The Internship

Well, here’s a post about my work and how its going. Really if I had to sum up work in one word, I’d have to say “DIRT”, which goes nicely with my new title of “domesticated travelling farmer”…Thanks dad. But seriously, so much dirt.

I hope at this point most of you will understand, dirt but to give an update, we are still working and struggling with the greenhouse. It has been a long exhaustive process. So heres a recap of some of the highlights(or not so high moments) of the past weeks.

1st. We finally were able to empty the old soil from the greenhouse…kind of. We went away for a week to work in another county of Kenya, leaving a teacher in charge who promised it would be finished and dug out by the time we got back. Half way through the week I get a message that its finished, and well at that point me and Cait were ready to throw a party. that was a big deal. We returned home and couldn’t wait to get to this greenhouse and see the completion of our ditch. Remember, it was supposed to be 2 feet deep, and what we came home to was…….mayyyybe 6 inches in spots, half of which the used to fill in the area where we had dug TWO FEET DEEP LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. We looked at each other, laughed in disbelief and went home before we lost all of our cool. That was a long day. Best part, the teacher came to proudly explain the “2 feet deep”, I don’t think he knows what 6 inches looks like, poor guy.
So what did we do? Well its the schools project ultimately, and if that is what they were going to do, that was how it was going to stay. We were done digging, no chance we were going back to shovelling dirt and breaking our backs.

2nd. We had to refill the greenhouse with new soil. Now we had talked to the farm at the university previously and arranged their assistance with retrieving new forest soil and transporting it with a tractor/truck to the greenhouse. So we met once again, agreed on prices, informed them of the greenhouse measurement and agreed to start(and told it would be finished) the next day. But when they brought one tractor full at 1pm and realized this was about a 10th of the amount of soil we needed, the problems began. They were in a over their heads, not realizing the size of this job. After lots of bartering, and measuring, we agreed on payment for the men for the job, and asked that it be completed as soon as possible. “It will be done tomorrow” was the response and we were happy. It was not done tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. BUT it was completed so at least we are thankful for that.

3rd. The water. About 6 years ago pipes were laid underground through a field of coffee trees in the direction of a water hydrant, pumping water from a river below. We had agreed on using drip pipes in the greenhouse, and connecting to this hydrant. It was pre approved, and plan was in place with the farm manager, maintenance, the primary school and ourselves. The problem was, the laying of the pipe was never finished, and nobody had thought to mark where this pipe was underground. Common sense isn’t so common anymore I guess. SO out we went armed with shovels ready to dig holes until we found this pipe, and its respective end. Literally, finding a starting marker, we went from there, digging 2 feet down every 20 or so feet until we uncovered the pipe, quickly celebrating and continuing on, another 20 feet and so it continued. Have you ever seen the movie “Holes” we were reenacting the Female Kenyan version in a coffee farm. I think some people thought we were legitimately crazy and I don’t blame them. But we found it, but not after we dug up half the field….and our teacher friend pierced through the PVC pipe while digging with a metal 3 pronged hoe. Not always the brightest.
From here we contacted a plumber at the university to assist with connection and laying of the rest of the pipes to the hydrant. We met with the maintenance manager and the plumber and guess what we were told? “You will have water tomorrow”, “We will have it finished by tomorrow”. It still not finished, and its been over a month. HA! Kenya strikes again. Long story short, we can no longer use that hydrant and are now looking into a new connection, but this proposed budget came up to roughly 700$ and well, we don’t have that so looking into options right now. Still a struggle, but we will have water, just not tomorrow 😉

4th. We have visited a training farm where we learned valuable information on planting such as what seeds to use, what seeds we can mix, what does well in a greenhouse, what variety of seeds, how big our mounds have to be, spacing of the plants etc. We have also met with someone to repair the ends of the greenhouse netting that was damaged by the cow taking a jaunt through either end, and have hired a man to construct a fence, preventing said cow from repeating this destructive act.

It is progressing, just pole pole (slowly slowly in Swahili). However, we are learning to really embrace the Hakuna Matata way, sometimes not so happily but such is life I guess. The benefit to this would be our new ability to problem solve, conduct business deals, and network with a variety of different fields of work, outside of our nursing scope(including make friends with cows lol). We also are thoroughly enjoying building relationships with the students at the primary school as they come to help or hang out with us at the greenhouse (bombarding us with questions, feeling our hair, stealing our sunglasses or trying to teach us the local language).

As for our other work efforts, we arranged and coordinated a meeting of headteachers from the various primary schools in and around Nyeri County, and have made an attempt to start a Health Education Programme with the support and diligence of DeKUT. This past week we conducted our first visit to a school with some students from the Nursing Program at DeKUT, where they taught subjects such as Personal Hygiene, Adolescence, and Substance and Drug abuse to students in classes 6-8. These were topics identified by the headteachers, as key areas for needed information at these ages. It was a fruitful afternoon where 50 nursing students interacted with these primary school students, presented information, answered questions and just spent time mentoring. It was promising and we are hoping that this will be a activity that will be continued by the nursing program, or nursing student society at DeKUT.

We also had an opportunity to visit a different county in Kenya and conduct research within the community on the Sexual health and rights of adolescents. We were able to visit various medical centres, primary schools and speak with individuals ranging from young girls with children, their mothers, teachers, pastors, nurses and doctors. We were able to see first hand many of the problems that were occurring and speak with some girls who were in grade 7 and already had 3 year olds. It was heartbreaking, and a really difficult week. Its difficult to become witness of these issues and hear the stories of these young girls, but it is even more difficult not having a way or proper means to provide useful, sustainable help. It is heartbreaking to hear their stories, and hear their aspirations but it is even harder to know that because we are white and coming in to do this research that they have hope in us to support them and solve these issues, when really humanitarians etc are often only making these situations worse. And this is a hard position for me to be in and quite the ethical dilemma I struggle with every day that I am here. It is daunting coming into communities such as this because you know you really have nothing to offer.

Lastly we are preparing for an upcoming visit to a nearby hospital where we will spend a week working on the front line while also gathering information to assist in building a international placement available for Canadian nursing students.

Life in kenya is good, work in kenya is slow. This internship is different from what I expected, and very different from what I imagined I might do with a nursing degree (they always said nursing was a broad title, but does farmer fit under that? 😛 ), however, it is a wonderful experience so far.

Despite not feeling like a nurse most of the time, I am constantly being inundated with the evidence of the social determinants of health and the social structures of the Kenyan society. It is an interesting position and I am thankful for the opportunity to immerse myself in a society that is very different from the “Canadian way of life”. That being said, only two months left until I’m back in Canada, and I’m not so sure what I even want to do with my “Canadian life”. BUT one thing I do know; I am done digging dirt.

-The Happier Traveler