Africa Trip (May 2023)
Stop #1 Malawi:
Tuesday May 16th to Friday May 19th
Objective: Choose 5 villages for micro power systems.
After our 9/22 visit to Malawi we agreed that PurposeBOX would choose 5 rural villages to provide a Micro Power System (3KVA solar/battery/inverter). Using the following selection criteria:
A village that would not receive public electric service within the next 20 years.
Employ local labor to build a small room to hold the equipment
Include a small grain mill to process subsistence crops grown in the village.
Locate this system next to a school and provide a light for after hours studying.
Set up a local representative to service and monitor these micro power systems.
The first day and a half we visited: 3 community centers, 2 schools and a compound with a medical clinic, grain mill, youth center, sports center and school. Each of these were supported by US Christian individuals or churches. All within a 30 mile radius of Lilongwe, we were able to evaluate the need and impact of each. Only one of these locations had a plan to become self-sustaining. And only one location had electrical service.
As these visits unfolded it seemed the criteria for providing a Micro Power System was misguided. For each of these locations a simple light/battery/solar panel in classrooms or public spaces would serve the needs well at a fraction of the cost. This is why site visits are so important and why we keep an open mind. (See #1 in Observations and Conclusions at the end)
For our last full day in Malawi we visited Paddy’s work in Nkhotakota along the east side of Lake Malawi. It is a 4 hour drive from Lilongwe to the property and the roads are in poor condition. Paddy Brady has served this area and the prisons in Malawi for 15 years! As a senior chief he had a meeting scheduled with the other tribal chiefs to discuss details for a group of 30 Doctors coming in September for a week of walk-in medical care in that area. Jason Miller organizes this annual event with a group of medical doctors from the US.
Since our last visit 6 months ago the medical clinic is now up and running and the both school sites were packed with kids. And the additional accommodations and updating that has been completed at the lake front site. We had a wonderful lunch with staff and then headed back to our lodging in Lilongwe. As a rule in most of rural Africa day light driving is the primary rule for safety.
Kids gathering at the community center for a free lunch.
Stop #2 Namibia:
Friday May 19th to Monday May 22nd
Reason: Consult on the plight of Bushmen in the Naye-Naye Concession Area
During Jason’s annual visit to the Dallas Safari Show last January we were invited to Namibia. Mr Japsie Blaauw of Dzombo Hunting Safaris https://www.dzombo.com/ who was recently awarded a large hunting conservancy in N/E Namibia. The conservancy program has a holistic approach; while wildlife management (hunting) is a key element, the people and culture of the land are also. It was a 6 hr drive from Windhoek, the countries capital to the village of Tsumkwe in Namibia, about 20 miles east of Botswana. Before arriving at our lodging we visited a site where Jaspsie is building a school.
We stayed at the Tsumkwe Country Lodge. https://www.tsumkwelodge.com/ A wonderful accommodation that included a nightly viewing of wild elephants at the water hole adjacent to the property. Unlike much of Africa the few fences you see in the Naye-Naye Concession are about keeping animals out of human spaces, rather than confining them to a game preserve. The animals are free to roam!
The people we came for are the Bushman. A small people group numbering about 11000 in this area. These are the people who the Coke bottle dropped on in the 1980’s movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. Their language incorporates a distinct clicking noise. Simple hunters and gathers, traditionally they have no livestock or crops they grow. Still today they live in dirt floor tents and eat what they can find or kill in the wild. Among the most primitive of Africa they face challenges in the lands they have roamed for centuries struggling to adapt to changes around them. With our hosts we spent hours discussing how best to serve these people. Preserve their culture and way of life? Give them land rights? Advocate for them? See my thought on this in #2 Observations and Conclusions below. All good stuff and why these trips are meaningful!
Bushman couple shell necklaces in front of a their tent/hut.
An added bonus was a visit from Michael Henderson of Heart of Africa. http://www.heartofafrica.org. His organization delivered and donated a Smartbox
https://www.heartofafrica.org/ministries/smartbox/ containing 20 Chromebooks and loaded with full K-12 curriculum, plus a library to be used in the new school!
