Ok, so as I said, all the volunteers were leaving, including me, Cassie, German Lara and English Lara, who set off for Lamu. On the 5th August we got a lift from Zack to Nairobi, when we got there we booked our tickets on the night train to Mombasa, then we went to Java House, which I may or may not have mentioned before, for food. It’s pretty good, but tastes really good after Githeri (maize and beans). German Lara (who will from now on be refered to as Lara, with English Lara remaining English Lara) and Cassie went to the city market, which I hate, so English Lara and I went to an internet café. Later on we got some supplies for the train and headed over to catch it.
The train really wasn’t bad at all. We were second class so we had beds. I’d also heard that there were no toilets, just the kenyan style holes in the floor of the train, which would be very difficult to aim for whilst the train is moving. There were toilets, they were fine. The train took around 16 hours, it moved slowly and often stopped for long periods of time, but we slept through a lot of it so it didn’t matter. In the morning we went for our breakfast which we had been told was “compulsory” by the ticket man when we had asked to go cheaper but without breakfast. We waited about an hour and a half and it was rubbish, I don’t even remember what was on it, I think there was one sausage, possibly an egg, I don’t know, it was a waste of time.
So, we got to Mombasa without really knowing what to expect, I didn’t like Mombasa right from the start, as for some reason English Lara had brought a suitcase to Africa and the wheels of course broke off on the crap pavement. So, being the only boy, I had to drag it for a mile or two to our hotel, all the while people are hassling me to buy crap or get on a bus to Nairobi or Malindi. We didn’t do much in Mombasa, Lara didn’t have a bathing suit for Lamu, so went spent some time looking for places that sold them, we went to the fort, but it cost too much to go in, that’s about all I can remember. It’s really humid there, I felt like I was sweating in the cold showers in the hotel. While in Mombasa, English Lara decided that she was going to go to an orphanage there and do some more voluntary work, she had only been at WWB about a week and a half, so I think she felt like she hadn’t done much. So after two nights stay in Mombasa, Cassie, Lara and I got an early bus to Lamu.
The bus ride took around 6 or 7 hours, but was a lot worse than the night train. We took three out of the five seats at the back, and I took the central one thinking that I could stretch my legs down the aisle. I really should have known there’d just be bags in the way, so it was foolish to get my hopes up. On the bus we met another guy called David, who was also 22, but he looked about 30. Once we got off the bus we had to get a little boat to Lamu, it made Cassie feel sea sick. When we got off the original plan was to phone a guy called James who worked at a café called Hapa Hapa, but the only phone we had was English Lara’s, and she’d decided not to come. It was High season in Lamu, so a lot of the hotels were full, and James was supposed to find places for us with room. We met him just at the end of the jetty anyway, he recognised Lara’s basket bought from Makuyu market. He led us to a hotel that had space, so we dumped our stuff and went back to the Hapa Hapa for food. James taught us how to play a game called Bao that involves beads in holes on a piece of wood. I’m not going to try to explain it here, but we played it a lot over the week.
Lamu is my favourite place that I have been to on this trip so far. It doesn’t feel like anywhere else I have been in Kenya, or anywhere else I have ever been. There are a couple of motor vehicles on the island, but not many, the main mode of transport is donkey, and there are loads of them. It’s a very muslim area, and the call to prayer goes out from loud speakers five times a day like in Istanbul. It’s very laid back and people are very eager to befriend each other.
On our first night, the four of us, including David from the bus, met James at a bar called Petleys, one of the only bars on Lamu, with a barman (and possibly the owner, I’m not sure) called Satan. After a few beers and more games of Bao (I’m not sure if it was this night or another night, but eventually bottles of beer and pints of juice from Hapa Hapa were on the line in these games, and Bao suddenly became very important) James managed to talk us all into going to the disco. It was fun and we stayed there until 4 in the morning despite it being full of prostitutes and sleazy men hunting Lara and Cassie. The music was just reggae all night. On the way home a log fell off a building and hit James in the arm, it didn’t hurt him much though, but it was kind of strange.
I woke up at 7:30 the next day and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I sat on the roof until breakfast was being served and then ate with David and two girls we had all met the night before, I think one was Finnish and the other was Belgian, but I could be wrong. Breakfast consisted each day of fruit followed by eggs in some way with toast. When I sat down, David and the girls were already there, so they told me that when the guy asked to take my order, he actually meant how do you want your eggs.
