Freeplay Foundation
Tom Hanks and Kristine Pearson holding a Freeplay windup radio
Kristine Pearson with Tom Hanks, who knows the power of radio

Tackling Energy Poverty

Lifeline Energy Blog / Kristine Pearson’s blog

Kristine Pearson’s blog

I’ve never looked back – my 24 years in Africa

January 2, 2012

By Kristine Pearson

When I immigrated to South Africa from America in January 1989, South African President PW Botha hadn’t yet suffered the stroke that catapulted FW de Klerk to power. George Bush Sr was sworn in as America’s 41st president and President Michael Gorbachov led what was called the USSR.  Civil wars ripped apart Angola, Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia and Mozambique – all had linkages to Cold War – a crippling experience for Africa with long-term consequences.  The US, USSR and China supported various regimes and guerrilla movements across the continent.

South Africa's first legal protest

Now in its last days, the Cold War gave rise to social movements like Solidarity’s legalisation in Poland, the Berlin Wall falling and killings in Tiananmen Square.  Anti-apartheid campaigns were gaining momentum, but South Africans were living in a nationwide State of Emergency. Most of the world still glanced the other way at the brutality of the apartheid government and the crimes against humanity committed elsewhere in Africa.  Yet profound changes were underway.

Images of women with flies in their eyes nursing emaciated infants, mass starvation, children wielding AK-47s, dictators in military uniforms, potholed dirt roads and burned out buildings dominated the world media about Africa.  These weren’t the images I knew.  To me, despite the obvious problems, Africa was a continent of immense possibilities, of stunning beauty, with extraordinary people.  Drawn to Africa like a magnet and despite the protestations from family and friends, I knew in my heart that it was the only place I wanted to make my future.

The day Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years

I was privileged to walk in South Africa’s first legal protest march in January 1990 in Cape Town. The following month I sat on the ground 50 yards from Nelson Mandela as he made his historic first speech as a free man. Every month history happened at breakneck speed as apartheid was structurally dismantled.  In April 1994 I stood for hours to vote in South Africa’s first democratic election alongside thousands – office workers, business owners, domestics, gardeners and others dressed in their Sunday best – never allowed to vote before only because they weren’t white.  At the same time that I was casting my ballot, hundreds of thousands were being massacred in the most efficient genocide the world had ever seen in Rwanda.  Both countries could have gone so differently, but each are regarded now as African success stories.

Waiting in line to vote in 1994

During nearly 24 years I’ve travelled to half of Africa’s 54 countries, to modern cities; unserviced slums; overcrowded refugee camps; and remote areas off the map.  When Mozambique received its annual rainfall in four days in in 2000 and while stranded in Maputo, I saw first hand the vital importance of  radio information during an emergency.  While driving through the Sahara in 2002, the sky went dark as a swarm of locusts descended. Days later the creepy insects were still popping out.  Four years ago I trained hundreds of Somali women refugees living in the Dadaab camps how to use our wind-up and solar radios.  Not one woman had ever turned on a radio in her life.  Just last year I was gifted with a Maasai name, Naramatt (the one who milks cows efficiently, I think), by Maasai women that I work with in Kenya. I’ve met with people who had never seen a white person and those who think whites are the cause of their problems.

I’ve witnessed dramatic changes everywhere like the explosive growth of cell phones. I recall cellular service giants Vodacom & MTN in 1994 saying that by 2004 they expected the market to be 500,000 subscribers.  They were wrong by 21 million.  Africa’s cellular network has always been superior to America’s.  The Internet is widely available in every city and large town, but has yet to reach outside metro areas in any scale.

When I first arrived, vehicles in rural areas belonged to the UN, NGOs or governments. People walked long distances to do anything and there were a few bicycles.  A mini-bus taxi wasn’t yet on the roads. Today mini-buses are to me more dangerous than malarial mosquitoes. Traffic and air pollution, by-products and symbols of the middle class, have taken over sleepy cities like Bamako, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. Stores stocked their shelves with items mainly from South Africa or Europe.  Made in China wasn’t seen much.

China’s interest in Africa started decades ago and it’s now a critical supplier of oil, minerals and other raw materials to fuel its still-booming economy. Its economic muscle and influence have increased to the point where now China is Africa’s biggest trading partner worth an estimated $150 billion in 2011, a whopping 30% increase over 2010. China’s influence is evident in South Africa’s refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a tourist visa to attend Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday party.

Unlike the Western approach of insisting on an agenda of democracy, human rights and ‘structural adjustment’ by the IMF, the Chinese seem to have no moral imperative to change Africa.  They don’t seem to tell Africans how to run their countries, to want to convert them to their religious beliefs or turn them into black Chinese as the French did with their ‘colonies’.  Given the economic mess in Europe right now, having diversified investors and business partners is essential for Africa’s increasingly brighter future. Sub-Saharan Africa is the third-fastest growing region in the world, behind China and India.

A market stall in rural Rwanda

Over the past couple of years for my work with Lifeline Energy, I’ve travelled to Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania,  Zambia, Namibia and Mauritius, in addition to South Africa.  Ubiquitous and cheap Chinese products – pots, pans, plastic items, solar lights, batteries, hair accessories, cell phones, soy sauce and rice noodles – line shelves from kiosks to hypermarkets.  You might even think that this is somewhere in Hong Kong; it’s a market stall in rural Rwanda.  Affordability is key for Africans as they move up the economic ladder, which they are doing in record numbers.