Smartbox donated by Heart of Africa.
Stop #3 Kenya:
Monday May 22nd to Saturday May 27th
Reason: Earlier this year, Professor Charles Mully, the leader and founder of Mully Children’s Family (MCF) invited us to help them reduce energy costs and improve reliability.
Our objective here is to assist MCF in securing the best solution. Choice of a contractor / service provider is simply their decision.
MCF has 11 locations across Kenya where they show the love of God to people in need. For 30 years they have rescued kids and single mothers who were living a desperate existence and welcomed in to the world’s largest family https://www.mullychildrensfamily.org/
Daddy Mully and Moma Ester have become the second parents to over 30,000 kids. The beneficiaries of their oversized home have stories! For example a now professional chef was nearly killed as a child. Upon his mother’s death a relative attempted to drown him in a toilet! Still another promising music student was molested by her grandfather as an adolescent after her mother passed away. Simply MCF saves lives.
Earlier this year I reached out to Tool-Kit https://www.toolkitiskills.com requesting assistance in meeting local solar installation contractors. In Kenya there is a shortage of skilled workers but no shortage of people who could be trained. Toolkit exists to provide training and place their students in jobs. Their area of focus/training includes welding, solar and agriculture. They are primarily funded through grants and scholarships by the companies that hire their students and other support groups. A wonderful organization and very helpful for us as we sought out reliable potential contractors.
Tool Kit provided introductions to 3 companies that I was able to connect with prior to leaving for Africa.
We arrived Nairobi on 5/22, and caught up with Paul Dickison at the Fairview Hotel and then Peter Fry of End Poverty / Kua Ventures https://kuaventures.org/ joined us for dinner. Paul has a strong interest in missions work and he and I led a Faith Driven Entrepreneur group earlier this year.
AM on the 23rd, we were picked up by MCF and headed to Yatta/Ndalani, the organizations 2 largest properties, about 2hrs north & east of Nairobi.
Ron Barnes (in blue) gives us a lesson in raising fish.
A little side trip: On the way to MCF we visited Ron Barnes of 93C Degrees https://www.93cdegrees.com/ at a new Aquaculture operation located in Ruiru.
This is a small site in a developing area north of Nairobi, maybe only a 75 x 100 ft lot. Ron has set up a Tilapia fish farm and produce growing system. The fish are raised in tanks and the plants are nourished by the waste water circulated from the fish tanks. The facility will be run by a local pastor who will be feeding and serving in that area. The production is about 350 pan sized fish per month and they have the space to double production.
Ron’s church in Klamath Falls, OR funded the project Ron gives an impassioned tour and was heard to say “it’s as simple as biology”. At which point he lost us! They are in the process of building a similar facility along the Kenyan coast in Malindi. Many of the components will be pre-assembled in Klamath Falls and shipped to Kenya for an August install.
From there we headed onto MCF Yatta, where the MCF property is the largest at about 800 acres. The facilities include a 350 student college, a technical training program, dormitories, two 40,000 broiler chicken buildings, four reservoirs, a fish farm, business office and about 400 acres of field crops and green houses. All this is shared with a family/clan of Baboons! We toured facilities and were even able to check out the hospital construction that was in full swing with the first phase already at the 4th floor!
Middle wing of the hospital under construction.
After that we took the 30 minute drive on to Ndalani (a 400 acre site). As beautiful as ever, the peaceful environment and welcoming staff provided a wonderful dinner and visited with Professor/Doctor Charles Mully. He remains Charles, as he always has been, a committed, hardworking faith focused father to many. He’s a rock, unchanged since my 1st visit in 2017.
The next day, 5/24, Wednesday, we toured Ndalani and spent some focused time talking with Charles talking about solar and his vision for MCF. In the evening we were blessed by the MCF Choir. About 75 High School Seniors who sang 7 songs, some in English and some in Swahili, all acapella.
On Thursday we dedicated the entire morning to the solar project. We visited pump and generator locations, reviewed energy expenses and wrapped up our visit reviewing possible concepts with Charles and his staff. It was productive to understand some of the details of MCF energy consumption. After lunch we headed back to the Fairview in Nairobi, about a 2-3 hour trip.
