Thanks Jo'burg!

Goodbye to Jo'burg....

Well I’m back to OR Tambo International Airport, sitting in Mugg and Bean and wondering whether three coffees before 8 am is perhaps a tiny bit excessive…  It is a bit sad to be leaving Jo’burg.  I’ve only just worked out how to order coffee! (Filter every time, except if it is a really good café, then it’s a cappuccino.  Never a latte – this has the same amount of coffee as a cappuccino but twice the milk and ends up like something from Starbucks.  Soy milk?  Only in Cape Town.)

Destination: Nairobi, Kenya.  There I will spend the next 6 weeks continuing my research and other adventures!  I chose Kenya as the second case study country (in addition to South Africa) for my PhD, intending to investigate how the expanded African refugee definition is applied there.  Then two weeks ago, I discovered it is not applied there at all.  This is because UNHCR, rather than the government, conducts refugee status determination in Kenya.  And they have their own ‘extended refugee definition’, which is actually quite different to the one in the African Refugee Convention.  A PhD student’s worst nightmare, having to revise the research plan half way through!

I debated changing my plans and heading to Tanzania, or Uganda, instead.  But in the end I am sticking with Kenya.  As it happens, UNHCR is currently in the process of handing over refugee status determination to the Kenyan government, after which refugee status determination will be conducted according to the African refugee definition, which Kenya has incorporated in its domestic Refugees Act. As part of the handover process, UNHCR is currently providing training to government officials in refugee law and status determination.  My hope is that, though the African refugee definition is not yet being applied, the handover process will yield interesting insight and discussion into both UNHCR’s and the government’s understanding of the definition’s scope.  Plus, I have already made a few good contacts in Kenya, and it would be a shame to let them go to waste!

In fact, one of those contacts, a lecturer in refugee law at the University of Nairobi, has invited me to speak to his Masters class this evening on the topic of ‘Research Methods and Designing a Research Question’.  The timing could be better – I’ve been up since 5 am and will only have the 3 hour flight in which to plan my presentation.  But I suppose you have to seize the opportunity when it arises, not wait for when it’s convenient!  Plus, being forced to make my way to the university on my first night is a sure fire way to ensure that I don’t spend the first three days sitting in my room, too afraid to leave!

Though I have been in South Africa for almost 2 months, it’s now that I feel I am really going to Africa.  Perhaps it’s because even Lonely Planet says that when you picture an image of Africa, that image is probably Kenya.  Or maybe it’s because in all of my years of dreaming of going to Africa, it was always the East African countries – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania – that I dreamed of.  In any event, it’s ciao for now to Jo’burg (though I will be back for a few days at the end of next month) and hello Kenya!

... and hello Nairobi!