Feb 2007

Sunday 25th February 2007

Things are well.

Yesterday, fed up with the city a matatu’d out to Lake Naivasha again and took a boat onto Crescent Island. The island (a crescent shape) was a former volcano crater rim and commands a view of another volcano Mount Longonot (blog…), the cliff of Hell’s Gate (blog… ) is full of lots of beautiful animals. During the boat trip I saw my first hippo (with Longonot behind).

I just walked around the island for a few hours, in amongst the Gnu (Wildebeast)... you remember that song Mr Fee used to sing
"I'm a GeNu, How do you do?"

Dave is in Africa, Honestly

Thompsons’ Gazelles, Grants Gazelles, Imapala, Water buck

and the ubiquitous Zebras. But I had been warned to keep away from the thick trees and bushes because that’s where the Buffalo were hiding… Yes, Buffalo, together with Hippos are by far the most dangerous animals in Africa – killing and maiming many more people than lions or leopards… because their grumpy!

On arrival back in Nairobi, I met Ben (Kenyan guy from work). We headed out to Eastlands for a drink in a properly African pub, with African music, dancing and no Musungos (whites).. it was great. Then onto his cousin’s mourning house in South B to hang out for a while. Similar in many ways to the mourning house Kai and I visited in Sri Lanka … people hanging about outside the house under a covering sitting chatting, laughing, most not seeming to be particularly interested in the fact that Ben’s cousin’s wife had just died. The difference was that in Kenya they were playing a Shine Jesus Shine dvd at full volume on the TV and I was very careful not to pay any attention to drunken uncles who might ask me to sing a song. There was no repeat performance of Brown Eyed Girl from Dave.

After the death house, I attended the ex-pat party of the week… hosted by The Italians.

Oh, and here's a pic of Paul flipping pancakes at my place last Tuesday

And here is my office

Some of my Colleagues in the office and my office through the back

My at my desk

Had a pancake party last night. Was great fun! Yummy.

Today I got chatting to a lady mycologist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. She and her colleagues in the Plant Pathology division are the main centre in Kenya to help farmers who have a problem with diseased crops. Farmers send in cuttings or samples of afflicted plants and the labs try to diagnose what is causing the disease and then advise or help with its control. They have people specialised in bacterial diseases, fungal disease, nematodes and viruses. This is vitally important to the livelihoods of Kenyan farmers and food security for the nation, since only by knowing what is wrong with your crop can you act properly to cure it. Diseases left unchecked can spread across a whole farm, province, country or even continent. Control may involve the use of chemical sprays to kill the causative agent or changing the way the crop is grown to avoid it being grown at a time of year when the pathogen is at its nastiest. It may also involve changing the crop… some pathogens are very selective to one species of plant, so if a field is contaminated with a disease that kills maize, then growing cowpea may be an option. Or it may involve planting varieties that are resistant to that particular strain of pathogen.

Obviously fast diagnosis and detailed knowledge of the disease causing agent can have a big impact… however, sometime in the last 10 years the Kenyan Government, in its wisdom decided that agricultural support and extension work should be self funding. I have a feeling that this is due to international reforms forced by the rich countries of the world (through institutions like the IMF, World Bank, WTO) on the poor countries to remove agricultural subsidies. The government cannot subsidise seed supply, fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides… the argument being that if people pay the full value of something they will use it more wisely and it will encourage entrepreneurs and the private sector to help out in a more efficient way than a 3rd world government ever could manage… if farmers pay the full value of seeds then it will support the breeding for and development of new locally produced varieties that are particularly adapted to the national setting. Somehow, these rules on not subsidising farming enforced upon the developing world do not apply to USA or the EU. We pay a British farmer 70 pence to make a bag of sugar that will sell on the market for about 40 pence. I don’t want to get too much into the unfairness of this situation as we’ve all heard from Make Poverty History and other campaigns the effect that our farming subsidies have on the ability of an African farmer to get a fair prices for his crop… if she/he makes sugar at 50 pence a bag then there won’t be a market for it!

What I’m ranting about today is the absolute madness of the withdrawal of government subsidies from a plant pathology unit. Here we have a few well trained scientists and agronomists (some with PhD’s from UK/Australia) who know how to use the relatively cheap and efficient biotechnological techniques of PCR or ELISA (which uses antibodies) for diagnosis of disease in a very quick and specific manner. They have an ELISA machine in their lab and some access to other equipment and yet they are rarely used because the Plant Pathology Unit must be self financing. They must take in as much cash from farmers as they spend… and when local farmers struggle to pay the 500 Kenyan Schillings per sample (about £3) the advanced techniques can’t cover their costs. Instead they resort to old school taxonomic analysis of looking at the fluffy shapes that the fungal cultures make.