We went to the beach later that day, the beach was huge, and I kind of regret not walking further along it as it’s something like 14km long. There was a little bit of sand that made a kind of island in the sea, David and I went out to it and wrote NO GIRLS on it in big letters. The only thing on the island was a jar of pickles, which we made a mess with. I think we probably went to Hapa Hapa for juice later, we did most days. Then we probably went to Petleys at night, had a few beers and played bao.
That was generally the pattern for the week, but with fewer pickles. We met lots of different people, there were loads of French people for some reason. One night I played Uno with a table full of French people and Cassie, who also speaks fluent French, and amazed them all with my French skills, “ J’habite a Bolton, Bolton est un Grand ville dans le nord ouest de L’Anglatere, cest industrielle” (the spelling in that is probably as bad as my pronunciation was on the night), I was the only person to win at uno twice though, so I think I know who came out on top. We also met a guy who is mentioned in the lonely planet guide (and told us so over and over again), he’s called Ali Hippy, and for 500 ksh he takes you to his house and cooks you dinner, we decided we would give it a try, as did two French people and an Australian called Elliot and an Israeli called Yael. It was really weird, I didn’t like it. The food was good, but the whole atmosphere was very staged and just seemed kind of odd. After dinner he played songs on his keyboard and his kids sing along. We all went to Petleys afterwards, and we taught the new people how to play bao.
We stayed in touch with Elliot and Yael throughout the week and went with them on a dhow trip one day. This is a trip in a boat, you go fishing and then the boat captains cook what you catch. We caught nothing, although one of the captains caught two small fish. Luckily they knew this was going to happen and had conveniently been to the market and bought a massive fish earlier. The fish was really good, I think it was called white snapper, and it was put in some kind of garlic sauce and then barbequed. On days other than this we just went to the beach and drank juice, that’s about it. One day we saw a really fat person on a donkey on the beach, and the donkey had to run because it was in a race, I think if he asked to ride a donkey on Blackpool beach they’d tell him to go on a diet first.
Cassie and I left Lara in Lamu last Sunday, Cassie had to fly back to France and I wanted to book a flight to Thailand and go back to see what was going on at the orphanage. So we got back on the boat early Sunday morning, got back on a bus, took the long bumpy bus ride back to Mombasa, went to get the train back to Nairobi, realized we didn’t have enough money, went to a cash machine, Cassie lost her card in one of the machines, forced to stay a night in Mombasa and get a bus the next day, went to the bank the next morning and they said that they just destroy foreign cards, “it’s procedure”, another fantastic time in Mombasa! I don’t remember how long the bus ride took, but it wasn’t fun, I barely even fitted in the seat. We got to Nairobi pretty late, so we dropped our stuff at the Africana (a cheap hotel) and then went and got pizza. The next morning Cassie left at 6:30 to get a taxi to the airport, and I was left with lonely matatu rides to Thika and then to Makuyu.
I booked a night in a room in Makuyu as soon as I got there, as I didn’t know what to expect at the orphanage, so I dropped my stuff off, went to Kason for Chapatti Mix (best 25 ksh you can spend in Makuyu) and then walked to the orphanage. Geoffrey’s car was there, which I wasn’t too pleased about, I didn’t really want to speak to him. I was eventually forced to, but he was pleasant. I met two new volunteers as soon as I got there, Casey, an American, and Kelly, an Australian. Kelly offered to show me round, which I declined. I went and spoke to Grace, she told me that Doug had got back the day before and was in his room, so I went and chatted to him for a while. He told me that Geoffrey was coming good on his changes, he’s had an accountant here looking at all the books and trying to get them into some kind of order and format. Dona has gone, and is currently replaced by a woman called Margret, who I haven’t spoke to much, but she hasn’t been seen beating the kids yet, so that’s a plus. I’ve been asked by Doug, Geoffrey and Zack not to mention past events to the new volunteers, which I don’t mind, although I think they found it strange that I was staying in Makuyu for my first night. I’m now living back at the orphanage. Geoffrey hasn’t asked me for any money yet, I think mainly to try to keep me sweet and stop me from saying anything to the newbies, Casey, Kelly, Meital (Israel) and Simon (London), and as of this morning, although they are sleeping and I haven’t met them yet, Cecilia and Laura from Sweden. My intention of coming back was never to just stir things up again, and as long as things seem to be going well I’m not going to say anything. I am going to pay the two weeks as I think it would show Geoffrey that I think he is going about things the right way, I am not giving it all to Geoffrey though. I will give Geoffrey his 19% that he takes from each volunteer fee, I don’t mind that, I don’t want the orphanage to fail because Geoffrey has to work more to support his family, however I don’t trust him fully enough yet to give him the rest, so I am going to give it to Doug to spend on things the orphanage needs.
