Kenyan Thanksgiving (Again)
It’s hard to believe that a year ago I killed the Thanksgiving turkey (for the first and last time) at the pastoral center in Kitui. Time flies and Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again. Since we weren’t on lock-down this year, I was able to celebrate with a US Embassy family in Nairobi. The food was decent, but unfortunately the prerequisite Kenyan house servants that do all the cooking, cleaning, and yard work for any given expat family have no idea how to make a true Grandma-prepared southern-style Thanksgiving. However, that’s an unfair expectation, because my Decatur, Alabama Thanksgiving is probably the most delicious meal of all time. The other three Peace Corps volunteers at the house were all from the North and, poor souls, they thought the food was fantastic, so I think I’m spoiled.
For dinner we had turkey, but no mushroom gravy to soak it in. Then there were green beans, but they were steamed instead of covered in sauce and topped with fried onion bits...far too healthy for the most gluttonous day of the year. The broccoli was boiled and unseasoned (as opposed to being drowned in Velveeta Cheese) and the mashed potatoes were white. That was the saddest part…no sweet potatoes covered in melted marshmallows. Still, anything beats an ugali Thanksgiving and it was great to be away from site and with friends for the holiday.
I spent three days in Nairobi and most of it working. On Wednesday I met with the president of the Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange. Between meeting with him and the branch manager in Bungoma a few days earlier, I made it clear that they actually have to do something for us if they want our membership fee. The plan is now to market our potatoes on their radio show in December. If this doesn’t work then we’ll give up on KACE, but at least we’re going to attempt something soon. I also went with KACE to Karinyaga millers, the company that was supposedly offering such high prices for dried sweet potato chips. The manager told me she learned that the sweet potatoes we are producing have been genetically modified, and it would be against God’s will for her to use them. Her religious beliefs on genetically modified produce would have been good to know two years ago, but she did tell us she was interested in purchasing as much grain amaranth as we could produce. Maybe I can convince the farmers to go through this all over again with another crop.
Even on Thanksgiving Day I had a meeting, but thankfully I was able to duck out around lunchtime. A previous Peace Corps volunteer named Jonathan has lived all over the world, and now he is back in Kenya wanting to set up a network called DrumNet. DrumNet, in theory, will link farmers to buyers to stockists to banks, all using cashless transactions and bank accounts. It seems incredibly ambitious but at the same time well thought-out and potentially feasible. His meeting included creditors, farmers, stockists, IT experts in charge of setting up the infrastructure (it will use text messaging on mobile phones to provide farmers with information), and a buyer. The first buyer is the largest producer of cooking oils in Africa, and the first demo crop will be sunflower seeds. The price being offered is not phenomenal but it is decent and Jonathan wants to use my Farmer Field School network as a pilot program. The Kakamega Farmer Field School network consists of almost two hundred Farmer Field Schools, each with between 20-30 farmers, a facilitator, and a bank account. With this system the infrastructure is already in place for what Jonathan needs for DrumNet to work from the farmer’s side, so I anticipate working with him much more next year.
I spent most of my spare time in Nairobi finishing up the proposal for the disabled groups and, thankfully because I never thought I’d see the day, everything is submitted and finalized. All that is left is for Peace Corps to agree to post the fundraising link online, and I pray that things will go smoothly from this point forward.
By Friday afternoon everything was finally out of the way and I decided to go to a craft fair I had been reading about in the Nairobi suburb of Karen. I heard it was a bit upscale and I was looking forward to finding some nice Christmas gifts to bring home with me. I knew there was trouble as soon as I arrived and a 250 shilling entry fee was required just to look around. Once inside the gate, tents were setup everywhere selling high-end crafts, and except for the occasional security guard or kiosk assistant there wasn’t a black person in sight. Karen is a very strange place. It consists almost entirely of old money descendants of colonial times, referred to now as “Kenyan Cowboys”, and I was surrounded by rich white Kenyans with British Accents. Most of the crafts in the markets were not even made by black Kenyans, but by wazungu, including framed pictures of Kenyan landscapes costing thousands of dollars and pottery costing hundreds. The worst part was that absolutely nothing was negotiable. There were a few things (but not many) that I had seen at the craft fair in Kisumu for a quarter of the price, and it was impossible to get them to budge. I did manage to buy one thing for my sister but that was about the end of my budget. The next time I go Christmas shopping it won’t be in Karen; even the supermarkets there double their prices just because they can.
