6.11.11

June 11, 2011

I am currently in the lobby of the Hotel Palmers in Kisumu and catching up on the writing that I have neglected for the past few days. Tomorrow morning (Sunday), I will be picked up and taken to spend the week at Mumias Sugar Company. The goal is to try and initiate a relationship with the organization so that future generations of Masters students will be able to intern in Mumias. I am the guinea pig, so to speak, and my job will be to meet as many people in management as possible, and convince the ‘powers that be’ that all SPEA students are as smart, charming and hardworking as myself. Kidding!! But I AM supposed to schmooze and make as good of an impression as possible. With that in mind, I am also multi-tasking and doing some company research so that I will at least appear to be well informed when I get there. However, I should actually be talking about the past week in Nyanza Province, which was our destination after Nakuru.

As I have mentioned in past posts, our boss at KEFRI is interested in getting us to contribute to a reforestation project being undertaken in southwestern Kenya. The project site is near a town called Suba in a region known as the Gwassi Hills. Here are the details. A Dutch foundation is financing a project called Green Forest Social Investment (GFSI) focused on regional poverty reduction through three main approaches: 1) economic development, 2) social transformation and 3) environmental restoration. The main theme is based on promoting integration amongst the three approaches – you could call it sustainable business. The investor set up an organization in the form of an LLC, with three main divisions: 1) GFSI Limited, 2) GFSI Trust and 3) Microfinance. Limited is responsible for marketing, Trust for technical expertise and Microfinance for providing credit services. The facility houses two state-of-the-art charcoal burners, a honey-processing facility, a facility for producing biodiesel and equipment for processing aloe vera.

If you are poor and living in rural Kenya, opportunities to improve your situation are limited. Suba is exceptionally remote, and the main forms of subsistence are either farming or fishing. Enter GFSI. First of all, the organization – with the help of KEFRI - provides seeds and seedlings of indigenous trees to landowners and farmers to begin reforesting the area. As the trees grow, they are pruned by farmers, and the wood sold to GFSI where it is burned, and turned into charcoal. The product is available for sale to the local community, but is also loaded onto boats at a recently constructed landing and shipped to Kisumu for sale.

Wood assembled by species and size for carbonization - I don't recall the tonnage, but the material you see here is sufficient to run the charcoal kiln for only about a week.

Pat and Leah looking imposing on the kiln.

Concurrently, farmers are taught how to keep bees and to build hives - GFSI lends them equipment and provides training. The key here is that the trees that have been planted are, for the most part, flowering. So as the trees grow, they are also providing the raw materials for honey, which is then sold to GFSI, which extracts it and sells it at premium prices around the country. As farmers periodically provide honey, they are essentially paying off the ‘loan’ of equipment.

Beehives. The weird green tree on the right is plumeria.

Also, GFSI provides the seeds of two plants called jatropha and croton (this one is actually a tree), whose fruits are sources for producing biodiesel. As the plants grow and bear fruit, it is harvested and sold to GFSI, where it is processed locally. The ethanol is then sold in Kenya or exported.

Finally, because the land is so arid, it is ideal for growing aloe vera. You guessed it. The aloe is sold to GFSI, who process it, and sell the raw material to the larger market.

Aloe Vera being cultivated on the GFSI site.

This spiky green fruit is actually a type of tomato.

The whole idea here is to provide opportunity to a poor, rural community that has no access to larger markets and little chance to learn new skills. Instead of providing cash like many organizations, GFSI is instead providing training and equipment with which community members can augment meager incomes derived from paltry maize crops and declining catches. The initial investment length is for five years, at the end of which the business will hopefully be self-sustaining. Of course, the business model is not-for-profit. No dividends are paid, and the investor and contributor are only trying to break even. All profits are shared with the community and as you probably gathered from above, GFSI is essentially making a market for the Gwassi community. With the exception of management, all the labor that is employed is local. Product can be loaded onto ferries at the lakeshore and cheaply shipped to the city of Kisumu for sale. The model is new, but if successful, will be replicated at other sites around the world.

The project was very well thought out. I spoke with most of the management team and I could not come up with one detail for which they had not accounted. Two and a half years into the investment term, community buy-in has been enthusiastic and honey production is expanding rapidly as more hives come on-line. The biodiesel plant, which will contribute the most to revenue, is still being built. The only snag I saw was that capacity of the charcoal burners was too great to warrant operation at the efficient level. There simply is not enough wood around the region to warrant turning on the big burner – it is not cost-effective. The organization is looking at importing other sources of fuel so that the carbonization process can resume.

My job will be to make a business plan for KEFRI, which is contributing the majority of the seeds. Basically, I will have to figure out exactly how much we have contributed and how much it cost, then forecast how much we can expect to contribute till the end of the investment term. I’m guessing that I’ll have to factor in the success rates of the different species of seed and there will probably be some form of discounting involved. Sorry, I’m just thinking on paper here. Anyway, hopefully I will be able to draw some conclusions that will be beneficial to both GFSI and KEFRI.