Bright orange Chinese construction vehicles can be seen across the continent building much-needed infrastructure.  Nairobi roads have been jammed for so long that I would have supported the Taliban building them. Recently elected President Sata of Zambia ran on an anti-Chinese platform, regularly making anti-Chinese remarks and promising to negotiate better terms for Zambians with Chinese employers. Africans tell me that the Chinese are racist and refuse to mix with them.

From my perspective, the Chinese are just another type of colonialists.   Who knows how many have settled in Africa, but it may be millions and they’re not likely to go home.  They isolate themselves in walled housing units that they’ve built, while bringing in their own foods and contributing little to local economies.  Western companies employ Africans at all levels including top positions and boards. In Chinese companies bosses and workers alike are Chinese; Africans work in the lowest level of positions, if at all. Animosity towards the Chinese by Africans is palpable. Other than in South Africa and Nigeria with their diversified economies, local people are deeply threatened by the presence of the Chinese.  Nearly every African I met in Namibia recently told me that the ‘Chinas’ are taking their jobs.  The new presidential State House and the Museum of Independence have been financed by the Chinese and built by Chinese and North Korean workers. Architecturally, they’re hideous eyesores, but I did see what they meant when I snapped a picture of a Chinese or North Korean mowing the museum’s lawn. Surely, a Namibian could have been hired to do this?

I laughed when I read that Richard Dowden, executive director of the Royal African Society is offering a prize for the first person to find an African bossing Chinese workers. Unsurprisingly, it remains unclaimed.

Africa may need their investment but the Chinese have done a lousy job at public relations.  Will we see Africans protesting against this economic imperialism? I doubt it. In addition, the Chinese supported many African ruling political parties like SWAPO in Namibia and MPLA in Angola when they were revolutionary movements.

I have seen many significant and positive changes across Africa. Change need to accelerate in real partnership with the continents largest trading partners (China particularly), themselves being responsible corporate citizens and creating well-paid skilled jobs, supporting entrepreneurial business by utilising local products in their supply chains and helping to expand sustainable economies across this amazing continent.

When I write about my next two decades in Africa, I hope that the next revolution will be a green one where Africa produces enough food to feed its people.  I can only hope that the new wealth will be responsibly used to stimulate employment, foster eco-tourism and ensure meaningful educational opportunities for girls instead of buying guns, fighter jets and presidential planes.  Combatting climate change instead of each other I hope will be a bigger story. I count on social entrepreneurs, especially women, to lead the way to create pivotal social change. It is my hope that I’ll be able to tell about how I’ve seen that the cures for HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB and other diseases save lives.  Large-scale electrification from renewable energy sources I hope will bring African homes and enterprises reliable electricity and that women and children will finally be liberated from the horrors of dangerous kerosene.  This electrification will, in turn, ensure that technology cascades far and wide. And finally, I sure hope that free and fair elections break out in every country and responsible leaders are elected who graciously step down when their terms end.

I enthusiastically look forward to the next 24 years in Africa. I’ll keep this blog handy in 2036.  Chopsticks anyone?

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog,News,Staff update — Tags: , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 9:07 am
Kerosene, a burning issue in women’s rights, human rights

October 2, 2011

By Kristine Pearson
CEO, Lifeline Energy                                                                                                 This is a “blong” – a long blog.

Like many girls I’ve met in Africa, Rose’s dream is to become a teacher.  The shy grade six student revises her homework at a rickety table in a tin shack in a Nairobi slum. A kerosene lamp fashioned from a can of bug spray called a koroboi in Swahili, allows Rose to study for a mere 15 minutes a night.  The light is inefficient and dim.  The fumes are noxious; the smoke ‘scratches’ her eyes.

She says that in the morning she ‘spits up black’.  She hates kerosene not only because it stinks and makes her feel tired and ill, but because six years ago her younger brother tipped over a koroboi, catching the house on fire killing her mother, father and brother.  To 13-year-old Rose, kerosene is the smell of death.

Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common in Africa.  Exposure to kerosene retards economic progress,  poisons children, causes deadly fires, horrific burns and injuries, and even death.  This fuel is silently destroying the lives and livelihoods of countless women and children across Africa.

With an estimated 870 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, 85% have no access to electricity.  Much of the population straddles the equator where it gets dark at night and light in the morning around 6:30 each day.  In addition, many African houses are rough hewn from mud or aluminium and poorly ventilated. Seeing inside is difficult even in daytime.  Pit latrines are built away from houses and people don’t use them at night for fear of the dark, snakes or being attacked.  Of the options available for lighting – kerosene, candles, firewood and batteries – kerosene is the most common.  And because it’s for household use, it’s a woman’s fuel – and woman and children bear the brunt of energy poverty

Take, for example, Nyeri, a 32 year-old former teacher from Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.  Nyeri barely survived the fire that started when a koroboi’s flame caught her skirt. She was eight months pregnant.  Living in a rural area, it took hours for her to be transported to a hospital, which was ill-equipped to deal with life-threatening burns.  In agonizing pain, Nyeri prematurely gave birth to a boy who died.  She had no way to bond with or nurse the baby because burns covered half of her body.  Badly disfigured, when she was well enough to return home her husband divorced her, kept her children and banished her to her parent’s faraway homestead.  When Nyeri’s parents died she was plunged into destitution and now depends on handouts to survive.

Masquerading as a benign fuel

There are an estimated 1.4 billion people globally who live without reliable access to electricity, and an additional 1.2 billion who live with intermittent electricity.  Yet the problem remains largely unknown in developed and electrified areas of the world.  The average Westerner can likely describe water and food issues that the poor struggle with.  We worry ourselves if the water we drink and the food we eat is safe. The same can’t be said for energy. Electricity for us is a flip of a switch.  The life threatening and profoundly challenging energy issues that the poor deal with every day are largely consigned to the periphery.

