as the essence of most of the problems – if it were developed into legitimate housing the issues of poor sanitation, crime, illegal breweries, prostitution and unemployment would disappear. But Kibera is not going to change dramatically any time soon, and in fact its very nature is what ensures that obtaining a Kibera dwelling demands large amounts of hustling. Kibera is central, with relatively good facilities and sanitation (compared to other Nairobi slums) and since the post-election violence in 2008 many inhabitants don’t pay any rent at all. Bull-dozing and rebuilding Kibera would just shift the slum somewhere else less central, less hygienic and with a thinner web of the society which currently makes life in Kibera possible. But even if the resolve to develop Kibera were there, would it be logistically possible when most of it is built on the steep slopes of a muddy river bank?

The NGO interventions that are working in Kibera are the ones that accept Kibera for what it is, or at least accept that change will only really come from within. It is what is within Kibera that is important, its people and its community - and strengthening the ties of community is the most crucial work that can be done. In my opinion no organisation does this in a better way than St Vincent’s. Children who come from challenging backgrounds learn very quickly at St Vincent’s that it is possible to be cherished and nurture their talents. The holistic approach to education and up-bringing, exemplified through the school, the rescue centre and the scholarship programme, ensures that no child is ever left out or misses out on an opportunity to achieve their potential. Most importantly they discover that they are all vital members of their society and that they are able to contribute positively. This is not taught by books but by example; all members of the St Vincent staff are based locally and none of them are adequately compensated for the work they do, so the children learn from them how to have a desire to give back. When the St Vincent children join the remaining 400,000 of their generation who are growing up here, it will be they, not government bull-dozers, who bring Kibera into a thriving future.

To support St Vincent's through Global Giving click here https://www.globalgiving.org/donate/3353/st-vincent-de-paul-community-development-organization/ 

Land Reform in Kenya

It is hard to get lost in London nowadays. GPS can tell you what side of the road you are on. If you miss it come to Kibera and I will get you lost within 15 minutes. Another place where you can easily get lost in Kenya is anywhere flat in Nyanza Province. This is what happened to me while trying to walk from Lwak village to Kamito in Asembo. I had two hours to kill before I needed to be in Kamito and although the boda boda drivers couldn’t understand what I was doing I turned down their invitations to join them on the back of their bike in favour of the well-trodden path.

When you get off the road, Nyanza is a maze of millions of one acre farms all interconnected with non-sequitur paths and hedgerows; a washing place here, a thatched hut there and every so often the moo of a cow that ambushes you from behind. When you can see your destination in the distance you have a hope of reaching it, even though you might well be put off course by a surprise swamp or a ploughed field which is keen not to be disturbed. When it is flat you have no hope.  Even though they were not used to seeing an odiero wandering around shambas asking for directions, there was no element of hostility from the Luo’s who plot by plot guided me to Kamito. For my part I was not used to asking which tree or plume of smoke I should aim for as my next landmark – something they are probably quite accustomed to. 

The muddle of the shambas is intrinsic to Luo and Kenyan culture. There is a strong sense of ancestral inheritance of the land but that does not mean it can’t be shared in many ways. There are no barbed wire fences to prohibit trespassers and unless you have grown up knowing there is no way of telling each family’s plot from another.  Each farmer will share and barter what he has to his advantage – land is for grazing one year in place of land for arable the next. Work animals and labour are rented out when they are in excess and hired the next season when in high demand. This breeds a strong sense of community and interdependence. 

However, underneath the surface a lack of trust and a fear of letting go means farmers such as these are facing increasing levels of poverty. Most farmers in Nyanza are subsistence farmers who generate extra income by selling excess harvest and working on neighbouring farms in peak season. Therefore for many their only tangible asset is their land, yet often there is nothing on paper that gives them the right to that land. In traditional Luo culture, a chief or ‘weg lowo’ would act as patron to large areas of land that had diverse soil types and terrains and he would lease it out to families who wanted to specialise in working that kind of terrain – often the terms for the these leases could be in the form of livestock or labour. In the 1950’s after many centuries of long term leases an unpaid adjudication committee was set up to register land to one individual or another and naturally the winners in such a system were the ones who could provide the biggest informal payment to the committee. As a result many farmers decided not to alert land transactions to the committee and just conducted deals amongst themselves. After a short time the registered title deeds fell out of sync with local understanding of who owned what land.

