Malindi

We have now completed five days of surveying after our pilot run in Ngecha, and I would like to describe both the villages we have been to and what "field work" is like. The reality of Kenyan village life and the challenges of collecting data have both been quite eye opening for me. The extreme circumstances in which the villagers live and the obstacles we face gathering information about their lives are things that I could never have imagined before coming here.
The villages we have been to are all within a fairly short distance of each other, but they are surprisingly diverse. Some of the areas are reasonably lush, but many are quite dry and in general this region is currently suffering from a prolonged drought. This has clearly affected the villagers' livelihoods. Food is scarce and in many cases large fields of maize are completely dead. One can only imagine how much hard work was wasted planting those fields.
The villages we have been to do not have access to running water or electricity. Women carry jugs of water on their heads from wells, which in many cases are several kilometers away. A few households have motorcycles, and while the roads are not paved and are quite poor, so far all the villages have been accessible by our ten passenger vans. The houses are made of stick, rock, and mud walls with thatched roofs made of palm leaves. Some of the nicer stores and houses have corrugated metal roofs which provide better cover and require less maintenance, but this is beyond the reach of most families. The houses are often in disrepair, and repairing them is quite time consuming and labor intensive (in fact, I am told they only last for about two years). The houses are small (usually one, sometimes two rooms), and they provide shelter for large families. It seems that children are everywhere, and virtually every woman we have interviewed has a baby.
The enumerators refer to the houses as "homesteads," and I think this is a good description. The houses seem reminscent of sod homesteads from the old West. Cooking takes place over small campfires, sometimes in a small hut but often outdoors. There are no bathroom facilities of any kind, and people have few possessions. Almost none of the children have shoes, and most of the adults go barefoot as well. There are some chickens and goats (who often live in the houses), and each village has a few herds of cattle. The main crop is maize, although in one village the houses were surrounded by palm trees. These are an important source of income as they can be used to produce palm oil and cocunut wine, and as a result this village was wealthier than the other villages I have been to.
I have posted pictures of some of the houses we have visited on facebook, maybe later I'll put them up here if I can figure out a good way to do it. As I said earlier, the places we have been are surprisingly diverse, but I think these pictures provide a reasonably representative picture of the places we have been to. I wish I could be taking more pictures, but several factors have kept me from taking as many as I would like. The first is that I am working, and so I feel it would be unprofessional in many cases to take a break to take pictures. In addition, I do not want to take pictures of people without first asking their permission, and this is difficult since I do not speak their language. As a result I usually wait until the interviews are complete, and try to take pictures a reasonable distance from the homes so that people are not clearly visible.
Now for "the field." We have been leaving the hotel by around 8 each morning, and arriving at the first village between 9 and 10:30. The villages are not too far from Malindi, but the roads are poor and our directions often are too, and so it can take a while. The first thing we do when we get to the village is to meet up with the village chief. This is a hereditary position, and while I'm not sure exactly what powers the chief has, in general the chiefs seem to be signficantly better off than the other villagers. At any rate, they are essential for directing us to where our respondents are - without them locating the respondents would be next to impossible. The survey takes anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to administer, depending on how well the respondent speaks Swahili (many speak only a local language), and how long it takes to find the respondent once their house has been located.
I would have thought the second factor would be a much bigger obstacle than it has been. However, most of the respondents work near their homes, in fields that are right next to the houses. People are surprisingly willing to take an hour or two out of their day with little or no warning, dropping whatever work they were doing to complete the interview. It seems that the villagers' home and work lives are much more intertwined than in our society, where there are more clearly defined work spaces and times. The villagers were extremely welcoming, and were generally very cooperative with the survey.
While getting the respondents to cooperate was much easier than I would have expected, the logistics of surveying a random sample of the population was a tremendous challenge. Luckily Synovate handled most of these details, but conducting accurate surveys in 2 villages each day that we had never been to before required a lot of tenacity and planning ahead. Most days the surveying would not be finished until around 6 or 7, giving us just enough time to get a late dinner before the restaurants in Malindi closed down around 9 (our favorite place, Johandis, served dinners that I often could not finish for the equivalent of 1 or 2 U.S. dollars).
Well hopefully that gives you a picture of what Malindi and the work I am doing are like. More to come soon I promise, and if you have any questions just post them and I'll try my best to answer.