Research Update

I was in Nairobi for the week of February 23-27 for my program's mid-term seminar. I met with a few of my professor's to discuss my progress with my research so far. The bulk of my research is already done and now I have a lot of data analysis to do. Along with two Community Health Workers who served as translators, I went to 42 homes of the orphans and vulnerable children who are in my research study. At each home I took a picture of the guardian in front of their house. I find it very interesting to look through all 42 of these photos because it really shows the variation of the styles and conditions of the houses in this area. The families who are the best off have a metal sheet roof and possibly even a few glass windows. One of the houses I remember as being different than all the rest had hard-mud walls with a metal sheet roof. The woman who lived in the house had taken a different kind of mud and painted flowers and other designs on the exterior of the house. I felt like it was really an example of a person making the best of their situations.

A fair amount of the houses I visited had mud walls and sometimes the guardians were even repairing the walls as we approached the home. The one family that really struck me had a young boy at the primary school who was disabled. He has a hunchback and a significant bulge in his chest. Of all of the children in my research study, he was the only one who was "very underweight." The house did not really have proper walls. The walls had a stick frame but there was little substance to the actual wall. About 3/4 of the walls had plastic bags as the barrier from the outside. The other 1/4 of the walls were just open to the elements. This particular family was particularly bad off so after meeting with the family, we made the decision to start him in our feeding center immediately. He was originally in my research study as part of the group who was not receiving help at the feeding center. I chose to not withhold the help at the feeding center in the name of "do no harm." Although we can unfortunately not make this exception for every student who is currently not receiving help at the feeding center, we continue to expand the feeding center's outreach and hope to eventually be able to include all of the children participating in the research study.

During my time in Nairobi for the mid-term seminar and my week off for break, one of my co-workers along with one of the Community Health Workers weighed and measured the children on the assigned date for the two weeks.

For the rest of my research, I will continue to measure the children each week until April 10th. I hope to set up a meeting with the head teacher of the primary school this week to discuss with him academic records. The third and final component of my research is to look at academic performance, attendance records and school drop-out rates at the primary school. I'm looking to compare the two groups of children - those receiving help at the feeding center and those who aren't currently receiving help. Almost every single family I spoke with in the household surveys said that their child never misses school because of chores or household labor. School attendance is a major issue, so it will be interesting to compare the responses of the family with the actual records.