Hey all-
Greetings from Kenya! I hope this message finds you all well. I just finished a ridiculous safari in the Maasi Mara Nature Preserve, and I’m now visiting one of Kiva’s partners in Central Kenya. Sorry its been a while since I’ve written – I’ve been super busy with WITEP, the organization I’m volunteering with, and have been doing some awesome things on the weekends.
First of all, I’m still in Africa – so I never made it to Brazil. Bummer. I was really looking forward to the beautiful Brazilians and beautiful beaches, um, I mean the rewarding volunteering I would have been able to do there. But, there was way too much work left in Uganda for me to leave, and this is a way higher priority for Kiva, so I was happy to stay - I’ll be here till the end of May, when I head straight to SF for Katie Taylor’s wedding in Napa, then back to Chicago by early June. Plus, there was a ton I didn’t have a chance to do by the time that I would have had to leave, so now I can see the sights with a bit more time, instead of trying to squeeze in everything in a very shelbyesque manner.
So, we’ve made a lot of progress at WITEP since I wrote last. My role there transitioned from being mainly in the field to focusing more on operations and working mostly from the office. This is definitely where I needed to be, but I for sure miss being in the field every day meeting clients, hearing how microfinance has impacted their lives, and enjoying the beautiful African sunshine. My recent work at WITEP has been helping to give them a strategy that will make them self-sustaining, which will allow them to serve poor people for many years to come. I’ve also been really focusing on helping them improve their repayment rates, and collect the money that they owe to Kiva lenders.
People have been telling me they want to loan to someone that I know, but WITEP is not posting any more loans on the Kiva site (www.kiva.org) until they improve their repayments a bit. I can tell you with certainty, however, that anyone on the Kiva site from East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania) will benefit greatly from your loan. The poverty here still blows my mind, but these loans really do make a huge difference.
Its also been a busy couple of weeks for Kiva. We were featured in a great article that showed up on the front page of the New York Times website, and was subsequently the 3rd most emailed article of the day. This was probably Kiva’s biggest press exposure to date, and we were flooded with visitors afterwards. The day after the article our loan volume was 10X normal, and we crossed the $4M mark for total loans. To put that in perspective, it took Kiva 10 months to raise our first million, and we raised this last million in under 2 months!
So aside from WITEP and Kiva, I’ve also been keeping myself quite busy. The highlight so far was the safari I went on last weekend in Kenya. Unbelievable. I was visiting a friend in Kenya, and had nothing to do for the weekend. Since I coulnd’t miss work, I was only at the reserve for a little over 24 hours, but it was totally worth it. He let me borrow his car (a 1990-something Mitsubishi sedan), and we made the 5 hr trip the Maasi Mara Nature Preserve. I was only planning on using the car to get to the park and paying for professional tours ($70 bucks a pop for 2 hrs!), but when we got there we found out that since it hadn’t been raining (the roads weren’t muddy) we’d be fine in the Mitsubishi – the roads leading to the part were actually worse than the roads in the park. Everyone else is in these intense Land Rovers, and we plug along in our tiny sedan, carefully navigating the giant holes in road and the mini rivers. I think people were staring at us as much as they were at the wildlife. And the wildlife was AMAZING. What was so remarkable was the sheer volume of animals. We saw literally thousands of animals in their natural habitat. We saw hundreds of Zebras, gazelles, and impalas, about 50 elephants (including a few babies), 10 lions (4 males, 5 females, and 1 cub), 2 giraffes, tons of hippos, 6 cheetah, and tons of monkeys. They are really used to humans, and come right up to you, The lions are super lazy during the day, and just want a place to lay in the shade. One time, we drove up to a lion, and it walked right in front of our car and laid down in our shade! My faves were the monkeys, because they let me sit in the middle of a group of them, and they would play all around me. One of the babies was super curious what I was, and kept trying to get away from its mom to check me out. Seeing the male lions was also incredible, and watching a huge herd of Elephants was probably my third favorite thing. We camped just outside the park in an area that was heavily populated by monkeys and baboons. I had no idea how smart and crafty the are, but during the day the monkeys unzipped a campers tent, got into her stuff, opened her pill box and took her blood pressure medicine! Also, when we were stopped, monkeys climbed into an open jeep and stole box lunches. In July there is a massive wildebeest and zebra migration (1.3 million animals!!!) when they move from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasi Mara in Kenya in search of food. Apparently you can hardly even see the bushes there’s so many animals, and tons of lions and cheetah come out to feed on the abundance of animals. Coming back for this has definitely been added to the life ‘to do’ list, and you all should add it to yours too!
