Rural Internet Kiosk
on Kenya VSO (Kenya), 24/Aug/2009 05:53, 34 days ago
I have not said much in this blog about my VSO placement with the Kenyan Society for the Blind as Adaptive Technology Trainer. In part this has been because my placement got off to a slow start, the placement description was written a year ago and the post at KSB that would be my line manager is vacant. After the slow start I have got a few projects underway including working with the Rural Internet Kiosk project. The guy that I am working with on this is very enthusiastic he talks a lot and spins off lots of ideas, while I am more of a practical techie who thinks‘how can we actually get this to work?’ ,so together we make quite a good team.A friend who knows that I am in Kenya has emailed me to ask if I have seen any wildlife yet. As I am in Nairobi my encounters with wildlife have been limited to a bit of bird watching and the bugs I find in my kitchen but they do not tend to live very long unless they are fast enough to avoid my efforts to splat them.As I am in the city I have more opportunities for people watching than wildlife watching. In sports Kenya is well known for producing medal winning runners, they have just finished facing their big rivals Ethiopia in the athletics championships in Berlin. I am no runner but I am slim with long legs and most Kenyans that you see on the street are my sort of build but a bit shorter, this is a blessing on crowded matatu but different from Scotland where signs of the western‘obesity crisis’ are clearly visible.What might help is something that I had not noticed until it was pointed out to me, it is almost impossible to see anybody eating on the street, or smoking for that matter. This must be a cultural thing because there are western burger chains and local fast food copies in Nairobi as well as the hawkers who thread their way through the traffic jams selling fruit or cones of peanuts. There are severe food shortages in the parts of Kenya worst hit by the drought but non problems in Nairobi.