I know I have been silent for this long, but it is said “sooner is better then never” I hope you are all well in your perspective locations. Since I did not report from the start, I will give you all a quick update. Well, as most of you recall we left on that cold, rainy day to London, via bus. That was an interesting trip, indeed. We (Natalia and I) had intended to sleep on the 13 hour ride, however to our surprise the bus was full of interesting (aka: crazy) people, it was like we had gypsies, the gang from the circus and a whole band all on board! After many laughs and lack of sleep we made it to London for our day and half there. It was nice to see friends and my brother and of course fit in a bit of shopping in Oxford St. We made to Heathrow fine and embarked on our Emirates flight to Dubai then to Nairobi. Of course, the flight to Dubai was delayed, so we had to run to catch our Nairobi flight. At the end, after going through security (twice) and sweating buckets we made our flight and we were Nairobi bound. Surprisingly our luggage made it to Kenya, but not in one piece

I was happy to be back to Africa, the weather in Nairobi is perfect, and I mean superbly nice. Not to hot, and not humid ! The only issue I have is the smog and fumes that come out of all the cars here !!! Sometimes I think about starting an car emission programme in this country. Well, maybe not Kenya alone but most of African cities suffer from this sort of pollution. My research kicked off well, I have been able to establish contact within my first 3 weeks here and all has gone well so far. Nairobi is a nice city to live in, but can also get boring at times. It is also one that is very comfortable…OK WAY too comfortable. We live in a very nice, and I mean very nice house with another awesome Canadian girl. We are surrounded by nice supermarkets, restaurants, cafes that offer wireless internet, shopping centers, etc….. I also enjoy riding the mataus that are equipped with flat screen TVs blasting with the latest rap music and a man dangling the side window screaming…TOWN TOWN (mini buses used for public transport…aka trotro in Ghana, taxis in South Africa, taka taka in Tanzania)!! After spending a month here, we decided it was time to hit the beaches, so we rented a house on Diani beach, south of Mombasa ! It was worth it after all the smog and hard work of course On Easter break we went back to Zanzibar for more quality beach time ! It was super nice to be back in Zanzibar ! But man, it was HOT!!  Then it was back to work on the research….But after a month, it was time to travel in country and see some of the main land. My local supervisor, who is super cool guy invited me to visit him in Eldoret for a couple of days and spend some time at Moi University ground. I have to say the drive over was stunning, the Rift Valley is quite beautiful, with gorgeous hills, wildlife and amazing views. While in Eldoret I managed to see Sana very quickly at a Somali restaurant and catch up quickly. A few days later, we were invited to Maru, a town 4 hours away to witness our Kenyan friend buy his bride !! A group of at least 30 friends cars packed themselves in matatus, cars,  and 100 family members in buses and made the trip to Maru, the land of mira (qaat)! This buy your wife event included negotiations with the family behind closed doors, plenty of food…more food….more food, lots of dancing and partying all night long!! Oh, the first instalment for the bride was 120,000 Kenyan shillings, which is about $1600 USD, which is about 1100 EURO….which is worth 5 cows !!

Natalia and I spent both our birthdays here in Kenya and had good times doing so. Last Saturday we throw Natalia a birthday party at our house and it was filled with good friends and many unknown people ( who played beer baseball in our kitchen…a very American thing to do….OK they were Americans)……but that was the plan, it was open for all kinda party !! After it was all over at 3 am we still felt we needed more partying, so we hit two clubs and finally returned home when dawn was about to break and the birds started to sing…….. So that is a very quick sum up of my time in Kenya !!! I leave here in two weeks to spend a week in Dubai and a few day in London, then back in Amsterdam. I am looking forward to seeing u all very soon and hearing all about your adventures during your fieldwork….Happy Researching……..YEAH RIGHT !

Edil

Ciao fellow travellers! I really haven’t had a chance to post on this blog until now… My internet time here in Guatemala is extremely limited and keeping up my own blog has kept me busy enough… All is good though, although I miss being clean, normal food (beans and rice do get a little repetitive after a while…), and many other things that I always took for granted at home… Also, I really cant wait to get back to Holland to get de-bugged… I’ve had so much parrasite trouble in the past 3 weeks – I hate the idea that I have eggs and worms living and feeding off me… hummm… sorry… too much information for my first post? heheheh

anyway, if you want to check out some pictures and read some stories go to:

www.fuzzytravel.com/lorenzarighetti

Hopefully see you all soon back in sunny NL! (I promise I wont be full of parassites by then!!)

