First 72 hours

So I have rewritten this first post about 5 times before putting it up here, which is indicative of how uncomfortable I feel maintaining a blog. (By the way, my spell check is telling me that blog is misspelled, which only reinforces my resistance to them) I have always felt it is a bit egotistical to have a blog, especially one that just updates people on what you are doing. So pardon my ego, and I will try to keep this short. If you really want to hear more, just email me (grantgraziani@gmail.com) and I’ll give you more of a scoop that way.

With that said, here goes.

For those of you who don’t know what I am doing in Kenya this summer, I will try to give a brief explanation. I have an internship in Kisumu, Kenya until late August. The main organization that I am working for is the Millennium Cities Initiative (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/mci/), which is operated by Columbia’s Earth Institute. MCI is the urban sibling of the more popular Millennium Village Project. Kisumu was named a Millennium City in 2006, and the coordinators here have been working to help the city reach the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/). The current project that I am working on with Salina, my fellow intern who just graduated from Columbia and is headed to medical school next fall, is to implement a community health worker (CHW) program in one of the slums around Kisumu. The slum is named Manyatta, and I hope to have some pictures up soon. Along with the CHW program comes CommCare (http://www.dimagi.com/content/commcare.html), a software package used on cell phones by CHWs. I am trying to develop this software to be used here in Kisumu once the CHW program is up and running. I am no computer scientist, so most of what I do is simple coding, while spending a lot of time on figuring out the best way for the software to be implemented, from operations to training to points of entry. I hope that made sense. If not, and you really care, just email me.

As for my travels so far: The flight to Kenya was simple enough. I left Raleigh on Sunday and changed planes in Zurich (nice Alps in the distance) and landed in Nairobi Monday night. Salina and I stayed with a distant friend of her family, a wealthy man of Indian descent, who was the most hospitable person ever. His place was kind of ridiculous: on the same road as the US Embassy, a few cooks, a driver, beautiful grounds, etc. Almost felt like royalty. A very ironic introduction to Kenya. The next morning we took a bus to Kisumu, which is on the shore of Lake Victoria. The bus ride went through the Great Rift Valley, which was beautiful. My favorite part of the ride was the 3-point turn we made in the middle of a town once we saw some road construction coming up. The bus was a large coach bus and the roads were no more than 1.5 lanes wide (hard to tell because there are no lines). We arrived in Kisumu in the early afternoon and settled into the guesthouse in which we are staying. We are staying in the middle of downtown Kisumu, which is convenient because our office is directly across the street. A little about Kisumu: 3rd largest city in Kenya (about half a million people), mainly populated by the Luo ethnic group (Obama’s) and is generally laid back. Pictures should come soon.

On our first day on the job, we saw a lot. We did the rounds with Beldina (our coordinator) in the morning. We met the major of Kisumu, the head doctors at the hospital, and various government administrators and health coordinators. We quickly drove through Manyatta slum on its one paved road to get a sense of it, and came back after lunch for a community member meeting (like a town hall meeting) which we were organizing and facilitating. The meeting lasted 3 hours (it started 2 hours late, which seems like the norm here) and was very impressive. About 200 people who live in Manyatta crammed into a room that wasn’t quite big enough. To spare you the details, let me just say that the level of community involvement Manyatta would put the US to shame. There had been previous meetings of the subunits of Manyatta, and representatives presented the major issues facing the community and proposed solutions and general concerns. It was a great way to see what issues were of top priority for those living in Manyatta, and how the CHW program can help address them. It definitely showed Salina and me that we have out work cut out for us, which is exciting. A lot needs to be done, and the first step if figuring out what the first step should be, which should come from the community, not me.

So that was entirely too long (I am killing time right now before a meeting), and I promise this will not happen again. Just keep checking this blog, pictures will come soon, and more updates. I really don’t want to bore you with too may details, so I will do a better job keeping this simple. But seriously, if you have questions or whatever, please email me. I am still like a kid that gets excited when mail arrives for him.