Real Bananas, Fondue, Beetles, a Tortoise, a Glass Factory and some Cholera

It's a perfect Sunday in Nairobi, warm but not too hot, a nice breeze blowing, the quality of light and constant woodsmoke smell making it seem almost autumnal here, but with the purple jacquaranda trees in bloom all over the city marking the closest thing Nairobi has to spring and the coming rainy season.  It's possible that's my perception of what it should be like at the end of September at home is clouding my impressions, but it's still lovely.

I'm finding work on the Somalia program interesting, and complex.  My organization, along with several other major NGOs, was summarily kicked out of Somalia several years ago by Al Shabaab, leaving programs suspended in midair.  When Al Shabaab recently "welcomed" NGOs back, mine was decidedly NOT among those they welcomed back.  However, there is too much need in Somalia and too many donors interested in helping us fund health and nutrition programs for us to avoid going back.  Thus, locations are being chosen very strategically for program start-up, and wherever possible starting back up programs we were forced to shut down several years ago.  For now, we'll be working in areas where Al Shabaab is not and will be poised to expand further if/when Al Shabaab falls.

But even for areas where Al Shabaab isn't present or active, there are still immense logistical and security challenges in setting up programs, and we will be working extensively through local partners with a relatively limited on-the-ground staff.  Since this doesn't change the quality of program we need to offer, one of the things I am working on a lot with the Somalia program is setting up remote monitoring systems.  This will allow my organization to ensure that we are implementing programs effectively and achieving results through these partners despite relatively little direct witness of them.  Some of this is straightforward--photographs, standard information that will be transmitted daily by cell phone, weekly and monthly tally sheets and so on.  But it needs to be a system that is as foolproof as possible as well as simple enough for people without any kind of monitoring background to use.  This in addition to working on many, many proposals for donors to fund the programs, and so I'm very busy. 

Obviously, given that I'm sitting at a desk in Nairobi doing most of this work, however interesting the work is it still doesn't really lend itself to photographs.  In Dadaab, all of my pictures were related to work, and in Nairobi they are all related to my social life.  So here's the fun in Nairobi this week.

Last Sunday, we headed down a long and extremely bumpy dirt road to Kitengela Glass Factory.  Even though you could see the skyline of downtown Nairobi across Nairobi National Park, it felt a world away from the hustle and bustle and traffic of Nairobi.  The glass factory is in a little valley, with wild gardens scattered with peacocks and chickens and dogs and sculptures and mosaic pathways leading to workshops and multiple display rooms.  I have heard it described as a hobbit-fairy land with art, which isn't too far off.

Every thing is made locally, mostly by people from the small village there, Kitengela.

In the interest of full disclosure, I spent more than half my time there petting dogs.

Also, there was a tortoise.

Then we ate fondue.  Did you know you could eat fondue in Nairobi?  It's hidden in deepest darkest Karen (a suburb on Nairobi named after Karen Blixen who wrote Out of Africa).  The gate isn't even marked.

That's Carrie.  Carrie and I worked together in Baghdad for my organization for a year, and now, after a year astray, aka working for another organization, she's back working on Somalia for us again!  That's one reason I love Nairobi--it's a hub for people and you meet up with a lot of people!  My friend Lorea is here, too, right now, also, surprise, working on a Somalia program for another organization.  Can you tell Somalia is "hot" (in aidworker, speak, at least) right now?

In other news, I ate corn from the "Hot n' Corny" stand sitting on a curb.

Ate a "real" banana.  Subsequently became concerned about all the fake bananas I have apparently been eating.

While we are on the topic of eating, discovered that Nairobi has a Korean-style (tart) frozen yogurt place, with yogurt and toppings by the ounce.  Officially have no reasons left not to live in Nairobi forever.

Saw a giant beetle on the lawn of the office.  iPod for scale.

Had an unexpected late afternoon hour to read at my favorite cafe in Nairobi while I waited for my meeting with the ICDDR,B.  If you would like to know what that stands for, click the link, it's vastly useful but not pretty at all.  Let's just say, our meeting was about cholera in Dadaab.  The meeting was worth the wait--the ICDDR,B has close ties with Hopkins School of Public Health and so I've heard a lot about them and their impressive work.  It was a little bit like having a meeting with a celebrity you admire.  Don't worry guys, I played it cool.

The end!

Back to Dadaab...briefly

After my semi-vacation in the US, I was actually pretty ready to go back to Dadaab and get back to work.  There were just a few things I wasn't so excited about...

The ridiculous convoy of aid vehicles between Garissa and Dadaab.  There have been isolated incidents of attacks by bandits and Al Shabaab on this road, so travel in a convoy with an armed guard is required.   Necessary? Maybe. Obnoxious? Definitely.  Here's what the convoy looks like:

Just kidding, this is what the aid vehicle convoy really looks like.

The dead animals.  I dislike the dead animals for a lot of reasons.  They're such a visible reminder that all is not well, that there is drought and famine.  A dead animal is some family's loss of wealth, and animals are deeply valued here.  And they're dead animals, and I just really like animals.  There are a lot of carcasses around, though, of animals that have starved to death or dehydrated.

The marabou storks.  They look like dirty old men, lurching around the camps and eating trash and, um, dead stuff.  They are the ugliest birds I have ever seen.  Maybe ugliest creatures overall, ever.

