GlobalPost/GroundTruth

In Tanzania, Coke improves medical distributions

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Jacob Kushner/GlobalPost

A successful Coca-Cola partnership in Tanzania to better distribute medicine across the country shows that not all public-private partnerships have to be self-serving.
what stores sell louis vuitton
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage retailer, has an unparalleled ability to get its goods to anyone and everyone. In Tanzania, Coca-Cola reaches areas where even essential medicines and life-saving medical supplies do not. An incredible 35 to 40 percent of all orders for medicine from Tanzania’s 5,000 health centers go unfilled due to “stock-outs.” The drugs simply don’t arrive.

If Coca-Cola can reach all corners of Tanzania, why not medicine? At last it is beginning to, thanks to Project Last Mile, a partnership that is helping to fix a number of kinks in the medical distribution process.

Read the full feature at GlobalPost.

Kenya redefines marriage in a blow to women’s rights

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

A push by Kenya’s president and male-dominated parliament to overhaul marriage bodes ill for the nation’s wives, socially and economically

NAIROBI, Kenya – President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a new marriage law this week that drastically restricts the rights of women in wedlock.

Human rights advocates here and abroad are condemning the law, which grants men the right to marry a second, third or even fourth wife without the previous wives’ permission. Currently, certain traditions allow men to take multiple wives, but only if he first gains their approval. There is no law that allows women to take multiple husbands.

“Parliament has discovered it has this ability to formulate laws that serve its interest,” said Tom Odhiambo, professor of cultural studies at the University of Nairobi. “Because many (members of parliament) are married to women whose social status and education level is below theirs, they can always go home and say “the Constitution allows me to marry a second wife.”
nike free 50 women
After parliament passed the regulation, Kenyans waited for nearly one month to see whether President Kenyatta — who stands accused before the International Criminal Court of committing crimes against humanity during Kenya’s violent 2007-2008 Presidential election — would risk further soiling his human rights image by signing it into law. Christian and Hindu leaders joined human rights advocates in calling on Kenyatta to veto the Act, saying polygamy violates their religious edicts.

Read the full article at GlobalPost.

A slow life aboard Kenya’s century-old train

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

The Nairobi Railway Station. /JACOB KUSHNER

For service workers at the Nairobi Railway, breakdowns and delays limit time-off, and there’s no overtime pay 

MOMBASA, Kenya – In its heyday, the Nairobi railway employed some 24,000 people. Day and night, they worked to keep freight and passenger trains running between what is now Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, and the Indian Ocean at the port of Mombasa.
coach handbag factory outlet
Today, the Rift Valley Railways Consortium employs only 3,000 people. The railway itself has changed little in more than a century since it was built by the British imperial power. Trains still bobble up and down, side to side as they roll along outdated, narrow tracks. Train traffic, derailment and other delays strand cars for hours in the middle of a national park.

In April, the China Road and Bridge Corporation announced plans to replace the historic railway with a new, modern line. Workers will lay a set of standard-width tracks that will allow freight trains to traverse them at much higher speeds. Most workers seem hopeful the new line will attract more tourists and other passengers, and that the influx of customers will translate into higher wages and benefits for the workers, too.

Read the full story and watch the video at GlobalPost

In Kenya, major debate over government wages ‘spiraling out of control’

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

In the nation’s public sector, there are huge disparities between the highest earners and the low. Now, Kenyans are fighting over who should take a cut.

Anthony Langat and Jacob Kushner

NAIROBI, Kenya—Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta ignited a nationwide debate over government employee wages this month when he surprised the country by announcing he would reduce his own salary by 20 percent.

The move signaled the beginning of a fierce debate over government wages, which are rising out of control: This year, public sector salaries are expected to eat up 54 percent of all tax revenue and equal 13 percent of the nation’s GDP, according to cabinet secretary in charge of the Treasury, Henry Rotich.
louis vuitton totally mm
“The recent growth in public sector wage bill is unsustainable and unacceptable,” Kenyatta said in a March 10 speech that sparked the wage debate. “If we maintain this trend we would be dedicating an ever larger share of the wealth we produce as a country to the remuneration of public servants.”

