An Interesting Week

Last week was very interesting--a week of changes and transitions, unexpected events, and beautiful sights.

It all began on Monday morning with a simple morning meeting. We were wrapping up the Millennium Village project, and this meeting was a progress update, and assessment of what was remaining. William, the business advisor on the project, and I knew that most of the facets of the project were completed on our end, and it was a matter of putting together the final deliverable. The others in the meeting agreed, and we all decided how to package the information. The project was rapidly coming to an end, one month early.

William was rolling on to a dairy project. It just so happened that the dairy team was having a two-day offsite meeting at Lake Naivasha with all of the field staff. The offsite was another progress update of sorts, mainly a chance for all those involved to come together, agree on what was remaining in the project, and how best to accomplish those tasks. The country director told William that he should plan on attending the offsite. Unexpectedly, the attention turned to me. The country director asked what I was working on, other than the Millennium project. My response was, “Not much.” I mean, I had a couple of small papers I was writing for the horticulture team, but my consistent focus had been the Millennium Village since arriving.

“Well, maybe you should come with us to Naivasha,” said the country director. He and William were going to find out if there was room in the budget for me.

Later that day, I was told that I was indeed going to the dairy offsite, and that we would leave Wednesday morning. Back to cows!!! I had a feeling that this would lead to a longer term project, but I wasn't certain. I checked the computer to see what documents I had from my prior project in Zambia. These might come in handy to refresh my memory.

Tuesday evening, on my way out of the office, I ran by the country director. Someone had told me that I should be ready to leave the office at 7:30 am the following morning, and I wanted to confirm. The director said that he and a couple of others were leaving at 7:30 to visit another project, and that he would then be dropped off in Naivasha to meet the dairy team for lunch. I had two choices-to leave early and visit the other project, or to leave later with the rest of the dairy team and go straight to Naivasha. Since I wasn't all that busy, I was all for leaving in the early group. The director agreed, saying that I might be some help on this other project.

In hindsight, that turned out to be a great decision. In the car ride, I find out that this other project is a farm, near Lake Naivasha, that is looking at a new project and the related financing. This meeting was to meet the owners of the farm, look at the operations, and get a general feel for their seriousness and commitment. I read the preliminary document that had been prepared by TechnoServe, made some comments, and looked forward to seeing the place.

And what a place it was.

We pulled into the farm, which was massive, and were greeted by some steep stone stairs, and Panther sitting on top of the stairs. Panther, we were told, was a family dog, a mix of local breeds, and the only remaining survivor of leopard attacks. The family had lost 8 other dogs to leopards. I began to think...this could be really interesting. Leopards?

The house was built into the side of a large hill (some might call it a small mountain). I should mention, Lake Naivasha and this house are in the middle of the Rift Valley, so the landscape is incredible. We climbed the stairs and entered the living room, which was set up for tea and coffee. All of us introduced ourselves, shared some stories (including the story of the dogs), and “talked business.” The family room was sprinkled with various farm products--almost like a show-and-tell. Amazingly, a bookshelf had be laid out with some homemade dairy products: cheeses, butter, strawberry jam, yogurts, etc. These were all on display for us to taste, and take home. I had never tasted homemade yogurt before, but after that strawberry yogurt, it will be very hard to buy any mass produced yogurt again.

Then the owners said we should go and “see the farm.” We climbed back down the stairs, with the faithful Panther leading the way, and got into the pick-up. The owner and our director were in the cab, and the rest of us got into the back of the pick up, and held on. We drove and drove and drove. No roads, a spattering of trails, and a ton of bush driving. We spent probably two to three hours driving around the farm, and I have a feeling we saw only a small fraction of the place.

Any time you live outside of the major cities in Africa, one of the main issues you have to face is water. Getting access to water is a problem; it is not like you can just hook up to a municipal water supply. So one of the focuses of our farm tour was the water source, and what the family had done to secure the source.

The owners had built a spillway and dam combination on a local river. The dam slowed up the river and created a pond. The side spillway was adjustable, controlling the flow of water diverted to a second pond.

The diverted water from the dam-spillway combo ran to a second pond that was the actual source of water for the farm's irrigation. The owners showed us the pumping station that they had built themselves; in fact, most things on this farm they had built themselves, including the house. The pumping station and pond provided the water for irrigation; most of the water used for household consumption was provided by capturing and storing rainwater.

The pond was situated in such a convenient location that hippos had taken up residence. Hippos aren't really a bother, we were told, except that they can demolish fences on the farm. Most fences that are secure enough to contain cattle are no match for a three ton beheamoth. Not to mention the fact that they are very dangerous. But when it comes to the crops, hippos don't really do any damage.

