Spring Break Travel - Malindi

Colin and his dad were with us on our flight from Lamu but we got off in Malindi and they proceeded on to Nairobi. We took a tuk-tuk to the hotel where every other group of students from our program has stayed at. For whatever reason, the guy at the reception was being a jerk and refused to budge on the price of the room. We ate lunch at the Italian restaurant at the hotel and then sampled almost all the flavors of gelato. We lugged our bags around the hotel town with us trying to find another hotel. We went to 3 other hotels which ended up all being more expensive than the original hotel. We grudgingly went back to the original hotel and ended up paying 5 times more per night than the guest house we stayed at in Lamu. $20 may not seem like a lot for a hotel room but with the cost of living in that area, those prices were really expensive. We were both feeling very frustrated that we were stuck paying such an expensive price for a hotel room so when we had to fill out the room registration form, Kevin filled it out under the name "Ben Dover." I don't think the people at the reception got it...

All of the prices for food at restaurants in Malindi were also much more expensive than anywhere else we've been in Kenya. Malindi is a very popular destination for Italian travelers. Since a lot of these travelers don't bargain down prices, everything becomes more inflated which ends up hurting the local people who live there. As much as Malindi is a tourist destination, the district is also one of the hardest hit areas for the famine Kenya is currently experiencing.

Malindi doesn't have nearly as much history or interesting things to see and anything there was to see, of course cost money. On Friday we took a matatu to see the Gede Ruins. Gede was a Swahili civilization first active during the 13th century. We went in the late afternoon because the guide book said that the lighting would be better as the sun went down and peaked through the forest canopy. Being the cheap college students we are, we chose not to have a tour guide and we instead just explored the area at our own leisure. I think Kevin and I were unusual tourists because we spent the majority of our time at Gede ruins taking photographs of these really unique flowers and monkeys. I got some cool videos of the monkeys eating and playing.

When we got back to the hotel, we rewarded our "hard" day with gelato, of course! On our last day in Malindi, we even had gelato for breakfast. We caught a matatu for the 2 hour ride back to Mombasa. To cap off our vacation, we spent the afternoon in the only air-conditioned place in steamy Mombasa, Dorman's coffee shop. We caught our bus around 6pm and spent the next 14 hours riding back to Kisumu. The only interesting thing to report was that I saw a baby elephant on the side of the road a few hours outside of Mombasa.

So now I'm back to reality in Kisumu. I have 5 more weeks at my internship before going back to Nairobi for a final two weeks of "research writing" and then I fly home April 25th.

Spring Break Travel - Lamu

During my week in Nairobi, I mentioned my travel plans to my host dad. In the time I've spent with my host family in Nairobi, I've found out that he seems to know just about everyone. Within 10 minutes, he called in a favor and got me 30% off my plane ticket for one leg of my journey. I definitely try to be a budget traveler as often as possible so 30% got me really excited. I haven't flown anywhere in Kenya so far and I usually choose the cheap but inefficient buses to travel East Africa. Several other groups of students from my program had made a similar trip to the coast that I was planning on doing and each group said that the road between Malindi and Lamu was just horrible.

I traveled with my friend Kevin from my program who is also working in Kisumu. We decided to take an overnight bus from Nairobi to Mombasa (8 hours) leaving Saturday night and arriving early Sunday morning. As I've mentioned I've done a lot of bus traveling, but this bus was the worst smelling bus I've been on. After 8 hours, the smell just kind of lingers with you. I am still amazed that as much development has occurred in Kenya, some of the roads are still in absolutely horrible condition. The Nairobi-Mombasa road has a section that you drive on for about an hour that barely resembles anything close to a road. There is supposedly construction on the road but nothing is of course labeled. The buses have to dodge huge potholes that more closely resemble craters in the lunar surface in addition to numerous diversions that often result in confused cars heading right at each other nearly avoiding head on collisions. At one point the bus came to a screeching halt because a group of hyenas were crossing the road. A few hours later, I got woken up by the bus honking and as I rubbed my eyes I saw an elephant standing on the side of the road waiting to cross.

All of us academic year students have come up with our own Kenya version of the saying "This is Africa (TIA)." Whenever something bad/interesting happens that you just can't explain through coherent logic, we just say "katiks" which has evolved from "Katika Kenya"- roughly translated as "Only in Kenya."

