August 26th - I'm In The Kenyan 2009 Census ...

Last night, some of the volunteers headed out for a drink ... but about 30 minutes later, they were back ... apparently Kenya was conducting a census (every 10 years) and so all the restaurants/bars were shut as people needed to be at home when the census takers might visit. We chuckled when they got back but didn't think much more about it ...

Then the next morning, we discovered the school was closed ... due to the census, it had been declared a national holiday and so again, people were staying home waiting to be counted ... apparently the holiday had been declared two weeks ago but not communicated widely ... until yesterday when the President in a press conference asked people to stay home ... I think this qualifies as a 'This is Africa' situation ...

Later that evening, we had a knock on the door - the census takers had arrived ... what did we say? I'm not sure anybody really knew ... but we got started answering their questions. First, they needed to determine who was the head of the household – so, in their minds, that was whoever was the oldest ... in our case, it was the other 'older' volunteer (Barbara) who wasn't about to sign up for that role ... We eventually got that sorted and then they went round the room getting all our personal data – age, marital/family status, parents alive, education level, employment status, use of computer, internet, how often etc. etc ... it was interesting, both what information they were collecting as well as learning a little more about each other! The biggest surprise for all of us was the age of Barbara, who I thought was likely in her late 40s / early 50s, who turned out to be 60 – an inspiration really. The rest of the volunteers where either university aged or mid 20s with the staff in their late 20s / early 30s – there were a few jokes from the census guys about why the women were not married or had children by 25 ... then they came to me ... not married or children at 42 ... I got this look of abject pity, but then at least he had the kindness to say I didn't look that old :-)

I still can't believe that I am registered in the 2009 Kenyan census ...