A Baby Named Boma

A celebration of prosperity and dignity. The orange shukas are a sign of the women's membership in a BOMA business.

When we arrive back at Judy’s house, a large group of women are waiting for us. They’re beautifully adorned in their jewelry and headdresses, and all of the women are wearing bright orange shukas.

Omar puts a bottle of water in my hand as our entire group heads out to a local meeting hall. As we walk we see a troubling sight: “Muslim Village,” a sign proclaims.

“We have always lived together in this village, Christian, Muslim and traditional African, but now we have this man, who wants to be our next MP, who says the Muslims should live separately from the rest of the village,” someone explains to me. “People are very upset and we know that we must fight this.”

What proceeds is a celebration of singing and dancing in which numerous testimonials and speeches are given.

“We want to say kalath (thank you), Mama Rungu, to you and to Kura for what you have brought us.”

The women have composed a new song and I catch the word “Kura” and “Mama Rungu” in the lyrics. Both Kura and I are given beautifully decorated rungus (warrior clubs) and I hold my rungu high above my head as we dance and sing. When we go outside, some of the women pose under a tree and I take their picture. It is only then that I realize what the bright orange shukas mean. It is a sign of membership — a new identity for the women in BOMA businesses who are no longer the village beggars who gather firewood and water. They are business owners and traders. They are proud of their accomplishments and the orange shuka is a sign of their dignity and prosperity.

“Now we are someone, Mama Rungu.”

We make our way slowly back to Judy’s house, where Omar is packing up the vehicle. Along the way we visit one last BOMA business. There are only two women inside the hut kiosk and they have a diverse set of goods to sell — powdered juice mixes, livestock drugs, shoes, clothes, tobacco, razor blades, lollipops and chewing gum.

Each BOMA business is comprised of three people, so I ask the two women: “Where is your third business partner?”

“She had a baby last night, Mama Rungu. She is so sorry to miss meeting you.”

“That’s OK, I will meet her next time,” I tell the women, “and her baby, of course!”

“This is a very special baby, Mama Rungu.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“This baby came on the day you arrived in our village. We all talked about what we would name this baby and then we decided. We named this baby Boma. It is a good name.”

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The Famine Next Time

A recent opinion article by Samuel Loewenberg in The New York Times (November 26, 2011) correctly observes that the current hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, which has afflicted some 13 million people, was predicted for months.

“The drought has been mounting for a year, but it wasn’t until the crisis peaked over the summer that the news media and most international donors took notice,” he writes. “It’s a familiar cycle: first come the news media pictures of emaciated infants, followed by conferences on how to do better next time, visits from top-level government officials and large financial commitments from international organizations and even donors like China and the Ikea Foundation.”

“This is good news; the assistance is badly needed. Yet the mismatch in timing raises a question that bedevils aid agencies. Unlike earthquakes or hurricanes, droughts and food price increases take time to develop, and the resulting hunger crises are forecast well in advance. From water harvesting to livestock support to cash assistance, there are a plethora of steps that could have significantly ameliorated the current crisis. Why weren’t they taken?”

The answer? The politics of poverty and the logistics of food aid.

Meanwhile, BOMA is focused on developing a long-term program for fighting poverty and helping residents adapt to climate change in the rural arid lands of Africa. Our REAP micro-enterprise program helps women start a small business and earn a sustainable income, so they can feed their families, pay for school fees and medical care, and accumulate savings that can help them survive drought. That’s what we call a high-impact investment.

To read the article, click here.

Also: Check out this thought-provoking take on international food aid and donations, titled “Haiti Doesn’t Need Your Old T-Shirt,” from the November 29 edition of Foreign Policy. To read the article, click here.

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The Trees of Sand

Kura in the middle of the Chalbi Desert.

At dawn we drove out of the village toward the Chalbi Desert, a land of dry volcanic sand that stretches all the way to Ethiopia. Judy and Ali, as well as a couple of other village friends, all lifetime residents of Kargi, were interested in joining us on this expedition and so they joined Kura, Semeji, Omar and me.