Wikipedia portrays kerosene as a diverse and relatively harmless fuel, used mostly to power jet-engine aircraft and rockets.  Although it briefly glosses over the fact that ‘at one time’ it was widely used in lamps and lanterns, it woefully fails to illustrate the scale of its use in developing countries, as well the devastating impact the use of kerosene has already had. It is sold to you and me in a sealed bottle with ‘caution’ and ‘highly flammable liquid’ on the label.  Oil companies and African governments do little to help educate consumers to use it safely or warn of its perils.

To Africans, kerosene, or paraffin as it is called in some countries, is a necessary evil.  It’s sold informally in market stalls and is bought and stored in disused Coke, water or liquor bottles.  Women even buy it in flimsy plastic bags. 

In South Africa, based on national surveys and hospital records, between 1996 and 2001, it was estimated that 80,000 children ingested kerosene per year and 40,000 children developed chemical pneumonia from drinking it.  It is unknown how many children actually died, but in 2001, it was estimated to be 4,000.  I would imagine this number has been reduced given South Africa’s aggressive electricity drive over the past 10 years.  That said, what about the rest of sub-Saharan Africa that has nowhere near South Africa’s current 70% electrification, the highest rate on the continent.  The numbers could truly be staggering, but no one knows.  No one is counting.

Celestine, a 12-year-old girl in Rwanda told me that she swallowed kerosene a few years ago believing it to be clean water, something she’d never before seen.  Further, she said that she worries what internal harm was caused by the incident.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the accident may leave her with lifelong heart problems and respiratory ailments. She is lucky to be alive. Kerosene is a low-viscosity hydrocarbon and it is an aspiration hazard – which means that Celestine could have choked to death on the fluid itself or suffocated from the fumes emanating from her belly.  According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, drinking kerosene can cause chemical pneumonitis, which requires several days or weeks on a respirator in a hospital and can become a lifelong, debilitating condition.  African mothers have told me that they give their children milk to drink, if they have some.

Spilling it on the skin can be equally as hazardous.  Women have proudly told me that they rub kerosene on their children’s heads rid them of lice.

Controlled kerosene fires recently undertaken by South Africa’s Paraffin Association revealed that it takes just two minutes for temperatures to reach 1000 degrees C and eight minutes for a corrugated tin shack to burn completely.  For shacks close together, it’s easy to understand why a fire spreads quickly. What chance do emergency services have, even if they are available?

With all the horrific outcomes caused by kerosene perhaps the most heart-breaking are burn injuries.  In South Africa alone, an estimated 15,000 children survive serious burn injuries every year.  This figure does not include the many fatalities or anyone over the age of 12.  Such statistics, however, are hard to come by even in South Africa.  If data were collected over the whole of Africa, this number would surely be staggering.

Burns are the worst type of injuries in terms of trauma because they are both excruciatingly painful and deforming.  Severe burns cause major harm to motor skills and development.  At present South Africa is the only African country that can deal with large numbers of burn injuries. Chris Hani Baragwaneth Hospital in Soweto, with its 2,964 beds, is the largest acute hospital in the world. With a specialised burn treatment centre, it also houses Africa’s most comprehensive burn unit, only a 26-bed facility.  According to the hospital, most children admitted to the burn unit are under the age of nine.

With 46,000 kerosene-related fires and 50,000 paraffin-related burns sustained in South Africa in 2001 alone (the most recent data I could find), the availability of treatment is depressing.  According to Johannesburg’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences, burn injuries cost an estimated $US1 million in that city alone. Burn victims usually require multiple surgeries.  With the sheer number of kerosene related injuries coupled with medical costs these figures are almost certainly grossly underestimated.   Add medical care to the cost of emergency services, loss of time, loss of assets and loss of a house by people who have no insurance, the true loss of using kerosene can never be justified and the true cost can never be calculated.

Hundreds of thousands of families have stories to tell like those of Rose and Nyeri who have suffered heartbreaking loss due to kerosene. They suffer in silence under the radar screen and no one is tracking them.  These stories should no longer be ignored or just accepted as unfortunate.  They should be seen as an outrage to the dignity of the human person.

Energy Access – a matter of human rights

Despite the enormity of the problem – and the existence of reliable, cost effective solutions – access to energy is a missing Millennium Development Goal.  Access to energy underpins all eight goals yet astonishingly there is no mention of the word ‘energy’ in the entire document.

In contrast, the International Energy Agency calls for “urgent action” on the matter, and estimates that alleviating energy poverty would cost $36 billion per year.  Kerosene sales, by comparison, create a $38 billion per year industry globally, an estimated $11 billion in sub-Saharan Africa alone.  In essence, the world is already spending the money it needs to address the energy poverty problem.

Energy access is a prerequisite to achieving the socioeconomic rights set out in international human rights law including health standards and access to clean water.  The right to breathe clean air, work and study in relative safety – all of these rights are violated by the need for fuel lanterns and cook stoves.

Given the overwhelming body of evidence, I believe kerosene is a blatant violation of international human rights standards.

Energy poverty and the gender bias

Since 1999 I’ve headed a non-profit social enterprise called Lifeline Energy.  Over the past four years while in the field in various African countries, I have spoken with hundreds of poor and vulnerable women and children about their household energy use and expenditure.  What was reinforced with every group I spoke with is that all technologies and the energies used to power them have a gender bias.  There are exceptions, but largely men are in charge of household security and buy batteries for their flashlights (torches).  I knew from years of distributing Lifeline’s solar and wind-up radios that men also buy batteries for radios and control listening access.

