more of the same

Farm photos taken by Shravan, a professional photographer who visited last Thurs-Sat:

Side: Shravan photographed the Real World characters in NYC and kept raving about what a great documentary OAF life would be - sort of like a Real World set, but in rural Kenya and with a great underlying purpose. I'm pretty sure he meant that as a compliment...

Plowing.
Calling for rain.
Dancing with the kids at the orphanage.
Boy at the orphanage with undoubtedly the coolest glasses I've ever seen.

I've passed the one-month mark, and all the things that kept me blogging every couple days have become normal. Yet it occurs to me that the backdrop of my life now is what sets it apart from life at home, and although it is easy to see the Kenyan countryside as farmland, workspace, residences, it is still worth taking notes to preserve these memories.

So here is a now-unexciting list of what I've been up to since my last post:

1. Work

• Radio advertising: I trained survey officers in a couple of new districts. I also visited the ones in Kakamega to collect their surveys, make sure we are getting the desired results, and troubleshoot during a couple farmer visits. Next Thursday evening I'm giving a "Fireside" - a weekly informal hour-long talk on any OAF-related topic, given by one of the expat staff - to see what kind of ideas and connections we can generate as a group to move the project forward.
• Cost cutting: This project has been moving unexpectedly quickly, as I'm approaching the $100,000 goal of budget cuts in one month rather than four. I've been in touch with about five Kenyan staff members to get data since the beginning of our passion fruit program in order to analyze which farmers and sites are, or have the potential to be, profitable. I've also been looking at other unprofitable segments of our organization; for example, visiting to our nursery to see if we can silo off that part of OAF into a profitable enterprise, and standardizing airtime (phone) and transport expenses for all staff. Andrew Youn, OAF's founder, led a meeting with field managers yesterday to institute some of the changes we've been discussing. He did a great job - pretty much a textbook example of "how to implement change in your organization" - and I am hopeful that our less-than-positive changes will not create too much resistance.
  
• I'm slowing finishing up - or hitting a lull - on my other two projects and have requested another. I've already been informed of three potential projects and can more or less choose the most interesting. More to come on that!
  

2. Everything else

• We threw a huge party in our compound on Saturday night, and pretty much all the wazungu who know in a 100 mile radius came. (Okay, so that isn't actually that many people...) We spent the evening at Good Friends, the only passable nightclub in Bungoma, which was - as always - a surprisingly fun time.
• Frisbee. After a 4 am Saturday night return to the compound, the alarm sounded at 8 am for a frisbee game. We've been playing twice a week for an hour or two at a time and I'm actually starting to learn strategy and (*gasp*) really look forward to our games.
• Sickness. I've been feeling intermittently sick lately, and two weeks ago - the night of the farmer homestay - went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with malaria, which is the standard diagnosis for white people who test negative for everything else. Since I don't feel that badly I'm not going to get treated. Almost everyone here has had malaria, and judging by my conversations with them, I don't. -- On that note, sicknesses here are very common - we actually have a scoreboard with point values assigned to typhoid, burscellosis, malaria, etc. where we keep tracking of who is "winning" in the disease race.
  
• The stars. After a month here, the night sky is still totally remarkable. You would never believe there are so many stars, or so many shades of light, woven into the night sky. I understand why there are so many stories to explain them. Once you look up at night it is hard to look back down.