Now that I’ve explained the business model, I can rave about the honey. Acacia honey is fantastic. Plain and simple. The honey it makes is a dark, golden brown and I must say, it tastes pretty darn good when drizzled on toast in the morning, or even when licked off of the nearest spoon (not that I would do that). The farmers around here are also encouraged to plant large quantities of sunflowers. Not only are the oil and seeds marketable, but sunflower honey is the clearest yellow, and locally, more popular than the acacia variety. Myself, I am partial to both. Every time I think of selling organic, free trade, acacia honey from Suba, Kenya, I imagine a stampede of hippies and soccer moms rushing through the double doors of Whole Foods to get at it.

This entry is not quite in the right order for my taste. I find myself at the end of a long explanation of a social business, and I haven’t even mentioned the trek there. And for sure, it was a trek. I am guessing that the Gwassi Hills lie between 150 and 200 miles from Nakuru, where I ended the last entry. About a 3 hour trip, right? Wrong. It takes 11 hours to go from Nakuru to Gwassi in a 4x4 truck. On the downside, we were crammed into the back of a Toyota for 10 hours. On the upside, we got to see just a fantastic amount of country and we had a new driver who could both see and hear.

Rift Valley at dawn.

We left Nakuru at dawn and started heading west through Rift Valley Province. Rift Valley and the central parts of Nyanza make up the ‘bread-basket’ of Kenya, though ‘maize-basket’ might be more appropriate. The road from Nakuru to Kisumu on Lake Victoria passes through some of the richest farmland in the country. Interestingly, Rift Valley is also where the majority of the domestic tea crop is cultivated. The highway is two lanes for the entire distance to Kisumu, and passes into a series of highlands where the tea plantations are located. I had never seen a commercial tea plantation before and they are really very striking. From the road, a field of tea plants looks like one giant box hedge. The leaves are bright, young-leaf green and the shrubs are planted closely together so that the leaves and twigs intertwine solidly together at about waist-height. Workers wear canvas waders for protection, and you can see groups of them wading through the plants grabbing handfuls of leaves and stuffing them into large sacks. Although there are some small, privately owned farms, most of what we passed were large commercial operations, where the bright green tea stretched over the hills for hundreds of acres. I would have really liked to have put on a pair of the canvas pants and waded out into one of the immense fields, just to run my hands over the leaves, in the spirit of ‘Gladiator’ and the field of wheat.

Tea plantation.

This trip further solidified my impression that Kenya is mostly one big farm. We did not pass one natural forest during the whole epic journey. Though the land is green and lush, it is only a series of small, interconnected shambas, and the green is that of tall corn and waving banana leaves.

Pat is looking intense because he forgot to take his malaria medicine with food - that means nausea.

After a brief stop for tea (I was craving it for some strange reason), we arrived in Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya after Nairobi and Mombasa. As often as I have looked at a map of Kenya, for some reason I had no idea that the vast lake spread out before me was the famous Lake Victoria. I was thinking it was another Rift Valley lake like Naivasha, and because no one else was talking about it, I kept my mouth shut as well. We headed through town to a village on the shore and had the local specialty: fresh caught tilapia fried whole, with ugali and kales. True to local tradition, we ate it all with our hands. Dad, you would have been proud – I grossed out my Kenyan companions when I started crunching on the fins. However, I was myself grossed out when my boss cracked open his fish’s head.

We rushed from our greasy, though fresh, lunch to catch the ferry across to the south shore of the lake. I still had no clue which lake we were about to cross, but an explanation still had not come up in any conversation, so I maintained my peace. We waited about an hour at the landing on the lakeshore for the ferry to arrive and in the meantime, watched an African fish eagle flutter from perch to perch in the surrounding trees, and a big water monitor lizard swimming. There are no power boats on this part of Lake Victoria. The boats are home-made, and though they may have a small motor stowed somewhere, the main means of locomotion is still through large triangular sails.

Sailboats on Lake Victoria.

The ferry pulled in and we backed the truck into one of the two spaces for vehicles. The accumulated crowd boarded, the engine rumbled and the boat lurched, starting the thirty minute crossing. It was somewhat of a tight fit. The ferry is not very large and people were shoulder to shoulder around the two vehicles that fit on board. As we pulled away from the landing, I distinctly saw a hippo sink out of sight off of the right railing.

Though I still was not aware that I was taking a ferry across Lake Victoria, some discussion of the lake needs to be made. Lake Victoria is dying. Three nations claim a border along the lakeshore: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The population around the Lake is burgeoning, and it’s waters act as a waste receptacle for three different countries, municipal, industrial or otherwise. Extensive deforestation along the banks and watersheds are leading to increased silt content and suspended matter, compounded by the manure and fertilizer that most of such runoff contains. The increased nitrogen content of the water has resulted in huge problems with water hyacinth, an invasive species that is gradually taking over the water’s surface. Many of the native fish are now extinct, a result of the introduction of tilapia and Nile perch for commercial purposes (FYI, the indigenous fish in these parts are the cichlids, that we all learned about when discussing natural selection). I forget the actual statistic, but the tonnage of fish harvested and exported to Europe and Asia is just astounding. However, that number is steadily declining as fish populations are continually overharvested. In fact, fishermen have been forced to use nets with smaller and smaller mesh in order to catch anything. As you drive along the streets in Kisumu, you see baskets and baskets of minnows and fry.

