Mpala-tics

This past Monday there was a demonstration on Mpala by the workers because of their issues with the administration. There is a certain member of the administration that creates problems not only with the Kenyan staff, but also with researchers creating difficulties with studies. Grievances include things like letting the sewage in the village overflow causing sicknesses, hiring only family members, and forging research documents, and laundering money from the centre. This issue has been going on since the last time I was here in 2014. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the situation, but I feel I have a firm enough grasp to explain. Now that there is a new director at Mpala, the village council had sent him a formal letter with over 20 grievances and notifying their concern with the situation and their plans to strike if he continued to work at Mpala. 




The board of trustees were all here last week along with the problem person. The staff got news that said person was here and as they wrote, went on strike. What a better time to have a demonstration than when the people filling the pockets of Mpala are here? 




This is where I get angry.




 Let me start off by saying all the researchers, students and techs were 100% safe during the protesting. These are the men that save our lives in the field every day, if anything we supported them. Our own field guides even called and messaged us telling us not to worry that they had no problems with us and they love us. 




When the protesting started, we were all at lunch, the director and a trustee, I’ll call ‘A’ (who had only ever been in Kenya TWICE for a total of 3 weeks) shuttled all the students, techs, and even researchers into the library. After about 10 minutes of being confused and angry we were crammed into a small space, A came in announcing ‘So who wants to know what’s going on?’. Obviously everyone. She then went on to explain that the administration was trying to put into practice ‘normal procedures for any normal institution’ such as not being allowed to hire your relatives and certain payroll organizations that the Kenyan staff ‘didn’t understand or weren’t used to’ so they got angry. This explanation is complete bullshit. The reasons for striking were the exact opposite than the trustee’s reasons.




The next morning, after fuming for the rest of the evening, A approached me at breakfast with ‘Are you ready to go?’. To which I responded something like ‘Would you like to tell me where I am going and why?” Apparently overnight the staff had gotten too scary for the trustees although they assured us that we were safe. Hindsight is 20/20 though and after our group had packed up and were forced to evacuate, we realized we were just being used as a pawn in the trustee’s negotiating ploy. Look at your livelihoods driving away because of your opinions is basically the message the admin were sending. As she was taking photos of our ‘safari’ our car was fuming and decided to break the caravan and go back into town to stay with our friend instead of being chaperoned by bigots with big pockets. 




We were able to come back the following morning, and the staff were so excited to see us back and none of them were informed that the trustees forces us to leave. Well, none of them except our field guides who we communicated with the whole time. Our guys even told us that the kitchen staff were still planning on working that day so we would all be taken care of. Hm. 




As wonderful as this place is, there are obviously still issues. Issues that can be fixed if people just listen, if people just spent some time with the people in the country they work in, we would all be understood a little better. Easier said than done, huh. 


When we returned we found out that the problem person was no longer to be at Mpala, but had to finish some work for the centre. There are still a ton of issues that need to be solved, and hopefully are solved all at once so this doesn’t become an even more drawn out process. For now, all of the staff are happy to have us back and are happy with what steps have occurred.