A Safe Haven and New Home
What are your first thoughts when you think of Kenya? Exotic animals? Poverty? Culture? The Lion King maybe? My first thoughts when I was told I was going to Kenya for this internship was “the bug place?! Really?”
Located in the heart of Africa is Kenya, and most importantly, The International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology most commonly known as icipe. Icipe has small campuses all around western Africa working on improving the lives of small farmers through push-pull farming. “What the heck is push-pull farming?!” you may ask. Push-Pull farming in simplest terms it is the intercropping of a plant the bugs hate and putting a trap plant that the bugs love around the field.
I started my whole journey in a new land off with an awesome driver named Simon. Simon greeted us with a smile and off he was to get the car. As we loaded our luggage into the vehicle a small grey car came up and ran straight into the side of our van like it looked to have done a million times. What a way to start off the trip I thought. From that short one hour drive I had already learned four things
1. You can cut anyone off as long as you honk
2. Slowing down for speedbumps is optional
3. The lines really don’t count
4. It’s not truly a party bus unless you have a picture of Jesus on the side
Tuesday we were shown around the Nairobi campus by the dynamic duo Moses and Dr. Rob who explained to us the four groups that icipe focuses on, told personal stories, and convinced the people in the honey lab that we needed to try some of the “stingless bee honey” which was so different from anything I had ever tasted before. Soon we were ready to fly off to the next place.
We flew to a small city called Kisumu. The smell of diesel fuel, open fires and the sight of the corn fields almost reminded me of home. As we drove through the city I watched small roadside shacks squished together fly by. While we waited in trafic I witnessed a bulldozer demolish a whole market with people running around picking up the pieces of their colorful shack like business out of the mud, our driver looked forward unphased like it happenes all the time. We drove on watching the jamble of people standby as the machinery flattened a path for a new road. As we drove out of the city and into the country we noticed a plethora of cattle and goats just out grazing, some lose, some herded by boys with sticks, but all looking sickly compared to the very fat cows found back in Iowa.
We had finally arrived, our journey was over! As we pulled through the gates out of the town and into the quiet jungle of our home in Mbita we instantly heard shouts of children down the road. We proceed down the small road and further into the foliage of the campus and found a school, a clinic and a small research center. Our driver said to us “you will be safe here, this is a safe place, mahali salama.” I didn’t realize until later what he had called this little place was a safe haven in Swahili.
A safe haven is a place of refuge or security, and to the people of Kenya, icipe is that safe place. People come here to work, to live, to educate their children, all sheltered by the scientists who work to better the lives of those outside the walls of the campus. The wildlife is sheltered from the developing towns, the trees grow tall and beautiful, and the birds fly free in this little patch of paradise. On our first day of work we walked down the street and a crowd of children came running from the school down the road high fiving anyone with their hand up, some even coming back around for “a better one”.
While at icipe I have met a woman who has taught me how to catch mosquitos like a ninja, children who have taught me how to correctly kick the bottle, and many researchers from all around the world. I’ve gotten the chance to work with some graduate students on their very complex research project. On Friday I spent four hours putting corn leaf disks into test tubes of ethanol to ship back to the US for advanced chromatography testing! This was my first real life lab experience and I couldn’t have been guided by a better team! So far my short experience at icipe has been a great one! If you have a questions by this point Please Ask! I’d love to answer any kind of question you have about my internship, this trip, or just Kenya or icipe in general!
