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