In sub-Saharan Africa, kerosene is a ‘woman’s fuel’. In rural areas a woman walks many miles to buy kerosene at the market. In urban settlements or slums, she buys it in as little as 10c increments or by the tablespoon. It may be all that she may be able to afford.  Because of women’s work inside the home, they are constantly exposed to kerosene and its toxic fumes.

The result is that more than 1.6 million of the world’s poor die each year from the effects of indoor air pollution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).  This is caused from both cooking and lighting. This photo I took in Rwanda illustrates that if kerosene from a tin can lamp can blacken a wall, it is doing the same to lungs.

All forms of non-renewable energy – kerosene, batteries, candles, charcoal and firewood – constrain economic development.  When added to cell phone charging, fuels for lighting and cooking, energy can consume up to 60% of household incomes in sub-Saharan Africa.  Women are subjected to a grinding cycle of abject poverty, one that impossible to escape from it you’re spending big amounts on non-renewables.

Last year I walked into a rural household to see a mother happily nursing a two month old baby less than six inches from an open flame lamp at midday.  In her culture it is not acceptable to breastfeed where men might see you.  She had no idea what harm she could be causing her child.

She didn’t realise that breathing kerosene is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes, or that two-thirds of all lung cancer victims in developing countries are non-smoking women according to WHO.  One would think with its devastating consequences, kerosene related illnesses, burns and deaths would be tracked and monitored similar to HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB; however, this is not the case.  Well-known illnesses receive donor funding in poor countries whereas energy related illnesses are relegated to a footnote and fall under the non-communicable disease (NCD) category.

Safe kerosene education receives woefully inadequate attention from governments or the oil companies that sell it.  Comprehensive multi-media campaigns in local languages are urgently needed to encourage women to take advantage of alternatives where they do exist and to teach users ways to limit the health risks and exposure where possible.  This is especially important for children living on their own as heads of households.  They may lack trusted adults to guide them and adults themselves may not understand the range and scope of dangers.  School programmes should feature energy safety as a mandatory part of the curriculum.

Education advances are severely hampered by the way students must do their homework at night.  Kerosene burns the eyes and throat, making it impossible to study for more than a few minutes.  A record number of children are entering or returning to school in sub-Saharan Africa, yet an unintended consequence is that children like Rose are potentially harming their eyes and lungs, and even risking fires and burns, in an effort to earn good grades.

Thrusting clean energy to the top of the international agenda

The health and economic consequences of prolonged exposure to kerosene are so grave that they infringe upon the basic human rights of women and children who have no other viable energy alternatives. It is recognized in Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family.”  Access to clean water has been singled out as a key factor that will determine the success of the Millennium Development Goals, but not access to clean energy

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring water and sanitation a basic human right, but not access to clean energy.

To propel access to clean energy to the forefront of the international agenda it must be declared a basic human right.  This is the only way to put the required moral and legal pressure on countries  and international organizations that’s needed to take decisive action. Declaring access to energy a human right reorganizes the lens through which the issue is viewed.  It becomes not merely a goal or agenda item but a substantial imperative to which every individual is entitled.

The UN has declared 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. By launching UN–Energy, the UN states it is committed to ensuring universal access to modern energy services by 2030. It also aims to bring energy access innovation together with the correct policy to reach a global scale, developing and deploying new and appropriate solutions. These are important steps in the right direction. Grid and mini-grid electricity initiatives are underway in the region, but they often take years to become operational with huge financial investments required.

Solutions already exist. Barriers to the effective delivery of modern energy services must be eliminated. Off-grid portable renewable energy solar and wind-up LED lights and lanterns, as well as energy-efficient cook stoves have already been developed for these markets. However, often steep duties, as much as 40%, and taxes or VAT varying between 12% in Botswana to 19.35% in Cameroon, making them unaffordable to the poorest – those who need them most. With appropriate government oversight and financial support, reform of subsidies and duties and equal gender participation in entrepreneurial initiatives transitioning from kerosene to renewable energy would be the start to create safer environments and economic opportunities. Children, women, families and communities would be able to safely convert unproductive night-time hours into productive ones.

Kerosene and energy access are pressing human rights issues that governments and the international community are obligated to act upon with expediency to end the on-going struggle of women and children forced to use kerosene in their daily lives. There are many problems in the world that are extremely complex and difficult to solve. This is not one of them. With the right approach, the use of kerosene and the energy poverty that it perpetuates and intensifies can become a thing of the past.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog,News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Kristine Pearson @ 2:00 pm
Keeping Stock For Disasters

March 21, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Access to information, light and basic energy in a humanitarian crisis can be just as essential as food, water, medical supplies and shelter.

Aerial shot of the 2000 Mozambique floods

For the past 12 years, Lifeline Energy has been involved in several major humanitarian emergencies – the Mozambique floods of 2000, the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, the Pakistan floods and now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Natural disasters don’t discriminate between rich or poor, although the poor tend to suffer more since they own fewer assets and don’t have insurance. These five catastrophes alone have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than a hundred million people. In each instance we’ve provided either solar and wind-up radios or self-powering radios with lights to displaced populations working with local aid organisations – but only several weeks to months after the disaster.

Temporary Shelters in Haiti

When a humanitarian disaster has occurred, we’ve been contacted by other aid organisations, the UN, corporates wanting to help and even national governments all asking for our products right away.  Lifeline Energy being a charity, can afford to  hold only a small number of products as we procure them from our new product development and trading arm, Lifeline Technologies Trading, on as needed basis.

