It is now coming up to the evening and there is a massive storm outside as I sit in the CADIF Kenya offices. I have already met lots of great people, had some lovely food! and started to collect some interesting data for my research.
The title of this post is what the children shouted as I walked up to my first hosts house! Muzungu is the Kswahili word for white person! After a much needed rest from the travelling I went to stay with Steven, the director of CADIF in his home in Nyalenda, a slum area of Kisumu. It was hard to appreciate the severity of poverty in Nyalenda as shown by the fact that my host estimated that perhaps 60% of the population there do not have a mosquito net. They took me on a tour of the city and we walked up to Hippo point. Unfortunately there were no Hippo's there as it was probably too early in the evening, but I will go back and hope to see them then.
We visited a community group called 'Oketch Nyakonya self help group' down a long dirt road leading off from a main road to Kisumu.When we arrived at the community the women sung a song and danced - they welcomed us warmly to their nursery school building where we held a focus group for my research. We discussed the peacebuilding process and the work their organisation has done on this topic. It was very informative and I think due to the presence of Steve and Volker from CADIF Kenya, the community was able to gain something in return by receiving some advice from them about how they could seek funding for some of their plans. At the end we had a group photo, complete with Global Footsteps stickers!
CADIF has a pilot programme, looking at educating young people about HIV/AIDs through sport entitled 'REDSport' (Right to Education and Sport) and as part of this they have been presenting some local schools, (who are soon to compete in the District cup football competition) with a large banner announcing the initiative and the connection with the school, including the logos and mottos of the schools, they also handed over 2 footballs to the schools. I attended three of these hand-overs. The first one was in a school where I was asked to introduce myself to the school and my accent caused a lot of laughter, to my embarrassment! Sometimes I have been very lucky to have people with me in Steven and Volker that can translate as even if a Kenyan I meet can speak English it definitely doesn't mean that they will understand me!
We had intended to see the Mayor on a courtesy visit and to promote the Kisumu link organisation, which through Mikadadi has helped to coordinate my visit and is in need of an office from which to operate in Kisumu, to enable it to develop the Kisumu-Cheltenham link, in collaboration with Global Footsteps, but there has been a delay perhaps connected to Fridays Mayoral elections. Hopefully we will meet him at some point in the next two and a half weeks.
Today I met with a women's group called 'Kazi Ngumu women's group' which has a range of projects with women in the Nyalenda area in particular. This was very interesting and I managed to have a number of recordings from the visit for my research. I have found, more than on my visit to Uganda that it is difficult doing research visits as a muzungu (white person) given the expectations that people tend to have that I may be bringing a considerable gift, or that my research will perhaps have a considerably positive impact on their community. Whilst I would love for these expectations to be met, it isn't really something that I can deliver, especially considering how many groups I am visiting on this trip! I am trying to ensure that the participants can gain something from the research by giving them the opportunity to ask questions and also the presence of my hosts is useful as they can sometimes offer advice to the groups about their funding options for example.
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