Read the full story at GlobalPost.

Six months later: Kenya’s Westgate Mall workers reflect on a delicate recovery

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

NAIROBI, Kenya —Today marks six months since gunmen trained by the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabaab stormed a popular shopping mall here, in a siege that left 62 civilians and five Kenyan soldiers dead, and at least 200 others injured.
louis vuitton handbags online
The victims consisted of both Kenyans and expatriates. Their families and friends remained traumatized by the attack and angered by the government’s response, during which Kenyan soldiers looted the mall, even while bodies remained strewn about.

The Israeli-owned Westgate Mall opened in 2007. It was a popular hangout for Kenyans and expatriates alike until it collapsed during the September 2013 siege. But one group of Kenyans in particular holds a uniquely intimate connection to the mall and the event that destroyed it: These hundreds of Kenyans were employed in the mall’s 80 shops and restaurants, and depended on the mall for their livelihoods.
nike outlet stores
Their wages, small by western standards, supported their families or paid for their continuing education.

When the gunshots erupted, workers fled side-by-side with patrons. Some hid from the gunmen for upwards of 11 hours before being rescued. In small acts of heroism, some workers led others up or down staircases to safety, or out back doors.

In the aftermath of the attack, some were transferred to other franchise locations owned by their employers. But many lost their jobs entirely.

Six months later, GlobalPost asked mall employees to reflect on how the attack changed their lives and how they are coping with its long-lasting effects.

Read the full story and watch the video at GlobalPost.

VIDEO: Kenya’s Westgate Mall workers reflect

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Vincent Gallo Kebogo used to work at an ice cream shop called “Mama Mia,” located in the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Six months after the mall was stormed by the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabaab, Kebogo reflects on the devastating attack and how it has affected his life.
coach outlet sunglasses online
Six Months Later: Kenya’s Westgate Mall workers reflect on a delicate recovery from Ground Truth on Vimeo.

Kenya’s workers fear for their pensions as the country cries ‘scandal’

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Samwel Wambiri stands in his home located on the Tassia II land, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. (Jacob Kushner/GlobalPost)

A botched investment by Kenya’s social security agency may delay workers’ retirement benefits, make a Chinese construction firm richer and leave thousands of small landowners with nothing.

By Anthony Langat and Jacob Kushner
macys coach bags
NAIROBI, Kenya—This, says Samuel Wambiri, is how corruption can disrupt a life in Kenya.

Ten years ago, the 54-year-old father of three purchased a small plot of land on the outskirts of Nairobi for a modest 315,000 shillings. That’s about $3,700, which Wambiri agreed to pay over 10-years. And upon that land, Wambiri built a home where he and his wife could retire.

But last month, just as Wambiri had finished paying it off, the agency that sold him the land announced some troubling news: Wambiri would have to pay 920,000 shillings, or $10,824 more — four times more than his original investment. That’s because the Nairobi County governor decided Kenya’s National Social Security Fund (NSSF), which sold the land, needed to build a sewage system and access roads through it at significant cost.

The NSSF announced it would transfer the cost of the utilities to the landowners themselves.

“I was happy that I had finally finished paying for my land,” Wambiri said. “I was looking for somewhere to settle, and I settled.”
louis vuitton handbags on sale
But now, Wambiri and an estimated 5,500 fellow small-parcel landowners in Nairobi’s Tassia II neighborhood may be forced to vacate their new land altogether if they don’t find a way to pay the bill.

Read the full story at GlobalPost.

Kenya may be uniquely ripe for advances in gay rights

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Kenyan gay and lesbian organizations demonstrate outside the Nigerian High Commission in Nairobi on February 7, 2014. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 had signed a bill into law against gay marriage and civil partnerships. (SIMON MAINA/AFP/Getty Images)

An increasingly supportive church and other signs suggest Kenya may be departing from its neighbors in the region by accepting homosexuality.