Kevin and I arrived in Mombasa around 5am. It was too dark out to safely walk around so we sat outside of the bus office and watched early morning Mombasa go by until it became light. Carrying our luggage we found a small breakfast place and ate chapatis and mandazi (fried dough) - an okay breakfast for 40 cents U.S. After breakfast we took a tuk-tuk to the matatu stage to catch a matatu to Malindi. The ride was about two hours from Mombasa to Malindi. We got to Malindi by 9:30am which was more than enough time to catch our flight at 2pm. None of the restaurants were open until 11am so we walked to the end of the pier and read our books for awhile. It was interesting watching people fish because two men would walk deep into the water with nets and then drag the nets to the shore by slowly walking. It didn't seem very efficient and the entire time we were there, we saw them catch 3 fish. We ate lunch at an Italian restaurant appropriately called I Love Pizza.

After lunch we headed off to the airport to catch our flight to Lamu. The flight only took about 25 minutes but I was so exhausted from the overnight bus ride that I slept the whole time. Lamu is part of the larger Lamu Archipelago. The airstrip is on an island across from Lamu island so we took a motorized boat for 100 KSH ($1.25). All of the guide books warned against the touts when you arrive on the island so we planned out a few guest houses that we wanted to go to. The guide books say that people will often to carry your bags and then escort you to the hotel/guest house of your choosing but then demand up to 1/3 of your night's stay from the hotel. The hotel then increases the nightly rate to compensate. Kevin and I both like bargaining so we went to the first guest house and got a good price but we thought we could do better so we went to two other ones. The first price ended up being the best so we went back and negotiated the price for bed and breakfast. The woman who owned the guest house said she was willing to work with us on a good price because we came by ourselves and not with touts. After some negotiating, we agreed on 500 KSH ($6.25) a night for bed and breakfast.

We did some walking around the town but we were exhausted so we went back to the room. Kevin fell asleep at 5pm and I fell asleep around 7pm and neither one of us woke up until 9am the next morning. I guess we saved some money by not eating dinner. Around 4am, I got woken up by a huge crash and I saw electric sparks. I turned on the lights to see that the support beam that had the ceiling fan on it had broken and came crashing down within 5 feet of our beds. There was nothing we could really do at 4 in the morning so we said "katiks" and went back to bed.

Monday was our first full day in Lamu so we did some exploring around the town which was really fascinating. A lot of the buildings are very historical and built in the traditional style. There are no cars on the island but people use some of the 3,000 donkeys on the island to get around or transport goods. We walked along the beach for awhile and took a lot of pictures of some wooden dhows stranded in the low tide. In the afternoon, we met up with one of our friend who works for Millenium Villages Project in Kisumu.

Colin, one of the other students in my program arrived Monday night in Lamu so Tuesday Kevin and I went on a dhow trip with Colin and his dad who was traveling with Colin during Spring Break. We sailed (with the help of a motor) for about an hour to reach the coral reefs near Manda Toto Island. We snorkeled for a few hours and then had a great lunch prepared for us by the dhow crew. We had fresh fish, chapatis, and a lot of fresh fruit. Even though I put on sunscreen my back got FRIED!!! I've been in extreme pain since Tuesday. I guess SPF 30 just isn't enough for equatorial sun.

On Wednesday we just did some more exploration of the island. We purposely got lost in order to discover the in's and out's of the different alleyways. We got lunch with Colin and his dad at a rooftop terrace restaurant overlooking the town and then headed to Shela Beach which is about a 10 km walk from Lamu town. We went swimming for awhile and then watched the sunset. Kevin and I decided to walk back to Lamu town around 9pm but we completely underestimated the tide. We ended up wading through waist-deep water for close to a mile and in the process cut up our feet.

Thursday morning we did some souvenir shopping and then caught our flight to Malindi at Noon.

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.

Research

This semester instead of taking classes, I will be conducting research from January until the beginning of April. I have returned to my internship at OGRA Foundation in Kisumu and have decided to do my research through OGRA. As a Community Health student, I wanted an internship that would allow me to work in the field on the grassroots level working with the people who need help. As I have mentioned in previous blog entries, my organization operates a feeding center in Ombeyi (a small village about 30 minutes outside of Kisumu). Interacting with the children during my first few months, I knew I wanted to work to improve their lives. The feeding center currently feeds 36 orphans and vulnerable children 2 meals a day, 6 days a week due to budget/funding constraints. For some of the children, the food they receive at the feeding center is the only food they eat which means that from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, some of the children may not eat at all.

My research is focusing on the community of Ombeyi, more specifically, children at Kiliti Primary School. I met with the headteacher of the primary school and he gathered information from each class about numbers of orphans and vulnerable children. For the purpose of the study, vulnerable children are defined as children from extremely poor families who although they may have both parents, the parents may suffer from mental or physical disabilities that prevents them from providing for their family. In Kiliti Primary School alone, there are nearly 200 orphans and vulnerable children! As I said, our feeding center currently provides for 36 children - there is obviously a need to expand the program.

