5.25.11

{Retroactive post}

I spent last week in Mombasa, and the trip was a whirlwind. I’ll be hard-pressed to fit everything into one entry, so I think the best way to proceed is just to break the trip out by day as I have time, and try to hit the highlights. That in itself will be difficult because we saw and experienced some interesting stuff. Here goes . . .

May 25, 2011

Pat and Leah left for Mombasa on Sunday to participate in a study that KEFRI is doing in collaboration with the UN and the Kenya National Museum. The project focuses on the response of indigenous cultures to climate change in and around the Sacred Forests, or Kayas, along the coast. The indigenous people, the Mijikenda, live up and down coastal Kenya. They believe that their gods reside in the heart of the Kayas, and that entering the sacred forests without following the proper rituals means that the forest will not allow you to leave. Bologna? Who knows? Even some of the KEFRI scientists told some strange stories about venturing too deep into the Kayas.

Historically, the threat of entering the sacred forests was enough to keep people from venturing inside, however as Christianity and Islam have replaced the worship of local gods, a gap in the belief system has emerged. The elders charged with maintaining the forests are slowly passing away, and are being replaced by the younger generation of Mijikenda who are generally more amenable to exploiting the natural resources the forests have to offer. The fact that most of the areas abut prime beachfront property does not help matters. I think you can see where this is going – “Why should I slave away growing maize year after year when this land is worth millions of dollars to developers?”

Anyway the project was to interview village elders from three different Kayas, to see how rising temperatures are affecting the way they live. What sorts of methods are they using to mitigate climate change? How are the harvests? Are they using different seeds? How are the catches? Are they catching different species or throwing their nets in different places? How do they see their use of the land and forests changing in the future? This area of the world is particularly vulnerable because if temperatures continue to rise, the corresponding rise in sea levels will effectively wipe out these ecosystems. Back in the 90’s the Kaya Forests were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, like the Pyramids and the Grand Canyon.

Cool right? So did I venture into the shadowy sacred depths of the holy forests? Did I peer through the latticework of leaves and branches at troops of endangered colobus monkeys? Did I gain wisdom from listening to the elders tell the stories of generations? No, no and no. I didn’t actually get to go into the forests. I left Nairobi on Wednesday after the rest of the group, and by the time I made it to Mombasa they had finished all of the important interviews. Disappointing, though by coming late I did manage to avoid being chased by ghost dogs.

I departed Nairobi by bus at 1 p.m. The drive to Mombasa is, on a good day, about an eight-hour trip, depending on traffic. Honestly, the single longest part of the trip was getting out of Nairobi itself – the traffic in this city is a thing of wonder. The road to Mombasa is cleverly named the ‘Mombasa Road’ and is two lanes the entire way, except for the parts where it dissolves into a dirt track for a couple of miles.

I was astounded by the number of construction projects we passed on the outskirts of the city. Buildings are going up everywhere, signs for Bamburi Cement (owned by LaFarge if you’re interested) are posted all over, and eighteen-wheelers clog the roadways going to and from the city carrying materials. It is an encouraging to see all of this investment, though it was in direct contrast to my vision of Africa as the world’s last bastion of wilderness. Instead, we drove through urban sprawl for what seemed like hours before the construction finally diminished to roadside villages and vegetable stalls.

I know that I am rambling, but I feel it is worth making one more point before I get back to the trip. If you’ve taken an economics course of any flavor, then chances are that you are familiar with the tradeoff between the factors of production, capital and labor. The idea is that a given level of output may be achieved by any number of different combinations of capital and labor, with one combination being ‘optimal’. Maybe you would like to mow your yard. You could hire 10 guys with swing-blades to manually cut the grass, or one guy on a riding lawnmower. The yard will be cut equally well by either party, but which is more efficient?

Nowhere is this tradeoff more evident than in Kenya. I use the grass example because that actually still happens here! Instead of one guy on a Cub Cadet, gangs of people chop grass with machetes, the ends bent slightly to give a nice flat cut. Heavy equipment is in short supply for road construction – I saw a guy breaking up asphalt with a pickaxe! The most telling example though, is the renovation of the guest housing next door to our rooms. The workers have no power tools, so instead of hearing the buzz of a circular saw and the pop of a nail gun, you hear boards being cut by hand and the banging of hammers – I had almost forgotten that houses were built that way!