NAIROBI, Kenya — For years, homosexuality was as unlawful in Kenya as it was in neighboring Uganda or in Nigeria — countries where anti-gay sentiment is growing.
coach outlets
Kenya’s penal code prescribes up to 14 years in prison for men who commit “acts of gross indecency” with other men or for any person who acts “against the order of nature.” It’s the same maximum sentence that existed in Nigeria, and seven years greater than what was until recently the maximum punishment in Uganda.

Uganda’s parliament passed a law making “aggravated homosexuality” a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The Ugandan president said on Friday that he plans to sign the bill. President Obama on Sunday condemned the move, and warned “such discrimination could harm its relationship with the United States.”
black louis vuitton
In January, Nigeria’s president signed a law that also orders that homosexuals be imprisoned for life and even makes gatherings of homosexuals illegal, including those held by advocacy or rights organizations. The law has already led to numerous arrests.

But in Kenya no such attempt has been made to reduce legal protections for gays, and many Kenyans seem increasingly willing to accept homosexuality as a fact of life, or to move beyond political posturing over the subject altogether.

Read the full story as it appeared at GlobalPost. 

Kenyans call for attention to justice, the UN Millennium Development Goal that never was

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
With the United Nations convening in New York next week to debate a new set of global development goals, one Kenyan rights group wants justice reform to have its day in court.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s leading legal rights group Thursday called on Kenya’s government to pressure the United Nations to adopt “justice” as one of its primary global development goals beginning next year through 2030.

Declaring Jan. 30 “Access to Justice Day,” Kituo Cha Sheria (the Center for Legal Empowerment) engaged Kenyans in a televised conference to rally the nation toward what it says is much-needed judicial reform here and around the world.
nike shox nz
“A large population of the poor and marginalized are living outside the protection of the law,” wrote the group in a letter urging Kenya’s UN representatives to introduce justice as a new development goal during next week’s meeting the UN’s Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the full story at GlobalPost.

Four years after the Haiti earthquake, what have billions in US aid bought?

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
The United States spent $2.8 billion to help Haiti rebuild, but the results have been a disaster of a different kind.

By Jacob Kushner

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In the four years since Haiti’s disastrous earthquake, the United States has promised $3.6 billion in aid, at least $2.8 billion of which has already been spent.
coach handbags clearance
Has it helped? GlobalPost examined more than one dozen studies and audits to estimate how much of that money made it through US government and NGO bureaucracies to the ground in Haiti — and what good it did there.

Read the article at GlobalPost.

In post-earthquake Haiti, a forgotten island is left to recover on its own

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

A ferry arrives at the wharf in Anse-a-Galets on the island of La Gonave, Haiti. /Jacob Kushner

Thousands sought refuge on the island of La Gonave four years ago. But little help ever arrived, something permanent residents know all too well.

ANSE-A-GALETS, Haiti — To traverse the 13-mile stretch of Caribbean Sea to the island of La Gonave, one must choose between three types of boats, none particularly safe.
louis vuitton bucket
First there are the “fly boats,” speed boats with outboard motors that race a dozen people from one side to the other. From time to time they flip over. Few records exist as to how many people survive.

Then there are the two large steel ferries that carry a few hundred passengers slowly across the sea each day. In 1997, one of those ferries sank, killing 200.
nike air max infrared
Last, there are the sailboats — wooden ships built from hand-carved lumber and pieced together with hammered nails. Their canvas masts are reminiscent of those in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie franchise. They carry everything from rice to dry cement, motorcycles, cars and trucks.

In better times, Haitians travel to and from the 300-square-mile island as a matter of routine, however risky. In times of emergency, like the massive earthquake of four years ago, they come to La Gonave in droves.

