IPD Projects

After a day or so in camp, I was getting used to my surroundings, and everything became a little less overwhelming and I started to compile a list of ways I can help the camp or areas which I felt needed special attention, here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

HIV Seminar
One of the IDPs who volunteers in the clinic dispensing medicine estimated the rate of HIV amongst adults in the camp at over 40%, although noted that most people don’t know, or are not open about their status. So following on from my last placement, I’m planning on holding an HIV Seminar for the people of the camp, and hopefully arrange for testing on the day.

Children’s Playground
Camp life is hard on families in general, they don’t have much, and food and shelter are their main priorities, so sometimes I feel the kids get forgotten a little bit, even know their are so many of them. Babies are just left to the older kids, sometimes only a few years older for care. The only things the kids really have to play with are old tires and batteries in the mud. So I want to build a playground set as part of the in camp school, hoping to have a slide, swings and monkey bars.

Signs for Toilets and Watertanks
With people living in such close quarters in camp, families generally share one tent, and mothers sometimes have eight kids, so proper hygiene really important to ensure the health of the entire camp. For this reason I’m going to commission the camp sign painter to paint signs on the water tanks reminding people to boil the water before drinking, and on the toilet doors reminding them to wash their hands. Seems like the most basic of things coming from a western country, but from what I’ve noticed, and reports from people in the camp, these simple but important actions are often ignored. To make sure more people can understand the messages, they will be painted in both Swahili and English.

Camp Communication
A large population like the one in the camp, can often be hard to communicate community messages to, so I started looking at ways to help this. Pretty much every adult in Kenya has a mobile phone, so I thought about creating a text message register, so that short messages could be sent out to all the phones in camp.

Condom Distribution
The alarming number of babies which have been born in camp got me thinking…. With so many people in camp without jobs, perhaps people were making themselves “busy” in other ways. Camp conditions are hard on families, but the more mouths to feed the harder it is add in Kenya’s HIV statistics and it would just be better that people made sure they were safe when “busy”. Condoms are available free from the government, but we need to find a way to make them available in a discreet way in camp.

Emptying the Pit Toilets
There are just over 60 toilets in camp being shared by 4000+ people so they fill up pretty quickly and the smell is overwhelming, perhaps you get used to it, but I haven’t even been able to open the door to any of the ones in camp. One of the major concerns is if the el niño rains are as bad as expected, and the camp floods, the pit latrines may overflow spilling sewage everywhere and spreading diseases like cholera so getting the toilets emptied is pretty important.

Battery Return program
Around camp there are lots and lots of used batteries strewn everywhere, they are rusting and breaking open, spilling their toxic contents into the soil and the hands of the children who play with them. I’m going to work on a battery return program to try round up all the batteries and protect the health of the camp.

Tool Hire Program
Many of the men in camp are tradesmen of some kind, but to do their jobs they need to provide their own tools which they lost when they were forced to leave their homes. We can’t just give every man news tools, but perhaps there’s a way we can create a loan/hire system where tools can be used for specific jobs, but returned to the communal pool after the job is done.