The End of Kenyan Field Work

Hi everyone! Whether you stumbled on my blog to read my state officer post, to follow along with my Kenya internship, or just because -- thanks for stopping by and for all of the support!9:17AM Thursday and today are supposed to be very much the same so I'll spare you the time and put them into one post together. Professor Khan allowed us an expansion to 20 people per country, instead of 15 and I'm very happy about it! Even though it's not much of a difference, it's still 10 more people after we're done and more (much needed) insight into Aflatoxin. As of this morning, I have one more female that I need to interview to make my responses gender-balanced and Isaac has two or so and then we will begin our focus group discussion. I'm not sure what the focus group discussion will look like or if all of our participants will speak English so that we are able to facilitate the discussion ourselves. I know that we're pulling from the 20 farmers that we've already interviewed to balance genders and that we take only one respondent per household at max to get unbiased answers. Martin, our icipe Field Director in the Rongo County area, and Matilda are getting that set up for us and we will meet the farmers later today!Right now, we are driving to get Matilda and we left Mbita at around 8:10AM. We picked up a few icipe people along the way and we're slowly but surely making our way to our final destination. Each day has been back and forth travelling from Mbita and Rongo/Migori, which is about an hour and thirty minutes of driving on a good day.We passed a burial and it looked more like a party to me! There was loud, peppy music and party tents and people dancing. It seemed as though they view burials as more of a "celebration of life" as opposed to mourning which I was really inspired by. Kenyans, and Africans in general, really seem to be positive despite their circumstances. I've seen women carrying heavy jugs of water on their heads, smiling and laughing; people walking ridiculous distances to get to school or work without angry faces; and others going through the day content as they know it could be a lot worse.A few of our interviews today took place at an orphanage. There was a farmer Field School going on, so we got to meet new push-pull farmers and interview the older ones. My personal introduction should be: "Hi, my name is Holly. I'm not from here and I like cats and children so if you have one of those who can be best friends".I've included some photos below of the orphanage kids!Below is a dog and her puppies at the orphanage. They also had "pakas" (cats) but I couldn't find them.I'm not sure why I always look so tired, but whatever! Here's a selfie I took with the side of the road, haha. Isaac and I voluntarily road in the back of the truck for a little bit and it wasn't as bad as I expected. Bumpy, but not terrible. Notice the Cardinals hat? Yeah, it's easy for people to tell I'm from the States and from Missouri, but oh well :) 12:30PM We drove around to many of the different farms that we've been to this week and picked up farmers for the focus group discussion. We've traveled a lot of miles this week and I couldn't imagine making them all walk so far -- even though some do that on a regular basis. The discussion took place at Mama Molly's, at her orphanage/farm (I think I talked about it in my last post) where there are sadly more dogs than cats. But, still kids! Yay!To the left is a photo of me with my Mizzou friend, Clinton! Clinton likes to be called "Waylo" (not sure why), but his mom tried to sell him for 500 Shillings when he was just a few days old because he had "heart problems" (he didn't-she just did not know how to take care of a kid) and the court system ordered for Molly to take him under her care. He was sweet, didn't talk much...but I loved his shirt even if he didn't know why I was taking a picture with him! I'm so curious as to how our clothes get here....there are several stores on the side of the street selling things we would find in an American thrift store. How did they get it??Here are some kids who were observing our focus group discussion from afar. Kids love getting their photo taken so I went and said hi to them!There you have it! The focus group discussion was probably my favorite thing we've done so far. Isaac and I had some prepared topics to discuss but the farmers (a majority of which we had already met) blew me away with their knowledge and ideas. While most of them had no clue what Aflatoxin was, I decided to take a social advocacy type of approach and talk about media integration and education. Based on what they said they would like to learn from and what was most convenient for them, I hope to work with icipe to develop some sort of educational awareness campaign. Yes, it's great that I'm conducting research; however, research can only do so much for the farmer. It has to be shared and applied to make an impact!The entire discussion took a few hours and the farmers were all patient and provided a lot of valuable insight. I'll share that within a few days! We rewarded them for participating by giving them soda and loaves of bread which they seemed to enjoy. Keep in mind, I'm in a country where it costs over 8,000 Shillings to buy a toy piano the size of my arm and over 800 Shillings for me to wash 5 articles of clothing. It made me realize that they are so appreciative for what they get and it saddened me realizing that in America, people would expect to be paid a nice chunk of money to give their time for more than 15 minutes and that they likely would've been complaining a large portion of the time (myself included).Molly showed us her house and talked with some of the farmers about her orphanage. She took me back to her back room and was like "don't worry, I'm not going to kill you" and I tried to hold back my laughter, because she was just trying to be nice. Hahaha, sweet Mama Molly. She talked a lot about how young white folks like us can fund her orphanage and it broke my heart. 

Mama Molly did have a few excellent points that I would like to share with you all:

• "They're not orphans." Molly said this probably about 20 times in the course of the 15-minute discussion, but she had a strong point. She said "if you want to help them, don't put in their heads that they're unwanted." I thought that was so neat and SO important. Oftentimes, we try to label people or "pity" them for whatever reason based on situations that have happened, things their parents did, etc. and I could see in these kids eyes that they were just happy to be loved and to have friends like them. She said orphaned..orphaned by who? unwanted...unwanted by who? I want them and they're my kids..I wish more people had her positive, nurturing spirit.
• Give them responsibilities. Molly's approach is quite simple - she has the kids work for their education. She divides her push-pull plot into sections for each of the kiddos and gives them each a chicken or an animal to take care of and they get a portion of the profit or harvest and that covers their education or board at her orphanage. She teaches them responsibility early on and doesn't let them feel as though things are handed to them and that is so important in life. It always frustrated me growing up, the kids who got brand new cars when they turned 15, the ones who always had the newest iPhone out of mommy and daddy's pocket, the ones who wanted to flash their material possessions or money to others. Having to work for my success and making things happen on my own  (contrary to popular opinion) essentially brought me to Kenya and it was so enlightening to see Molly teaching these children to overcome barriers and that their situation did not define them.

Wow! What a day. The focus group discussion was so fun, but very long. Unfortunately, we didn't make it back in time to teach but we're planning on it this week.