Nigel’s diary entry from Nairobi, Kenya – 17 December 2006
 
The Field part of the Mission is complete.  The field part of the mission has now been completed. Darren and Chris hitched a ride by UN aircraft from Garissa back to Nairobi on Thursday while Nigel, Emerson and Jonny drove the faithful Toyota back to the city on Saturday morning.

Leaving Garissa.  After nearly two weeks in Garissa we can’t really say we will miss the place. The heat and flies alone make it hard to love. In most respects it didn’t really seem like being in Kenya as it is more like being in Somalia.  Many people live nomadically, herding their goats and camels between water sources. Obviously they don’t need to go far at the moment. But difficult as the floods have been for people, and however green the landscape at the moment – vividly so – the more normal conditions of chronic drought will prevail again before very long.  The harshness of life in eastern Kenya is hard to contemplate.

Back in Nairobi.  Back up in Nairobi, altitude 1,800 metres, the weather is like an English summer but it got quite cool out last night which was a bit of a shock to the system. We saw Jonny off to the airport then met up with Emma Mumford, one of the original MapAction team.  She is in Kenya for 4 months with Save the Children working on scenario planning for response to a possible (likely?) massive influx of refugees across into north and east Kenya, fleeing the deteriorating situation in Somalia. The refugee numbers being talked about are between 200,000 and a million: this will of course place massive pressure on the Kenyan government and, more so, on the international agencies and NGOs who are already looking after 160,000 people in the Dadaab camps.

The final Capacity-Building task.  We are planning a quiet day today, Sunday, catching up with emails and visiting the National Operations Centre (NOC) to see how the staff are getting on with their new windows onto the internet. On Monday we need to get to work on preparing a ‘blue print’ for information management procedures for the NOC, as part of our capacity-building work with them. It represents the final task of our mission before we fly home on Wednesday evening.