Jochen Ott

Final report on studying physics in Kenya

December 2006

When I decided to spend a year in Kenya as an exchange student, I did not know what was waiting for me there. I did not expect anything specific apart from that I imagined that it would be a whole lot different from my life in Germany.

Looking back to the almost ten months that I stayed in Kenya, I can say it was a worthwhile experience that has me taught a different point of view in many aspects of life: Among some other things, I now know and value the fact that life in Germany is of higher overall quality than in Kenya. That is not surprising, of course, but having viewed with my own eyes at least some aspects of the lifes people live is different from just knowing it by intellectual reasoning.

University courses

The way of learning at the university was different from what I was used to: While in Germany most of the process of comprehension takes place while doing excercises, which are therefore considered to be very important. In contrast, in Kenya, the emphasis is on the lectures itself and there are no additional hours for excercises. As I have learned by others, this is not specific to the system in Kenya but rather the other way round as German universities seem to be the exception.

Most of the courses I attended were fourth-year-courses. Some of the lectures offered — such as quantum mechanics II or eletrodynamics — I already had had in Germany before. Furthermore, as an exchange student who did not want to graduate with a bachelor, I had the choice which lectures to attend.

Some of the courses I found easier to follow than others, as there were major differences in how the professors structured and the way they held their lectures. So I chose the ones I learned most from.

Project

Together with two students, I worked on a project with the goal to build a temperature regulation circuit with a microcontroller, a temperature sensor, a electrical heater, a display and a keyboard for user interfacing and some additional electronics. The microcontroller was pretty new, so there was not much experience using that device in the department.

As I already had some programming experiences, my part was mainly writing the software for the microcontroller. But I also helped the other students with their parts. As usual, the biggest part of the project was done in the last two weeks and not during the semester. Despite this lack of time, the project was a success in the end (i.e. the circuit worked), but there is still a potential for improvements and further projects. With that in mind, I tried to document the software I have written very thouroughly in my research project report. It could also help students with other projects that make use of the microcontroller.

People

Naturally, people in Kenya have typically a life quite different from one in Germany. This different way of life also expresses itself in different views and opinions. On the other hand, I was impressed how small that difference was (at least in Nairobi). Some of that I already wrote in my report on first impressions.

I had also the chance to visit a friend who comes from a rural part of Kenya and showed me how his family lives there, earning their money by selling food they grow (if there is enough to sell at all). There, the differences I expected when I came to Kenya, were much more obvious: the dependence on the rainy season for growing the plants, no power but from some batteries (for radio and some torches only), no telephone, no clocks. Hardly any tools I am used to in my everyday life. From the house, you could see in the valley where also the road was which the matatus used to drive to Nairobi. To catch one, you had to wait until a matatu shows up on that road and start running to the road immidiately to get it. Life there was not easy for them though they did not complain about their destiny. But just small changes on which they had no influence on, like the weather or the fuel price, could mean a very hard time for them. In this "plainness" of life, reduced to the very basic things (and that it was to me, definitely), my friend showed me a place in the valley and told me that while they had a very advanced living, there, they would still live like 50 or 100 years ago.

Paul's home

People seem somehow more willing to accept the situation they are in, even if it is very difficult (well, what other option have they got?). On the other hand, they seem desperate at the same time, looking for a chance to get another life.

Travelling

Kenya is also a great country to travel: There are very nice National Reserves to watch wild animals but also many other worthwhile places to go like Mombasa, Lamu and other cities at the coast. But there are totally different things to do as well like climbing Mount Kenya.

We (the exchange students) travelled a lot together, sometimes with other people we knew. In most cases, these were other Germans or people from other countries working at NGOs. Sometimes I wish I would have travelled more with Kenyans but the students often were not interested in the trips we made or did not have the time or money to join us.

Two highlights were surely the two climbings of Mount Kenya. The frist time in December. We joined a group organized by George who worked in the Alliance Francaise (the French cultural institute in Nairobi). We joined a larger group and were almost 20 people in the end, an interesting group of people, with not many foreigners. The second time was in March, when we went on our own on a nine day tour which was an extraordinary experience of a totally different nature as the everyday life in Nairobi (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Together with my family, who came to visit me over Christmas and New Year's Eve, we made a safari to Maasai Mara and Lake Nakuru. The landscape and the animals we saw were really impressive and very much different from what one can see in Europe.

Maasai Mara