At last...a post!

Sorry for the delay in getting this blog up and running -- things have been hectic and the internet connections too slow to post photos so I've decided to go with an all text blog and just link to my photos at another site. Scroll down to "KENYA PHOTOS" and "FARM TOUR PHOTOS" if you want to skip the text.

I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya on May 30 for the two-day African Economic Research Consortium-Cornell University conference on "Bottom-Up Interventions for Economic Growth in sub-Saharan Africa". There were about 45 participants, mostly Africans, and a mixture of current doctoral students, recent PhD's and more senior academics and researchers. In addition to my presentation, there were seven others, a few of which were related to HIV/AIDS. The others were on nutrition and productivity, rural livelihoods and co-ops. Overall, it was a good experience and I got to meet some interesting people.

The trip to Nairobi was long but went smoothly overall. I didn't get much sleep on the various flights but that ended up being a good thing in the end because I slipped right into the new time zone without much jet lag. The one minor glitch in the trip was a (temporarily) lost suitcase -- I had sort of expected this so packed my conference clothes in my carry-on. Fortunately, the suitcase showed up just in time and that good news was followed shortly thereafter with an even better piece of good news: passing the prelims! What a relief:)

Now on to the fun stuff...The conference ended Friday afternoon and I met up with Megan (MSU Ag Econ alum working in Nairobi). It was great to see her and we wasted no time in catching up at her swanky apartment and later over a cold Tusker (beer) at the Pizza Garden.

A few impressions of Nairobi: MUCH more developed than Conakry - the two cities are really like different worlds. The roads are better, the cars are better, the driving is better, the food is better ... need I say more? The countless roundabouts throughout the city are a bit scary - traffic lights are apparently more like suggestions than rules - but Megan maneuvered them like a champ.

I didn't really know what to expect of Nairobi in terms of things to do, etc., but was pleasantly surprised when Megan began including in our options lots of activities I thought would only be possible if I were staying longer than 2 days. We drove out to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage on Saturday morning (passing along the way Kibera, Africa's largest slum - home to 1.6 million people). Had a great time at Sheldrick--the elephants were SO CUTE! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one. Here's the link for the elephant orphanage if you're interested: http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/index.asp . There were also a few warthogs running around which was kind of cool.

After a nice lunch of Indian and Thai food at Talisman Restaurant, we headed for Nairobi National Park where we started with a "safari walk", which was more like a stroll through a glorified zoo. The animals were in large enclosures rather than cages, some more secure than others, and included things like pygmy hippos, lions, zebras, wildebeest, a leopard, a cheetah, some kind of monkeys and antelope-type creatures, water buffalo, tortoises, a white rhino, and a crocodile.

Seeing all of these animals was fun but it's much more thrilling to try to spot them in the wild so we paid our $40 for the entrance fee to the National Park itself, hopped in the low-riding Toyota sedan Megan had borrowed for the weekend, and began our driving "safari" through the park. Just a few hundred feet inside the main gate, we encountered a pack of baboons. Kind of exciting but they're about as common as squirrels on the outskirts of Nairobi (we had seen some baboons on the main road on our way to the restaurant for lunch). Shortly after we passed the baboons, the road turned from tarmac to dirt. It was relatively flat at first but as we got further into the park, the potholes got progressively deeper. There were a few spots with large pools of water or streams across the road at which we had to turn back for fear of getting the Toyota stuck. We drove around the park for probably 3 hours or so but only managed to see some more antelope. I think we were just a bit unlucky because last time Megan was there she saw a bunch of giraffes and zebras! We still had a good time on our little adventure and had a lot of time to catch up while trying not to get stuck in potholes or lost in the vast, maze-like park.

That night in Nairobi was a mini-MSU Ag Econ gathering -- Megan and I joined Elliot, a PhD student doing his dissertation research in Kenya, and Melody, an alum who was in town for a few days for work. Usually prelim success would have been celebrated at the Peanut Barrel in East Lansing but raising a glass at Gypsies in Nairobi worked just as well for me!

