Wednesday May 26, 2010
Additional Information from Wednesday, May 26, 2010
While the focus groups were finishing the Mashavu demonstrations at local Nyeri Hospitals, a group consisting of Khanjan, Andrew, Kartik, Jeff, and Roma loaded up a matatu and headed back to Nairobi. The ride there took around 3 hours all of which Jeff spent talking in the back seat. By the end of the ride Khanjan claimed that Jeff spoke more often and louder than himself (which is saying something). The crew stayed at the Terminal Hotel again. After a nice Ethiopian dinner with Rosa and Chris who are CYEC people who are stationed in Nairobi. Dessert had to be skipped however because of a sudden fit of hiccups by Khanjan. Everyone was trying not to laugh because he was pacing around the restaurant trying to hold his breath or anything else that would help him. While this was going on, Christian and Ben from WPSU landed in Nairobi and checked into the Terminal Hotel. They will be joining the team for 10 days to film a 30 minute documentary about Mashavu, WishVast, and Essential Design for the Big Ten Network. The documentary will air in late July. After returning from dinner, the team retired for the night to prepare for the long journey to Ngong the next day.
The next morning they went to the Java House in Nairobi for breakfast and coffee. Khanjan didn’t want to eat anything because he was afraid that he was going to get the hiccups again after the previous night’s experience. After eating the team said goodbye to Kartik; he is staying in Nairobi to do a case study on street youths in the city. Right after breakfast, they met up with Maureen, Paul, and Victor from UNIDO who traveled with them to survey the site of the “Big Bang”. After a short pit stop to pick the mobile power unit that will be used at the site the matatu headed to the District Hospital for Kajiato North to pay a courtesy call to the District Medical Officer of Health and invite her to the demonstration. The journey then switched gears from driving through the suburbs of Nairobi to hitting the back roads that wind down the valley side down to the town of Olosho-Oibor in the Massai region of Kenya to the local clinic where the demonstration will be held. After an hour of scenic driving, they arrived at the UNIDO power station that powers the village. At the power station, Roma and Jeff were given a tour of the site and saw exactly how it worked. There is a bank of batteries that are charged by both wind and solar power and produce 5 kilowatts of energy a day. If there is no sun or wind, there is a diesel generator that can produce 11 kilowatts a day as a backup. At the station, there is also a barber where kids can get their haircut for 30 shillings and adults for 50. This was put there to save people the long tedious ride to Ngong to get a haircut, which costs more money and uses up a lot of time. There was a soap making room where women mix soap and sell it to the local people. The man giving us the tour said that this was important because historically in their culture the men have all the wealth and power, and it was important that women got involved in small business to enter the business world, as well. There was a room for charging cell phones and another room with 4 Dell desktop computers that share a USB modem for mobile internet, as well as a scanner/photocopier that cost 5 shillings to use. The final room had a 27 inch LG flat screen with 6 channels for which they charged 10 shillings per use. A surprising fact was that they said they make around 1000 shillings a day from TV alone. Power lines ran out from the station to both the clinic and the school on either side.
The clinic was small yet well built, and they had power in every room, as well as a computer for the doctor. Dr. Musimyi, the head doctor of the clinic, was kind enough to sit down with the group and talk about the Mashavu system and how it could be implemented. In the meeting, Khanjan gave the full pitch of Mashavu and explained how it would be able to help people that come to the clinic. Because there are 12 villages that share the one clinic, telemedicine can be an invaluable tool for the people in the Massai valley. They already have existing health surveys that are taken every month from all of the members of the community, but it costs a lot of money to keep printing these surveys. An example that really got the doctor on board with Mashavu was a case that we saw when we were waiting for the meeting to start. A little boy had a really infected wound on his leg that originally started off as a bug bite. Khanjan told the doctor that one of the health workers could have visited the boy, taken a webcam shot, and received feedback from the doctor that very day. When the doctor heard that he would actually be able see his patients over the internet, he was hooked. He started talking about all the different possibilities like having Mashavu on a bike for easier transport. The UNIDO people also stressed that this is something besides TV and printing that the power created at their kiosk can be used for. The final note of the meeting was picking a village nearby where we would set the mobile power unit up at and a kiosk for the Big Bang. Enoolerai Obo, which is a 10 minute matatu drive away was the perfect distance logistically.
After the meeting, we visited the boys’ secondary school in Enoolerai Obo to get permission from the school to set up a kiosk there. The assistant principal sat down with us for a meeting. The best part of the meeting was that it wasn’t Khanjan who was giving the pitch, it was the doctor from the clinic. I think that it really gave the impression that Mashavu is very exciting and something to get involved with. The assistant principle was very welcoming and invited us to use the school grounds as part of our demonstration and to feel at home. The site was surveyed and a nice big acacia tree was picked to set up the kiosk under. The principal said that the more visitors they have the more blessed they are so he was truly blessed.
After the meeting, the group headed back to Nairobi to pick up the food for the safari, as well as the safari trucks to take back to Nyeri for everyone. Shopping in Nairobi was fun and some goodies were picked up for the rest of the students. The group left Nairobi around 10:30pm in enormous safari trucks and finally arrived back in Nyeri at 1:30 am.
