Hi its Kira and Catherine the nutrition students from the university of Prince Edward Island. 🙂
The past couple of days in Kenya have been so wonderful. We have been so busy and have done so much already! It is very exciting to have met the women and men we will be working with this summer. Everyone has already been so kind and generous-three days and I already feel at home.
On our first day, the nutrition team spent time exploring the Kenyan culture. Our wonderful guide, Susan, took us to our first Nakumat (similar to a Walmart) for shopping, out for Kenyan coffee, to the David Sheldwick Wildlife Elephant Orphanage, then to more shopping at Kazuri beads where we met the hard working women in the Kazuri beads factory, to the Giraffe centre, and finally to meet Henry our travel agent.
Our second day was just as busy as the first! Both the nutrition team and vet team went for a visit to Kenyatta University. We met the dean and faculty of Applied Human Sciences and then later the Vice-Chancellor of Kenyatta University. Our meeting was very nice and was my first ever video recorded meeting! After, we finally got to meet the new Kenyan graduate students, Emily, Sarah, Grace and Ann that will be joining our project. We were all so excited to meet one another! We quickly finished our meetings up and got ready for the long 5 hour drive to Naari. On our way we stopped at the huge dairy in Wakulima! We were given a nice tour of the dairy and the opportunity to see how milk is produced. We continued on with our journey and made it up some very rough hills up to our new home. Our wonderful cook Vincent made us a big meal as we were all pretty hungry and exhausted. I don’t know about the rest, but Catherine and I fell asleep pretty fast!
On our third day, yesterday, we met with the Naari Dairy board and Upendo women’s group leaders. It was wonderful meeting everyone that we will be working so closely with. I would like to note how grateful and appreciative they were of the work that has already been done and will be done. The farmers have noticed improvement in milk production since the projects began. On average, there has been an increase from 3.5kg of milk per day per farmer up to 7kg of milk.
I think that so far, one of my favourite memories from Kenya is every time we drive by a group of children. We wave and say hello and the reaction the children give us is incredible! They start screaming with smiles on their face, jumping up and down, and even chase after our car! It is just so adorable.
I am looking forward to getting into the Naari community and working with the Naari women’s groups to improve nutrition within their families. Thank-you Kenya for being so wonderful so far.
Kira and Catherine.
Pictured: Ann, Sarah, Grace, Kira, Catherine.