Isaac in Kenya

Home Again

2010-04-04T02:48:00.001+02:00

Isaac is no longer in Kenya; he is back to Jefferson City, in the middle of Missouri, in the middle of the US of A.
I thoroughly enjoyed my journey and I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog.
My twenty-five hour trip home was uneventful, except that, due to security, I would have missed my flight out of Dulles had my plane not been delayed two hours.
Now the question is, should I make an "Isaac not in Kenya" blog?

The Swiss Alps, seen from the plane as I was departing Zurich.

Lake Nakuru

2010-03-15T19:52:00.001+02:00

I went to Lake Nakuru National Park yesterday and saw all manner of interesting beasts.

This is the first animal we saw: a hyena chillin' in some mud...

There were lots of flamingos.

And even more zebras...

We saw around fifteen white rhinos...

...And one black rhino, very far away.

These, the cape buffalo, are very dangerous;

they are one of the few animals that will attack without provocation.

Cooling off in some muck.

We saw two male lions...

...but they just lay there and didn't do anything interesting.

A waterbuck.

Impalas.

One of those crazy lizards I tried to photograph in Mwanza. It's colors change with the temperature, and it was cooler here than in Mwanza so it's colors are not nearly as brilliant.

A young giraffe eating the leaves of an acacia tree.

I can not know how they do it; acacias have 3-4 inch poison thorns,

so if you even get pricked, it hurts for weeks.

There was one giraffe that was much more darkly colored than any of the others.

A baby baboon riding it's mother.

There were a couple baby baboons battling in a tree, it was hilarious...

A lull in the fighting...

A colobus monkey.

Sand Dams

2010-03-11T16:13:00.001+02:00

Sand dams are an incredibly good idea...

A couple people from EMU are staying with Wes and Lois (an elderly EMM couple that hosts the meals at the guest house) and they were going to Kola so I went with them.

We left at 0700 in hopes of beating the Nairobi traffic. We failed. Wes knew a back way which would not have so much traffic; it didn't, but Wes did not know it as well as he thought and got disoriented (which is quite easy when there are practically no signs). With my limited knowledge of the area I was able to direct him to a road from which we could return to a main road, but then at an intersection Wes thought he knew a better way to get where we wanted to go and so my suggestions were not taken. Unfortunately, we again found ourselves on a road on which we did not want to be and despite my suggestions that turning around may be a good idea, the driver drove bravely on. We sat in traffic for another hour and finally found our way back to the main road. We then drove in circles for half an hour, since the navigator did not understand the directions we had been given and I, after having been ignored once more, had decided that there was no point in my offering assistance.

Finally, after driving into and out of the airport parking and making four wrong turns, we finally got back on the correct road and proceeded on our way.

We were going to visit Jacob and Alvera Stern, a couple from MCC who are helping with a sand dam project. They work with Utooni Development Organisation (UDO) which finds communities that have formed self-help groups which want to build a sand dam. UDO provides the cement, reinforcing bars, consultation, etcetera, and the self help group provides the labor, sand, stone, and water (which sometimes has to be carried for miles). The dam then represents significant investment of time and labor so the community will take responsibility for maintaining it.

The location of the dams is very specific; they must be built in a sandy, seasonal riverbed that has a rock bottom. They are built in series, since one dam captures only about 2% of the river's water. After a dam is built it fills with sand, and the sand captures water, while silt flows over the sand. Behind the dam is usually around 40% water and 60% sand, and sand prevents surface evaporation, which can be up to 70 inches per year. The sand prevents mosquitoes from breeding, since there is no water on the surface. It also filters the water and greatly decreases the presence of parasites and disease.

The water that flows in the river.

The water coming out of the dam, after being filtered through the sand.

To retrieve the water, a pipe can be put at the base of the dam, (as has been done in the picture above) or people can simply dig scoop-holes in the sand behind the dam.

Jacob Stern loves to talk and knows everything about what he does, so I learned lots of stuff about the sand dam projects; as we walked up the stream for several hours, seeing total of five dams, Jacob kept up a running commentary, telling us more than I thought there was to know on the subject.

We also went to see the first sand dam built in the area: built by UDO's founder. It has been extended six times and is now over twenty feet tall.

The sand trapped above a dam.

The dams that we went to see are all made by one self-help group. It is the most active group in the area; they have built thirteen dams in two years. The group has 27 members but when they start a dam, 150 people show up and they can finish a dam in three days.

Another project they encourage is terracing. The terraces slow down the water: decreasing runoff.

Digging the terraces is backbreaking work but they dramatically increase crop yields, especially if used along with drought-resistant crops, rather than the standard maize.

Tanzania

2010-03-01T17:36:00.002+02:00

I tagged along on yet another of Aram and Debbi's trips: this time to Tanzania.

The purpose of the trip was to visit various Mennonite establishments in Tanzania. Our destinations were Shirati- the first Mennonite mission post in East Africa- Musoma, and Mwanza.

