Chief's Appreciation Day 2007

The group I work with here in Kenya works closely with the local Chiefs to gain approval to work on projects in this region. Once a year they invite these chiefs to the main research campus for a visit. This visit includes tours of the campus and most specifically the state of the art labs as well as an overview of our work in the region, followed by a question and answer period. Last Friday nearly 200 chiefs and assistant chiefs from 5 different districts arrived on campus for this special day.

I had volunteered to help out, mostly out of curiosity of who these chiefs were since they wield a great deal of power over our ability to do research in their communities. At first, early in the week I was told they would be fine and they had everything under-control. I was having a hard time imagining that everything was really under-control, even if this had not been Kenya I would have been surprised that there wouldn't have been a need for some extra hand on the day of the event. I have now been in Kenya long enough to know that things rarely go as smoothly as planned even if you have an expert planner in charge. Imagine for a minute having to plan the security entry, the tour schedule, the seating arrangements, talking points for the director, lunch for 200, and transportation reimbursement for the chiefs; all this in less then a week. This rivals most wedding planning except in this case more so then in most weddings, if you upset your guest it could actually have some long term consequences on the work and research that we can do. So to say that there was a certain about of stress around the office last week would be putting it mildly.

The day of the event arrived. I had been told that I would be helping out starting around 1:30 in the afternoon to direct people for the group pictures. At 11 I was called down to help and didn’t finish my duties until 3 pm. At which time I was tired and hot, but pleased that I had been able to help out during the event and also see just who these chiefs were. The chiefs themselves are a diverse group, young and old, wearing civilian clothes and wearing military like uniforms, and some very attentive and others who fell asleep during the presentations. I was surprised to see about 10 women in the group of chiefs, I have seen very few Kenyan women in positions of authority during my time here so it was a pleasant surprise.

I would say that over all the day went fairly well, I think that as a whole the chiefs left having gained a better understanding of the work that my group does and also having had some of their questions answered. The question and answer period of the afternoon was the post fascinating to me as some questions were very technical and showed a certain amount of understanding of complex health issues while the others were very very basic. As with any event there are always a few problems, ours came during the lunch service. We didn’t exactly run out of food but we ran out of certain classic Kenyan starches that are served with nearly every meal. There wasn’t enough people helping to serve so I ended up helping serve drinks while my roommate were in the food service line, this included my vegetarian roommate somehow getting assigned to serve the chicken.

Culturally, there were some moments were I was able to see a clear difference between how such an event would have occurred in the US versus here in Kenya. This is not the case of everyone I have seen helping out at events but in general I would say that in the US I have seen individuals much more proactive and thinking ahead to the next steps of the event then some of my Kenyan counterparts were on Friday. The other big difference I saw was after the meal. Lunch was served on metal plates with metal spoon, and drinks were in glass bottle. After the meal the majority of the participates just left their plates on the ground wherever they had sat not bothering to bring them forward to our main serving area and putting them on the table set out for just such a purpose. This may have been because it was not specially announced to do so but I think it is also what people are more use to doing at such an event. Then again on our part we made one big cultural faux-paux, we forget to set-up a hand washing station for before and after the meal. In Kenyan culture it is very important and at times almost a ritual to wash your hands before and after a meal, this is particularly true when you are eating with your hands which wasn’t the case for our event. Regardless, I was asked by several chiefs were they could wash their hands which indicates to me it is something that we should have thought of. I am sure there were probably other little mistakes that we made along the way but really over all I thought the day was a pretty good success and that we learned a few things to make the event better next year. As for me I learned a little bit more about this village chief culture that is so important in the work that my organization does here in Kenya.