On my last of 4 days in Kenya, Megan and I drove up to the Rift Valley and hiked Mount Longonot, an extinct volcano. The drive up was really interesting -- got to see a few smaller Kenyan towns and the views of the Rift Valley as we wove our way to Longonot were absolutely spectacular. Had my first experiences with oxygen deprivation on the hike up -- partially because I'm out of shape but also because of the high altitude (at least I hope so!). It was worth it, though, as the view from the top was amazing. Inside the crater of the volcano is now filled with a forest and from the rim looking out, you can see Lake Naivasha, a salt lake inhabited by some hippos.

Nairobi was a ton of fun and most of all it was great to have the chance to catch up with Megan.

KENYA PHOTOS

From Nairobi, my next stop and final destination for the rest of the summer was Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. The flight down to Lusaka was only about 3 hours and en route I caught a stunning glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro!

Whereas Nairobi was green and lush (and it even rained a few times while I was there), Zambia is at the beginning of its dry season so the the green is slowly fading to brown. I was picked up at the airport by our project driver and after a quick pit stop to check into the Chita Lodge, my home for the next 2 weeks, I headed to the office to scope things outs. Joined some colleagues for my first lunch of nshima (in Zambia, that is) and finally got to try the pumpkin leaves I had heard so much about. Delicious. Had oxtail stew a few days later -- thankfully, I didn't realize until after I was done eating that I had just consumed chunks of the tail of poor cattle! Why I didn't think ox tail meant actually eating tail is beyond me. Won't do that again! A little too fatty and slimy for my tastes. Compared to the chaos of Nairobi, the outskirts of Lusaka I saw on the way from the airport to the Chita were orderly if a bit sleepy. Driving along Great East Road, we passed all the landmarks Dingi had been telling me about: the University of Zambia (also known as UNZA), and the Arcades and Manda Hill shopping malls (yes, malls, Guineaphiles!). The roads were super nice and the drivers seemed quite sane compared to Nairobi and elsewhere I've been in Africa.

Managed to get a see a more representative sample of Lusaka later during my first week in Zambia. The Partnership to Cut Hunger & Poverty in Africa (PCHPA) where I used to work was co-hosting a conference in Lusaka and I tagged along on their farm tours. On our way out of town, we passed through the city centre and infamous Cairo Road and then some shanty towns on the outskirts of Lusaka. A little different perspective from the wealthy neighborhoods surrounding the Chita Lodge. The farm tours were a lot of fun -- we toured a coffee farm (Mubuyu Farms) and a sugar cane estate (Zambia Sugar Company) -- not quite the smallholder agricultural sector I've been studying for my thesis but at least I got to see some of the more commercial operations. Impressive stuff.

ZAMBIA FARM TOURS & THE CHITA LODGE PHOTOS

Since the PCHPA conference ended, I've been working mainly from the Food Security Research Project (FSRP) office and trying to get up to speed on the urban food consumption survey we're doing this summer. There hasn't been a lot of work done on urban consumption patterns in Zambia nor on urban agriculture here so that's what we're trying to get some information about with this survey. Drove through some of the high density housing compounds yesterday and found that mind-boggling. I feel like my experiences in Guinea gave me a good sense of what rural poverty in Africa is like but urban poverty is a very different animal, it seems. Hopefully we'll get out more next week and can start talking with some of the residents and traders.

The other adventure this past week was taking 3 driving lessons around Lusaka (they drive on the opposite side of the road here). I probably would have been fine just diving into it but felt like it was worth the $40 to drive around some crappy training car before starting to the drive the project vehicles! I must admit that the thought of driving here was a bit intimidating (drivers downtown in Lusaka, especially the minibus and taxi drivers, aren't quite as sane as my initial impressions would suggest!) but after a few days of it, I've decided that it's much scarier being a passenger than a driver around here. At least as the driver, you feel more in control and like at least you know what you're doing. We'll see how it goes next week when I transition to the nice project Landcruisers!

Well, I think that's about it for now. If you've actually read all this, thanks for your patience! I'll try to update things here more consistently starting next week. Cheers. ~nmm