The first day we drove about four hours and spent the night with some people who have an orphanage. They found one of their kids at the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry, several have showed up on their doorstep, and many have been given into their care by the family members of an abusive parent. They currently have twenty-five kids; the oldest is 15 and the youngest was three days old at the time of our visit. Most of the kids are under five.

On day two we drove four hours and spent two hours at the border. The first part of the two hours at the border were greatly enjoyed by Priska and Shadrach; some random truckers let them hang out in the cab of their truck...

The Tanzanian visas were twice as expensive as was expected, so we did not have enough dollars to pay for the visas and customs would not take Kenya shillings. And there was no place to change money at the border. Aram eventually had to cross back into Kenya to buy dollars.
After what seemed like an eternity, with two kids becoming more tired and manic by the minute, we were finally on our way.

Tanzania is quite different from Kenya; for one thing, there are actually road signs, and people obey the traffic laws. Also, the landscape differs greatly from just across the border; on the Kenya side it is semi arid and mostly flat, in Tanzania it is green, and all around are large, steep hills, strewn with enormous, granite boulders.

Six queries for directions later we arrived in Shirati, which is just a few kilometers from Lake Victoria.

We spent two days there visiting the church leaders and whatnot.

Shirati is a relatively small village, but there is a large hospital and medical college that the Mennonites started in the 1930s.

We went down to the beach one evening and Priska and Shadrach played in the sand for awhile. Much to my dismay, it is not advisable to swim because of the presence of bilharzia in the water.

We were the main entertainment of the evening for the local kids, Priska and Shadrach especially.

This girl stood and watched us for half an hour, the whole time holding this five-gallon bucket of water on her head.

There were many egrets eating stuff at the water's edge.

And sitting on rocks...

A fishing boat

Next we drove three hours to Musoma, the location of a sizable bible college, also established by the Mennonites.

While Aram talked with the teachers and sat in on classes, I climbed one of the many hills in the area; I succeeded in getting some very nice panoramas but my panorama stitching program has ceased to function, so I will post them later.

A somewhat distorted view of the lake.

While in Musoma we stayed at a Catholic guest house that is right on the lake. We found out that the bilharzia parasites can be killed with a cheap, effective medicine, so we went swimming.

The kids really liked playing in the water and sand, and would do so happily for hours.

Shadrach's favorite activity was throwing handfuls of sand in the water.

Reloading....

Fishing dhows went out around sunset.

The waves gave me the opportunity to take some pictures that are pretty sweet and were rather dangerous to the life of my camera.

In Mwanza we just hung out with A&D's friends for two days. They have two kids almost the same ages as Priska and Shadrach, so the kids were really happy and crazy.

I read a bunch of random books: The Silmarillion, Origin of the Species, some stuff by Netzsche, a couple of papers on the the Sukuma Medicine Men and their magic stuff, et al. It was quite interesting...

On Sunday morning I decided to climb a boulder laden hill instead of going to a church service that I would understand none of. I saw all manner of amazing wild life: awesome birds...North America really got a bad deal when it comes to birds...Either that or we killed them all...

enormous butterflies

a troup of Vervet monkeys,

and brilliantly colored lizards that change color according to the temperature,

I spent over an hour trying to get a good picture of the crazy lizards, but they are really sensitive to nearby movement and move incredibly fast. And having only a 4x zoom does not help...

The females were not nearly as spectacular...

We took the bus back to Musoma, and while we were waiting at the bus stop, this guy without a shirt, wearing a motorcycle helmet and carrying an eighteen inch, evil looking knife starts walking around making motions as though he is chopping things into pieces. He stood directly behind me for a couple of minutes, slicing up invisible things...And that was somewhat disturbing...

Then he jammed the knife in his pants and started wandering around dancing. He continued this until another guy walked up behind him and tried to pull the knife out of his pants; unfortunately the serrations on the back of the knife got stuck on his pants. They struggled a bit and the protagonist got the crazy guy on the ground and confiscated the knife. By this time quite a crowd had gathered, but no one tried to help the guy get the knife or anything, they just watched...

The rest of the trip was uneventful, except at the border they gave us all manner of trouble...

I took 1223 pictures...Below are a few of the more interesting ones.

A flower of unknown species.

Guess.

Debbi and Priska in a fishing boat.

Sunset on Lake Victoria

The Lake reflected in some broken glass atop a wall.

In Maasailand (The black smudge is a person)

The Lake

Shadrach likes bananas

The main tourist attraction of Mwanza

Some fishermen. They spent about two hours pulling their net into an ever-small enclosure, and caught a grand total of seven fish...

Dung Beetle

2010-02-11T22:24:00.000+02:00

This is an awesome beetle; he rolls a ball of manure that is about five times as big as he is at amazing speeds. While standing on his "hands"...

Sometimes he gets a bit carried away. Literally.

The ball kept going out of control; several times it ran over him.