The situation around Lake Victoria is an indicator of why projects like GFSI are so important. By reforesting, runoff and siltation are controlled. With different methods to obtain income, community members can pursue other means of employment, reducing pressure on fish populations. Further, with increased discretionary income, community members can afford to think about preserving their environment instead of wondering where they will find their next meal. However, any truly viable effort at restoring the Lake can only be achieved through cooperation between the countries that border it.

The landscape changes significantly once the ferry pulls into the southern dock. Whereas the Kisumu region benefits from the rain shadow cast by the Lake, Gwassi does not. Though rocky, Kisumu is decidedly green. The maize is tall and the road crossed numerous small rivers and creeks – often the piki-piki (motorcycle) drivers would park their vehicles in the shallows for a quick wash. The Gwassi region is arid. It looks a good bit like the mountains around Las Vegas and Lake Powell – high, rocky ridges covered in scrub, aloe vera and plumeria, which look like spineless suarajo cacti. The roads are all gravel and hard packed dirt. As we traced along the top of a ridge, I watched a saker falcon flying fast and stiff winged over our heads.

We were all excited when our boss informed us that our route would take us through Ruma National Park. In the 15 minutes it took to cross the park, it looked like the classic picture of African savannah that you see in magazines – tall, waving amber grass and scattered acacias with their strange flattened crowns. It was not long before we spotted a herd of giraffes through the trunks of the trees, so we unloaded briefly and snapped a few pictures. The park looks like a great place to take a tour – you are supposed to be able to see lion, hyena, leopard, giraffe (of course), and most of the common antelope. The prize though, is seeing a roan – this is one of the only places you can see them in Kenya.

Pat, Leah and our boss, Dr. Ongugo, with a herd of twigas - you can just see them in the left of the frame.

After 4 hours of dirt roads and desert, we reemerged back onto the lakeshore and sunset. The ferry from Kisumu cuts across a narrow, out-flung arm of Lake Victoria, with several small islands, which was one of the reasons why I was not sure of which lake it was that we were crossing. However now that we had moved away from the narrowest portion, there was no difference between the Lake and the ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico. We were looking straight west, to a perfectly flat horizon and the sun slowly dipping into the water. There were no houses or people, just our small group, the dusty road through the scrub, the Lake and the setting sun. There was no mistaking it – I was looking at Lake Victoria.

We finally turned onto a rutted road and made our way up to a set of cliffs looking over the Lake, where the project facility was located. After entering the metal gate, passing huge piles of wood stacked for charcoal and some warehouses, we emerged onto the cliff face where the staff and guesthouses were located. The place was swank. Arranged around a small bar and restaurant with a tall, thatched roof was a row of small houses with tin roofs and canvas walls, set upon individual concrete slabs. Each tent had working bathrooms, a flat screen television, and the best part – a king size four-poster bed, complete with white linen and draped in mosquito nets. The walls snapped and rustled in the breeze coming from the lake and the light from the sunset passed faintly the canvas, giving the whole structure a strange feeling of luxury. My first thought after I threw my pack on the bed and looked out the mesh door at the sunset was, “I could live here.”

That night I dined on pasta carbonara, Pat on pizza and Leah the Vegetarian on vegetables in peanut sauce, all washed down with ice cold Tuskers. It was an unbelievable feeling not to eat chicken, ugali and kales for the first time in a week. Also, they were selling glasses of Johnny Walker Red Label at the unbelievable price of 200 shillings (the exchange rate is currently about 90 KES to 1 USD)! Please leave me in this place!

It was dark by the time I walked out of the restaurant and stumbled back to the homelike interior of my tent. The stars were as bright as I have ever seen and I was looking out upon the blackness of the lake. Hundreds of tiny points of light slowly spread from shore across the darkness of the water as fishermen lit up gas lights and set their nets for the night. I unzipped the mesh front of my tent, washed my face and fell into clean sheets for the first time in a week. As I lay in the bed, surrounded by the gauze of mosquito nets and listening to the rustling of the walls, I watched the shadow of bats circling the faint luminance of the gaslight hanging just outside the entrance. I couldn’t tell you the last time I have slept so well.

The Lewis Carroll classic, 'Through the Mosquito Net'.

This post has gotten extremely long – I’ll see if I can wrap it up. The next two days passed quickly as we met with the project team and learned about the operation. I went down to the landing and swam with the locals, though I was a bit to scared to actually go more than a few feet from the rocky shore – there were supposed to be hippos and crocodiles around the nearest point, but the area we were swimming was exceptionally deep. I felt that it was worth the risk. The main crop pests in this area are monkeys and porcupines. Walking around the gardens at the GFSI compound, we could see snares set in every likely spot. Gwassi is the home of the Luo tribe and porcupine is a delicacy. Also, you are not supposed to walk outside of the compound at night because there is a strong chance that you may meet a lion or hyena!

Pictures soon and I hope there aren’t too many grammatical errors here – I would proof it but I am about to walk out the door and I feel the need to post! Don’t judge me if there are, they will get corrected as I reread it. Pictures soon!

Mt. Kenya

6.7.11

June 7, 2011

Today was one of the most epic days of my life. Literally, I lived a daydream that I have had since I was a small child, made all the better because I never truly expected to ever actually do it. I’ll start from the beginning.