Que les vaya bien compañeros,

Lorenza

Hey guys,

Today Laura and I went to visit Suzan in Stellenbosch and since we don’t have internet at home, I thought, why not post a blog in the name of all of us! Cape Town is such an amazing city, I didn’t expect to feel so at home when I first arrived, but Laura (who set me up in the hostel and organized a place for us) even came to pick me up at the airport and the moment I arrived at the hostel, we sat down with a bunch of backpackers on the porch and started drinking wine and chatting. It’s so easy to make friends here, and from what Im hearing from Suzan, shes meeting lots of cool people too (shes actually living with a heavy metal taekwando dude!)

When Laura is not with her lover (ooooooo), we practically do everything together (like two penises in a pod!) and we drive around everywhere in our little turquuuuuooooiiiseee volkswagon chico, which we have dubbed “Sherman”. It appears that laura and I are the only ones who find this amusing hehe. I was under the impression that if we got a car, I would take off my sissy shorts and actually drive it, but I made one trip from our house to the hostel and almost peed my pants. Anyways, Laura has been great at taking on the drivers role while I navigate, and in return I drag her out running in the mornings along a boardwalk near the beach (im still trying to convince her and myself we can do the marathon in easter). Weather is super and the beaches are beautiful. Weve even been surfing together and both managed to get up on the board!

When Lauras dad was here, we went to visit Cape Point, which was gorgeous and finally at the end of the day, we went to see the famous penguins in Simon town… I was so excited I talked about them all day… and poor laura had to put up with it! But all in all, we saw alot of cool things that day and taught our friend Ema to say the word baboon properly (Come reunion time, we shall explain). We also went hiking up to lions head (a peak next to table mountain) for the full moon, and drank champagne, took amazing pictures of the city in the dark, and had a picnic in the on top of the peak. The point i suppose is that the whole group had to climb down afterwards in the dark, including the fact that we had to scale chains to get down (well 2). I was very very excited, and laura not so much. But she didnt cry once and I was very proud!

So a little about where we live… We are in a small cute house in the ghetto part of observatory (the boho student area)–> yes there are people that intentionally walk around without shoes, to feel one with the earth perhaps, except in the city they mostly walk around on pavement so wasnt sure if i saw the point. We have two other housemates, Victor and Selim. Victor is working alot but when hes around he gives us massages (Hes swedish so its ok). Generally a nice guy though. Selim is piles of fun, someone who is up for almost anything and gets along with everyone. Ive been going out alot with him and his friends lately, and its been great.

As for my research… going sloooow. Laura and I have only gotten a list of student association chairs last week from the university (and as forest gump once said: thats all i have to say about that… oh and life is like a box of chocolates).

Before I let you guys go, a little about our visit to stellenbosch. Suzan showed us around everywhere and we had wine and lunch with her, and it was so good to catch up since I hadnt seen her yet since I got here. She seems to be having a great time, and even went to her first strip club last night!!! Wooooooo hoooooooo! go suzan!–> Photos unfortunately not available.

Anyways, I hope youre all having the best time still (Franny, where are you at?)…

Keep us posted and on behalf of laura and suzan: We miss you guys already.

xxx

Sandra, Laura, Suzan

Having lunch at the beach

 

24/7 Sarah and Felice: about flying peanuts (penises) and other adventures

 

How it all started:

8 pm 21-2-2009: the beginning of three months sharing trotros, breakfast, clothes, sunscreen and attention from guys. After 1.5 hour of waiting at the airport with  a name plate saying SARAH, finally the German girl arrived. Felice was pleasantly surprised by the small amount of luggage Sarah was bringing (she had/ has this image of Sarah as a girly girl that would bring lots of unnecessary luggage for living in Africa; which was partly true, for she had her hair blower in her hand luggage). The small luggage was however not on purpose, because her backpack was lost. This meant three days of suffering in a jeans for Sarah (thanks Edil for the t-shirt!) and three days of suffering for Felice because she had to spend all of her time in shopping malls searching for clothes.

 

Living:

While some of you might be living in houses made of cow shit in remote areas, our greatest frustration is that the internet is sometimes not working. Hard life. We live in the first floor in a huge compound, with two bedrooms, bathrooms and a private kitchen and a maid who cleans our rooms and makes our beds everyday. We even have a private security dog named Killer (who runs away if you sneeze to loud). Accra is a extremely pleasant city to live in. The combination of living close to the sea and nice sunshine makes us forget about all the first term study problems. We travel around by trotros (small buses), which are steered by maniacs but which also always assure funny conversations with strangers. Felice likes the trotros so much that she spends four hours a day in them travelling to her research organization.

                                                                                                                   

Research:

Are you really interested?! Nahhh….!

 

Leisure time:

On the first weekend together we fled from the noisy city to the relaxing (at least for the 5 minutes a day that the guys left us alone) beach village Cape Coast. Here we did all the compulsory stuff (visiting the former slavery fort in Elmina, buying souvenirs and doing a canopy walk in a ‘wild’ park). The only wild thing we saw was a goat, who didn’t last long because it was run over by our trotro. This almost brought Felice to tears and it was a good thing that the driver was out of her reach. We planned to go for a swim in Cape Coast, but we accidentally saw how much garbage and feces would join us in our swim. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves getting rid of the beach boys and eating loads of fried plantain and red-red (bean stew).

