Showering in Luxury

Day 14
8:00 Breakfast
10:30 Archaeology
12:30 Lunch
2:30 Nature Walk
6:30 Dinner
7:30 Natural History Class

   Today we went on a guided nature walk to look for colobus monkeys. "We walked silently in single file following our local guides. We could hear the monkey call, it was like a purring "rar" sound. We trekked through the bush trying to find them. We got off course and had to cross this slippery waterfall, but we made it safely back to the lodge."
   Camping on the lodge grounds has its perks. We had access to hot showers here! At our compound in Karen we have showers; they're cold water and in the chilly air of Nairobi, it's not exactly as refreshing as you'd think! While in the bush in Eremit we had portable showers. You filled up a canvas bag with water from a bucket, then used a pulley to pull it up over a branch. A pull chain opened a small hole in the bag which was attached to a shower head so the water would rain down on you. When you're soaping up you can turn off the water. A privacy curtain surrounded the bag to make a little enclosure. I didn't take a photo of it, I hope my explanation does it justice! 10 years ago today I had a hot shower for the first time in two weeks and reveled in the luxury of it.

Travel Day to Timau

Day 13
6:30 Tent Breakdown
7:00 Breakfast
9:00 Leave for Timau
1:00 Lunch Stop
5:00 Arrive Timau
7:00 Dinner

The Staff Setting Up Lunch

The Cows At Our Lunch Spot

   Today was a long day on the truck, 6.5 hours of driving. On the way we saw crops of maize, mango trees and neat looking cactus trees.  This day is one that has been forever imprinted in my memory and as I read through my journal entry all the feelings I had on this day came rushing back to me. Since this day I have NEVER said "I'm starving" and dislike when I hear people say it. "We stopped for lunch at a grassy area by a river and there were cows everywhere! The camp staff set up the tables and food, it was amazing how they pulled everything out and chopped all the veggies. We all sat in the grass beside the cows and ate. It was a real eye opener when local people surrounded us and stared. There were men who lay on the hill and watched us eat. You really think about what you're throwing away when hungry people are watching you. I think we left them all our leftovers."

Camp Site 2 - Timau

   In Timau we are camping on the grounds of Timau River Lodge, it's pretty luxurious compared to where we've camped before. The professors got to sleep in cabins, lucky them because I wrote in my journal that the ground was hard here, much harder than Nairobi and Eremit! 10 years ago today I learned firsthand about the value of food and to appreciate what I have.



A Bit of Butterflys and a Bit of Skulls

Day 12
7:30 Breakfast
9:00 Butterfly Farm
12:00-5:30 Nairobi Museum
6:45 Dinner

Holding the Chameleon

   "It's going to be a busy day!" At the butterfly farm we first went to the pupa nursery. Since the butterflies hatch in the morning they always have staff in there watching. Afterwards we went to the private collection area, which isn't open to the public, it was a very nice gesture of the staff to let us back there. "There are 1 million pinned butterflies in the collection and 3540 of the 3600 African butterfly species. They almost have a specimen of them all to study!" The greenhouse with the butterflies was neat, there was a bright green chameleon too!
   The archaeology class went back to the museum in Nairobi again to meet with Mzalendo. We went behind the scenes to the labs in the museum. Mzalendo had laid out stone tools and gave us a lecture on all the ages in evolutionary history. A paleontology professor did a guest lecture on the controversy of modern human evolution using skulls from the museum to illustrate her point. We had a tour of the vertebra prep. lab to see how they preserved all the ancient bones.  10 years ago today I was learning about evolution, in Kenya, at the museum, which was so much cooler than being in a lecture hall in Canada!

Kenya Butterfly Farm

Butterfly







Amy's Been To The Butterfly Centre!

 

Archaeology Class with Mzalendo

Behind the Scenes at Nairobi Museum



Modern Human Evolution

Shopping and Emails

Day 11
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Kazuri Bead Factory
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Karen Town Trip
3:30 Utamaduni Crafts Centre
6:30 Dinner

   Today we had some time to do a bit of shopping. I was happy to return to Kazuri Bead Factory and buy some more of the beautiful beads and watch the women make them. The clay comes from Mount Kenya. In the town I bought some string to make a necklace with my beads, Lee was showing people how to make them. I think by the end of the trip we all had necklaces! We were able to walk to the Utamaduni Crafts Centre, the area is so beautiful, I enjoyed the walk.
   The camp laptops were occasional connected to the Internet. We had opportunities to sign up for time slots to write emails home through the camp email. We were instructed to tell our friends and family to write us emails to the camp's email address and use our name in the subject line. Today was the first day we connected to the Internet to receive emails and I was overjoyed at hearing from people back home in Canada. 10 years ago today I experienced the incredibly simple joy of reading an email from my parents.

