bye bye Lewa...

--> Sunrise from Mt. Kenya

So this is my last day at Lewa. it has been an amazing time here, I wish I had the time to post what I have done in the last couple weeks but there is just not enough time. The last 10 weeks have flown by in the blink of an eye, it feels like it was only yesterday that I was sitting in this exact same spot filled with wonder of how my next two months would unfold.

For the next couple of weeks I am going to be backpacking around East Africa. Tonight I am taking a night bus to Jinja, Uganda where there is some of the best whitewater rafting in the world. From there the plan is to go to Kampala then Kigali, Rwanda. But who knows where this trip will take me. All I can say is that I am very excited to be on the next leg of my adventure, but very sad to leave Lewa, especially all of the amazing friends I have made here. I will have to make plans to come back to Africa and i am sure I will be spending many weekends in Toronto with the other interns from here.

Anyways I will try and keep in touch, if anybody wants to phone me my number is +254700930441 but i will have to change numbers along the way in the different countries. I hope everyone is enjoying summer and I hope that I will be able to post soon

Slight change of plans - a weekend at Elias' house

So instead of climbing Mount Kenya last weekend, we changed it to this weekend and for good fortune because I had the unique experience of staying at a local Kenyan's house.

On friday Sandra, Sean, James and I did a 30 km bush walk with 2 rangers, Nkori and Jacob. it was a real challenge, at first I really underestimated how hard it would be and I didn't bring food or water, what was I thinking? I guess I hadn't been out for so long before and I am used to working in the office or workshop, James and Sandra saved me by giving me bread and water. Anyways it was a real adventure, we were out for 7 and a half hours and we walked almost to the North end of Lewa and looped back. We were walking through many different ecosystems, Savannah, a tropical valley and a mountainous area. I couldn't imagine doing that every day like the rangers do, my legs hurt all weekend.

After the big adventure I met up with Elias, who is an electrician at Lewa and we met the first week I was at Lewa. He had been asking me to go to his house for a long time and I finally found a time to go. So we took the Matatu (public transit) to his village called Nkubu (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=Nkubu&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl), about 1 hour ride southeast of Lewa.

You take a 45 minute drive from Lewa to Meru then about a 20 minute ride to Nkubu market. Really cool place, got to his house and it was pitch black, we had gone to the supermarket on the way and bought food, snacks, beer, wine and some meat right off the cow. Then got to Elias’, it is a small place and I was uncomfortable at first, but I really warmed up to it. We ate a really good meal of Ugali and a vegetable/beef stew. Soo good. Then some tea, then walked to his fathers/brothers place (crazy walk through the hills) and watched some soccer with his family and some of their friends.

Elias' family have are farmers and he showed me around his farm, his banana trees, coffee plants, mangos, papayas, yams, sweet potatoes, avocado, cassava, sugar cane and bees nests.

In the morning I ate breakfast back at elias’, eggs and bread and pb, tea, bananas. Then met his bro named Dennis and went to the “bamboo family resort” as they call it, which is a waterfall by the river that they own. We drank beers by the falls, took a bunch of pictures, picked and roasted some yams, then forded the river to go to get some miraa (small stems from a tree which you chew and it feels kind of like drinking coffee, it is very popular around here) from their neighbours.

Elias has 3 kids, Anna who is 18 months old, Megan who is in grade 3 and then Sylvester who is in grade 5 (they are about 12 and 14 years old). They are very good kids, very smart and study hard especially in English. Then we went back to the house, had a lie down and a really big meal of mokimo, which is a traditional Kenyan dish, it is very good and they gave me huge portions. Every meal except breakfast is taken outside in the front yard, cows are nearby in their pens and chickens are running around. Elias is trying to build a house but doesn’t have the money to finish it, he has been building for 2 years and he reckons he can have it finished in one year.

The family atmosphere there was amazing, so many brothers and sisters, kids, all hanging out together, helping eachother out, farming together. In the morning woke up, ate sweet potatoes, tea and oranges with Dennis for breakfast then went for a big adventure with dennis and elias. We walked down the valley, past some pineapple plantation, then down to the water, to a hydro project. They didn’t really know where they were going, we were just exploring, I was probably the only foreigner to go to these places in a long time. I fell in the water trying to get to the waterfall so i ended up going swimming in these big falls, they thought i was crazy.