Anyway, once we emerged from the city, the best part of the whole week began. Nairobi is located in the highland region of Kenya, so the terrain is lush, green and quite cool. The altitude (according to my handy-dandy watch) is almost 1700 meters above sea level. However as soon as you leave the city heading east, you are immediately aware of the loss in altitude and rise in temperature. You can feel the land beginning the long, slow descent to sea level and the Indian Ocean.

The first part of the journey was through a landscape reminiscent of New Mexico. The land gently rolls away in sere tan waves, dotted here and there by scattered stands of acacia trees, to vistas so wide its almost like being on the ocean. The sky is the bright blue of the tropics and small clouds seem to rush past overhead. Aside from the beauty of the sheer expanse of the savanna, the most striking features of the landscape are the small mountains that hulk up out of the plain, seemingly at random. The first were no larger than rocky outcrops, gradually increasing in size to ridges, and then into real-life peaks, some easily a thousand feet high. We passed along the shoulders of some of the big hills and I could see the lines of cracks and faults in the exposed rock, formed when movements in the continental plates thrust them into existence. It’s hard to describe how it feels to behold so much country with one sweep of your eye; to see a single craggy peak rising alone out of the expanse. It made me want to get out of the bus, and start walking, and keep walking just so I could be a part of the landscape.

Of course, I was also watching for wildlife, and once leaving the city, I did not have long to wait. We almost immediately passed a flock of helmeted guinea fowl on the side of the road – I assume they were dusting and eating grit, like turkeys. Once the true grassland started, I saw a distant herd of zebra through the trunks of an acacia stand. I could just distinguish the sun shining on black and white backs and withers. Thompson’s gazelle were numerous in the open areas. They are not very large, about the size of a Labrador, but very neatly and cleanly marked black, tan and white. I even spied a flock of ostriches moving through some trees, a male and two females. As we passed through a series of grassy hills I caught an antelope silhouetted on the crest of a hill – I’m guessing it was either a topi or a hartebeest.

About halfway to our destination (about 4 hours in) we stopped at a small gas station and restaurant to take a break and grab a bite to eat. The sun was starting to set and the land was becoming increasingly more desert-like. The rolling tan grass of the savannah was replaced with low, gnarled acacia trees and scrub - it looks a good bit like the scrubland of west Texas. The exposed earth had a definite ocher color. Settlements were scattered, and when we did pass houses, they were generally made of the same red earth that surrounded them; small earthen huts with either a corrugated tin roof or steeply slanted thatch. People would run into the highway to try and sell mangos, oranges and even maize as we passed through communities. Herds of white and brown goats grazed along the sides of the road.

Interestingly, we started seeing baobab trees in greater and greater numbers. These trees are just tremendous. They don’t look like they belong on earth. A baobab resembles the leg of some giant creature that was planted deep in the ground since before time began. The bark is gray and whorled, like an elephant’s skin, and the trunk narrows only slightly before thick branches emerge and terminate into spindly, fingerlike ends. Strange oval fruits droop from the tips of some branches, while others are decorated with the nests of weaverbirds. It was amusing to see a giant baobab looking as ancient as the stones, with its branches waving in the desert wind and festooned with the flimsy and fleeting homes of the colorful weaverbirds, almost like it were wearing tinsel. Often, huts were clustered right up against the feet of the giants, and absolutely dwarfed by the magnitude of the trees.

After buying a very questionable hot-dog at the rest stop (don’t ask me why I did it), we hopped back in the bus for the last leg. We had stopped right on the edge of Tsavo National Park and if you are a Michael Douglas fan (who isn’t?) you may have seen ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’, a movie about two man-eating lions who dined on oodles of Indian workers laying a railroad line through the area. The lions are now mounted at the Field Museum in Chicago. Also, from what I understand, male lions in this region are often mane-less. I kept a sharp eye out, but did not see any lions or elephants in the park, even though the day was turning to dusk.

