When it rains, it pours...

So it looks like this trip is going out with a bang…

I had a lot to talk about for stuff that we’ve done the past couple days but I’m going to condense it all to get to the story at hand…

So after village market last week I went into Kibera for a couple days. There is not a whole lot interesting note other than meeting this cool college student from Japan who is interning for Ken’s YMCA this summer. He went around with me on my research on Friday.

Saturday was the big goat feast day. We woke up early at 6am to get to Robert’s house by 7am to kill the goat. Emily successfully made the kill, much to the surprise of all the Kenyans that thought she would chicken out. I’m not going to go into the details of the kill and its subsequent skinning and dissection, but it was a fascinating experience. Ask me about it if you see me in person and I will tell you more about it.

As soon as we had killed it, we tossed its liver on the grill and after a thorough cooking we had some of it which tasted pretty good. It is traditional to eat a piece of it right after the kill so we had some of that meat for breakfast. Afterwards Matt, Roy and myself came back to Kilimani for a couple hours before returning to the house for a lunch of some more goat. We watched Lion King with Robert and his neighbor’s families. We then went to his father and brother’s house. His brother had a meeting to go to with the vice-president of Kenya, but we spent some time talking to his father. He was a very intelligent man, and asked us to quiz him on his knowledge. Most of his answers dated back to biblical references as he was deeply religious. After that we had a dinner of more goat, before leaving for the night. We stayed up a couple hours to see Emily off, and then we went to bed.

Sunday was a very relaxing day. We sort of wanted to crash after the bus days prior so we sat around for the most part. We sat around and then at night we went to see Captain America at a nearby movie theatre. I enjoyed it and thought it a little ironic that we were watching Captain America in Kenya. It was the next morning when all hell broke loose.

Just before Emily left, we blew a fuse in the house. We thought it only pertained to half of our room’s electricity, but it was also the fuse for the water pump. Little did we know, the water pump was slowly draining over the next 24 hours so eventually it ran out and we had no more. We realized last night that we had run out of water, so we sent an email to the landlord and waited for a response today to figure out how to fix it.

I woke up this morning around 10am. I got out of bed and saw that no now was home except for Minh. I went and asked him what was going on and he told me that Matt had taken Roy to the hospital. At this point I was like What? As it turns out, both Minh and Roy were affected by some kind of food poisoning. They both had thrown up quite a bit, but Roy was especially bad so Matt needed to call a cab to get him to the hospital in town that the expats go to. He needed to be given a ton of antibiotics and they ran a number of tests on him after hooking him up to an IV.

Back at the apartment, there was still no power and no water. On top of that, the toilets were overflowing from the vomit that the two of them had ejected in their sickness. The landlord told us to go and find the caretakers of the complex we live in who do a lot of repairs. I went and found one and brought him in to help. He came to look at our fuse box and told us that the fuse for the water pump was only 10 amperes and we needed a 20 ampere one. He went out and bought one and came back and installed it. After putting it in, the power started flickering a bit, before we lost all of our power.

The caretaker went to check on other apartments, and it turned out that the whole building blew a massive fuse and had no power. We needed to wait for someone to pick up a couple new fuses, and for an electrician to come and install them. Meanwhile Roy and Minh were still sick and there was puke everywhere. While we were waiting for power, I went outside and filled some buckets of water at a nearby tap to pour into the back of the toilets to cause it to flush. It did not work super well, but it was the best option we had.

After a few hours, we finally got our power back. Apparently a fuse had completely exploded and the whole building shorted out. It was all repaired and we thought that everything was fine. Roy was finally released from the hospital with a big bag of medication to take, but he is feeling a little bit better now. Minh is also, but he is flying out tonight which should be an interesting experience. I went to go flush the toilets and it didn’t work. We still did not have water.

I went to go find the caretaker again to ask him to look and see what the problem was. After a little while he figured it out. With all the power troubles, our water pump must have completely lit on fire. The whole thing was scorched and completely burnt out. We need to get a new pump before we get any water.