 

Back in Accra we finally wanted to experience the amazing party scene that should exist in Accra. In Cape Coast we met a guy who recommended us to go to Paloma, so on Tuesday we totally dressed up (nice clothes, good hair day, make-up) for a lovely night of dancing. However, when we arrived there were 5 big screens with soccer and no music whatsoever. Words cannot express how overdressed we felt. But we decided to make the best out of it and settled ourselves at the bar with a margarita and a Southern Comfort. Maybe it was because we didn’t expect anything good could follow after our dramatic entrance, but we had the best evening ever. We were spoiled by the other visitors (mainly too old men and a horny Nigerian guy), who provided us with champagne, chocolate cake, red wine and even a free taxi home. (That taxi was a big disappointment for the Nigerian, who was sure that he could persuade us to spend the night with him, LOL).

 

This weekend we had the pleasure to meet up with Kwaku, his wife, daughter and cousin in his home country. We celebrated the national Independence Day together at the beach (you are allowed to be jealous). Sarah felt extremely white (obroni) while we went for a swim, but Felice is convinced that she looks more like a obibini (black person) already. On Saturday, Kwaku took us out to a place where real dancing occurred and where we didn’t look strange wearing a short skirt (Felice) and a rather revealing dress (Sarah). We really enjoyed ourselves finally dancing.

 

False assumptions.

Some of you might wonder how we are surviving each other. Before we left some people expressed the differences between us and even we wondered if we wouldn’t kill each other when we had to spend 24 hours together (Sarah even dreams about Felice; note from Sarah: NOT TRUE). But, as always, prejudices are there to be broken. Thus:

• Felice is not ‘melig’ (loud and hilarious) all the time. Although Sarah is still not completely used to her rather blunt comments.
• Sarah is not as posh as Felice thought. She is more a freaking hippie.
• Felice is not as messy as Sarah thought. She seems rather organized, but with food….
• Sarah and guys…(Note from Felice: I am not to allowed to type something about that, that would ruin our freshly established trust).

 

Still existing pre-assumptions:

• Sarah needs LOADS of time to prepare herself in the morning, according to her she is just adapting to the African rhythm.
• Felice is shameless in her comments, even in a packed trotro.
• Felice is a sport addict, she went running in Accra (under loud cheers from the Ghanaians) and she will have her first handball training tomorrow.
• Sarah is not sporty AT ALL (dancing is the only exception).

 

After word

Yesterday, Felice exposed to Sarah that she loves eating penises. And that she was very sad that she hadn’t had any that day, for the first time since her arrival. Sarah was shocked for a second, until she realized that Felice was pronouncing peanuts in a very Dutch way. From now on Felice swears to only talk about groundnuts. And if somebody wants to know about the flying penises…we will tell you in Amsterdam.

 

Have a good research/ holiday!!

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, forgot to say that we are in Ghana, regional capital of upper west Wa, and that we’re managaing all various stomach illnessesd!

And you missed fred trying to plug his computer on the car battery!

Hi everybody!

Finally managed to find an internet cafe in these remote areas!!!We are about to start the third week of workshops with the “tracking Local Development” researchers, and i must say that Sanne, Jolien and myself have totally forgot about our own research which we left 2 weeks ago. even if we can’t wait to get started, a lot of questionings remain as to whether my research is really relevant, and i’m just applying my own ideas to a country and a population that haven’t asked for it…Well, will figure that out next week when i will start rushing all over burkina on my future great motorbike.

Must say that working with Fred and company hjas beenb very chilled out, and mostly funny. The first week of workshops we spent in remote burkina was just a blast. Sitiing the whole day under a tree under 40 degrees minimum and listening to these groups of men and women develop on their rural lives…now that changes your perception of development forever, and that is maybe why my research has been changing constantlty (in my head). We were staying in the new town hall (a brick house) with of course no water and no electricity. We managed to find a generator to work on the computers after the workshop and get some decent light to get things down on paper, but after the tentative of repair by Fred and Wouter improvising thgemselves as mechanicians, we just abnadoned and spent nights summarizing the days workshops until three in the morning.  Finally got to grasp what life that almost hasn’;t been touch by modernism looks like: the villages were sincerely the medieval type you would’ve seen in europe some 500 years ago…and an agricultural state which can be compared to ours as it was in 2000B.C (facts from Fred).

Ton arrived and we’ll see how it goes.

have no time left on this computer, xx to you all.

