As told by Sean Hewens:

A Busia local

We arrive in Busia via a flight from Nairobi to Kisumu and a two-hour taxi ride west to Busia. Busia is a border town that straddles the Kenya - Uganda border. It merits a measly three lines in the guidebook and we don’t know quite what to expect. We do know that Busia is the hometown for Maria’s Libraries, our partner organization for the MobileCAP initiative in Kenya. When Eva and Ariel aren’t working behind the scenes to make things work for Smallbean at our four locations around Kenya, they are working with the community in Busia to build a new and very ambitious library. Even before we arrive in Busia, the phone calls begin. A call from Maria, the namesake of “Maria’s Libraries” and the organizer of the project site in Busia. From Jimmy, the local computer guru in town, who runs an Internet shop and other various businesses such as installing wireless internet and importing various electronic gadgets from Nairobi to Busia. And Conrad, the hotel manager at the Blue York Motel, who I’ve been emailing about reservations for the last few weeks and seems inordinately excited about our stay at his hotel. As we soon discover, the calls from Maria, Jimmy, and Conrad are a preview of the wonderful hospitality we will experience throughout our five days in Busia.

Trucks along the road

The first things that strike me as we roll into town are the trucks. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, all lined up on the left side of the road and waiting to cross the border into Uganda. 80% are petroleum trucks stamped with “transport goods” on the side of their tanks. As we move slowly through town, dodging hundreds and hundreds of bicycle taxis streaming in both directions, the line of trucks keeps going for, we are later told, 5 kilometers on an average day. At the hotel we dump our bags and head off to meet Jimmy at his Internet shop. He’s friendly and very dapperly dressed. We eat at a local Kenyan place. I receive a “get out of jail” free card due to my vegetarian status and have chapatti and greens. The rest of team Smallbean samples both liver and intestines, which don’t seem to go down very smooth (Jimmy has no such problems). After lunch, Jimmy shows us the site of the new library, right now just an empty field, but apparently owing to a series of land disputes and typical Kenyan paperwork, just to obtain a title on the land has taken several years and is definitely a victory. The new library will break ground later this year and are all very excited.

We return to the hotel and are surprised by the arrival of Lies and Maruca, two Belgian friends of mine from back in the day. Lies and I were coworkers at the United Nations in late 2008 and Maruca is a teacher, both of whom I traveled with for about 10 days at the tail end of a previous trip to Africa. They are in Uganda randomly for the month and have traveled to Busia to assist in teaching the MobileCAP. And just after their arrival, Maria arrives to welcome us. She is sixty and a retired government employee of some sort. She now operates a banana farm with her husband, who is a very young 87 years of age and is a retired economist who held high positions both in Kenya and the East African Union. Maria is a barrel of energy. She is shortly joined by Geoffrey, the secretary of the library association. We sit down to a very nice dinner on the Blue York veranda, a location where we will spend many of our evenings over the coming days. It’s very clear from the outset that Maria and Geoffrey have done their homework on the Citizen Archivist Project. Both are full of scores of ideas about who should be interviewed and how the project should go about documenting Busia. Maria is very firm that such a project will definitely take longer than the five weeks of the scheduled pilot. With a broad smile, I explain that this is absolutely OK and that we very much hope that the Citizen Archivist Project in Busia extends well beyond just five weeks and becomes a permanent feature in the new library. Dinner moves along and the evening comes to an end, with all of us exhausted after waking at 5:00am to reach Busia.

