The Home visits

Written by: Amy Rawlinson & Harrison Blizzard-Nutrition Team 2011

This week we visited four women’s homes as training for our food security interviews that will take place in July. The homes were located in two communities, Ruuju and Muchui, which are approximately one hour apart. We asked the women questions pertaining to their gardens, crops, and food. The first day we started at Muchui which has suffered from two consecutive droughts. These first two visits at Muchui were unique in that they were our first interactions with the women of this area and also it was our first time asking these women to recall upon their hardships. We started by listing the foods and beverages that the women consumed the previous day. While we had experience doing these interviews through our university course work it was difficult because we were unfamiliar with some of the foods (for example the food Changa, which is a dish composed of pounded maize and beans), beverages (a soy drink, where they use crushed soy beans and hot water instead of tea), and meals that the women ate and drank but also we were collecting this information through a translator. As we transitioned into asking the women our questions on their food security it was apparent that the women have been experiencing tough times with their food sources, however it was uplifting to see the resilience and positive attitudes that the women had towards any future successes. The opportunity to measure heights and weights of children under 5 years of age was new to us and proved to be a challenge as they chose not to cooperate but with time, patience, and persistence we were able to collect the data.
Two days later we travelled to Ruuju to complete the same training. The area of Ruuju is much more lush and has received more rain than Muchui; knowing this we assumed that the questions asked would reflect a much more positive feedback on the women’s food security, however, this was not the case. The Women of Ruuju are in fact experiencing similar problems with their food sources as the women of Muchui. They are equally, however, as hard working and hopeful of good crop yields and a better season to come. Our experience preforming the questions were better this time as we had more practice with asking the questions. Also, our communication through the translator was much more free flowing. The young children were still uncooperative with us, but with help from the mothers and other children they allowed us to take their measurements.
At the end of each interview we presented a bottle of (fortified) Golden Fry Oil to the women as a token of our appreciation of their time, this was a gift which they were very pleased to receive and helped to lift the somber atmosphere that generally followed our food security questions.
These four interviews allowed us to be able to reflect on our performances at these, which will help us to successfully attain the needed information for the 40 more interviews that we will be completing in the near future. We are looking forward to revisiting these communities and women throughout our stay in Kenya. We are hopeful that the information we gather will help to improve the quality of life for these families.