Aurel (and sanne and jolien behind me catching up with two weeks worth of mails…am sure they say hello)

… i hope someone posts something soon! i keep checking back every day, so hungry for updates! there are still so many people who haven’t shared their first fieldwork impressions. is anyone else scratching their head as to whether their research is relevant to the place at all? a. xx

hello dear ids-ers.. Here a message from the Andes-city of Huancayo.. I have been in Peru for a little bit more then a week.. sorry for not writing but you know how time flies..

I arrived in Lima and had a great arrival as Anna arranged everthing for me.. She lives in this nice apartment from a really nice Señora that helps with everything you need.. Well, I met my local supervisor who is the BEST, so nice, helpful and we are laughing all the time. The first days I was just getting to know Lima and also the latin american life again,,,  and socializing with Anna . I was ready with my bags packed to leave to the Andes a few times, but we could not pass because of the rocks on the road because of heavy rainfall.. yes this is Peru!!!

Well after staying two nights at Carla´s (my supervisors) house and a total change of my research question (I will now be focusing on the dynamics in the transnational family and social remittances), we could finally leave by train (12 hours)… This stupid taxidriver did not know where to go but in the end we ran with all our heavy bags and managed to enter the train.. We got breakfast (airplain food), studied a little bit and listened to the touristic explanations.. it was not that bad.. and.. we met this real transnational family … jejjj!! I was happy to arrive in Huancayo, I am staying in Carla´s parents house, Frida Kahlo – but less luxurious- style, and we arranged my own office in the house!!  So these days I have been reading, getting to know her ´aunt´ (that is not really aunt but best friend of the mother) that showed me, really slowly (as she is like 75 years old) the center and some good places to buy food etc.. She even took me to the church and a diner with two other widows and an older couple… haha still good to hear some family stories… I also had to say goodby to my computer (yes, also just as you Laura) and bought some basic things. Now I am analising the questionairres that are done in 2007 to make a selection of the families I will make cases of. Yesterday I went to the ´train´ family and to some girls that did the questionairres in 2007 and can show me the neighbourhoods..

So, I am getting used to my place, getting to know more and more people and feel my start is ok.. I do not have internet at home but think I will in 1 week,, then it will be more easy to write etc. I also have my own blog http://evadebruine.reismee.nl that I will write on in English from now on!!

Beso grande and good luck everyone!!!

Eva

The stories might be written a bit more simplistic than yours but that’s because I am – bit lazy – copy pasting from my own blog which my grandmother also reads . Just to let you know!

Accra (GH), January 19th 2009

After a long journey with a train full of middle-aged women going to the ‘huishoudbeurs’ and a transfer of nearly 6 hours in the middle of the outskirts of Casablanca, Felice, Jolien and I have reached Accra, the capital of Ghana.

Still having a knot of mixed feelings in my belly thanks to my ‘pastaboy’ or maybe the idea of having to live out of my backpack for the first coming month – ok if the intension is travelling less if you carrying all kinds of research shit with you – the taxi ride to Felice’s accommodation – where Jolien and I will be staying the first days – made it all better. Some of you may recognize this feeling I want to describe here, do not know yet how, and some may not but it feels super duper magically great when you arrive at night in a country or place you have never been before. The whole world seems to have stopped, you are completely exhausted but brought ‘home’ and at the same time the best reggae music is playing on the background. How fortunate am I again that I got this chance to study, travel and live for a brief period of time somewhere else!!!

Before heading to Ouagadougou on Saturday morning – the capital of Burkina Faso from where the workshops will start – the first week contained so far resting, relaxing, acclimatizing and preparing especially to the climate waiting us up north. We have arranged the bus tickets, got a Ghanaian sim-card, exchanged some money and tried to cook in the dark due to power cuts and despite my attempt to convince my fellow companions as well as host wife that some candles might always be handy… In addition also the shower stopped and of course no well near. For a brief moment I longed back to my place in Tanji… Despite the absence of running water and electricity there were at least constantly candles and water.

But do you hear me complaining? This is the charm right of doing ‘field work’ …?

With love,

Sanne

Nezaabre everybody! Been here for two days now and  say that it feels good to be back in the red dust of Africa!

Been couch surfing for two days in the outskirts of Ouaga, well if you can consider that there are any limits to this town…one story buildings are a must here and seeing higher feels like bein transported in another world! AM truely considering taking a hostel to start some work…you just can’t cope sometimes just sitting under the tree in the traditional courtyard of the house and simply doing nothing!

Am also considering buying a motorbike, going really arican. But it(s just so great being in a t shirt at night and riding the motorcycle…a certain sense of liberty!

My time in this shitty cyber café is up, on a key bord that must be from uzbekistan and you just have to guess they keys, and completely stuck by the red dust of course. Will ot buy a laptop here…vive la mobylette!

x, aurel