“No one would be able to cross this land on foot, Mama Rungu,” Ali tells me. “The alkaline soil sucks the moisture from your body and burns you up.”

As we drive, the ground turns from brown to white, from rocky soil to fine sand. Another vehicle has passed this way in the past 24 hours and we follow the tracks that lead us to a grove of trees. It is a strange looking sight — leafless trees, no taller than 8 to 10 feet, sprout out of the sand. There is no grass or bushes. Just trees and sand.

“When it rains the trees will have leaves, but only for a short time,” Judy tells us.

Kura announces, “This place is called the Trees of Sand.”

Suddenly we see a creature run across the sand, headed towards the black hills of ancient volcanic rock that rim one side of the desert. Kura guns the engine and our racing vehicle cuts the animal off before he can make it to the hill, giving us a good view. He has dark circles around his eyes, a striped tail and a low, badger-like body. Later we find out that it was an unusual daylight sighting of a civet cat.

To our right we see rows of large black stones.

“This was a place from a long time ago,” Ali tells us. “There was a great battle between the Gabbra and the Rendille and there were so many Gabbra killed that the Rendille elders told the warriors to place large black stones in every place where there was a dead Gabbra warrior.” Laid out like a runway, we saw hundreds of stones.

“This happened a long time ago, Mama Rungu, but the stones are still here.”

Kura is driving fast and the morning wind coming through the open windows feels great. Finally the desert is ahead of us — a white land of nothingness with a horizon that is a straight flat line.

“Do you see the mirage up ahead, Mama Rungu?” Kura asks me. After crossing the Falam and other desert lands of Northern Kenya, I thought I had the ability to discern mirage from reality.

“Not so!” says Kura. “This time it is not a mirage. It is actually a lake, an alkaline lake, here on the edge of the desert. Camels love this water and our warriors risk their lives to bring their camels out here.”

We get out and wander to the edge of the lake. Crumbling crystals of salt cling to its rim and flocks of plovers, geese and ducks honk and squawk. We poke at the crusts of salt and throw stones at the feathers drifting in the putrid green water. Paleontologists have found the fossilized remnants of fish and snail shells in the desert — evidence that a large lake once existed here. But today it is a shallow pond — amazing given that it has not rained here in over a year.

We need to get back — the women in town have planned a special event for us. We don’t want to be late.

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BOMA Accolades on the Web

BOMA was recently listed as one of “50 Nonprofits Making a World of Difference” on the Matador Network, a Website that publishes independent, original and in-depth reporting on the global travel culture. The report featured nonprofits around the world—including such well-known institutions as Grameen Foundation, MercyCorps and Global Fund for Women—that are successfully using cutting-edge, low-cost technology to expand their reach and impact. A follow-up article, which also included BOMA, focused on “Fifteen Technologies Your Nonprofit Should Be Using.”

Through its REAP micro-enterprise program, BOMA is helping the pastoral nomads of Northern Kenya to establish sustainable small businesses and savings and loans associations in their communities. As the savings groups accumulate profits, one key challenge is finding a reliable way to keep the money secure — a challenge in a remote, rural environment with no formal banks. BOMA’s local Village Mentors are encouraging the savings groups to use mobile banking via inexpensive cellular phones, where available. Because cash is not readily available, mobile banking keeps the savings secure and discourages loan requests from community members who aren’t participating in REAP.

“While [nonprofits] have traditionally been large groups with vast networks and resources, technology has empowered everyday people to form not-for-profits with little more than a laptop and an idea,” writes Matador author Carlo Alcos. “It’s enabling people from anywhere in the world to access free world-class education; it’s helping to deliver clean water and improved sanitation in developing countries; it’s bringing modern healthcare to people who would otherwise not have access to it…The advances made in mobile and computing technologies are enriching the lives of those who really need it.”

To read the articles, click here:

http://matadornetwork.com/change/50-nonprofits-making-a-world-of-difference/

http://matadornetwork.com/change/15-technologies-your-nonprofit-should-be-using/

BOMA was also featured in a two-part blog post by founder and CEO Kathleen Colson on The Displaced Nation, an irreverent Website for “expats, global nomads and armchair travelers.” The post covers Kathleen’s recent five-week trip through Northern Kenya, where she visited REAP businesses and attended BOMA’s annual two-day Mentor University, a training session for our local Village Mentors.