For years we’ve tried to persuade donors to fund a stockpile that would allow radios and lights to arrive as soon as possible and not weeks later when lives may have been lost.  There are aid depots in Dubai, Panama, Italy, Hong Kong and other locations around the world, which make dispatching goods a fairly straightforward process.

In an emergency, I believe that dependable radios or lights that wind-up are essential.  The sun may shine, but in a crisis, a robust winding system has proven time and again to be the most reliable power source. Offering displaced populations devices dependent on costly disposable batteries or solar power only is unsustainable.  People want and need information on-demand in a disaster – from where and when aid will be distributed, to how to find/locate missing loved ones and weather reports.  One also cannot underestimate the psychosocial support that music provides. In Japan, people also want trusted updates on the status of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant and radiation levels on a regular basis.

Having dependable light is similarly important for safety and security at night, especially for women, children and the elderly.  If cellular networks are operating, then a way to power cell phones is just as important.

For the Japan earthquake and tsunami, between the generosity of GlobalGiving’s donors and Oxfam Japan, we have 15,000 wind-up and solar Polaris radio-light-cell phone chargers due for delivery in Japan in early April. These are destined for mainly the elderly in the Tohuku Kanto region.  Japan utilises unique frequencies and radios need to be manufactured for this market specifically.

One of the reasons that we created our new MP3 enabled Lifeplayer is for emergencies. It can provide displaced populations with up to 64GB of educational and informational access anytime, anywhere to anyone.  Children can be organised immediately around lessons in their own language. Given its excellent sound quality, the Lifeplayer easily accommodates 60 listeners. Radio broadcasts can be recorded for listening later and people can record their own stories of their survival for generations to come.

As a small agency, we cannot afford to create or hold stockpiles, yet it’s crucial that our products are immediately ready to respond to the next humanitarian catastrophe. Let us never be accused of missing an opportunity to help.

Lifeline Energy stands ready to work with others around the world to share our conviction to increase our disaster preparedness for the next humanitarian emergency wherever that may be.

Filed under: Emergency appeal,Kristine Pearson's blog,News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 3:20 pm
A Tribute to Victor – a Hero of the Starehe Slum

February 17, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Women and men who devote their lives to making a difference for others are publicly honored as ‘heroes’ by CNN, Time magazine, Skoll Foundation and others.  I believe that the real heroes are those unsung, unrecognized people living in the communities they serve who are often living in dire poverty themselves.

One such hero was 31-year old Victor Ochieng. Victor had worked his way up from security guard to headmaster of Little Bees, a school built beside a refuse dump in Nairobi’s sprawling Mathare Valley slum.

In 2008 I was introduced to the much loved, irrepressible, larger than life, 60-year old Mama Lucy Odipo,  a community organizer and founder of the Little Bees School.  The school is situated in Starehe, a seven-hectare maze of rusty iron roofed shacks and shops, muddy alleyways, and rocky streets.  Mama Lucy received a Lifeline radio through a women’s group and she invited me to visit the school.

A colleague and I arrived to the parking area next to the sign (land) ‘grabbers will face necessary action’.  We walked down a slope criss-crossing the muddy, smelly stream of sudsy wash water mixed with raw sewage, which flowed into a narrow tributary of the brown Nairobi River that was choked with garbage.  We turned right into an unmarked dark passage just wide enough for two people and heard the sound of children laughing.  It was recess.


“Welcome to Little Bees, my name is Victor.”  A tall, thin man wearing khaki trousers and tennis shoes extended his hand to me with a smile. He told me that he was the head of security and proudly showed me around. Victor escorted me to the small playground, packed with children playing on equipment that included a rickety jungle gym, an upside down wheelbarrow and a seesaw.

On one side of the playground were sheet metal, dirt floored, sand flea infested, makeshift classrooms filled with second-hand desks.  Each classroom only had one small window. On the other side were two brick classrooms. I could see that they were building a second floor with plastic tarp walls. The children were all shimmying up and down a rough-hewn ladder as if it were stairs with a railing. It made me very nervous, but no one else seemed to be. The toilets were overflowing, as evidently the municipality had not emptied them. Little Bees would be condemned in America or Europe.

Nonetheless, the 20 orphans taken in by Mama Lucy and the 180-day students, many of whose parents were destitute, were as playful and full of life as any child in an upmarket school. They crowded around me and welcomed me with a song.  Their red and blue uniforms with white shirts were patched and mended hand-me downs, most of which did not fit. Every day the children ate a hot meal prepared by volunteer mothers from the neighborhood cooked in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire. Although hugely under-resourced, the children were loved, fed and thriving. Victor adored the children and they clearly loved him.

Primary education is free in Kenya.  There is an acute shortage of schools in slums. Non-formal schools like Little Bees spring up to provide an education offered by volunteer teachers, who may not have a teaching qualification.  Victor told me how much they appreciated listening to the school lessons broadcast by the Kenya Institute of Education on our radio, especially for subjects like science and maths.

A few months later, I returned to Little Bees and Victor greeted me like a long lost friend, telling me that he’s ‘moved up’ to librarian and head of procurement. I had a Tom Hanks Day t-shirt with me given to Lifeline Energy by Kevin Turk, an American who raises funds for us each year through his International Tom Hanks Day fundraising event. It was too big for the children, so I gave it to Victor.

As I was taking some video, Victor reappeared in his new t-shirt and I casually ask him if he knew whom Tom Hanks was? He thought for a minute and said the he did not.  I asked him to guess.  Here’s the sweet video.

