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

Martina, Elias, and Viola are ETH students who participated in a two-week field project to Bungoma County, Western Kenya from Nov. 10 to 25, 2018. In this post, they share some memories of their exchange with the local population.

Read more about the class in the first post of this series.

Rich people (by Martina Rapp)

Working outdoors in a multi-cultural team, getting hints and help from the local people is the best learning environment one could ask for.

“Do you wear a wig?” a little kid asked, touching my braid and triggering the laughter of all his friends hiding behind him, coming closer and closer and then running away when I would look at them.

While the locals were surprised at our long hair, our white skin and the habit of wearing creams for all kind of protection, I in turn was amazed at the knowledge of the farmers, especially the children: I learnt more in some hours by their side than in many years sitting at a desk at university.

“What crops do you grow in your country?” was one of the most common questions they would ask us, and I was always a little bit ashamed to answer, envying the connection they have with nature, which I feel we have almost lost completely.

Experiencing such warm and welcoming behaviors towards our visits, such a willingness to help us even without any contributions teaches us a lot about how these people, whom we normally would identify as poor, have often much more richness than we do.

Sticky all over (by Elias Barmettler)

Heike and I trying to eat the sugar cane stalks. Fun and delicious.

In the late afternoon of our third field day, we visited the farm of Paul Watonga. After a warm welcoming session, Caren (UoE) and Elena (KU Leuven) interviewed Paul while Heike (KU Leuven) and I began examining the soil properties and Paul’s son was taking a closer look at my Swiss army knife. Great division of labor! When the soil description was done (it was a Gleysol with beautiful red and black mottling), Paul provided us with fresh sugar cane stalks, an energizing snack that Kenyans commonly chew. Despite Caren’s instructions, my Belgian friends and I struggled to eat the sugar cane the proper way, ending up with gnawed stalks and mouths full of coarse fibers. We could not resist from laughing in this funny moment. There we were standing, students from Eldoret, Leuven and Zurich and a farmer from Kamukuywa with his family, all amused by this simple situation comedy, without any need of words. The thrilling feeling of unity and familiarity was flowing through my body. Eventually, we got to the delicious sugar juice somehow and we left Paul’s farm sticky all over and full of energy!

Musembe Girl (by Viola Iselin)

This brave little girl from Musembe wouldn’t leave our side.

The most curious villagers of Musembe carefully and constantly observed our days of fieldwork. As we struggled through the eucalyptus woodlots and roamed around crop fields under a boiling mid-day sun, an enthusiastic little crowd of children would follow us around. They must have been intrigued by us foreign visitors, as we might have seemed quite lost at times trying to complete some of our field experiments. The children would run around and chuckle at our attempts to pronounce local greeting words. However, they were also quite curious about the field methods they saw and mimicked our activities in play and laughed as they tagged along. One day, there was an especially charming little girl among them. She must have been about three years old, her ruffled pink dress torn and stained in many places. She always kept her distance of about an arm’s length. However, she followed us around persistently and kept up with the group despite the long distances we crossed over rough terrain. I was deeply impressed with the determination and curiosity that kept this little girl on our toes for an entire afternoon. I wonder what she was thinking.

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).