To read the article, click here:

http://thedisplacednation.com/2011/11/18/journeys-through-nomadic-africa-a-travel-yarn-in-two-parts-part-2/

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Begging is the First Born

A customer buys some traditional medicine from a BOMA business in Kargi.

At Judy’s home in Kargi there is a stick hut with burlap walls. It has a dirt floor, a bed made of sticks and a thin foam mattress. This will be my room for the next two nights.

We arrived in the middle of the day. I asked Omar to bring me a basin of water into which I dipped my thin scarf. After loosely squeezing it, the blood-warm water dripped back into the basin, which Omar set on the ground. I lay down on the mattress and draped the wet scarf over me. The fabric cooled my body and face and served as a barrier, keeping the hundreds of flies that circled overhead from reaching my mouth and nose. Semeji put a rock against the door so that no one would disturb me. Nearby I could hear Kura’s voice saying to a gathering crowd, “Yes, Mama Rungu,” and then the voices would respond “Ooohh, Mama Rungu,” and I knew there were people sitting on the ground outside of my hut. I tried to sleep in order to block out the heat and the noise and the smells.

After a few hours, I moved the rock and came out into the bright light. Dozens of women were seated on the ground. As news of my emergence spread, more people gathered in the shade of Judy’s house. Judy offered me a chair and I sat with the women, sipping a hot cup of tea with sugar and goat milk.

“Ready, Mama Rungu?”

“Ready, Kura.”

With each woman I visit, I gain better insights into what it is like to be the poorest of the poor in a community dependent on livestock and food aid.

“We were blind, Mama Rungu. We did not know what to do. We did our chores and then went behind the house to sleep. Now with this business, we are more active than the men.”

“Before we used to beg so much. In our culture, if you bring a rope to someone’s house they have to give you a camel. But not anymore. Now, everyone is poor because so many of the livestock have died.”

Some of the women I talked with referred to the Hunger Safety Net Programme (the distribution of cash instead of food) as “the computer.”

“With BOMA, we were told to use the money to help ourselves, not to eat. The computer goes straight to your stomach, but this business is always with us.”

“When we are poor, we must put our livestock with other people and we must sacrifice a child who will stay with those people. The children must watch the livestock and after one year they are given a camel.”

“My first-born daughter had to drop out of school and get married because we did not have the money for her school fees. If I had this business, then I would not have let her get married. “

Marsogoso Galnagale of the Borehole Business Group was in a double-business kiosk and one of the other business group members was her mother. I asked Marsogoso if she had ever begged for credit or food from community members. “Of course, Mama Rungu, I have children. When all the livestock died, we begged from those that still had livestock. But if you are a beggar, you do not get the fatty part of the camel.”

“What about your mother, did she beg?”

“Yes, she would go and ask for credit or food and we would often go to bed hungry.  Begging is part of life. We call it ‘daheateyan’ – begging is the first born. It is part of life.”

“Will your children beg, Marsogoso?”

“No, Mama Rungu, with this business I can get food and I can take my children to the clinic. I can give them an education and they will learn from me how to do business. My son is twelve years old and he is a herder. I hope that someday he will go to school so that when the livestock die, he will not have to beg.”

I am perplexed by the high number of children that are not in school. Ali Turaga, the other BOMA Mentor for Kargi, tells me, “a family will always send their smartest children to mind the livestock. School is for the child that is not too smart.”

“He is right, Mama Rungu,” Marsogoso tells me, “We did not know the importance of education, but now we do. I want my last born to reach the highest level. It is the educated ones that come back and help us. Now I must make this happen.”

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The Face of Food Aid

Ndebe's son, who was bitten by a rabid dog.

