Elephants, Giraffes, Work and Me

I have my bags packed and I am leaving tomorrow morning for our field work! It has been a crazy two weeks! We arrived in Nairobi from Kapiti on Monday morning and got straight to work. We are staying at the ILRI compound, which is super safe and nice. The students were even given our own offices! I am staying with a super nice lady from India who just so happened to have gotten her PhD from NC State! What a small world! We have been having fun talking about Raleigh and the like.

I found out ILRI is kind of a big deal. It is a CG (Consultative Group) and there are only like 11 in the world and this is the only one for agriculture. Not a bad place to be associated with, really. We have worked our booties off trying to get the instruments ready for our Focus Group discussions and household surveys, key informant interviews and so on…apparently things have to be pretty well in order if you want to have some relevant data. I’ve learned and am learning so much about research and development…I even thought about getting my PhD for about 45 seconds. Let’s work on grad school first, tiger.

We were initially supposed to leave Thursday and then again today, but the new plan is we leave tomorrow for a completely different town than we were going to before. I’m trusting it will all work out just as it should.

Today we took our first day off (although we had a few meetings anyway) and went to the Elephant Orphanage, Giraffe Center and the Kazuri Bead Factory in Karen. I love the elephant babies and the giraffes are always fun. In a random twist of fate, one of the other students, Shreyas, ran into a friend he met while working in India a year ago. They had been pretty good buddies and hadn’t seen each other in a long time! What a small world! We had lunch with him and his buddies and then left Shreyas to have fun with his friends before they left for South Africa for the World Cup. Three of the last 4 World Cups, I have been overseas. Weird. Wonder where I’ll be next one? Since it is in Africa for the first time, people are nuts over the games. It is HUGE! I’m really excited, even though I’m not a big soccer fan. I’ll probably get into it…I wanted to buy a jersey just so I could fit in. I’m a sucker for team sporting events.

It’s getting close to bed time…I have a little bit of a sore throat and head gunk. It’s getting better, or at least I keep telling myself it is. I just need some more rest and a few more glasses of chai.

Kisses to you all!
Amanda Jean

PS- I go by Amanda Jean here because the other girl is Amanda as well, but with the accent, I get called Amanda Jane, which is the other Amanda’s middle name! She’s a “W” too, so we just have trouble all around.