October 1-8 2010

My trip to Tanzania and Kenya

MurielToday I left Hanoi for Bangkok to transit and then eventually reach the destination of Nairobi, Kenya. The flight was long, and once we arrived I had to wait 5 hours at the airport for my flight to Tanzania. I was feeling jet lagged and nauseous so I sat down and waited. Unexpectedly, I bumped into Muriel and Francis, both from Quebec and with whom I interacted when we were based in Nepal together. They now live in Nairobi and it was great to see them and catch up on news. It helped to pass time, but the nausea persisted. Just before boarding time, I threw up and managed to quickly pull a plastic bag for this as my head was spinning. Then on the flight, I threw up 4 more times before landing a mere 45 minutes later in Kilimanjaro,KIA lodge Tanzania. I was not in good shape and was happy to find the KIA lodge driver at the airport ready for me. I crashed in my bungalow and woke up in better shape 5 hours later. I think it was the food on Kenya Airways which was bad... In the evening I met up with 2 other VECO colleagues, Chris from Head-office and Rogier from Indonesia. The lodge was rustic yet modern and tho very expensive, it was quite wonderful.

Road tripThe next day we left with the driver to reach VECO's project area in Same District, 2 hours away. We checked into the Elephant Motel and then went to the office to hear a presentation on the chain development program of that area, mainly with goat, onion and chicken commodities. The next day, we all drove through the sandy and bumpy Masai farmersbush for 2 hours to reach the remote project area and met with onion and goat Masai farmers. It was great meeting with them, discussing their issues and marketing. For sure we had a very short time, but the exposure was very interesting. That afternoon, we had to rush back to Kilimanjaro to catch our flight back to Nairobi. When we got to the airport, the airline had already closed the counter but we managed to get them to reopen for us and let us through. We had to skip in front of the line-up at immigration and many people got annoyed with us. But at least, we made it and boarded the plane...

Field tripWednesday Oct. 5th was the first day of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Value Chain Conference with about 50 participants from all over the world. We had to listen to many presentations, some of them more interesting than others, about SME-farmer partnership and challenges. The donor Cordaid presented a framework for analyzing sustainability of projects and this seems quite a useful tool which I intend to use. On day 2 we went on a field visit to meet a commercial vegetable farmer and on the way back to Nairobi, I managed to get the driver to stop for us at a souvenir shop. I wanted to buy a few things for my colleagues at the office and also for myself. Then in the evening began again the long journey back to Hanoi. I was more careful this time with the Kenya Airways food and only ate the cooked things (not the salad).

KilimanjaroGenerally, I can say that I was very impressed with the people in Kenya and Tanzania. I found them to be so friendly and helpful, and also very calm, direct/frank and open in our exchanges. This to me was a sharp contrast to West Africa where I found people to be more distant, agressive and vague in their communication. All in all this was a very positive experience for me. I hope that next time I will be able to do a safari and/or a trekking up the famous Kilimanjaro !