The reforestation project that I am slated to work on is located in the Gwasi Hills region of Kenya, in Western Province. Pat, Leah and I, along with Dr. Ongugo (our boss), are to journey by truck to the project site, with a stop at Nakuru along the way. KEFRI is performing some analysis on reforestation in the Aberderes, the mountain range north of Nairobi. We were to spend Tuesday with the project team while they merged data to write a report.

I left work on Monday at around 3 p.m., expecting to arrive in Nakuru around 6 p.m. that night. As usual, no one had accounted for Africa-time, so after a bunch of random errands, some grocery shopping and then a return trip to the KEFRI compound because someone had forgotten a computer, we finally got out of town around 5:30 p.m. So much for meeting the rest of the group for dinner (Pat and Leah had gone in a separate car).

Though we left town late, that meant that we were headed into the Rift Valley at sunset. As I have mentioned before, Nairobi is high - here at KEFRI the elevation is over 2500 meters. The Rift Valley is west of the highlands upon which Nairobi sits, and extends west for a couple hundred kilometers or so, before encountering a similar set of highlands and Lake Victoria. The Valley begins in the northern reaches of Kenya and extends to the southern border of Tanzania and into Mozambique. Uganda, Malawi, Burundi and Congo make the up the western border of the Valley. As I am fact checking while writing this entry, the deepest point of the Rift Valley is actually just north of Nairobi.

The evening was hazy and chilly as the small Toyota truck crammed with five men, luggage and a PC finally set out from Nairobi. Traffic was not terribly heavy as we exited the city, headed northwest towards the Aberderes. All along the way were signs for KEFRI and KFS (Kenya Forest Service) announcing the presence of various project sites. The Aberderes region of Kenya is what is considered one of five “water towers”, including Mount Kenya, Mount Elgon in the west, the Mau Forest and Cherengani Hills. A water tower is a region where rainwater falls and collects, providing sources for rivers, streams and even groundwater. The system of water catchment is complex and the presence of trees is of particular importance as their presence slows runoff and allows water to collect, not to mention that transpiration from forests is a source for generating the rainclouds themselves. The Aberderes region is one of the most fertile in Kenya, and though it is an important source of water, it has been the victim of heavy deforestation since independence. Aside from the frequent stands of cedar and eucalyptus planted by KEFRI and KFS, the road twists and turns through acres and acres of small farms of maize and occasionally sorghum. The landscape is a series of gently rolling hills, everything cultivated, and it reminded me of how I had always imagined the Shire to look; small cottages, neat fields and well kept gardens.

Suddenly, we rounded a corner and emerged onto the face of the Great Escarpment with the whole of Rift Valley Province spread before us, 3000 meters down. It was breathtaking. The cliffs waste no time in falling down to the floor of the Valley, which from the top of the Escarpment, looks like a giant patchwork quilt rolling away for miles before fading into the evening haze. Single peaks loomed up in the distance, one of which is called Mount Longonot, a dormant volcano. I could clearly descry the interior of the partially deteriorated crater as we passed.

The road, Nakuru-Naivasha highway in fact, turned north and west following the rim of the Escarpment, and slowly wound down to the valley floor and the city of Naivasha, clustered about the shores of a lake by the same name. This part of the world is dotted with a series of large lakes, born of the same geologic forces that formed the Rift Valley. Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana and Lake Malawi are all examples. To satisfy my own curiosity, the Great Rift Valley is still in the process of being formed. A portion of the African Plate is splitting into two smaller tectonic plates, the Nubian and Somalian Plates. This splitting and separating action created (is creating) the Great Rift Valley.

As we passed through Naivasha, the sun set for good and it started to rain. I’ve discovered that the key to driving in Kenya is to have nerves of steel. You’ve got to be aggressive or you won’t get anywhere, the traffic is simply too bad. On the highway, this means that you’ve got to be able to pass in any situation, even if it means scaring the pants off of your American passengers in the back seat. If you aren’t in complete control of all your faculties, you are dead in the water. Little did I know that the friendly driver with whom I had been joking earlier was terribly near-sighted. Big problem. Any time a pair of headlights would approach, he would slow to a crawl, and huge trucks and buses would blow past us in the other lane. Worse, he could not see to pass anyone, so we were stuck behind an eighteen-wheeler for almost the entire second half of the journey. Even rust-bucket matatus adorned with black lights were barreling around us in gusts of gospel music! When we finally got to Nakuru, I felt like falling to my knees and kissing the ground.

Passing through Naivasha-town.

We were staying at a church retreat center of some sort, which was exceptionally clean but with no hard alcohol to help me take the edge off the harrowing escape I had just made. I settled for a tough piece of stewed chicken (kuku) and rice. The chickens here are not a product of Tyson. Rather, they run around in the yard until someone wrings their neck and throws them in the fryer. They taste amazing, but tend to be a bit chewier than what you would buy at the supermarket back home. I had to get out my pocketknife to cut this particular bird into manageable pieces.

After supper, I retreated to my room (which was named after a bishop), washed my face and passed out. Africa-time is no joke. It takes forever to get anywhere!!