But there's lots more that I did miss.  This place...it's not easy, but there's something there that sucks you in.

Firewood

The office

A shop in Hagadera Camp

Water trucking to a borehole where animals drink in the host community

All that said, I thought I would be in Dadaab for at least another six weeks, but a week after I got back there, I got a request to return to Nairobi to help our Somalia office put together some new programs.  The drought and famine in Somalia that has pushed so many new refugees into Dadaab has also, of course, caused serious problems for those left behind in Somalia.  This, combined with Al Shabaab's slightly increased openness to international aid agencies, has created both a demand for new programs in Somalia, especially those addressing malnutrition, as well as new money from donors to fund these programs.

My organization has been doing health and nutrition work in Somalia since 1991, when military dictator Siad Barre was overthrown, as well as, more recently, Somaliland, and is using this opportunity to try to expand its programming in Somalia, so that's what I will be working on for the next few weeks at least.  Though the setting is less dramatic than Dadaab--there are security risks that prevent international stuff like me from going into Somalia so I'll be in Nairobi during this time--the work is similar in many ways and very interesting and complex, so I'm looking forward to it even if I'm a bit sorry to say goodbye to Dadaab for now.

Kisumu and Suba (Another Retrospective)

While I'm feeling all retrospective, I thought I might as well go ahead and blog about my work trip to Kisumu and Suba in June, even though it feels like a million years ago.  That said, it was a really interesting trip and worth a blog entry.  Also, Kisumu is a sister city of Boulder, Colorado (according to Wikipedia) and I thought it was important for Jess to know what her new town's sister city is up to these days.

My organization has programs all over Kenya, several of which I had visited when I was here in March.  I hadn't yet been to the ones in the west, on Lake Victoria.  These programs are all HIV/AIDS related, focusing on prevention programs, especially among the fishing families that live in small villages scattered along the beaches of Lake Victoria.  They are on the whole great programs and there were just a few minor things for me to address, but to do that I needed to go out and see some of the program sites--my absolute favorite part of this job, I think.

I flew into Kisumu on a Sunday evening,  coming in to the air strip low over a darkening Lake Victoria and headed out first thing Monday morning to catch the ferry from Luanda K'Otiento outside of Kisumu across the lake to Mbiti Point in Suba District.

The ferry got into Mbiti Point a few hours later and we headed straight off through the countryside...

...to visit the first program, which teaches caregivers (parents, grandparents, older siblings) of teenagers how to communicate with the teenager better.  The groups meet several times a week and have an extensive curriculum with a lot of topics, some of which relate specifically to HIV prevention, but many of which only discuss ways of communicate, better understanding teenagers needs and wants and so on.  The caregivers apparently really like it and were certainly active participants in the sessions I visited.  The first was in a church, set inland a bit.

We stopped for lunch after that.  It was as fresh and local as fresh and local gets, pulled straight from Lake Victoria that morning.  The waiter was named Obama--Obama's family is from this part of Kenya, a huge point of pride and something everyone wanted to talk to me about.

This is my colleague Karari, who I was traveling with and who along with several others of our Suba District team mocked me for the mess I made of it and how much I left behind.  I have to say, it was pretty good, but I have never quite required my taste for seafood after the Senegalese fermented mudfish stew incident in Paris several years ago.  The waitress looked skeptical when I ordered it (having picked it randomly from the menu with no idea what it was) and said tactfully that it was a "very African dish" and was I sure?  At this point I had spent an entire slightly less than two years in Africa and wasn't to be deterred by that assessment.  It was horrific, my delicate American tastebuds devastated.  Lesson learned.

After I'd picked my fish as clean as my clumsy American fingers could manage, we headed off to another caregivers group, this one on a fishing beach right on the lake.

While my colleagues were taking care of some financial business with the team leader which I was irrelevant to, I made some new friends.

The next morning we drove out to visit a few of the mobile voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) for HIV sites we run in the area.  The first was in a little strip of businesses along the road, where I made a few more (slightly skeptical) friends.

The second site, though, was tucked down on a remote fishing beach in a little town right on the lake.

There were huge swarms of bugs around town and out across the lake looking almost like smoke.  These little bugs attract the small sardine-like fish that the fishermen catch and leave to dry on nets around town.  The bigger fish are more prized, though, because they bring in a bit more money.

Then we bumped back to town to catch the ferry back to Kisumu.  It took awhile to load the cows (the owners can get a higher price if they sell them in Kisumu, so many who can afford to will load cattle up and ferry them across the lake when they are ready to sell) but eventually we were off.

As we were arriving back in Kisumu, we saw another ferry pulling out of dock, way overloaded with more people still fighting to get on.  It is cheaper by a few shillings than the ferry I was on, but overloaded and with not nearly enough life jackets, making it much more dangerous.

My time in Kisumu was quick, just enough time to see a glance of our programs there, including another VCT, a voluntary medical male circumcision program and a prison where we have a TB program for the inmates.

I also really enjoyed driving around and seeing Kisumu as we visited the programs.  It's the third largest city in Kenya and has an interesting feel.  Some of this comes from the very large Indian community there.

And, of course, another fish, this time with my Kisumu colleagues at the Tilapia Beach Resort on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Before:

After:

Including the gills.  Yuck.

And then, with my stomach full of fish, I flew back to Nairobi.