October 19, 2006: Harambee

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, is known as the father of the Harambee. The idea is that people of the country, wananchi, should pull together and help one another whenever there is a problem. It can be as simple as passers by joining together to help push a car out of the mud or the wazee from a community calling for people to help contribute to a person in need. It seems that the idea is firmly rooted in Kenyan culture, especially in the rural areas.
Right now there is a student from a technical college in Kenya called Thika Technical Institute that is doing his “attachment” part of his diploma with MEP. His name is James Kimani. Kimani helps the technicians with any job like climbing the poles to change the lines during rationing or bringing diesel from the main storage tank to the generator fuel tanks. When there is nothing else going on he reads through his college notes and reviews topics from his previous classes.
Kimani is originally from the Lake Kenyatta Settlement Scheme and his father is good friends with the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of MEP. Kimani’s parents live about a 45 minute bike ride from Mpeketoni near a very small town called Kiongwe with his younger brother. Kimani also stays there when he is on break from classes and during his attachment.
Their primary source of income is farming on the ten-acre plot (a shamba) so coming up with Kimani’s school fees has not been easy. When he goes back to classes in January it will be his final year of school. In the final year you must pay extra for examination fees and for a final project. His dad decided to gather the wazee from the area and organize a harambee this year to help raise funds for his final year of school.
When Kimani mentioned the harambee, he said people either send their contribution through a close family friend or they attend the harambee themselves. Even though it meant ditching out on an afternoon of work at MEP, I decided I couldn’t pass up the chance to participate in the harambee.
Kimani and I met in town on the day of the harambee to collect a speaker system. I thought he was going to just grab a hand-held megaphone, but instead we picked up a giant bell shaped speaker. It looked like it was pulled straight off of an air raid siren from WWII. Lacking any other means, we loaded the speaker onto the back of my bike and the power supply/ amplifier onto Kimani’s bike.
Kiongwe is not on one of the major roads extending out from Mpeketoni. Instead we followed a convoluted network of field paths for about 45 minutes to get to his home. Their home consists of three separate mud wall structures with makuti roofs. The largest is the home of his parents and the smaller two were the homes for him and his brother. In Kikuyu tradition, once a boy turns 14 he becomes a young man and is kicked out of his father’s house. He has to build his own home but at least he gets to build it on the same compound. Kimani is 25 so his house is starting to get a bit run down with age.
When we arrived, his parents and friends had already pulled out all of their furniture into the compound area. Since it was raining they propped up three or four old UN relief tarps over the seating area. We hung the speaker from a nearby tree and plugged the power supply into car battery. The battery is the sole source of electricity for the family. Instead of buying a solar panel they just carry the battery to town on the back of a bike every few weeks to recharge it.
For entertainment Kimani brought out a radio/cassette player to broadcast out music for all the neighboring shambas. I challenge anyone to find a more beat up tape player than this one. The door for the cassette was long gone, a shoe lace was used to hold the front half of the cassette player to the back half, and the original speaker no longer worked so leads came out of the player to a second freely hanging speaker. We cranked up the volume and held the microphone for the public address system to the small speaker to enjoy some customary Kenyan music.
As the afternoon went on people from the community made their way to the compound. All of the females sat on benches near the parents’ house while males would make their way to the seating area under the tarps. As soon as a new guest would arrive he would come shake every persons hand and would be promptly served a dish of rice and potatoes.
Around 5 pm the compound was packed with people. The females came to join the males at the main seating area and the MC for the night began. I think he was speaking in Kikuyu so I really didn’t understand anything. But after a few wazee passed around the microphone, a bag was placed on a table in front of the MC and people would come to the front to put the contribution into the bag.
Kimani’s father walked up to the front first to put in his symbolic contribution. Then another after another came up right after him. As a person would come up the MC would announce the person’s name and the amount they were contributing. Some people would be contributing for many people that weren’t able to attend so the MC would read off a list of how much each person contributed. After each contribution the group would clap. The large contributions were a thousand or two shillings, usually from someone that was contributing from many people at once. Those who did not have money to contribute would bring items like a bag of groundnuts, a few kg’s of corn, or a live chicken or two.
When there were no more contributions, the MC handed over the mic to an auctioneer to auction off the non-monetary items. At the end all of the money that was raised was announced to the group. Kimani was able to raise around 20,000 KSh (US$290) from all of the contributions. The funds raised will meet about half of his total school fees for the next year.
The fundraising continued later into the night, but the main part of it was done by the time it became dark. Even though it was about a 40-minute bike ride each way Kimani offered to take me back to Mpeketoni. I thought I would be okay on my own if he just showed me the way to the main roads. But soon after we got underway I found that every time I went through a mud puddle the dynamo for my light would lose friction with the tire and the light would go dim. Luckily he was more than happy to escort me all the way back through the dark.
Soon after we reached a main road I heard Kimani yell back – “Don’t come this way! Don’t come this way!” But I was right behind him. A puddle that he thought was just a small one turned out to be a 20 foot long, two foot deep lake in the middle of the road. We pedaled as hard as we could to keep up momentum but about half way through the lake we could go no further. We had to bail off the bikes and walk the rest of the way through it to the road. He was worried that I would be upset about having to splash though the puddle. On the contrary I was having a great time – it was just like being back in the puddles at home! Unfortunately, these giant puddles are from the short rains - the long rains season starts in March. I may need a canoe by then!