Climbing Mt. Longonot, and life around Nairobi

Northwest of Nairobi is tea country - beautiful cool green hills

Hiking up Mt Longonot

Lots of "spiky things" out there.  The galls on this acacia are actually made by ants.  The ants leave a hole or two in the gall, which will whistle in the wind sometimes, so it is sometimes known as a whistling acacia

Panorama from the rim of Longonot

Mt Longonot is, as the boys say, a "mostly extinct" volcano.  The last eruption was in 1860, so we felt pretty safe!  The only evidence of activity was steam coming out of a vent at one location. 

Starting out along the rim; some of us did the full 7 km circuit around the rim.

At the high point on the rim, great view out over the crater and the rift valley.

Back in Nairobi.  Carina climbs in bed to wake up Alex in the morning, but sometimes she just decides to fall asleep!  They catch a taxi with other kids at 7:15, so don't have to leave much earlier than when they did back in the states.

Not an Africa native, but the Jacaranda trees have come into full bloom and are gorgeous.

Flame trees are also in full bloom

At the end of 2 weeks of Swahili lessons with our teacher Judith (second from left), and SALTers Kara and David.  Judith was a very patient teacher, and a wealth of knowledge about Kenya in general.  

Paraphenalia for studying our Swahili for two weeks.  Despite the excellent help from our teacher, we were feeling like Swahili was anything but simplified!  The grammar chart is an attempt to make sense of 5 out of the 8 or so noun classes.  Each noun class changes the prefix of adjectives, possessive pronouns, verbs, etc.  Despite the difficulty, and the fact that most here know Engilsh, it's nice to start understanding some Swahili.

Fig tree roots at Karura, and our son taking the opportunity to climb something!

Mau mau caves, supposedly a hideout during the Mau Mau rebellion.  It happened to be the day that they inaugurated a British-funded memorial in Nairobi to the many detainees of the Mau Mau period.

The trail is next to residential areas, separated by an electrified fence.  It's wonderful to have Karura forest, but one is also conscious of the land pressure, and how the only way to preserve it is to have enough security to prevent degradation of the forest.

From Karura forest to a "slum" area.  The Nairobi area used to be estates with workers quarters on the edges.  The workers areas have often turned into slums, next to more affluent areas.  So in places the city is a patchwork of affluent and slum areas.  

River before it flows into the forest.  One wonders, of course, what they think about being fenced out of an area that is mostly used by middle and upper class Kenyans and wazunga ("gringos").  The paper this week reports that 42% of Kenyans earn between 10 and 100 dollars per month (and keeping in mind the cost of living in Kenya is quite high), and 32% of Kenyans go to bed hungry (70 to 80% in western and northeast Kenyan).  The population of Kenya is projected to go from 44 million now to 80 million in 2050.  

Narina Trogon, one of many exotic (to us!) birds found in Karura.