On Sundays after church in Kenya, many people like to enjoy home made beer. Many home made beers haha. It is made with sugar cane, honey, and it is fermented with a certain type of bark, really good. After lunch we said goodbye to everyone and headed back to Lewa. Before getting on the bus we went to a bar with the family and some of their friends, it was really fun.

Anyways this is a bit of a long post but I wanted to describe this amazing experience. It gave me some different perspectives on life and the African people. I definitely recommend doing something like this if the opportunity arises. Now I am back at Lewa, working on the recycling project and planning my next few weeks here.

CANADA DAY

Polle sana (sorry) for the delay between posts, I have had a really busy couple of weeks.

I thought I would start with talking about what I have been doing volunteer-wise. So another intern and I did an "energy audit" on the lodges at Lewa and came to realize that one of the biggest problems here is waste disposal. At the lodges, trash is thrown into open pits and burned periodically. The end goal of my project will be to initiate a plastic recycling program at Lewa. The missing pieces of the puzzle are that many people arent motivated to separate plastics because it is just easier to throw it in a pit and that there are few recycling facilities outside Nairobi and none near Lewa.
The ideal solution would be to find a project in the nearby area that recycles plastic and would pay for it. There are some students from Harvard University working in Nanyuki to start a recycling program called the SAFI project and I have been in contact with them, we are working together to find a solution. For now it is necessary to educate people about recycling and work to find/start a place that can use the plastic. The other problem is my time here is quickly coming to a close! It has gone by so fast.

Last weekend was the Lewa marathon and we were busy all week putting up banners (never want to see another again) and doing random jobs to get ready for the event. Seeing all of the runners made me want to run a marathon or at least a half. What took us 4 days to set up was taken down in about 4 hours! A lot of work for a one day event. Then this week I have been organizing all of the plastic bottles used at the marathon (so many). Some workers, James and I went dump-pit diving for a day to recover some of the bottles that were mixed in with the other garbage and came out with 7 barrels (thats dedication). James ended up with juicy feet because there wasn't enough rubber boots for everyone, poor guy. When everything was collected we crushed all of the bottles by hand and put them in barrels. That took a couple days. A guy from Nairobi will come next week to pick up all of the bottles and pay 10 Kenyan shillings per kilogram (about 12 cents per kilo) and I think we have about 100 kilos, so we will make about 12 dollars or 1000 KSH, which seems small in Canada but is fairly significant over here. A used motorcycle here costs about 3000 shillings, which is 40 dollars Canadian.

This weekend James and I are climbing Mount Kenya! I am really stoked, we organized everything today and we are leaving tomorrow. At first we were going to attempt to do it solo but were convinced to get a guide. It will be 2 days to the top camp and then one day summit (3am start) and all the way back to Lewa. It is supposed to be really cold, around -10 at the summit with wind and some snow/rain, pretty crazy considering how close Mt. Kenya is to the equator.

Anyways happy Canada day! I hope everyone in Victoria ends up at the waterfront, enjoy some Molson Canadian for me.

Diani Beach

This weekend we went to Diani beach, it is about 30 minutes south of Mombassa. I left Lewa at about 10AM on Thursday and had the day in Nanyuki and met with some people from the SAFI project, which are a group of students from Harvard University who are trying to establish some recycling initiatives in the Laikipia plateau (the area around Lewa). Hopefully we can work together and find a way for Lewa to better manage their plastic waste.

We then walked around Nanyuki, it is a really cool town and some locals showed us around to the good shops. We then took a 4 hour private vehicle to the Nairobi bus station (fairly sketchy), and I was hungry so Michael and I ate some fried chicken at a fast food place (didnt get sick somehow!). From Nairobi it is about 7 hours to Mombassa. the bus was nice but the bus drivers drive crazy fast. None of us slept very much and we were really beat by the time we were in Mombassa.

From Mombassa you have to take a 3 minute ferry ride (we couldn't figure out why they don't build a bridge) to the south coast. The ferries are mayhem, nothing like BC ferries, packed to the brim with walk ons, bikes and cars. In Diani we stayed at a place called the Flamboyant, really nice place and we got a really good deal, less than 20 dollars a night.

