#WorkWednesday
Work, work, work, work, work, work.....It's Wednesday!Today we finally started working. Half sad, half happy - but that's what I'm here for so I'm excited to get started. Rico/Isaac, the other BR intern, and I met with Professor Khan, Dr. Midega (my supervisor), Dr. Pittchar (a social scientist) and Matilda (a nice woman who has volunteered her time to help us!) and it was really informative as to the work we will be completing during our internship.We then started working on our questionnaires that we will use when we interview the farmers and let me be the first to say that this is a long and grueling process, without a doubt! We're only on draft #1, day 1, and I'm ready to interview the farmers already...but they informed me that this may be a 3 week process. Bummer! I've attached the very, very, very rough draft below so that you can have some sort of idea of what I am doing. We'll field our questions to focus groups all across western Kenya, continually revise the questionnaire, interview upwards of 30 farmers, and then analyze the data like nobody's business! Mine, like I said before, is Push-Pull and Aflatoxin on Post-Harvest Losses in Western Kenya: Genderized Perceptions. My questionnaire is divided into questions that pertain to each of the complex parts of my assignment. The biggest thing I learned today is to have patience (to slow down -- Kenyans love to take their time!) (PS it is Kenyan culture that time is very relative and being late is more often than not). I have begun to realize that not everything means the same to other people so wording is key. Specific and quantitative, Holly, specific and quantitative is the way to go with these things!More to come on my research and aflatoxin (I had no clue what it was either-no worries!) tomorrow.Enowski Questionnaire 1UPDATE: WE CAN ORDER CUSTOM FOOD. THIS IS BREAKING NEWS PEOPLE!AHHHHHH! Lisa, the program director, told us we could and yesterday Prof. Khan mentioned some cheese and tomato sandwich we'd never had..but I didn't actually believe them until today. We asked the guest house manager Francine if we could order food or have substitutions and she gave us a list of seriously my favorite things (minus hot wings).....pizza, Mexican, more pizza, burgers, stir fry, tons of unhealthy yummy American goodies for me to indulge on for the next two months. Yay! I ordered veggie pizza for tomorrow's lunch and stir fry for dinner, and Rico ordered pancakes for breakfast and pizza for lunch. I'm so excited and I cannot wait to send pictures. Granted, the food here has been fine and I'm in no position to complain, but I already started the countdown on my phone to the day I could get pizza at the London airport. 
There's a picture of dinner this evening. See, not bad! Pasta is heavenly, as usual, but I try to stay away from the meat and I always feel bad leaving food on my plate when I know there are people in this very compound who would eat it. I haven't got sick yet and I'm really trying to keep it that way. BONUS Look at that sky ❤️❤️❤️Holy beautiful, right? It is the weirdest thing to watch the sunset when you know the sun is rising in your part of the world. Mbita Point couldn't be any better for me and I hope they can say the same about me in two months time. It's a gorgeous place, yet so peaceful, safe, and natural. I love it here.