In the first 19 days after the earthquake, 630,000 people fled Port-au-Prince, 7,500 of them to La Gonave, according to a 2011 study. Untold thousands more fled there from other earthquake-affected areas. Some NGOs put the total at 20,000, which would mean the island’s normal population of approximately 100,000 increased by between 15 and 20 percent almost overnight.
coach imitation purses
To feed and house them all would have required a substantial amount of the $9 billion pledged by international governments for Haiti’s recovery. But little of that aid — or the aid allocated by private donors — reached the people of La Gonave, GlobalPost found. Most of the migrants returned to the mainland in the months after the earthquake, leaving permanent residents in a dire state.

Read the full story at GlobalPost.

In Haiti, all eyes on US to reform food aid program

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
US Congress is on the verge of rejecting a money-saving proposal that would deliver US food aid to more people and boost foreign farmers in the process.

Sacks of American rice for sale at a Port-au-Prince market. (Jacob Kushner/GlobalPost)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The idea that the delivery of American food aid needs an overhaul goes almost without question here in the capital of a nation still recovering from the devastating earthquake of four years ago.

Farmers in Haiti and many of their counterparts in the United States are joining foreign aid organizations calling on the United States to stop sending American crops to Haiti through what many critics say is the deeply flawed and wasteful strategy of the current, multi-billion-dollar US Department of Agriculture Food for Peace program.

“Unfortunately US policy doesn’t consider first the political interests of farmers abroad, but of its own,” said Camille Chalmers, director of a Haitian farmers’ association.

“But now there is a chance to change that,” he added.
nike shox pink
Read the full article at GlobalPost. 

New hospital encourages doctors to stick around as Haiti continues to rebuild

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Pediatricians in residence Dr. Roosler Billy Telcide, 27 (right), and Dr. Ben Bechir Beaubrun, sit in the children’s waiting room at the Partners in Health University Hospital in Mirebalais. Telcide said he’s excited to learn first rate patient care at the new facility– and to carry those standards with him as he practices medicine to his hometown once he completes his residency. /Jacob Kushner


louis vuitton men wallet
MIREBALAIS, Haiti — When Roosler Billy Telcide completed medical school in Port-au-Prince, his hopes for finding a residency to prepare him for a career as a pediatrician were modest.

“I had a dream when I was a medical student to do my residency where I can find a scanner, an MRI, and all those things Partners in Health has,” said Telcide, 27, in reference to Boston non-profit whose state-of-the-art teaching hospital opened last year in the town of Mirebalais, north of Port-au-Prince.

Funded by private donors and grants, and using equipment donated from the Boston area, the $25-million, 300-bed University Hospital of Mirebalais (HUM) already handles some 800 outpatient visits a day, offers chemotherapy to cancer patients, delivers 200 to 300 babies per month and operates a 24-hour emergency ward. Its mission: provide free, first-rate health care to Haitians who could otherwise not afford it.
imitation coach purse
Read the full story as it appeared at GlobalPost.

New hospital encourages doctors to stay as Haiti continues to rebuild

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Pediatricians in residence Dr. Roosler Billy Telcide, 27 (right), and Dr. Ben Bechir Beaubrun, sit in the children’s waiting room at the Partners in Health University Hospital in Mirebalais. Telcide said he’s excited to learn first rate patient care at the new facility– and to carry those standards with him as he practices medicine to his hometown once he completes his residency.

MIREBALAIS, Haiti — When Roosler Billy Telcide completed medical school in Port-au-Prince, his hopes for finding a residency to prepare him for a career as a pediatrician were modest.
nike discount outlet
“I had a dream when I was a medical student to do my residency where I can find a scanner, an MRI, and all those things Partners in Health has,” said Telcide, 27, in reference to Boston non-profit whose state-of-the-art teaching hospital opened last year in the town of Mirebalais, north of Port-au-Prince.

Funded by private donors and grants, and using equipment donated from the Boston area, the $25-million, 300-bed University Hospital of Mirebalais (HUM) already handles some 800 outpatient visits a day, offers chemotherapy to cancer patients, delivers 200 to 300 babies per month and operates a 24-hour emergency ward. Its mission: provide free, first-rate health care to Haitians who could otherwise not afford it.
coach knockoff bags
Read the full story as it appeared at GlobalPost.