Sandra, James and I competed in the Diani beach 5 a side touch rugby tournament which was really fun. A team dropped out so we filled in and we didnt have to pay the 100 pound team entrance fee and got free food for the weekend! We teamed up with 3 others, two from the Isle of Man and one from England. We played really well, only won two games but the other teams there were really good.

Diani beach reminded me a lot of home, west coast BC - Tofino, so although it was an awesome time, it was kind of the first time in my trip that I missed home. We did a lot of swimming, spent a lot of time at the Forty Thieves beach bar and a lot of time chilling on the beach.

The ride back to Lewa was much more manageable and now we are all back to work. Our vacation is over but there is still a lot to look forward to.

In the office/Rhino watching

Today is a boring day in the office, nothing much going on so here are some more pictures to check out. I went with the rhino scouts yesterday and we saw a bunch of rhinos and even some lions. We got stuck for a little while and had to get helped out by some other rangers. I finished writing a proposal to get a plastic collection program at Lewa and I am waiting to get it edited so I can show it to the management. This weekend we are going to Diani beach, near Mombasa, looks unreal it should be a really good time!

NEW POST

Soo no new pictures this week, but soon to come.
This Friday was Sandra's birthday and we had a big party for her. We bought a goat from a nearby community and had fresh goat. For the first time in my life I ate raw liver...not my favourite meal. The goat was really good and a bunch of the Lewa rangers came and we had a bonfire.
For work right now I am trying to implement a plastic recycling system at Lewa because right now all of the plastic is just burned. I am just writing a proposal right now then i will try and get the management on side. Next week we will be starting to prepare for the Lewa marathon, which will be a lot of work.
Hope everyone is enjoying summer, I am for sure!

NEW POST

The last week has been a pretty big adventure. On Friday I drove with Sunthar to the opening of a water tank. We ended up parking in the wrong place and people were sitting all over the front of our car. The speeches went for over an hour and we were going to be really late getting back so I had to clear the people off the hood of the car to make an escape but the engine wouldn't start. To make a long story short we had to wait for another 30 mins then we were watched by an audience while I started the car, stalled a few times and finally made it out.

We then went to Nairobi. Cool town, we stayed in a 1* hotel called the hotel Embassy. It was really shady but it was around 12 dollars per night in downtown so we put up with it. We went to a really good Ethiopian restaurant (you have to try Ethiopian food) then went to a bar. We went to the Maasai market next day, then went to another restaurant and another bar so it was a really good weekend.

Yesterday Sean and I went with some people from a non for profit called equals 3, who put up solar panels in remote areas. We set up a solar panel at the Lewa funded Laparua school, which is at the northern gate of Lewa in the valley. Really cool experience, then went to a waterfall for a swim in the afternoon.

The past week has been very eventful. We went to a NRT (norther rangelands trust) conservancy called Sera last Monday. It is a 4 hour drive north on the highway that goes all the way to Ethiopia. We took apart a radio tower that had been hit by lightning. It is a desert there and so hot and we had to walk up and down this hill for a couple hours.

On Thursday and Friday Sean (another student here) and I went to a primary school called Seboiga and we helped out two other Canadian teachers organize a library and then we helped out with their classes and had a sports day. Really cool experience.

On Friday we had a camp fire and then went camping which was really fun then on Saturday we went into a town called Nanyuki (1 hour drive south) and went to some shops then to a pool hall at night.

Lewa

Habari yako, Wow, so I have been here for about a week now and it is a real experience. If anyone has the opportunity to come to this area of the world- do it. There are 9 other Canadians here so we have kind of taken over and its a lot of fun.

For the first few days I was just being toured around and seeing lewa before the other students got here. I visited one of the schools that lewa supports in a poor village, and a bunch of little kids were waving and coming up to me and wanted to shake my hand, we are so lucky to live where we do. I also went up to a place called Tassia, which is outside of lewa in a conservancy managed by the Northern Rangelands trust. It was really hot up there. they are using a new type of brick that is made out of about 5% cement, and the rest water and soil, and they compress it in this machine and out pops a brick. They are interlocking and so don't need any mortar when they are constructed, very innovative.

On friday I started working on an energy and waste reduction project with another student, it will be very interesting. I also got tracked by a tracker dog from about 500m away then got jumped on and slobbered all over.
Anyways I will post more as it comes, I have some other stories but I'll save them for another time!