Western Kenya

2010-02-07T20:23:00.002+02:00

When I travel in Kenya, I am always amazed at how quickly and drastically the landscape can change.

Aram, Debbi, the kids and I went to western Kenya to distribute some relief food that someone had donated. The climate, tribe, and crops changed dramatically many times on the nine hour drive. We would be driving through semi-arid land, nothing but sand and acacia trees to the horizon, then come over a ridge and suddenly we'd be in green farmland, or tea fields, or an evergreen forest.

The tea fields are my favorite. The tea bushes grow very close together, and the fields stretch for miles. The top leaves of the tea bushes are chartreuse, so for miles we were driving through a sea of neon green.

People picking tea.

Then the tea ends. Abruptly. The rolling, neon green fields, suddenly become steep hills, covered in a patchwork of red plowed soil and green crops. We also changed from Kalenjin territory to Luo land.

We spent the first night in a hotel on Lake Victoria. At one point the hotel had been very nice; it now has an aura of decomposing luxury. There was a lovely pool, and I was broiling hot. The kids swam for a couple minutes until we were informed in a very indirect, African way that the pool was closed; “We just put in chlorine so you might not want to swim right now.” (The water was barely chlorinated.) I was very annoyed, the water would have felt SO good after sitting in a hot car all day.

We ordered supper, and waited, and waited, and waited. It was nearly an hour and a half before our food arrived. I should not have been surprised, but I was.

Priska was rather sick during the night, and we were awakened every few hours by her vomiting. Dehydration, we decided, was the culprit.

We rose early, having been told that we were going to start the food distribution at 0900, and our destination was still two hours away. We arrived at 1000; the area chief, who was supposed to be administrating the distribution, had gone somewhere. It was unknown when he would return.

So we chilled (or rather, baked) for a few hours, waiting for him to return. We talked to people, ate sugar cane, Aram and I played a game of chess. Finally, around 1330, someone took charge and we started handing out the food. The chief was still absent when we finished.

About halfway home we stopped for the night at a small lodge on a hill above a creek. They served really tasty Indian food, and it only took them forty-five minutes to prepare it.

I was awakened at 0530 by what sounded like someone shoveling gravel into a metal wheelbarrow outside my window, so I got up and wandered around. A locked gate blocked my way to the creek, but that was not much of a problem since it was missing a hinge. There was a six-foot, man-made waterfall, a waterwheel (Installed backwards so it scooped water, and it did not have a race of any kind so it turned quite slowly.) and a bunch of pipes.

Apparently water had been pumped from this creek and piped to somewhere that needed it. But it was no longer in use, the waterwheel was disconnected.

I took Shadrack down to the waterfall and he was entranced; I think he would have stood and stared at it for ever. Priska thought it was great fun to jump around at the edge of the falls. I am sort of surprised that she did not fall in...

The rest of the trip home was uneventful, except that Shadrack was sick and vomited at intervals most of the way.

I took 643 pictures on the three day trip; 487 of them are of the many different landscapes that I drove through.

Some of the people to whom we gave food.

Safari ants. These guys are about 3/4 of an inch long.

A six foot tall termite mound

A tendril from some sort of vine.

More tea

Lake Elementaita

A mountain was reflected in the lake, it was AMAZING. Unfortunately the auto-focus on my camera malfunctioned, so it is out of focus.

Sunset

Sugar High

2010-02-01T17:34:00.001+02:00

I told Debbi that it was a bad idea. At least a very messy one. Did she listen? Noooo...

The cause was cookies, and the chocolate they were dipped in.

This was the result.

Their clothes had to be removed when it was time to clean up.

Aram's comment was, "Wow. They are naked, dancing and yelling nonsense."

2010-02-01T10:48:00.000+02:00

It seems that most Kenyans are chameleophobic. I caught a chameleon yesterday, Priska and Shadrack thought it was pretty cool, as did I. Lena, our house help, did not like it at all. I was told by another Kenyan that chameleons are not good things to have around...

I think they are pretty awesome; when I caught it, it was greenish; by the time I let it go it was more of a yellow.

2010-01-17T06:21:00.000+02:00

Shadrak

Kids

2010-01-12T22:34:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately my camera malfunctioned and deleted the section that included most of the pictures that I took of kids on the beach, but here are a few that survived.

Priska and Shadrach decided to go on some sort of quest, I don't remember what it was.

Shadrach doesn't like clothes.

Drinking soda in the ruins.

I wonder how many Muslims have prayed in there...

Debbi and Priska, and the view from the house we stayed in.

Shadrach attempting murder on the ride home.

2010-01-12T15:02:00.002+02:00

Tropical beaches are amazing.

Someone needs to install one in mid Missouri.

I got up early to take some pictures of the sun rising over the Indian Ocean. It was cloudy so I did not get the pictures I wanted, but it was still quite beautiful.

