They called me Silwal

It's the golden hour as we meander through the beach at Luanda Rombo, the village next to Alekii. Bathed in the evening sun the main street is a chaos of activity. Several children from my school are chasing after a makeshift football made from carefully collected leftover plastic bags tied together with broken fishing lines whilst cooking stoves waft over steam from ugali pots cooked by mothers looking on. In the distance I can hear the pocho mill whirring it's daily routine as a queue of patient girls exchange the day's gossip waiting to grind their freshly harvested maize. 

In many ways it's an idyllic scene. About as far from the rat race as you could get, laughter in abundance and a happy melancholy that hangs in the air. The local shop keeper, barber, and a few drunken fishermen greet me and I return each of them in Luo, their mother tongue.

Apart from London where I was brought up and now live, and Manchester where I studied, Luanda Rombo is the place I've spent most time and know best in the whole world.

The literal translation into English is Sheep's Stone which refers to the old grazing pastures for shepherds and farmers to bring their livestock to drink from the lake. Today the village is home to a few hundred Luo people which centres around a small beach where fishing boats rock gently in the evening breeze. Women are collecting omena, small fish, from nets on the ground where they've been drying the morning's catch in the sun.

Omena are tiny fish which form the cornerstone of the local diet. They are typically dried, and then boiled or fried. For the uninitiated both the smell and flavour can be overpowering and it takes a while to build up a tolerance, but it's cheap and full of protein which is why Luos love it.

Typically it will be the women who buy direct from the boats in the morning, dry and sell omena in the sun and sell in local markets. For many it's the only way they know how to make a living for their families. Lake Victoria has been significantly over-fished and fishermen have reported a fall in catch over the last few years meaning there is less omena to sell and more competition between women who want to buy it.

This, combined with a staggeringly high HIV infection rate(at least one in four across the county and much higher by the beaches) means that women like Sarah* are forced into having sex with fishermen to win their favour and make sure that they are first in line to buy fish. These fishermen will often have several relationships with different women across the island which contributes to the spread of the virus. This is known as 'Jaboya' around the lake and is widespread, found in every beach where there is omena fishing.

Other women like Anne* who manages a boat are forced to have sex with fishermen just to make sure that they keep working for them and don't move to another boat. When we interview Anne for our documentary she calls them parasites who feed off her. Anne also tells us that she is HIV positive. Sarah is still to be tested.

The fishermen are fundamentally flawed characters, living from one day to the next. Drinking, drugs and gambling are all the norm rather than the exception, money coming and going too easily and too quickly.

We meet Ezekiel who's bloodshot eyes and slurred speech betray all the signs off a life lived for today rather than tomorrow. He tells us that his life fishing is hard, and is getting harder as they catch less and less fish. He says he drinks and smokes bhang because they help with the cold at night, and that most fishermen do the same. He also says he has a girlfriend who he sells fish to at another beach across the lake from his wife and family.

I feel like I should be angry or disgusted with Ezekiel, but in the end I feel a deep sympathy for him. There are no choices for men like him other than to work on the boats in hard conditions, and the short term nature of living hand to mouth gives rise to alcoholism and drug abuse when men are continually away from their families for long periods.

More significantly though it feels like Ezekiel's life has little purpose, one day staggering into another devoid of plans or aspirations for the future. It's like he just exists rather than actually lives.

This is a stark contrast to the amazing women that we meet, who although faced with serious hardship and struggle exert a tremendous warmth and humour. Spending time with Sarah and her nine year old son gives an insight what real purpose means for local women who would do anything for their children. At the end of the day these are people who's environment and circumstances shape their lives but don't necessarily define them.

Generally Luos are good natured people characterised by the Lake - typically laid back and easy going, funny and quick to make jokes but ultimately extremely hard working which comes with the territory being a fishing community.

They are the third biggest ethnic group in Kenya and although they have never been in power, but have played an important role in Kenya's history. In 1963 as Kenya became an independent country it was Tom Mboya, a Luo from Rusinga, who mobilised international support for the new country, making relationships with the West and in particular promoting university partnerships with America which is how Barack Obama's father first made it to the states on a scholarship programme.