Kazuri and Utamaduni in this Shopping Centre

Traveling Back to The Compound

Day 10
7:00 Tent Breakdown
7:30 Breakfast
9:00 Leave for Nairobi
1:15 Arrive at Nairobi
1:30 Lunch
6:30 Dinner




The Flat Tire

   "We woke early to pack our bags. When we took down our tent, we took off the fly first and then moved our tent over to another spot to roll it up because there was potentially scorpions and snakes under the tent!! We did find one scorpion and several large millipedes." Yikes! To think I was sleeping over top of these bugs with only a thin layer of tent!
  We were all sad to say goodbye to Richard, he had been a wonderful host here in Eremit. The drive back to Nairobi took us up hill out of the Rift Valley. It was slow going. One of the trucks broke down and we had to squish people in; usually we travel with 13 people to a truck, but we had to smush in 20. It was fun to chat and pass around crackers and listen to our diskman's (yup!).
   "It's funny how the compound feels like home now." I also noticed after being in the arid Rift Valley how green the grass is here in Nairobi, and how it covers the whole ground. The Eremit campsite was all dirt with dry grass patches. The climate is significantly cooler here, I had goosebumps when the sun started setting. 10 years ago today I experienced the differences in elevation and that even though I was in Africa, it wasn't going to be hot all the time!

Visiting a Boma and Eremit Primary School

Day 9
7:30 Breakfast
8:15 Leave for Richard's Boma
11:15 Visit Elementary School
1:15 Lunch
5:00 Archaeology
6:30 Dinner

   "I have scratches all over my legs from the tall sharp grass and thorny bushes here!" After breakfast we went to visit Richard's Boma, or tiny village. Richard is the senior elder of his Boma and we are camping on his land. I think we paid him with sheep dip for his animals. Richard is a Masai, that's a type of tribe. His Boma was surrounded by a thorny bush fence to keep the leopards out of the living area and the area with the animals. Within the fence was relatively large. The cattle and goats are kept in a separate area from the living area. Richard has 2 wives, each married woman in the village has her own house and the man's children can go into either woman's homes. The children often don't know who their mother is because everyone helps raise them; it's amazing how different it is to our culture. "The women had their bead work laid out in the centre area for us to look at and buy. We were free to take pictures of everyone. I asked someone if I could take a picture of her and she put on all her bead necklaces - she just adorned herself with them, it was wonderful!"


The People of Richard's Boma

   We got to look inside one of the homes within the Boma; "it (the ceiling) was pretty low and the walls were made of cow manure, packed and dried. Inside was hot and tight. There were a few rooms; the main one was a small kitchen with a fire in the middle. There was very little walking space." This was the first time that Westerners were invited into this Boma and we were very privileged to have this experience.


The Boma, the Fence, the Houses and Inside the House

   From the Boma visit we went to Eremit Primary School. (Check out the Google Map Link Below!) The children came out and greeted us and the principal introduced us. "In a sort of ceremonial procession we brought up our donations. We each gave them a book and box of pencils." The pencils were handed out to the children, they were so happy to get something as simple as a pencil. It was really gratifying to give them things for their schoolwork.


Eremit Primary School

   We got to visit the school rooms and I went to a grade one classroom. We sang the children some songs ("I'm a little teapot" and "head and shoulders") and then Kasoi helped us translate to tell the children we would like to hear them sing. "They sang three beautiful songs, one child led and the rest sang. I had tears in my eyes. Two songs were Christian and one was a school song. They also knew "Old MacDonald" in Swahili!" 10 years ago today I felt like someone employed by National Geographic, I was honored to see a culture that very few experience in real life. 



Singing For Us

I Got to Meet Richard Leakey!

Day 8
6:30 Breakfast
7:00 Leave for Olorgesailie with Archeology Class
1:00 Lunch
5:00 Natural History Class
6:30 Dinner



Olorgesailie

Making Flints

   The archeology class consisted of 10 of us and back at Olorgesailie our professor did a lecture on flint and stone tools. Olorgesailie is most known for the vast number of hand axes found there. The majority of the excavation at that site was overseen by Mary and Louis Leakey. "We all walked down to the stone creek bed to make our own stone tools. We had to go to the dried water bed because at an archeology site, it wouldn't be good to leave our poorly made flints laying around - the scientists might think homo erectus is making bad tools! In the creek they can't study or identify them because the origin is unknown as they could have come from another source." So we tried our hand at making flints (pardon the pun), it's a lot harder than it looks! "After a while and a few terrible flints later we went up to the teaching area to trace and examine our labours. We were told by our professor that our flints were pretty bad!"


