November 2016

Thanksgiving at the MCC office!  We had the joy of sharing the tradition with several of our Kenyan staff colleagues, and other ex-pat MCCers here.  The turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing tasted great, 

Carving up the turkey

And the post-turkey, "I ate too much" dinner stupor

Alex is our horticulturalist.  Absent a garden to work in, he's adapted with a wonderful window garden.

The first rains of the season brought out the local chameleons.  This one became a short-term pet before being released back into our loquat tree. 

A Saturday jaunt out to Maasai-land on the floor of the rift valley is a different environment than the highlands around Nairobi.  Among the dryland vegetation was this strange plant.  Spiny, as is usual for most plants here, but with an odd big bulbous trunk.

Rains bring out the leaves in the acacias.

We visited Olorgosaillie, a prehistoric site in the rift valley that is one of the most important excavations for human origins.  Mary Leakey was one of the first to excavate, finding it to be a "factory" of stone tools, shown here scattered about the ground.  Although less famous than Olduvai in Tanzania, it has equal importance for prehistoric finds, being the largest stone tool find in the world.  

Stone axes, and some animal bones also at the site.  It's fascinating to be living in the area so famous for human origins.

Landscape in the rift valley

Out in Machakos the rainy season is full swing, and has transformed the area into a verdant landscape.  So different from a month ago when everything was brown.

Talking to a farmer about the results of a bacteria test we did on his drinking water (taken straight from a scoop hole in the nearby sand dam).  An enthusiastic and inquisitive person, he seems on board to start treating his water.

Remarkably after visiting so many dams, it was only on one of the last ones where we finally managed to get the truck stuck in some soft sand.  Rescued by UDO staff with some timbers, we got out pretty easily then.

Most maize is just coming up, like the fields in the background.  One farmer used a pump to irrigate early from a sand dam.  His maize is well ahead, so that he can harvest and sell while the price is still high, making more profit.

The primary activity now is weeding, almost all by hand (and usually by women).  Lots of work, one report I saw estimated one woman would take some 80 hours of work to weed a 1 hectare field.

October 2016

Some pictures from our October...

Rosslyn had cross-country this year, so Evan and Alex both ran.  Unfortunately there were not enough teams around for many meets, so Evan (shown here) had two meets and Alex only one.  Oh well, they still enjoyed it the short time it lasted.

Alex running the high school 5km route

Our friends, Bruce Buckwalter and Rose Shank (and 3 or their sons), were in from Ethiopia so we met them one Saturday night at a camping area along the shore of Lake Naivasha.  The hippos were a highlight, here watching one in the papyrus. 

The campsite was a beautiful area along the lake, very relaxing. :

Mostly the hippos are out at night, here one is outside the camp electric fence.  We had fun in the evening watching the night guard play cat and mouse with the hippos trying to sneak around the fence.  All night we could hear them bellowing outside. 

Morning breakfast brought a food option that Alex hadn't considered before - ice cream on pancakes!  As can be seen, he responded favorably.

We stopped by the Sanctuary Ranch after breakfast to hang out with their wildlife for a while.  Lots of baby animals.

There are no predators or otherwise particularly dangerous animals there, so you can walk among the giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, etc.  It's a beautiful yellow acacia forest in the area, which is one of our favorite trees here.

We continue to enjoy all the birds that frequent our feeders.  Bronze mannakins are some of the common ones.

I've spent a lot of time out evaluating sand dams the last few months, so more pictures from the many dams and communities that I've been to:

Staple foods in the Ukambani region are maize, beans and green grams (a lentil-like food)

Kids watching the activities at one of the dams.  Having a mzungu (white person) show up at the dams usually creates some discussion and attention, often with surprising results.  For instance, the community at one dam thought I'd come to dig up the mythical treasure of mercury that was purportedly buried in the river during the colonial period.

There are lots of baobabs, and we often pick up some fruit to munch while in the field.  The inside of the fruit pod has black seeds coated in a white powdery substance.  The powder traditionally is used to make a smoothie-like drink high in calcium, vitamin C and various other things.

Kitui is very dry at the end of the dry season, but acacias and baobab (shown here) sense that the rains are coming (hopefully), and so start to leaf out some.

We visited various colonial era dams in Kitui, often with interesting designs.  Here a small colonial dam is on the right (Ben, SASOL staff, sitting on it), which collects water that runs off the rock and gully.  There was originally a pipe connected to it that ran water down to communities.  Since then, a missionary couple sponsored a larger dam (not shown), which collects water during the rainy season and provides piped water to schools etc.  This dam was in some hills sticking up out of the savanna which have a protected (sort of) forest.  There are still springs and small valleys with perennial streams, showing the value of protecting the forests.

One dam was just inside Tsavo East National Park.  We hiked up along a cliffside and into the park (right side of the fence road).

The dam inside Tsavo.  This one had elephant dung on it, which was a first for us!

We stopped by a school project in Kitui South.  The sign on the tree states Kenyan school policy, which is that the kids are to only speak English and Kiswahili in school.  They aren't allowed to speak their "mother tongue", which in Kitui is kikamba.

Water is very scarce and low now during the dry season, and some drastic measures are taken to get water.  We saw many deep wells, such as this one that was around 20 feet deep, which somebody (usually a woman in the community) must climb down into in order to fill jerry cans of water.  The cans are pulled up out of the well.  Often a knotted rope is present for the woman to then climb out of the hole.