That’s it really, there are 8 volunteers now, Geoffrey keeps promising it will not go above 10. Boniface left for some reason, no one really knows why, so a new fieldworker arrived yesterday, called Eric. Njeroge left with Ann and Devin, and they sent me an email saying that he is enjoying working on the 9 acre farm over at that orphanage, so I’m pleased for him. Ann and Devin have to go back to the States because of financial strains (I’m told that their tenant hasn’t paid rent or something) and they asked me if I wanted to take their place at that orphanage, but I had booked the flight to Thailand two days previously, so I must move on.
We’re having a BBQ on Friday, so that’ll be good.
I think this is the first time the blog has been completely up to date for ages, not sure when the next time I write will be, possibly in Thailand, possibly before.
Bye All.
24 Aug 2009
18 Aug 2009
interesting stuff
This is going to be a more interesting blog post than some of the last ones, it’s kind of difficult to know where to start.
I knew when I signed up for this project that $90 a week was more than it would cost to feed me in Kenya, however it was still one of the cheapest volunteering opportunities that I could find for my time frame, and I felt reassured that all the money was going to the orphanage as I hadn’t booked through a company, such as “a broader view” which charges upwards of $200 a week for people to be here. So I liked the idea of paying $90 a week if it was going to enable good things to happen at the orphanage while I was here. It quickly became evident that this was not the case though.
First of all, I was under the impression that Geoffrey (the director of this organization) lived here at the orphanage. He doesn’t. This didn’t perturb me too much as I reasoned that it’d be easier for him to do work for the orphanage from a city, rather than an orphanage in the middle of rural Kenya. Also I assumed he had other work (he may or may not) that he used to provide for his family, another good reason for him living in a city.
Second, the projects. A guy called Jeurgen (spelling probably wrong) paid for the well, pump, tank etc. He came, volunteered, paid $90 a week, and then paid extra to give the place water, a thoroughly nice guy, unlike Geoffrey. Aaron and Kaitlin were here for 2 years and put a lot of effort into making this place what it is, they also paid for the biogas project, great people, unlike Geoffrey. Danny and John, here not long ago, were here for 3 weeks and bought a swingset for the kids, when they asked Geoffrey if they could stay a couple of days longer to avoid staying in Nairobi, Geoffrey said that’d be fine, they just have to pay for an extra week, another $180 between them. Danny and John pointed out that they had been on 3 trips while here, missing a full week, and had also bought a swingset, Geoffrey relented. Doug just the other week bought a bull and cart for the orphanage so that trips to and from the shamba harvesting will be less frequent.
By now you should be wondering where the $90 at least from each of us each week is going, as are the rest of us here, and from looking at the volunteer feedback on this computer, as have volunteers for a while:
“I think the project is an excellent one, and could truly become a best-practice model for orphaned children in Africa, but unless and until more is done to improve financial accountability, I will not continue to support WWB nor will I recommend you to friends and family. And I must say it’s a terrible shame as well, given how excellent this project is. I imagine that you’ll not have much good fortune with international donors unless you make this a priority.”
“One thing is the money. I would try to organize, together with Geoffrey where, the financial stuff. At some time at my time at WWB I had the feeling, that there is the need to sit down all together and try to find a solution for this problem. I cant understand where, for example the volunteer money (90USD is a lot…) goes.”
Some money does get spent. The food costs nothing, basically. We can go up to the Kason hotel (it means restaurant here, for some reason) three times a day and spend in total 75 Ksh, one American dollar to eat for a day, and the food would be better than what Grace is provided with here. So that makes $83 dollars a day (at least) unaccountable for. There are some projects that are not paid for directly by volunteers, the education centre and animal enclosure for example. Geoffrey also has to pay the staff, who, having spent a lot of time with them now (most of them fantastic people), I know do not get paid a lot. Another thing to bear in mind though is that the volunteers coming here are not Geoffreys only source of income from this organization. There are also people who sponsor the kids to go to school, and other good people who just make donations to the project. Most of the kids here are primary school age, and primary education is free here. Uniforms are not expensive, and most of them appear to be very old and tattered. Not much money being spent there. There are also donations that come in for the kids that have been placed in foster homes (I think there’s around 70 of them). Every 2 months a meeting is supposed to be held where they are given $20 worth of stuff, bought with money from their sponsors. The one I attended was the first for 3 months, and the kids were handed out around $5 worth of stuff, some of which was stuff that had been brought by volunteers.
