Wrapping Up at WFP

This is the last week of my internship so I gave my final presentation to stakeholders at the Ministry of Education yesterday. I presented on the Transition Strategy for Sustainable School Feeding that I developed this summer, in collaboration with Ouko, my focal point at the Ministry. Here are some photos from the meeting....

Me and the Ministry of Education's School Feeding Unit

Me and Ouko, the focal point at MoE

My supervisor Charles from WFP, me and Ouko

Explaining the Strategy...

Life in Kakuma Refugee Camp

Last week I went to Kakuma refugee camp. Here are some photos from my trip there...

In the foothills of Mt. Kenya...

I just got back from a weekend trip with friends in the foothills of Mt. Kenya. We drove to Aberdares National Park and spent the weekend hiking, visiting a waterfall, and doing some game drives. The highlight of the wildlife we saw was definitely some very old bull elephants and some giant forest hogs (which, I might add, are very aptly named so!).

It also felt SO good to do some hiking and stretch my limbs. Never in my life have I spent so much time being sedentary and sitting in a car, as a I have here in Kenya. Being a pedestrian is not really an option here in Nairobi due to the security risk, so you are pretty much stuck having to drive everywhere you want to go. And its not possible to walk many places in the countryside either, unless you are with armed guards, due to the risk of getting attacked by wild animals. So, you end up driving everywhere then too.

It felt especially amazing to have hiked for 3 hours in a row this weekend, the longest duration of exercise I've gotten since being in Kenya!

Pink Flamingos, White Rhinos, and Black Buffaloes, Oh My!

Last Saturday, some friends and I drove to Lake Nakuru National Park. We saw hundreds of pink flamingos hanging out in the lake, herds of black buffalo grazing along the shoreline,
ancient white rhinos hiding in the bushes, and a leopard leaping from a tree...

We then drove up a nearby mountain to catch the majestic view from above...

And then ended the day with a gourmet picnic lunch.

All around -- an amazing day.

Orphan Elephants and Kissing Giraffes

A few weeks ago, my friend Katherine from Cornell flew from Kampala to Nairobi for the weekend. We spent the weekend visiting all the must-see sites around town and doing all the touristy things I had never done since arriving in Nairobi. The highlights were visiting baby orphan elephants and feeding Rothschild giraffes...






The giraffes ate right out of our hands. They are known to have a 'healing kiss' because the antiseptic saliva they produce can heal their wounds within minutes.

Giraffes are amazing! They sleep standing up and with their eyes open, in 5 minute intervals for a maximum of 45 mins a day!

Safari by Bike!

A few weekends ago, I went with some friends to Lake Naivasha. Here are some photos and tales from our adventures...

The drive from Nairobi down through the Rift Valley is spectacular! A little frightening at times when on-coming traffic plays 'chicken' with you on the 2-lane highway that has a sheer drop-off cliff on one side, but nevertheless spectacular!

My favorite thing we did that weekend was explore Hell's Gate National Park by bike! It was amazing to ride our bikes through the park and be able to walk straight up to zebras and giraffes.

They seemed only moderately interested in us though...

The warthogs seemed a little more interested! We had some fun staring contests with each other. The warthogs would usually win though, when I'd bike away in anticipation of being attacked!


We also hiked through an amazing gorge in the park, where there were hot springs that were hot enough to boil an egg on the spot.

On the way home we ran into some monkeys doing their daily grooming deeds...

We later rented a boat to explore Lake Naivasha. Beautiful waterlilies adorned the surface...
And we discovered a group of hippos on the other side of the lake, lurking in the muddy banks.



All around, it was an amazing animal-filled weekend of adventure!

Visiting the field

Well, it’s probably about time that I tell you a little bit about what I’m actually doing here, at least in terms of my internship that is. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m working with the school feeding unit here at the World Food Programme. One of the main reasons why I chose to work with WFP in Kenya (as opposed to a WFP office somewhere else in the world) is because the Kenya country office is currently at the cutting edge in terms spearheading the organization’s transition away from being a food aid organization and towards one providing food assistance. What’s the difference you might ask? Well, the essence can be captured in the old Chinese proverb “give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life”. In other words, it’s the difference between giving poor farmers a 1kg bag of imported corn from the U.S. to eat or giving them a 1kg bag of maize seeds and then empowering them to grow an abundant harvest on their own, which could produce 100kg of maize to then eat.

For the last 30 years, WFP has been running school feeding programs here in Kenya, very much fulfilling its mandate as a food aid organization. It would buy split peas from Canada or get imported corn from the U.S. and then distribute the food to schools for their feeding programs. And the program worked well – childhood hunger was prevented and primary school enrolment levels improved.

But over the last couple of years, WFP has started to develop a radically different perspective on this whole food aid thing. They’ve started to realize that perhaps it is time for the Kenyan government to take responsibility and ownership over feeding their nation’s school children. And perhaps it makes more sense to buy maize and pigeon peas from local Kenyan farmers rather than to import corn from the US and split peas from Canada. And perhaps school meals will only be effective if there is also school-wide health and sanitation services available, to ensure that preventable diseases such as dysentery don’t rob the children of the nutrients they would glean from the school meal in the first place. And of course all of these changes are in the name of ‘sustainability’. The good old s-word seems to have permeated all aspects of life these days.

So, all of this change in thinking came to the fore last summer in July when the Kenyan government launched a new initiative called Home-Grown School Feeding. This innovative program is now paving the way for eventual total government takeover of school feeding in Kenya – which is huge!! But in order to prepare for that transition to take place, a strategy is needed to figure out exactly how WFP will transfer all of its responsibilities over to the government.

And so that’s where I come in. I’ve been charged with the task of developing this strategy for WFP and the government. It’s the first time such a strategy has been developed by WFP and Kenya is the first country to do it, so the headquarters in Rome are eager to learn from our experience and then use us as a model for other countries. It’s all very exciting!

Anyway, to get some on-the-ground experience under my belt before delving too far into writing the strategy, I went on a field visit to some schools benefitting from the home-grown program. Here are a couple of photos I took along the way…