As Kenya modernised, this disparity created more and more opportunities for exploitation. People used the committees to acquire title deeds for land which they were not occupying and blamed the disorganisation of the system if there were any complaints. When there weren’t complaints these title deeds could be used as collateral on a loan, or even sold to multiple buyers at once in front of different members of the committees. By the mid 1980’s, when corruption in Kenya was at a peak, very few subsistence farmers trusted the title deed system at all, and over time there was a campaign for recognition of ‘customary ownership’ of land, enabling the potential for complications to increase further.  By the end of 2012, up to 75 per cent of landin Kenya was unregistered 

Although not fool-proof, the safest way of holding rights over inherited land is to occupy it. This does not just mean farm it, but also live on it and bury your dead in it. In traditional culture, each son must build his own hut in the compound while still a teenager, and then when he marries he should set up his own compound outside the perimeter of his father’s space. Within two generations, 25 houses may have been built around the original one, constituting a mini village. The maze I stumbled upon was effectively several of these mini villages which over time have merged together to form a mega shamba complex. This could be OK if all the gardens and small fields could be used efficiently, but often the open space is actually a dedicated burial ground for the ancestors.

The consequence of this over-population of the rural areas of Kenya has led to massive migration to Nairobi (I havewritten before about why they come to Nairobi instead of other cities). However, this is not helping to develop Nyanza which still lags far behind most other provinces. For example, Nyanza is the province with the highestprevalence of HIV, domestic violence, and child mortality, and 63% of the population are living in poverty.

Nyanza is not famous for having the most productive land in Kenya, but if farmed efficiently it has potential to feed the whole region.  It is not possible to farm the land efficiently if it is becoming more and more congested with huts and graveyards. People need to congest their living quarters into centralised areas (such as towns) and common burial grounds need to be allocated at affordable prices. As part of co-operatives or larger private businesses, workers commute daily to work in the fields from this urbanised location, which in itself becomes an opportunity for new businesses, services and general economic development. Meanwhile the land can provide anywhere between 5 – 20 times the crop it yielded when farmed inefficiently with poor resources. Of course, this is not a new argument and I am no expert in it so I will not discuss it further, but anyone in the ‘peasant romantic’ wing should read this blog by Duncan Green and consider that the land reform I am referring to is a model that was adopted across the industrialised world, starting with Sweden in the 1700’s. (see)

For this land reform to occur, title deeds will need to be exchanged, and/or people will need to be happy to not live on and bury their dead in the land that they own. This is something that was recognised in Kenya’s vision 2030, completed in 2008, and elevated in the new constitution of 2010. It was for this reason that the constitution stipulated the establishment of a strong independent commission that would wipe the slate clean on land rights and clarify the rights of land-owners. (http://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/117-chapter-five-land-and-environment/part-1-land/234-67-national-land-commission) Its independence was a vital attribute as land grabbing had been clearly associated with the politicians who were closest to the ministry of lands and it was seen that ending the corruption could not be done from the inside.

This suggestion was supported a few weeks ago when an independent audit was called without warning for the Ministry of Lands. The independent audit found no less than one million files that had mysteriously disappeared while on the same day staff from the ministry were caught and arrested for sneaking title deeds out of the building. But to be strong is just as vital an attribute. The National Land Commission has pledged to create three million title deeds for Kenyans in the next five years, and these title deeds must be undisputed and unduplicated.  

The NLC has said that to be strong it needs a budget of Sh14.8 billion, but instead it was given just Sh 779 million. For this it has to rely on the Ministry of Lands that administers the budget. Despite considering themselves their ‘mother ministry’, Ministry of Lands insists that the NLC should no longer operate within Ardhi House and should not be overstepping its mandate but issuing title deeds but should exist to offer advice to the ministry  and offer other roles delegated by the government. This has led to a stand-off and increasing delays in the issuance of title deeds.

The recent war between the National Land Commission and the Ministry of Lands (above) shows that this administration does not want the NLC to be strong, and in effect this means that they are less interested in pursuing Vision 2030 than increasing their own power. To make this point clearer, the president paid a visit to the ministry in what was slated as a sign of solidarity with the minister Charity Ngilu. This stance will ensure that Nyanza and other congested rural areas of Kenya will remain poor with all the effects that come with it.

In her chapter on land reform in her book ‘The Challenge for Africa’, Wangari Maathai writes this: ‘I would like to see not poor farmers scrambling to produce tea or cassava on a piece of land that long ago lost its productivity, but rather cooperatives that provide farmers with accurate and timely information about their crops… The government will need to make a commitment to rooting out corruption in parastatal agencies that further exploit and impoverish small farmers.’  She did not live to see it, and it is still a long way off, but it will never happen in Kenya if the National Land Commission is not strong and independent.

An Unlikely Faith

Of all the motivations in people’s lives, compassion and greed are usually thought to inhabit opposite ends of a spectrum. Thomas à Kempis identifies vanity to be the contrast to compassion, because compassion brings out the full extent of humility and generosity while vanity is all that is self-obsessed, including the pursuit of wealth, glory and power for the sake of power.

