With the help of the Joe S. Mundy Global Learning Experience Endowment Fund, graduate student Jamie M. Fischer traveled to Kenya for one week in October, 2009. Jamie is currently a graduate student researcher in the Transportation Program at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Tech. She was originally attracted to Kenya in order to visit ongoing humanitarian development projects supported by a campus organization at Georgia Tech; the Student Movement for Real Change (SMRC), for which she serves as Vice President. The decision of when to go came suddenly when she learned about the country's hosting of a landmark event: the 8th International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH). This is the first conference of its kind to be held in Africa, and in any developing nation. It covered a wide range of themes related to Urban Health, including "infrastructure systems and urban health", which relates directly to Jamie's research.
A member of the Baha'i Faith, Jamie took some time to visit the National Baha'i Center of Kenya, and to celebrate a holy day with the Baha'is of Nairobi during her stay. She also spent a day with friends in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between connecting flights on her way home. Coming home, Jamie can only describe her journey as "amazing and intense". And, showing the transportation engineer in her, she comments that "something HAS to be done about Nairobi's air quality and congestion".
Potatoes or Pumpkin? Jamie helps with the weekly distribution of donated food at an IDP camp near Mai Mahiu, Kenya
She was profoundly affected by the state of need and urgency that was conveyed by the conference proceedings and by her own observations. While more than half of the world's population is now living in cities, the most staggering growth is actually in slums. The world's urban poor are living without access to basic sanitation or waste management infrastructure, without education and without work. One of the largest of these slums in in Nairobi, and while Jamie only passed it on a city bus as she commuted from her homestay to the conference, she heard stomach-turning stories from volunteers coordinating with SMRC and from conference delegates.
On the other hand, Jamie returned to Atlanta with a sense of hope and responsibility. Many of the conference presentations told of success stories from community-based education and infrastructure interventions. Also inspiring were the people displaced by Kenya's 2007 post-election violence (internally displaced persons, or IDPs). At the collection of camps that Jamie visited with SMRC contacts, the people are hopeful about growing a maize mill economy and building a school, despite living in tents made of found wood and rice bags.
Although it was only a week's trip, it has been somewhat difficult returning to "business as usual" in Atlanta. Jamie is working to intergrate what she learned and her new sense of responsibility into her research at GA Tech. For her first trip to Africa, and in fact her first international trip as an adult, Jamie estimates that this will form just the beginning of many years of invested interest and work with the developing world. She is very grateful to the Mundy Endowment for providing the means and she is eager to share her learning and experience in the way of research contribution at the university.