Now that you have some background of how much of a shit Geoffrey is I’ll start on some specific cases.
Alena paid for a month too much, and asked in countless emails if she would be entitled to a refund. Geoffrey never replied. Geoffrey came to the orphanage one day, and Alena approached him, Geoffrey said that she wasn’t entitled to a refund, but if she could get a friend to come and do the extra month then they could do it for free and pay her the difference. Alena came and found me, I was in bed, knowing that I was planning on staying an extra 4 weeks, I went and told Geoffrey what Alena had told me, followed by “I’m Alena’s friend, and I’d like to do her 4 weeks”. Greedy Geoffrey’s friendly smile dropped into a frown. “That’s a different issue, why is Alena bringing you into problems between me and her, this is a separate issue, you pay me for your 4 weeks and I’ll deal with Alena”. I told him that I’d wait and see what Alena said and what he said to Alena, until yesterday they still hadn’t spoken, so I still haven’t paid Geoffrey for the 4 weeks, thankfully.
Ana was told that because it was high season she had to pay for at least 2 months, she did, even though she could only stay for one, presumably because she thought it was going to a good cause, not Geoffrey.
Jens and Melda got told the same thing, they said they instead would like to donate a really fancy camera to the orphanage so that pictures of the kids could be put up on the website. The camera is at Geoffrey’s house.
Geoffrey charges (or rather was charging) $80 for a ride to and from the airport, he made both Jens and Melda pay the $80 even though they were coming together, the same with Ben and Mila, who also happened to come in the same trip as German Laura. Recently Geoffrey started to refuse trips back to the airport, stating that the $80 was only for one way (on matatus you can get to Nairobi for the equivalent of $2). We looked on his website and he had changed one part of it to say that it was only one way, but another part of it still said 2 ways, fucking idiot.
A few weeks ago, the only bad member of staff, Dona, was caught beating the kids (twice in one day). Everyone wanted her fired, Geoffrey said he would have to think about it and talk to the kids. THERE IS NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT. Dona is still here. Ann and Devin had many meetings with him saying that she needed to go, it never happened.
On Friday everything erupted, Ana had a really angry phone conversation with Geoffrey in which he was denying her a lift to Nairobi on Saturday. Remember that Ana paid $80 for transport AND double the volunteer fee, yet she was refused a lift to Nairobi. Ann and Devin got involved and eventually decided that they were going to leave (they had been thinking about it for a while, mainly due to the Dona thing and not being given the type of power and experience they were promised, also with things getting tenser they wanted to get their kids Naya and Kai out of there). They sent Geoffrey a message saying that they were going to leave on Sunday. Geoffrey then ridiculously sent a message back, one part I can remember from it was “this is total BETRAYAL”, the jist of it was that he was going to try to get them deported. Devin and Ann then planned to leave on Saturday to try to avoid conflict. With Geoffrey’s request they sent him an email (along with cc’ing it into many organizations that had been link with the project, future volunteers, the American embassy, as it had Geoffrey’s text quoted in it) outlining all the reason why he’s a slimy little bastard and they were leaving. Cassie got on facebook, and found all of the volunteers that were planning on coming and contacted them with what was going on. People have sent emails to “a broader view” and “idealist.org” and other organizations that list WWB with information about what Geoffrey’s been doing, trying to hit him where it hurts, his wallet.