Group shot outside the Busia Municipal Building

We awake rested and ready for class. We walk to what appears to be the Busia municipal building where Maria has reserved a conference room for the training. We arrive at 10:00am. The rest of the class is rather slow in arriving, with the first coming through the door at approximately 10:30 and most folks arriving by 11:00. The class is very full! Unlike our other sites which were exclusively students under the age of 30, Busia has a total of approximately 15 students ranging in age from Maria and the meze, both of whom are 60 older, down to Joseph, Edna and Esther, the librarians who appear to be in their early or mid-20’s. Originally, the setup in Busia had been for a handful of Citizen Archivists and students to participate in the class, perhaps 6 at the most. As the training drew closer, and the enthusiasm in Busia grew, the class acquired “observers,” folks affiliated with the library project in Busia who would attend the class to learn, but not to participate. As expected, the observers are very enthusiastic and keen on participating in the class as well. Luckily we have five volunteers and a hodgepodge of cameras and recorders to supplement the MobileCAP training materials (which were intended for a much smaller class size). The Busia enthusiasm is amazing, but it’s also a little exhausting from a logistical perspective!

Our diverse array of volunteers and participants

A couple of differences from the other two sites quickly become apparent in Busia. In EWaus we had George and Leboo, the Nairobi University students home for the summer whom were quite proficient at computers and more than happy to teach the others in the class. In Kibera we had Ray and Steve, both of whom served the same purpose. In both sites, we were certain, that, if all else failed, these four individuals knew enough about computers to ensure that data was being uploaded, processed and stored properly on the computers. It was a great feeling and made our job much easier. In Busia, it’s a bit more of a challenge. Although we have Jimmy and his friend Wycliffe (a computer science major!) attending portions of the training, they are much more involved as personal support and not as intimately involved in the Citizen Archivist Project. Likewise, we have Carson, an American living in Busia for two years who will serve as the long-term volunteer for the site. Unfortunately, she’s traveling for the week of the training here in Busia. As a result, we have a room full of enormously excited and enthusiastic Citizen Archivists, but it’s absolutely imperative that we get down to brass tacks and make sure that these 15 wonderful students understand the basics of the computer by the end of the training. If the Busia class can be criticized (and let me just say that I love these guys!) it’s that they have thought about the project so thoroughly and are so enthusiastic that they sometimes get lost in the details of who to interview and what questions to ask etc., that they lose sight of the absolute importance of learning the basic computer skills that will make for a successful Citizen Archivist Project in Busia. I am confident these skills will come in time.

Practice interviews

After teaching the basic camera and interviewing skills in the morning and early afternoon of the first day of training, it’s time to brainstorm questions for the scavenger hunt. Let me just say that this exercise took approximately 20 to 30 minutes at both EWaus and Kibera. Again, the purpose is to choose 10 relatively simple but representative people / sites / customs / traditions / places from the town and document them using both the camera and the recorders. Upon returning to the classroom, it provides the students with their first chance to jump into the computers and practice the uploading and organization of data themselves. But, before any of this can happen, we have to come up with the scavenger hunt clues. In Busia, this results in a wildly entertaining back and forth discussion that takes close to two hours. Suggestions for clues include, locating someone smuggling goods across the Kenya - Uganda border. Or, finding a corrupt government official that allegedly works at an office nearby and asking him some questions about his job. Or, walking to a local recording studio that just opened in town (the first of its kind) and interviewing the owner and recording some live performances. The list goes on and it’s clear that everyone in the group is swinging for the fences. What a funny group. So ambitious and so enthusiastic to truly record what it means to live in Busia in 2010. Eventually we whittle down the clues to what can reasonably be accomplished tomorrow morning and get ready to call it a day.

"Yes" voters in their green shirts

One last note, tomorrow there is a political rally in town. As some of you might know, there is a hugely important constitutional referendum in Kenya on August 4th. The vote is very simple. “Yes” or “ No” for the new constitution. So far, almost everyone we’ve met has been very pro-“Yes” for the new constitution, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t strong “No” voters around the country. After the violence that followed the election violence in 2007, many people are wary that some of the same violence will occur this time around. Tomorrow, there will be a “Yes” rally in Busia and, much like the Masai market day in EWaus, this will be a fabulous opportunity for the students to use their new skills as Citizen Archivists to document a very cool event in town. We make plans accordingly and somehow manage to get everyone out of the conference room and the training ended by 6:30pm. Have I mentioned that I love Busia but it’s absolutely exhausting?