#geminacourt

When I woke up this morning I was hit by homesickness pangs. These feelings were unexpected. The last six weeks in Kenya have been an incredibly rewarding personal and professional adventure. They have flown by. While I do miss my close friends, family, and the Fletcher community, the summer has been good to me—thanks to the warm welcome by folks at Ushahidi, BRCK, and the iHub. But for whatever reason, this morning I experienced a serious bout of nostalgia.

While I am not exactly sure what caused this morning homesickness, I can point to a few telltale signs. Last night I received an email from a friend in Boston detailing a strike at my favorite supermarket chain, Market Basket. Now, I know what you’re thinking—it’s a grocery store, Owen. Who cares? But Market Basket is much, much more. It’s a cultural experience with unbelievably low prices and farm-fresh produce at a fraction of the cost of Whole Foods or even Trader Joe’s. With the ongoing drama around Arthur T. Demoulas’ beloved supermarket, I can’t help worrying that my local Market Basket just won’t be the same when I return to Cambridge. The news also brought insatiable cravings for some American staple foods simply unavailable or prohibitively expensive here in Kenya. A few come to mind: a gallon of Garelick Farms’ milk, Cheerios that aren’t $8/box, and Vermont sharp cheddar. Market Basket, your doors best be open when I return in August.

Today also marks two weeks before I jump on the red-eye to Heathrow and then Norway to meet up with my girlfriend. It’s been challenging being away from such a smart and beautiful woman. Our reunion will bring us through the Norwegian fjords and across the heart of Scandinavia. It will be an interesting juxtaposition to my summer in East Africa. We have already booked a cheap little cabin on the edge of a dramatic valley in Askøy. The trip will provide a necessary recharge before heading back to Fletcher in the fall. That said, I am going to miss $1 Tuskers, $2 githeri, and $3 cab rides in Nairobi. Norway, Sweden, and Finland are…gulp…expensive.

Last night around midnight I arrived at my new apartment in the Kilamani neighborhood of Nairobi. Despite habitually struggling with night arrivals (being an earlier riser and all around morning person), I still felt a twinge of excitement as my cab driver—Sammy—drove me from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Gemina Court. After a fitful sleep, it was off to the iHub and Ushahidi’s HQ, known colloquially around these parts as the Batcave. I was greeted with a sign that proclaimed “Danger: Ninjas and Pirates and Lasers and Shit.” And like that, I knew I had landed in the right place.

My colleagues, Jen and Meghan, took me under their wings and showed me the ropes. First stop: mobile phone. Jen whisked me off to Junction (a large mall close to the Ushahidi’s micro-campus in Kilimani) to perform what she described as a “Kenyan Baptism”. This included the acquisition of a Safaricom SIM card and the activation of my first M-PESA account. While I’m no mobile money virgin, having dabbled in the dark arts of Venmo and LevelUp, M-PESA is different. It’s an innovation developed in the developing world for the developing world. Anyone can use it to send and/or receive cash—from a restaurateur to a small fruit stand owner to a piki piki driver (the local term for a mototaxi). All take M-PESA. A bank account isn’t required and the sign-up process was a cakewalk. While not without its critics, M-PESA is ICT4D…to a T. I hope to explore a slew of similar technologies firsthand over the course of the summer.