A two year penis operation -just dont ask!

It was a hot Sunday morning, my skin glistened with sweat and a timid breeze barely whispered. The fire and brimstone sermon/rant from the pastor in the church next door was testing my dangerously abbreviated patience – I needed to go do something. My phone was silent, my wallet empty and for an hour my mind stuck on one seemingly unanswerable question

"Colm, What the fuck are you going to do today?"

I enjoyed my Saturday with good food, Granny's Irish Times, one of Dads Books, some of Bobs DVDs, a few of Tusker's Beers and Arsene's Football. I enjoyed my solitude yet wished still to share it with someone. On Sunday, I had begun to crave that company.

Work was painfully slow and ineffective, full of late or 'no-show' meetings with little or no support. My status as strange mzungu (whitey) and the stares that were associated with it in my village began to seriously test.

But nothing was more difficult than Sundays.

Alone.

What the F*****CK am I doing here???

Getting asked 'Why are you doing VSO for 2 years?' is liked standing outside the 'Penis Extension Ward' and being asked by someone what are you doing in hospital?

Oh God this is awkward.

Trust me, you don't want to hear the answer 'I want to make the world a better place' (I've broke away from the above analogy…) It will make us both uncomfortable. So I used to always mutter something about 'A chance to do something different, get out of Banking and a suit'. Laugh awkwardly, turn and run.

Now comes the other difficult question - 'So did you have the impact as a VSO that you wanted?' This is like when leaving the hospital and after a few weeks someone asking you 'So are you happy with how it works after the operation?'

(Bob Geldolf once said in an essay 'Make Poverty History' in the New York Times on the eve of the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005 "We must do something, anything. Whether it works or not". So by that wonderful summation of Development, VSO has been a tremendous success for me. I have done something and it was an extremely educational, enlightening and beneficial experience. Did anyone significantly benefit from my work? Hardly.)

"Yes, I am delighted with it. It worked incredibly well for me." "What? Did it work well for her? - Heck I don't know! but it sure worked fine for me."

You see, after the low points, slowly Sundays and life in Kenya in general got better. I worked with more groups and local NGOs, there was slow progress, some small successes, some huge lessons.

I went to Uganda with friends, a few trips to Nairobi, a visit from Dubai and Home, and Christmas in Zanzibar. Most importantly, I met some more people around Kilifi. Ari, Ellen, Beau and of course Kate whom our daily battles about Prince shooting his Dad (not yet on the internet) and Westlife being a better band then BackStreet Boys made life all the more bizarrely endurable.

Now I don’t think that I want to finish early but stay forever.

I’ve never been 100% sure what I’m trying to say in these blogs. But one thing I know is that whatever I do next, it will largely be me who chooses. That’s a choice people in poverty, whose dreams are restricted by mere survival, don’t have.

This is something we should really choose to do something, just choose to do something, to try and change.

Thanks.

From Kenya,

Colm

Chiefly lives

This is the angry blog. The one that says how I don’t understand how we can ignore a stat that tells us 3 out of 5 girls in Sub-Saharan Africa’s first sexual experience is forced upon them.

This is an angry blog that says that 8.1% of women are HIV positive in Kenya compared to 5.4% men, that girls are exposed to the virus earlier than boys due in a significant way to older men exploiting their innocence and tells that 30,000 teenage girls servicing sordid sex tourists get paid double the normal price if they agree to do it without a condom.

This an angry blog aimed at African men. Men who are far less likely to be tested for HIV then women partly due to the success of post-natal and ante-natal testing but largely down to ignorance, stupidity and pride. Aimed at people who are not doing enough to effectively target a group that companies like Guinness or MTN do with comparative ease.

This is an angry blog aimed at the white wrist band, live 8 lovers who once championed with their favorite celebrity the now forgotten, ignored and abused girl child. It asks how any woman can care and do so little for their gender so ruthlessly, rampantly and raucously oppressed while they read pages and pages of Katie Price or Paris Hilton. How blind they are to the fact that largest abused sector is you – the woman, the girl. Or the men who commit the Crime.

This is an angry blog aimed at a predominantly ineffective donor sector that makes careers out of the poor. A sector that has swallowed us up, me included and now fecklessly spits out numbers, quota’s, self-serving do-gooding rather than effectively tackling girl child rape in Nairobi slums, teachers abusing teenage girls in Kenya schools or giving women a voice and choice.