The town of Marsabit is on the Cape Town to Cairo road, a main artery of the African continent. Just two hours west of this main road is the village of Kargi, home to numerous clans of the Rendille people. Like many of the main villages in Northern Kenya, Kargi became a settled village because of the continued presence of missionary and aid organizations that, over the course of 50 years or more, have responded to the humanitarian call for food relief during the periodic droughts that are part of the life cycle of the arid lands of Northern Kenya.

Aid organizations like to distribute food in road-accessible locations with a certain population density. As one official of a large organization based in Nairobi told me, “our foreign government donors don’t like us to do too much in Northern Kenya. There is not enough population density, so our cost per person to distribute food aid or provide development programs is too high.”

That is why we are seeing so many traditional pastoralists settle in villages like Kargi. As many residents have told me, “if we move away, then we will not receive food aid when there are droughts. We have to stay here.”

So now Kargi has a population of about 5,500 people and there are many aid organizations in the village. If you Google “Kargi,” you will come up with all kinds of videos and press releases on their life-saving work. Recently, the aid organization CARE piloted a progressive food-aid program called the Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP).  Instead of providing relief food, CARE gives people money, so they can buy the food they need to survive.

In casual conversations with village leaders, it becomes obvious to visitors like me that more than 50% of the Kargi population receives some form of food aid — either monthly distributions of maize, and sometimes beans and oil, and/or HSNP funds.

It is in places like this that you get a good picture of what food aid looks like. Almost every stick hut is covered with relief food sacks or cans emblazoned with “US AID” or “Gift from the American People.” The maize, or cow corn, is the main staple of food aid. Purchased from large industrial farms in the Midwest by U.S. taxpayers, it is put on ships, also paid by American taxpayers. Food aid is big business and it is a source of significant revenue for farmers and shipping companies, hence their lobbying presence in Washington, DC. They need famine.

The World Food Programme oversees much of the distribution of food aid when it arrives in the port of Mombasa, Kenya, channeling it through other aid organizations like Red Cross and CARE. Some distribute the food to places like Kargi. Others, in a controversial procedure, sell the food on the open market, providing a source of revenue that helps pay for salaries, offices and poverty reduction programs. But this practice also undermines African food markets and can be a devastating blow to small African farmers. In a brave stand, CARE was one of the first to disavow this practice.

This season, the food aid is different. Much of the corn is very hard. People have asked me if the American farmers were somehow drying the corn with heat. When the corn is this hard, it must be cooked for 7 to 8 hours over an open fire, using up precious resources like firewood and water. Even then, the resulting porridge is difficult to digest, especially for the elderly and young children.

And so I found myself sitting in the hut of Ndebe Arbele, a member of one of the BOMA businesses in the village of Falam. With a seed capital grant of $150 provided by BOMA, her business group, May Yeel, has been able to buy food, beads, washing powder and other small essentials in Marsabit, which they then sell in their village to residents and travelers. Ndebe and her other partners attended BOMA business-skills training programs and soon they will start a series of training programs on savings. After just two short months they were able to distribute profits to their members and according to their record book, they now have savings and cash on hand of 5,300 shillings.

I am very aware when I visit with our BOMA businesses that many times, I am told what I want to hear. On this occasion, I decided to push back.

“But didn’t you also receive money from HSNP?  I am looking at your group’s record book and I don’t see how the 4,000 shillings came from the BOMA business,” I said to her.

Ndebe looked down. “Yes, you are right. I also took my HSNP money to pay for the shots.”

She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Please,” she said to me, “please don’t take this business away from me. All my life I have been a beggar. I used to be idle, waiting for food relief to feed my children. Now I am a trader. Now I work every day. From others we get relief, but it always ends. This business stays with us, and now I am someone.  Please, please don’t take this away from me.”

I suddenly realized that in places like this, we stake our claim. We can provide grants and training so that women like Ndebe can earn an income that will help her care for her seven children.But the human spirit craves dignity and respect more than it seeks wealth, and that is what we had given Ndebe. It was enough.

“I could never take this business from you, Ndebe. It is yours forever. Thank you for telling me why this business is important to you. I will always come and visit you when I am here, and I want you always to tell me what you feel in your heart.”