Luckily the caretaker offered to go and pick up the new pump for us, and he said that he can install it sometime today. It will cost us around $70, but we will eventually get reimbursed by the landlord. And that’s where we stand right now. Roy is home now, and he and Minh are sleeping trying to recover. I’m waiting for the caretaker to come back with the new pump so we can finally get water back in the house.

I just love how both of them get sick at the exact same time that we lose all water and power and ability to flush down any waste. 

Oh Kenya…

On Stranger Tides

Today was an interesting day (I feel like I’ve said that a lot). I was able to experience some genuine culture shock, and had a good time doing it.

I spent about 11 hours today in a place called the Village Market. Emily had a meeting in a part of Nairobi called Kigeri. It is a really beautiful and green part of town, and it is where most of the foreign embassies are located, as long as an enormous UN compound. We wanted to check out Village Market so we figured that while in the area, it would be a good opportunity to do so (as it is kind of far, and expensive by cab to get to).

Emily went to her meeting nearby and I continued straight to the mall. When I got there, I became a little confused as to where I was. The place was absolutely ridiculous. There was a big waterfall nearby an outdoor food court. There were dozens of stores, carvings, more waterfalls, artwork, and art gallery, a water park, mini-golf, a movie theatre… the list goes on and on. It was massive.

The Village Market seems to be the place where the families of diplomats go for leisure. It was filled with foreigners from all over, and it seemed to be quite an affluent crowd. (There were many Kenyans there as well, though they were definitely upper class)

I went and sat in a café for a couple hours and finished a book (the 7^th I’ve finished since getting here). Emily eventual came from her meeting and we explored a little more. Then Matt and Roy joined us and we played 18 holes of mini-golf (I won) before eating in the food court. We then sat at a bar with live music and killed some time until we went to the movies to see the 4^th Pirates of the Caribbean (It was all that was planning).

The whole time, there were moments that I forgot that we were in Nairobi, Kenya. It felt a lot more like a tropical resort. It was bizarre, but a nice relaxing day that is sure to be a contrast with going back to Kibera tomorrow.

Pranked

Not much new to talk about. We are settling back in after our Safari. I’m going to begin working again with Ken in Kibera this week. I just wanted to quickly relay something interesting that happened to me yesterday.

I had just finished meeting with Adam and walking with him back to his house to pick up a spare power adapter he was lending me. As I was walking through the Prestige parking lot a Kenyan man flagged me down. Normally if random people try to talking to me, I tend to ignore them as they normally ask for something because I stand out. He was very persistent though and walked up to me.

He started pointing to the back of my shirt and said that I had something there. Dirt or something, maybe paint. He then stepped closer and started saying more emphatically that I had something on my shirt. At this point I started to get worried and I grabbed my phone and wallet through my pants pocket to make sure no one was trying to steal them. The man then took out a rag and started trying to rub whatever I had off my back. Suddenly, another Kenyan man walked over and agreed with the first man that I had a lot of paint on my back somehow. The both continued to try and wipe it off the back of my shirt. I tried looking to see what they were gesturing at, but for the life of me I could not figure out what they were talking about. I was still nervous about them, but I tried brushing the back of my shirt to see if I could figure out what the hell they were talking about. I started getting kind of stressed as they become continually exasperated about the fact that my shirt was filthy.

The first man then tapped me on my shoulder and smiled. He gave me a thumbs up with his other hand and said “Look! You’ve been Pranked!!!”I turned around, and out from behind a car was a video crew with a big camera all smiling at me. Then everyone standing in the parking lot around me began to laugh. The first guy thanked me, patted me on my back, and sent me on my way.

Yeah, that’s Kenya for you. Take a look; I will probably end up on Kenyan television.