In 1969 Tom Mboya was assassinated in Nairobi, and although never proven many Luos believe that his murder was politically motivated to keep him out of power. At his trial, the assassin referred to a 'Big Man' who should have been standing trial instead, possibly referring to a higher conspiracy from the ruling party.

Today the leader of the opposition coalition, Raila Odinga, is Luo and is currently mobilising support for a referendum on whether the government should stay in power. He needs one million signatures under the country's new constitution to make this happen and there will be significant consequences for the country if he's successful in reaching this target.  

As I sit down by the bank of the shore to watch the setting sun paint the lake and the sky one last time, I replay the last three months. There have been difficult times for sure - there are significant social problems here on Rusinga and during darker moments it can be difficult to see the light and not feel like the whole situation is helpless.

However together with Alekii, some talented local fixers and the community we have launched an impact investment club which raised just under £11,000 in a month, researched and launched a consumer transport business and shot a film about Jaboya and life on the fishing  communities. This won't necessarily change the world of course, but the collective efforts of the last ten weeks should sustain Alekii and raise the profile of the community and the issues they face.

It's just the start, and there's a lot to do still, but at a glance we've been successful in what we originally set out to do.

It also occurs to me that I've come to really identify with Luos. Their food, their politics, their language, their music, their problems and their jokes have all become mine as I've lived here.

I'm honoured on my last day on the island as the Alekii family offer me a plot of land to own and build on which I'm humble to accept. This will be the next project I think, to build something lasting which can benefit the local community but also be mine to use when I visit.

I've absolutely loved learning their language which is peppered with smiles and laughter and I plan to try and become one of only a handful of whites who are fluent in my lifetime.

My favourite phrase, and the one that earns me most respect, is 'A ja Luo gi chunya' which translates to 'I'm Luo in my heart' which I now understand to be true. I  know that I will return many times to this part of the world which has become a second home with a second family.

As the sky kaleidoscopes orange to purple the peace and serenity is abruptly shattered by a gaggle of Alekii kids who descend on me London riot style. Most of them jump around me shouting my English name, but Caroline, a very bright girl who also plays an aggressive Roy Kean type enforcer role in midfield greets me by my Luo nickname. 'Silwal' means 'brown' in Luo (rather than being referred to generically as musungo which means white) which was given to me by an elder and adopted by Luanda Rombo residents to my delight.   

Darkness approaches and people shout greetings and farewells as I walk up the dusty hill away from the village, and I smile inwardly feeling accepted - they called me Silwal.

* Name changed / real photos not used. 

A viewpoint from a cultural crossroad

We Jackson men are known for our washing up skills. The old man is so keen in fact, that unwitting dinner guests often have their have their half-finished plates whisked away ninja style from under their noses to the kitchen.

My brother and sister and I were raised to do our fair share, and to value equality and fairness, in this case that if someone else had slaved over hot pots and pans all afternoon they should be allowed to put their feet up in front of Corrie afterwards.

Growing up our family had fairly fluid roles when it came to work and home life. My Mum successfully launched and ran several businesses and supported the family when my Dad was made redundant and decided to do his Masters degree. Perhaps nothing out of the ordinary today but it felt a bit special at the time to be picked up from school by your Dad who let you sit precariously on his bike's handlebars as we zig zagged down the hill past my friends walking home with their mothers.

This belief that although we might not be born the same, that we all have the right to be treated with equal respect and be given the same opportunities is fundamental. For me personally, it's part of what I think makes us human.

Although certain progressive strides have been made in Kenya (for example making female circumcision illegal), the general attitude here towards women still grates with me.

I'm told by an elder, 'Why would you wash your own clothes when you have sisters?' which is symptomatic of the male outlook. The conversation sticks with me and I keep seeing this attitude in the roles that are prescribed to men and women. For instance, to me it's entirely unfair when young women are expected to go out and work and then come home to fetch the water and do all the cooking, cleaning and washing whilst men are waited on.

