I remember Kenya at the center of my African history courses. A rebellion in the mid-twentieth century freed it from colonial rule and its first president, Jomo Kenyatta, became one of the fore fathers for African Independence. Because of strong early leadership and their position between the Arab and Africa worlds - it is now the richest country in Central Africa. A green revolution also preserved its lush landscape – allowing parks and protected forests to remain while other countries struggle to maintain even a semblance of green space. You’ve seen their exports in coffee and tea shops, and their athletes on sports channels leading the pack in marathons. For a while it was a peaceful, quite nation; but recent questionable elections and a refugee influx have created instability and insecurity. Peace Corps officially left the country in 2014 and now whole districts are off limits to American visitors. It is hard to tell what will happen to Kenya in the coming years, but I must say my first impression is that it currently stands leaps and bounds above the development levels of other African countries I have seen. It is a country with potential and hope, but also with some challenging years to come. Its borders were formed by colonialism, but the clans which live along its Eastern edge do not recognize political boundaries. I came to Kenya because polio and other vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs) are coming into Kenya from Somalia. I helped facilitate a focus group training for Kenyans to interview Somali migrants who cross into Kenya, with the goal being to understand where we should target immunization campaigns. We printed large maps for focus group participants to show migration routes, where nomadic people cross the border and where they access healthcare, etc... One of our questions was, ‘where are the Somali communities settling in Kenya?’ This question, however, confused our trainees because “we are all Somali”. They explained that Somali are a people, not a country. People move freely across eastern Kenya and southern Somalia, as they follow the seasons with their cattle – searching for greener pasture and water, and in more recent years they are also escaping the effects of global warming and terrorist attacks. Lesson one, the people we needed to focus on do not define themselves based on a nationality, but rather a way of life- so our question would have to change from ‘Somali’ to ‘nomadic’. We asked our trainees to submit their photographs, maps and reports through the internet. They all have smart phones and email addresses which suggested that it would be a possible option. To make sure it would be feasible, we enquired if there were ever network problems and if they could they submit electronically. “The tower was bombed three months ago”. A fact stated so casually that I had to double check to make sure I heard them correctly. The more I listened the more I became lost in the complexities of their reality. “Do not send them in nice vehicles, that’s what ‘they’ target”; “We should not invite security people to our meetings- the community is afraid of them”. Al-Shahaab, the regional terrorist group, are mostly focused in southern Somalia, but the porous borders allow them to also focus some attacks on the Kenyan side. They, like the other terrorist groups of our era, attack anything which does not fall within their idea of ‘correct’ and use bombings as a visible way to create fear. Lesson two, they could collect all the data in the world, but I will never truly understand their lives because my reality is nothing like theirs. We sent our data collectors to the field two days after the training, and hope that within the next two weeks we can receive a glimpse of what is happening on the ground. Also we will get to see if we conducted the training well enough to get back strong data – data we can use to support the region. In my short tenure at the CDC I have learned that I am in the minority. My colleagues are Scientists, with a capital “S”. If the sample is not large enough, the correlations are not sufficiently proven, or the study under enough control; then the results are invalid. This perspective makes it very challenging when studying people, because each person has the ability to make a choice. Unlike mice, our choices are intertwined with our realities, which are the direct result of our social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. This is where those trained in the hard sciences stumble. We cannot implement a program in a community and say with exact certainty what will or will not work. This is where I come in, the only anthropologist in my entire division. We need to train our data collectors to not think like epidemiologists – people live in village A. We need to train them to think like anthropologists – people live in village A because… The method of study needs to be qualitative, because ordinal values do not exist in the gray areas of human society; causing those trained in the hard sciences to struggle with training others to think outside of Excel boxes. They do not know how to collect it, analyze it, use it…. That is why I was brought onto this project, to create a training which would bring back qualitative data sufficient enough to inform programmatic direction. I look forward to seeing the data and getting another glimpse into their lives.
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Bonnie HarveyCurrently working in northern Malawi as Programs and Evaluations Coordinator for Temwa Archives
June 2019
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