Safari

So, I’d say that going on a Safari would be towards the top of the list of the coolest things I’ve ever been lucky enough to do. It was a pretty awesome experience all around, and make sure to check out this photo album to see some of the pictures. More pictures from each of us that went should be added over time, so check back every once in a while.

We started out Friday being picked up in the morning by our driver Paul. Our safari vehicle was a matatu specifically made for safaris. It has a lot of space inside, and the roof also rises so you can stand up inside and look outside. Here is a picture from google of what one looks like:

We set out immediately and our first stop was at a view point over the Great Rift Valley. The valley is a large rift between continental plates that extends from Lebanon all the way down Africa through Kenya and further south. The view point gave a pretty awesome view, and we were able to look many miles away into the valley. After taking a few pictures we were back on the road to a town called Narock where we ate lunch. The place we ate at was called the Dream King Restaurant. It is an all you can eat Kenyan restaurant that has many deals with different safari groups, so it was filled with white tourists which was kind of unsettling at first. After lunch we were back on the road.

A little bit outside of Narock we hit this really awful road. It was so rough going driving on the road, that it was a smoother ride with half the wheels off road and driving in a ditch. It was a pretty uncomfortable stretch of road as it constantly felt like we were about to tip over on our side which would have been pretty unfortunate. At one point one of our tires was punctured and we had to stop to replace it with a spare. After some bumpier driving, we eventually reached the Masai Mara area.

The first thing we did when getting there was to go on an afternoon game drive for a couple of hours. We had to stop at a gate and Paul paid our park entrance fee ($80 a day per head), and then we were in the park and were immediately greeted by our first pack of Wildebeest of many that we would see across the rest of the trip. I’m not really sure what to write about the safari itself. I don’t want to write too much about just what it was like, and what I felt. Instead, here is a list of observations and things I saw from all three of the game drives that I did. Then I will explain the accommodations and the rest of the trip.

•          There was so much open space. You could just look and all around you in each direction was just empty land filled with animals.
•         We were in the park during the great migration which is when wildebeest and zebra travel into the Mara north from Tanzania. The migration is peak safari time, as there were literally millions of them walking around. You would just look out, and every dot you saw was a wildebeest extending far into the difference. A remarkable thing about them is that they travel in almost straight lines when they walk which is neat to look at.
•          Our Tufts bred need to see elephants were more than satisfied. We saw probably dozens walking around, eating, drinking, all mostly in families.
•          We saw tons of giraffe too.
•          Lions were pretty cool. We saw the most on the third day. Normally they would just lay around in the shade to avoid the heat of the day, but a couple times we saw them more active. Once we saw one chasing after some wildebeest down into a ditch. When we got to the other side of it, there was a dead wildebeest at its side. Another time we saw a lion feasting on its prey. It then started to carry it away from some vultures.
•         Vultures and storks are really nasty creatures. We saw them eating a few carcasses. One vulture fresh at a kill site ate the scrotum of a wildebeest and then proceeded to stick its head and long neck entirely up the hole where the scrotum used to be into the body. It was pretty disgusting.
•          You never see in any pictures of animals, that whenever there is something interesting, dozens of safari cars rush to the scene. You know there is something interesting when you can see a group gathering in the distance. You then rush up to them to see what they are looking for.
•          Other animals we were gazelle, water buck, antelope, impalas, and a lot of different birds.
•          Unfortunately, we were not able to see any cheetah, leopard, or rhinos. All three are very rare.
•          Sunrise over the African Savannah. Just think Lion King.

There is so much more to talk about the safari, but I would not do it justice by writing here. Feel free to ask me about it in person next time I see you and I will be glad to explain it some more.

The place where we stayed at night was called Rhino Safari camp. It was not a great hotel or lodge, but it was comfortable enough. Accommodations were either tents under a roof attached to a bathroom, or small hostel type rooms. We stated in the latter though the first night there was a snafu with the lodging, and two of the group had to stay with strangers. All was well though. The food was also pretty good. Again, standard Kenyan food, but that is not a bad thing.

