If you want to go far, go together - Part I

This blog series shares the stories of twelve ETH students who participated in a two-week field project to Bungoma County, Western Kenya from Nov. 10 to 25, 2018. The field project was co-organized with University of Eldoret (Kenya; 18 participating students), KU Leuven (Belgium; 21 participating students). The field project is an integral part of the MSc class “Tropical cropping systems, soils and livelihoods” (lecturers: Johan Six and Anett Hofmann, Sustainable Agroecosystems group), offered in ETH Master programs “Agroecosystem Sciences” and “Environmental Sciences”. The class guided students in analyzing and comprehending tropical agroecosystems and food systems. During the field project students gained practical knowledge of field methods, diagnostic tools and survey methods by working in small international student teams that were immersed in five rural towns, i.e. Kimilili, Kumukuywa, Chwele, Mabanga and Misikhu (all in Bungoma County). Students had the opportunity to be in direct contact with farmers and local extension officers through interviews and field surveys on farms and were supported by eleven university staff members from all three participating universities. The task for the student teams was to assess the state of food and energy security in the five small towns, where they stayed. The results were presented at University of Eldoret.

In this first post of the series, Rahel, Johanna, and their colleague talk about working in an international setting.

Shared impressions of a very international team (by Rahel Felder)

Teamwork on a farm in Kimilili: Describing the soil auger in detail was the last part of the detailed analysis of this farm. In the background, the farmer’s house and banana plants are visible.

For our fieldwork, we had to select representative farms for the part of the town, where we worked on a detailed analysis including interviews, soil sampling and biodiversity analysis. After a first visit and interview of a potential farm to be analyzed, we discussed in the group if we would include the farm in our sampling or not. These discussions were very interesting. We all came from different backgrounds and brought in different knowledge, but still our first impressions of the farms often were exactly the same. One farmer told us that he never has had problems to have enough food for his family. However, as we left, each one of us had the feeling that he was too proud to tell us about his real situation and therefore gave us wrong information. On another day, an extension agriculture officer accompanied our group and brought us to farms. As he left, we all had the feeling that he just showed us the better-off farms around. Situations like this where very common during our fieldwork. This shared feeling about people and situations in this international group of people was a very great experience for me.

Joyce, ugali and humor (by Johanna Kuhn)

Joyce among our team in the hostel’s garden.

We first met Joyce when she greeted us at the gate of her guesthouse. As soon as we were out of the bus, she started to show us around. She was very knowledgeable about the people and their way of conducting agriculture in the region. In the rare case of her being unable to answer our questions, she always knew someone who could. At the end of our stay, she had showed us how to cook local dishes such as ugali (a kind of polenta) and chapati (flat bread) and had invited us to join her for church on Sunday. On our last evening, she invited us for dinner at her place. Protestants, Catholics, atheists, Belgians, Kenyans and Swiss blessed the food together. I think I will remember this evening for a very long time. Not only was it a very special occasion but also it was the perfect ending for the week with this group. Never before in my life had I worked together with a more heterogeneous group and learnt so much about people, also in the context of agriculture, in such a short time. Our beliefs and some of our values couldn’t have been more different. But somehow, mostly through humor, we managed to work together and with the people of Kimilili in a very respectful way.

Like a family for 15 days

This trip was a real adventure for me since I have never been in Africa before. I was nervous to meet my teammates. We had 15 days to work on four tasks about food and energy security and during the preparatory skype meetings, we had so much difficulties to understand each other that I really hoped that it was only because of the bad connection. However, once we were there everything went perfectly fine! I was really amazed to see how people from different backgrounds can build a link between each other in so little time. Dinners were always a good moment where Esther (UoE) wanted us to try all the good food of the country and during which we were sharing our experiences from the days. But more than that we were also speaking of our countries, our culture, our families, the politics and so on, even about marriage. I remembered this evening where we laughed so much because we all (French, Belgians and Kenyans) had this same time limit that at 30 years old we should get married. As a joke, Nicolas (UoE) and I (ETH Zurich) said that we had everything planned (the guests, the clothing, where we would like to organize it, ...), except the partners to whom we should be married to but this is a really little detail. We laughed so much that evening that it was like being at a family dinner. Back home, I wanted to make my family taste a bite of Kenya and bring a bite of this good energy to our Christmas table. I tried to cook chapati. It was a really simple recipe [http://www.talkingtonelly.com/how-to-make-soft-layered-chapati-chapati-za-ngozi/] but without the techniques, it turned out that it was quite difficult to prepare them having the correct shape and texture and then of course the right taste. I had the shape and the texture … For the taste I need more work.

Evans (UoE), Jonas, Hanne, Janne (all three KU Leuven), Nicholas, Esther (both UoE) and I having dinner in Chwele.

My chapati preparation for our family Christmas dinner, with guacamole.

We are grateful for the financial support by the WFSC (Course Support Grant for WFSC members) to the field projects in 2018 (Kenya) and 2017 (Ethiopia).