On Friday night there was a Peace Corps party at the Upper Hill campsite and I had a good time meeting the new volunteers and staying up about six hours past my normal bedtime of nine o’clock. The next day I took a miserable 12 hour bus ride back to Kakamega and caught up with one of the primate researchers from the forest. We are making tentative plans to go to Masai Mara (The Serengeti plains) next weekend with a woman I met in Kisumu who has some extra room in her Safari bus and agreed to take us along free of charge. We’ll see what happens, it’s been raining basically nonstop lately, which is strange given that this is supposed to be the beginning of the dry season. Weather permitting things will work out and I’ll have some great pics to show when I’m home over the holidays.
For dinner we had turkey, but no mushroom gravy to soak it in. Then there were green beans, but they were steamed instead of covered in sauce and topped with fried onion bits...far too healthy for the most gluttonous day of the year. The broccoli was boiled and unseasoned (as opposed to being drowned in Velveeta Cheese) and the mashed potatoes were white. That was the saddest part…no sweet potatoes covered in melted marshmallows. Still, anything beats an ugali Thanksgiving and it was great to be away from site and with friends for the holiday.
I spent three days in Nairobi and most of it working. On Wednesday I met with the president of the Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange. Between meeting with him and the branch manager in Bungoma a few days earlier, I made it clear that they actually have to do something for us if they want our membership fee. The plan is now to market our potatoes on their radio show in December. If this doesn’t work then we’ll give up on KACE, but at least we’re going to attempt something soon. I also went with KACE to Karinyaga millers, the company that was supposedly offering such high prices for dried sweet potato chips. The manager told me she learned that the sweet potatoes we are producing have been genetically modified, and it would be against God’s will for her to use them. Her religious beliefs on genetically modified produce would have been good to know two years ago, but she did tell us she was interested in purchasing as much grain amaranth as we could produce. Maybe I can convince the farmers to go through this all over again with another crop.
Even on Thanksgiving Day I had a meeting, but thankfully I was able to duck out around lunchtime. A previous Peace Corps volunteer named Jonathan has lived all over the world, and now he is back in Kenya wanting to set up a network called DrumNet. DrumNet, in theory, will link farmers to buyers to stockists to banks, all using cashless transactions and bank accounts. It seems incredibly ambitious but at the same time well thought-out and potentially feasible. His meeting included creditors, farmers, stockists, IT experts in charge of setting up the infrastructure (it will use text messaging on mobile phones to provide farmers with information), and a buyer. The first buyer is the largest producer of cooking oils in Africa, and the first demo crop will be sunflower seeds. The price being offered is not phenomenal but it is decent and Jonathan wants to use my Farmer Field School network as a pilot program. The Kakamega Farmer Field School network consists of almost two hundred Farmer Field Schools, each with between 20-30 farmers, a facilitator, and a bank account. With this system the infrastructure is already in place for what Jonathan needs for DrumNet to work from the farmer’s side, so I anticipate working with him much more next year.
I spent most of my spare time in Nairobi finishing up the proposal for the disabled groups and, thankfully because I never thought I’d see the day, everything is submitted and finalized. All that is left is for Peace Corps to agree to post the fundraising link online, and I pray that things will go smoothly from this point forward.
By Friday afternoon everything was finally out of the way and I decided to go to a craft fair I had been reading about in the Nairobi suburb of Karen. I heard it was a bit upscale and I was looking forward to finding some nice Christmas gifts to bring home with me. I knew there was trouble as soon as I arrived and a 250 shilling entry fee was required just to look around. Once inside the gate, tents were setup everywhere selling high-end crafts, and except for the occasional security guard or kiosk assistant there wasn’t a black person in sight. Karen is a very strange place. It consists almost entirely of old money descendants of colonial times, referred to now as “Kenyan Cowboys”, and I was surrounded by rich white Kenyans with British Accents. Most of the crafts in the markets were not even made by black Kenyans, but by wazungu, including framed pictures of Kenyan landscapes costing thousands of dollars and pottery costing hundreds. The worst part was that absolutely nothing was negotiable. There were a few things (but not many) that I had seen at the craft fair in Kisumu for a quarter of the price, and it was impossible to get them to budge. I did manage to buy one thing for my sister but that was about the end of my budget. The next time I go Christmas shopping it won’t be in Karen; even the supermarkets there double their prices just because they can.
On Friday night there was a Peace Corps party at the Upper Hill campsite and I had a good time meeting the new volunteers and staying up about six hours past my normal bedtime of nine o’clock. The next day I took a miserable 12 hour bus ride back to Kakamega and caught up with one of the primate researchers from the forest. We are making tentative plans to go to Masai Mara (The Serengeti plains) next weekend with a woman I met in Kisumu who has some extra room in her Safari bus and agreed to take us along free of charge. We’ll see what happens, it’s been raining basically nonstop lately, which is strange given that this is supposed to be the beginning of the dry season. Weather permitting things will work out and I’ll have some great pics to show when I’m home over the holidays.
posted by KenyaJoe at 1:47 AM
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