Guess Where I Am Now?

So, believe it or not, this blog is not dead after all. For some reason, I had a hard time posting to a website entitled “Notes from Kenya” when, in fact, I was not in Kenya. I know that is no excuse…but that is what happened.

As most of you probably do not know, I am, indeed, back in Kenya. I left Connecticut at the end of April, rather suddenly, and have been here in Nairobi ever since. The departure happened so quickly that, outside of my family, no one really knows that I left.

It is good to be a back in my home away from home. The city has changed little since I left in December. The post-election violence (or simply “PEV” as it is now being called) left little evidence in the Westlands area of the city (where I work and live). I have not yet returned to Kibera, where I assume the evidence is quite real. The government has reached a power-sharing agreement, and a grand coalition has been established. There is tangible hope that Kenya is back from the brink, and good things are to come.

Ride outside of Nairobi, though, and the effects of the PEV hit you in the face. The tell-tale sign—rows and rows of stark-white tents—alert you to the presence of the International Red Cross, overseeing and administering the management of the Internally Displaced Persons (or IDP) camps. Refugees in their own country, these IDPs either cannot go home, do not want to go home, or have no home to return to. The peaceful, clean white tents, billowing with the passing wind, mask the dirty, violent mess left behind in the wake of democracy. Your stomach tightens and your heart aches, as you drive by, comfortable in your air conditioned 4x4, looking at entire families wandering aimlessly behind barbed wire fences, like prisoners held without reason. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution in sight.

I returned to Nairobi to continue working with TechnoServe. I arrived in April largely to help train staff for a new dairy development program that we are launching in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Then, the plan was for me to manage a pilot test of a financing facility that we were researching last year. This six-month pilot program was to begin after the dairy training. But, as often happens in life, things changed. I have been asked to work on the diary program full time (I just simply cannot get enough of the cows…) For various reasons that I won’t go into here, the financing facility project has been put on hold for now, and I will be the Interim Regional Manager for the dairy development program. It will be an exciting and challenging opportunity. Plus, in roughly three month’s time, I expect to launch the financing facility pilot project.

Now that I have resuscitated this blog, I hope to post a bit more often. I am convinced I will have more laughable and/or embarrassing tales to tell—this stage of my life never ceases to amaze me.