For four days I spent most of my waking hours in the water. Swimming, kayaking, sailing, windsurfing...

Windsurfing is somewhat difficult to get the hang of; I was just getting it figured out by the day we left.

Aram and I went out to the reef were the waves were breaking and surfed in the kayak. If we could catch the wave just right we would fly, skimming along just in front of the wave.

If we caught it just wrong it would flip the kayak and we would be tossed into the water, trying not to crack our heads on the coral or step on a sea urchin.

I don't think Priska and Shadrach have ever been so happy, they would play in the waves and sand for hours and still cry when it was time to go in for lunch.

At first Shadrach called the white sand "snow". He dug a big hole and then stood at the edge and called down into it, "Are you okay Mike Mulligan?"

(If you have never read Mike Mulligan by Virginia Lee Burton, you need to)

There were little crabs everywhere; on the beach they are sand colored....

And not very noticeable..

But on the coral all of the crabs are, well, coral colored...

At night the crabs come out of their holes in hordes, thousands of the little buggers, and scuttle about at the edge of the waves...

And in the kitchen.

I walked out onto a point and took some pictures. I was barefoot (of course) and I discovered coral is extremely sharp.

There are holes through the coral that open into caves that the waves have cut into the coral cliffs. This picture is too small to see it, but the smudges in the sand are footprints.

The view.

Gede

2010-01-12T14:56:00.001+02:00

We went to Gede, the ruins of a 14th century Arabic trading town, in which artifacts from India, China, Venice, and Spain have been found. And yet the Portuguese, who occupied Malindi only 7 miles away in the same time period, did not know that it existed. There is no record of the town in any Arabic or Portuguese historical records.

The Great Mosque.

A prayer alcove, it's shape is such that the person praying can be heard by the entire congregation.

The Palace.

The King's tomb.

And me in it.

They had flush toilets, better than most of the toilets in Kenya now, 500 years later...

A tree, I can't remember which kind, eating a wall of one of the seven Mosques

Don't fall down the well, Shadrach...

Take Two

2010-01-11T16:39:00.001+02:00

0430. Ahhgg, stupid eyelids; get out of the way, I can't see!
We arrived at the bus station at 0545 and discovered that the office did not open until six and the bus left at eight. So we spent three hours wandering around, eating breakfast, guarding our luggage, making sure that Priska and Shadrach did not vanish, etc...

At 0830 (only 30 minutes late, amazing!) our ten hours of sweltering heat, uncomfortable seats, and not much leg room, began. At first I was afraid that I would die of heat stroke, then I was afraid that I wouldn't...

I did see a lot of really cool rock formations. For several hours the land was completely flat except for all of the miniature mountains that stuck up from the ground. It looked like someone beneath the earth's crust had used their finger to poke upwards.

We stopped once, and only for long enough to wake up my legs and get a bit of food from one of the local food stands. Then the bus was off again, and I was off into a semi-conscious state of pouring sweat and trying to find the most comfortable possible position in my seat.
At last we arrived at the beach. White sand, warm blue water, annoying beach boys trying to sell me stuff, and the bus ride with it's baking heat was all worth it.

Mombasa: Take 1

2010-01-11T14:45:00.001+02:00

We decided to go to Mombasa, the tourist town on the coast, we were just not sure when.

Then some friends called and said that they were staying in a lovely house, right on the beach just outside Mombasa and would we like to join them?

We finally, after much deliberation, decided to go. It was 1630.

It is a ten hour bus ride to Mombasa, and the bus leaves at 2100.

We packed frantically for two hours and then took a taxi to the bus station which is about three miles away. We should have plenty of time to get there. Right?

The matatu drivers decided to go on strike for three days to protest the fact that the police were stopping them for bribes when they broke the law. The lack of matatus made traffic a nightmare. (Not that Nairobi traffic is ever not a nightmare...)

After three hours we had traveled about a mile. It was decided that there was no way we would make it to the bus on time and we would try again in the morning.
"Well that is one way to kill a couple of hours" "Yeah, very dead"

Priska got some sunglasses...

2009-12-31T17:42:00.000+02:00

I have not been doing a whole lot of interesting stuff lately, mostly school...
I did however, just upload quite a few pictures to Picasa, so if you are inclined (and have fast internet) feel free to browse them. Be warned, there are 339 pictures from my Kenya trip...

Kids

2009-12-23T06:34:00.000+02:00

Assorted pictures that I have taken of my niece and nephew in the last few months.

Shadrach helping Tobias and I make a door for the chicken pen.

Priska and Shadrach are true DiGennaros, they climb everything in sight...

Shadrach in Sunday school.

We went to a giraffe park and Shadrach spent half an hour carrying handfuls of food to the giraffes.

Priska has figured out that people change their facial expression while they speak, but not exactly the system by which they do it. So she jabbers merrily making the strangest of faces....

This is one of the less bizarre ones.

Shadrach snitched Debbi's sunglasses...