More damaging were the wild pigs and warthogs that stroll on to the farm. Both the pigs and the warthogs burrow under the fences, and ravage through the crops, digging them up along the way. At one point, the farm was growing lots of potatoes, but the owners got tired of feeding the pigs, and gave up.

We continued exploring the farm, seeing cattle, cranes, secretary birds, ibis, and beautiful vistas left and right. It was an incredible afternoon, and I was very glad I decided to tag along. We were a bit late getting to Lake Naivasha and the dairy meeting. We had not anticipated a three-hour tour of the farm, but none of us wanted to cut that short.

Lake Naivasha turned out to be beautiful as well, although most of the two-day affair was spent in a conference room. But that is a story for another day.

On Friday, after returning from Naivasha, I spoke to the team leader on the farm project. It appears that she could use my help. So, going along for the ride was a good move for many reasons; it looks like I will end up working on this project, which should be very interesting and challenging. Hopefully that was not my last visit to the farm.

Nakuru National Park

A couple of weekends ago, a few of us decided to take advantage of a Friday Kenyan holiday, and use the long weekend for a safari in a national park. Since most of us are on a budget, we opted for the camping (read: cheap) option.

Thursday afternoon, we headed northwest from Nairobi towards Nakuru National Park. The drive was four hours through some of the most scenic landscape on the continent-namely the Rift Valley. It was this route, the story goes, that inspired The Lion King. We were told that the Disney artists actually came and took photos of the Rift Valley, and translated them into drawings for the movie. We even saw the peak upon which, in the movie, Mufasa tells Simba “this will all be yours someday.” Impressed? I thought not.

To continue the movie trivia, we drove pass another famous spot along Lake Naivasha. Hell's Gate is a well-known spot for hiking and mountain biking, with some good views of wildlife (the non-dangerous variety). This is also the spot where Tomb Raider 2 was filmed, for all you Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie fans out there. However, I have yet to visit Hell's Gate; any further descriptions will have to come later.

In addition to the majestic scenery, the ride took us on some of the most decrepid, pot-hole infested roads ever traveled.

So the group (four of us, plus our tour guide and our camp manager/cook) arrived in Nakuru right after sunset, and pulled into the campsite which was just past the entry gate. What we saw immediately made me fell very inadequate, and maybe a bit jealous. The only other group in the campsite was a logo-splattered caravan of Nissan 4x4's, complete with rooftop tents, bush bars, fog lights front winches, and generators. These guys were hard core. Here we came in our vintage-90's Toyota van, with rear wheel drive, and rented Tents-in-a-Bag. Hmm...

Still in awe, we set up camp around a fire pit. There were some logs to sit on, but they were quite scattered about. Not wanting to shout at each other in the dark, some of us in the group struggled to roll the immovable logs closer to the fire pit. (I say some of us, because it wasn't me. I was too busy laughing at the rest of the group and trying to take pictures. Obnoxious, I know.) The log rolling proved to be a big mistake; you will soon find out why. After the logs were set, we put up the tents relatively close to the fire pit, for warmth and light. Miraculously, the tents went up relatively easily.

It wasn't too long after dinner that it started drizzling, which in short order turned into heavy raining. That put a damper on the fireside chat, so we decided to pack it in. The noise of the rain on the tents was quite peaceful, and the night passed without incident.

I woke before the sun rose, to the noise of David, our camp manager preparing breakfast. It was early-six or so-and other than David, I was the first one up. The light from the fire cast shadows on our tent, specifically shadows of ants marching all along our tent. They were crawling along the seams, probably because there was a small overhang that protected them from the wet rain and dew. The ants were on all four sides of our tent, and it was an eery sight-something out of a nature show. The shadows made the ants seem bigger than they were.

I quickly unzipped the opening, and strategically emerged from the tent, trying to prevent being showered with ants. About thirty seconds later, I started feeling the pain of bites-first on my legs, then on my stomach and back. I jumped up and down, and rolled up my pant legs to find numerous ants gnawing on my presumably tasty skin. I took off my shirt and started picking the ants off of my stomach, back and neck.

The ants were not only on our tent, but in it as well. Evidently we had slept with the ants crawling around our inside our tent, undisturbed, warm, and protected from the rain. Undisturbed, that is, until we started moving. The fact that a small herd of zebra were having an early morning graze in the field not twenty yards away was overshadowed by the unexpected attack.

David told us that these were the dreaded Siafu, or Safari Ants-a notoriously aggressive variety I remember seeing on The Discovery Channel. These ants can kill goats, chickens, even human babies if left unattended-they are that aggressive.

And they hurt like hell. The Siafu aren't poisonous, but they sure pack a punch, especially the big soldier ants. Ouch. We eventually determined that many of the logs that we moved the previous night happened to be home to the Siafu. Between us moving the logs, and the rain, the Siafu were especially active, some might say vengeful.

