Jambo!
It’s Sunday morning here in Kenya. The past couple days have been a whirlwind, and I’m starting to get the feeling that my trip is going to feel a lot shorter than 4 ½ weeks.
I arrived in Nairobi as scheduled and then spent a very long night trying to sleep in the airport as my domestic flight didn’t leave until the next morning. After my three trips to Kenya I can now say pretty confidently that after 24 hours of traveling I get pretty cranky (at least internally) with what I have named “the part of the trip where you desperately want to sleep so time goes by faster but your body won’t let you since it’s in shock and jet-lagged and you're so close to your final destination but not quite there” or a shorter title of “travel annoyance”.
Friday, I was picked up from the airport by Scott and Claire and after starting to move around my travel annoyance went away and I was excited to be back in Africa. We spent the majority of the day meeting with Melinda and Sheila, employees of CAWST, a support organization for biosand filters. I fit in a short nap (they were a little impressed that I used a flat, wooden arm rest as a pillow) which helped tremendously.
Saturday, I attended one of Aqua Clara’s start-up meetings. Basically, community members from a school area were invited to learn about the filters, help build one, ask questions, and sign up to purchase one. The Moi University students came so I was able to meet with them face to face. I definitely feel like the outsider when with them mostly because they communicate more in Swahili than English. Towards the end of the day I was able to talk with some of them in ones or twos which helped a lot. I will be meeting with them three times this upcoming week to train them on sample collection, the project overview, lab protocols, and other such things. I’ll have a preceding day to prepare in each case, but I’ve been so busy with finishing the school semester in the US that I haven’t had much time to devote to preparing any sort of plan for this training. If the training goes well then hopefully there shouldn’t be too many issues once the project is underway and the students should be able to get into a pretty standard routine.
I got some sun as well on Saturday. Sunscreen was one of the minor things that I realized I forgot to pack in my haste. The weather is quite nice here other than the high intensity sun. If you’re not standing in the sun then it feels like the mid-70s with a cool breeze. It is the rainy season, but it has been very mild for the past couple months.
I have internet of a reasonable speed which can handle non-video Skype reasonably well. Scott said that the power typically goes out here on Thursday evenings so I wouldn’t plan to find me available at that time, but at least it’s on a predictable cycle unlike much of Africa.
If you have any questions regarding my time here, my accommodations, or Africa in general, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
-Steven
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