Kenya Trip - Day 13

Dated: August 16th, 2010

Location: Ewaso Nyiro River Camp, Mpala Wildlife Conservancy, Laikipia Valley

I'm in W's group. I'm not sure this is where my interests lie--I thought I made enough of an effort to show a great deal of interest in both rangeland management and sustainability but maybe I was overlooked? They said you could request a switch, but it's such a small class, I don't want to be a stick in the mud or make somebody else move.

We ended up doing interviews for the morning. We split up to interview John the waiter and Apollo our research assistant. R and W were pretty vague about our goals so most of us took advantage of this as an opportunity to gain material for our personal projects. I was in the group that interviewed Apollo. I'm still formulating my project, so I let me group members ask most of the questions. Apollo, like Nicholas, is from Il Motiok, so I was able to ask him about how many livestock animals are killed by wildlife every year. He told me that last August a pack of wild dogs killed 8 of his own goats. I feel like there was a bit of a language barrier inhibiting us both ways. One of the student in my group tended to ask the most questions and often phrased them in a lengthy, drawn-out manner that I think severely affect Apollo's ability to grasp the question. When he didn't understand, Apollo's method was to cling to a few key words from the question. For example, the question would be "How do you think Ilmotiok's population growth and growth in education will impact further relations with Mpala? Do you think it will be more strenuous for both parties?" And Apollo would go on about how important growth is to Il Motiok and how good Mpala is for the group ranch as a whole. The other group interviewing John talked to him about the referendum to the constitution and literally brought to the table various booklets and a copy of the new constitution in Swahili. Apparently he was very excited about the changes coming to Kenya.

We had a lecture from Lamine Sagna, another professor from Princeton (but originally from Senegal). His lecture was about a course he was teaching entitled "Science, Technology and African Development." It was all about how Africa needs to catch up to the rest of the world developmentally. It was all very theoretical and even posed phases for what Africa should go through in order to become more developed. It seemed disconnected from the Africa I've seen so far--he tended to make lots of generalizations and avoided specific examples, but maybe I'd have to take the course. It was great to finally hear from a member of the African "elite."