Meeting Richard Leakey

   We were VERY fortunate today because Richard Leakey (the son of Mary and Louis) was at the site today and he shook my hand!! We got some pictures with him before he went off to supervise some very important things (I'm guessing). "We continued on to a recent excavation site that they're still digging. They found the first bones of homo erectus here. At the other site they found signs (like the hand axes) but never the skeletal evidence. The skull they found was around 1 million years old. We didn't get to see it because it's at a museum." I learned so much this morning 10 years ago today.


The Dig Site of the first homo erectus find in Olorgesailie

Have I Only Been Here For 1 Week?

Day 7
6:30 Breakfast
7:00 Trip to Olorgesailie
1:30 Lunch
4:45 Archaeology Class
6:30 Dinner

The Toilet

   It's amazing how adaptable people are. I had only been here for a week but already was settling into camp routine easily. "Because the air is normally so dusty & dry, our snot is very dirty. The floor of our tent is also really dirty from this dry dirt. Rachel & I were using our socks to sweep it up. These are socks I'm going to wear again, I wore them yesterday & today - it's all about laundry conservation!" I also recorded this gem in my journal, "I really am afraid of squatting over the toilet and a snake biting me - I don't think I've ever appreciated a porcelain toilet more!"
   The archaeology site Olorgesailie was about an hour drive away from our camp site. It's already become second nature to lean inwards in the truck to avoid being scratched by the acacia tree thorny branches whipping in. 
   Once at the site, the archaeology professor Mzalendo gave a short lecture about the site. We went to the "museum" which was a small building with information. We went walking through the site looking at the hand axes made by homo erectus. "The coolest site was the elephant humerus from 992,000 years ago. The elephant species elephas recki became extinct around 600,000 years ago and some of the last bones known of this species are found at Olorgesailie." 10 years ago today I came to realize that the luxuries we enjoy in the Western world come in many forms, including flushing toilets!


Olorgesailie




The Humerus from Elephas Recki and a modern elephant

Handaxes

 

The Catwalk around the Dig Site

Scorpions, Snakes and Termites - Welcome to the Great Rift Valley

Day 6
7:00 Tent Breakdown
7:30 Breakfast
9:45 Leave for Eremit
1:15 Arrive at Eremit (eat lunch)
4:15 Nature Walk
6:30 Dinner



Driving to Eremit

   If you click on the location link at the bottom of this post "Eremit, Kenya" it will take you to Google Maps. Click "Satellite View" and you can actually see the Masai Village!! To be honest, I don't know if that's the exact one that we visited, but I spent quite some time on Google Maps looking for this place and think it's really cool!



The Great Rift Valley

   I wrote this about driving through a small area on our way out of Nairobi, "It looked like a village but very poor. They have a pharmacy and grocery store, but it didn't look well kept. It was also packed with people everywhere! They were selling lots of fruit in the streets. Everyone was friendly and waved to us - we must have been quite the sight, a caravan of army green trucks! There were "street goats" that don't belong to anyone and just wander around, there were also lots of donkeys around. I noticed a lot of Coke products too." And while on the truck, "It was a great view all the way down into the Rift Valley. It was bumpy and there were thorny trees that were banging the side of the truck - we had to lean forward every time one whipped by. The sound of the branches on the roof was like fingernails on a chalkboard." 


Ngong Hills. In Swahili, ngong means knuckle

Eremit

   Richard is a Masai Senior Elder. He met us at our camp site and took us on a nature walk. I wrote "We started out walking across the plains, dry and dusty - it was so hot and dry that as soon as you sweat, it evaporates! My teeth felt grimy. We walked a long way following a rugged path. Richard told many stories. We saw a lot of donkey poop (like ice cream cone swirls) and goat poop (little round pellets). It started raining on our way back. We were all brown from the dry dust kicked up. Even my arms and hands were dusty. We were grateful for the rain." As I read back at what I did 10 yeas ago today, I am so thankful for this experience of the arid heat and the relief of a welcome rain.



Nature Walk









Richard

Just Another Day in Kenya

Day 5
7:30 Breakfast
10:00 Tent Breakdown Demonstration
10:30 Natural History Class
12:30 Lunch
3:00 Trip to Kazuri Bead Factory
6:30 Dinner




In Our Tent

   "The camp staff gave us a tent breakdown demo, they were hamming it up and acting silly while doing it, but we learned how to do it!" Here in camp there are 20 Kenyan staff members who do all the daily activities, like cook food and clean up, they dig the toilet holes and set up the teaching tents. We are responsible for setting up our own sleeping tents and had to be taught how to do it. By the end of our trip, we were pros at it!