This is a long post so I am going to stop here. I have a lot more to talk about safaris, but I will leave that until the next time I see you in person. All in all, it was an incredible trip, I would recommend it to anyone, and I would definitely do it again.

Safari Tomorrow

I don’t really have all that much to add today. I spent the day going around Kibera again with Ken and Joshua, talking with a number of different people about data. The past couple days have been pretty uneventful overall. I needed to recover after spending so much time in Kibera on Saturday and Sunday, so I spent most of this past week just processing the information that I’ve gathered. We also booked a Safari and we are leaving tomorrow.

We are going for a 2 night safari in the Masai Mara, one of the world’s most famous game reserves. The Masai Mara is the northern portion of the Serengeti National Park located in Tanzania. It is the home of lions, cheetahs, giraffe, zebra, hippos, and really pretty much any animal that you can think of when picturing the Lion King (which we watched last night).

We are being picked up at 9am or so tomorrow morning for the 5 hour drive to the park from Nairobi. In the afternoon we are going on our first game drive, then returning to Rhino Camp at night. We are going to be sleeping in Tents, though they have roofs, and the whole area is in the enclosed campsite (so we are not in danger of being eaten). All day Saturday we have another game drive, and Sunday morning we have a final one as we are leaving the park.

I will be sure to write all about it when I get back, and I will try to get some good pictures online.

More than just Money

Yesterday was quite a fascinating day in Kibera. Today on the other hand, I relaxed for a bit, finishing a book and starting another, as well as typing up some of my notes so far. I’m a little tired currently, so I will skip most of the details of the day, and just mention each of the interesting or bizarre things that occurred.

Synopsis: I was in Kibera again all day in order to continue my research. Ken led me around again, and Matt decided to come to Kibera as well.

The Friend: Soon after we arrived in Kibera, Matt commented to Ken that he knew a lot of people around town, as we had to stop every thirty seconds for him to talk to somebody. Ken then agreed that he knew many people and pointed out that he knew a man who was across the street. The man was sitting in and picking through an enormous pile of garbage. Ken called him over and asked what he was doing. The man was covered in soot and garbage and was explaining that he was collecting it to sell. He was not completely there though. Something seemed a little off. Ken introduced him to us and told us that they went to college together. He tried talking with the man for a minute or two, but most of what he was saying did not make a whole lot of sense. The man then asked for help and said, “Watch, I can do tricks”. He then proceeded to do a split. It was the single most uncomfortable experience I have been in so far while in Kenya. Ken gave him a few coins and as we were walking away, Ken told us that they were in the same class, and that he had a lot more money growing up than Ken himself did. He told us that there are other factors then just money that affect how people turn out. It was just such a stark difference. Two young kids, coming from the same place. One ends up being a successful community activist, the other, a likely burned out from drugs beggar, picking through trash and doing tricks for some spare change…

The Drunkenness: Ken pointed out early on that Sunday is the major day for drinking in Kibera. Apparently, alcoholism is a pervasive problem in the slum. Throughout the day, we would see drunken people stumbling on by, yelling obscenities and falling over themselves...

The Art Studio: At one point, Ken brought us to this art studio in the slum. Inside were a few of the artists who were part of an art collective that worked out of this one studio. The walls were covered in their artwork, some of it quick comical, and full of political commentary. They told us how they have art hanging all around Kibera. They might be a group to get involved with the data center to help represent data in a variety of forms. As we were there, this man came in whose hair was in dreads. He asked for my name. When I told him it was David, he proceeded to tell me the following: “You are David. You live down in the hole you fight the lions in the dirt under the ground you feel the air it surrounds you everywhere the air it touches it moves it flows around your body it keeps going it flows the air the life force you fight the lions…” he trailed off. He then turned to Matt and ranted in much the same way, except about how Matt wrote the gospel of Matthew in the bible. He was very obviously high on something more than alcohol...