Helping Aram roast coffee beans.

Part 4 Ng'iro Again

2009-12-12T20:57:00.000+02:00

I wanted to climb another part of Ng'iro but Stephen did not. I ask my host, Stephen Cowan, who has been working in the area for twenty years, if it would be too dangerous for me to go alone. "Most of the locals went to Sifur for the circumcision ceremony so you shouldn't have to worry about thieves. As long as you don't step on a cobra or a scorpion, you should be fine. Oh, and you might meet a leopard or a cheetah anytime"

Yeah, I should be fine...

Turns out I did survive. , I decided not to actually climb the mountain because I do not know enough about survival in this environment. "What to do if ..." I was just going for a little walk through the bush in the direction of the mountain. But the peak called, and I could not resist. But my little walk made it so that, instead of hiking up something like a path, I was climbing a nearly vertical slope, beating my way through thorn bushes. But it was fun, except for one acacia tree that tried to remove my arm.

And (disappointingly) I met not even one cheetah...

Really tall cliffs. The spire of rock in the center is, I would estimate, over two-hundred feet tall.

Weird looking clouds...

And weird looking tree. The wind off the mountain is so strong and constant that all the trees (except acacia) are permanently bent in the direction of it.

Tuum-Part Three: Mt. Ng'iro

2009-12-11T10:12:00.001+02:00

They said it would probably be the steepest mountain I had ever climbed.
They said that it would be freezing at the top and I would want a coat. I did not believe that, I had done nothing but be fried by the sun for a week, I wouldn't mind a little freezing.
Mt. Ng'iro is the highest point in this part of Kenya, and the base is a ten minute walk from here. It looks like it would be an easy thirty minute scramble to the top, but I know that when it comes to mountains, looks are always deceiving.

At 643 we set off. Mt. Ng'iro is east of Tuum so there is about an hour and a half between when it gets light and when the sun rises bringing with it unbearable heat. This morning was (comparatively) cool and cloudy but even so, by the first time we stopped I could wring sweat out of my shirt. I thought my water had leaked.

There is a band of massive cedars about halfway up the mountain, I have no idea why, but they provided some very welcome shade, (the sun had risen by now) and were a pleasant variation to the acacia trees with their three inch thorns.

After three hours of speed walking up an almost vertical slope, (our guide did not seem to realize that wazungu are mortal and require breaks once in a while) we came over the ridge and entered a different world.
The contrast was amazing. On one side was almost desert, with cactus and sand, on the other, was green. Green trees, green grass, even a small stream. The air was cool, the ground was cool. (I burned my hand on a rock on the other side of the ridge)

We walked beside a creek through a forest of mammoth, moss-draped trees. It reminded me of some forest (I don't remember which) in Lord of the Rings.

As we continued to increase in altitude the stream disappeared, the verdant trees gave way to small bushes growing out of the rock.

When we reached the peak, called Horn of the Buffalo, we could see for many miles, then a cloud came and we were inside it.

An icy, refreshing gale roared up out of the valley. My companions were shivering in their coats and huddling in the lee of boulders, I stood on top of the boulders looking over a sea of cloud, watching as bits of cloud were hurled by the wind, up from the valley and into my T-shirt. I could stand on this rock all day...

Bother, my companions are leaving. I guess I had better go as well. Farewell mountain top, I wish I could stay...

Down.
Down hurts. After fifteen minutes my leg muscles are burning and my ankles ache. Only three hours and forty-five minutes more. As we descended the temperature rose, by the time we reached Tuum it was as though we were walking through a solar oven, on broil.
At 1405 we reached the house, my legs had gotten used to the strain and felt fine but my ankles were in agony. I asked our guide if he was tired. "No, I ready to do it again." And I believed that.

More Pictures

Tuum

A really cool canyon thing.

Tuum-Part Two: Juxtaposition of the Incongruous

2009-12-11T08:17:00.000+02:00

A Wii??! What!?!
Here I am in the African bush, a six hour drive from the nearest town, nothing but sand, acacia trees and a sprinkling of Samburu and their cattle for one hundred and fifty miles, standing on a WiiFit balance board trying to keep my bubble from popping on the sides of the stream. Oh, time to stop, the sun is setting, there will be no power soon...

To Tuum 11-21/22

2009-12-11T08:10:00.000+02:00

I am going to Tuum, (a tiny village in the bush sixteen hours north of here) with some people I have met once, to stay for two weeks doing I have no idea what. This should be interesting.

The beginning of my first day in Tuum. 11-23
600: Get up and go to the bathroom. (outhouse)
605: Attempt to leave the bathroom. Discover that the bar on the outside of the door has somehow latched itself.
605-625: Try every method of opening the door short of breaking it down. (which would have been quite easy)
625: Stephen, my housemate, comes out of the house and I fail to get his attention.
625-700: More escape attempts.
700: I finally get Stephen's attention. FREEDOM!!!
705: I am nearly killed by a falling shower bucket. (We hang a bucket from a hook to take a shower)

Cactus again.