It strikes me that culturally Luos are at a half way point between the new world (modern, educated women working in professional jobs) and the old one (preconceptions about women's work and place in the home). Elsewhere in society there are more serious social problems associated with this mind-set.  

This week I've spent time with local NGO Dev Link who work on promoting human rights and safety for women. Discrimination is rife when it comes to gender, reports of violence against women are often ignored and the HIV/AIDs epidemic has left huge numbers of vulnerable to abuse in the face of abject poverty.

The root causes are complex, but often stem from an old Luo tradition of men 'inheriting' wives in the event of a death of a husband. Salmon, a kind and compassionate programme manager at Dev Link tells me that in generations past the tradition was meant to protect and provide for women, to ensure that the deceased's name lived on.

A polygamous people, a brother-in-law or other close relative would traditionally take on the inheritance of the wife. In generations past, to have multiple wives signified success and the means to provide, and men with only one wife would not be permitted a voice in community discussions for this reason.

Although attitudes are changing and fewer and fewer Luos take multiple wives, the practice of inheritance still persists. Again, the old and the new clash, sometimes with grim consequences. Today, Rusinga has a transient population as poverty inland forces people to relocate away from their families to the coast to find work as fishermen. In parallel, the HIV epidemic (27% infection rate across the island at the last count) mean that there are more deaths and consequently more women left isolated from their extended families and without a dependable source of income.

Wife inheritance in this setting can become abusive, where women are often forced to accept the offer of a local man in the absence of their extended family in exchange for security. These men are often motivated by sex or wealth rather than the intention to support a grieving and vulnerable family. Violence is not uncommon in these circumstances, and I'm shaken by one case where an inherited wife was first abandoned whilst pregnant before being brutally attacked with a machete by the new husband. Luckily she survived, but there have been a number of murders involving wife inheritance. Dev Link tell me that they are seeing at least one new case like this every month, and estimate that many more go unreported.

Although Kenyans have a constitution of rights, actually accessing them is another matter. Corruption, favouritism and the sheer cost of travelling to and from court for trial has meant that accessing justice through the police and the judiciary is far from universal.

More broadly, many other widows are forced into a practice called 'Jabyoa' which is where women are forced to offer themselves sexually to fishermen in order to be given the chance to buy fish to sell on for a meagre profit in the local market. The practice is so ingrained that many women don't necessarily see a problem with Jaboya, or at least see it as a necessity or way of life here, yet the health impacts are severe and Jaboya is one of the driving factors of the region's significant HIV rate.  

Essentially the problems facing women are a product of poverty. A combination of a lack of education, lack of opportunities to earn a livelihood and poor access to healthcare result in the narrowing of choices and the accompanying social problems. 

It paints a bleak picture, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the atmosphere on the beaches would be dark and depressed when actually the reverse is true. The women I meet and photograph smile brightly and laugh generously. They are enterprising, and more and more are running their own businesses and managing their own money.

Dev Link is run by a truly inspirational woman called Esther Soti who has set up several projects across the region where girls are rescued from early marriage and abusive relationships, has led campaigns against Jaboya and trains local women to become paralegals to handle human rights abuses in courts.

I hope that this is symptomatic of the next generation and broader cultural and systemic change. Attitudes are shifting slowly, and there is real hope that in the future women will not just be afforded their rights, but become the leaders in their communities, in business and in government.

Pivotal to long term change are like organisations like Alekii delivering primary education to girls to afford them choices in the way they choose to live their lives, who they chose to share them with, and how they make a living.

In the mean time for me it's back to the washing up. I know it's only small, but I'm teaching the younger boys in the family that if they want to play football, first you either cook or you have to do the dishes. That's only fair. 

Dreams from my Grandfather

My grandfather's name was Reg Silletto. What a name. He was, and continues to be, an inspiration to me and I'd like to share why.

My earliest memories of him always involved him peering at me over the business pages of The Daily Telegraph. He was the entrepreneur of the family, a great salesman (and talker), and meticulous with numbers.

