from panthers to projects

I realize it’s been a while since I last wrote, but I’ll do my best to catch you all up as best I can…

I’m going to start with a trip we (the program) took a little less than a month ago to Tanzania, in which we stayed with a Black Panther (yes, the kind you’re thinking of), visited the International Criminal Court’s War Crimes Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide, and stayed with a Maasai tribe. Oh, and then there was that day where we hiked part of Kilimanjaro. All-in-all, I’d say it was a pretty good trip.

The first day we were in Arusha we went to the ICC, where we heard a lecture on the ICC in general, the specific institution in Arusha (specifically there to find/prosecute those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda), and we sat in on a trial for someone responsible for transporting people/ammunition to all sorts of important people then. It felt absolutely absurd that we were allowed to be there, and was crazy to have people arguing about such specific details of one minute of one day in 1994, on which the rest of this man’s life depends…

Staying with the Maasai tribe for a few days was really quite fun. Though clearly we didn’t experience what life is really like there, I do think we got a pretty accurate sneak-peak that was far more rewarding than the other touristy Maasai tribe experience I had had with a tribe in Kenya a few months earlier. I felt like I actually made friends with a few of the warriors (to the extent that that’s possible when we only shared a vocabulary of maybe 100 words in Kiswahili. The kids there were absolutely adorable, and the warriors were really quite nice, and made it feel like an incredibly personal experience as they taught us about different traditions, rituals, and everyday life. We slaughtered a goat while we were there (that’s kind of what I mean by getting a glimpse of life, though clearly the ceremony when we slaughtered the goat was taken far less seriously than one would be under other circumstances), we learned how to chew the bark from one tree as bubblegum, how to cut ourselves a toothbrush from another plant, identify certain ingredients for all kinds of medicinal chai… basically, it was great.

Unfortunately, after our stay at with the Maasai, everyone in our trip managed to get food poisoning (that we later determined was NOT from all the crazy goat parts that we had eaten) just in time to climb Kilimanjaro. We all ended up climbing, though that’s not really saying much, considering we were only allowed to climb to the base camp, and it was really a pretty easy hike. Still though, good for impressing people who don’t think to ask how far you went, and it really was a nice time.

I may have missed some points of TZ, but I’m going to keep moving right along in my efforts to get up to speed. When we returned to Nairobi, I was hoping to come back to a letter from the IRB at Scripps… You may or may not know that part of my stay here involves doing research for a month. Well, if I’m doing research with human participants I have to get my research passed through an Institutional Review Board at Scripps, and over here, because I’m affiliated with both institutions. Well, the IRB at Scripps takes a week or two to go over everything, so I had gotten it set up before TZ, and was hoping to find it finished. Turns out, true to Kenyan productivity, my academic director had forgotten to send it in, and then decided that it wasn’t her responsibility when she realized. Long story short, I had a mini-breakdown, a good cry, and then felt just as peppy as usual when I was done, though it was still beyond me how anything was going to be accomplished, given that our one month of allotted research time had just started, and I needed the full month to conduct this research (which, by the way, I was planning to use for my thesis upon my return to Scripps in the fall). …Fast forward a few weeks, and everything got sorted out, and I’ll just have to multitask as I write part of my paper and complete my research to make up for lost time. At this point, I’m hopeful that research will work out (though not as planned), and if not, well, I’m sure life will go on anyway.

Meanwhile, my social life also progressed… since our return from TZ, I moved out of my home stay (independence!!!) and into a nearby appt with two friends from my program. The apartment has a pool, internet, and no family trying to take care of me by telling me when I am/am not allowed to go out, aaaand, I cook my own things with what I view as appropriate levels of oil and sugar. It’s great. It’s funny what happens when you’re not FORCED to be with someone… now whenever I go home everyone (including me) is always thrilled, and it seems it never gets boring. So, I've been spending my days in Nairobi doing research downtown, which is a great excuse to talk to all kinds of people, and then relaxing and going to football matches with friends at night. Life could be worse...

For those of you who don't already know, the research I'm conducting is on psychological empowerment, and specifically concerns cultural differences in perception of government and empowerment across Kenya. In easier terms, I'm doing my research in Nairobi, Kisumu (on Lake Victoria), and Mombasa (on the Coast), and in each location I determine through interviews and surveys how people perceive their government, and how that relates to the ways in which (if at all) people in one city/culture behave in more/less empowered ways.

Though I'm going to leave you shortly to catch my ride to Kisumu, I'd like to share one last exciting bit of news for those of you that do not already know: I recently received word that I was selected as a recipient of the $10,000 Stauss Grant for a project I proposed in which I'll work with girls in Kilifi (near Mombasa) to create their own community development projects. I'll explain this further later, but if you're interested in hearing more, email me, and I'll send you a copy of the proposal...