VictorandTomHanks

Over the next few visits, ‘Tommy Honks’ as Victor called him became an inside joke between us and we always laughed about it.

Last year in May, before the World Cup, I gave Victor a Vuvuzela in the colors of the South African flag. It was the first one that anyone had seen (other than in a newspaper) and Victor swiftly became the Pied Piper of Starehe. As he blew it and the children followed him around the school and into the street.  He was so proud of his new ‘trumpet’ and he loved entertaining the community.

Every time I’ve been in Nairobi, probably nine times in the past three years, I have visited Little Bees.  Each time Victor had been promoted – from security, to procurement, to librarian to social studies teacher, to deputy headmaster. Victor’s life was the school and he was always making renovations and improvements. On my last visit he was being groomed to take over as headmaster, enabling Mama Lucy to slow down.

I emailed Mama Lucy in January to tell her I was coming to visit. She wrote me back and told me that Victor had been murdered.  He went out at night to buy medicine for his young son, Meso, when three thugs stabbed him in the stomach and snatched his cell phone.  He died later that night in Kenyatta Hospital.

When I visited Little Bees twice in early February, sadness filled the air.  I learned that Victor, who was survived by a young wife and two young children, was Mama Lucy’s fourth born son, out of 15 children. She had never mentioned that Victor was her child. She didn’t want me to think that he had been promoted out of nepotism, but instead because of his abilities, devotion and dedication to the children – the ‘little bees’.

Victor was buried on 12 February at his birthplace in Kisumu, in Kenya’s Western province at a funeral attended by hundreds of mourners.

How this slum school survives on so little is a miracle, but how it will survive without Victor I don’t know.

Living in a Nairobi slum where the conditions of life are unspeakable in 2011 – overcrowding, inadequate housing, the paucity of basic services, the lack of quality health care, combined with high levels of violence and insecurity  – where a life is reduced to a cell phone, is nothing short of a human rights abuse.

Victor was robbed of his phone and paid for it with his life.  And now Mama Lucy was robbed of a son, the school was robbed of devoted role model and leader and humanity was robbed of a hero.

Please let us know if you would like to make a contribution to the Little Bees School, which can either be done through Lifeline Energy or sent directly to Mama Lucy.


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Radios for the referendum in Southern Sudan

January 11, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Radio remains the most important communications medium in sub-Saharan Africa, especially so in Southern Sudan.  With electricity, cellular coverage and Internet restricted to a handful of cities in an area the size of Texas, radio remains the only technology that can reach isolated groups. That said, batteries outside towns and trading posts are hard to come by and expensive, making rural communities even harder to reach.

Picture courtesy T Thielen

From late 2006 to 2008, Lifeline Energy shipped 265,000 of our solar and wind-up radios to Southern Sudan in support of a broad-based civic education initiative spearheaded by the National Democratic Institute (NDI). The radios were deployed to support Let’s Talk, a 30-minute weekly programme covering a host of issues – political transition, rights and responsibilities in a democracy, the new constitutional framework and political processes. Providing listening access through our power-independent radios not only helped ensure access for women and youth, but also enabled people to listen to topics of interest like the weather, news and educational broadcasts. Let’s Talk was broadcast on Sudan Radio Service and Miraya FM, the south’s most popular station.

In a country with less than 50 miles of paved roads, delivering these huge consignments was no easy task, as evidenced by the trucks transporting radios stuck in the mud on the Juba-Yei road. The responsibility of distributing the radios fell to NDI’s partner NGOs working in the southern states for use by listening groups.

Juba-Yei road

Our project manager, Chhavi Sharma, and I travelled to Juba in February 2008 to work with NDI’s on-the-ground partners to help create a training programme. Although I had been to Khartoum, it was my first trip to the south. The training, attended by about 40 local and international NGO staff of the partner NGOs, took place in a community centre overlooking the Nile. Literacy levels in Southern Sudan are some of the lowest in the world and for women, literacy is an appalling 8%. Therefore, the training had to be highly visual and pictorial. Teachers and community leaders were identified as radio guardians, but we understood that many might never have operated a radio before.

Radio training programme in Juba

The lack of infrastructure makes feedback difficult to obtain.  However, I am confident that our blue radios have made a positive difference to people’s engagement in this week’s referendum to decide whether or not Southern Sudan should become Africa’s 53rd state.

I have watched with immense interest the television images of the long and patient queues of high spirited women and men wearing their best clothes and baking for hours in the sun waiting to stamp their thumbprints on the ballot paper.  It brought back fond memories of 1994, when I waited for several hours myself to vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections on the second of three election days. The role that radio played in informing around those elections cannot be underestimated either.

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TEDWomen conference – “fuel–based violence”

December 13, 2010

By Kristine Pearson in Washington, DC.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the first TEDWomen conference in Washington, DC.  Over the past two decades I’ve attended at many women-centered forums, but this was the most intense and wide-ranging, attracting around 600 overwhelmingly female delegates and 50 mainly female speakers. True, most speakers and participants were American, but we also heard the voices of inspirational women from around the world who are creating and making change. In our own way, we all participated in the conversation, and an incredible collective conversation it was.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at TEDWomen Conference

The driving force behind this event, Pat Mitchell, I heard described last year as a woman’s woman.  She’s also a feminist’s feminist who has been a mentor and role model to me and I suspect hundreds of other women over her celebrated career as a journalist.

