Nairobye

Well it's hard to believe, but tonight I’m heading back to the U.S.A. This was such an amazing experience - everything here is so different from what I'm used to and I really feel like I learned a lot.
  Last night I was thinking about what I’ll take away from this trip, and what its most lasting impacts will be for me. One is that I’ll definitely appreciate the things we have in the U.S. more from now on. This includes things we take for granted such as cleaner air, tap water that’s safe to drink, sidewalks, the ability to walk around at night, and paved roads. I’ll also appreciate the fact that I have enough food to eat the entire year, adequate shelter, quick access to medicine if I get sick, fair elections that occur without violence, and the education I need to pursue a career of my choosing.
    In some ways I think East Africa is a sobering reminder that these are things that must be worked for by a society – they don’t exist automatically. There are people in Kenya and Tanzania who die because they can’t afford very inexpensive medicine, who teeter on the brink of starvation on a regular basis, are killed or lose their entire livelihoods due to ethnic violence, and are unable to escape the subsistence lifestyle they were born in to due to lack of education or other barriers outside of their control. In the developed Western world the average person does not have to deal with these sorts of tragedies, in large part because we have well-functioning governments and social norms that prevent them. Some sort of medical insurance is available to most people, education is easily accessible, political violence is not accepted, policies exist to insure economic growth benefits a broad segment of the population, and safety nets are provided for people in extreme poverty. I think this trip has taught me how important these arrangements are, and how crucial it is that we work to ensure they remain in place and are improved where possible.
    Although the poverty we saw was at times overwhelming, I really did come away with a sense that change, even quick change, is possible. The new constitution in Kenya represents a radical departure from the previous way government was conducted in Kenya. There are many provisions designed to do away with special treatment for politicians (including a provision, which many MPs are still resisting that requires politicians to pay the same income taxes as all Kenyans), as well as to hold government more accountable to its citizens.
   In addition, developing countries such as Kenya and Tanzania are prime targets for investment, especially with the economic trouble developed countries have been having recently. Production methods are extremely inefficient in these countries, and so the returns on technology or capital investments are potentially enormous. For example, we saw construction workers using shovels to construct roads. By investing in a backhoe, their production could be increased immensely. In the U.S., where every construction worker already uses modern machinery, the returns on a capital investment such as a backhoe are much smaller. So in theory, the developing world should receive enormous levels of investment which could help to fuel rapid development.
    The trouble, of course, is that investors are looking to invest in countries that are politically stable, free of corruption, have a well-educated workforce, and possess basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity. So even though Kenya and Tanzania have enormous potential for growth, this potential hasn’t yet been realized in part because they have a hard time attracting outside investment. If corruption can be eradicated, education and infrastructure improved, and political stability achieved, not only will people benefit directly, but the investment needed to become a developed nation will be delivered.
    Lots of the ingredients for rapid development seem to be in place. The people of this region are incredibly resourceful. For example, there aren’t enough policemen to combat speeding, but so many speed bumps have been put on the roads that you can’t really speed anyways. One of the Synovate vans we were driving in had already travelled 850,000 kilometers – with the roads it goes on I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. People find a way to live in relative comfort on incomes a small fraction of the size that would be considered normal in the developed world. In addition, the entrepreneurial spirit is extremely strong here. Small shops crowd the roads and village centers, and I would say over half of the respondents I interviewed said they ran some sort of small business. And finally, Kenya and Tanzania have the advantage of being able to “leapfrog” some stages of development that the Western world had to go through. For example, in Kenya you won’t see many telephone lines since people have gone straight to cell phones. And it isn’t necessary for countless wi-fi networks to be set up here, either – for a very reasonable price you can buy a mobile modem that uses cell phone networks to deliver internet (practically the entire country is covered).
    So those are my final reflections as I fly over the Sahara Desert. I learned a lot about conducting research this summer, and that’s something that will be very valuable to me in the future. Hopefully I made some contribution to the enormous task of economic and social development in Eastern Africa, as well. But I think the thing that I’ll remember and value most is having seen the way people live here, and the ways in which they cope with enormous challenges and try to improve their lives. Hopefully I’ll make it back to Africa someday, it is such a beautiful and interesting place. When I do, I hope Africa will be well on its way to its goal of being “The Continent of the 21^st Century.” Kwahare!   

