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Strategy

It’s been FULL-ON at work since returning from the bliss of my Christmas travels. But I’ve never been one to complain about a little pressure, so I’ve really enjoyed getting my teeth into collating my research and preparing the first draft of my access to justice strategy.

 The bare idea I’m developing is to write a practitioner’s guide to act as a road map for lawyers in FIDA to follow if they are seeking to engage with an informal justice system in Kenya. It’s programmatic in design, so I’m learning a huge amount about the theory of engagement as well as the practicalities of funding, development-partnerships, issue analysis and evaluation techniques.

The guide will, I hope, support strategic access-to-justice planning for rural women, evidence FIDA’s work for the purposes of securing donor-funding and provide a universal information source for developing FIDA’s informal justice system strategy. The first draft of the guide is with the FIDA lawyers now and I anxiously await the initial feedback……

Fever-pitch

Whatever feverish devil of an infection managed to penetrate my system over the weekend, decided to unleash the mother of all battles on my immune system. I spent most of Saturday night and Sunday pretty damn ill wondering (1) at what point my myriad symptoms would turn into malaria, and (2) whether or not me re-reading the ‘these are the symptoms of malaria’ handout the travel nurse in Bristol threw at me in October would increase or decrease my chances of survival.

Anyway, after waking up the ‘Mama’ owner of my guest house in the middle of the night on Saturday, pale, dehydrated, fever-struck and in desperate need of water, I survived…..DRAMA over! But it was a rough few days. I’m fighting fit again now.

Corruption on the plane

Well, not literally, but it makes an interesting title! Just thought I had to write about my experience sitting next to some guy on the flight from Mombasa to Nairobi last week. It was a dreadful flight: black thunderclouds, lightning outside the plane, nose-diving to exit turbulence etc, one of those! I was LUCKY enough to find myself sat next to an aeronautical engineer who was able, with dead-pan face, both to reassure me as to the plane’s ‘excellent’ safety record and to make me patently aware of his overwhelming fear of night-flights and turbulence. So that settled me right in for the hour-long torture…..I mean, flight.

Anyway, we started talking to assuage his growing fear and to take my mind OFF his growing fears. Topics moved on to the currently proposed constitution in Kenya (as it often does) and we had a really interesting talk about the corruption in the country and the ways in which a new constitutional system could combat this. He then found out about my job and we started chatting about the law. He had recently been charged with drink-driving and was due to attend court in February. If he did, he was going to lose his licence. But he reassured me as bold as brass that he wasn’t worried cos’ a cash payment to the Judge through his lawyer would make sure that his hearing date was adjourned….

Game meat

When I went to Carnivores restaurant in Nairobi I was hoping to try zebra. But it’s off the menu as it’s recently been categorized as a game meat and its consumption has now been banned. Shame I missed the train rides that Margaret at work used to enjoy when she was a child. She told me that when the train hit a zebra or even an elephant on the tracks, it would stop, the animal would be expertly butchered and the meat distributed between the passengers. Simple. Apparently, zebra’s really tasty and nothing at all like chicken!