Truckin'...

I am back in Nairobi now, typing and finishing my independent study project. Three weeks is a long time to write about, but I will give you some highlights of my stay:

I stayed in rural Kisii, west of Nairobi. To get to the house in which I lived, one had to walk seven kilometers from the road to the top of a hill. From the road, it was about forty kilometers to Kisii town. So, although I was studying the rural wealthy, it was far from the type of civilization I knew and was comfortable with. The area was part of a settlement scheme put in place after independence in 1963. Therefore, the plots of land were very large (think 70-200 acres) and the houses extravagant. Many high-ranking people in Kenya neighbored our compound and proved to be valuable sources of information for me. One slightly discouraging fact was that most residents were not farmers but rather businessmen or political leaders, so they lived in places other than their farm in Kisii and were difficult to track down and talk to.

Every morning, I woke up around 5am and helped make chai. Like the tea in Maasai-land, the cows were freshly milked each morning and then that whole, unprocessed cows milk was used to make the tea. The breakfast menu every day consisted of cold sukumawiki-and-peanut butter sandwiches, which are probably the most horrific tasting food one could ever eat. Besides breakfast, the rest of the food was pretty good. The sunrises and sunsets were stunning and I unintentionally took most of my pictures of the sun and clouds. Like over 700 pictures of the sky. Since the house was at the top of a hill, each morning a dense fog gathered below the house as the sun was coming up and created a cool yet eerie effect.

During the first week of my work, I became frustrated because the family I was staying with would not allow me to leave the compound. I had a hard time balancing being a guest and being a researcher, because I did not want to go against their wishes by leaving alone, particularly since I did not know where anything was, but at the same time, sitting around shucking dried maize was not furthering my research as much as interviewing community members would have been. I finally created a plan and told them that I needed to go and find out information. They reluctantly consented to me working in the morning as long as I returned around lunch time. This compromise worked well because I wrote my field notes every afternoon. At times, I felt like I would make a really bad real anthropologist because I became tired of always being “on” and ready to remember the events that took place. It was definitely lonely and hard to be so far from anyone who could relate a little bit to me. Yet, it was a good learning experience and I found an overabundance of information.

Throughout my three weeks, I attend both a funeral and a wedding. I also witnessed the birth of a baby goat (mbuzi mtoto), which is infinitely cooler than slaughtering a goat. A contact with the chairman of KTDA, the largest tea company in Kenya, helped secure me a tour of a tea factory and the primary school which he owns. One of the days I was taught how to brew changaa, an illegal liquor made of millet and maize. I also took a day off from work and journeyed to the Itierio Village in the Ekerenyo Division to visit the future site for the Amani Reading Center, the library that Cory’s Eagle Project collected books for.

On the bus ride back to Nairobi, the song “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead came into my head and I believe it perfectly describes my time in Kisii: “Sometimes the light keeps shining on me, other times I can barely see, lately its occurred to me, what a long, strange trip its been…”

As of Friday, I only have two weeks left in Kenya. What a crazy thought! Thanks for continuing to read and be interested in my studies. I am excited to return home, see everyone, share my stories and hear about yours. To everyone in Rochester, good luck with finals and have a wonderful summer!