2009-11-12T20:51:00.001+02:00

There is a cactus in our yard that, I am told, blooms once a year, and then, only at night. It is by far the most intricate cactus flower I have seen. So, of course, I took some pictures...

2009-11-09T08:01:00.006+02:00

Here are some random pictures I have taken over the last few days.

A spiky tree, as you can see.

One of the spikes up close.

A random flower...

...And another

A Papaya flower.

Mud

2009-11-05T20:42:00.006+02:00

The drought is over and now Priska and Shadrach have a new activity.

After a few attempts to take some pictures, Priska said, "stop following me! I don't like taking pictures!" So Shadrach was my main subject.

Man down!!!

I think this picture is the definition of happiness.

Kangemi

2009-11-02T16:04:00.004+02:00

We went to visit some people in an upper-class slum today. Instead of the temporary mud buildings, most of the dwellings were stone or concrete. We went for lunch and it was somewhat like the salesmen at the Masai Market, except they were trying to get me to eat instead of buy something at an insane price. "Isaac, don't you want some more?" "Oh, thank you, but I am quite full. But it is very good and I wish I could eat more." "Are you sure? Among our people, if much food is left that means it was not prepared well." etc...

Driving out of the area was like driving through a crowded store. There were people sitting in the mud on both sides of the road (though it could hardly be called a road, jammed with people, animals, and carts, some of which were stuck in the enormous mudholes) selling cloth, roasted maize, shoes, and assorted other items. There were people on all sides, one rather demented looking fellow walked by and announced, "I lost my mind!" I think he was right.

Here are some pictures of the Bird of Paradise flower that is blooming in the yard.

It's flower structure is not like any flower I have seen before.

2009-10-27T09:49:00.002+02:00

"Born Again Butchery" read a sign on a tiny shop with chunks of meat hanging in front of it. This was one of the many strangely named establishments Aram and I passed on the way to Kitale, a six hour drive away, on Thursday.

Aram was giving a seminar for some local pastors, and I went along for the ride. It was quite the experience. Just getting there was interesting, not only was I certain that I had breathed my last on multiple occasions, but that part of the country is vastly different. It actually rains there so the fields were green and there were real trees, evergreens even. If I had been informed that I was in the northeast U.S. I would have believed it.

Except for the mud huts and banana trees, I haven't seen many of those in northern P.A.

Then while Aram was teaching for most of the next two days, I was at the mercy of the kids.

Every where we go it seems like there are always at least a hundred yelling kids following me around. Because of the nearby church school, it was no different here. I had planned on just sitting quietly and doing my school, so much for that... Have you ever tried to think with an audience of 50 noisy kids? Not possible. So I gave up and got out the soccer ball I had brought along for this purpose, and chaos reigned. You don't know the meaning of insanity until you have seen seventy-five African kids between ages eight and twelve, all trying to kick the same ball. A couple of times one kid tried to start a game. And he would be successful, for a few minutes. Then the teams would dissolve into madness.

Cactus

2009-10-20T12:53:00.001+02:00

Here are some pictures of prickly-pear flowers I took recently.

Kibera

2009-10-19T14:30:00.008+02:00

This morning we visited Kibera, the world's second largest slum. Over 1.5 million people are crammed into under a square mile of corrugated steel roofed, mud or concrete shacks.

There is no septic system, sparse electricity, no running water except the occasional water tank that often runs out. And even that is not drinkable. There is no drainage except the roads and pathways which are dirt and when it rains becomes they turn to foul smelling, disease ridden mud. Everywhere there is trash, the ground seems to be held together by plastic bags.

Our guide was a pastor of a church that is a school/daycare during the week. This is the path down to his house where he lives with one of his sons in a two room, about 120 sq ft, cement walled and floored, steel roofed box, for which he pays $180 dollars a month. He has electricity, (the breaker box looks like death waiting to happen) and a 10 inch, almost color TV. (he had a nicer one but it was stolen in the post election violence)

And yet, the people seem, for the most part, to be fairly happy and friendly despite the terrible living conditions. There are kids playing with their toys made from trash and they all smile and shout over and over and over the only English they know at us, "ow aru, ow aru, ow aru, ow aru..."

The women laugh and talk as they wash laundry standing in ankle deep mud. This seemed to be a sort of laundromat.

And some are not so happy...

Tobias and I came to the conclusion that the people in power keep Kibera alive but only barely alive for a number of reasons. One is that with Nairobi's 50% unemployment and the desperation there is always a huge supply of cheap labor. And a few people are getting really rich off of the rent as their maintenance costs are very close to nil.