Comments

   So I know I've been asking you guys to leave me comments, and a few of you have left some interesting ones. As of yet I've failed to respond to any of them, and so I'd like to take this chance to follow up on the things you all have said. Here goes.

Mmmm Sugarcane

   Meg: The most interesting thing I ate here was sugarcane. Sugarcane is a hard, sweet plant that tastes sort of like watermelon and sort of like sweet corn (weird, I know). It is impossible to swallow, and it's kind of what I imagine eating sweet wood would be like. I had a few bites of this, realized that it isn't that good and is probably the worst food in the world for your teeth, and then never ate it again. The most interesting thing I drank was hot fermented milk. My unbiased opinion (formed in the moments before I realized what I was drinking) is that it tastes pretty good. It is sweet and creamy, and they put some combination of herbs in it that made it taste almost like chai tea. I admit that once I realized what I was drinking, I did not have any more. Another candidate is Ethiopian food, which we had yesterday. They serve different meats and vegetables on a flat sour pancake, and you pick up the food with pieces of this pancake that they serve on the side. Fairly spicy, very filling, and extremely delicious. Today we are going to a South Indian food place (in the U.S. and Britain they usually serve North Indian food). So we'll see how that goes. Most of the food here is plain, and consists mostly of stews, starches, and fruit. The stews are usually made with fish, chicken, or beef, and the meat is much gamier (leaner) here than in the U.S. They also serve a lot of French fries, greens, and ugali. Ugali is essentially a drier, stiffer version of grits.
    Jacob: We never found the Steeler's Super Bowl T-shirts, so I guess you can't even pretent like they won. Oh well. There are some industrial jobs to be had in Kenya, and probably fewer in Tanzania. One of our drivers had previously worked in a glue factory. He said it was not a good job because the safety standards are low. All the people we interviewed relied mainly on farming for their livelihood, with the exception of two or three teachers, who still received a large part of their income from farming. From what I gathered, almost all empolyment comes through the government, NGOs, tourism, fishing, casual labor, and farming. Many people in Northern Kenya are pastoralists (nomadic ranchers), and they have been hardest hit by the drought. They are harder for aid agencies to reach, and usually have even less emergency supplies saved up than farmers.
   The fact that food producers sometimes go hungry is a fascinating phenomenon, and one that I'd like to learn more about. One contributing factor that I failed to mention in the last post is the presence of businessmen who buy up much of the excess food at cutthroat rates and store it until prices rise again due to a shortage. This is not as much of a problem in the U.S. because the government takes measures to control prices. In some cases U.S. farmers will be paid not to maximize their food production, or the government will purchase excess food at subsidized rates and either store it or redistribute to areas in need (often abroad). Limiting food production in an area that produces excess food is good for farmers collectively, but not individually, which is why government intervention may be necessary. If every farmer limits their production, prices remain stable and farmers can increase their profits. However, if a single farmer takes it upon himself to lower production, prices remain unchanged while that farmer has less to sell. In Kenya, where prices are allowed to fluctuate with the market, every farmer has an incentive to maximize their production. This can drive prices so low that farmers must sell food they would like to keep for themselves to businessmen, who hold it until a food shortage (here or in a neighboring country) allows them to sell it at a neat profit. Why can't Rift Valley farmers simply sell their food to the government to redistribute to Northern Kenya instead of these businessmen? I asked several people this question, and they said that corrupt ties between the government and businessmen leads to the government purchasing emergency food from the businessmen at above-market prices.
  Hopefully that answers everyone questions, if you have more please send them my way. 

The Rift Valley

After finishing up in Kisumu, we headed about two hours northwest and uphill to Eldoret. Eldoret is an agricultural town in the middle of the Rift Valley, Kenya’s largest and most populous province. It is also the most fertile area of Kenya, and produces the majority of its food. According to the GPS, Eldoret sits at an elevation of about 7100 feet, and as a result it was often chilly. While large parts of Kenya are currently suffering from drought, this area is currently in the middle of a six-month rainy season (May to October) and so for the five days we were in Eldoret it rained for at least a few hours every day.

