6 a.m. and 6 p.m. in Nairobi: Obama’s and John’s Victories

Dateline Nairobi: 6 a.m. Wednesday 5th November 2008 found me awake, hearing Obama’s victory speech in tears of joy. 6 p.m. that same day found me again in tears in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum of a million inhabitants, hearing John’s story of how he, a 23 year old ‘general’ commanded 200 youths with pangas (machetes) to destroy Toi market after the December 2007 Kenyan elections. The tears came, not about the destruction, but from John’s heart rending account of how he and the youths worked with Jami Bora Trust to rebuild the market, create a new future on ‘the other side’ of violence. Two victories by two sons of Kenya, both descendants of the Luo tribe from the shores of Lake Victoria, both given opportunities, both being more than a tribe or a race, both making a difference to the world.

You might ask how John’s victory could be compared with Obama’s. As I videoed his testimony I heard how John and his gang razed Toi Market, a site for 1,700 traders of foodstuffs, household goods and small workshops to serve Kibera’s million. After wrecking the place and declaring it a ‘no go’ area for others than Luos and Nubians (people from Sudan settled in Kibara by the British before Kenyan independence), they met with Andrew, the manager of Jami Bora Trust, agreed to give up their battleground, to rebuild their market, to hand in their pangas for tools to make iron storage boxes and jikos, charcoal stoves. How did Andrew, a medic and resident of Kibera, win their confidence when John and his gang had scared off armed police and the District Commissioner? Andrew with only himself and his organisation, the Jami Bora Trust?

How has Jami Bora succeeded in some of the worst conditions in urban Africa? How have former beggars, thieves and hooligans become microfinance members, loan officers, business coaches, market rebuilders, a phoenix rising from the ashes? ‘Jami Bora’ means ‘Good Families’ in Kiswahili and its microfinance credit system, housing, training and health insurance serves 200,000 in Kenya, aiming to reach half a million by the end of 2010. How has it been so successful since Ingrid Munroe and the ‘Mamas’, the beggars from Kibera founded it in 1999? Ingrid, a Swedish former UN worker past retirement age and married to a Canadian, first came to Kenya in 1985 to organise the UN Year of Shelter and stayed. At retirement time, the ‘Mamas’ of Kibera told her, ‘Mama, you can’t leave us. Let’s work together.’

So they have created a miracle when other projects with huge donor funds have failed to make a dent in Kibera’s poverty. Their housing project and new town, 40 kilometers from Kibera, due to be populated by 2,000 former beggar families in January 2009, is being built at 10% of the cost of the nearby UN Habitat programme. Owners of the houses will pay 3000 Kenyan Shillings per month, about $50, gradually increasing monthly payments over 20 years to be full owners. Their town will have a market, a wetlands sewerage system of a series of ponds ending with waste water clean enough for the gardens by each house, workshops for trained people, its own school. Jami Bora won a three year court battle with locals, not wanting former beggars as neighbours. Losers of the court cases will be winners, the customers for Jami Bora’s thriving businesses. Two other projects are already underway for housing, cost efficient because the future owners make as many of the housing components themselves, rows upon rows of concrete blocks, stockpiling until it’s time to build.

Jami Bora has created this miracle through local ownership, local initiatives and local people. Ingrid has put the success of her street-wise system down to her education from her three adopted sons, three former street children, and then all of the former beggars as members and staff knowing by instinct what to do.

We didn’t have to think about how to rebuild Toi Market, we knew we had to include the people who burnt it down, include them as part of the process to create something to benefit everyone. Jami Bora’s strength is the different ethnic groups in our management teams. That’s why we never broke down on tribal grounds in the crisis. My strength is because I don’t belong to any tribe.

Ingrid and her husband, no ordinary ex-patriates in Kenya, have five children, four adopted and one ‘home grown’. The three youngest were street children from Kibera, brothers subjected to cruelties beyond belief. The middle one was in jail for four years from the age of four to eight, the elder maimed from being run over by a truck, the last one had no language before coming to the Munroes. They are now in their 20s, two with their own families in Kenya, the third studying in Sweden.

