May 14th, 2006 – about 10,000 miles awayWell I made it to Kenya without a hitch. There were no delays, I did not have to sit next to any talkative weirdoes, I had good movies to watch on the plane, the lines were short, British Airways gives out free wine and their food was mighty tasty, my luggage arrived with everything in it and not mashed up, and I didn’t have any problems with customs. The trip was nice, very nice indeed, but long oh so long. It was kinda freaky on the plane flying to London when within a span of a few hours I saw the sun go down and come up. Also a bit nutty is that within 12 hours I flew over the tip of Greenland and over the equator. My only trouble currently is dealing with exhaustion. There’s nothing like a seven hour time difference to mess with your internal tick tock. Arugh, I need tea and lots of it. Jet lag is whack.
So this morning while of you were just going to sleep or already snoring I awoke to realize I was not in Kansas anymore. Ah yes, as my eyes fluttered open I heard the familiar sounds and smelled the familiar smells of a developing country: mosquitoes buzzing outside the net around my bed, roosters crowing, the smell of burning trash, horns honking, people nearby speaking in a foreign tongue, radios blaring, etc.. I rolled over to look at the clock which stated it was 8:30 in the am. That would be 1:30 am for you all. Did I mention I need some tea?
So I hope in the next few weeks I can share with you my experiences here in Kenya as they happen, complete with paradoxes, occasional self-denials and other complexities. Today I must attend a party and get a bit of work done and then tomorrow I will be out and about in Nairobi doing errands. I’m hoping my head will be a bit less cloudy when I awake.
May 18, 2006
Well the guy at the Mosque across the road is singing over the loud speaker and the sun is going down. No offense but he sounds like a combination of a cat in heat and Barry Manalow singing in Arabic after he’s had a few too many. I’d love to take control of his mic and belt out a smokin’ rendition of “Funky Town” or something along those lines. I’m not sure that would go over too well however.
I am currently residing with the Kikuya family in “Airport View Estate” which is just down the road from one of the main entrances to the slum that was featured in the movie “The Constant Gardner.” They’re real nice folks and have three lovely kids that like to sing to me in the early morn, when I get home from work, at dinner, after dinner etc. I don’t mind so much. At least they sound better than the dude on the loud speaker across the way.
So I will never complain about the road conditions in Atlanta again. On Tuesday the research team went out to two different villages to meet with chiefs about the formative research we would like to do. We followed pot holes all the way hither and back. Honestly, it was like riding a metal tray down a flight of stairs for about four hours. I swear the only smooth patch of road occurred when we drove across the top of a bus that had fallen into a giant pothole. It was pretty cool coming back however when I saw a fella and his herd of camels strolling down the road.
So Kenyans tend to be very polite (other than when driving). Walking down the road I haven’t been harassed or bothered one bit except for the blizzard of diesel smoke and dust that erupts out of every vehicle. Thankfully, I think I have finally conquered jet lag. I really had to fight the power during one of the meetings the other day and they caught this hilarious bit of fight the nod on film. I hate that feeling.
May 22, 2006
Well, I made it through another day of work here in Kenya. What that means is that I braved a fifteen minute crazy ass mini bus ride then crossed two busy intersections that don’t have stop lights or stop signs (not that they would be obeyed- more on this in a minute) remembering to look the opposite direction all the while fighting what my head is telling me to do (Kenyans drive on the left) then after I inhale about four or five more lungfuls of diesel smoke I enter the gates of the university I am working with. Then once in the university gates I encounter two ailing computers that have Internet capability about three to four days a week that I share with a host of faculty all the while dealing with electrical outages. Remember to save often! While all this frustrates me to no end, my colleagues just take it all in stride. Really, I am amazed that any of the faculty can get much of anything done let alone try and do research. But they do, and Kenyans seem not only to be resourceful but kind and patient. Well, driving aside. Actually Kenyans go through some kind of metamorphosis when you put a steering wheel in their hands. They cut each other off, they drive down “sidewalks,” they tailgate etc. Eight lanes of rush hour traffic in Atlanta really doesn’t seem all that bad after all. Funny how little trips aboard can remind you of this. Life in Kenya takes guts and patience. I only have to do it for five weeks. Let me just take a moment to recognize that Kenyans do it everyday. I raise my bottle of lemon-lime Fanta with vodka added to all Kenyans!The research team has been working at a crazy fast speed trying to get as much of the formative research done while I’m here. On Friday I trained the people that will be running the focus groups, Saturday I gave a talk about completing graduate work in the US and today I trained the folks who will be conducting survey interviews. We are hoping that 12 interviewers can collect 500 surveys in the next four days. What a mighty task! I will be extremely happy if we get 300.
