So yet again I have been super busy and not writing in my blog before I pass out every night. We have just started doing fieldwork for our directed research projects! I am in the group who is studying environmental policy, so I spend my days walking from farm to farm asking people 68 questions (literally) about their lives. We are studying the land use changes in the area and the effects they have on all different aspects of life. There are nine of us in the group and we all picked a different focus area from sustainability of agriculture to waste management to human wildlife conflict. I decided that I might as well try and connect my directed research to my actual major, so I am studying the effects of land use on health and nutrition.  This should be interesting, as I haven’t actually taken a nursing or nutrition course yet (hopefully google comes through for me). The interview process involves long hours in the hot Kenyan sun (8am-4pm), an abundance of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and talking to the always interesting and welcoming local people. The first two days we went to the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, where the agriculture tends to be pretty good due to naturally high soil quality. I didn’t really know how the first interview was going to go, but I jumped right in and didn’t make any major mistakes. Luckily we split into smaller groups of two or three people, and each of these groups have a local guide who speaks English, Swahili, and a variety of other tribal languages. The landscape for some reason reminded me of Switzerland- It must have been the cornfields and sunflowers and giant mountain in the background. Everyone we tried to interview was more than willing to talk to us, which was surprising as I’m sure if we tried to do this in America would we not only not be offered a seat inside the house but would also be chased off the premises with a shotgun.  The third day we went to the town of Kimana, which is a more arid climate, and talked to the farmers there. It was this day that I received my second marriage proposal of the trip from one of the Maasai farmers we interviewed. I decided to let the man keep his self-esteem so I made up a boyfriend. His name was Ross.

We also interviewed a man who was 80 years old. When he told me how old he was I nearly dropped my clipboard because the life expectancy here is about 40. I also shouted in excitement (not recommended interview conduct) when he said that he eats all different kinds of food, because it meant I could potentially say that good nutrition makes it more likely that you will literally live be twice as old as the entire population of Kenya.

                The next day we went back to Kimana and I met my favorite interviewee so far. His name was Peter and he talked to us for over an hour. He was not one who suffered from lack of words, and once I tried to move on to the next question and he shook a stick at me and said “now let me finish!” I think I may have actually laughed out loud, which an interviewer probably shouldn’t do either. He also had a lot of things to say about American politics, which led to a lot of nodding and smiling on my part because it is safe to say that most Kenyans know more about American politics than I do.

                After two days in Kimana we moved on to interviewing people in Kuku group ranch, where the farmland is communal. We drove through the bushland, over the river and through the acacia woodlands  for an hour until we got to our destination. It was obvious from most of the interviews that mzungu (white people) did not venture into this area as often as they did in the other two locations. The first day about 10 children braided my hair while I interviewed their father, and they then followed us to our next stop and proceeded to cram themselves into the tiny house where we were doing our next interview.  Unfortunately the next day was the day that my stomach decided that 2 � months in East Africa was too much to cooperate with. I am pretty sure that I was not fully conscious while conducting the majority of the interviews, and when we were finally done I laid down under an Acacia tree and waited for the car to come. Around this time a couple of Maasai decided to wander through the bushland and then stopped to stare at the mzungu lying on the ground and clutching her stomach like she was about to give birth. My partner told me later that they kept asking our guide how tall I was for some reason, and also what kind of crops we grew in America. Luckily tomorrow we have a well-deserved day off when we will all go to a lodge and eat cake and sit by a pool!

Location: Amboseli, Kenya