Isaac in Kenya

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Home Again

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.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Lake Nakuru

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.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Sand Dams

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.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Tanzania

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.