Tuesday, I woke up with my arms pinned to my sides by tangled blankets, but I was free of bedbug bites and ravenous. After a typical Kenyan breakfast of fried eggs, toast, mystery sausage and chai, I hung out till Leah, Pat and Dr. Ongugo showed up. The project team set up computer equipment in a conference room and started getting down to the business of combining their tree data. Having looked at many spreadsheets, and having had absolutely nothing to do with what was being discussed, I bored of the discussion rather quickly. Leah, Pat and I surfed the Internet and compared photos of the previous evening’s epic sunset until Dr. Ongugo thankfully sent us away with the blind driver to Lake Nakuru National Park.

Lake Nakuru is not a large park, and though it is readily accessible from Nakuru-town, it is home to a wide variety of wildlife. It is an alkaline lake, and is best known for the concentrations of flamingos and other birdlife that it attracts. You can hire a guide to take you through the park, or simply drive through on your own – just take care not to get out of your vehicle!

Lake Nakuru.

We navigated through town and started down the long gravel road lined with acacias that leads to the main gates. This area is apparently a favorite picnic spot for townspeople. Couples had spread blankets up and down the grassy shoulders and were enjoying lunch or cuddling. The interesting thing about it was the troop of baboons hanging around in the trees or prowling between the blankets. As I mentioned several posts back, baboons are intimidating animals up close, and all they really want to do is to eat your sandwich. I am relatively sure that I could think of a better spot to take a date than on a picnic where you may or may not have your face ripped off over a plate of finger sandwiches. I do not trust those monkeys.

We rounded a last corner of the road, and pulled up to the front gates, from which I could just glimpse the marshy lakeshore, where the black shapes of waterbuck and cape buffalo could be seen calmly grazing. We couldn’t pay the $60 fee quickly enough to get out there! We piled back into the truck and prepared to pass through the Jurassic Park-esque gates, when our driver inexplicably (we thought) started chatting with the gate staff. The tirade of Swahili was getting quite lengthy, and we were all starting to get impatient with him, when I heard the word ‘simba’ mentioned several times in quick succession. With no explanation given though, a guy standing outside of the gate suddenly opened my door and hopped in the backseat with Leah and I. He grinned, shook our hands and said, “I’ll take you to see the lions.”

We made a u-turn out of the gate and headed away from the park back towards town. Before we reached the picnickers, we turned onto a small gravel track and headed up towards a series of rocky hills. We had not gone more than 400 yards from the main park entrance when we topped a rise and saw a lioness and half-grown cub lying in the shade of a lone acacia. Ahead, stretched across the road and twisted at an odd angle, were the black head and neck of a female cape buffalo. The rest of the carcass lay in the tall grass of the roadside. A pool of black liquid gathered under the head. The smell from the kill was a physical force – as soon as we crested the rise, and even as we saw it there in the road, the stench of decaying meat and eviscerated organs filled the inside of the cab. You could taste the decay. Just to the side of carcass was an old culvert. We could see the shoulders and tail of a third lion inside the structure drinking. The truck pulled to a stop just as the big male emerged from drinking its fill. It was maneless, a transplant from Tsavo, and huge. He gave the truck one desultory glance, switched his tail and lay down in the grass. His belly was distended from gorging on the buffalo. As we snapped picture after picture, he suddenly arose and approached the kill. Though he did not appear to be particularly hungry anymore, he latched onto what remained of a haunch and reached one massive paw up to the ribs to steady himself as he started tearing out chunks of meat. As the paw settled onto the top of the carcass, the claws extended – curved talons as long as your little finger. As soon as he touched the buffalo, CLOUDS of blowflies arose into the air, even coming through the cracks in our windows and into the cab. Trust me, there is a big difference between seeing these creatures sleeping in their pit at the zoo, and looking one in the eye without the benefit of a fence or concrete wall.

Chowing down.

Our impromptu guide urged the driver closer, and we now stopped the truck within touching distance of the lion, violently tugging the rear of the buffalo this way and that. We were so close I could hear him breathing. At one point, he paused ever so slightly and glanced up at us in the truck. At that slight move, the guide started slapping the driver on the shoulder exclaiming, “Back up, back up, back up!”

We watched Simba worry the kill for a while longer, snapping our fill of pictures and video before slowly backing away and heading back to the main park. I for one, was not expecting to see any lions on this trip so immediately being led to a kill, and on the road-side no less, was incredibly lucky. I had read about lion kills, but the experience was much more visceral than I had imagined. Seeing that sort of behavior in the flesh is just incredibly raw.

Leaving the lions, we entered the park proper, and started a tour along the lakeshore. Lake Nakuru is beautiful. It lies at the feet of a series of small peaks and is surrounded on all sides by marsh and forest. Hulking cape buffalo and waterbuck waded in the reeds, grazing, along with ibis, storks and other wading birds. Huge rafts of pelicans stood about noisily on muddy banks and formed scattered pink and white phalanxes in the middle of the lake. Baboons and vervet monkeys gamboled about on the road and in the forest. Birds were everywhere.

Impala buck.

We turned away from the lake and headed up towards the nearby grassland we could see through the trees. Herds of gazelle fed placidly through scattered acacia and thin, woody shrubs. Waterbuck had made their way from the lakeshore to feed on grass, and were often flanked by the huge buffalo. We passed a flock of helmeted guinea fowl, dusting and a little later, saw a pair of black-backed jackals trot out of the long grass.