“Kalath, Mama Rungu.” Thank you.

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The Ominous Falam

Gumps crossing the Falam.

When we drove up the western side of Mount Kulal to reach the village of Gatab, our vehicle had to negotiate the steep sides of the mountain. Deep gashes in the dormant volcano’s lava flows created jaw-dropping canyons that made the ascent long and challenging. The descent down the other side of the mountain was kinder. We dipped and curved. Forest turned to rocky soil and then to scrubland. In the distance, the horizon glimmered with the vision of a large water mirage. Kura stopped the vehicle for a minute and we all watched the shimmering lake. But it was not a lake. It was the Falam, and beyond it the infamous Chalbi Desert.

Our destination was the village of Kargi. En route, we would drop off Caro at her home in Olturot and then we would spend two nights in Kargi at Judy’s home. I had been looking forward to visiting, Kargi as we now have 40 businesses in and around the village. Later in the month, we would launch 20 more. There was tremendous enthusiasm for our work in Kargi, and we had worked hard to establish ourselves in this village region, keeping in mind that we also had to keep our staff safe in an area that sees frequent ethnic conflicts over livestock. What was heartening was that we also had overwhelming support for our work by the leadership of the village. The chief had even told Kura, “…these BOMA people, they look shiny.” Clean, healthy, shiny. Shiny is good.

Everyone started to shed layers as we drove across the flats. It was now over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.Rounding a stand of short scrub trees, we finally saw the Falam ahead of us — a strange bowl of soft sand with the dead skeletons of ancient trees poking out from the surface. In another climate, it would be a bowl of snow where the wind blows the soft material across the surface — filling in hidden crevasses and drops. Anyone trying to traverse this stretch has to know the route. Despite its ominous reputation, I wanted to get out and walk. I wanted to photograph Gumps as Kura drove across the Falam.

Omar and I jumped out and immediately sank down above our ankles in warm powder. It was tolerable for a few seconds before you felt the need to move away from the heat, only to sink down again in another ring of powder. We kicked the sand into the air and it drifted off in little fluffs. A dust devil came toward us, but then veered away as if intimidated by the unearthly appearance of the Falam.

Kura pointed us in the direction we should walk and Omar and I started out. The heat poured down on us like white hot lead. I tried to take a few pictures but you could not stand still for very long before the sand would start to burn. Finally, we reached one corner of the angulated circle of this strange land. I turned and signaled to Kura, camera ready.

A halo of dust settled on everything around us as the vehicle stopped. Kura had left the window open and his face and clothes were now coated with a light brown dust that stood in contrast to his dark skin. We were all coughing and sputtering and cheering. “Thank God we made it across before the rains come, Mama Rungu. The rain turns the Falam to cement and we would never be able to cross,” Kura told me.

“I know, Kura, you once called me on the satellite phone when you were stuck in this place. And this is where you also saw the cheetahs that time, right?”

“Yes, this is it. We had broken down, and we were driving at night. You were driving to Loiyangalani in the other vehicle and we were late meeting you, but I still woke you up at 3 a.m. to tell you we had seen the cheetahs!”

“That’s a great memory, Kura.” We both were grinning.

We got back in the vehicle and the road returned to hardpack sand. The light breeze blew the powdered dust out of our hair and clothes. Just before Kargi, we stopped in the appropriately named Rendille village of Falam. Kura wanted me to meet one of the BOMA businesses in the village. I didn’t know it then, but I was about to meet a woman who would redefine the way we evaluate our work. And she would bring me to tears.

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The Verdant Forest of Mount Kulal

The path we drove through the Mount Kulal forest.

Millions of years ago the African continent tore itself apart, creating a jagged trench from Jordan in the north to Mozambique in the south. Great volcanic mountains erupted on either side of this giant crevice, including Kilimanjaro and Ol Donyo Lengai (Mountain of God) in Tanzania and Longonot, Menengai and Mount Kulal in Kenya. The 5400-mile trench is called the Great Rift Valley. It is visible from the moon.

