Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 21 – 4/14/11
Yesterday afternoon a few people went into town and learned that the Kenyan President was coming to Kimana today to officially open the new paved road. So we arranged with our professors to move our schedule around today so that we could go into Kimana and see him and all the activities. We had one class from 8 to 9am talking about the statistical program we will be using to analyze our DR data. As soon as this class was finished we all raced off to get ready and the drove to Kimana. There were large banners and signs all over the place thanking donors and announcing the grand opening. Right beside the road a tent was set up where the president would arrive, present the plaque about the road, plant a tree, and the cut the ribbon spanning the road. From the road a dirt track led to a quad surrounded by four tents. The front one was all decorated in Kenyan colors and clearly showed where the president would be addressing the people. When we arrived a group of Maasai women were doing a traditional dance to blasted traditional music. Most of the chairs were already full so we wandered around until things started to happen. There were a bunch of children running around, both local kids and what seemed like several schools as well. Back out by the road we were able to walk right into the tent set up. Underneath it there were maps displayed to show where this road went and various stages of construction. Next to the tent was the cement stand and the brass plaque commemorating the road and of course all mixed in this area were press members, Chinese donors, administration police, a marching band, and numerous other government officials all waiting for the president to arrive. The two girls I was walking around with and I had a short but interesting chat with the material engineer of this road. He was born in central Kenya, went to secondary school in the UK before returning to South Africa to attend University and now works all over Africa constructing roads and other infrastructure. Besides us he was one of only two mzungus (white people) we saw. As we were standing there chatting a well dressed woman came over and offered the group an extra baseball hat that the Kenyan National Highway Authority was giving to all the important people present. I quickly accepted and am very proud of my souvenir. Talking with the press guy was very interesting also as he told us about his job and some of the stories he has covered. About this time a big police man came over and herded us back to the large tents further back from the road. I thought this was a sign that things were finally moving but 45 mins later we were still standing around sweating in the hot sun. At noon we all began the walk back to the cruisers to check in with the SFS staff who had said we would leave at noon. It was agreed all around that we would wait another hour to see if he got here before we returned to camp for lunch. We stayed by the parked cars shoulder to shoulder to the locals and waited. The president arrived in a swarm of fancy cars and was completely surrounded by people as he stepped into the tent to present the plaque. His words (all Swahili unfortunately) were said over a loudspeaker for the crowd to hear. It was about this time we noticed that one of our fellow students was standing taking pictures less than 3 yards away from the President. He was with the group of press members and stayed with them as the President moved on to planting the tree and cutting the ribbon. As the President moved into the tents further from the road to address the people gathered, our classmate wove his way through the people to our group since we were now leaving. He explained to all of us that he had told the guards he was a member of the press and just got a spot between two of the other reporters and began taking pictures. Back at camp we had lunch and then broke up into our DR groups to meeting with our Professor. Shem’s DR group met under the tree again and we discussed more details such as our work plan, data collection sheets, and other small organizational details. We were finished by mid afternoon and had the rest of the day free. The WM DR student met after dinner and created a work plan. This involved us choosing the due dates for the rough drafts of the sections of our papers and when we were going to begin writing the group portions of this project. Our other task was to create a data sheet. These two things finished, we printed them out for everyone and a copy for Shem before calling it a night.
Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 22 – 4/15/11
This is the fourth day I have woken up quite early and not been able to go back to sleep. While I would appreciate more sleep I now get to watch the sunrise through the yellow bark acacia trees. Toast at breakfast was really good and our first class was not until 9am. This class was all about statistics. The three professors covered different areas of statistics but I was not terribly entertained by any of them. I understand they are doing these sessions to help us but they take so long and I don’t get much out of them. I’d prefer to be given the slides and told to read them instead of sit listening about stat tests for two hours. After the stat lecture Molly gave us the DR Risk Management Debrief which only took about half an hour. Right after lunch we were back in class this time to do a stat lab. This took a total of 2.5 hours that I would rather have spent otherwise. Luckily this is the last one and tomorrow we start the fieldwork part of the research which is my favorite. My DR group met under our tree again and Shem gave us feedback on our data sheet and clarified some questions we had come across last night. I spent the rest of the day playing with the neighbor’s dog before eating dinner. DR group is meeting one more time this evening to finalize everything for tomorrow. Tomorrow I am MOD and have cook crew (starting at 5:30 tomorrow due to DR travel) in addition to starting DR. I’m going to be very tired tomorrow evening……
No comments:
Post a Comment