For my research I will be focusing on a group of 21 orphans and vulnerable children from the feeding center who are under the age of 13 (pre-pubescent) and a similarly sized group of orphans and vulnerable children from the primary school who are currently not receiving any help from an organization. I measured their height and weight for an initial reading to measure their Body Mass Index (BMI). Body Mass Index can be a good indicator of if a person is underweight, at normal/healthy weight or if they are overweight. Measure your Body Mass Index here

In the initial reading 14 of the children in the study were either underweight or very underweight according to their Body Mass Index. Five children were considered to be underweight at the Feeding Center and nine children were considered to be underweight (1 was very underweight) at the primary school.

The second major component of my research is conducting household surveys. I will be visiting the homes of each of the 42 children in the study to perform a wellness analysis. The parent or guardian is given or read a detailed informed consent form in either English or Luo. For many of the study participants so far, they have been illiterate so they are read the entire consent form by a Community Health Worker and then they grant their consent through their thumb print.

Summary of research results thus far:
In most of the homes I've visited, there have been 2 main rooms in the house. All of the walls are made of mud with a stick frame. Some of the houses have metal sheet roofs while others have a thatched roof. Many of the children don't brush their teeth, and for those who do, they use a stick. None of the houses have had a toilet or pit latrine so far which means that people just go to the bathroom in the brush.

One of the survey questions asks if they know how HIV is transmitted. A very common response has been that HIV is contracted through infidelity. When I ask them to elaborate, they usually don't but state that they have just heard that it is spread when people are not faithful. This signals a very basic understanding of how HIV is transmitted which can help to explain the very high rate of HIV prevalence in the community. A few months ago I participated in a Community Health Worker training where we discussed sexual health. We asked the people in the training to write down myths that they've heard in the community about family planning. A response that surprisingly came up a lot was that women were concerned that the condom might slip off and become lodged in the uterus. People also kept saying that condoms were expensive even though they can be found in that village for about 10 KSH per (13 cents) and several organizations supply them for free at clinics in the area. When we engaged people further they started talking more about the shame, embarrassment or stigma of buying a condom.

For most of the families I've met with so far, the only meals their children eat come from the feeding center. The feeding center only provides 2 meals a day, 6 days a week. So for most of these children, they may not eat at all between Saturday lunch and Monday breakfast. I have not started meeting with families of the children who don't receive meals at the feeding center, but I feel like the responses will be very interesting.

I am hoping to get a lot more surveys done this week so I will update when I can.

Oil Tanker Explosion

Less than a week after the Nakumatt Downtown fire, another fire tragedy has struck Kenya. On Saturday an oil tanker overturned on the Eldoret-Nakuru road near Molo town. Hundreds of people ran to the oil tanker to collect/siphon any fuel they could. The crash happened in a poor part of Kenya and the people siphoned the fuel to try to sell it. Most of the people who rushed to the scene were women and young children. Among the crowd of people that gathered were a group of boys who were playing football (soccer) at a nearby field. Several Kenya Police officers were at the scene trying to prevent the looting.

Without notice the oil tanker exploded severely burning many people. The first fire engine to respond arrived at the scene an hour after the explosion.

The death toll continues to climb but the latest report is that over 111 people have been killed and over 117 are still hospitalized with severe burns. Of the 111 people killed, 16 of the 26 children who were playing football (soccer) at the nearby field were burned to death. The Daily Nation reported today that the Kenya Red Cross has declared 36 children are still missing. Among the dead were also the three Kenya Police officers.

The last few evenings, this oil tanker explosion has been the top story as the death toll continues to rise. One of the evenings on the news, they interviewed a mother who had lost both of her children in the explosion. As much as the government has made promises in the days after the Nakumatt Downtown fire and the oil tanker explosion, unless the underlying issues are addressed instances like this will continue to happen. The reason why hundreds of women and children rushed to collect fuel from the overturned tanker was not because of greed but because they like 10 million other Kenyans are facing extreme poverty and starvation. You cannot tell hungry people not to collect fuel from an overturned tanker if this fuel can mean that a family can feed their children more than just one meal of ugali a day.