Tsavo is a tangle of thorns and thicket. The trees, mostly acacia, are small and twisted and the earth is dry. Everything has thorns. It really is a menacing sort of landscape and not someplace I would relish exploring without some stout brush-pants, lots of water and a gun. Rocky crags rear their heads at intervals and baobabs occasionally rise out of the scrub. It may or may not be true, but I felt like entering Tsavo was a bit like driving through a giant bowl. The road sloped downhill towards the coast, so I was looking out over just an extraordinary amount of country. To the north, a distant set of cliffs paralleled our course, hinting at a plateau, and to the south were scattered ranges of mountains.

After a while, I just put up my camera and binoculars and enjoyed what I was seeing. There is a small range of mountains on the eastern side of the park, and the sun was setting behind us, sending long pink fingers across the sky and lighting the faces of the approaching peaks in a soft light. Looking back west, the sunset silhouetted a craggy ridge whose crest, dark with shadow and rimmed in light, looked just like a crowd of people with their faces upturned. The clouds were low, and flat bottomed and lit from the setting sun. The forbidding thickets were softened in the evening light and gazing off into the darkening east over the miles of tangled thicket and thorn I could see the northerly plateau coming to its end in long, smooth steps. Seeing the vast expanse of the park, and the haze of the purple evening hovering over the last plateau was almost like looking off the edge of the world.

It was full dark by the time we arrived in Mombasa. The sea smell was in the air and it was exceptionally humid. At the bus stop we were swarmed by taxi-drivers looking for business, as well as salesmen of all descriptions. They will sell anything on the street in Mombasa – the normal drinks, snacks, or fruit, but also socks, hand towels, flashlights, stuffed animals, anything. I even saw two guys on a motorcycle, the guy on the back holding a king mackerel by the tail, driving in and out of parking lots trying to sell the fish!

We were picked up by the KEFRI drivers who somehow navigated out of the jam around the bus station – Mombasa traffic is not quite on par with that of Nairobi, but it runs a close second. The streets are narrow and winding, and though the city is Arabic in origin, I was immediately reminded of France. Even the architecture is reminiscent of the French coast. Emerging on the waterfront, we waited in line for the ferry to take us across a bay to pick up the highway to take us to the south coast, and driving off on the far side, I was exposed to the big problem in and around Mombasa – sanitation. There are literally PILES of garbage lining the sides of the road, and I do mean PILES, complete with pools of standing water. As you can imagine, it smells abominably. I still haven’t quite figured out how things get done in Kenya. I mean it seems like a relatively simple matter to improve sanitation. Step 1 – recognize that you need to cart away your trash. Step 2 – establish a landfill. Step 3 – get some trucks. Step 4 – clean up the trash and dump it away from your citizens. The vast majority of people that I have dealt with are highly educated, and I have seen all of the construction going on around the capital. I know that the capability is there, so why isn’t something being done? Mombasa is a notorious malaria zone, along with all the other diseases associated with standing water and waste.

Wow, I am rambling. Almost done. We finally pulled into a nyama-choma restaurant in the town of Diani on the south coast to reunite with the team (Pat and Leah included). This dish is worth explaining because we ate it almost exclusively for 2 days. Nyama-choma is basically smoked beef, and the Kenyans are crazy about it. The joints that specialize in making it are generally found next to butcher shops where they buy beef. In my opinion, a meal of nyama-choma embodies the worst things about eating a steak. So take a skinny cow (if it was from around Mombasa, then it was probably eating garbage), butcher it and slice off a big random chunk of meat. Make sure you get as much gristle as possible. A few slivers of bone wouldn’t be amiss either. Wrap it in foil with a healthy handful of salt and put it on top of a charcoal grill. Cook it till all the juice is gone and it’s good and tough. Now unwrap it, lay it on the grill briefly, and then slap it on a plate with French fries. Great! You may now serve it to your favorite American. Oh yeah. Scare up a bunch of flies to buzz all around the food so that it will be even more appetizing. Bon appétit! Hope you have hot sauce.

After that bite of supper, we headed to a small hotel nearby where I wearily procured a room key from the proprietor who had to be awoken at her desk. Once in the room, I hastily pulled down the mosquito net and immediately passed out from exhaustion and nyama-choma. What a massive entry this is! And I’m still catching up! Oh well, stay tuned for more adventures in Mombasa. I won’t say whom, but someone ends up getting an amoeba!

Best!