This was the oldest dam we found, built in the 1920's.  An elderly man in the community tells stories of what he knew of its construction.  Under threat of penalty under the colonial "Chief Act", community members were required to trek around 15 days roundtrip to the railway head at Kibwezi to carry cement to the dam.  Women and children carried the cement, while men "protected them from the man-eaters (lions)"

Kitui is one of the areas under drought.  A borehole at one area shows the value of water under such situations - several hundred households and their livestock depend on this source.  Some donkeys were looking emaciated in this region, so things are tough at the moment.  There used to be springs in this area, but the forest was cut down and turned to fields, many of which have severely eroded such as this one.  Most of the springs then dried up.  Everybody is hoping the rains arrive soon...

Donkeys are everywhere to carry water.  MCC Kenya staff person James Kanyari is my good companion on these trips to Machakos and Kitui, he always helps me interpret what's going on at the sites.

Traditional thatch and mud huts are used in the far regions that we've been visiting.

September 2016

September finds the boys well into the swing of school, and Cristina and I continuing our work with partners.  There is no big news, but here are some pictures to show what we're doing these days. 

I (Doug) am working a lot with a sand dam assessment project, so spend a lot of time in Machakos, Kitui and Makeuni counties.  We're visiting 100 sand dams, and assessing some measures of their effectiveness.  More on that later in the year when we get more results, but thusfar it is interesting to see the vast diversity of how the dams are functioning.  This was an interesting one, as it is an example of a colonial-era dam, built in 1953.  So 65 years later, it is still functioning well, by all accounts.  Coarse sand is behind the dam, and as deep as we could core (1.5 meters).  There is obvious agricultural activitiy on the edges, here you can see a vegetable garden and some napier grass (for fodder).  In short, the community was very happy about its continued function.

Coring on the dams involved digging through the soft sand, here MCC staffer James Kanyari.  Standing on sand in the Kenyan heat digging endless holes reminded me of the classic novel "Holes"!

A typical scoophole on a dam, used to collect water in jerrycans for household use.  Here Joseph from UDO samples the water for salinity and bacteria levels.

Part of the assessment is to measure bacteria in water which communities use from the dams.  We'll compile results later, but early results suggest bacteria in many of the water sources used.  Here is a test of the water actually used from a person's household, taken from a scoophole on a dam.  MCC along with our partners are thinking of what work can be done to improve water quality from these sources.

Not all dams function well, or even at all.  Here a dam in the south part of the region appears to be totally nonfunctional.  There is no evidence of water, of increased water table, and the material behind the dam is heavily silted (which prevents it from effectively holding sand).  This area missed the last rainy season, so is bone dry as it has not rained since last December.  It's not clear to me what the communities do for food.  The area has some very badly eroded sections also, as can be seen in the foreground.

A core on a silted sand dam.  There was a bit of crusted sand on top, but within several inches of the surface is muddy silt. That's not good for holding water for use.  

Even silted sand dams sometimes seem to provide benefits.  Here a seeming oasis in a desert - the obvious greenery of many gardens around a sand dam - is from a dam that was basically all silt/mud and no sand.  Much water had pooled on the surface, so in effect seemed to function as a sort of conventional dam.

Another water harvesting technique is the use of rock catchments, here in an area down by Mtito Andei and Tsavo National Park.  Barriers are built along the large rock surface so that water flows off the rock into channels, which run through pipes into tanks.

Here the troughs from the rock catchment feed into two large tanks.  The tanks reportedly easily fill even in a single dam.  In the background is the new SGR (single gauge railway) being built by a Chinese company.  The SGR runs from Mombasa to Nairobi, a badly needed alternative to all the trucks taking goods along the overcrowded Mombasa Highway.  Unfortunately the SGR impacts land owners, here they say the tanks will need to be taken out and the rock catchment will no longer function.

SASOL and UDO staff, and 4 interns we've hired to help with the assessment.  I greatly appreciate all their dedication and hard work tromping around lots of backwoods areas in the sun!

I find all sorts of fascinating animals while out doing the assessments.  Digging holes in Kitui, we found lots of these Blunt-faced Snout Burrowers.  They hide under the moist sand of river beds until rains and then come out.

One of our favorite birds here, the Purple Grenadier.

There are always interesting sites, and I never tire of the amazing baobob trees.  Here you can see the pegs they put into the trunk, allowing them to climb up the tree (presumably for fruit, but perhaps for something else)

The loquat tree outside our flat is in full production these days, and the boys are enjoying climbing it to harvest the fruit.

Cristina and the boys made loquat pie!

It's still amazing that Nairobi has a national park right next to it, and despite its proximity it has a lot of great animals.  We took a Saturday morning to escape to the park for a bit of watching wildlife.

Giraffe baby with its father

Baboons cheekily take any opportunity to get some food.  Finding our windows closed on the MCC cruiser, it decided to claim a spot on the roof

Game parks are always an opportunity to practice driving.  As usual, that involves dodging wildlife on the road.

The SGR also passes through the national park, a particularly controversial part of the railway plans, as many would rather reroute it around the park.  They're still arguing about how much that will happen, although it appears here that it is a "done deal" for at least part of the railway.

We took a weekend camping trip to Hell's Gate National Park, near Lake Naivasha.  The campsite had an amazing view across a grassy valley where we could watch the animals grazing.

Morning with our friends Joy and daughter Amilee.

Running with the zebras.  Hell's Gate has no predators or elephants, so is a rare park where you can walk freely about.  Evan decided that doing some running with the African animals would be fun!

The lower gorge in the park is a beautiful hike through a slot canyon

After our hike, we stopped in at the KenGen hot springs pool.  Hell's Gate has abundant geothermal resources, so there are geothermal generating plants (background) in the park that produce some 15% of Kenya's electricity.  Hot mineral water seeping out of the ground here is shunted to a pool where one can enjoy a hot-tub experience!  While having a generating station in a national park seems incongruous, it is good to see what is presumably clean(er) energy production.