Untitled Travel Blog: 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.