Tuk Tuk in Paradise

6/14/10

Today I met with some folks who are going to be partners on the project, Lydia from UNAIDS and Richard from Millennium village project, I went through the basics of how the project will unfold over the next few months, they had some good insights on how to make the project run more smoothly and I’m looking forward to getting their input moving forward. I’ll have two more meetings with folks tomorrow, the person in charge of the CHWs and Maurice who will be my main point of contact here. So tomorrow, I hope we’ll figure out where exactly we’re heading after we get into Kisumu tomorrow. That would be good, as of now, we would just have to show up and hope for the best.



I was reading The End of Poverty by Paul Pollak which is all about his work in poverty alleviation over the years and he was talking about some pretty basic things that are the basis for his work, and they apply well here too. Some are obvious, like “Go where the problem is”, I certainly agree with this, if you haven’t seen it, how can you solve it? The second is to find the people who are affected by the problem, and listen to what they have to say, they have the benefit of experience and make sure that you are actually listening. This is the basis of what I’ll be doing the first few weeks here. I’m making a list of what I would like to do and am going to be having meetings on Thursday and Friday and will be putting together a work plan based on the info that I get. Then on Monday the goal is to begin the field work.
6/15
Hmmm, looking back it wasn’t all that exciting. I had meetings all day until it was time to go to the airport. We went to the airport and flew to Kisumu, I love flights out of small airports where things are mellow, and we flew with a ton of water and got through security within a few minutes. We flew into the smallest airport I have ever seen, I have had apartments bigger than the Kisumu airport, but it also has more character than most I have ever seen.




Josephine at Millennium Development Goals set up a ride from the airport for us and found us a wonderful guest house. Lynn and Linda are taking wonderful care of us here, and we have internet now if anyone would like to Skype.
6/16/10
Lynn took us around town today and I finally got to go to a market here! We took a tuk tuk to the Jubilee market. A tuk tuk is a motorcycle type thing, it has three wheels and is a taxi which can fit three people. It is awesome and Claire loves it too.



So at the Jubilee market we went to buy produce and it was amazing, we bought a TON! Avocado salad tonight! And then I’m making Saag Paneer out of local greens. We also found Claire a woven bassinet there. After that we went to Nakumatt which is maybe the biggest store I have ever been in. We were really glad that we got the woven bassinet rather than a crib though as they started at $200, though they were very nice. We got even more groceries and will be feasting for our time here I think, oh and we got Claire a potty too. Okay, well Katie has been watching Claire as I have been writing so I should go let her have a break. Oh and our housemates are 2 Japanese researchers, everyone loves Claire and it’s been nice to start to have a little community. Okay, more tomorrow!