At this point in my trip I just have to stop and give thanks for a few things. I am thankful for the mighty peanut- that no matter where I travel provides me with nourishment. I am thankful for vodka that goes so well with lemon-lime Fanta and that keeps me sane. I have 25 more days left in Kenya. Those days will be filled with being shrewd about doing good. A wonderful friend of mine that has worked in all sorts of conditions and countries sent me an e-mail yesterday. In it she commented that Kenya is both “special and fucked up”. That is so true honey, so true.
Sunday, May 28, 2006-Black boogers
So this coming Wednesday will mark the half-way point for the Kenyan portion of my trip. Unfortunately most of my time here so far has been spent in front of a computer doing work. Not so exciting really. This coming week will be spent putting data into SPSS. Yes, I have about 550 surveys to enter. BLAH!!! The project is going alright. I say just alright because of course there are many things that could be going better but due local circumstances there are obstacles to be dealt with. Take for instance the fact that we had five out of twelve research assistants falsify documents and steal participant incentive money. Kenyans on the research team were not surprised about this. My Kenyan colleagues tell me it is common practice for Kenyans to get money however possible. I guess I was not all that flabbergasted either to tell you the truth, the majority of the people in this country are struggling to get by; nonetheless, you always hope that things will be different. Lucky me (being the outside whitey that gets to leave in three weeks) was elected to break the news to the scoundrels that they were under investigation for fraud and that for the time being we would not be paying them. So get this, when I questioned them one by one, two of them actually told me that the reason the signatures all looked the same on the participant incentive signature sheet is because all the participants used the same pen. What a creative excuse!
So I have to wonder as I see trucks and cars advertising driver’s education around town what exactly they are teaching their students. Can you imagine… “Go faster! Cut that person off! It’s okay to drive into oncoming traffic. Pull out into traffic and then look. Always slam on your breaks at the last possible second. Go ahead and drive on the sidewalks it doesn’t matter if people are walking there, you have the right of way.” Yikes, driving and walking are exciting here. It is about as much fun as it was in Jamaica except that Kenyans are much too polite to use their horn so most times all you hear is screeching tires. I try not to think about what is happening around me when I’m on the road. I would need to be medicated if I did.
So I must go now and work on some stuff before the mosquitoes come out and I have to retreat under my net. I actually had one crafty bugger get under my net the other night. It being around three in the morning and me not wanting to get out of bed, flip on the light, find it and kill it I decided to retreat under a sheet and leave just a small enough hole where I could breathe comfortably. The next thing I know the little f*&^er flew up my nose. Urgh! Damn vermin! You can think of me around noon your time (that is 7 pm my time) when I am committing murder in my room via fly swatter and hand clapping. Many will die!
So this coming Wednesday will mark the half-way point for the Kenyan portion of my trip. Unfortunately most of my time here so far has been spent in front of a computer doing work. Not so exciting really. This coming week will be spent putting data into SPSS. Yes, I have about 550 surveys to enter. BLAH!!! The project is going alright. I say just alright because of course there are many things that could be going better but due local circumstances there are obstacles to be dealt with. Take for instance the fact that we had five out of twelve research assistants falsify documents and steal participant incentive money. Kenyans on the research team were not surprised about this. My Kenyan colleagues tell me it is common practice for Kenyans to get money however possible. I guess I was not all that flabbergasted either to tell you the truth, the majority of the people in this country are struggling to get by; nonetheless, you always hope that things will be different. Lucky me (being the outside whitey that gets to leave in three weeks) was elected to break the news to the scoundrels that they were under investigation for fraud and that for the time being we would not be paying them. So get this, when I questioned them one by one, two of them actually told me that the reason the signatures all looked the same on the participant incentive signature sheet is because all the participants used the same pen. What a creative excuse!So I have to wonder as I see trucks and cars advertising driver’s education around town what exactly they are teaching their students. Can you imagine… “Go faster! Cut that person off! It’s okay to drive into oncoming traffic. Pull out into traffic and then look. Always slam on your breaks at the last possible second. Go ahead and drive on the sidewalks it doesn’t matter if people are walking there, you have the right of way.” Yikes, driving and walking are exciting here. It is about as much fun as it was in Jamaica except that Kenyans are much too polite to use their horn so most times all you hear is screeching tires. I try not to think about what is happening around me when I’m on the road. I would need to be medicated if I did.
