Since January 2016 I have been working on a British Library-funded project to “protect” and “preserve” the “endangered” archive of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Kenya. For most of our team this has involved many hours and many days wearing face-masks and dust-coats, cleaning, sorting, and copying piles of old documents.
Read MoreGenitals
In June earlier this year, in Nyeri County, Kenya, there were two separate incidents where wives attempted to chop off their husbands’ penises. In the first incident, Anne Njeri attacked Daniel King'ori, her husband of seven years, after she found condoms in his pockets when he returned home from a late-night drinking session.
Read MoreThe Double-Edged Sword of Cultural Tourism
During my summer field research, I traveled to the Maasai Mara, the Kenyan half of the incredible Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, and the home of the Maasai ethnic group. For many of us, this probably evokes a sense of timelessness, and a society untouched by the ‘evils of modernity’. It is also one that many National Geographic documentaries and glossy tourist brochures continue to perpetuate. However, it is but a small sliver of the reality there, like looking at one pixel of an entire photograph; beautiful, perhaps, but incomplete.
Read MoreEdinburgh Fieldwork Prize Runner Up: Becoming a Development Insider
As a conscientious 1st year PhD student preparing for fieldwork, I diligently reviewed the relevant literature. Since I had chosen to effectively intern with two British NGOs while undertaking ‘participant observation’ of their work, the writings of David Mosse seemed particularly useful.
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