Blasting down the Rift Valley are wind currents propelled by hot dry air masses from the north that create an almost constant growl of wind. These were the winds that now pounded the village of Gatab, perched on the edge of one of the sheer mountain cliffs of Mount Kulal. I was glad we were staying in a solid cement house — the home of a doctor who had left the area but allowed visitors, approved by the missionaries, to use the home during his absence. It was a clean, sparsely furnished house with three bedrooms and the ultimate luxury of a flush toilet. As night descended on the village, we settled in. Sheets were put on beds and Omar cooked us a dinner of rice, cabbage and some of the fresh spinach from South Horr. While we ate, Kura, Judy and Ali told me the ancient story of Harra, the Rendille giant who was eventually killed by the red-hot knife of his own people, driven straight into his heart.

I tried to sleep, but the thorn branches of a bougainvillea bush, brilliant with pink blossoms during the day, now clawed at the tin roof of the building, desperately trying to hang on as the wind blew and blew. The missionary’s dogs barked in desperate pleas for calm which eventually came with the dawn, as the winds quieted down and the mists descended from the forest, blanketing the village in an eerie white fog.

No one was in a hurry to leave. We slowly drank our sweet tea and packed the vehicle. Damaris and her husband hosted us in their new home for a breakfast of njera and more tea. Hosea, the other Mentor from Gatab, also joined us. I was disappointed that I could not visit with more of our businesses in the village yesterday, as many of them were closed because of the demonstration. I did get a chance to visit with Alice Learamo of the Baraka business group and I was impressed with the diversity of products that her group was selling — metal cow bells and tire sandals from the Maasai markets of Narok, padlocks and inexpensive cell phones. The business had propelled Alice to take adult literacy classes so that she could maintain the group’s financial records. The mother of five children, Alice told me, “most of my life I have had nothing. Now I have a little something for myself and my children.”

“How has the drought affected you?” I asked her. “When others were suffering we were comfortable,” she told me.

Kura carefully steered Gumps down a forest path. Semeji gripped my shoulder from the back seat, excited and terrified as we rocked and rolled over boulders and around giant trunks of trees. Moss hung from branches and the vines of strangler figs descended from the canopy, choking the life out of the trees that had originally hosted them. Occasionally we would come upon people herding their livestock through the forest, including visitors from the drought-devastated villages of the arid lands below.

“Who is in charge of protecting the forest?” I asked Hosea. “Oh, we have a forest ranger, who is supposed to keep people from cutting down trees and foraging their livestock in the forest, but he lives in the village of Loiyangalani.” Loiyangalani was dozens of kilometers away.

At the base of a giant tree in the Mount Kulal forest: Omar, Hosea, Carol, Ali Turaga, Kura, Semeji and Judy.

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Under Siege

Stopping for a vehicle check on the road up Mount Kulal.

After a night of malarone-infused anxiety dreams, I awoke to the sound of young fruit dropping on my tin roof from the gnarled olive tree above my hut. The winds had arrived. As the dawn broke, the intensity of the wind increased, and by the time I was up and dressed I could barely hear the cooing of the morning doves above the sound of the wind. This was a sign. Change was coming.

The Gumpsmobile was packed. Besides all of our supplies, including food, water, vehicle parts and diesel on the roof, we had 12 passengers. On the two back bench seats, squished between luggage and tires, rode the four men: Semeji, Omar, Ali Turuga from Kargi and Hosea from Gatab. In the second row rode the women and babies: Judy and baby Brian, Carol from Olturot, Damaris and baby Anon and Teresa from Loiyangalani, the headmistress of one of the Gatab primary schools. Kura and I, the laptop backpacks and some food supplies rode in the front. We also had to pack up some of the Mentor’s purchases from the relative lush valley of South Horr: young mango trees, grain sacks of lentils, spinach and vegetables and mysterious bags of medicinal herbs and seeds.

The dirt and sand road out of South Horr is initially the same route to Loiyangalani. Kura had decided that we would not make the trek to Loiy and Lake Turkana this time, as we wanted to see new villages and he was concerned about the security of the Loiy road. The livestock from the north had been moved to the nearby Baragoi region in a desperate attempt to save them and so the potential presence of armed gangs of cattle rustlers could not be dismissed. At the “junction,” the critical point where Semeji “mans up” by riding in the front seat with the AK47 safety off, we turned right to Mt. Kulal.