The story begins in the 1950's where he'd become sales director of a well established engineering firm in Scotland. He travelled widely, particularly across Northern Ireland and the Republic and got to understand the challenges small farmers faced. In Ireland inherited land was divided between sons rather than passing to the first born meaning that over the centuries farms became smaller and smaller making it extremely difficult to make a decent living.

Following the unexpected death of the firm's well respected managing director, the board decided to bring in a new MD with a very chequered past and a suspected history of defrauding unsuspecting investors. Reg's opinion was that the new guy was a con man, and protested the same to the board. His disapproval was met with deaf ears though, and he was issued an ultimatum - either fall in line or show yourself the door.

                               

He chose the latter. Whether it was out of genuinely out of principle or pride I'll never know. Maybe it was a bit of both. I'd like to believe that his values drove his decision though, that he felt that he couldn't work for alongside others who tolerated dishonesty, and that his complicity would define him accordingly.

Meanwhile, in Denmark a young engineer was working on a new prototype that would eventually revolutionise the farming industry in Ireland. Small but powerful machinery that perfectly suited the small farms found up and down the country. 

If his first decision took principles, the next one took courage. The Danish engineer offered him three prototypes to sell in Ireland and the whole family invested everything they had relocating to Drogheda. The risks were huge, going it alone to sell an unknown, untested product in a foreign country would eventually exhaust all their savings. When they arrived the family were so poor that my Mum had to go to school in her old uniform because they couldn't afford new clothes.

He set up premises on a disused piece of land next to a railway station, painted the new machines himself and sold them. The rest is history, orders came flooding in, a new factory was built and dealerships throughout Ireland, Scotland and England opened. Years later, with delicious irony, he was even offered the opportunity to take over his old firm who by then had fallen on hard times. In the end he decided against it and they eventually went under.

In his later years he branched into property and invested wisely in the stock market. He used to split his portfolio and go head to head with his investment firm which year after year he'd usually outperform.

He wasn't perfect of course. As with so many entrepreneurs who focus so intently on their businesses, his family felt his absence. Although he inspired loyalty, he was a difficult man who wanted things his own way and wasn't tolerant of those who didn't bow to his authority. But at his core, I like to believe that he was a man driven to success, but not at the expense of his principles which is why I respected him so much.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, had Reg been alive today he almost certainly would have believed that many of the problems facing developing countries could be solved through trade and enterprise. And I believe the same.

In her unflinching book Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo highlights the fall out of decades on unchecked government aid doled out to African dictatorships. Put very simply, her argument is two-fold: One, at a systemic level aid made these new African economies inefficient, corrupt and ill equipped to compete on a global scale which is why Asia and South America's growth in comparable free market economies has been significantly faster. Two, that at an individual level aid creates a dependency culture where people and their communities learn to rely on hand outs rather than work towards prosperity.

Across East Africa I've seen the dependency culture for myself. Why would you go out and work or collaborate with your community to improve yourselves when the white man will come and do it for you for free? At Alekii I was angered but not surprised that one of the teachers quipped 'Yes but the musungos (whites) will just pay for everything' whilst talking about the future of the school. 

Working in Uganda I remember a volunteer teacher who bought a pair of shoes for one of her pupils because he had injured his toe on the 3 mile walk to school he did barefoot every day. Completely understandable, but the unintended consequences were grizzly - the following day five or six of her classmates came to school with cuts on their feet that they had inflicted on themselves with razor blades to get new shoes.

This is an isolated, extreme case of course, but perhaps symbolic of the dependency culture and behaviours that we in the West can stimulate through aid.

Clearly philanthropy (and in fact aid) still has an essential role to play in development overseas, particularly with health and humanitarian response where there are scant alternatives. However, for Alekii to stand on its own, the solution has to be free enterprise which can run alongside the school providing a sustainable income and creating jobs and opportunity for the community. The challenge, of course, is capital.

Impact investing has been around for half a decade and is rapidly growing in popularity in the financial sector. It can take various different forms, and investors may expect various different levels of return, however what is common is that there is a measurable impact which is reported alongside the return on investment.

I've always believed that at it's purest sense modern consumerism is a quite a good proxy for democracy. Every time you buy something you vote. You vote for a company's ethical policies, their commitment to workers' safety. Of course this assumes we are all informed consumers which isn't always the case, but the truth is that we hold a lot more power in our everyday spending than we realise.

