Happier Days in Eldoret

OK, yesterday I posted on the violence in Eldoret and other parts of Kenya, but things were actually very pleasant when I was there in November. We had run a Global Module with a professor by the name of Naomi Shitemi a couple years ago and I finally had the opportunity to actually travel to Moi University to have more substantial discussions about expanding their participation. Unfortunatey, Naomi was out of town and left me in the competent hands of Gilbert Nduru who heads up the Geography Department. Ironically, as soon as the semester was over Gilbert was heading out of the country to spend a semester teaching at Indiana University in my home state of Indiana (and he actually called me out of the blue a few weeks ago from IU). Moi University itself is located about an hour's drive outside of Eldoret - it would probably be a shorter drive except the roads are spectacularly bad. That didn't stop Gilbert from driving like a mad man, and it took some real muscles to force the car around some amazing potholes. It didn't help that many of the local villages along the way had decided to create their own unofficial speed bumps made out of packed earth. The countryside was pretty, and looked like a cross between Vermont and Indiana - Eldoret is big cheese country.

Moi had even more technological limitations than Kenyatta, and in some ways it was worse because the fiber optic line had not reached Eldoret (it was being laid at Kenyatta when I was there). Gilbert was using online for his laptop through his cell phone. It brought home once again the potential for running GMs through m-Learning - something else to explore. The meetings went well, and I talked to the Dean of Arts & Sciences, several faculty members, and hundreds of students. Even more so than with Kenyatta, this is a case where this visit is more developmental - and I think the potential is definitely here, although certainly tracking down some grant-funding to help with their technological needs is going to have to be a necessity. Gilbert did manage to put together a Geography lab with pretty good Internet access, so I think we can eventually start by running GMs housed in Geography classes.

I had one of those amazing moments that you can't get out of your mind when driving back to Eldoret from Moi late one afternoon. The sky was spectacular with huge, boiling clouds (which erupted later) - I was staring out the window at the scenery and the occasional villages, Gilbert was grinding around potholes, and Eunice, who heads up Philosophy & Religion, was sitting in the back quiety humming along to a gospel song on a tape. Very peaceful.

I've included some pictures. You have a distant shot of the main administrative building, one of Gilbert in front of their nice library, the main road through campus, and one of the restaurants on campus (I had the bananas).