We touched down in Nairobi around 9:30 pm. After traveling most of the way alone, I had been joined by Ely, a fifth-year biomedical engineering student, in London. She would become my travel partner for the rest of the trip. As we waited for our bags to come around on the carousel, I thought about the things that could have broken or fallen out along the way. An hour or so later, I found that I didn't need to worry about it, because the luggage never came anyways.
Before the months of planning that went into this trip, before I began to allocate my monetary resources, I made sure that I had the mental resources to get the most out of my time in Africa. Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid informed me that conventional aid models have failed to alleviate poverty and in many cases, have made conditions worse. Paul Polak's Out of Poverty taught me to learn everything about the context, leverage notions of ownership and entrepreneurship, and that designing for the developing world without speaking to my "market" face to face is an exercise in futility. The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier hit me in the face with a lot of economic data that may or may not have been ingested by my brain. Perhaps most importantly, though, my peers who had made similar travels warned me to expect everything to go wrong, so that I might be pleasantly surprised if nothing does.
We phoned the man who would be picking us up and driving us about for the next day or so, Gabriel, who had been waiting outside. We hopped into the 90's compact sedan and Gabriel phoned the advisor of the Engineers Without Borders group we would be meeting in Otho Abwao, a village of about 500 in western Kenya. Immediately the phone was handed to me without explanation, and I was informed in a familiar American accent that not only did the solar pump and several panels required for the implementation of the Otho Abwao water system not arrive in the village, but I would need to travel to the supplier in Nairobi tomorrow morning and raise hell to try to get them. I was laughing, but the man on the phone was not. Shortly, I was not either.
We got some much needed rest at the Mennonite Guest House, and I woke up naturally at 6:30 AM, as I would continue to do for the whole trip.
Nairobi is hot, dusty, but an unmistakably modern city. The drivers on the roads continually bulldogged their way around aggressively, but when someone cut us off, Gabriel let them in, because we were doing the same thing. When we arrived at the supplier's headquarters, we met a man by the name of Mr. Nawir. I postured to intimidate, but predictably failed. Instead, I pulled a 180, and asked for a tour. After all, I had things to learn, and the equipment was held up in customs, so any efforts on my part would have been fruitless anyways. I immediately understood why I had been asked to take the yoke rather than the obvious choice of Ely, who had been to the region for several months before. Everyone we spoke to together always seemed to address me. The culture is male-dominated, only noticeably in the city, but profoundly in the villages. Throughout the trip, even when Ely was doing all the talking, technical questions would often be directed to me, at which point my mouth would awkwardly fall open, and I would turn and gesture to her.
Gabriel drove us to the airport to inspect the carousel after the last British Airways flight. Along the way, he explained why he was blowing through multiple red lights:
"We can be ambushed or hijacked while sitting at a red light"
I asked if that actually happens or if it's just the news blowing things out of proportion, to which he replied, "It is common." Gabriel's English was pretty good, but I'm not sure he meant exactly that, or rather, I hope not. Fortunately we found the bags sitting in the middle of the baggage claim when we arrived, and had to slow to a stop for a small group of Zebra to cross the road on the return trip. Obviously, I was floored by this.
We gracefully rose the following morning at a bleary 5:00 to try to make up for lost time. The "Easy Coach" was our means of transportation for this leg, bouncing us energetically over the nearly 200 miles to Otho Abwao. The roads in this part of Kenya at least are riddled with doze-inhibiting potholes, and a plethora of speedbumps. Along the way we passed countless small aggregations of colorful storefronts, selling everything from Coca-Cola to computer parts. I found it continually inspiring that even in remote places with much more precarious road conditions than this street in Kenya, the indomitable resourcefulness of the entrepreneur still stocks the shelves, even if the product is delivered by a bike with a crate and a bungee strap.
We passed through Kericho, where massive tea plantations stretched across the highlands. I later learned from Treehugger.com that Lipton gets much of its tea from these fields, and employees make around $4.00 a day. With benefits, their wage exceeds the national average three-fold.
After staying on the bus longer than we should have, we were picked up in Kisumu by the family that we would be staying with, the Akulos, and one of the engineers, sitting in the passenger seat. The van made a quick stop at a market for Mrs. Akulo to pick up some mangoes. The engineer in the front seat with a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses on asked me, "Is this chaotic enough for you?"
I glanced out the window at the colorful, flourishing market and replied, "Looks pretty serene to me."
It was exciting to arrive in Otho Abwao, finally feeling like I was where I needed to be. One of the first things I noticed was that a foot-pump had already been installed in a bore-hole in the center of the village, which was surprising to me. Accepting an invitation, I hopped up and began to pump clean water up from the water table. It came out in quick spurts of pressure relative to the depression of the pedal. The pedal itself was too small for a grown man to use two feet, so the motion quickly becomes tiring and repetitive. Sometimes I would come down to see two children jumping up and down on the machine, filling water buckets or "jerry cans," often surrounded by a group of other children. Not only did the device provide safe and sanitary water, but the location had appeared to become an impromptu social gathering spot. The solar pump would be installed in the place of this foot-pump, and upon asking I found that the engineers nor the village had any plan for what to do with the original pump, which I found a bit disconcerting.
Myself and the group of seven engineers laid some HDPE pipe in the trenches that had been dug by the residents of the village. At one point I had the brief opportunity to dig (read: hack) away at the "soil," which was unbelievably dense. I had to ask if I was breaking up rocks, at which point I was assured that that was just the consistency of the dirt during the dry season. Digging the hundreds of yards of trenches required by the EWB-designed system was truly an impressive feat of perseverance.
Nearly everywhere we went, a veritable entourage of children followed the "mzungu," as they called us. We had fun taking pictures and showing them to the kids while we worked. One little girl even helped us as we passed along parts of the assembly. At one point I diverged from the group to take some photos of the cistern at the nearby school. Half of the school appeared to be made out of bricks, while the other half was constructed like a typical house out of sticks and sisal with mud and dung packed onto the walls. As I knelt down to take the picture I heard a squeal from behind me, and a group of three children that had been following us crowded together to be in the picture. I snapped the shot and showed them the picture, which induced a fit of giggles. One of the little boys had a piece of notebook in his hand.
"Do you go to school here?" I asked.
They nodded.
"How do you like it?"
They stared blankly.
"What are you learning?"
More blank stares. I extended my hand and he gave me the sheet of paper. It was filled with neatly printed numbers, although I do not remember exactly what kind of math it was. I had to smile, because I was impressed, but also because you couldn't pay me to do the math on that page without throwing up first. The only thing I could think to do that they would understand was to nod enthusiastically and say "good!"
The little girl in the group scrambled to pull out her homework too, which she handed to me. I did the same thing, at which point they started giggling again, mimicking me, "good, good." I wasn't sure if they thought I was an idiot or just liked the sound of the word, but I had to laugh too.
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