Downtown Nairobi Fire

On January 28th, a fire broke out in a downtown supermarket called Nakumatt. Nakumatt is basically the Kenyan equivalent of Wal-Mart in that it sells virtually anything you could possibly want. There are branches all around the country in most major towns. The branch that burned down was called Nakumatt Downtown and was located on the main road in town, Kenyatta Avenue. When I watched the news on Wednesday evening, it came as a shock to me to watch this building engulfed in flames. Just 3 weeks ago Rachel and went shopping in that very store. I've shopped at that branch a few other times during my time in Nairobi. The cause of the fire is being attributed to malfunctioning electricity which resulted in a black out in the store in the minutes before the fire started.

The footage from the scene showed utter panic and fear in the eyes of many people. The building had two floors but the windows on the top floor were too small for anyone to fit through which left only one clear exit for all of the people in the store. In my experiences in that store, it was very cramped and difficult to maneuver around. Some of the employees fled to the roof of the building and then climbed down light poles with the help of people below.

Watching the footage from the scene, it was clear that there was widespread confusion. As the crowds of hundreds of people gathered at the scene, they blocked the fire vehicles trying to get to the fire. As is the case with many accidents or crime scenes in Kenya, flocks of people gather to see what is going on. People often say that when Kenyans hear gunshots, instead of running away they run towards the sound because they want to see for themselves whats going on. Many of the policemen who responded to the fire had to be used for crowd/riot control. Hundreds of people in the crowd were dangerously close to the building as containers of gas and kerosene exploded inside. The police were also worried about looting.

The first vehicle to respond to the fire was not a fire engine. Various agencies responded to the fire including Nairobi City Council, government vehicles, and private companies. Although the fire station is literally down the block from the Nakumatt, the response time was very delayed. Many cars were parked in front of the store blocking the firetrucks from even getting close to the store. The cars were physically picked up and moved by dozens of people from the crowd.

None of the firefighters at the scene had any protective equipment. With no protective equipment, no effort was made to enter the building to rescue people who remained inside.The hoses were all held by dozens of volunteers from the crowd that had gathered. The water being sprayed was being aimed at the top of the fire and not even at the base showing indications that the firefighters were grossly under trained and ill-prepared. I think the worst part of the entire fire response is that at one point, all of the trucks RAN OUT OF WATER and were unable to continue fighting the fire. They had to find a private truck that sells water to donate to the cause of trying to extinguish the fire.

Wednesday on the news, there were several reports from the scene. As the reporter wrapped up their segment from the scene hours after the fire had started, I remember the reporter stating that thankfully there were no casualties to report. The next day, the accounts from the scene were not as positive with more and more reports of missing people coming in. In the days after the fire, the number of missing people has climbed as high as 50 people.

Twenty-fours after the fire started, the fire had still not been completely extinguished. The next day, the Kenya Red Cross examined the scene and started to recover bodies. Bodies continue to be discovered in the various parts of the building. Just yesterday they discovered a mother and child in the corner on the ground floor - their bodies still holding one another.

In the days after the fire, there has been a lot of speculation about what exactly happened at the Nakumatt. From accounts of survivors and people at the scene, the exit doors were closed by some of the Managers who feared looting. When they closed those doors, they locked dozens of people inside who became victims of the fire's heat and intense smoke. The building and the merchandise all had insurance but the more than 27 lives lost in this fire cannot be replaced.

If this fire showed anything, it was that the city of Nairobi is not prepared for any sort of major disaster. One government official was interviewed at the scene and quoted as saying that they are considering developing an emergency services department for Nairobi. I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure an emergency services department should have been formed decades ago especially for the third largest city in Africa; one that has also been the scene of a major terrorist attack in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in 1998. When the U.S. Embassy was bombed, it was the Israelis who organized a rescue team before the Kenyans did. The dogs from the Israeli rescue team were the ones who helped find survivors buried in the rubble. If a second fire started in a different part of Nairobi, the entire city would be crippled. In many ways the city of Nairobi has plenty of landmarks that are vulnerable to attack and this past week it has shown that it can not organize an adequate response.

Obama's Inauguration

In the days leading up to the Inauguration, the different Kenyan news channels would feature at least 10 minutes of Barack Obama stories each night. In some ways, I think Kenyans are more informed about American politics than most Americans.

Yesterday walking around Kisumu you could feel the energy in the air. The city of Kisumu had made elaborate plans for an Inauguration party at the Jomo Kenyatta Sports Grounds, a large open area with a stage, near the center of town.

When I arrived at work, the secretary was wearing a skirt made out of the Obama leso I bought for her while I was in Mombasa. A leso/kanga is a large piece of material that is often colorfully decorated and features a Swahili quotation in a text box. "A leso/kanga can be a declaration of love, a flirtation, an insult, a riddle, a political slogan, a famous proverb and many other things" (Leso/Kanga) The Obama leso I bought for the secretary featured three faces of Obama in the center and instead of the usual Swahili quotation, it featured the campaign slogan of "Yes We Can." One of my other co-workers was wearing an Obama t-shirt so the three of us took a picture together.