I learned beggar mentality from the three boys who spoke only Sheng, a slang of English and Kiswahili, when they came to us. As they learned English and Kiswahili, we could follow what happened to them. The trust between the beggars and me was based on the boys and the street mothers who showed solidarity with the street children, even though they weren’t their own. The one in prison from the age of four to eight bottled everything up for a year and a half, then had nightmares for six months. My husband and I took turns with him.

This quiet woman also told of how her eldest adopted son, had to leave first the International, then the British school in Nairobi, socially shunned by ‘do gooder’ ex-pat families once they found out he was an ex-street child, finally finding a home in the Swedish school, the first time the three felt they were not different.

Ingrid’s sons educated her instincts, guiding her to draw her microfinance credit programme members from the beggars, starting with a loan for as little as $5. This $5 for a bag of charcoal enabled a beggar over time to become today a charcoal wholesaler. I met members in Jami Bora’s busy Kibera branch by the rebuilt Toi Market making savings deposits, a requirement for qualifying for a loan. Others were making out loan applications accompanied by a member of their five-person group that guarantees loan pay-back. A loan officer and former beggar himself explained:

This is no easy credit system here. If they want to borrow Kenyan Shillings 10,000, they first have to save 5,000 and belong to a group. We visit their businesses. They have a plan. They bring a guarantor.

Jami Bora cuts its costs of doing small loans by using the latest technology, Point of Sale machines that print out receipts immediately to savers and borrowers. In the beginning they solved problems of payment defaults with a study that revealed slow payments were often due to costs of medical emergencies. With Jami Bora’s ‘can do’ attitude they invented a low-cost, self-sustaining health insurance scheme, costing less than $25 per year for a member and four children under the age of 18.

We have made it up as we went along, using street people, former beggars. We have found our best social workers from those who took the longest to develop, the biggest back sliders, the ones with the most excuses. They wind up being the best coaches.

This brings us full circle to John’s victory in parallel to Obama’s, rebuilding Toi Market. John and Bernard, his deputy, told me how they transformed from hard bitten thugs to micro entrepreneurs, coming to the ‘other side’ after flattening the market. Bernard said, ‘We carried pangas. If John told me to cut you, I’d do it without thinking. I’d just do it.’ John added, ‘You can’t imagine the force of 200 youths, beating away armed police and the District Commissioner.’ When asked what had turned things around both John and Bernard pointed to Andrew, Jami Bora’s branch manager:

He’s the one. He talked to us, convinced us this market was for everyone, Luos, Nubians, Kikuyus, we all need to make a living. They started by giving us maize for a day’s work, then 500 shillings [$6] a day, we built 500 stalls in three weeks, people got back to work. We couldn’t believe they weren’t punishing us, they gave us a chance. They gave us an emergency loan, then training. We now make metal boxes and charcoal stoves. We had been idlers, along with the prostitutes and other lay abouts, we had nothing at stake.

They ushered me to their workshops, showed me their products: brightly painted blue metal boxes for storing clothes, water tight for the flimsy Kibera shacks and jikos, charcoal-burning stoves. They hammered metal for the video, proud of the noise of making rather than destroying, opened the doors to their lock-up storage, counting the shiny metal boxes ready for painting, the jikos lined up for the next step of production. Andrew, other Jami Bora staff, John, Bernard and others took me to the seventh story of the building surrounded by the Toi Market, pointing to the new roofs of the 1,900 stalls built: 1700 to replace the burnt ones, 200 for John’s youths.

People come from other areas at the weekends to buy fresh cabbages, other things here, not just Kibera people. They know they can get fresh. You should see the rich cars.

By then it was dusk, seven p.m., kerosene and electric lights lit, smoke rising from the shanties as we looked over the shiny new roofs of the Toi Market stalls, took photos. They pointed out vehicles in the scrap yard below: ‘You throw these away in your country. Here we try to make them run again.’ Earlier they had posed in front of their blue homemade boxes, holding up a photo of Obama and my bag that says, ‘What are you grateful for?’ John looked over the shiny roofs from the seventh floor vantage point, looked at Andrew and said, ‘It’s better than before.’