Kazuri Bead Factory

   Since we are getting university credits while on this trip, we had to be enrolled in courses. The courses had the same amount of teaching hours as those offered in Canada and we had projects, tests and lectures. Some days were harder than others to get all my course readings and homework done! Today students (from one of the courses I wasn't enrolled in) went on a trip to the UN, it would have been such a great experience.


Hand Painting the Beads

   The Kazuri Bead Factory was an a compound in the area. Kazuri is the swahili word for "small & beautiful". There were lots of women making all the beads in the factory. Each worker is trained to do all the jobs, so they don't only do one thing day after day. Each bead is shaped and hand painted before being fired over night. The phamphlet that I picked up said, "The founder of the company, Lady Susan Wood, started with two woman workers and soon discovered that there were many other women in the villages around Nairobi, most of whom were single mothers, who were in great need of regular employment. Driven by the desire to provide such opportunities, Kazuri has grown and today we have a large workforce skilled in the manufacture of hand made jewlery."10 years ago today I learned that a "factory" isn't an assembly line of faceless people. Next time I look at the things I enjoy and appreciate I will remember the smiles of these lovely ladies.



Inside the Factory








Some Culture and Politics

Day 4
7:30 Breakfast
10:00 Trip to Karen
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Trip to Natural History Museum
3:30 Ceremony for Vice President
6:30 Dinner




All Dressed Up

   The highlights of today were going to the Natural History Museum and meeting the Vice President. "On the way to Nairobi we saw a monkey on the side road sign - it was amazing - our first wildlife encounter. Everyone was scrambling for their camera, but we drove by so fast." That journal passage stands out to me because in the subsequent days & weeks we became immune to the little joys of spotting monkeys, considering they would frequently crawl on the large tents at camp!


At Nairobi Museum

   I found the Nairobi Museum marvelous. It was incredible to me that nothing was behind ropes or bars. There was a sperm whale skeleton, neat skulls and one of the most complete homo-erectus skeleton. The bird room had 38 display cases of specimens, there were full size mammals, beautiful artwork and displays of clothing and accessories.


Sperm Whale Skeleton

   We all went to the Parliament building because there was a donation of a Land Rover being made to the museum of Kenya to be received by the vice president, Hon Moody Awori. It was encouraged that we take photos. "After the speech, he drove the vehicle around and then he wanted to meet us. He shook a few people's hands - and HE SHOOK MY HAND! Then we had to get in a group and he came over to stand and pose for pictures with us. I was standing beside him. I hope I can get a copy of the picture!" Today I searched Google Images for a copy of that picture that was taken 10 years ago today, but I couldn't find it.




Hon Moody Awori



In The Swing Of Things

Day 3
6:30 Running
7:00 Breakfast
8:30 Archeology
12:30 Lunch
2:30 Diving Talk
4:30 HIV/AIDS Talk
6:30 Dinner
7:00 Karen Blixen Bar



Photographing Butterflies

   I am not a runner, but I wanted to go for the run with the rest of the group. I think most of us went on this first scheduled run. I know that Lee continued running almost every morning, but I'm not sure who else did. Arare, one of the staff, took us out of the compound to run. I was more curious than anything else, I wanted to see what Kenya looked like! Not being a runner, I quickly fell behind and ended up walking with Karin.



Kasoi Protecting Us
 

   During some afternoon free time I wrote in my journal, "Rachel and I decided to do laundry. What an experience. We asked one of the camp staff for water and detergent and washed our clothes by the back fence. In one tub we put the soap (we used too much) and with our brush scrubbed our clothes. The other tub was for rinsing out the detergent - but it didn't work took well - we had to use more water. It was hard to squeeze out all the water too - strong forearms are needed!" It's so interesting for me to reflect on this because I know as the trip progressed I did laundry less and less frequently - and here we are on day 3 washing our clothes already!


Don

   Another moment that I recorded in my journal was this, "During dinner we were sitting around the fire eating, watching the black kite's circling above us, they were closing in - one was swooping, we all watched it dive down - pointing. "wow, wow, WOW, WOW!" The bird dove down and grabbed food off of Julie's plate while she was just standing there, it was so scary!" One of the camp staff who soon became everyone's favourite, Kasoi, stood guard with a stick so we could eat our dinner in peace afterwards!


Cheers!

