A Run Around

This week there seems to be a conference occurring at icipe. For the first time since I’ve been here I think there may be more than five people staying in the Guest House. This results in more people from around the world for me to meet each night at dinner, that is, if they end up eating dinner here. Regardless, the food seems to be improving with the increase in visitors. Hopefully they will stay around for a while.

Today in the office Sarah and I transcribed more tapes. I find it remarkable how long this is taking us. Tino estimated the transcribing would take 15 hours total. We have spent almost a full work day on them and we have barely reached 40% complete. I find with each question answered, the answers start to get repetitive. As in, the farmers had similar answers to a lot of our questions. I also am seeing a trend in the connections or chain reactions due to the climate change. For instance, climatic change is causing food to become scarce. As a result, children are looking for other means of income besides farming and are getting into more accidents due to their adventurous new trades. I will look deeper into these connections when writing my research paper and trying to draw some conclusions. For now, the transcribing continues.

During the lunch hour today, Fabian invited me for a run outside of the compound with him. Since I have been running in circles inside the fence, I was anxious to get out and run with some different scenery and be able to see the area surrounding me better. The path Fabian runs is about seven kilometers and was expected to take us 45 minutes. This seemed like a decent pace for me. The first stretch of the run was running along a busy street traversing through town. We stayed as far as we could off of the road, but since the roads in Kenya are so bad, drivers also like to go off road. There were no close calls or anything, but I felt the pollution from the cars the entire run. The air quality beyond the fence of icipe changes substantially. The whole run I felt like I was inhaling fumes from a factory. The smell and density of the air was not pleasant. The roads were also muddy and bumpy. I’m not sure the last time it rained here, but I came across huge puddles every minute. Off of the busy street we turned onto a side road. The road looked deserted with foliage and weeds overgrowing the path I’m guessing once served as a side walk. In the distance, houses were visible. From a distance the houses didn’t look as bad as the slums but they didn’t represent luxury either. We ran around Moi Stadium, a sports center that houses a wide array of sporting events. Hopefully during my stay here I will be able to attend one of those sporting events. The path around the stadium wrapped back up to a highway. In Kenya, it is not uncommon for people to walk on the side of the highway; there is even a sidewalk there. We ran on the sidewalk, but as I’ve been told before, there are no rules in Kenya and I heard a honk behind me. I jumped out of the way as a motorcycle passed. By the end of the run, I wasn’t exhausted as Fabian guessed I would have been due to the high altitude. As great as the run was, running in the middle of the day is inconvenient and I think I will stick with my circles inside the fence each morning; there my lungs don’t feel the effects either.