Portlander sparks hope in African village

By Stephen Frey
The Portland Upside
November 2009

Stephen Frey’s visit to a village in Kenya, Africa, helps residents discover their untapped potential.

Last year, 18-year-old Portland native Stephen Frey traveled around Africa doing community development work. He wound up living alone in a Masai village where he and a group of local teenagers started a community development organization from the ground up. Here, in his own words, is how it happened.

It was with utmost confusion that I traveled to Kenya in February 2009 for what seemed to be a misguided, spontaneous 10-week detour.

My exhilaration to be on the journey was overshadowed by an uneasy feeling in my gut: I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Sure, I wanted to do something useful to help. But what does that mean for an inexperienced 18-year-old kid?

Strangely enough, the feeling of uncertainty became my most powerful tool in connecting with the local people.

In the beginning I came to Africa to do a study/volunteer program in South Africa. It lasted five months, but I felt I was not meant to go home immediately afterward. For some unknown reason I felt I should go to Kenya instead.

One of the volunteer team members, Lantoo ‘Israel’ Sanchi from Kenya, invited me to live in his family’s Masai village for a while. Together we began tossing around ideas to help their community. Whether it came from intuition or plain insanity, the whole trip was a last-minute decision and we didn’t really know what would come out of it.

Once in Kenya, I immediately began questioning my reason to be there.

“What can I do to really help here?” I thought. “There are one billion people in Africa, 30 million in Kenya alone. What can one person do? I am an outsider. I don’t know the language, I don’t understand the culture… how do I even strike up a conversation?”

I felt powerless.

But coming from that outsider’s perspective helped me to see an untapped potential in the local people, a potential that is often overlooked.

While their fertile soil and immense quantities of land give them the opportunity to grow enough food to feed millions of people, the livelihood of many Kenyans has been squelched by continuous drought and economic decay.

Kenyans are smart. With enough economic training they could create business opportunities and lift their economy. Foreigners already come in to Kenya to harvest the natural resources. Why can’t the local people benefit from the land, too?

These thoughts sparked an idea. We needed something sustainable, which did not entail giving handouts as I had previously been trained to do. I realized I was not there to teach community members, but to create a platform for them to continue teaching themselves after I left.

So after arriving in the village, I befriended some of the other teenagers and began asking them zillions of questions. We brought the community together, looked at the available resources, and asked, “How can we make the most of what we have?” Through many discussions, they began to see their potential.

The final idea for the project came seemingly out of nowhere, about three weeks after my arrival in Kenya. The Masais crafted a vision for their community project and to express this vision, they called the group “Dupoto Naidimayu,” meaning “Prosperity Is Possible.”

And after many weeks of enthusiastic effort from the “Dupoto Naidimayu” team, the vision became a reality. We launched the Village Possibilities Centre to serve as a communal gathering point where people can find information they need to help themselves. Informational resources include home health care, sanitation and water purification, HIV/AIDS prevention, agriculture, irrigation, environmental preservation, economics, micro-enterprise, political awareness, modern technology, and college education options.

We found a way to get an Internet connection in the village and started collecting books for a library. We were also certified by the Kenyan government as a Community-Based Organization. The Centre now operates as a library, community forum, Internet café, computer school, and headquarters for the other community groups in the area. Soon they will start hosting workshops, classes and village gatherings on the topics above.

The project seemed to create a new posture and attitude in the community members. The whole atmosphere was pretty exciting. As people heard about our center, they said things like, “I’ve always wanted to do something like that,” and “this is what our community has been waiting for!”

We later found that large non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) were implementing the same model elsewhere in Kenya. That really blew us away because we were simply making things up as we went. Before our attempt, some community groups had started but faded out. Many of the local people already wanted to help their community but didn’t know where to start.

One of them, Nicholas Kisoso, expressed it well.

“Before this, we all used to sit around by ourselves, wanting to do something for our people, wondering if we were the only ones who wanted it.”

Nicholas now serves as the head of the local leadership team.

While the project snowballed and local involvement grew, I relocated back to the United States after only 10 weeks. Although I have handed over the reins to the local leadership team, I continue to stay involved long-distance. We plan for the project to continue growing for years to come.

As for my friend Israel Sanchi, his sights are set on becoming President of Kenya. He’s already started to run for election in 2012 as the local county commissioner, something never done by someone so young, in his culture.
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I remember looking out the window over the vast drought-stricken Kenyan landscape as the plane landed at Nairobi International Airport last February. I wondered then if I had a place there.
Looking back, I realize that my feeling of powerlessness helped me identify with the Masai tribe’s situation. As they learned to believe in their own ideas, they taught me to believe in mine. We unwittingly helped each other to go through the same process.

After all, the community project had been stirring in them for years. In my opinion, I didn’t do much. They were already capable. It just helped to have someone tell them they could do it.

The real project wasn’t books or computers. The Centre was only a manifestation of the real gift to the Masai: hope, a belief, a vision that seemed to have been lost in previous attempts at community improvement. The real work was accomplished in their minds. The building could burn down tomorrow and I wouldn’t be too upset. They’d rebuild, because the vision is in them now.

The Masai now possess the idea that they have power, they can do it, that they aren’t crazy to dream of a better life for themselves. Prosperity is possible­—even in Africa—when one makes the most of what one has.

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Learn more about the Kenya project at www.RiseUpVillage.org

Stephen Frey is now back with his family in Clackamas, Oregon. He is searching for like-minded people, ideas and opportunities. Please connect at stephenfrey5@gmail.com or FlashesOfTinfoil.com