Saturday came and Edith (Geoffrey’s greedy wife) arrived before Ann, Devin, Naya and Kai had left. She didn’t say much until Ann and Devin’s ride came and we started loading their stuff, she couldn’t stop them though. After they left, Edith spoke with Sabrina (she’s been here the longest) for a long time. She kept asking for the Microfinance money, which Sabrina stongly denied her. All the volunteers got together after and wrote down some points that we wanted to bring up in a meeting with Geoffrey and Edith, as Edith had said that Geoffrey was on his way. The first attempt at the meeting wasn’t a success because, as you can imagine all the volunteers feel strongly about their money going to the orphans, not being spent on Edith’s hair or Geoffrey’s suits, so at times lots of people were talking at once. Geoffrey shunned the financial questions saying we’d have to speak with the treasurer who is in Nairobi. There isn’t a treasurer, or a board, there’s just Geoffrey and Edith, and of course their lies and greed. We asked for an email address, if we could go and meet him, what his name was, he eventually uttered a Mr. something and Sabrina asked him to write it down, he passed it to Edith to write down, who obviously hadn’t listened, as she wrote down something different. It did get a little silly with people talking over each other, Geoffrey said he wanted to meet with the kids and while he did we should choose some representatives. We chose Alena, who kept calm in the first meeting, and Sabrina as shes been here the longest. I don’t know what Geoffrey said to the Kids, but some of them were upset afterwards, I only hope it wasn’t anything bad against Ann and Devin or any of the other volunteers.
Unsurprisingly nothing much got resolved in the meeting. It’s only Geoffrey and Edith that can solve this and unfortunately I don’t think they will. We all know they have been scamming money that should be going to these kids, but I worry that he will just find replacement development managers (Ann and Devin) get new volunteers and carry on. All of us are leaving during this week, Sabrina and Doug go to Uganda tomorrow, I’m going to Lamu with English and German Laura and Cassie. The rest leave next weekend. Doug comes back and has paid till December. I do not know if he will stay. I am going to come back on 18th Aug, without paying, for up to a week, and see what happens, then I will go back to Lamu until German Laura leaves and then fly to Thailand.
There is of course the other way of looking at all of this. This was still one of the cheapest African based volunteer projects that I found, and if I’d gone with a company it still would have meant that not all the money goes to the cause. Some of the money does get spent for the kids benefit, and they love volunteers coming here (which won’t happen for a while now that we have basically nuked it with the help of Facebook, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the facebook group was gone pretty soon) and the work that I’ve done on the education centre, bio gas, animal enclosure, shamba, etc has all been helpful for the place, staff and kids, and when I applied to come here I wasn’t against paying $90 a week to give that help and have this experience, which has been fantastic on the surface. But the problem is that this place could be so much greater with out Geoffrey’s greed. The kids could be in a better school, there’s a Don Bosco school not far away that charges $10 a month for kids to go there, why isn’t some of the volunteers’ money being spent on that? The staff get paid less per month than each volunteer pays a week. Zack, Geoffrey’s own fucking brother, has a wife and two kids that he sees only once every two months because he can’t afford the commute to get there, let alone the cost of moving them here.
So if we destroy this place as much as we hoped, then it will hurt the kids in the short term, they wont have all the volunteers around to show them the love and support they get now, but in the long term maybe Geoffrey will change his ways, put more of the money into the orphanage and these kids will have a better future.
The only thing left to say is that Geoffrey and Edith took the internet (and blamed the kids when questioned) so I probably can’t post this at least till Wednesday. There’s only me and Sabrina here today, the rest have gone to Nairobi so they’re going to stop at an internet café and send emails far quicker than they could here, so taking the internet didn’t stop anything.
David
Ok, I wrote this on not the Sunday just gone, not the one before, but the one before that (I can't do dates anymore). Since then Geoffrey has "suspended the volunteer program" and refunded people for time they've paid for but have had to leave early because of this mess. I also got an email stating that he is making these changes:
1. Firing the social worker (Dona) who was found guilty of abusing children.
2. Employing an additional staff to be responsible with all WWB finances (sponsorship, women, sanitary, volunteer) books and financial records. The director will no longer keep the books.
3. To maintain highest financial accountability
4. To review the policy of WWB and implement it strictly – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
5. To make a clear breakdown of the volunteer fees – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
6. To maintain the number of volunteers under 10.
7. To operate WWB with highest values, transparency, accountability, honesty, morality and others for the good of children, volunteers and staff.
8. Review the child sponsorship and make it clear to all the sponsors where money is going.
9. To form an international board – under discussion
10. To keep the children at the forefront of everything. 1. Firing the social worker (Dona) who was found guilty of abusing children.
2. Employing an additional staff to be responsible with all WWB finances (sponsorship, women, sanitary, volunteer) books and financial records. The director will no longer keep the books.