Helmeted guinea fowl - they make a very distinctive sound.

Black-backed jackals. About the size of a coyote.

I have read way too many old hunting stories, and most of the classic writers regard cape buffalo as the most dangerous game animal, except for perhaps the elephant. Knowing this, I was still never that impressed when seeing buffalo on television – they just seem to come across like a big cow. Nothing could be further from the truth. A cape buffalo is a massive animal and when you see a bull standing in the open, they look like a giant hunk of rock. Their shoulders are massive, almost disproportionately large. It is easy to understand why hunters use such big bore guns for buffalo – you have to! We drove right up to a few small herds and solitary bulls – they weighed at least as much as our little truck, which was a strange feeling. The size of these animals says something about the strength of the animals that prey upon them, namely, the pride of lions just up the road.

Cape buffalo - massive animals.

Waterbuck on the left.

As we were riding around, I realized that not only was our driver night-blind, but he had trouble seeing during the day as well. Plus, he was hard of hearing, which is not a good quality to have when you are driving very close to wild animals that could conceivably tip over the vehicle if you get too close. I wound up sitting half out the back window, and holding onto the roof bar so I could spot animals and then yell directions into the driver’s ear. Every time I climbed out the window, I would always check the surroundings to make sure nothing with teeth and claws would jump on me when my back was turned.

Driving through a herd of buffalo, I spotted a massive animal away up on a distant hill. After bumping our way over the plain, we were rewarded with one of the 70 or so white rhinos in the park. Kifaru was far bigger than our truck and gradually fed his way to within thirty yards or so of our waiting cameras. We watched him meander across the plain for a good half hour.

White rhino. The difference between a white and black rhino is in the shape of their mouths. The white's is wide and flat for grazing, while the black's is pointed and slightly prehensile for browsing on shrubs.

As the sun started to go down, we decided to head back to the lakeshore to see if we could get some photographs down by the water. We found a forest track leading to the water’s edge that with the help of my trusty binoculars, could be seen to lead to a distant mass of bright pink, which just had to be a flock of flamingos. Before we had gone too far though, a troop of baboons pitched out of the trees and started walking down the middle of the road ahead of us. Picture this: I’m sitting in the rear of the truck, directly behind the driver. He slows down next to a female baboon that is literally about three feet away from the cab. All of the windows are down. I look down and see what is happening, and start to slowly roll my window up. The driver stops, stares at the monkey and starts snapping his fingers at it. The baboon stares back at him (which in monkey language is a sign of aggression), then fakes like it is going to jump in the window! We are yelling at this guy to roll up his window, but he can’t hear us cause he’s deaf!

Monkey road.

You don't want this guy in your lap.

The forest road we were following emerged from the lengthening shadows of the trees onto a bare mudflat, marked with the prints of innumerable waterfowl and streaked white with their droppings, where we got out of the truck for the first time. The wind whipped down from the hills, gathered speed, and howled across the shore, pulling at our clothes and drowning out sound. Across the lake, storm clouds were passing, and a rainbow appeared above the distant ridges. Hundreds of pelicans had gathered on the edge of the flat in a giant rookery and roosted above our heads in the solitary acacias near the water’s edge. Egyptian geese and widgeon whistled past on the gale, while maribu storks stalked through the shallows with their strange pink necks. The clatter of bills, grunts, screeches and cries from the accumulated birdlife was deafening, even in the gale force wind. However, most clearly discernible in all the chaos was the clear, high piping of the flamingos standing just off shore. The birds are shades of the brightest pink and they move about so delicately it is surprising that they do not simply blow away. It was unbelievable to see them in their natural environment, framed in a fierce landscape and lit by the clear light of the African dusk. When the flock, hundreds strong, lifted briefly into the air to alight farther down the shore, the beating of the black tipped wings reminded me of a deck of cards being shuffled.

Greater and lesser flamingos - filter feeders. As the zoo delights in telling you, the pink color comes from the invertebrates they feed upon.

Pat and Leah, loving life. See the rainbow?

I know that I won’t be able to properly convey just how surreal this experience was for me. To stand out on the middle of an empty mudflat in the middle of Africa, when you cannot hear a thing for the rush of the wind and the cries of the birds, and you see cape buffalo grazing just beyond the vehicle, and even though you are there with a group of people, you feel alone, and the experience is still yours alone and then suddenly the world seems as big as when you were a kid. When the light had faded and we got back into the truck, none of the words we could think of to describe the experience really seemed to fit. As we drove back through the gates, the group was silent, as everyone retreated to the solitude of their own thoughts to muse on the birds and the wind.

Pelicans and maribu storks in the trees. These are white and pink-backed pelicans.

Fulfillment.

6.5.11

June 5, 2011

(Pictures added!)

Not much has happened over the past week, which in all actuality was a good thing. It was nice to be back at home base for a little while, and in my case, not to sweat through my clothes before noon. It also gave me a chance to get some laundry done. I must admit, I do enjoy getting my clothes back, freshly dried and crisp from hanging on the line. It is just a whole other level of freshness.