Mathare School

2009-10-18T20:31:00.005+02:00

We visited a Christan school in the Mathare slum on Saturday, it was crazy. Whites are a novelty to the kids and we were mobbed. Imagine 100 four-year olds chasing you and shouting "mzungu!!" (the word for whites, it literally means the people who are always running around like crazy with no apparent purpose) Three hundred kids ages 4-13 attend. Each class is in a different metal shack, and the preschoolers (this is about an eighth of them)

are all in this building that is also the church.

One of the classes.

As we left I took this picture of some kids and their world.

Hell's gate

2009-10-16T13:45:00.009+02:00

Renting mountain bikes was interesting, there were six guys each trying to get us to rent their bike. I tried three; "no, that one's seat is insanely uncomfortable", "this one has a flat tire", I decided on one that had a not-too-painful seat and front suspension. We rode about a mile uphill with trucks and buses roaring by enveloping us in black smoke (apparently everyone here modifies their vehicle in hopes of making it have more power, I don't know if it works but they sure do make a lot of smoke) trying not to run over pedestrians, and dodging the places the road was missing. Then we rode a mile or so uphill on a extremely rough road to the gate of Hell's Gate. They wanted money for a map so we figured we could do without.

The first interesting thing was Ficher's Tower, it is just sticking up 80' out of a mostly flat field.

I really wanted to reach the top and tried three different routes, but with already fifty feet of exposure, no ropes and a handhold literally a only foot out of reach I decided that it would be wise not to try. I know I could have made it up, I was not so certain about back down... The basalt cliffs were really cool, this one about one hundred feet high.

We considered the ten mile round trip to the Obsidian Caves but decided to go to the Gorges first and go to the caves later, if our water held out. At the entrance to the Gorge they tried to sell us a guide and Aram convinced them that we did not need one, and we went on our way. But they weren't done, a guy ran after us and started to "guide" us on the path while Aram was trying, in Swahili, to politely convince him that his services were unnecessary and undesirable. Eventually we paid him fifty shillings and he left. The gorges were amazing, the rock is a soapstone type and very soft so erosion does really cool stuff to it, but try as I might I could not get any good pictures of them. Here are a few of the best pictures I was able to get.

A waterfall. Obviously.

A small piece of the gorge.

Another.

The central tower.

We heard a really loud hissing and followed it to this. It seemed to be a capped steam vent. The pressure release was what was letting off hot, sulfurous gas at high pressure.

Our water was running low and our hindparts were rather sore from the biking over the "roads" so we didn't go to Obsidian Caves. I wonder what they are....

We stopped a little store (little as in, the three of us barely fit inside) and ate fries and discussed politics with the owner, who happened to be a pastor that Aram knew. When we got back to our camp site we found that monkeys had knocked over and collapsed our tent. We chased them away and were relieved to find that there seemed to be no damage.

Lake Naivasha is so polluted that swimming isn't smart but there was a pool and, although it looked pretty nasty, it felt good after biking 15-20 miles under equatorial sun. I also took this picture of Tobias diving in.

The Mt. Longonot Expedition,10/15/09. Warning: Rather lengthy.

2009-10-15T11:10:00.015+02:00

After driving from Nairobi down into and across the Rift Valley

and only missing one turn, (Aram was too busy discussing politics, cultural differences and religion with Tobias and me to pay attention to where we were going) we arrived at Mt. Longonot National Park,

drank as much water as we could and began to climb. It was 9:23.

The path at first was a gently sloping gravel road and the rim of the crater looked to be a twenty minute walk away. We saw gazelles, zebras and a large herd of weirdabeasts, we noted the fact that sagebrush actually smelled like sage, and also that the nice smooth road was becoming a steep climb in a two inch thick layer of superfine dust that filled our shoes and our lungs and was not friends with our digital cameras. The twenty minute walk was an hour of half walking half climbing. We came over the top and...

...the ground vanished. The top edge of the crater was, at most, ten feet wide with a two hundred foot drop to the bottom of the crater. The crater is about a mile and a half across (my pictures give no sense of the scale) and the bottom appeared to be fairly smooth with a few bushes here and there. It looked like if we found a way down into the crater it would be easy to cross it and climb the other side to the peak. There was one place where there was no sheer face between the rim and the bottom of the crater and we decided on that as our point of descent.

After walking/sliding/climbing down we discovered that we had severely misjudged the character of the bottom of the crater. There had been a fire recently and it was a charred thicket that covered the bottom and the parts that hadn't burned were so thick with undergrowth that they were nearly impassable.

And it was far from smooth, the entire landscape was a boulder field of the pieces of pumice that had fallen back into the crater after the last eruption.

We realized that crossing the crater was not an option. I climbed a tree to look for a certain cinder cone that we had seen from the top, also to look for a place that we might be able to get back to the top of the rim. I thought that I found both. Once we made it to the cinder cone and got a better view of our surroundings we saw that the ledge I thought we would be able to climb out on was merely a discoloration of the rock. We also drank most of our remaining water. I climbed spike of rock and found another way to exit the crater and, after Aram and Tobias climbed up to have a look around, we headed for it.