When we see all the suffering in the world it is easy for anyone to feel compassion for our fellow humans but using that compassion as the motivation for our lives is much harder. I do not believe that people turn to greed and other vanities because they cannot feel compassion and shock at wrong doings, but because they believe there is nothing they can really do about it, and therefore they might as well deny it. Living in East Africa has unfortunately made it much easier to see why people would think that way, and very often I feel the same.  What is scary is that right here right now, people have far more opportunities to make a positive change motivated by their compassion than they do in other parts of the world such as North Korea, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Eastern Congo – or at other times for that matter such as under Idi Amin in Uganda and Arap Moi in Kenya.

After the new constitution was signed in Kenya in 2010 there was a tangible sense of hope- a belief that this country is on the up. Apparently this has been reminiscent of Moi’s ousting in 2002 and even independence in 1963. There was a determination that the 2013 elections would be peaceful and when they duly were there was a sense of national self-congratulation and pride in a country that was really ‘developing’ in the right direction. This feeling still exists in Kenya, despite the government’s best efforts to derail it (more on that another time), and it is the feeling of positivity and change for the better above all else that makes me happy to live in Kenya.

But even in this relatively positive environment I can’t help feeling that greed is winning and those who try to fight it are fighting in vain.  Globally we are proud of improving human rights in the last sixty years, but are we really moving in the right direction? The gap between the rich and poor is always growing and the poorest billion people on the planet are being left behind, largely because of a greedy nationalistic stance taken by ‘developed’ countries, and mostly by the rich in those countries. Now in Europe those from the rest of the world who have been left behind are being treated with increasing animosity when they try to seek asylum or opportunities in a richer place. In Kenya, the same trend is being reciprocated on a national scale: the rich are getting richer and the physical divide between the rich and poor areas is becoming ever more pronounced.  Freedom of movement is being restricted, not just for refugees (as would unfortunately be expected) but also for the rural poor who are being offered far less social mobility than they deserve. On a community level, a lack of faith in a system that condemns the poor to subservience leads to entrepreneurs preferring to cater to an informal market which does not promote an inclusive community but instead promotes divisions and further inequality. The lack of trust in daily lives has fuelled a lack of trust in families and personal relationships – over 50% of children growing up in Nairobi slums are from dysfunctional families, and there has been a marked rise in domestic violence in Kenya in the last 20 years (see http://odieromondi.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-are-women-in-kenya-getting-their.html)

In this pyramid, power and greed plays its role at every level. Men in Kibera have the power to beat their wives into doing all the housework and the youth of the slum can harass the more vulnerable into filling their pockets, yet they are oppressed by the government who do not recognise many of their rights (police have recently been given the freedom to ‘shoot to kill’ these gangsters at will). Even the Kenyan politicians must be subservient to a global system that is interested in keeping Kenya poor. Many of them might not be allowed to travel to Europe even if they wanted to because Europeans are unwilling to share or lose any more of what they have.

If you have compassion for your neighbours and their oppression and try to do something about it, it does not mean that you will not be oppressed anyway, so it makes more sense to join in the system. However you might try to help, at some point it will be undone by corruption and greed at a higher level.

Somehow, many people refuse to live under this spell. Yesterday on the way to the Easter service I saw a young man in his mid-twenties running with his five year old daughter to get to church in time to get a seat. She was dressed in a shiny purple dress and he was wearing a smart shirt with a rosary round his neck. Their shoes were covered in mud as it had rained hard during the night and they had just navigated the muddy tracks of Kibera. For this scene to have taken place a number of unlikely things must have happened. A young man who became a father in his late teens has decided to commit to his family; he had decided to spend what must be a huge proportion of his salary on his daughters dress; he had got up on possibly his only day off in weeks at 7.30 am in order to get to church on time – and then run with his daughter so that she got a good view of the service.  The church was full of such people. It was not occupied by people who have been bred all their lives to go to church on Easter Sunday and continue to do so under pressure of ‘Catholic guilt’, but people of all ages who have a faith that a system of greed and oppression is not the only way. At the end of the service a spontaneous cheer went round the building – not the climactic wailing I dread in some services – but the kind of applause you get at the end of a football game when your team has won the league, the tension is freed, and the celebrations can begin.

These people are sure that in fact they are right to invest in hope, but where they get this idea is a mystery. The logic says that following greed and vanities is far more lucrative and beneficial, especially if you are living in a challenging environment like Kibera. Instead they are allowing compassion for their neighbours to motivate their lives and it seems to me that they are happy about it. Can this be dismissed as delusion?