Another incredible experience was climbing Mt. Elgon, Uganda’s tallest mountain at about 14,300 ft, with a buddy named Patrick that I met in Mbale (fellow microfinance volunteer, just graduated from Notre Dame and doing everything he can to avoid getting a job). It was a 3 day hike, with almost a 10,000 ft vertical climb. While summiting the peak was clearly beautiful, the most remarkable part of the hike was the super steep parts through the jungle at the beginning and the end. We were deep in the jungle, and since the terrain was so steep, the surroundings would rapidly change with the altitude. Another crazy thing was that we were actually in the clouds while we were hiking up through the jungle. With the exception of taste, all of my senses were completely overwhelmed. Visually, the scenery was constantly changing – from deep jungle, to bamboo forest, to huge moss covered trees. We also came across a point where we were absolutely surrounded by 2 types of monkeys. You could feel the moisture of the clouds stick to your skin, vines would randomly rub over your body, and you’d get bit by a mysterious insect from time to time. The sounds were incredible – birds, insects, monkeys, frogs, sounds that you really didn’t want to know what they were – and they were incredibly loud. You’d only quit hearing one sound when it was replaced by another sound – they’d kinda fade into eachother as you walked. The most remarkable thing, though, was the smells. Its hard for me to put my finger on exactly what the smells were, but like the sounds, you could always smell something, and you only quit smelling it when it was replaced by something else. And one of these senses was always changing. It almost felt as though I was imaging my surroundings, or it was a dream, and my mind was playing tricks on me by changing my surrounding so quickly. And, since we were in the clouds, you couldn’t see more than 100 meters in any direction, and the mistiness made it seem even more eerie. Overall, an incredible experience. Next up within the month: Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania – the roof of Africa at 19,400 ft.
Uganda is home to Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, which the source of the Nile and is about 2 hrs from Mbale. The start of the huge river provides some of the most ridiculous white water rafting on the planet – 5 sets of class 5 rapids, which are the toughest you can possibly raft. Also, it’s the contours of the river bed which cause the rapids, while most class 5 rapids are formed by huge rocks, which makes the rafting really unsafe. Making it through the entire course without flippling your raft several times is completely impossible. The crazy thing was when your raft gets flipped at the beginning of a rapid, you just float down the rapid with nothing but a life jacket and a helmet. There were definitely times when I was underwater for at least 20 seconds, but I’d always make it back to the surface eventually. When I have a few free weekends I think I’m going to go back and learn to Kayak. Obviously I won’t venture to the class 5s, but it should still be a great way to spend some time.
The last really cool thing I did was I spent a weekend in bush at my roommate’s village. It was great to have a chance to experience how people live in super rural areas. As a guest, they want you to just sit and relax, but I did my best to pitch in with the work – cooking over a fire, grinding gound nuts (peanuts, essentially), and gathering water - although, I’m pretty damn bad at balancing things on my head (it is not a stereotype that Africans carry tons of stuff on their heads – they really do carry everything, from water, to bowls of bananas, to 10 foot long pieces of sugar cane, on their heads). I did not lend a hand, however, when they slaughtered a goat for a huge feast. It was pretty gruesome, but mighty tasty! We also did some great hiking, and went hunting, which consisted of carrying big sticks and looking for animals – not surprisingly we came up empty. Apparently, if we saw an antelope, we would try to surround it, and sneak up on it with our big sticks. I wasn’t really sure how we could possibly catch an antelope, but my roommates were pretty adamant that it works. Also, the villages are very communal – neighbors always stop in, just to pass the time or to help with chores or cooking. A few of them brought their babies (I’ve already discussed how cute African babies are). I found out the hard way that most babies don’t wear diapers when a cute baby boy peed all over me! I didn’t hold any more babies after that. We slept in grass huts, which were surprisingly warm, and waterproof (it rained really hard).
I hope you’re all doing well in the states. Shoot me back a few lines if you have a minute – would love to hear whats new. I don’t get much news down here, so keep me posted on whats goin on up there. I’ll definitely write again sooner than I did last time so I don’t barrage you with such a long email.
Best-
Shelby
