Blogging Siaya - The Journey Here

IPA Kenya, Siaya Office. We don't stand on ceremony here.

Here I am! Surely at this point on my journey all my readers know me well and have heard that I just took a long-craved job with the Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) spinoff, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in rural Western Kenya. The task: oversee the second half of a development randomized controlled trial on how farmers learn about new products and improved practices. The setting: Siaya, Kenya, a town of about 11,000 people about halfway between Kisumu and Busia--or more or less equidistant from Lake Victoria and the Uganda border.

I expect I will write both about the experience of being an expat/administrator/manager/researcher here, and about the substance of what this work is about, although those components might go in different places. Right now, everything is fluid!

Now I've been here a week and there are a ton of thoughts stewing around, but I'm going to keep this post to the journey here itself. A week ago today, after I sold or gave away nearly all my worldly possessions and filled out a respectable stack of paperwork, my (new) sweetheart (!) gave me a ride to Logan airport. When we arrived, a wave of horror came over me as I realized I didn't have the letter of invitation I required for my visa, which I would pick up at Nairobi airport customs. Our heartfelt and emotional farewells were abruptly cut off as she sprang into action, determining where the nearest printer was located--the Marriott by the airport--and dispatching me through security to see if I could locate one inside. Happily, there was one, once I had begged my way into the Delta SkyClub, and the crisis was averted. (In fact, the crisis had never existed--I was never asked to produce a copy of the letter).

The flights to Amsterdam and on to Nairobi were long but in fact relatively painless. On the way to Amsterdam I sat next to a woman who turned out to be a Kenyan who lived in Madrid and was visiting family in the US. I picked her brain for information about the Luo people, who inhabit the area around Siaya, and learned that they are largely Catholic.

(I would later hear, from Catholics, that most of Kenya is Catholic. I would also hear, from a Baptist, that most of Kenya is Baptist.)

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

On the way to Nairobi I sat next to an Englishman who had been born in Kenya, and whose father had worked for the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. I was two for two on apposite plane companions. This fellow was the current owner of a family coffee-exporting company operating throughout East Africa. I extracted a number of Swahili pointers from him and discussed the coffee trade. I also heard what is becoming a familiar refrain about African farmers failing to recognize their own interests in how best to cultivate their land. It is an idea I have been predisposed by my teachers to resist--in fact I have seen the white/yellow corn example employed by the coffee scion had been presented to demonstrate how farmers are rationally making choices that seem to outsiders like they reduce yields. Yet, this view is coming as well from quarters where I wouldn't expect it, and I have to acknowledge that I simply don't know what to believe. Surely the poor farmers are right sometimes--but maybe they are also stubborn and ignorant other times?

Besides these conversations, I spent the flights trying to deduce the rules of Swahili grammar from a phrasebook that was well-written but not oriented toward the new resident of the country.

Grace House - Accomodations in Nairobi, with the
nicest bed net I've seen yet, even though there's no
malaria in Nairobi.

Immigration at Nairobi presented a formidable line, which I ended up at the back of. But I got through fine, secured my visa, purchased a Kenyan SIM card, and--after a phone call to the Cambridge Savings Bank--was able to withdraw some Kenyan shillings from the ATM. Then I was on my way to Grace House, where I got three or four hours of sleep before an early morning flight to Kisumu.

Landing in Kisumu

My companion on the flight to Kisumu was a student of environmental planning in Eldoret, and an excellent conversational partner. It was a short flight, however, and soon we were descending into Kisumu above Lake Victoria. Through the window, I could make out the triangular sails of fishing boats and then, as we got closer, fishing rowboats and canoes. We crossed the tarmac on foot barely after dawn.

I got into a car and saw rural Africa filing by me: schoolchildren in adorable uniforms, men and
women (but mostly women) hard at work planting and turning over the soil, structures built of mud and sticks, red dirt roads, and security checks by armed guards. I dropped off my bags at a small hotel where I would stay until my predecessor vacated his room, and came into the office. (The motorbike pictured here is said predecessor's).