Following on from this very brief post in advance of our first visit to Malindi, myself and Dee spent the last couple of days in Lamu, checking out the accommodation and training venues for next week.
Again, it was great to get out on the road, leaving the hub in Mombasa at about 8.30am. From there, we got a lift as far as Mtwapa (a suburb of Mombasa out past the hub), and then hopped on a matatu as far as Malindi airport (about 2 hours or so, which is far too much time to ever spend in a matatu!). Malindi “airport” was a bit of a surprise to say the least – it’s a very small building in the middle of a field, so using the word airport is probably stretching it a little. After getting over the surprise, we boarded a Fly540 plane to Manda – the island next to Lamu. The plane was decent enough – a 35 seater or so, and the flight is only 25 minutes.
Our surprise at the size of Malindi “airport” dissipated on arrival at Manda airstrip, which is at least honest in the description of itself. Manda amounts to a field with two wall-less huts – one of them is the security checking area, and the other is departures!
From Manda, we hopped on a ferry over to Lamu, taking about 20 minutes or so, and just sat in awe – Lamu is particularly beautiful as you approach the island.
Once in Lamu, we were kept busy walking around the narrow streets examining accommodation options and training venues for the team to use next week (the whole team will make the above journey this Saturday, except with some other form of transport substituted for the matatu ride). Camara have a second hub in Lamu (Kenya is the only country with more than one hub in Africa), and it was very interesting to get a look at it to explore the differences between it and the Mombasa hub. The primary (though certainly not the only) activity of the Mombasa hub is the distribution of refurbished computers to schools – all other activity flows from this. In Lamu however, a different model is in operation. As Lamu has only a small number of schools, all of which are now equipped with either Camara or non-Camara computers, there would be no requirement for such a model.
The Lamu hub therefore focusses on two core activities. One is training, which is provided not only to teachers in the area, but to business people, public servants, and generally any of the Lamu people who are interested in learning. The second area is the provision of internet access, which is done by providing a very low-cost internet cafe (internet rates in the cafe are 50c per hour, which is very reasonable by Kenyan standards). These two areas are the backbone of the Lamu hub, which certainly seems to be thriving – Camara are well respected on Lamu, and an awful lot of people seem very apreciative of the work being done.
Those are obviously only initial observations, as we spent less than 36 hours in Lamu before making the above mentioned journey in reverse. Thankfully, the team had cooked us dinner for when we arrived back in Mombasa – it really was nice to get back to the group, even after only a couple of days…