So I must go now and work on some stuff before the mosquitoes come out and I have to retreat under my net. I actually had one crafty bugger get under my net the other night. It being around three in the morning and me not wanting to get out of bed, flip on the light, find it and kill it I decided to retreat under a sheet and leave just a small enough hole where I could breathe comfortably. The next thing I know the little f*&^er flew up my nose. Urgh! Damn vermin! You can think of me around noon your time (that is 7 pm my time) when I am committing murder in my room via fly swatter and hand clapping. Many will die!
June 5, 2006-Body odor a go-go
L
ast week moved slower than mammal evolution it seems. So far I have only input data from 128 surveys into SPSS. About 450 more to go! I’m going bananas quite frankly and I’m so very sick of being in the tiny room I’m renting. Saturday at least I got to escape my room for a little while and go to the market to pick up some nick-nacks and do-dads to bring home to prove I was in Kenya. Be on the lookout for fish shaped bowls made entirely out of used match sticks, place mats made out of banana leaves and water buffalos shaped out of ungali (a staple food in Kenya made out of finely ground maize mixed with water- kinda like instant mashed potatoes except that ungali tastes worse, yes if you can imagine it, quite worse folks. I liken the taste of ungali to a mixture of talcum powder and wall paper paste. No thanks, I’ll pass on seconds. Thankfully, the next two weeks I’ll be pretty busy with other things so I’m hoping the time will go a little faster.Taking me back to my good ol’ Peace Corps days I have been asked to give a presentation on HIV/AIDS prevention to a village about 50 miles south of Nairobi. For six of those miles mind you I will have to balance on the back of a bicycle over an awful road through beautiful scenery. I’ll try and capture that on film to provide all of you with some comic relief. In addition I have to start writing a grant, give a couple of other presentations and meet with a few people here and there. I think I’m going to hand the SPSS data entry off to the research assistants on this project. I’m not sure my mind can handle another 450 surveys especially when 2/3 of them are in Kiswahili and Kikamba.
June 6, 2006
Question of the day: Why is it that no matter what developing country you go to the markets are full of synthetic fabrics of astonishing ugliness?
June 7, 2006- Metal rebars sticking up from roofs- A Third World symbol of hope
You can call Kenya part of the “developing world,” or “the part of the world that is really screwed.” Being here is a constant reminder that life is weighty, important, grave and critical. Being surrounded by squalor I’ve found it is hard not to look at things in a serious way, think about serious things, pick serious things to talk about and speak of them most seriously. This is making me boring. But there seems no escape from it. In fact, just the other night we were discussing the recent drought/famine in Kenya at the dinner table. Then we started talking about aid and everything the US and other rich countries could do to help. (Everyone seems to have the perfect solutions ($$$ and lots of it) yet the problems continue. Maybe I was a little snarky, maybe a little burnt-out but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to bring up the fact that a lot of the shitty things that happen in Kenya to Kenyans are done by Kenyans themselves.June 8, 2006
Of course when you come from another country people have questions to ask you about “your people” and how things are in your country. Here is just a sample of some of the things I have been asked so far:
Is it true Americans think Kenyans are like monkeys?
Isn’t true that women in the US can remove their uteruses and have a baby implanted in there and then put them back in their bodies?
Is rush hour traffic on Friday as bad as this in your country? (A matatu driver asked me this as he was driving down a busy sidewalk bypassing a lot of the traffic and annoying/ nearly hitting a lot of pedestrians)
Everyone is rich in the US aren’t they? (This is the time I would love to show them a video of how things are in South Bronx, Detroit, New Orleans and the west side of Chicago.)
How come your people don’t think we wear shoes? One of my Kenyan colleagues told me that a volunteer once came to work without shoes because they thought nobody wears shoes in Kenya and wanted to fit in.
June 9, 2006
Today I rode on the back of a bicycle for about 35 minutes (one way) to a village to deliver a presentation on HIV prevention. I have decided this is my favorite form of transportation in Kenya. Sans the waves of odoriferous funk coming from the chap doing the peddling the experience was quite pleasant. These boda boda drivers are amazing! Here they are on one speed bikes hauling people around up and down hills on dirt roads. My guy wasn’t even breathing hard; nonetheless, I did feel bad for him on one hill and got off so we could walk up the thing together. Round trip cost me $2. In my opinion he should have made $50.
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