This is doubly true of our investments where we have real scale and influence to demand that we not only make a good return, but that we also create some positive change that mirrors our own values. I don't see why creating a positive impact and making a return on an investment should be mutually exclusive.

It's for this reason that I'm launching The Alekii Harambee Club - an impact investment club in partnership with the Alekii Centre.

In Kiswahili 'Harambee' literally means 'all pull together', or joining hands as a group, community or even country to achieve a particular goal. It became common language as Kenya gained independence from British colonial rule in the early sixties where the likes of Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya's first president) strove to join the many disparate tribes in search of self determination, unity and prosperity. In modern Kenya the word harambee provokes a sense of togetherness - the Kenyan national football team for example are known as the Harambee stars.

The concept for the club is simple - members will invest in new start up businesses on Rusinga Island that a. provide above market returns for investors and b. deliver benefit to the community by way of education, employment or other social/environmental benefit.

Profits over a fixed term will be divided 50:50 between club members and the Alekii Centre to invest in education, youth training, healthcare and other measurable social impact programmes which will be reported to club members along with their earnings. After the term has expired the enterprise and it's assets are released back to the community.

I know many of you have expressed an interest in this kind of programme in the past. Either because you share these kind of views on development, have become disillusioned with traditional philanthropy or are just looking for good investment opportunities for your portfolios.

As I write I'm in Nairobi dotting the I's and crossing the T's of our pilot enterprise business plan which looks extremely promising as well as a club constitution for new members.

I'll be approaching some of you directly with our plans over the coming weeks, but if you're interested in joining the Alekki Harambee Club then please comment or email me at davidshanejackson@gmail.com and I'll make sure you're part of the first initial offering which is due to complete in August.

We plan to start small and prove the concept works, but our aspirations are much larger. The beauty of an enterprise approach to development is that it can be quickly scaled, and I hope in ten years time the club will become a significant force for good in the local area backed by a group of happy investors in the UK.

I owe a lot to my Grandfather. Many of the decisions I've made in my life simply wouldn't have been possible without him and I've always held myself accountable to his ideals and values. In launching the Alekii Harambee Club I hope to, in my own small way, emulate the traits that made him great - becoming an entrepreneur, acting according to my values and having courage. 

I hope you'll consider joining me.

On true grit and determination

'Liet charma' - it means I'm hot in Luo, the mother tongue of the Luo tribe who live along the shores of Lake Victoria in South West Kenya. Sweating, I count eleven people crammed into the bashed up Toyota estate waiting for one last passenger to reach full capacity so we can leave. The owner's shouting manically  at no one in particular 'Mbita, Mbita, Mbita" which makes me smile though as it means that I'm almost back in my home away from home.

I'd arrived via Abu Dhabi and Nairobi. I'd been visiting friends on the way, and the abundance and excesses of the Middle East feels obscene here where the so many survive on less than $1 a day. Mbita, my destination, is the town on Rusinga Island. It's beautiful, but poor. Set on Lake Victoria, fishing dominates the local economy with many businesses living and dying based on the success or failure of last night's catch.

In Nairobi I'd attended a strategy meeting for AMREF, one of Africa's largest health NGOs where they'd been setting their business plan 2014-17. Their HQ based in Nairboi, AMREF is a proudly African organisation with a mantra 'African solutions to African problems'.

This chimes nicely with the reason for my trip. For six years the Alekii school which delivers free or subsidised  education to children affected by poverty and HIV/AIDs has survived on donations from the West. Volunteers like me have contributed to building a new school building in 2012, and more recently the incredible generosity of donors from the UK have kept the school running paying essential running costs like teacher's salaries. But Alekii is a Kenyan school, run by a capable group of Kenyans and our vision is to become self sustainable and relinquish the dependence on donations.

