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.