There has been a dearth of activity at the main KEFRI center since it has been necessary to coordinate project trips before we can really start working on anything. This week however, I was asked to come up with a gender based violence policy for the Institution. Though not exactly my cup of tea, it was interesting to learn about an area of policy making that I had never really thought about.

The excitement for the week came on Wednesday, which we were surprised to learn was a national holiday - Madaraka Day, or Kenyan Independence Day to all you wazungus. Our driver, George Igogo (igogo means 'eagle' in swahili), invited us to celebrate with his family, which meant that we would get to walk over to some of the nearby villages. Compared to the US, most people do not have very much, so we all appreciated what a gesture our friend was making.

I really did not know what to expect when George showed up at our door on Wednesday morning. To get to George’s village of Nguriundito, we would have to walk down through the local forest (planted by our boss) that almost everyone has told us to avoid without the company of a local. I have yet to see any really questionable characters around KEFRI but apparently they exist. Anyway, we set off through the woods with George and his son James, who was so shy in front of us wazungus that he did not breath a word for 6 hours. We walked for around half an hour through a forest of eucalyptus, with plots of maize hastily planted in any sunny patches.

As many of you may have guessed, eucalyptus is not native to East Africa. Although I am not sure about the global range of the species, the varieties being planted around Kenya are imported from Australia. Eucalyptus is a very fast growing tree, achieving sizes useful for timber purposes in a little over half the time necessary for indigenous trees like acacia to achieve comparable mass. Of course, there are tradeoffs. Eucalyptus is adapted to the arid environment of Australia, so they require vast amounts of water. It is generally recommended not to plant tracts of the tree along watercourses because they will suck it dry. Furthermore, some species turn the soil more acidic, inhibiting the growth of native vegetation. The planting of eucalyptus is a hotly debated topic in Kenya these days. Farmers like it because they can use it relatively quickly for poles. Environmentalists claim that widespread planting is contributing to a general loss in biodiversity.

(Note: I've started reading about the planting of Eucalyptus, globally. It is the most popular exotic tree planted worldwide. Claims that the trees will dry watercourses are not true. Instead, poor agricultural practices are more often to blame for the degradation of water sources. However, it is true that the trees contribute to a loss in biodiversity.)

Leah and Pat looking for koalas in the eucalypts - wrong continent guys!

Thinking about the costs and benefits of eucalyptus, we emerged from the forest into one of the more attractive settlements I have ever had the chance to see. Most of the time, I only see Kenyan towns from the road, and they all follow the same scheme, a pot-hole ridden street lined with vegetable and fruit stalls, a hardware store, a butcher shop, a nyamachoma restaurant, a dry goods store and maybe a bar. Although there is usually a good bit of trash in the gutters, the layout is much cleaner and practical than it may appear at first glance. Away from the road though, the story is much different. Nguriundito made me want to buy some chickens, plant some maize and settle down to live. Setting eyes on the village was almost like taking a step back in time. Small, bright houses set back from the path peeped out from bright green patches of maize, with avocado, banana and paw-paw set under the eaves. The air was so clean it seemed to sparkle. There was no sound except for the small sounds of community: the chirping of birds, the distant lowing of a cow and the laughter of children playing. Although I saw powerlines, I cannot say that I heard a television or radio. There was not a speck of litter. I guess the best way to say it was that the community was beautiful in its simplicity. So beautiful in fact that I pulled out my iPhone, uploaded a video of the streets to Youtube, wrote three tweets and updated my Facebook status to “Nguriundito for realz”. Kidding.

Approaching the shambas of Nguriundito.

Couple of shops in the village.

KEFRI is pushing for the planting of bamboo as a crop. This is the giant variety - I thought the leaf patterns were pretty.

Pat looking cool next to a stalk of giant bamboo. How do you measure up, Pat?

After a nice uphill hike, we passed a sacred ficus tree, and finally arrived at George’s shamba. The house was made primarily of corrugated tin, set around eucalyptus poles set in a concrete slab. Though simple, it was open, airy, spotlessly clean and with plenty of room for George, his wife, and three children. A tin and brush fence surrounded the property, with room for a cookhouse, pigpen, cow pen, rabbit hutches and a small garden. His wife (whose name I just can’t recall – she spoke no English) cooked a feast, and we were joined by a set of grandparents and multiple cousins. We dined on beef stew and rice, boiled potatoes, cabbage, a tomato, onion and cilantro salad, peas and carrots, a Kikuyu dish of potato and pumpkin leaves (it was green and delicious) and my favorite, homemade chappati. It was the most unbelievable chappati I have had so far – you could taste the wood smoke from the cook fire on which it had been prepared. Of course, all of the food was grown locally, even the beef. After three plates of that delicious green mystery food and chappati, I was ready to pass out - don’t worry Mom, I haven’t lost too much weight!

Village walk.

Bouganvillea. Very common, as is lantana.

George and his son James. George raises rabbits for the village so the kids can learn to care for animals.