This is a blog dedicated to the truly special, loving and compassionate women we've been lucky enough to have lived with. As mothers, a wives, friends and people. How they reminds us all how given the freedom to grow, any girl can achieve the magnificent, forever missed but forever loved feminine beauty that they so majestically represents.

How we know how much we want more of them in our lives, but angry we're not doing enough to make it happen.

For Jill.

Google, Violence Against Women in Sub Saharan Africa next.

Dirty Soap

Voi is a large enough town roughly 4 hours from Nairobi and 2 and half hours from Mombasa. Nestled smack bang in the middle Tsavo East and West, together Africa’s largest National Park, it is home to many a highway petrol station that has seen countless in-transit travellers stop to empty their brimming to point of bursting bowls at toilets here since April 3rd 1893 (fact!).

Yours truly being one of said intransitions’s- way back in March 2009, when fresh behind the ears vso volunteer felt the need to unburden himself following hours of ‘leap into the unknown’ gut churning.

“Jesus! Oh Lord in Heaven save me” it was akin to being ambushed at a surprise party, the smell upon opening the door that unmercifully blitzed me. A powerful gas of piss that could be described as ‘rich’ ‘noxious’ ‘attacking’.

I could see fly’s hoovering nervously outside the vestibules, almost double daring each other to enter, even they reluctant to face the pooh packed potty’s with in. My journey length need, nay, desire to take a seat on the pensive porcelain stool vanished sooner than you could say ‘ possible long-term intestinal damage’.

Bravely and somewhat provoked by being dangerously moisten, I nonetheless pressed through the urine soaked ‘air’ toward the wall of bowel fluid woe, unzipped and limply spilled my contribution a top two laughably ill equipped urinal cakes below.

Millions of horrid painful, feces birthed illnesses swarmed around me as I hurriedly turned toward the much abused looking wash basins. I carried the firm intention of scrubbing off a layer of flesh and save myself from a hideous death some days ahead, when I saw the unsettlingly dirty bar of soap loitering beside the tap like a hooded teenage asbo hanging around some squalid urban estate.

Smell married sight and produced an assessment of the hygienic quality of said asbo looking soap – a piss laden honey trap for flesh eating bacteria. No thanks. I washed my hands with water and chased back into the car for cover, furiously rubbings hands against trouser leg front AND back.

Now, it’s been nearly two years since that now learned ‘only breathing through his mouth during Nairobi rest stops’ volunteer bravely escaped like Andy Dufrane from that ill-fated toilet, but that bar of soap has left a lasting impression. For since that faithful day, your piss pot evading hero spent many a night lying awake tossing and turning (80/20 rule applies), mulling over in his absurd adjective selecting head:

‘Dirty Soap! That double crossing swine, masquerading like butter wouldn’t melt, a rogue double (cleaning) agent defector faking to sell me healthy but actually intent of giving me danger – what a slimeball.’

And this, my now sure to be confused reader, is what corrupt politicians are – Dirty Soap. The most hideous thing in the world.

To solve every development issue, the corner stone for development is proper, effective and responsive government. Education, Gender Equality, Health, Trade, Effective use of Aid etc. etc. all require effective government to work.

Here there is practically none. Just dirty corrupt politicians.

Now before someone says, yeah but there’s corruption everywhere so why is it such a big deal in Kenya let me give you an example. The drug trade (Heroin) here is run by sitting Mombasa MP and second wife of the President of the country.

i.e. The problems with Corruption here are at completely different level than those in Ireland, Britain, the US or Europe.

As Barak Obama said:

Corruption is not a new problem. It’s not just a Kenyan problem, or an African problem. It’s a human problem, and it has existed in some form in almost every society. …

But while corruption is a problem we all share, here in Kenya it is a crisis – a crisis that’s robbing an honest people of the opportunities they have fought for – the opportunity they deserve.

The worst offenders are those elected by the people to help solve their problems. They offer solution but provide pilfer.

Where clean soap is so desperately required, the soap Kenya has is dirty and only serves to add to its woes rather than help it. The message is thus, painfully clear:

We need clean soap!

And with a the new constitution, pressure from the ICC and ever growing, frustrated educated middle class voting block – it might soon be coming.