So I finally got my own little anthropological pad… Read all about it here!
After a small amount of effort I finally found a room to rent. It’s owned by a guy who has a posho mill, which grinds dried maize into maize flour. Right behind the mill are two long rows of single rooms and when the mill is shut you can enter from the side by a large gate which is locked at night. I’m the proud owner of a bed with a mattress and a rather dodgy parafin stove as well as a container for storing water. I’ve borrowed a couple of curtains but will get some made to cover the window, and as is customary, the doorway. There’s a shared wash room and pit-latrine toilet outside for the compound.
The rent is 1200/= per month, just less than £10. The first couple of nights there i didn’t sleep well because of the sounds of funeral music - Luo people like to make sure that everyone knows when someone dies - apparently the body was not released from the mortuary in Nairobi for some reason, so the music had been going on for a whole month, every night until midnight. Fortunately it’s quiter now, although i was woken last time but the sound of rain water pounding on the corrugated iron roof.Most of my neighbours work at the hospital, others are teachers or civil servants. It’s a middle class pad, there is electricity and more than one of the rooms has a TV ariel. At night time a couple of cars can usually be found parked up between the two rows of houses.
Hope you like the pictures.
Love the house, and the title photo is also very cool, love the “Bina” box. Sigh…
Yeah, it almost looks like a product placement… maybe we should hit GSK (or whatever the manufacturer call themselves these days) for some cash. Hope the PhD is going well.
Hannah, your own research premises! I had a cupboard storage room opposite the department secretary’s office, with a borrowed sony foot operated dictation machine to use to transcribe bits of TV programmes of the 1970s.
Super hot weather here, a Victorian house can be cool in the day. Just as well. I wonder how you are accustommed to Kenya weather.
David sometimes remarks that he is surprised middle class Kenyan geeks read the register or know what he is proposing. He might try The Guardian in England for publicity. He has enough contacts.
Sara did okay with the second part of her degree, I wonder what she will do next year. Travel? Visit you? Keep well, photograph everything, write this up in the same way that Donald Tuzin did with his reearch. Anon
Well, that’s not quite how I put it mum… I was trying to say that I was happily surprised that so many people here in Kenya read that particular website. I was equally surprised that 4 million people per month (in total) read it!
Glad you’re well