If this blog interests you I would highly recommend reading a couple of blogs by my colleague Stephen on solidarity and suffering. http://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/solidarity/ and the follow up http://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/suffering-and-solidarity-some-more-thoughts/

Observations of a Slum Tourist 4: Olympic Opportunities

‘Human Traffic’ is the phrase often used to describe the thorough-fare that runs from Olympic bus stage past Olympic Primary School down into Kibera slum. The growing potholes that are making their stamp on this road are more the result of over ten thousand daily foot passengers than abuse from car tires. Any cars that venture this way must accept that going faster than walking pace is impossible and as a result few do. Another reason is that not many people have cars. This may sound obvious, but Kibera manages to fit a disputed 800,000 residents within 2.5 square miles, and there still seems to be space for all our cars.

 

When Olympic Estate was completed in 1975, each compound was designed with space for parking. The government scheme, which was designed to off-set the expansion of Kibera with organized housing, gave middle class Kenyans the opportunity to buy property that was linked up to the national amenities of water, sewerage and electricity. Cheap loans were made available for certain people to buy the houses at affordable prices and many of them immediately let them out, making a 100% return on investment within two years. Others divided up the compounds into smaller plots and in recent years landlords have demolished the original structures and built multi-story buildings consisting of several one-bedroom apartments. All this has had an impact on the amount of parking space available. However, the dividing up of plots has also meant that the relevant average income of Olympic residents has declined in the last two decades. A family living in a single bedroom apartment is less likely to be able to afford a car now, than the original tenants of the estate who were renting large compounds for themselves in the 1980’s.

 

The prevalence of human traffic over four-wheeled traffic has also had an impact on the pavements. Since the roads are used by amblers, the pavements now make ideal sites for makeshift shops for these amblers to peruse. Demand for such an obvious economic benefit has been matched by a dwindling of resistance; as the tarmac on the roads has slowly decayed, so has the determination of any party insistent on preventing these iron sheet shop fronts from popping up. They go up overnight and by morning they had always been there.  This trend has been escalating since the post-election violence in 2008, Kibera’s darkest hour in living memory, when it became clear that the inhabitants here run their own laws subject to no outside influences. The original landlords, who may have held more pride in their middle class estate and resisted these temporary structures, were largely chased out of town at this time for being from the wrong tribe and many have never returned.

All this would lead you to the conclusion that Kibera is swallowing Olympic, and on initial exposure that is often the reaction. However, that would be to deny the opportunities that present themselves in Olympic when you look a little closer. The main thing to remember is location. Kibera is prime real estate because if you have the resolve you can walk to work in the central business district and thereby saving yourself 2000 KSH (£15) per month. For those who do travel by bus, it should take less than half the time to get to town than it might if you live in other affordable areas of town. Ngong road is set to be widened within the next two years which will further cut down commuting times and on Ngong Road you get everything you need. If a linking road is made to the new by-pass south of Kibera it will give fantastic access to the west of Kenya. This means that Olympic is a very convenient place to live

The growing population should also be seen as an opportunity.  All basic day to day goods can be found in Olympic, but from the small temporary shops described above. Since these shops continue to grow in number it must mean that demand is there, and growing. However, multiple shops selling the same goods is not a formula for efficiency and actually limits the economic growth in the area. If larger, more permanent establishment could be commissioned and financed it could create even more jobs for the area in the long run. My reasoning is this: one-man-band shops do not rely on an economic ecosystem to survive- they just buy their products from travelling salesmen or buy them wholesale themselves, and then sell them direct to customers. A larger enterprise such as a supermarket would need other services such as store designers and engineers, security guards, and till managers. Such an ecosystem could create business for other industries such as local advertising agencies, carpenters and metal workers. The larger establishments could bring down the price of day to day consumables through economy of scale, which is of benefit to the whole community. If the temporary shops lose business, then at least many jobs would have already been created. However, their proprietors needn’t go out of work as long as they are innovative: a growing population brings a wide array of different business opportunities and demand for specialized goods. Therefore, Olympic provides countless opportunities for business minded people.

Let’s take as another example the ten tiny pubs lined up in the north side of the ring road need their own fridges, sound systems, bar staff and in some cases night security guards. If they could join forces and open a large club like Garage or Big Five in Fort Jesus resources could be pooled new attractions could be invested in that bring in more customers from outside, such as kitchens, pool tables, bigger TV screens and live bands. For this to happen though business men in Olympic need to be prepared to team up and trust each other.

Considering the exciting opportunities in Olympic it is surprising that housing prices are not escalating. Just a kilometre away in Jamuhuri, property is up to three times as expensive both to buy and to rent. But a few hundred metres away in the slum housing is almost ten times cheaper than in Olympic Estate. A year in to the new government’s tenure there are no obvious signs that the explode pressure of the slum is relenting, and it is not clear whether new policies will have the desired effects. Olympic is seen as a buffer zone between developed Nairobi and the unruly slum, ready to swing one way or another and until there is evidence of a clear swing in the right direction people are unwilling to invest in its property or infrastructure. As inhabitants it is up to us to make that decision, nobody is going to do it for us, and for that we need to be prepared to work together.