   Eldoret was another center of post-election violence in 2007-2008. On January 1, 2008, 35 Kikuyu who had been forced off their land were burned alive by a mob as they took refuge in an Eldoret church. We drove past many more burned-out houses and businesses in this area.

   This area is really a completely different world than what we saw in Tanzania and Malindi. People in this region have radios, TVs, electricity, and a fair number even have cars. It seems as though  anything will grow here: wheat, maize, tomatoes, passion fruit, potatoes, the list goes on and on. In fact, it is one of the great tragedies of the current food crisis in Eastern Africa that this region produces a large excess of food. While families in other areas of Kenya are suffering from lack of food, people here face financial hardship (but not necessarily hunger) because the supply of food so outstrips demand that producing food is often not profitable. I would like to point out that such a situation can lead to hunger, for example if food prices drop so low that families have to sell most of their produce to purchase other essentials such as medicine, fuel, and clothing. This might explain why the family I interviewed in Kisumu, which seemed to have such a prosperous farm, is currently struggling to obtain adequate food. But I digress. The problem in Kenya, as many people have noted, is not that overall food supply has dropped dramatically (it hasn’t). The real issue is that subsistence farmers in some areas have no money to purchase food when their own crops (which make up a small proportion of Kenya’s food supply) fail.

   There are several strategies for coping with this problem. One is to try to prevent crop failures in advance through irrigation projects and improved farming methods. The Kenyan government is committing to large-scale irrigation projects in the wake of this crisis, but of course it's too late for such measures to be of any help combatting the current shortage. Another is to help subsistence farmers find other ways of earning money besides planting traditional crops. In one of the poorest areas of Malindi we interviewed a woman who was planting trees in a food for work program developed by the Red Cross. This program allows the Red Cross to combat hunger without having to deal with the costs and logistics of distributing food aid. It also keeps people employed, helps aid agencies target people who really need food (only people who really need help will join these programs), and provides a lasting benefit to the community. The trees that were being planted by these women will provide shade and firewood, and a recently completed project in the region provides irrigation. This strategy does not necessarily require an agency to hire people. One program in drought stricken Northern Kenya teaches locals how to develop and sell products from a drought resistant tree that is rarely utilized. Giving peole the opportunity to purchase available food can be much more efficient, less disruptive of people's lives, and have a more lasting benefit than directly delivering food aid.

  But with so many malnurished subsistence farmers who can’t afford available food from other regions, the government has resorted to redistributing food. It has struggled with this task. This is due partly to inefficiency, partly to corruption (today police caught two truckloads of diverted emergency food aid), and partly to the difficulty of reaching remote areas accessible only by poor roads. And so the food emergency has continued.

  The roads were pretty poor in the region, as well. When it rained, the roads would become so muddy that they were often nearly impassable. Our vehicle had four wheel drive and was usually fine, but the Synovate van was not so well-equipped. There were a couple of instances where we'd end up walking a few kilometers to reach a village, but these walks were a welcome break. We spend most of our days sitting in a car, sitting in on interviews, and sitting around at hotels.  

   Anyways, things wrapped up pretty quickly in the Rift Valley. On the last day we had a nice talk with one of the SILC project managers who told us about all the progress the program is making. There are now over 27,000 SILC members in the Eldoret diocese, and the groups are beginning to run without direct CRS funding. This program is really growing quickly, and hopefully the research we did will help it to grow in a way that is beneficial to all those involved.

   So our field work is finished, and it's finally time to head back to Nairobi and then the U.S.A. I definitely have mixed feelings about leaving, but more on that later. If you have any questions about my trip so far, let me know and I’ll answer them in my last post.

Kisumu

  Just wrapped up field work in our second to last site, the Kisumu region of Western Kenya. Kisumu(below) is a town of about 100,000 people on the shores of Lake Victoria, about a five hour drive from Nairobi. It was good to be back in Kenya after three weeks in Tanzania - in many ways Kenya seems a lot closer to home. English is much more widely spoken here, and several of the field workers and CRS staff that we worked with in Kisumu were also with us during the Malindi leg. We arrived in Kisumu on a Monday, and after three days of training, one day conducting a pilot survey, and a day off (surveys cannot be conducted in this region on Saturday because of the high percentage of devout Seventh Day Adventists), we were finally ready to get back to surveying.  

