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Abstract
This paper reflects on the making of a collaborative, ethnographic life story on/with a leading Kenyan scientist, Davy Kiprotich Koech. A prominent and controversial international scholar in immunology and molecular medicine, Koech, born in 1951, came of age in postcolonial Kenya, an era characterized by optimism and possibilities as the nation gained independence from British rule in 1963. Internationally educated in medicine and science, he emerged as part of a new intellectual elite in postcolonial Kenya. He was a founding member of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in 1979, the national state agency responsible for medical research, and has won innumerable prizes and awards for professional and scientific achievements over the past 40 years, but a closer examination of the personal and political raises questions about the ethics of ‘global’ science, postcolonial development in East Africa, and HIV medicine in Kenya. What might his own personal story of scientific accomplishments, and controversies, tell us more generally about African science, institutional racisms, and postcolonial state making? This paper documents the methodological dilemmas in initiating a collaborative life story project with an elusive, elite scientist, including the challenge of co-narrating a life story that is entangled with political and scientific controversies.
Cet article se penche sur la création d’un récit de vie ethnographique collaboratif sur/avec un scientifique kenyan notable, Davy Koech Kiprotich. Koech, un savant international controversé et de premier plan dans l'immunologie et la médecine moléculaire, est né en 1951 et a grandi dans le Kenya postcolonial, durant une époque caractérisée par l'optimisme et les possibilités alors que la nation obtenait son indépendance de la domination britannique en 1963. Formé à l'étranger dans la médecine et la science, il a émergé au sein d'une nouvelle élite intellectuelle dans le Kenya postcolonial. Il a été membre fondateur de l'Institut Kenyan de Recherche Médicale (Kenya Medical Research Institute – KEMRI) en 1979, l'agence nationale d'État responsable pour la recherche médicale, et a remporté de nombreux prix et récompenses pour des réalisations professionnelles et scientifiques au cours des 40 dernières années ; mais un examen plus approfondi du personnel et du politique soulève des questions sur l'éthique de la science «globale», les développements postcoloniaux en Afrique orientale, et la médecine du VIH au Kenya. Que pourrait sa propre histoire personnelle de réalisations scientifiques et de controverses nous révéler plus généralement sur la science africaine, les racismes institutionnels, et la construction de l’Etat postcolonial? Cet article décrit les dilemmes méthodologiques dans le lancement d'un projet de récit de vie en collaboration avec un scientifique d'élite insaisissable, y compris le défi de co-raconter un récit de vie qui est mêlé à des controverses politiques et scientifiques.
Acknowledgements
Such a project as this demands a brave and reflective interlocutor and so I am exceptionally grateful to Dr Koech for sharing his time and stories with me, and his willingness to share them publicly. This I hope is only the first in a series of papers that will attempt to capture the spirit of him through the stories he tells. I would also like to thank Megan Styles for recommending The Risks of Knowledge which proved to be very helpful, Rebecca Peters and Claire Wendland for their invitation to the AAA session on Studying Up in Africa, Mark Tyndall who unintentionally introduced me to Koech, as well as Isaac Okero, Ken Little, Dara Culhane, Stacy Leigh Pigg, Walter Obiero, and Kirsten Bell for help in shaping the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. As part of our agreement, Davy Koech was given an opportunity prior to peer review to read and comment on this paper for publication. This is the first in a series of papers that explore the various controversies of his life.
2. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for thoughts on this.
3. My persistence in searching for a story that no one seemed to want to tell does demand a note on the ethics of my questioning, and it could certainly be read as yet another colonial rendering of the lives of Africans. Although Koech was willing to engage in this project, as noted here, his specific engagement with the project and his ethnographic narrative meant that his goal and aspirations largely determined the life story. He decided what he wanted to share, and what he did not. Yet, clearly this is not the sort of paper that Koech would have identified as being essential to write. As an anthropologist, I continue to set a particular trajectory for the ways in which our encounter and his stories are taken up. So while he may very well want his story told, my particular rendering of it may have been unexpected.
4. In fact, he spoke so often of such issues in the first couple of weeks together that I began to wonder if it an avoidance strategy (a way of talking to me without sharing anything personal) or if he simply mistook me for a different type of anthropologist (not an anthropologist interested in histories of science and biomedicine, but perhaps one interested in kinship and ‘tradition’).
5. This does appear to be a distinctly US CDC problem and begs the question why other agencies like the Wellcome Trust or the US Army Research Unit, both with large medical research investments in Kenya, do not have the same fiscal management problems, nor do they regularly accuse the Kenyans of corruption.
6. I explore these two cases in depth in a forthcoming manuscript.
7. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, ‘Moi Launches Anti-AIDS Drug’, JPRS Report: Epidemiology, AIDS, August 1990.
8. Forgetting, Fabian (Citation2007) reminds us, can be a cognitive, moral, or political act.
9. I owe thanks to Isaac Okero for pointing this out to me.
10. As I note elsewhere, the story is connected in part to a new constitution and a reformed judicial system.
11. And perhaps the challenges of contemporary scientific collaborations in East Africa as demonstrated by the case of ‘the KEMRI 6’, a group of Kenyan scientists who attempted to sue the Wellcome Trust Research Program in Kilifi for racial discrimination and human rights violations. See Denielle Elliott, ‘KEMRI 6 and the Politics of “Capacity” in Research Collaborations’, paper presented at the Science in the Developing World workshop, University of Waterloo, 18 September 2015.