I happened to glance up mid-gorge and noticed that the 10 other people in the room were staring at Leah, Pat and I as we ate. I would wager to guess that we are the only white people that have ever been to George’s house. Judging from the reaction of the kids around the neighborhood, I would guess that there are no frequent white visitors to the neighborhood either. We took a walk after lunch and once the kids figured out that we were people too, we had our own entourage! George’s family accompanied us on a walk back to KEFRI later that afternoon – I was holding hands with two kids, and alternating swinging them up in the air with every other step. They were fascinated that I had arm hair, and I know that all the girls wanted to touch Leah’s hair . . . and Pat’s bleached blonde mane for that matter. All in all, a great day, and especially fulfilling because we got to spend some time with family, and even though it was not our own, we were made to feel at home.

The rest of the week passed quickly, and especially once I learned that I would be headed to the Gwasi region to work on the sustainable reforestation project. I knocked out the gender policy assignment, and on Saturday, Pat, Leah and I headed down to the Nairobi National Park to go to the Elephant Orphanage. Traffic was exceptionally bad that morning so instead of the 2 hour travel time for which I had budgeted, the trip wound up taking closer to three. Having missed our window to see the “ellies” (according to Leah) we decided to check out the Nature Walk at the Park. Although it was zoo-like, we made another slightly shady deal with a guy to take us around (he said he was an intern but I didn’t believe him) and were able to feed a cage of colobus monkeys and an ostrich. There is a particular tree growing around the compound that all the animals are crazy about – we fed it to the monkeys and ostrich, but every herbivore I saw on Saturday was nibbling on its leaves. The highlight of the walk was seeing the bongo – a massive red, spiral horned, forest antelope. I had only seen them in pictures. After the Walk, we headed up the road to the Galleria in Karen-town where Leah and I previously got our first real supper in Kenya. My prayers to the coffee gods were answered because I was able to procure a real live French press! My life is about to get exponentially better.

Sunday, Pat and I went back to town to try and run a couple more errands. I needed to buy some shoes for the suit I plan to wear during my stint at Mumias Sugar – I unknowingly brought the unacceptable combination of black shoes and brown belt. Unbeknownst to us though, every store in Nairobi is closed on Sundays, so the shoe-shopping foray was a failure. However, we wound up going to the open air Masai Market, where vendors sell all of those cool African gifts that your family wants. I got some neat gifts but WAY overpaid. If you come to Nairobi, do not go to Masai Market. Buy your gifts for 300% less elsewhere.

I think that about puts the wraps on the first week of June. Next week I am off to Gwasi in the southwest corner of the country, and the following week I will spend in Mumias learning about carbon credits and the sugar industry. Best!

5.28.11

May 28, 2011

Saturday meant that it was time travel back to Nairobi, which would prove to take even longer than the standard eight hours because the route was all uphill. Two matatu rides brought us back to downtown Mombasa and the bus station. A word of advice when riding in matatus – beware the front seat. The engine heats up the metal in front of your shins and if you unknowingly touch it, you’ll get burned! There were two highlights to the trip, the bus itself and elephants.

If you happen to travel around Kenya or Uganda, then do yourself a favor and book an Oxygen bus. It’s almost like being in a private plane. Each bus comes with a stewardess who hands out snacks, juice and peanuts. Plus the seats are leather and very roomy. Better yet the buses are air-conditioned! After sweating through all of your clothes for a week, you tend to appreciate those little pieces of technology all the more.

Tsavo through a dirty windshield - do not get lost in this place.

Tsavo was just as forbidding in the light of day, and looked particularly dry and thorny. I had paid just a little bit more for a first class seat (about $20 total) and was sitting in the first position above the driver, meaning that I could look right out the massive windshield. Prime tourist position, and this time I was prepared with camera, binoculars and bird-book in hand – the stewardess and driver laughed at me the whole time as I craned my neck to see the sights they are forced to drive past 4 times a week.

Upon entering the park, I almost immediately started spotting elephants. Generally, herds would be hundreds of yards from the road, standing like red islands in the patches of tan grass and scrub. I counted at least ten. The last group I saw was a complete accident – after focusing on a very distant animal (at least a mile), I put the binoculars down and glanced out the window, only to be staring at two cows fifty yards from the highway! I also saw a troop of baboons, some dusty zebras and bunches of Thompsons gazelle. Every animal in Tsavo is covered in red dust.

Oh yeah, there was another highlight! On the way out of Mombasa, we were hung up in a traffic jam, which meant that people started pulling out of traffic and driving along the shoulders of the road. There was very little room. An oncoming eighteen-wheeler misjudged ever so slightly, and bashed in the side mirror of the bus!

Random rocky outcrop - one of the few pictures I took on the drive.

After the nine-hour trip, we finally got back to Nairobi, which meant another two hours minimum would be required to get back to KEFRI in Nderi. I stopped at a supermarket to pick up some fruit and crackers for Leah, who along with Pat rode back to Nairobi separately. Having eaten copious amounts of vegetables in Mombasa, she was the unfortunate member of our party to pick up an amoeba. Watch out for eating fruit and vegetables with the skin on. We later learned that in Mombasa, vegetables are often cultivated on sewer lines.

The trek out of city center indeed took two hours, so when all of us interns finally reunited at ‘home’ it was quite late. Everyone slept late on Sunday, and then Pat and I went into town with our packs to buy groceries. Though limited by our cooking equipment, we returned home with a respectable pile of food. Sunday night I dined on corn flakes, with pieces of banana and COLD milk! Success!