   Before I get into our experience of this region, I’d like to provide some background information on this area. Kisumu is the capital of Nyanza, one of Kenya’s eight provinces (the others are Western, Rift Valley, Central, Nairobi, Coast, Eastern, and North Eastern). Nyanza is tucked into the southwest corner of the country, and borders both Western Kenya and the much larger Rift Valley, where we are about to start surveying. Nyanza is populated predominantly by the Luo tribe, Kenya’s third largest behind the Kikuyu and Luhya. Some notable Luo include Raila Odinga, the current prime minister of Kenya, and Barak Obama’s father (when Barak Obama was elected, there was much celebrating due to an expectation that this region would benefit from its connections to our president).  

    Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, is a member of the Kikuyu tribe, and he was elected during a bitterly contested election in 2007 in which he ran against Odinga. This election, like many Kenyan elections, led to an outbreak of violence. Kikuyu is one of Odinga’s strongholds, and it was at the center of the post-election violence. Kikuyu people living in this region were in many cases forced off their land, had their property destroyed, or were violently attacked. A Kikuyu CRS staff member who we worked with used to live in Kisumu, but was forced to leave after the election.

   There is still much evidence of this violence today. One large building we saw in the middle of Kisumu remains destroyed after having been set on fire, and we have seen many burned out homes and businesses.  The next election is about a year away, and we have been unable to reach a number of our respondents because they have left the region in anticipation of renewed violence.    

   By all accounts, tribalism is a major problem in Kenya.  In addition to helping motivate the sort of violence seen in 2007, it has led to political dysfunction and mistrust of government. There are nearly 50 distinct tribes in Kenya, each with its own language, culture, and homeland (although it is not uncommon for people to live in other areas). In the wake of the previous election, Kenya has begun taking steps to try to deal with this problem.

   Shortly after the election, Kenya passed a new constitution. One of the most important changes this new constitution made was the introduction of devolved government. Instead of choices being made by the central government, which is often dominated by one tribe, more power will be given to local governments. The hope is that people will feel more represented by their government, and there will be less of a power struggle in the central government. Another initiative is to spread the use of English and Swahili, which could unite different tribes through a common language.  

   So these are some of the issues that have shaped Nyanza’s past. The area itself is much different from Malindi and Tanzania. In many ways it is like a warmer version of Nairobi. It is green, wet, and hilly. People here are better off than the other places we’ve been (it seems that we have gone to progressively richer locations). Most of the houses have metal roofs, multiple rooms, and furniture. One house even had a TV, powered by a generator. One interesting thing about this house was that the woman we interviewed said that the family often had to go about a month or so without eating lunch in order to make food last between harvests. This household appeared to be solidly in Kenya’s middle class (one of the richest village households), and is located in an area where food security is less of a concern than many other regions of East Africa. However, even they are not able to acquire all the food they want for one reason or another.

    The people in this area were exceptionally hospitable. They often insisted on praying for us when we arrived and again once we were ready to leave. In addition, we were usually offered large bags of groundnuts (peanuts) after the interviews. I always tried to refuse this gift, especially because eating more than a few could make us sick since they are uncooked (this also makes them taste not quite as good). However, on two occasions this was impossible, and so I ended up giving the bags to the enumerators, who will boil, fry, or soak them in salt water before eating. I was also offered hot fermented milk once, which I actually sort of liked before I realized what it was.  

Groundnuts

   We only spent three days in the field in this region, as the Western Kenya team we are monitoring is split into two groups. I will definitely miss this area. The climate is perfect, the scenery is beautiful, and the people are friendly. Another nice thing is that many of the respondents speak relatively good English, which allowed me for the first time to actually speak directly with them. One of the interviews I observed was actually conducted in English, which was very interesting. This also represents the beginning of the end of our trip – five days in Eldoret and then it’s back to Nairobi for one day before flying home. This trip has gone by so fast! Tomorrow we start our final leg – the Eldoret region of the Rift Valley.