Jane and Raziq of Tool Kit met us for dinner at the hotel and it gave Paul and Paddy a chance to learn about Tool-Kit and why they were joining us for the meetings the following day.
Friday, May 26, we met with the 3 interested solar contractors. In addition to the individual contractors; were Isaac Mulli and Grace Mulli Mutua from MCF, Jane Muigai Kamphuis and Raziq Swaleh from ToolKit & Skills and then myself, Jason Miller, Paul Dickison and Paddy Brady.
Members of the Mully family, Took Kit, and representative of Davis & Shift
For all 3 meetings we provided an overview of what was needed in a proposal and an introduction to MCF. The fun part was hearing each company represented share their history and work experience. All three companies had solid, positive, compelling presentations and so the decision will most likely come down to price, quality of the proposal and the feeling of who you can work best with! Since our return to the US I have seen multiple emails regarding the scheduling of sites visits to MCF. I’m looking forward to coming back next year and seeing a system up and running!
With those meetings done we concluded our trip with a “just us” dinner and caught our flights home the next day. Happy but tired.
Take A Ways
for PurposeBOX:
“An African solution for an African problem”.
While I’ll guess this is not a new expression, I heard it from my friend Isaac Mulli for the first time. In many ways I found this impactful. While the core of PurposeBOX is “improving the lives of rural people groups in developing countries”, I realized that ultimately it has to be an Africa solution, not a PurposeBOX solution. The founding of PurposeBOX was intended to create and build container enclosed solutions to ship to Africa. So the paradigm shifts again! We are at best consults on ways to provide a pathway for a better life for the people we seek to help. And even that is us up for revision!Preserving culture while improving lives.
I appreciate the past. A walk through Williamsburg, VA reminds those of us in the US of the history, culture and heritage of our country. As Africa develops, the rich history and culture does not need to be lost, just carried along in the progress. This is where I think we kind of ended up on the discussion of how best to help the Bushman. It will be a delicate journey.Yielding western norms.
The word ‘yes’ is not particularly simple in Africa. It could mean, I’ll do it or I am in agreement, but often it just means I heard what you said. In Africa the spectrum would be, at the minimum ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ all the way to simply yes (in westerns terms). As westerners we have no right to let these things annoy us.The Africa Man’s condition.
After 4 visits to Africa, I have not been in a place in rural Africa where I saw men in a generally positive light. This was my observation from the Sept 2022 trip and carried though this trip. I’m still committed to seek initiatives that include and lift up men. While women and children are more vulnerable, if men step up and participate in a healthy way much of the risk to women and children is mitigated.Much has been written about the waste, damage and pit falls of foreign aid.
Additionally the resulting ground level culture conflict that aid produces is palatable, ‘Their supporter gives them a brand new truck!’ Our last night in Nairobi at an outdoor restaurant I overhead a table near us discuss Micro Finance, the conversation was as expected and has been repeated hundreds and even thousands of times across Africa. Simply a desire to help meets a need. The challenge is how to see that relationship launch independence instead of dependence.Money!!
In many parts of Africa, westerners are seen as rich (true) and capable of dropping large sums of cash simply by hearing about or seeing a heart breaking need. There are stories of child support programs that are total shams, rally up 20 village kids and put them on display as orphans for visiting westerners. Just last week someone who was introduced to me requesting that I help them with business advice in Zambia culminated in a 6 figure request for money after the 3rd correspondence. The act of generosity seems to draw more ‘worthy’ causes.Please don’t take #5 & 6 above as negative, these are simply part of the challenges that face us as we seek to serve and see good things happen. We have to be ‘wise as serpents’ and do the hard work of making sure our support bears fruit and begins the process of building independence.
Showing the Love of God.
Quoting Mother Teresa: ‘We are but a small pencil in God’s hand writing a love letter to the world”. It’s easy to land in these places and believe that the context we bring, the relative success of our lives and the resources we possess can help entire people groups for the better. And in those thoughts we are wrong. The saint of Calcutta had it right, she shows up as a servant.
