215: Survival in African Context

Here are three tales of survival – techno-logical, human and animal. The first is frustrating, the second is complex, and the third one will make you smile.

I. Survival in the age of Technology: Please forgive my lack of communication over the last few weeks. In late June my laptop crashed in Kenya, along with all the data I needed for that trip. Awful as that was, I wasn’t too worried about losing all my other data because I had dutifully backed up most of my hard-drive on the so-called “Master Server” at work. Unfortunately, just as I returned to Namibia my very-pregnant colleague placed the first draft of a manual we had been writing onto this same “Master Server” --- and the day afterwards a huge power-outage caused that computer system to crash, as well.

Now what are the odds of THAT happening? (As luck would have it, Bernd was out-of-town that week at a Great Teachers’ workshop.) The overall stress was so great that my colleague went into premature labor, though fortunately her doctors could stabilize her condition. (She’s now on total bed-rest.) Needless to say, we’ve been in “recovery mode” ever since -- but slowly things are falling back into place, first draft included.

II. Survival over adversity in Kenya: Last month (for the Stephen Lewis Foundation) I discovered a most amazing project in Kenya’s rural southwest-province. It is an all-volunteer women’s group that began in 1990 when several grannies realized that they had lost opportunities in their lifetime because they never learned to read – and they decided to ensure that their daughters and granddaughters would not have to suffer a similar fate. As a result, they banded together to raise money to send their girl-children to school. To begin, they established a “food bank,” whereby they pool their meager earnings to buy bags of grain immediately after the harvest when they are cheap – and then store them in the “bank” (a secure, dry building) for sale later in the year when the prices go up. They share a portion of the food with the poorest households in the community, and over the years they have further invested their profits to buy a hand-operated sunflower press (to produce oil), bee-hives (to produce honey), a chip-maker (to cut potatoes into strips for French-Fries), and a nut-grinder (to make and sell peanut butter). Now, eighteen years later, this community has educated so many girls that whenever the Ministry of Education seeks to recruit new teachers, they always come to this village first. Additional spin-offs over the years have included two local “self-help savings clubs,” a home-based-care project, and an after-school club for orphans and other vulnerable children. These women absolutely blew me away!

During this same trip to Kenya, I also spent time in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest and most notorious slum. Here nearly 2 million people live crammed together in tiny tin shacks amidst open sewage, rotting carcasses and overpowering filth. The first project I visited trains former Commercial Sex Workers in Home-Based Care and HIV-prevention, and provides micro-enterprise loans for HIV-positive women who want to run (or improve) their own small-scale business. I’m amazed by the degree to which this project instills hope, despite the desperate surroundings.

The first time I assessed this project was with Elsita in 2004 and we met a woman named Joyce – bedridden, thin, and seemingly with just a few days to live. Even back then, however, Joyce whispered to us that she still had dreams: she wanted to open a small shop and sell exotic dress-material, and possibly go back to school for a course in fashion design. Soon after we left Joyce, I heard that she began taking ARVs (the anti-retroviral medications to treat HIV/AIDS), and when I visited the project again in 2006 I saw that Joyce had improved greatly. She was still thin and weak, to be sure, but able to care for herself and participate in various community activities. Now two more years have passed, and once again I saw Joyce. We hugged each other warmly. Wow! Joyce looks great, and she told me about the training she recently received in preparation for a small loan she would get later that week, with which to buy cloth to sell. “It isn’t much,” she said, “but it is a start.” The rules of the program are clear: One loan per person. Joyce would have to pay this loan back over six months, and then she could get a second, larger loan to grow her business even more.

Ten days later, I returned to Kibera once more to visit another organization’s project. They had also started to give out micro-enterprise loans for economic empowerment and wanted me to meet one of their clients. So once again, we walk through the narrow, sewage-filled alleyways of Kibera, past market stalls and one-room hovels. Eventually we entered one small passageway, and then another, and finally we stepped down a few steps. Upon entering the one room shack where the client lived, my jaw dropped. Here was Joyce, once again – now a client from this second project -- obviously breaking the rules and benefiting from at least two different organizations simultaneously.

Out of nearly two million people in Kibera, what are the chances that a visitor like me from the outside would have discovered her deception? I asked Joyce some questions and eventually she explained: “One loan is not enough,” she said, “not for the dreams I have waited so long to fulfil.”

At first I felt angry: with all the needy people in this community, why should one person benefit twice and others not at all? And then I thought to myself: Who am I to judge Joyce under such circumstances? Mightn’t I be doing the same? In this dog-eat-dog world you have to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Perhaps this is how survival works: Joyce is certainly not the first to invent this kind of manipulation, nor will she be the last…

III. Survival in our Back Yard:

Southern Africa boasts three species of dassies or hyraxes: two live in rocky areas (such as the back yard of our house) and one in trees. Dassies are sometimes called rock rabbits because of their size, but they are not even distantly related to rabbits and can easily be distinguished from them by their short, rounded ears. In fact, their closest relatives are the elephants (!!!), but obviously this relationship is very distant. A territorial male controls a colony of 3-17 females and their young, but males without territories are solitary. Gestation lasts 230 days, which is very long for an animal this size. Dassies eat a wide variety of vegetation, even consuming plants that are poisonous to domestic stock.


Until this year, we mostly had just a solitary male living in our back yard, but now we have acquired a large harem. Their piped squeaks can be heard all day long. This drives our dogs crazy, but dassies can hide where dogs can’t reach, so they have gradually learned to co-exist. On the other hand, the plants on our veranda have suffered immensely. In the dry season (like now) the little dassies gravitate to anything green and have discovered the treasure-trove of our carefully tended succulents. One by one, our plants are being stripped of their leaves – but these animals are so cute, we let them have their fill. The photos below show how “survival of the fittest” truly works. And if we can’t have elephants in our back yard, their long-lost cousins will have to do!

Kind regards, Lucy

P.S. Speaking of survival, we’re proud to tell you that this Friday (July 18) Sergio graduates Boot Camp to become a full-fledged Marine! He wrote that the cards and

letters he received from well-wishers really helped him get through the rough-spots. (Thanks so much!) His training will continue over the next few months. We still have a little breathing time before he gets shipped overseas…