3. To maintain highest financial accountability
4. To review the policy of WWB and implement it strictly – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
5. To make a clear breakdown of the volunteer fees – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
6. To maintain the number of volunteers under 10.
7. To operate WWB with highest values, transparency, accountability, honesty, morality and others for the good of children, volunteers and staff.
8. Review the child sponsorship and make it clear to all the sponsors where money is going.
9. To form an international board – under discussion
10. To keep the children at the forefront of everything.
I've been in Lamu for the past week, one of the weirdest but most interesting places I have ever been, i'll put more about it at another time though, as right now I need to book a flight to Thailand and I am in Thika on my way back to the orphanage to check out what's going on. I'm going to stay in Makuyu and eat my own food, so i'm not costing Geoffrey anything.
David
I knew when I signed up for this project that $90 a week was more than it would cost to feed me in Kenya, however it was still one of the cheapest volunteering opportunities that I could find for my time frame, and I felt reassured that all the money was going to the orphanage as I hadn’t booked through a company, such as “a broader view” which charges upwards of $200 a week for people to be here. So I liked the idea of paying $90 a week if it was going to enable good things to happen at the orphanage while I was here. It quickly became evident that this was not the case though.
First of all, I was under the impression that Geoffrey (the director of this organization) lived here at the orphanage. He doesn’t. This didn’t perturb me too much as I reasoned that it’d be easier for him to do work for the orphanage from a city, rather than an orphanage in the middle of rural Kenya. Also I assumed he had other work (he may or may not) that he used to provide for his family, another good reason for him living in a city.
Second, the projects. A guy called Jeurgen (spelling probably wrong) paid for the well, pump, tank etc. He came, volunteered, paid $90 a week, and then paid extra to give the place water, a thoroughly nice guy, unlike Geoffrey. Aaron and Kaitlin were here for 2 years and put a lot of effort into making this place what it is, they also paid for the biogas project, great people, unlike Geoffrey. Danny and John, here not long ago, were here for 3 weeks and bought a swingset for the kids, when they asked Geoffrey if they could stay a couple of days longer to avoid staying in Nairobi, Geoffrey said that’d be fine, they just have to pay for an extra week, another $180 between them. Danny and John pointed out that they had been on 3 trips while here, missing a full week, and had also bought a swingset, Geoffrey relented. Doug just the other week bought a bull and cart for the orphanage so that trips to and from the shamba harvesting will be less frequent.
By now you should be wondering where the $90 at least from each of us each week is going, as are the rest of us here, and from looking at the volunteer feedback on this computer, as have volunteers for a while:
“I think the project is an excellent one, and could truly become a best-practice model for orphaned children in Africa, but unless and until more is done to improve financial accountability, I will not continue to support WWB nor will I recommend you to friends and family. And I must say it’s a terrible shame as well, given how excellent this project is. I imagine that you’ll not have much good fortune with international donors unless you make this a priority.”
“One thing is the money. I would try to organize, together with Geoffrey where, the financial stuff. At some time at my time at WWB I had the feeling, that there is the need to sit down all together and try to find a solution for this problem. I cant understand where, for example the volunteer money (90USD is a lot…) goes.”
Some money does get spent. The food costs nothing, basically. We can go up to the Kason hotel (it means restaurant here, for some reason) three times a day and spend in total 75 Ksh, one American dollar to eat for a day, and the food would be better than what Grace is provided with here. So that makes $83 dollars a day (at least) unaccountable for. There are some projects that are not paid for directly by volunteers, the education centre and animal enclosure for example. Geoffrey also has to pay the staff, who, having spent a lot of time with them now (most of them fantastic people), I know do not get paid a lot. Another thing to bear in mind though is that the volunteers coming here are not Geoffreys only source of income from this organization. There are also people who sponsor the kids to go to school, and other good people who just make donations to the project. Most of the kids here are primary school age, and primary education is free here. Uniforms are not expensive, and most of them appear to be very old and tattered. Not much money being spent there. There are also donations that come in for the kids that have been placed in foster homes (I think there’s around 70 of them). Every 2 months a meeting is supposed to be held where they are given $20 worth of stuff, bought with money from their sponsors. The one I attended was the first for 3 months, and the kids were handed out around $5 worth of stuff, some of which was stuff that had been brought by volunteers.
Now that you have some background of how much of a shit Geoffrey is I’ll start on some specific cases.
