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.