Mituntu

Habari Ysabui (Good Morning. Its noon here but 5am on the east coast so I guess I can still get away with good morning). I’m back in Nairobi again after a week in SVH Mituntu. I had good access to electricity there but the internet modem was not cooperative at all, so I wasn’t able to update. The blog. SVH Mituntu is actually in the Tigania West Constituency. The way areas are divided up here is very confusing, so I won’t try to explain it, but if you wanted to find it on a map you would look for Meru, the nearest big town/small city about 18 km from where I was staying. I was again doing a home stay. My host father, Barnibus, is a principal of a secondary school and chairman of the SVH committee. He is very involved in several community initiatives, and is also getting a masters degree in project management. My host mother, Anne, is a deputy principal at secondary school. They have two children, one at boarding school and one in standard 1 (first grade) who still lives at home, Barnibus’ youngest sister who is in form 2 and a “house girl” also live with them. Their home was very large, and nicer than any Kenyan home that I have visited in a rural area yet. They had a large kitchen with tables to work on (as apposed to just the ground), and a refrigerator (which meant we had cold juice), something I had not seen in a home before. They also had a television, so I got to see news daily and watch part of Michael Jackson’s Funeral when it was shown on KTN (Kenya Television Network). I was actually pretty surprised that it was playing on the Kenyan channels, talk about globalization. The big news stories here lately have been about Kofi Annan pushing the Kenyan government to try the perpetrators of post election violence at the Hague. I don’t understand all of the details and admittedly have not been paying very close attention, but the jist of it seems to be that Annan handed a list of suspects names over the ICC. The reason the ICC is even getting involved is that many Kenyans fear that if the criminals are tried in the Kenyan justice system they will bribe judges and prosecutors into not guilty verdicts and lenient sentences. In general, Kenyans have very little trust for their government, and since some of the perpetrators are actually high ranking government officials, their fears seem justified. I don’t quite have a sense over how people feel about this, I know that Barnibus supported it, but that’s just one persons opinion. I guess Parliament is pretty divided over the issue. I just think it’s surprising to see a country turn the Hauge to supplement its justice system. Coming from the United States, where the ICC is mostly ignored on a good day, it’s refreshing to see the body taken so seriously. Before this stuff with the Hauge came up last week, there was a lot of talk about Somalia, and what Kenya should be doing about the situation there, if they should send troops ect. Anyway, Tigania is a very interesting area. It’s North of Nairobi, in the Eastern province and very different from the western areas of Nyanza Province that I had been in. First of all Nyanza, especially Kuria near the Tanzanian boarder, has plenty of rain. Crops flourished, the maize harvest looked plentiful, and people didn’t seem too concerned with not having enough to eat. But right now, there is a drought in Tigania, and in many parts of eastern Kenya. The maize harvest is not good there for the third year in a row. Most people rely on their Shambas (personal farms) for food and whatever small income they can make from selling the surplus, when there is no rain and no harvest people really hurt. Looking at the fields and shambas in this area it was obvious that this was not going to be a good year for most of those families. Because it has been so dry, everything is very dusty. The dirt is a brick red color and it sticks to everything. I wore sneakers for the first time, just because it felt like my feet would get so dirty in sandals.

Besides being dry Tigania is also the first area I have been in that is mountainous. There were beutiful veiws all around of the hills, and on a coupel fo the days we had a chance to see mount Kenya (the second tallest mountain in Africa). Getting around Tigania is usually a bit harder than the other villages. Public transportation is more limited and there aren't many boda boda's (byciles for higher). But most of the schools we were going to where just off of the main road. One was very far into the interior (about 7 km), so we had to higher a car to take us there).

One of the things that I found really interesting was that this area is actually much more "modern" than the areas in Nyanza where we spent time. By modern I mean that many women where pants, and some where tight pants and genes. The secondary school girls are alowed to keep their hair long (in Nyanza they all have to keep it cut short), and the skirts for thier uniforms are just below the knee instead of mid calf. Also, people here eat with spoons and forks much more often then they do in Nyanza, where almost everyone just eats with their hands.

Barnibus' home is just a few hundered meters from the main tarmak road and a town called Godone. He owns just 1/4 of an acre there, only enough for his house and a few fruit trees. His shambas are else where. He chose to make a house on a small peice of land in order to be close to the town and the road. We went into town with him a few times and met many of the local officers. We also met a butcher who can smoke a cigarette through his mouth, but make the smoke come out of his ears (after showing us the man asked if anyone would sponsor him to go to the US and show his talent their, if anyone is intersted let me know and I will pass the workd along).

Barnibus also brougt us to his school. He is principal at a school called St. Mary's, which is in one of the most interior areas I have been too. It was a 2o-30 minute drive from the tarmac road in the mountains. Unlike the rest of Kenya (where people think that it is cold when its 68 degrees) this area was actually chilly and very very windy. We spoke to the students there about different types of learners (auditory, visual, and kenestetic) and the best study strategies for each. Then we answered questions about anything. They mostly asked us about America and what we are studying.

One morning a friend of our host fathers invited us to his home to see his area and visit the school he is the chairman of. It was only about 5 km into the interior, but it felt much more ioslated than that. The roads are bumpy and up fairly steep inclines. I want to say taht they are the worst that we have seen, but I'm nots sure if that is because of the conditions themselves or because we were also going up hill. When we got there we walked around the area near his home, and saw the various parcels of land that he owns. We also briefly visited some homes in the area that have been affected by HIV. Other universal problems in this area were poor harvest, and also lack of land. People's shambas were not big enough to support them even if the maize harvest were good, or to support them with other crops, and they are too poor to buy their own food.

Now that I am finished in Mituntu I am done with the whole phase I of my research project (first survey, HIV talk, second survey). Now I am going back around to the villages to do the third evaluation.