Alena paid for a month too much, and asked in countless emails if she would be entitled to a refund. Geoffrey never replied. Geoffrey came to the orphanage one day, and Alena approached him, Geoffrey said that she wasn’t entitled to a refund, but if she could get a friend to come and do the extra month then they could do it for free and pay her the difference. Alena came and found me, I was in bed, knowing that I was planning on staying an extra 4 weeks, I went and told Geoffrey what Alena had told me, followed by “I’m Alena’s friend, and I’d like to do her 4 weeks”. Greedy Geoffrey’s friendly smile dropped into a frown. “That’s a different issue, why is Alena bringing you into problems between me and her, this is a separate issue, you pay me for your 4 weeks and I’ll deal with Alena”. I told him that I’d wait and see what Alena said and what he said to Alena, until yesterday they still hadn’t spoken, so I still haven’t paid Geoffrey for the 4 weeks, thankfully.
Ana was told that because it was high season she had to pay for at least 2 months, she did, even though she could only stay for one, presumably because she thought it was going to a good cause, not Geoffrey.
Jens and Melda got told the same thing, they said they instead would like to donate a really fancy camera to the orphanage so that pictures of the kids could be put up on the website. The camera is at Geoffrey’s house.
Geoffrey charges (or rather was charging) $80 for a ride to and from the airport, he made both Jens and Melda pay the $80 even though they were coming together, the same with Ben and Mila, who also happened to come in the same trip as German Laura. Recently Geoffrey started to refuse trips back to the airport, stating that the $80 was only for one way (on matatus you can get to Nairobi for the equivalent of $2). We looked on his website and he had changed one part of it to say that it was only one way, but another part of it still said 2 ways, fucking idiot.
A few weeks ago, the only bad member of staff, Dona, was caught beating the kids (twice in one day). Everyone wanted her fired, Geoffrey said he would have to think about it and talk to the kids. THERE IS NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT. Dona is still here. Ann and Devin had many meetings with him saying that she needed to go, it never happened.
On Friday everything erupted, Ana had a really angry phone conversation with Geoffrey in which he was denying her a lift to Nairobi on Saturday. Remember that Ana paid $80 for transport AND double the volunteer fee, yet she was refused a lift to Nairobi. Ann and Devin got involved and eventually decided that they were going to leave (they had been thinking about it for a while, mainly due to the Dona thing and not being given the type of power and experience they were promised, also with things getting tenser they wanted to get their kids Naya and Kai out of there). They sent Geoffrey a message saying that they were going to leave on Sunday. Geoffrey then ridiculously sent a message back, one part I can remember from it was “this is total BETRAYAL”, the jist of it was that he was going to try to get them deported. Devin and Ann then planned to leave on Saturday to try to avoid conflict. With Geoffrey’s request they sent him an email (along with cc’ing it into many organizations that had been link with the project, future volunteers, the American embassy, as it had Geoffrey’s text quoted in it) outlining all the reason why he’s a slimy little bastard and they were leaving. Cassie got on facebook, and found all of the volunteers that were planning on coming and contacted them with what was going on. People have sent emails to “a broader view” and “idealist.org” and other organizations that list WWB with information about what Geoffrey’s been doing, trying to hit him where it hurts, his wallet.
Saturday came and Edith (Geoffrey’s greedy wife) arrived before Ann, Devin, Naya and Kai had left. She didn’t say much until Ann and Devin’s ride came and we started loading their stuff, she couldn’t stop them though. After they left, Edith spoke with Sabrina (she’s been here the longest) for a long time. She kept asking for the Microfinance money, which Sabrina stongly denied her. All the volunteers got together after and wrote down some points that we wanted to bring up in a meeting with Geoffrey and Edith, as Edith had said that Geoffrey was on his way. The first attempt at the meeting wasn’t a success because, as you can imagine all the volunteers feel strongly about their money going to the orphans, not being spent on Edith’s hair or Geoffrey’s suits, so at times lots of people were talking at once. Geoffrey shunned the financial questions saying we’d have to speak with the treasurer who is in Nairobi. There isn’t a treasurer, or a board, there’s just Geoffrey and Edith, and of course their lies and greed. We asked for an email address, if we could go and meet him, what his name was, he eventually uttered a Mr. something and Sabrina asked him to write it down, he passed it to Edith to write down, who obviously hadn’t listened, as she wrote down something different. It did get a little silly with people talking over each other, Geoffrey said he wanted to meet with the kids and while he did we should choose some representatives. We chose Alena, who kept calm in the first meeting, and Sabrina as shes been here the longest. I don’t know what Geoffrey said to the Kids, but some of them were upset afterwards, I only hope it wasn’t anything bad against Ann and Devin or any of the other volunteers.
