Talent is Universal; Opportunity is Not

The past few days have been hectic and stressful, yet wonderful. They have been so jam-packed with activities that it’s hard to keep them straight. If I wasn’t completely exhausted I would write every night, but unfortunately that’s not the case and I am completely exhausted come nine-o’clock.

On Saturday, we went on a three-four hour hike up to the Chyulu Hills, one of the most beautiful places in Kenya. The hike was really intense, especially for someone like me who lacks endurance, knee strength and relative coordination. Also, the altitude was really high and I lost my breath quite easily. However, despite thinking to myself many times (and saying out loud), “I don’t know if I can do this”, I made it up all the way to the top- about 15 feet below the clouds! Part of our group parted off below, but I persevered and continued up to the top! I wish that I could post photos; the view was absolutely incredible. We had to climb with two Maasai guides (while Daniel and Sapaya are Maasai, they aren’t trained for the hike). These guides were trained on the best routes and avoiding/dealing with wildlife conflicts.

We were able to gain access to this exclusive hike (which people pay upwards of $1500 for) because we entered through Daniel and Sapaya’s Group Ranch. Kenya is divided up into Group Ranches; for instance, for our research we are looking at the impact of the closure of the Imbirikani Clinic on the Imbirikani Group Ranch. Anyways, Daniel and Sapaya are from a village right near the Chyulu Hills; they grew up there and went to school together and now work at SFS. They are both hilarious and wonderful (there is also a wonderful Program Assistant named Moses who didn’t drive that day). I will be so sad to say goodbye to them so soon.

Daniel talked to us about some of the challenges their region face, namely water shortages, wildlife conflicts and food shortages. The region is beautiful, but unforgiving. It is clear that in order to survive in much of Kenya, one must be tough and persevere through incredibly difficult situations. I am in awe of the people who still lead subsistence lives and literally live off of the land.

In order to get to Chyulu hills, we drove for about two hours on some of the worst roads I’ve ever been on. Sometimes, we would just drive through the open tundra on no road at all, crossing huge ravines with giraffe’s, zebras and tommy’s (little antelope things!) overlooking our strange journey. I was quite glad I had my Dramamine for this trip, but it was wonderful having Daniel and Sapaya there and we never felt lost or unsafe at all. On the way back, we saw a Jackal killing a baby goat! Sapaya spun the land cruiser around and drove at the Jackal, chasing it away from the rest of the small herd and crashing through the small underbrush. It was quite fun and interesting.

After we got back from the hike, we were all exhausted. Luckily, the Mama’s had to reschedule, so we were able to take a quick break before going out to a bar for a few drinks. It was nice to relax, but as per usual when going out with a group of Americans, one guy got extremely drunk and belligerent. It ended up being rather embarrassing and annoying. The beer was good though.

On Sunday, we met our translators and went over our qualitative and quantitative questionnaires (the quantitative are for the Boma interviews while the qualitative are for the key informant interviews and focus group discussions). I lucked out with my group for the week. My partner is Naom, a Kenyan who, obviously, speaks Swahili, which will make conversation much easier. Our translator (who will translate into Maasai), Daniel, has been translating for five years and we are very lucky to have him. Some of the other groups were not so lucky and their guides didn’t speak English very well.

We also did a practice round at a Boma across the street. It helped us identify flaws in our questionnaire or flaws in communication with the translators. This was a very helpful process. Even in the practice round, questions like rape, HIV, circumcision, gender roles, domestic violence, STIs and such raised incredibly important questions. Further, the practice round showed that many of the guides really did not speak English, so we had to do a last minute switch and hire a group of new translators.

