Main reason for not having written anything in the last few weeks: not much exciting has happened.
After the misadventures of Christmas we did the only reasonable (read: adult) thing: stayed home and worked on our report. The thing is due at the end of January but the sooner we get it out of the way, the better. And I’m proud to say that we are putting the finishing touches on it these days. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a paper this early before deadline before.
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| Report writing |
As said, we stayed home after Christmas – including New Year’s Eve where we stayed in and watched two movies instead of one. We managed to find the family’s movie drawer so we are working our way through the more appealing titles. The other night we saw Out of Africa and it is probably the 7th or 8th time I watch it but I love it more every time. Anyway, the first week of 2012 we spent at home, sitting in the shade on the porch, writing that report. Francis had informed us that we could go back to work in that week, but he ended up having to spend a couple of days in Isiolo. During the week we took a couple of walks into town, walked to Kongoni (remember, the one that our coordinator owns and where we had Christmas dinner?) for lunch and taste-tested milkshakes in the mzungu cafés across town. Highlights of the week also included seeing a new record for amount of people on a motorcycle – which is 5 in case you were wondering. Also, we walked to the equator which is just south of town, an about 45 min walk from home. For a small fee we were shown the Coriolis-effect (http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corioliseffekten) in action. Some people apparently oppose the scientific truth of this effect, but no matter what, the water did swirl in opposing directions on the south and north side of the line. So I choose to believe.
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| At the equator |
On the Friday night we went out to dinner with Maggie, our “mom”, some of her friends and Rachel, an American Peace Corps volunteer who rents a small annex on Maggie’s compound. We went to Kongoni, had a nice meal and a really nice and fun night. It was good to get out after having spent an entire week immersed in report writing.
After that extra week at home, we returned to work on Monday and spent most of the day doing errands with Francis in Nyeri. Nyeri is the ‘capital’ city of this district so most government offices are in this town. We’ve been a couple of times before, but I’m quite fond of the place especially because of the drive there which winds up and down fertile, green hillsides while Mt. Kenya looms in the horizon.
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| Nyeri |
One of our tasks that day was to visit KEBS – Kenya Bureau of Standards. KEBS tests products and gives a stamp of approval that the product is safe and lives up to the proper standards. We went there because we have a big food distribution coming up. Francis wants to make sure that the food is fit for human consumption especially because the Red Cross has just made a huge mistake of distribution food that turned out to be contaminated with mold and the so-called aflatoxins, which can kill people.
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| Contaminated food at a school - although this is from the government(a whole different story in itself), not the Red Cross |
They’ve had to reclaim food worth several millions in large part funded by the Kenyan people themselves. Not a very good situation at all, so even though the food distribution should have taken place almost two weeks ago, it is making sense to really wait for the results from KEBS to come back. So for now, we are playing the waiting game – again, or perhaps I should say still.
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| On the way home from Nyeri - this seemed to function as a school bus |
On Tuesday, after the day was more or less finished, Francis felt sorry for us that we had not yet seen any, or very few at least, wild animals, so we headed down the road from the office where a large national reservation stretches across the landscape. In the reservation is one of, if not the, Kenya’s biggest rhino sanctuaries. We did not go in, but drove along the fence scouting for wildlife. According to Francis the animals usually come fairly close to the fence, but that day they seemed to stay elsewhere. We did however spot a white rhino fairly close – in the picture bellow you might be able to see it staring at us.
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| Rhino - right in the middle of the picture |
A herd of black rhinos were grazing further away and mostly resembled black, moving dots. We also saw a couple of flocks of gazelles of various species, buffalos and some funny looking birds that we later identified as the African Crowned Crane. It was quite nice, for once, to get a feel for the wildlife that Kenya seems to be so famous for and we’re really looking forward to the next time we get the opportunity for a safari.
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| Rain clouds loom on the slopes of Mt. Kenya |
As we headed to the office Thursday morning the matatu was about halfway to Naro Moru when suddenly traffic came to a halt. Cars were stopped in the middle of the road, some were turning around, some were going off-road to find alternative routes – all because in front of us a large gathering of people had blocked the road by setting fire to branches and other flammable things. Honestly, I was initially a little worried. In every cautionary guidebook it says to stay away from demonstrations and hostile situations and it was impossible to decipher the intention from a distance. Word travels fast when you’re stuck in the middle of morning traffic, so our fellow passengers soon told us that the people were demonstrating against the elephants. Yes, you read it right: the elephants. That sure is something you’ll never see in good old Denmark. The problem with the elephants is that they get into people’s crops and destroy them either by the sheer size of them or by eating it. The locals want the government to help them first of all by putting up a fence, but apparently the government has no intentions of that so on Thursday people were demonstrating when a group of five elephants showed up. We got out of the matatu and walked closer to the action and we could clearly see the elephants feasting on the trees some 50 meters from the road. Big, beautiful animals that took no notice of the noisy horde of people close by. As it seemed like we could be there all day, we called Francis who had heard the rumor and was practically already on his way towards us from the other side. In the meantime, our matatu driver told us that the police had been called and were on their way to dissolve the demonstration and chase off the elephants. It might be bad to be in a demonstration in the first place, but once the police shows up it’s better to just get out of the way. So we passed through and headed up the road to a safe distance from the fire blockade. Soon after the police came rushing past and five minutes later traffic started flowing again. We met up with Francis and ended up more or less hanging around the area for a couple of hours. First, we watched as the rest of the traffic disappeared and the Kenya Wildlife Service headed into the bush to chase the elephants away. Then we visited a school in the vicinity. As most other community schools it was primitively set up with little space and a big lack of desks for the students. In most class rooms they seated four kids to a table.
As we headed back towards the office, events were again developing in the elephant-sighting area. We pulled over at a safe distance and Francis explained that the KWS was trying to push the elephants towards the forest while the locals wanted them to kill the animals. The elephants have a good memory and if they kill one of them, the elephants will most likely stay away from the area for a couple of years because they remember that one of them was killed there. Also, the locals want the meat. So we waited around to see them chase the animals across the road. We heard the opposing gunshots from the KWS and the yelling from the locals but they managed to stay in a stalemate for some time and Francis got impatient so we headed back to the office without getting another look at the group. We don’t know the outcome of the situation, but I’ll let you know if we learn it at some point.
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| People gathering on the road waiting for the elephants |
Back at the office we spent the rest of the day doing nothing. Someone had come to take two of the desks to another office but it turned out to be a daunting task to get the desks out. We stayed out of it (too many cooks) but it took the guys a couple of hours to get them out as the desks were too wide for too narrow doors.
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| Charlotte found a grass hopper outside the office |
Some of you might be wondering whatever happened to the whole going to Isiolo thing and all I can say is that we’ve really given up on the prospect of going there. Tribal violence broke out again over Christmas and there’s no telling when it will be safe to go. Charlotte is leaving in a month and we can’t waste much more time waiting. We’re planning to wait out the situation next week in terms of the food distribution and then Francis is trying to help us set up a visit to the western part of the country where they have been badly affected by floods. If all goes according to plan for a change, we’ll spend a couple of weeks there before Charlotte leaves and then – I don’t know. I’ve decided to stay for another couple of months because the school curriculum allows it, because I don’t have anything at home that pulls me back and because I’m not quite done with Kenya yet. I feel like there are still things to learn, things to see and people to meet. And then of course there’s the wedding I have to go to in South Africa in April. And it is clear logic that it would be silly to fly home in February just to have to go back in April – right?
Oh, and also we experienced a new record as to how many people can fit in a 14-seat matatu – the answer is 22.