Climbing the twenty foot cliff was easy enough, the talus slope was hard because with every two steps up I slid back a step, then we had to climb about 150 vertical feet of almost vertical, hard dirt covered with charred trees.

Oh, and did I mention, the ground was almost too hot, from the sun, to comfortably touch. it took us almost an hour to scramble out of the crater and we were covered with soot, ash, dust and sweat, and we had half a liter of water left. We decided to try for the summit of Longonot which meant climbing another two hundred feet in a mile hike.

I regretted that decision after about a half mile of climbing through dust and pumice gravel. (Keep in mind that this is at 9000 feet where there is a lot less oxygen than at 600 feet where I am used to living) We rested for a bit at the top, looking at the world around us, the Masai herdsmen hundreds of feet below, the dust devils swirling across the dry fields,

the crater and lake Naivasha.

Then we started the descent running and sliding down through the dust and gravel that had been so hard to climb through. We caught up with a group of Kenyan schoolchildren and joined them, dodging the thorny acacia trees in the controlled fall down the side of the mountain the foremost thought in our minds, "WATER!!". We drank a little, not wanting to get sick and drove to Lake Naivasha where we were planning to camp. It was now 3:47.

The view from the top.

In some places the rock is really soft and so it gets weathered easily.

Sunday

2009-10-12T05:13:00.003+02:00

We rode a Matatu (the low cost, low comfort, rather dangerous public transport) most of the way to church and walked the rest of the way through a slum/flea market where one could buy lumber, used wire, shoes, fruit of many kinds and all sorts of other interesting stuff. The church was a tent, with an added on part made from a billboard tarp stretched over wood, and plastic chairs for seating. One thing I found interesting was that most of the songs were a single line that was repeated many times with the occasional alteration of a word. The pastor is a Kenyan and speaks both Swahili and English so when he was speaking English his translator would speak Swahili then he would switch and so hid translator would too. I occasionally heard a word in the Swahili that I recognized so at least I have learned something... After church we went to an Ethiopian restaurant. They brought out the food on a tray with little piles of the different stuff, meat, another kind of meat that was in a little stand that had burning charcoal under it, some garbanzo bean stuff that was really good, (however it had insanely hot peppers hiding in it) and some other stuff that I don't remember. There was no silverware, they brought some white pancake like stuff that was in rolls, and you picked up the food with that. We played more Ultimate in the evening and everyone was really impressed because I, by pure chance, threw a disc the length of the field and my target person did not have to move their feet. Today we are going to go help the pastor of the church design a greenhouse, oh, we are leaving in ten minutes...

My recent past

2009-10-10T16:46:00.002+02:00

We played a game of Ultimate yesterday evening, until it was too dark to see and every pass was being dropped. It was the first real game of ultimate, where the people actually used strategy, that I have played in several years. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and escaped with amazingly minor injuries. Tobias and Aram were not so fortunate; when Tobias and I collided Tobias face-planted and got an impressive scrape on his face and Aram fell on some rocks (the field wasn't the best) and a good deal of skin that was intended to be attached to his leg.

Today we went on a game drive and saw all sorts of beasties, I took over three hundred pictures and I have deleted all but 71. Here are a few of the more interesting ones...

Zebras and an eland.

I don't think this needs a caption...

Cool birds. (Their identity is, as yet, unknown)

Another unneeded caption...

My niece, Priska, riding a rhino. (check out the facial expression :))

Me photographing a giraffe out of the land rover.

And, the Weirdabeast, (named by me because of it's strange appearance) it is another species that remains unidentified...

Flora and Fauna

2009-10-07T20:24:00.006+02:00

Bougainvillea.

Passion fruit flower

The soil looks like this, only redder.

This is an Ibis that wanders around the yard.

This evening Aram, Tobias and I went and played a pick-up game of soccer, it was pretty fun but I did not get much action because everyone else is ten times as good as I am.

Tomorrow is my first Swahili lesson. I hope learning Swahili work better for me than learning Spanish. :-|

Africa: First Impressions

2009-10-06T11:40:00.006+02:00

The Zurich airport was modern design, spotlessly clean, empty and silent. I felt like I should be wearing a Tuxedo. When I landed in Nairobi it was quite different. Low ceilinged, crowded, noisy, people sitting on the floors and I would guess that the Swiss would be appalled at the level of cleanliness... The drive to my brother's house was interesting, African traffic is quite different from that of America. For one, there are practically no traffic control signs, and definitely no traffic lights, also the use of lanes doesn't seem to have caught on here, and there are peopleeverywhere, walking along the road, running out in front of trucks and somehow surviving, horns are in constant use by everyone. I am told that traffic is amazingly clear right now.

Today we went and and walked around a small piece of the town, to get there we rode matatus, the public transportation. The number of people is amazing, everywhere you might look there are more people.

We are planning to climb a mountain this week at some point. Should be interesting.

These are a few pictures I took on my flight.