   Don had reserved us tables at the Karen Blixen Bar to listen to blues music, so we all piled into the trucks and headed into Karen. The bar was a beautiful stone with dark heavy wood for tables and chairs. The singer sang like Louis Armstrong. We toured the Karen Blixen house beside the bar as well. It was a great evening. 10 years ago today I started making friends, forming connections that would last a lifetime. :)





Getting Orientated

Day 2 Schedule
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Academic Meeting
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Trip to Karen
4:30 Natural History Class
6:30 Dinner

   "Sometime in the middle of the night a huge dog was barking "woof woof" and every other dog in the area started barking too. I could hear everyone else in their tents whispering about it. It was all over after that  for me, I couldn't sleep." Around 6am everyone got up, no one slept well. We sat around the dying campfire waiting for breakfast. I dined on fruit and eggs that were delicious!
   In the town of Karen I exchanged money at the bank and we looked around at the different stores. There were lots of people trying to sell us things.

Some "tidbits" of information that I wrote about;

• Today is Rebecca's birthday, we sang for her and the staff made her a birthday cake
• There are 4 dogs on this compound, 1 male and 3 females named "The Supremes"
• I signed a form with the phrase "in the event of my death" written in it
• I was frightened of having to go pee in the middle of the night 

10 years ago today I was adjusting to a lifestyle so different from my own.

Arriving in Kenya

   We went into the airport, filled out an immigration card, showed our vaccination book and got our passports stamped. ""Welcome" the gruff man said to me. It was anxious waiting for our bags, is my bag still in Canada - or where in the world is it? Finally my bag came around the turnstile!"
   Big trucks (that eventually become very familiar to us!) were waiting for us outside the airport. There was a baggage truck for our stuff and two passenger trucks. There were padded benches facing each other. They drive on the opposite side of the road here, the only place I knew of that did that was Australia.It was around 5:30am and the sky was dark purple, it felt like night. I noticed the "amazing" trees. We drove to The Compound, a house and grounds in Karen Nairobi that we will use as our base camp. During the drive the sky lightened to a soft blue, it was very bright. In my journal I wrote "The compound was not what I expected - I wasn't disappointed or anything - I guess I just couldn't envision what my life would be like here. There were 11x11 tents set up for us, a kitchen area and tables set up for a buffet. There was a tent with overhead fluorescent lights for teaching and other supply tents set up." The camp staff had made us breakfast and then Amy, Rachel and I agreed to be tent mates. I spent the rest of the day napping and exploring the compound. 10 years ago today I was getting ready to start an adventure of a lifetime!

Passing Through Ethiopia

   I wrote in my journal "Flying into Ethiopia there were sparkling blue and orange lights of the city. There were major roadways too! Not what I would have thought."
   We landed at midnight (local time) about 6.5 hours after taking off. I calculated that it was 4pm in Toronto and still Saturday. I wondered what my mom and dad were doing at that time. We had a 3 hour layover at this airport and then a seemingly short flight to Kenya. I recorded that my total travel time since leaving Toronto was 37 hours. I wrote in my journal "when we got off the plane, we had to walk across the airport runway (we got off the plan on a small outdoor staircase) - my first steps on African ground!"

Still Traveling

   The plane landed in Frankfurt Germany at 1:45am but with the time difference the local time was 7:45am. When we got off the plane and walked around within the airport I marveled at the fact that my favourite magazine Cosmo was written in a different language (it's the small things I noted). The bunch of us that flew there from Toronto wandered aimlessly around the Frankfurt airport. The smell of smoke caught my attention and I noticed people standing around an ashtray or sitting in the cafeteria smoking. How different airports are now, 10 years later! I ended up clicking with Amy & Rachel and we hung out at the gate. I took my first malaria pill. After 7 hours at the airport we met most of the group at the gate and Ethiopian Airlines took us to Addis Ababa.

"First Day of Travel"

Those are literally the first words in my journal 10 years ago today.

   10 years ago today I boarded a plane for my very first international flight. I was 21 years old and in my 4th year of University at Dalhousie. I had signed up for the Canadian Field Studies in Africa program and I was on my way to Kenya for 10 weeks.
   I had been on airplanes before; my hometown was Waterloo and I was attending school in Halifax, but this flight was different. I had poured over maps and felt thrilled that I would be flying over the Atlantic Ocean to a country so foreign to me that I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like. In my journal I wrote "I had a shower - I wonder when my next shower will be? I put on the clothes I've had laid out all week, I'll be traveling in these clothes for days. Looking at a world map I thought to myself that I'm going to be flying over the Atlantic Ocean tonight!"
   Once at the airport I wrote about meeting Amy in line for the Air Canada flight to Frankfurt. One by one, more girls approached us asking if we were going to Africa, I was glad to be getting into a group so I wasn't alone. It was a long flight to Frankfurt, but I had an aisle seat!