The Rat: We were in the house of one of Ken’s friends talking about the data center. The man told us that the houses are very poorly built in Kibera and they need to be fixed up. As if on cue, immediately after he said that, a huge rat scurried by on a ledge behind his head...

The Fight: As we were leaving Kibera we walked past a big fight going on between a few people. They were obviously drunk and just brawling. We quickly evaded them to avoid getting drawn in...

The Police Officers: After we had left Kibera, we were walking through Kilimani about a block from our house when two police officers came up behind us and stopped us. They asked for our IDs and we quickly complied by showing them our driver’s licenses. They continued walking with us for a few minutes, interrogating us about what we were doing here, where we were coming from, where we were going. One then asked me if it was true that in the United States, police officers don’t carry big guns. In Kenya, the police walk around with very large, automatic machine guns. They are actually quite unsettling to see everywhere. I told them that it was true; in the US they only use small side arms. He seemed disappointed, and said that his gun was easier to shoot people with. When we got to our block, they left us alone, but I think they were probably trying to get a bribe out of us. Bribes are a pretty typical way of life here...

What a day…

The Common Tour Route

Today I spent a nice long day in Kibera which was a fascinating time. It was the start of my research into the types of data that communities find the most useful, so I spent all day talking to different people in the slum about things they would want to know about their community.

I started out by meeting Ken O. in the morning. We then walked from where we were meeting into the slum which was only about 10 minutes away. We entered through a different side of it then I’ve seen before. There was a large open dirt field which looked like it served as a place for big events to happen in the area. There were a lot of kids playing soccer, and there was a stage set up where there would later be some performers hip hop dancing. As we got into the slum, I saw one of the sights that Kibera is well known for. The train tracks. There is a railroad line that runs straight through the slum. There was no train coming so people were walking up and down it, and children were playing on them. Shops lined the side of them only about 5 feet from the edge of the tracks. One point along them, you could look too the right, and see all of Kibera spreading out into the distance. The slum really is quite massive. To the left of the tracks in an oddly surreal way was the green of a golf course where I saw some wealthy looking foreigners playing a game. It was just kind of weird to see such poverty to my right, a railroad beneath me, and affluence to the left.

As I was walking along the tracks, Ken saw another Kenyan who he knew who was guiding an American couple. The woman turned to me and said: “Oh, I guess this is the popular tourist route”. I just sort of nodded and continued on with Ken, but that comment bothered me a little bit. My first reaction was that of revulsion that she considered such a thing as tourism. I think it is vile to view other people’s poverty and suffering as something fascinating to look at. My second reaction though was that as I was looking out at the reaches of the slum from the railroad, wasn’t I in a way a tourist? I’m still not really sure where I sit on this. I think I justify it in my mind that I am here doing work with the community, rather than just staring at them. It enables me to do what I do without feel bad about it, but there is definitely some grey area.

The first place we went was a school complex run by the Kibera YMCA. That was where I realized that Ken was kind of a big deal as he turns out to be the director of the whole organization. We stopped in a parent meeting the school was having, and I had the opportunity to speak to the parents about the project and ask them a few questions. It went pretty well, though they were reluctant to speak at first. Most of what they mentioned dealt with the health and safety of the children in Kibera, which makes sense as they are parents.

After the meeting I went and sat in the headmaster’s office while Ken had some work to attend to. I think I dozed off for a little while, before waking up and chatting with one of the teachers for a while about the history of New York City, and the geography of the United States. After that was lunch before I met with all the staff of the school. I chatted with them about the project and data for a little over the hour. They were incredibly interested, and offered a ton of great insight. After that we left the school, and caught a matatu deeper into the slum.