We listened to women tell about their struggles and stories,  like a mother-daughter doctor team from Somalia; National Geographic filmmakers Beverly and Derek Joubert; India’s top cop Kiran Bedi; the ‘man-box’ originator Tony Parker; environmental commentator Naomi Klein; patient capital pioneer Jacqueline Novogratz; Phyllis Rodriguez, who lost her son in the World Trade Center on September 11 and Aicha El-Wafi, mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence without parole for conspiring to kill US citizens; surprise speaker Hilary Clinton; and concluding presenter, the irrepressible, extraordinary Eve Ensler.

Former Canadian politician, UN Ambassador and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Steven Lewis, who I had never heard speak before, delivered an impassioned, blistering attack on the UN for failing women in terms of violence, rape, HIV/AIDS and other critical issues.

Wow, I thought, there’s another form of violence that no one’s talking about – it’s silent, visible as wispy black smoke and it stinks – it’s kerosene. Brought to us by oil companies, and the entire energy supply is virtually entirely men even down to the local kerosene sellers,  this highly flammable fossil fuel is largely unregulated in the developing world.  Kerosene or paraffin, as it’s also known, violates a woman’s eyes and lungs (made much worse if she is HIV positive or has TB).  According to the World Bank, 780 million women and children inhale fumes equivalent to smoke from two packs of cigarettes a day.  Two-thirds of lung cancer victims in developing countries are women.

When I was in Kenya’s Maasailand earlier in the year, I asked 90 rural kerosene-dependent women how many had suffered burns on themselves or their children and at least 20 women raised their hands.  A few told stories of fires that cost them dearly, including the lives of a loved one.  Some shared how their children had ingested kerosene believing it to be water.

If ‘fuel–based violence’ impacted men in the same way, something would have been done by now to ensure the poorest had some form of access to modern energy.  But because women in Africa so often have only a small voice — or none at all — millions are suffering scratchy blood shot eyes, acute respiratory illness, asthma, chronic bronchitis and even pulmonary disease.  It’s time we all step up and help poor women everywhere access clean energy.

So thank you, Stephen Lewis, for giving me an additional frame in which to encase the deadly consequences of kerosene usage.  And thanks to all the wonderful people who staged such a powerful
two days and who gave so openly of themselves.

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A night at the 10th annual Tech Museum of Innovation Awards

November 10, 2010

Dr Peter Friess, President of the Tech Museum of Innovation, with the Lifeline radio

By Kristine Pearson in Santa Clara

What a thrill to attend the 10th annual Tech Museum of Innovation Awards in Santa Clara on Saturday night. I was absolutely gob smacked that Peter Friess, the head of Silicon Valley’s Tech Museum walked on stage winding a Lifeline radio. Peter talked about the success of the Lifeline radio and Lifeline Energy (well, Freeplay Foundation, as we were known then) as the first winner of this award in 2001 and then excerpts of my acceptance speech was played.  I had no idea they were going to do this. What a huge honour it was to be formally recognized by the Tech Museum again.

This was the first time the gala was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center and was the largest attendance ever at 1,800 guests. Many attendees were legends in Silicon Valley’s tech community. Everyone had come to find out who the five winners would be and also to hear Queen Rania al Abdullah of Jordan.

Queen Rania of Jordan with Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter

Queen Rania, this years’ James C. Morgan Humanitarian Award honouree, spoke purposefully, passionately and eloquently about the importance of education.  She encouraged everyone to ‘dream the undreamt’ and to ‘imagine the unimaginable’.

After dinner the award winners were announced from a field of three finalists  laureates in five categories:

•    Intel Environment Award – Peer Water Exchange, a project of Blue Planet Network – Worldwide
•    BD Biosciences Economic Development Award – Alexis T. Belonio, Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology
•    Microsoft Education Award – BBC World Service Trust, BBC Janala
•    The Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award – A Single Drop for Safe Water
•    Nokia Health Award – Venkatesh Mannar, Micronutrient Initiative

In this year’s education category I was delighted that one of our partners, the BBC World Service Trust, won for their English language mobile phone programming in Bangladesh.

Kristine Pearson accepting the first Tech Museum of Innovation Award in 2001

The Tech Awards have grown over the years into the world’s premiere awards for technology benefitting humanity and it will always be our honour to have been the very first winner.  The iconic Lifeline radio – which is now retired and has been replaced by the Prime – is a featured display at the Tech Museum in Silicon Valley.

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Seeing Gladys again after four year

October 11, 2010

An update by Kristine Pearson in Kabras

Gladys Kadogomoses’ big blue radio works perfectly after more than four years of constant use by her and her ladies’ listening group. She told me with great affection what it had meant to her – how she learned so much about health, nutrition and women’s rights; how she followed events during the frightening unrest in 2008 on the BBC; how she listened to the debates around the referendum; and most importantly about the programmes that told her about the medicines she needed to take and when to take them – because Gladys is HIV positive.

I first met gracious and friendly Gladys just after she had been diagnosed. She told me openly that she felt hopeless, ashamed and contemplated suicide because her deceased truck-driver husband, had left her nothing other than a disease. Then she joined the women’s self-help group Vumilia (perseverance in Swahili) and met weekly with other women in similar circumstances. With support, encouragement, and acceptance coupled with anti-retroviral drugs, she began to put her life back together.

In 2006 Gladys received a Lifeline radio along with 30 other positive women. She was the only one not a grandmother.

This was the first time since then that I had been back to Vumilia, which is in Kabras, just north of Kakamega in Western Kenya. On the weekend, I visited Gladys in her home to find out about her first night with her Lifelight.  The day before she and 30 other women, participated in a Lifelight workshop.

