Archive for the ‘Africa Trip Tomas Moreno’ Category
August 5th, 2009 at 9:19 am
To complete our packed final day in Kenya, we had dinner with an inspiring group of Kenyans: Imagine sitting at a table with some of your biggest heroes, with people who are able to create the change you want to see, with people who are international icons, and people who simply have great ideas, know how to implement them, and are doing just that.
This is the fantastic dinner we were able to have last Friday. We ate dinner with John Githongo—a former government official who was able to expose the corruption within the Kenyan government. We were also joined by Daudi Were, a Kenyan blogger who, along with fellow bloggers, contribute to this new era wherein the government must be wary that their citizens are ready and willing to keep them in check. Now, add their friends, a group of some 20 people who all have innovative approaches to the problems that they, everyday Africans, face.
I do not have the space to relate to all of you the amazing experience this was, but if you are interested in learning more, please comment or email any of us. We are ready and willing to relate the stories we were fortunate to hear.
I will leave you with one more comment on the amazing theme carried throughout my dinner-table discussion: the indomitable power of the human spirit. Every person I spoke to commented on how much the stories of others had affected them and how they were utilizing those stories in their current work, seeing them as the true currency of innovative development and of our age. And on their behalf, I ask that you, as Mr. Githongo, Ms. Yvonne Owuor, and Mr. John Primrose all advised: “Never stop questioning the world you live in.”
-Tomas Moreno
August 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Imagine a world where you pick up a bouquet of Kenyan flowers alongside your morning latte once a week. This is the dream world for Peeush Mahajan, owner of Shalimar Farms, a farm that produces cut flowers, one of Kenya’s biggest exports.
Last week, we toured this magnificent farm, if you could call it that. This farm was much closer to a well oiled machine. While in the U.S. the costs and benefits of large factory farms are debated, in Kenya farms and factories like this one provide a very interesting model for development. Shalimar Farms is part of the East Africa Growers Association (EAG), a collection of farms that work together to achieve economies of scale that make it easier to market their goods.
At the flower farm we learned about barriers to trade for the flower producers. While the farm has been able to find a place for their flowers in some developed-country markers, it has struggled to find buyers in the U.S. The EAG works with an organization called COMPETE, which is funded through USAID and is affiliated with the East Africa Trade Hub. COMPETE and the trade hub help connect flower producers like Shalimar Farms with buyers in the developed world through trade shows and personal introductions.
We also had a chance to learn about a piece of U.S. legislation called the African Growth and Opportunity ACT (AGOA). AGOA works to provide African suppliers with a market in the United States by eliminating tariffs and quotas on Africa exports, thus allowing African exporters an equal playing field within the U.S. market. Unfortunately, some key goods that Africa produces are not covered under AGOA.
Sadly, Mr. Mahajan’s dream cannot come true so long as he lacks access to markets in the developed world for his products, and as such, he and his employees will see limited success without the opportunity to export their goods to the United States. This means that he will not be able to expand his amazing operation to more Kenyans, providing them with health care, food, housing, and education for their children.
-Tomas Moreno
July 30th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Sorry for not blogging for a day, our time in Kenya has been very hectic. But amongst all of this chaos of going from site to site there has been a lot of hope expressed by the stories of the people we have been able to talk to.
More than this, they have shared their innovative ways of approaching the problems they face (such as the astonishing MPESA program). But that is not what we looked at the past two days. We researched the local health of the Kisumu area, which boasts the country’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS with a whopping 14%, and how they work to stem this and a myriad of other issues. What I focused on was the economic issues facing those with infectious diseases in and around Kisumu.
The most inspiring story was at Kagua CBO (Community Based Organization). Here, people that have HIV/AIDS live together in a community, supporting each other as well as finding hope and strength in the fact that they aren’t alone. But, the most inspiring part of this was when we were able to go visit some of the families in their homes. Here, we met Phieria Opende Agola.
Phieria is 65 (at least, she could not remember her exact birth date), and lives with her grandson and granddaughter who both have HIV/AIDS. She takes care of them because her son and daughter-in-law died from HIV/AIDS almost 10 years ago. Since then, she has devoted her life to her grandchildren and soon moved next to her other son and daughter-in-law (who was 21 with four children; she had her first child at the age of 11). They care for seven children between the two of them, but mostly take care of them separately.
This means that she must make the two-hour journey to Lake Victoria to get water for her family. She usually takes a 21-L jug that none of us could carry for more than a few seconds standing still, much less walking up and down hills.