The last place that we stopped to gather information was at a fundraising event that was taking place in a community center. Ken was invited as a guest of honor. It was a fundraiser to help send a student to University next year because the family could not afford it by themselves. It was an interesting event. You had to pay some money when you first came in. Then, the MC would introduce different people who would go up to the front of the room and badger people for more money. Whoever had the mic would walk around demanding more money from people for quite random reasons. One man handed another guy a box to hold. He then charged him 200 schillings for holding it and he had to pay up. It was a really interesting time, similar to fundraising events that you would see back in the US, but also very distinctly Kenyan.

I just returned back to the apartment now after a long day. We ate dinner at a place in prestige called “Books First, Sherlock’s Grill and Sports Pub”. I had some quesadillas which were not bad. I’m meeting Ken at 11am tomorrow morning to head back into Kibera, so let’s home it is as good a time as today was.

Oh, also, today we decided and set into motion the plans to go on a Safari next weekend. More to come on that later...

1 Week Later

I’ve been a little slow in writing blog posts, so I will try to use this one to catch up a bit. I’m going to use this one to describe things, rather than provide too in depth commentary and thought on what I’ve been doing. After I’ve caught up, I will transition to something more like that. Anyway…

I’ve been in Kenya for about a week. Things have been going well so far, and I’m enjoying my time here thus far. I’m going to break everything down by subject and try and include as much as I can.

Places to go nearby: So, our apartment is located in the Kilimani part of Nairobi. It is the home of most of the expat community, as well as Nairobi’s considerably large upper middle class. As such, the area is filled with a number of stores and locations that are not too different from what you would find in America. Adam’s Arcade is about a 7 minute walk away. It is a little outdoor plaza mall. We’ve gone there a few times to eat and meet at a place called Java. Java which we believe was first founded by an American a few years, back is a really awesome coffee shop type place. They have good coffee and tea, as well as great breakfast food. I had some banana walnut pancakes there that were fantastic.

Another location about 7 minutes away is called Prestige. It is a larger outdoor mall type place that we go to fairly often. It has an ATM is I want to take out more money, a food court, a lot of stores and a movie theatre playing recent movies. The night that I arrived, the rest of my team went to see Harry Potter at the theater. One of the stores in Prestige is called Nakumat which is a chain as I went to one last summer while in Kampala. On the first floor it is a pretty basic supermarket with really any type of food, Kenyan or Western that you can find. It has two more floors that can be described as a mix between a Target and a Sears with a whole variety of different items, electronics, and furniture. It is a really neat place that we can go to if we ever need really anything.

The third location that we frequent is another mall, about 8 minutes away called YaYa. It is a rather large 4 story mall that is probably the most affluent out of each location. It has a number of stores where you can buy just about anything you can want. It has a super market on the first floor, as well as another Java. Our collective favorite place there is definitely a coffee/pastry shop called Alexandro. They have seats in YaYa’s main lobby as well as in this outdoor, yet contained tree house like space that has Monet prints on the wall, as well as a lovely banner depicting a snowy evening. The pasty’s they serve are fantastic, and we usually end up going there at least once each day.

The Food: The food is something I have been asked about frequently back home. It has been fantastic so far. A couple nights we have cooked pasta in our apartment, but otherwise most nights we have eaten out. There are food courts in both Prestige and YaYa that have a number of different restaurants ranging from Swahili and Ethiopian, to Indian, Chinese, and Italian. Most of it so far has been very good, and I have not yet gotten the same meal twice. Another place we have eaten is a nice restaurant called Smart Village. It is Ethiopian food so it consists of mashed up vegetables, and legumes and such, and sometimes meat. You eat it using this sponge break that you tear pieces of, and use it to scoop up the veggies. It was kind of amusing the other day when we were eating there; we ordered one full chicken which can feed the table of 9 of us. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication and they thought we asked for four chickens. Big difference! We ended up eating a lot of it, but we worked it out with them that we did not have to pay for it all as it was a miscommunication.