Unsurprisingly nothing much got resolved in the meeting. It’s only Geoffrey and Edith that can solve this and unfortunately I don’t think they will. We all know they have been scamming money that should be going to these kids, but I worry that he will just find replacement development managers (Ann and Devin) get new volunteers and carry on. All of us are leaving during this week, Sabrina and Doug go to Uganda tomorrow, I’m going to Lamu with English and German Laura and Cassie. The rest leave next weekend. Doug comes back and has paid till December. I do not know if he will stay. I am going to come back on 18th Aug, without paying, for up to a week, and see what happens, then I will go back to Lamu until German Laura leaves and then fly to Thailand.
There is of course the other way of looking at all of this. This was still one of the cheapest African based volunteer projects that I found, and if I’d gone with a company it still would have meant that not all the money goes to the cause. Some of the money does get spent for the kids benefit, and they love volunteers coming here (which won’t happen for a while now that we have basically nuked it with the help of Facebook, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the facebook group was gone pretty soon) and the work that I’ve done on the education centre, bio gas, animal enclosure, shamba, etc has all been helpful for the place, staff and kids, and when I applied to come here I wasn’t against paying $90 a week to give that help and have this experience, which has been fantastic on the surface. But the problem is that this place could be so much greater with out Geoffrey’s greed. The kids could be in a better school, there’s a Don Bosco school not far away that charges $10 a month for kids to go there, why isn’t some of the volunteers’ money being spent on that? The staff get paid less per month than each volunteer pays a week. Zack, Geoffrey’s own fucking brother, has a wife and two kids that he sees only once every two months because he can’t afford the commute to get there, let alone the cost of moving them here.
So if we destroy this place as much as we hoped, then it will hurt the kids in the short term, they wont have all the volunteers around to show them the love and support they get now, but in the long term maybe Geoffrey will change his ways, put more of the money into the orphanage and these kids will have a better future.
The only thing left to say is that Geoffrey and Edith took the internet (and blamed the kids when questioned) so I probably can’t post this at least till Wednesday. There’s only me and Sabrina here today, the rest have gone to Nairobi so they’re going to stop at an internet café and send emails far quicker than they could here, so taking the internet didn’t stop anything.
David
Ok, I wrote this on not the Sunday just gone, not the one before, but the one before that (I can't do dates anymore). Since then Geoffrey has "suspended the volunteer program" and refunded people for time they've paid for but have had to leave early because of this mess. I also got an email stating that he is making these changes:
1. Firing the social worker (Dona) who was found guilty of abusing children.
2. Employing an additional staff to be responsible with all WWB finances (sponsorship, women, sanitary, volunteer) books and financial records. The director will no longer keep the books.
3. To maintain highest financial accountability
4. To review the policy of WWB and implement it strictly – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
5. To make a clear breakdown of the volunteer fees – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
6. To maintain the number of volunteers under 10.
7. To operate WWB with highest values, transparency, accountability, honesty, morality and others for the good of children, volunteers and staff.
8. Review the child sponsorship and make it clear to all the sponsors where money is going.
9. To form an international board – under discussion
10. To keep the children at the forefront of everything. 1. Firing the social worker (Dona) who was found guilty of abusing children.
2. Employing an additional staff to be responsible with all WWB finances (sponsorship, women, sanitary, volunteer) books and financial records. The director will no longer keep the books.
3. To maintain highest financial accountability
4. To review the policy of WWB and implement it strictly – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
5. To make a clear breakdown of the volunteer fees – Aaron & Kaitlin to help on this.
6. To maintain the number of volunteers under 10.
7. To operate WWB with highest values, transparency, accountability, honesty, morality and others for the good of children, volunteers and staff.
8. Review the child sponsorship and make it clear to all the sponsors where money is going.
9. To form an international board – under discussion
10. To keep the children at the forefront of everything.
I've been in Lamu for the past week, one of the weirdest but most interesting places I have ever been, i'll put more about it at another time though, as right now I need to book a flight to Thailand and I am in Thika on my way back to the orphanage to check out what's going on. I'm going to stay in Makuyu and eat my own food, so i'm not costing Geoffrey anything.
David
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