It seems to me incredibly short sited of the powers that make the rules. I am not an economist and I don’t know how to do proper cost/benefit analysis, but I imagine that the benefit of knowing early about threatening diseases is worth more to the country than just to the farmer with the diseased plant… and could certainly be worth more than £3… if it stops the disease spreading to his neighbouring farms and destroying livelihoods of farmers who will then be unable to pay for their kids to go to school and may also rely on food aid handouts from the government. So expecting the farmer to pay the full cost of stopping an crop infection does not seem reasonable.

I would really like to know if this is driven by the agenda of the Kenyan government or the rich donor countries of the world.

Before I came to Kenya, I was told that Africa and Asia were incomparable. And it’s true: they are totally different; yet I can’t help comparing (and contrasting?) them. I know that, having only spent a couple of months in Nairobi and slightly more time in Sri Lanka and India, I am not in a position to analyse anything properly, but I can comment on my initial impressions.

One of the first differences I noticed was the people… not that they’re black… but the subservience. I was quite surprised (stupidly) when the driver or the porter in the hotel took the initiative to ask me who I was, where I was from, why I had come here. In India, that does not happen; I would probably exchange similar information but at my initiative. One wealthy Asian told me the lower classes there should ‘know their place’.

Another thing that jumped out when I first arrived was the food. In Asia, the street stalls and the cafes are overflowing with delicious and interesting foods. In Kenya there is almost no street food and the local dishes in the restaurants are not so interesting. Normal food here is Chicken or Beef stew or barbequed meet with maize, rice or chips as the accompanying starch.

Kenyans also express their sexualities much more explicitly than does your average Asian I’ve met. Sri Lankan women are likely to dress modestly and be unlikely to strike up a conversation with a tourist male. In Kenya, the women and men seem very aware of and comfortable with their bodies. They love to boogie and even ones that aren’t that pretty are very sexy when they get on the dance floor.

Of course the religions are different, the poverty is more extreme in Africa and, although Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia were all in the British Empire, Kenya feels like its been much more thoroughly colonised than the Asian territories I’ve visited. But what I like to ponder is whether the differences are due to the difference of Africa and how much due to colonialism experienced in the two continents.

Why do I think Kenya was more colonised?
Well, the Asians were allowed to keep their own home grown religions.
The subservience of Indians is, I’m told, something to do with the caste system and the religions… which also seems to allow so many people to be living on top of each other, without too much strife and war that has tormented Africa since independence.

The boring food of Kenya sounds similar to boring British food… with Maize (the staple food) being an indigenous crop to the Americas. Cattle with Aberdeen Angus and Frisian genetic background. Chips being an indigenous crop to Scotland. Interestingly, Ethiopia (the only African country that wasn’t colonised) has got much more flavourful food.

I don’t think the increased sensuality and sexuality of Africa comes from the Brits, but an Indian friend of mine tells me that the prudishness I observed in India is due to the import of Victorian values… from Britain.

In language, I took a bus here in the company ‘Citti Hoppa’ (some corruption of a Cockney way of speaking) and I paid my fair to the bus conductor ‘Duncan’ with 20 ‘bob’ (abbreviation for the official currency of Shillings) before ‘alighting’ at my destination.

Another huge difference between Asia and Kenya is that the colonialism in Kenya seems to remain very strong today in economic terms. As I write this, I’m sitting opposite Barclays bank, within 2 minutes walk of a BP, a Shell and a Mobil petrol station. I can see an advert across the road for Michelin tyres.

Most of the music and pop stars I hear on the radio or see on TV (or in churches) are from UK or our richest former colony (USA) and all the TV’s, radios and cars here seem to be of brands from the global North.

In the supermarket, all the brands are ones from home. Macvities Digestives, Campbells soup, Delmonte juice, Lea and Perrins Worcester Sauce to name but a few.

In India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia you see local banks, petrol companies, music, film industry, computers, TV’s and brands in supermarkets.

This all makes me question, how much the increased colonialism is responsible for increased poverty in Africa still today. How much of every Shilling I spend here on most of my purchases here in Kenya ends up in the pockets of shareholders in the global north. Are the high rates of HIV/AIDS in Africa in part due to conservative Christian values on contraception? How much of the slow pace of development is due to the hand-out culture that our previous developmental/economic policies have nurtured?

I also want to rant about attitudes towards technology and agricultural development that Africa has adopted from The West… but I think that can wait for another time.

My dearest twin, Matt, commented to me the other day that he likes my blog and finds it quite interesting, but he can’t tell whether I’m enjoying myself here in Africa.