What we’ve been doing: In the week that I’ve been here, we have had busy days as well as uneventful. The first couple days I was here we just traveled around and I tried to get used to my surroundings. We went into the center of Nairobi to walk around. We happened upon a bar called Samba that was notable for its padded walls and neon lights guiding the stairs up to it. It turned out to be a really nice place with a lot of people watching football (soccer) games. There we met a Kenyan man named Robert who I will talk about more in a later blog post. Long story short, we went to his house for dinner last night and it was great. A couple days ago I went into the city again with Roy. He is doing a project on Matatus, so we walked from Matatu station to Matatu station. Matatus are basically minibuses/large vans that serve as the primary form of transit around the city. They don’t drive until they are full and they follow different routes, but if business is slow they will change them at any time. They are not expensive to use, less than 50 cents most of the time, but are definitely an experience due to their aggressive driving style. There are also buses you can take around the city that are a little bit more comfortable for an equivalent price.

As for my project it is just getting started. I had a meeting yesterday and another one tomorrow to put together the research methods. Today I am going to take data and translate it into a few different forms so that we can see which ways of representing data are the best for people in communities to understand. I will try to put what I create up on this blog after I write it.

I’ve been to Kibera once already with a man named Ken O. and Joshua who is one of the people from group shot. Ken grew up in Kibera and now works with a number of groups in the community. He works with mSurvey, the YMCA in Kibera, as well as his own NGO. He is going to be my main contact when working on this project. He took us on a tour of one small part of Kibera near where he grew up. Kibera is certainly an interesting place. It was a lot more similar to Shilongo, the village in Uganda where I was last summer in terms of the poverty in the area. It was different in other respects and more similar to my trip to the Dominican Republic in January because of the tight slum living conditions. I will describe it more in detail sometime later after I have been there more.

When I haven’t been working I’ve been reading a lot. I think I’ve gotten through around 4 books since getting here, and I have a while left to go and to continue reading before I get caught up in school as soon as I get home.

That’s it for now, and I will try to write a bit more regularly moving forward.

The Trip and What I'm Doing

Note: This is the first time my internet connection has been fast enough to post anything, so I meant to put this up a couple days ago. I'm also not sure if I will be able to get the pictures up for a couple more days. I will see if I can post something about what I've been doing since this post was written in a day or two.

I’m currently writing this from Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. I probably won’t be able to publish it until I am in Nairobi, but I figured that I might as well start writing something more introductory now before starting to actually talk about Kenya once I get there later tonday/tonight/tomorrow (whatever time it happens to be).

My flight to get here was nice enough. The Turkish airline flight I took was for the most part pleasant. The food was pretty good, and they had a wide variety of on-demand movies to watch. I killed some time watching the movie The Town which was pretty good. It was neat to see locations all around Boston that I see on a regular basis. The only hiccup in the trip was a toddler sitting in the seat directly behind me who threw several temper tantrums throughout the flight. He would just start screaming for around 20 minutes before his mother was able to calm him down both times. To top it off, as we were getting off the plane, he threw up all over a young girl that was sitting a couple rows away. Real nice.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment to explain exactly why I am going to Kenya. This past semester I took a seminar that was taught by a consulting group called Groupshot who specialize in technology in development in context. The culmination of the course was this trip to Kenya, partially sponsored by the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts. 4 other students and I are going to be in Kenya each doing research on our own respective projects, though there will be a substantial amount of overlap and we will likely work together frequently.

My project is in regards to data access and usability. It is often a problem all around the world that data collected does not get back to the people that the data came from. Oftentimes groups go into developing countries with the intention of performing a project. They will collect data from communities, and then leave with it. Sometimes the communities see the data again, but much of the time they do not. In the cases that they do see the data, it is often not in a form that is usable for the actual community members to use. As a result, this data which could be a great resource is ultimately wasted. The research question I am going to try and work on has two parts. The first of which is how can we get all this data that is collected back to the community itself. The second part is how then can this data become usable for community members to empower themselves with. I’m going to be doing this research through surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc… to try and get as complete a picture of the situation as possible.