Gladys beamed when she told me that her three children shared the light to study and for the first time she could see properly at night to read her Bible.  Also for the first time, they used the pit latrine after dark, feeling safe from snakes and being able to see. She said, “without this light, at night we are otherwise forced to use a small white bucket.”

In addition, she spoke about the savings on paraffin that she would make.  Gladys, like most women I’ve met who live in poverty, buy paraffin daily in small amounts.  She spends anywhere from 20-40 Kenya shillings (25-50 US cents) per day averaging KS10,950 annually or a staggering $135. When the children study for exams she buys enough for light three lights.  With the Lifelight, her savings will be significant.

Vumilia’s founder, Rose Ayuma Moon, who grew up in the Kabras area, established in 2004.  Although she lives in Nairobi, she set up Vumilia because she saw how the skyrocketing HIV/AIDS pandemic was disrupting the lives of alarming numbers in her community and at that time the government was doing very little. Today Vumilia provides health and psycho-social support to 200 HIV positive women – all but two are grannies. In addition, Rose, who tirelessly and heroically divides her time between Kabras and Nairobi, also established the Vulmilia Home for Orphaned Girls, a residential facility for 22 girls aged 3-16 in 2006.

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The Lifeplayer Launches to the World!

September 20, 2010

An update from Kristine Pearson in New York City.

It is such a gratifying feeling to see something that you’ve nurtured for so long come to life.  Last week we successfully launched a tool that we truly believe will be a game-changer in educational access for millions in the developing world.  This is first device ever created for humanitarian use that allows content to be pre-recorded or loaded later (up to 64GB), can record live voice or radio broadcasts and even charges a cell phone.  Called the Lifeplayer, it has been phenomenally well received by development specialists, partners and the media alike.

We spent three years researching and developing the Lifeplayer – determining the need; establishing what features were most desirable and practical; ensuring it could be reliably powered by a solar panel or wind-up energy; deciding how we could bring different technologies already in use in Africa and elsewhere together; and most importantly, how we would get the research and development funded.  We were so blessed that Tom Hanks stepped in and not only contributed generously to the Lifeplayer’s development, but he asked his friends to help, too.  We could not have asked for a more devoted supporter on every level.  His tweet about the Lifeplayer was retweeted by thousands of others who spread the word virally.

There are a lot of people who have made the MP3-enabled  Lifeplayer possible.  Chief amongst them is Phil Goodwin, who heads our new product development and trading arm, Lifeline Technologies Trading Ltd.  Phil is the design principal who has headed a multi-disciplinary team of model makers, industrial designers and software engineers, as well as the excellent group at our production facility in Asia.  Due to component shortages brought about by the economic recession, we experienced some unforeseen delays, but finally the Lifeplayer is en route to being included in a host of important initiatives that will bring high quality information and educational content to those who otherwise would not have these learning opportunities.

I also want to thank the Lifeline Energy team and boards for their terrific support for their unwavering enthusiasm and belief in our vision.

New York has been the perfect place to launch the Lifeplayer, especially with the UN General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The city is abuzz with excitement (and traffic snarls) and I’m honored to be making an input tomorrow at the CGI about women and the environment.

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Liberia – a first visit

August 25, 2010

Written by Kristine Pearson


Flying into Monrovia’s Roberts Field

I’ve been to nearly half of the countries in Africa, but this is my first visit to Liberia – the first African country to elect a female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Sitting in the window seat of an old Ethiopian Airways plane, I noticed a fleet of UN helicopters as we descended over the Atlantic beaches and into Robert Field. We joined the only other aircraft – a Kenya Airways flight that had left Accra shortly before us.

I’m excited for the eight days ahead.

The tall and affable immigration officer, who was wearing a pressed brown uniform, was the most welcoming person to have ever stamped my passport.  My bags emerged last on the smallest luggage carousel that I’ve ever seen.

The airport was destroyed during the 14-year civil war that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and left one million people displaced. A once viable and functioning economy was destroyed, entire villages were deserted and every family was impacted.  I’ve seen first-hand from Rwanda, Sudan and Mozambique the wreckage that war leaves on government institutions, commerce, households, landscapes and the people, especially women and children. Evidence of the conflict remains everywhere, with bombed out-deserted buildings, crumbling infrastructure and young people missing a hand or walking on crutches a common sight.

However, progress is also visible.  The Chinese have built a new tarmac road from the airport to town. Markets are thriving with stalls of locally grown produce, necessities and imported Chinese goods; petrol stations abound in Monrovia’s busy streets crowded by new cars (many shiny SUVs); buildings are getting coats of paint and lots of multi-story ones are under construction.  But the task of rebuilding this country’s infrastructure and human capital is monumental and every sector competes for donor aid and investment.

Recipients of Foundation for Women loans

I’m here on mission with the Foundation for Women – a San Diego-based micro-finance firm headed by my friend Deborah Lindholm.  Deborah and Ann Lovell (we serve on the Women’s Leadership Board at the Kennedy School together) stopped by the Foundation for Women’s Monrovia office this morning. Several groups of women had come long distances when they learned Deborah was coming.  We were welcomed with songs of praise.  The women take out small loans starting at $100 for income generating activities and have a payback rate of 98%.

Even though thousands of women are earning income, they still have to buy candles,  kerosene for lighting or cheap battery operated Chinese-made lights that don’t last more than a few months. The current options are costly, hazardous and damaging to the environment. That’s why Lifeline Energy and Foundation for Women are teaming up in a new initiative, Women Lighting-up Africa, starting in Liberia which will see women set-up in renewable lighting enterprises.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog,Updates from Field — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 1:59 pm