After work I met up with a few of the other students from my program. We decided to go to the Sports Grounds to check out the festivities. When we starting getting cloer to the Sports Grounds, we saw dozens of people selling everything Obama and America. Small American flags, Obama shirts, and much more were being sold but my personal favorites were the American flag-patterned shoes. By the time we got there, there were already hundreds of people gathered. One of the newspapers sponsored several projection screens that were erected to show the Inauguration speech. Right when we arrived at the Sports Grounds, the Kisumu version of Barack Obama arrived. There had been talks in the days before the Inauguration that this Kisumu version of Obama would be escorted through town by a caravan of motorcycles and bicycles (both common forms of transport in Kisumu). The Kisumu Obama gave a speech to the crowd frequently mentioning the terms "change" and "yes we can." One of the events that was held earlier in the day was a contest of who could best imitate Obama. The winner received 50,000 KSH (approx $641).

We didn't stay very long among the huge crowd of people because as a group of 6 white people, we attracted a lot of attention. A lot of the street kids (many of them carrying their bottles of glue that they sniff in order to get a high) kept coming up to us asking for money and they were much more aggressive than they usually are. We took a few pictures but had to be very vigilant of our cameras and other valuables. We decided to watch the festivities for awhile from the safe vantage point of the upstairs bar/restaurant at the Sports Grounds. At one point some people lit some things on fire and were swinging the fire around on chains. People thankfully didn't seem to be supporting that and the crowd dispersed quickly from those people. From where we were sitting on the rooftop bar/restaurant, we couldn't see the projection screens so we decided to go across the street to the Imperial Hotel where there would be a much calmer and organized group of people watching the events.

We ended up watching everything in the 5th floor bar/restaurant with a lot of other white people. It was funny to see when we walked in because there was such a segregation of white and black. Down on the street level, thousands of people had gathered in the Sports Grounds and there on the 5th floor of the nicest hotel in Kisumu, two dozen white people (we students included) gathered together in a nice bar/restaurant to watch the events on a flat screen TV. The 5th floor bar/restaurant was supposed to be for hotel residents only but I'm pretty sure that just because the six of us were white we were not questioned when we walked in the hotel. I am sure that if six Kenyans tried to watch the events at the same place, their motives would be questioned.

Watching the Inauguration while in Kenya was certainly a unique experience. The one (white) girl we were with had come to Kenya a few years ago, met a Kenyan man and has since married him and moved to Kisumu. As we watched, she explained a lot of the symbolism of the ceremony to her husband.

Listening to Obama's Inauguration speech was also interesting from the Kenyan perspective. People all over the city of Kisumu erupted when Obama said "to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more."

People also erupted into jubilant cheers when he said: "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds" Kenya as a country is currently facing a horrible food shortage. Because of the post-election violence, crops were destroyed and even worse some crops were unable to be planted for months. So even a year after the horrible events of the post-election violence, Kenyans are still suffering from the repercussions. There is also widespread corruption on the parts of the millers and different government ministries. Today over 10 million Kenyans face starvation with that number increasing daily because the country is in the middle of the dry season. The rains will not come until mid-March and until then the fields are dry, barren and dusty. Even in Kisumu, food prices have doubled and there are very limited vegetables one can buy - if they can afford them.

Immediately after the conclusion of the Inauguration speech the band in the Sports Grounds resumed playing and the entire crowd started dancing. We decided to join the crowd for a little while. Almost immediately after walking into the Sports Grounds we attracted a lot of attention with a lot of the men asking the girls if they wanted to "make the next Obama." One girl caught two people trying to go through her bag and I felt people going through my pockets. A security guard in a suit found us and stood by us making sure no one came too close to us. We all felt pretty uncomfortable so we left.

All in all, it was a very interesting evening. The Kenyan news channels replayed the Inauguration speech all night. Commentators during the Inauguration coverage remarked a few times that the whole world was watching. In many ways that statement is incredibly true. People all over the world found a television or radio to listen to the events of the Inauguration knowing that the change in leadership of the United States could directly impact their lives. From the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the Israelis and Palestinians holding on to a fragile cease fire, to the soldiers fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the world is truly affected by the actions of the United States.

In a city in the middle of Western Kenya on the coast of Lake Victoria, among thousands of very happy Kenyans, I watched Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States of America.