I was slightly pleased to see the hard-core group on the other side of the campsite picking ants off their legs as well. All that cool gear won't protect you from the smallest nuisances. While it made me feel better to know that we weren't the only ones being eaten, that fact did little to alleviate our troubles.

We quickly ate breakfast, trying to stay moving all the while, and left for a game drive. As we were pulling out of the campsite, we were still picking off the last remaining Siafu.



The rest of the trip was filled with game drives, my first since being in Tanzania in 2004. Nakuru National Park is basically the area around Lake Nakuru, a natural soda lake home to tens of thousands of flamingos. It is an amazing sight, and a deafening sound. At certain places in the park, you can get out and walk up to the shoreline, mere yards from the immense flocks of flamingos eating algae from the lake.

Nakuru is also home to a largely successful breading program for both white and black rhino-very rare sights in most other parks. We saw so many rhinos, that they became a non-event by the end of the trip. We even saw a couple of baby rhinos, evidence of the successful breeding and anti-poaching programs in Nakuru.

The second night, as we were fixing dinner, a drunk South African approached us from the hard core group, holding a half empty wine glass. (Yes, they even had wine glasses. We were drinking out of plastic cups.) I asked, “Where are you guys headed?”

“Cairo,” was the response. Cairo! Egypt!!! I wanted to get on my knees and beg him to take me along. In my mind, to drive from Cairo to Capetown (or Capetown to Cairo, as this group was doing) would be the ultimate adventure, filled with sights and experiences unparalleled anywhere else in the world. However, I refrained from any an all begging, and just said something stupid, like, “that's teriffic” or, even worse, “sounds like a great trip.” I have to admit, once again, I was really jealous...

The following day, we were going to eat lunch, break camp and head home. We came back from the early morning game drive, to see David in the camp with a wide-eyed look on his face. “The baboons!” he yelled, as we got out of the van. We looked around and saw nothing. Then slowly, among the shrubs and trees surrounding the camp, we began to spot what David was talking about. First it was one, then a handful, and then more and more appeared.

In all, we estimate a pack of 30-40 baboons had basically surrounded the campsite, waiting for an opportune time to sneak in and grab something. Most of the hard core group was out on a game drive, so the baboons struck their camp first. One grabbed a bag of what appeared to be marshmallows, and ran towards the shrubs. He then sat, turned and looked at us, and proceeded to eat the multi-colored marshmallows, one by one, until the bag was empty.

Another couple jumped up on a table, knocked over a couple of wine glasses, opened a bag of bread and started eating. We chased them away from the table, laughing a bit as we did so. The entire escapade was infuriating and histerical at the same time.

After the other camp had lost its entertainment value, the baboons turned their attention towards our camp. It was amazing to see how aggressive and fearless baboons are, and to see their very large teeth, which they were not ashamed to show. They would get right up close, and you had to be as aggressive as they were to chase them away. And they are smart. If you turn your back, they will come up behind you and grab something while you are not looking. That is how we lost all of our bananas.

And our bread.

And our garlic.

The one that took the bananas was on my watch. I was packing away one of the dismantled tents, and I turned to put the tent in the van. A baboon came down the tree right behind me, grabbed the bananas, and climbed right back up the tree, just a few feet beyond arms reach. I looked up at him, demanding that he return the bananas. He just stared back at me (it was definitely a “he”) and ate the bananas whole, one after another, peel and all.

The second night of our stay, another couple had set up camp in the campsite, closer to the site's entrance. They had brought a bright red tent that they had vacated that morning for a sunrise game drive. Well, the baboons had a field day with bright red play-toy. We tried to stop them, but it was no use. The baboons were relentless. We had a hard enough time trying to protect our own campsite, let alone an unattended one. They hopped on top of the red tent, jumped up and down, slid off the side, and did it all over again. Repeatedly.

Up.

Down.

Up

Down.

Up.

Snap.

The baboon on the tent fell to the ground with a thud and was dumfounded. He had no idea what happened, but the tent was destroyed. We were laughing; it was a very funny sight to see. After the tent was leveled, some air was trapped inside, creating a pillow-like bubble, that caused further intrigue.

By the time we pulled out, the troop was growing tired of the campsite and was beginning to move on. On the ride back towards Nairobi, most of us slept, looking forward to our first shower in a couple of days.

The trip to Nakuru was a memorable one. The game drives were spectacular, and full of animals, waterfalls, and beautiful scenery. However, most of that was overshadowed by the surreal events at the campsite itself.

Here are some more photos from the weekend in Nakuru:

More photos

Here are some more photos from the recent excursions to the Giraffe Center and the Elephant Orphanage. Hope you enjoy.