UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Another important component to my work in Kenya was the time I spent with the street youth at Tumaini Day Center. Their resilience, tenacity, and curiosity are traits that can be found anywhere, but the way they exhibited those qualities while simultaneously surviving through their own unique life challenges, is something I have never witnessed before. The young men were so anxious to learn everything that was presented to them. They had a ferocity to acquire education and experience-they wanted to absorb everything possible. These boys are unlike any young person I have ever encountered. During the workshop I helped present on integrated pest management, I was only able to communicate about half of the concepts in Swahili, but that did not keep them from inquiring further into aspects of the talk they did not understand. Through team efforts of the boys who understood different parts of my presentation and my own broken Swahili, we were able to piece together the majority of what ...

My daily life in Kenya was roughly split between working and activities with the array of people I lived with. If I was not working at Turbo Farm or Tumaini Day Center, planning logistics at AMPATH, or in town gathering supplies, then I was with groups of medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and psychology students or practicing surgeons and doctors. Living at the Indiana University House was an integral part of my success in Kenya. After a long day of working in the field and attempting to converse primarily in Swahili or traveling far outside of Eldoret on a makeshift road, it was this group of people that kept me level. They were crucial in making Eldoret more than just a quick summer project. This group of people enabled me to call this small town my home, no matter how short my time there was.             I also had the incredible opportunity to take several weekend trips with the students from the IU House. Although th...

             My name is Emily Kovar and I spent two of my summer months in the beautiful country of Kenya in the rising town of Eldoret. I am an International Agricultural Development major at UC Davis, so my project “Improving Nutrition Through Indigenous Vegetables” was a perfect fit for my interests. The overarching goals of this project   are increasing access to seed markets, facilitating better connections between farmers and sellers, and encouraging a culture of green vegetable consumption. Although I did not see the results of these long-term goals, I did see the fruit of my participation in the immediate targets of the project. I focused on growing the vegetables, marketing them to the community, organizing Eldoret youth for farm management workshops, and monitoring the progress of our homemade solar drier.        In the two months I spent in Eldoret, I witnessed the life cycle o...

As my last two weeks in Kenya came to a close, I not only worked to finish my assignment but also learned about how the production process at Bright Green. As part of my assignment, I needed to understand the many efforts that go into making the charcoal briquettes. This first began with site visits to charcoal vendors where Bright Green gets waste material to make their product. The charcoal vendors were located in different parts of town, so Rebecca and I used our favorite mode of transport, the matatus, to go meet them.   When we got to the site, we were met with towers of giant sacks or guneas stacked on top of each other all filled to the brim with charcoal. Scattered all over the ground beneath these sacs lay charcoal dust, the waste material which constitutes the main ingredient of Bright Green’s MOTO briquettes. We talked with the charcoal vendors who were leaning against the sacks, asking them about their delivery process and following up on past orders of charcoal du...

It’s been two weeks into my time in Kenya and I’m still loving the cool Nairobi weather. What a relief from the Davis heat! I started off my second week with a brainstorm session for the customer questionnaire at the office. It was an iterative discussion between Chebet and myself on what topics to address in the survey and how to go about framing the questions. Utilizing the business concepts of customer segmentation and targeting, we developed a list of characteristics for our product’s target users and their anticipated needs as relates to energy and cooking fuels. I was then able to synthesize this information with Bright Green’s own objectives for the briquettes into developing the first set of survey questions. Following our brainstorming session, I led a discussion on strategies to avoid bias in our survey. Prior to starting the project, I had done some research on survey bias and learned about how aspects such as the structure of questions or environment where a surve...

I had the opportunity to attend the Ashoka Changemaker Summit in Arusha. Some great businessmen and innovators were in attendance. Ashoka is a collaborative group that seeks to bring innovators together with business people.   The focus of this summit was the future of work in Africa. We kicked things off with an icebreaker, and then went into a panel discussion about where East Africa is headed. “ By 2035, Africa's labour force will be more than China, with 41% of the world's youth being African and 40% of East Africans under 15 years of age. What does this mean for the future of work in East Africa?” Conference Icebreaker We broke into workshop groups, and I went the workshop all about talent. There were four panelists, mostly Kenyan, that were all young “intrepreneurs.” I found this to be a funny concept—instead of focusing on developing peoples’ independent skills, they focused on retaining people within a company. But, the panelists had some interesting thin...

Nane-Nane I’ve been working at the Twende Innovation Center in Arusha, Tanzania. The center is located in an area dubbed “nane-nane,” which means 8-8. An agricultural festival takes place here every August, and there are lots of ag-business ventures located here. The grounds are very well kept, and little shops line the main street. It’s a short walk to Twende from the house I’m staying at, and we pass through many garden plots on our way there. It’s all very picture-esque. The innovation center is a hub for social innovation and simple technology solutions. They lead local innovative projects like drip irrigation kits and a bicycle powered maize-sheller while supporting other projects like the crop thresher that I have been researching. It’s quite a busy place to be in; my first day here an eco-tour group stopped in to check out all the projects happening there. Twende Every Wednesday they have a “happy-hour” where they do a team building activity. This is help foster...