Tackling HIV/AIDS is a large part of AMREF's work, and this is particularly prominent along the shores of Lake Victoria where the infection rate is as high as 40%. Part of the reason for this is a local custom called 'Jaboya', or exchanging sex for fish. Women, often widows, are forced to offer themselves to fishermen in exchange for being first in line to buy the catch to sell at the market and make a meagre living to support their families. Jaboya is one the main reasons that the HIV/AIDS infection rate is so high in this region, and we plan to shoot a short documentary to highlight the problem, thus forming the second reason for me returning to the island.

Back to the overcrowded Toyota and a man with a chicken has jammed himself contortionist style into the boot and we're off. As the island peeks appear over the bumpy ridge, I worry about the state that I'll find the school in. The last two years have not been easy for the family who run the it - in 2012 a tropical storm blew the roof off the new school building, the project coordinator was evicted losing his family home and business in the process, and in May of this year another storm collapsed a wall in the family home putting their grandfather in hospital with a broken leg.

When I eventually arrive at the family home which is next to the school grounds I'm pleased to see that everyone is in good spirits. Alekii is truly a family run organisation, and I'm greeted warmly by the sons, daughters, grandchildren and grandparents who run the day to day operations and will be my hosts for the next two months.

They tell me that the school is surviving, but barely. Fundraising has taken a back seat while the family focus on rebuilding themselves after recent set backs. The teachers have not been paid this month and the family are scraping together the little they have to try and continue the school's feeding programme of daily porridge.

I'm a fundraiser, and I feel I should relish this kind of challenge but I feel nervous. There's a lot riding on this trip and we need to get it right. The following day we begin putting a plan together. There are essentially four income streams for the school: contributions from parents, the school's volunteer programme, grants from institutional funders and enterprise projects.

We focus on the quick wins and begin contacting prospective volunteers which result in a handful of confirmations and we're off. We meet with local offices from various government departments and chase funding applications and begin planning future applications for more significant infrastructure projects. The school needs a new classroom to meet the demand of the community and the Kenyan government are offering funding for this kind of work.

As we progress, I feel more confident now that the building blocks are in place. We pay the teachers who have waited patiently for their salaries and budget carefully for the next quarter.

Luos have a saying 'Mos mos' which means slowly slowly, or bit by bit. This is the pace here and it takes me a while to adjust to back to it. The first order of the day on arrival was to arrange some wheels. In the UK buying a bike would be a relatively straight forward affair but here it takes two full days, involves a 200 mile round trip and even then the pedal falls off having ridden the thing for just two minutes.

I'm not complaining though -  my routine is wonderful. The day starts at 5.30 with kickboxing training made possible by two kind friends in the UK who donated the equipment. My training partners, both named Evans, are tough young athletes who are both training for army trials later in the year. I can tell you that putting in the miles with Kenyans is no joke, although on our first outing a crowd of school kids join us on our run and a group of around 30 jog through the town in a bizarre scene that amuses the locals. This week I felt buoyed keeping pace until I realised that Evans was wearing flip flops.  

Solar power is coming to the island which is brilliant to see, and there is an ambitious plan to bring panels and lights to every household over the next year. For now though, there is no power at the school and I spend my mornings at the Solar Hub working to plan our fundraising sat next to bright, well educated young Kenyans who are learning everything from Word to Photoshop. There's so much potential here, if not the jobs to make use of it.

Afternoons are spent coaching the school's football team, and inspired by England's woeful performance against Uruguay I decide that if I'll be successful if I leave with the team playing a decent passing game and being able to control the ball. Now wherever I go into the village there's guaranteed to be a gaggle of youngsters yelling 'Pass, touch, pass' at me. Not quite Ferguson-esque yet but we'll get there.

Having been here for two weeks now I'm struck again by an overwhelming sense of grit and determination in the people I meet. People are tough here because you have to be. There's no safety net for emergencies or NHS when your family gets sick. The school has survived in the face of significant hardship only because of the will of the community. Yet there is a genuine belief that together we can ensure that it continues to grow and thrive.

Right now we're busy putting business plans together now for an enterprise scheme which will sustain the school for the long term and create jobs for the community which I'm excited to share, but aren't quite ready yet. The numbers look like they add up though, and we're all determined to make it work.