What am I doing here?

Here is a little entry I prepared earlier (last night) but am only publishing now…

I am currently sitting at Nairobi airport and it’s 2am local time. I am about to board a flight to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia where I will be spending the next week or so working.

So why am I in Africa some of you may be wondering? Well here is the lowdown for those of you that care. I am working for an outfit called the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) which is based out of Nairobi and Addis. I will be working in the Vietnamese office, essentially facilitating more effective and efficient communications practices for the institutes Asian operations which are grossly underrepresented/non-existent. The institute is primarily focused on, you guessed it – livestock research. This ranges from scientific biotechnological studies into livestock health/disesases and feeds, to markets based work such as how smallholders of livestock can become more efficient in their practices and become more participatory in the emerging meat markets of the developing world. My work as I said, will be primarily focused on communications, both internally within ILRI and externally to program partners and perhaps the main stakeholders – farmers, with a particular focus on their Asian work, which includes India, China, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

As I said before, the institute is headquartered in Africa, and is quite Africa-centric, hence why I am here i.e. to basically meet the head of my div – knowledge management – and also to meet some counterparts from here that I will be working in conjunction with and to receive some training etc..

Now my time in Kenya hasn’t really allowed me to explore real Africa whatsoever as I’ve been kooked up in the ILRI campus here (basically a massive gated compound with laboratories, offices, guest hostels, seminar rooms etc), however I hope to get a greater feel for ‘Africa’ when I am in Addis which I heard is much safer then Nairobi.

Hopefully I will be back sometime next year so I can really do some safari-ing and whatnot in greater Kenya.

Anyways, that is it. I am going to go start the latest book in Game of Thrones now and pass out. I’ve been sick with a lame ass fever all week. Baaaah.

My workstation in Nairobi where I was getting my Flipcam creep on

 

Leave a comment