With that, I need to board my flight to Kenya. I will try and update this blog regularly. Also, if you ever have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.

I’ve arrived safely in Kenya and so far things are really nice. My second flight was pretty manageable. It went for the most part without a hitch. I was sitting next to a mother, her father, and her 1 month year old baby girl. She was really young to be traveling all the way to Kenya from wherever they started (they sounded Dutch to me). When I arrived in the airport it took little trouble to acquire a visa. There was a long line to purchase one, but it only took around 20 minutes. The whole process of getting the visa, and then changing money took longer as there was a massive group of volunteers from I believe Ireland that were clogging everything up. They appeared to be doing some volunteer work from a church. I wish I had had the chance to ask them more specifically what they were working on. I’m skeptical of such trips as they were only staying a week from the conversations I heard. The one bothersome part of getting through the airport was that the customs official who gave me the visa asked if I could break a $100 US bill for her. I saw no problem with it as I was just going to exchange it to Kenyan Schillings anyway. Unfortunately, as it turns out, it was an older $100 bill. While it is still legal tender, the first exchange place in the airport didn’t want it. I was finally able to get it exchanged at a second place, but the exchange rate was 1 schilling less (The rate was about 1$US=95 Schillings).

After leaving the airport, I was greeted by John who had a piece of paper with my name on it. He told me “Karibou Kenya, Kakuna Matata!” which means “Welcome to Kenya, no worries!” (If you recognize that second phrase from the Lion King it is because the movie is peppered with Swahili. Simba I believe actually means lion. The movie was supposed to take place in either Kenya or Tanzania). The drive to get to the apartment only took around 20 minutes though apparently if done in the middle of the day rather than 3 in the morning; it could take over an hour due to all of the congestion. Although he pointed out some landmarks along the way, I don’t feel that I yet have a good feel of the city. I will need to go around it in the daytime to see what’s what. One landmark that was pretty neat that he pointed out was Nairobi National Park. I could not see into it, only the fence that surrounds it, but apparently it is full of a whole number of elephants, giraffes, buffalo, monkeys, baboons, etc… The interesting part of it all was that it directly bordered the airport and the outskirts of the city. He pointed out a few hotels along side it that during the day, you can look out your window and see all the animals. I’d like to go on a real safari while on this trip, but at the very least I know I will get to see this park at one point or another.

After the nice drive through the city, we arrived at the apartment complex and I was greeted by my fellow Tufts students who had arrived a few days earlier. The whole complex is surrounded by a barbed electric fence with 24 hour security so it is pretty safe. Apparently there is also a pool and a 24 hour gym, but I have yet to see them yet. The apartment itself is very nice. It is very spacious and clean. It is a three bedroom apartment with a living room, dining room, kitchen and 2 and a half bathrooms for just 5 people. I have some pictures of it below.

I’m not yet sure what I’m going to be doing today, most likely getting acclimated with the parts of the city around the apartment. I am going to try and pickup a cheap phone to use as well as a local sym card that is much more affordable than using a phone from home. In the apartment we have an android phone working as a wifi hotspot, so I should have the internet regularly, but not for long stretches of time, so I will try and post something either later tonight, or sometime tomorrow.

Living Room

Dining Room

View Outside Window (looks the same as what our apartment looks like from the outside)

Kitchen

My bedroom 

Bathroom (and me taking the picture)

Main Hallway

Other angle of the Kitchen

New Travel Blog

Welcome to my new blog devoted to whatever travels I am doing around the globe. I wanted this to be separate from my standard blog as the audience might be a little different for either. This blog is mostly meant for family and friends. If you are not one of my friends or a family member, this blog is going to be a pretty typical travel blog. I will try to keep this as interesting as I can though.

My first trip that I will talk about here will be my trip to Kenya that I leave for in 2 days. Sometime soon I will put up an introduction post for that trip describing what it is that I am doing. I will then try update it every few days while I am traveling.