Maureen, the other daughter-in-law, had a dream of opening up a business so she could work her way out of poverty but would need 3000 KSH (just over US$39). And she cannot save the money because currently they live off of a paltry 500 KSH (US$6.) a month. Put in context, four of us spent 680 KSH that morning for seconds of our breakfast…
The thought of living off of that for a month, while caring for two children, is crippling even at my age. To think of doing that at 65 is unimaginable. But Phieria did say that she found hope in Kagua and her grandchildren both had big dreams of being an attorney and a teacher. And I find so much hope in their hope; the fact that they, despite massive economic barriers, even compared to people in similar situations have these dreams and plans is truly inspiring.
-Tomas Moreno
July 27th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Today was our first full day here in Kenya. As a start, we focused on education. As we all know, education is extremely important in creating a strong, sustainable economy and is tied of the Millennium Development Goals (universal primary education as well as gender parity). As such, this was a great introduction to Kenya for us, and especially for me.
We spent the first part of our morning at the Kitie Secondary School. Kitie means “a place that lagged behind,” which is true about this rural, mountainous area about two hours from Nairobi. In Kenya, students must apply to secondary school, and at Kitie, only about 64% of those who apply are accepted to attend. Kenya is revolutionary about its education system, having eliminated school fees for both primary and secondary schools (though students must still pay for their uniforms, boarding when necessary, and food).
But free secondary school has come at a cost for these institutions. Kitie had only 27 students seven years ago, and now has 280 students. Sadly, this growth has not been matched by the growth of the teaching staff and classrooms. Kitie only has 12 teachers, but the school pays for three of them instead of the government due to a freeze on teacher hiring to stem budget deficits and government spending.
Moreover, the government funds don’t go towards school expansion unless there is a large budget surplus, and it is rarely enough to aid a school significantly. As such, Kitie has mobilized its parents, mostly poor farmers (the principal stated that there have been no monetary gains from the farms in the area for four years due to droughts), to fundraise to expand the school.
This mobilization by the school is so inspiring. While talking to the principal and his staff, I really got the sense that he cared about his students (he kept saying things were for the students). When we spoke to some of the children, one of them wished to congratulate him on his successes in improving the school during his seven year tenure.
This experience set up our next stop, the Machakos teacher training center. Here, we learned how primary school teachers are trained. Teachers in training choose one of two tracks: science or the arts. This is what they will teach in school, and only this. As such, they ‘team teach’ classes. One example was a class of 70, and each teacher is expected to be alone when they teach! I was further saddened when I learned the teachers weren’t necessarily guaranteed a job upon graduation because of the freeze on new teacher hiring. Many may not get a teaching position for 10 years. This is further complicated by the fact that many of these teachers may find it difficult to get a job in their area because each area has a quota for teacher hiring in the first place, and if they are not from an area with room in their quota, they have a lot of politics to work through to be able to teach there.
We ended the day at a rhino and elephant orphanage. This was AMAZING! We even adopted 5 of them; my rhino is named Maxwell, and was born blind.
Thank you all for following our trip! If you have any questions, etc. please comment or post a Facebook update!
-Tomas Moreno
May 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Tomas Moreno, a rising junior at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a Campus Challenge superstar. Besides serving as Campus Outreach Ambassador (COA) for the Carolinas, Tomas successfully led his team to the Power 100, the Top 10, and finally to become the 2008-9 OCC champions.
At Wofford, Tomas is studying Sociology and Economics with a concentration in African and African American Affairs, and an additional minor in Government. He has traveled to Mexico with Rotary International several times, and worked with an orphanage in Romania in 2008. He’s active with ONE partner organization OXFAM, as well as a bunch of other campus organizations. Tomas has plans to join the Peace Corps upon his graduation, but more immediately, he will be an organizer for Bread for the World in San Francisco this summer.
Tomas joined ONE in 2006 when a friend, who had first heard about ONE in her house of faith, “banded” him with a white ONE wristband. As COA for the Carolinas, he has recruited new campus leaders in those states and successfully mentored them to become as engaged as he is.
This past school year, his tireless work mobilizing his campus was rewarded when Wofford finished in first place in OCC, becoming the 2008-9 Campus Challenge champs despite being a campus of less than 2,000 undergraduates.
Check out Tomas’ project for the Africa trip here.
Congrats to Tomas and the other Africa trip winners!
-Emily Stivers
TAGS: 2009 OCC Africa Trip, Africa Trip Tomas Moreno