Recently, I suppose I’ve been commenting more on things I’ve seen and how they’ve challenged me, rather than focussing on the fun stuff.

But, I think its quite safe to say that although its not everything I’d wanted, YES, I am enjoying myself in Nairobi.

Why is it not everything I’d wanted?

Well, I still feel like I’m not really experiencing Africa. Nairobi is a town that is crowded with Aid and Development workers. It homes the headquarters of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), UN HABITAT (focussing on city issues), several big regional offices for other agencies, coordinating offices for emergency missions in Somalia and Sudan and lots of NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organisations – or in Britain, charities like Oxfam). I spend most of my spare time with the international community and still feel I don’t really know many Kenyans. Sure I work with them, but the work relationships have mostly stayed at work. I haven’t visited homes or really engaged with their lives… I wonder if it’s my fault for not trying enough… but in other countries I’ve managed much more easily. I think its something about Nairobi. Perhaps also the security in Nairobi – always having to be a bit more careful about giving banter on the street or inviting people home or accepting an invitation to go somewhere.

The fun is very fun though. Even though I’m frustrated by the slow pace of work and the beaurocracy of the UN agencies, I know I’m lucky.
Where else can I get up and leave at the end of the week and look at Zebras, Giraffes, Elephants? It is totally amazing!

Two weekends ago I visited a Giraffe centre with two friends I met in Rome (Caitlin and Stefano who work with UNESCO) who have recently moved out here.

We walked along a nice country lane to get there

Giraffe’s are amazing!

We also walked around a nearby wood and found this guy in our way

Last weekend on the Saturday I met up with an Irish friend, Hugh, and we took a Matatu (public transport minibus) an hour out of town to visit the Thika falls. I had imagined something special… it was actually pretty crap. But it was still an adventure. Just going out and finding a new place.

Then Saturday night I got chatting with a couple of friends at Casablanca. They told me at 3 am that Sarah had rented a car and there was to be a trip starting at 9am tomorrow morning to visit Mount Longonot. So after few hours of sleep we got up, made hummous and drove off. We passed some stunning views of the rift valley which the camera really doesn’t do justice to. The ground suddenly falls away below you to a huge flat floor that goes on for … far.

You can see Mount Longonot (a volcano crater) in the distance in the photo. The pointy one.

So we drove to the bottom, climbed up the side and planned to walk around the crater

However, it started raining very hard and we got a bit wet and cold and went down happy after just some jaunting on the crater rim.

Sarah is the short blonde British girl who works in HIV/AIDS journalism. Kirsten is the tall blonde Canadian girl who I spent Christmas eve with. One of the guys plays for the Kenyan football team and is her boyfriend. He’s also a part-time model.

The fourth guy sells clothes and reads 10 newspapers a day and filled me in about the complex political situation in Kenya as we walked.

This week I was out in Havanas (a Cuban bar) for the Birthday of a great Italian guy here called Vincenzo who makes documentaries. Thursday was the regular Salsa night at The Pavement, which is a big social event where you can meet everybody in the international community. Friday night I went out for dinner with some international scientists from the International Centre for Research in Semi-Arid and Tropical Crops (ICRISAT) before going back to Casablanca.

Then last night was the big bonanza.
We had about 70 people in our flat from at least 21 nationalities… many of them known. Many not. Like I said, it is a small international community here. Everybody knows everybody… so many people turned up who I knew who had been invited by a friend of a friend of someone and it was great.

The community is a bit like being University students who never quite grew up. Lots of people who aren’t ready to settle down with no or dysfunctional relationships. People from all over the world. Mostly interesting. Mostly fun. But being slightly older there isn’t so much agro, and nobody being sick from too much alcohol.

I don’t know if you can judge a party from the debris left over in the morning but

Red wine 10 bottles
White wine 3.5 bottles
Vodka 8 bottles
Gin 2.75 bottles
Famous Grouse 1 bottle
Tusker beer 103 cans + 7 bottles
Tusker Malt beer 7 bottles
Windhoek beer 1 bottle
Stella 1 bottle
Smirnoff ice 1 bottle
Red Bull 2 cans

Krest (bitter lemon) 1 bottle
Tonic 13 glass bottles (200ml)
Sprite 6 x 2 litres
Coke 6 x 2 litres
Plastic cups 100

Hummous (home-made) 3 empty bowles
Guacamole (home-made) 1 empty tub
Salsa (home-made) 1 empty vat
Cookies (home-made) 3 empty trays
Samosas (50 not there)

I think it was a good party.

Photos below were us clearing up this morning... the water has been off all day and I still haven't showered.. ugggh!