On Monday, we spent the morning finalizing the qualitative questionnaires before going to our Key Informant Interviews. I was in the group interviewing the District AIDS coordinator in Loitoktok at the Imbirikani Health Center. It was very interesting to hear his comments, particularly with respect to the closing of the Imbirikani Clinic. The main problems he has seen following the closure are lack of sanitation, increased mother to child transmission of HIV, increased opportunistic infections (particularly TB- 50% of those HIV positive also have TB), the development of drug resistance due to defaulters on ARVs, lack of immunization programs and lack of nutrition for women and children. These are MASSIVE problems that if left unaddressed, will have unprecedented consequences. With problems like drug resistance, it is frustrating because they were actually caused by the Imbirikani clinic. While without the clinic’s existence, other problems would have continued and erupted, with the clinic’s existence and then abrupt closure, many and most HIV patients defaulted on their drugs, creating drug resistance. This is incredibly frustrating and extremely sad to see because this leads people to become hopeless, which is the worst outcome possible. People become hopeless because they see that even when they do receive help, it is unsustainable and their problems will still exist and are compounded upon when the help leaves.

I fell asleep in the middle of the previous last sentence last night. I’ve never actually fallen asleep with my computer on my lap before; I must be working hard. Today I had to get up at 5:45 for cook crew. The mornings here are so peaceful, I didn’t even mind. It stays pitch black until about 6:30, which makes it a bit bizarre to be waking in what seems to be the middle of the night. My favourite times of day are when it’s dark. It is so peaceful and the clouds or stars (depending on the cloud cover) never cease to amaze and inspire me. The night sky seems so much closer and so much more intense. I never thought anything could compare to stargazing over Cape Cod Bay, but boy was I wrong; rural Kenya has it beat by a long shot. The incredible beauty of Kenya adds to the inherent tragedy that it possesses. It’s tough to comprehend how such beauty can bring about such pain and suffering among such wonderful people. I have mentioned this before, but two quotes that are constantly (literally, constantly) running through my head are: “Talent is universal; opportunity is not” and “Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live.” These people did nothing different than you or I to determine where we were born and which opportunities we were given, but for some reason we were chosen or were fortunate enough to be born into an incredible lifestyle with countless opportunities. The most frustrating thing is when people don’t recognize this and don’t feel some responsibility towards the less fortunate members of mankind. I think that I came to Kenya with this philosophy, and finally I am beginning to understand it and fully embrace it. Hopefully someday I will be able to live it. I don’t think I will ever be satisfied with life if I am not helping those less fortunate. It’s just that: fortune; the luck of the draw that determines where you’re born. It’s absolutely mind-blowing.

Today, we began field research. We left KBC at 7:30 and returned around 5 PM. It was a very long day of research that was taxing and frustrating, yet eye opening. We all piled into our designated trucks with our wonderful drivers (we had Daniel) and some of us also had faculty members with us (we were lucky enough to have Joyce!). We were equipped with lots of water, first aid packets (of course I added to mine), radios, and packed lunches and were dropped off outside a Boma about a half hour away from KBC for our first interview. When we entered, the Mama was reluctant to talk to us. She said that she has completed many of these interviews and/or questionnaires, yet she never sees any benefit. She didn’t see the point of participating if nothing was going to change. This was the first surprise of the day; we were not expecting the Mamas to challenge us about the actual research. I am so glad that she did because it really opened my eyes to the directed research we are doing and made me even more inspired to actually create some lasting change from it, or at least to begin the process. Our professors keep saying that our research will be utilized; we have a community forum/presentation after we finalize the data and it will help people. However, I am absolutely going to bring this up at the debrief tonight. If this research is not going to create any movement for change or positive benefit, I absolutely 100% do not agree with the ethical implications of it. It is without a doubt, completely unacceptable to hold our research methods education to a higher importance than someone else’s culture and real life problems. I’ll let you know what comes of this.

Anyways, now I’m exhausted and we’re about to have dinner and then a two-hour class on data collection methods and intros to epi info. Yay! And we leave at 7 tomorrow (that means cook crew is at 5:30; I’m glad I’m not on tomorrow).

Also, a few updates:

1.     I deleted my Facebook for the rest of the trip because I really want to utilize my time here and not think about life back home. Just an FYI. (So email me!!)

2.     If you to www.fieldstudies.org and click on the “blog” tab, you can see a little blurb I wrote for headquarters.

3.     EMAIL ME!

XO