Today we interviewed key informants to further aid in the development of our questionnaires. We have done a literature review to collect background information on our respective topics but today was our chance to interview individuals working first hand in the field with the issues we will be exploring. Among the informants were an environmental worker, public health clinic workers and riders that go out into the community, a Maasi midwife, an herbalist and others. It was great to get to talk to these individuals to confirm what we have heard or maybe assumed and also to learn more about the current situations.

We learned that the rule for crop development around a water source is a boundary area that is the width of the stream; for example if the stream is 10 feet wide, crops can be formed 10 feet away from the streams edge. I spent about one hour talking to an environmental worker named James who talked a lot about agricultural practices. He said that the crops are normally formed perpendicular to the streams, which are used for drinking water, so that runoff from the crops containing pesticides and fertilizers runs directly into the water source. He also said it is not uncommon for people to mix their pesticide treatments in a plastic jug, rinse the jug out once, and then fill it with water for drinking. I asked James if there was any groundwater available in the area and if any of the villages had tried using groundwater as a drinking source, and he wasn’t sure. He said that the option hasn’t been researched because there was still water available on the surface. Our main assumption was confirmed today by a number of sources and that is that people use the same water for drinking as they do for bathing and washing of dishes and laundry. The lack of latrines also results in human waste right along the stream banks that gets washed into the water during floods from the rainy season.

We asked a lot of the same questions to different key informants and received a lot of conflicting answers; the results of our survey should be very interesting and we can finally set some of these issues straight! The first draft of our questionnaire is due on Friday and the second draft is due Sunday night. We will do a trial run of our survey on Monday surveying a smaller ranch before making final adjustments. We’ve been busy, but there are only about 4 weeks left to complete the whole project!

Tomorrow we will take a day off from academics and volunteer with the Kimana Water Project building fences and pouring cement to protect spring areas, should be a lot of fun!