We came upon an unusual scene. Gatab is a community of 560 households and today hundreds of residents were sitting or standing in the fields below the main part of the village. Most were groups of men with their walking sticks and shukas over their shoulders. There were also huddled groups of women with babies and older women sitting on the ground. It was a scene of quiet protest against one of the missionaries who lives with his family behind a tall chainlink fence. I was only a casual observer and the circumstances were, I am sure, complicated. But it is hard not to notice, amidst the simple poverty of this village, the relative wealth of a family whom I am told do not interact socially with the village — multiple ATV and lorry vehicles, a backhoe, a wind tower, a satellite dish and a trampoline for children who do not attend the local school. All of this infrastructure was in support of a clinic and Haven Home — a boarding school for nomadic children and orphans.

After nine-plus years of living in their midst, the community was protesting the actions of one of the preachers. A number of years ago, a local woman had received a divorce after years of abuse by her husband. She was employed by the missionaries and had finally decided that she wanted to have a baby but she would do it without a husband. She was fired. According to a number of village leaders that I spoke with, this was the last straw.

The police and local commissioner were called and through the night a security patrol was provided to protect the missionary family compound. It was unclear how much of a threat this siege scene represented. But clearly the community felt strongly that they wanted the missionary and his family out. They wanted them to leave. “We’ve had enough,” was what I was told over and over. I tried to find out more and later that evening I did a search on the Web (yes, you can get slow Internet through a mobile phone modem), where I found this description of Haven Home: “Haven Home provides a Christian environment for these young people from many of the immoral and destructive tribal practices.”

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Zero Percent Failure

A pick-up truck filled with happy BOMA Mentors after the three-day Mentor University training program.

In the months prior to this trip to Kenya, I had spent a lot of time reading about the success of healthcare in Africa. While economic interventions, in general, have not been overly successful — incomes across the continent are down or stagnant — there have been successes in the delivery of healthcare due to significant investments by organizations like the Gates Foundation. The book Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding — And How We Can Improve the World Even More by Charles Kenny is a fascinating read. At the suggestion of a BOMA board member, I also started reading the articles in The New Yorker by the medical doctor Atul Gawande, such as “The Bell Curve” and “The Hot Spotters.”

I then spent a lot of time looking at the role of community healthcare workers in Africa. I wanted to know what we could learn from their training and empowerment, and how we could apply these lessons to our team of BOMA Village Mentors. In our last impact assessment, we had a 4% failure rate of the first 100 businesses. So I asked the BOMA team, “What if the businesses were patients? Would we tolerate a 4% failure rate? We have participants who live on the edge of survival.  We have a program that helps them feed their families, educate their children and keep them healthy. Are we willing to accept that 4% or more of the participants will fail? What are the consequences of that failure?”

This conversation led to a fascinating discovery. Once we started focusing on our failures, we became more imaginative, more creative. And then we knew what we needed to do. Every organization, for profit or not, likes to focus on its successes. If you are a nonprofit, you especially want to tout your successes, as this enables you to secure more donations.  But in the process of focusing on our failures, we also began to focus on where we could innovate in order to achieve success. And that came down to the training and support of our local BOMA Mentors. They are the heart of our program, and we need to give them every resource possible so they can fortify the success of 100% of our businesses. We set a goal for the following year: a 0% failure rate.

Today was the final day of Mentor University and I had been simply an observer. This was their program and they did not seek an affirmation from me. At Kura’s invitation, I shared some final remarks. The BOMA family beamed back to me with smiles of hope and vitality as I shared the concept of 0% failure. It was a goal — a lofty goal — but I could sense the confidence in the room. Our Mentors come from communities that have been overwhelmed by aid organizations that keep them on life support. Our program represents an opportunity to bring out the strength and resilience that resides in all of us. I could not have been prouder to be associated with this outstanding group of individuals.

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