House of Courage: An internship in Mombasa, Kenya

The title? Yeah... it would take too long to explain. Ask me in person but for now just realize that things are very good.

We’ve had a very productive week at the House of Courage Initiative. For a while we’ve had to go through bureaucratic paper work and letters of approval from different stake holders in the Kisauni Youth Center in our attempt to get reconnected to power. This has been my main focus for my internship and with approval of funding nearly a month ago by FSD it seemed a done deal. At the beginning of the week however it seemed that we may miss our window of opportunity. Kenya Power Lighting Company (KPLC) was telling us that it was going to take another month to get an electrician out to hook up the power. Through FSD policy the hook up needs to be completed before I leave at the beginning of August.

Things looked bad.

It’s amazing though what a little smart preplanning with funds and knowing the right people can do in Kenya. HOCI had previously received a seed grant that was not enough to complete the power installation project. We sat on that money waiting for an opportunity to arise to use it. We needed the quotations from KPLC to get money from FSD but we needed to get money to an electrician to get the quotes from KPLC.

Don’t ask me to explain it right now…it’s Kenya.

So with the seed grant money we partially prepaid a trusted electrician the administrative people of HOCI were familiar at the beginning of the week. He then expedited the process so we could get all the quotations from the power company and begin work on the installation on Friday. Since we were able to get the quotes, FSD released the appropriate funds to us and the rest of the equipment and labor bills were addressed.

We’ll see the final product at the end of next week and I believe it will be better than I had previously hoped. KNOCK ON WOOD