We’d been in the country for about two weeks now, and Sharon, my friend and coworker at TEWDI Uganda (the women’s development NGO I was interning for) decided that that weekend we needed to get out of the office and go see some of Uganda’s spectacular natural beauty. On the road to Sipi Falls Sipi Falls ended up being just as beautiful as it had been described to me. As we traveled up the mountain towards the site, the air grew clearer, the land became greener, and the soil turned a deep, deep red. We took our time visiting each of the three waterfalls, stopping to take way too many photos and to speak to the smiling kids that would come out of their homes to greet us, many carrying Gerry cans of water or bundles of sugarcane on their heads. I t was no surprise that it had gotten pretty late by the time we arrived back at our car. We drove down the mountain as the sun set spectacularly behind us.  After the excursion of the day, and what with the warm, still...

During the last days in Puerto Escondido, we received a lecture by a public health worker that dedicates his work on vector-borne disease control. He mentioned that in the rural areas of Puerto Escondido ticks carrying the chagas disease are common and represent a disease of poverty. These ticks live in the wild and feed off of animal and human blood. Many families in rural areas are surrounded by fields and give ticks a place to hide inside of their homes during the day and will come out at night to feed. Ticks hide in dark tight places such as under mattresses, in between furnitures, frames, mirrors, and in roofs made of palm tree leaves which is very common in Puerto Escondido. These ticks can carry the Chagas diseases and infect families. If the disease is left untreated, it can cause sudden death. Mosquitos are also vectors that can transmit diseases such as zika and dengue as explained to us by the public health worker. Mosquito survive in area...

My first impression of Puerto Escondido was the heat. Next was the beautiful beaches. Then the warm water of the ocean that felt like I was entering a heated jacuzzi. We stayed at the Hotel Quinta Carizalillo which was a nice air conditioned hotel where most rooms were occupied by the UC Davis students. We immediately fled to the beach upon arrival and walked around the town to the center to check out stores and the mercado. On the way we found a fresh coconut for 15 pesos, less than 1USD! They cut it open and put a straw in do we can drink the coconut water. It was the best coconut water I have ever had! I felt like I was in paradise, I wondered why anyone wouldn’t want to stay here for longer than their vacation time. Little did I know that the paradise I have quickly learned to love is a place where social injustice thrives. After our one day of paradise we received a lecture by Dra. Isabel, a local doctor from Puerto Escondido. She explained to us ...

      The first day at clinical rotation in San Jacinto was spent observing the doctor to patient interaction. Most people were coming in for their control appointments for diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or pregnancy. Many patient with diabetes were in their mid 40s and onwards. We saw a diabetic man that had not been abiding to his treatment as should and was starting to develop discoloration on some of his toes on both feet. This discoloration was a dark purple color. The doctor explained that this is due to poor circulation of blood to this area and if not careful, will have to get those toes amputated. Their were many people who confessed to taking shots of mezcal to control their diabetes because they were told by family members that it would help with their blood pressure. The doctor clarified that Mezcal may mask symptoms but the underlining condition cannot be cured with mezcal. A lot of the patients with diabetes were workers either in construc...

One day a week the Italian language class at Cittadini del Mondo sings songs together.  It's a great way to reinforce vocabulary and grammar in a fun and interactive way. I shot a   discrete video of myself singing along with the class. At Palazzo Selam, we are face to face with the people we serve. Here I am talking with a man who is translating for another resident who needs medical attention. ​I noticed that during the Italian lessons hosted by the intercultural library, the students young children became restless and rowdy. This was a distraction for both their parents and other students trying to learn. One day walking past the toy shop on the way to the library, I found a solution. Dr. D'Angelo is the organizer of Cittadini del Mondo and the person with whom I corresponded before my arrival. On our last day working together we took a picture. I bought a puzzle for the children and I to play with outside during the Italian lesson. Outside on the steps,...

This is Palazzo Selam, home to over 2,000 Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Sudanese refugees and migrants. Many reach Rome by traveling through from southern Italy. The inside features crumbling ceilings, exposed wires, and several buckets strewn about to collect the water from leaks. The volunteers of Cittadini del Mondo and I went here once a week to assist with medical and social services for the people we work with. It was difficult to communicate at times because of a lack of trained interpereters which is a problem I hope to solve the next time I go to Rome.

I was lucky to have gotten a direct flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Rome, Italy but a 9 hour flight is still a long time to be in the air. When the pilot announced that we would reach our destination in half an hour, I took a video from the window seat. I didn't actually have a window seat, so I unbuckled myself and stealthily snuck to the only open spot in the curtained off flight attendants' section. Only to be promptly asked to return to my assigned seat. That's how I met a nice elderly couple in the row across from me. They introduced themselves. The woman was Italian and the man was from the United States. They warned me of the pickpocketers and actually frightened me quite a bit. Getting off the plane, I couldn't hold my purse tight enough while fighting through the throngs of people with their luggage all going in seemingly the opposite direction that I was going. Every few minutes a taxi driver would ask me in a commanding voice "TAXI?!...