Mariah's Adventures

Back to Tanzania...

2009-03-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Kenya's South Coast Weekend

2009-03-10T03:55:00.000-07:00

Uganda

2009-02-07T13:00:00.001-08:00

Holidays 2009 in East Africa

2009-02-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

It was a great first holiday season spent in Africa. My uncle came to visit from the UAE. We spent a few days exploring Nairobi and went on safari to Maasai Mara (famous for the massive wildebeest migration) and Lake Nakuru. My friend Heidi's dad came from Brazil. My friend Anand's brother came from London. And Heidi and Anand's friend Helen came from Scotland. Here are some of my favorite pics from safari and Christmas!

This is a safari pile up! When there's news of an interesting animal sighting (this was a lion sleeping on it's back in the tall grass with only one paw visible) the vans and Land Rovers flock to get the photo.

Me and Uncle Kirk at a waterfall in Maasai Mara.

It was a lovely being able to walk behind the waterfall but this little grotto was filled with the sickeningly sweet stench of baboon poo.

Lake Nakuru National Park

Carrots! I have never seen such a sight of orange.

Termite mounds

Heidi and I slaving away in the kitchen!

Anand and Sechin ready for the Christmas Eve feast

Heidi and her dad, George

Our friend Ato

Christmas Day game of Clue in the garden for Sechin's (Anand's brother) birthday.

Anand's house decorated for Christmas.

Helen, Scottish shepherdess extraordinaire, and new found friend.

My 26th birthday celebration with my amazing friends! Heidi loves me!

Two Klingsmiths golfing together in Africa!

Uncle Kirk making the final putt of our 18 hole day around the links.

Mt. Meru Adventure

2009-02-06T00:26:00.000-08:00

Mount Meru is Tanzania's second highest peak at 14,980 feet and we took a long weekend in December to stretch our legs and journey to the top.

The invitingly clear view of Mt. Meru the evening before our 3 day adventure began. This was one of only two times in 5 days-before, after and including our climb-when the mountain was free from its veil of clouds. We had amazing luck!

The base of Mt. Meru is surrounded by Arusha National Park, so the baboons and giraffes were there to greet us and make our trip even more exciting.

Here we go! The hunchback is our gun-toting, National Park issued ranger along to protect us from the buffalo and whatever other dangers we might encounter.

The guides re-packing the bags before we head up the mountain.

I mentioned the inclement weather and this should give you a good idea of what it was like. Luckily, it was rainy buckets before we began the hike, but 20 minutes out it let up. We arrived at this camp about an hour before it started pouring again. This was the morning we set out for the second camp, but it cleared up and just remained foggy until we reached the second camp. We got settled at the second camp and had hoped to run up Little Meru to acclimatize ourselves but it was raining. An hour later the sun came out and burned away some of the clouds making for brilliant conditions for a sunset hike. And the ultimate luck...for our hike to and from the summit we had perfectly blue skies. And as we were driving away from the National Park we looked back to see Mt. Meru engulfed in clouds yet again.

The amazing Tanzanian guides carrying all of our gear and food and charging up the mountain effortlessly. This is hiking African style! You carry only your day bag and water and create a job for 6 guys for 3 days.

The peaceful view of the vast expanses that spread out from the lower slopes of Mt. Meru.

The first camp was posh! Plenty of water, rooms with 4 bunk beds, sinks, toilets, dining hall...not what we were expecting.

Catherine and Jo taking afternoon tea, looking out from the deck, willing the clouds to part so we could get our first view of Kili.

Our first view of the summit of Mt. Meru since we started our walk (a bit daunting!)

Right out of a story book!

Encountering unique vegetation on mountains is always one of my favorite parts about hiking.

Amazing! This is what it's all about!

In the running for a spot in my top ten favorite scenes.

Looking down at the second camp from the summit of Little Meru.

Do you see the hippo?

And there she is, poking out of the clouds to show us the challenge awaiting us in the morning.

This high mountain meadow with the clouds racing across was breathtaking.

On the summit of Mt. Meru with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the distance.

Mt Meru's ash cone.

This was the foggy scene at 2:00 am when we reached Rhino Point-only 700 meters left!

The hikers at sunrise.

Hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro may be an amazing experience but you would miss this incredible view!

Jeff, our tour guide extraordinaire (who also took us to Mt. Kenya) , on the phone at 4500 meters.

The towering shadow of Mt. Meru.

Catherine, Hannah, Jo and me stand triumphantly on Socialist Peak.

The only snow I have seen since December 2006!

Happy, hearty flowers at 14,000 feet!

Yep, there it is and we were just there!

To think we had just walked this stretch in the dark 3 hours ago! It was an amazing morning, the sky was clear and the stars were brilliant. Sirius overhead chasing after Orion-was happy to see the familiar sight while hiking on top of a mountain.

Good thing we didn't miss a step on this little hill on the way up!

How about this job? Carrying bags of cement and lumber up to 3000 meters to build the camp you see in the picture above.

And the adventure didn't even end when we got off the hiking trails!

Not a bad way to end a good adventure.

A fig tree you can drive through.

Site visits in Western Kenya

2008-11-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

Western Kenya...Obama Country (as it now commonly referred to). I spent three weeks here doing follow-up visits with 3 groups of women who had attended the African Women and Water Conference.

Interesting rocks. There is a local legend here that these rocks have a spring that never never stops flowing and that has amazing healing powers.

The rice paddies of Kenya...it was like being home in the Philippines.

Felix, my traveling companion for this trip, dancing with the orphan girls who prepared a special presentation for our visit (complete with two songs about Obama).

Juice (pronounced "ju-eece" here in Kenya) made from Verbena they are growing in their women's project garden.

House of Ghetto. This is the Kenyan version of a movie theatre. There is a TV inside and an odd assortment of wooden benches and plastic chairs and they charge as entrance fee and play anything from the news to football games and movies.

Oh I love the constant availability of avocados here!

Using the Tippy Tap the women's group has set up for demostration.

Rolling chappati dough.

Felix's adorable cousin playing racket guitar. I was entertained by him and his sisters for 3 hours straight! Running skills, songs, poems, drawings, dances...they were nonstop.

Anybody know a 5th grader in another country that wants a penpal? The beauty in orange is desperately seeking one. She wants to be a neurosurgeon when she grows up. Her sister wants to be a gynecologist. Why such specific aspirations you may ask? Well, their teacher told them that neurosurgeons have good hands and that gynecologists get to deliver babies.

Anybody? Huh?

Taking little sister for a ride.

Bubbles! Pure joy and excitement from this crowd.

I could have stood out and played with these kids all day; I always attract quite a crowd of little people but with the simple joy of bubbles my popularity increased imediately!

Walking through the market I asked curiously, "what do people do with these rocks?" "They chew on them." Yes, people-especially pregnant women-eat these because they believe they are a good source of iron for their diet.

Kind of a "Where's Waldo" scene!

I learned about cotton farming, something I had never seen before.

The creativity and resourcefulness of people here is outstanding. They now have a proper latrine.

Seline Osian, a participant from the Women and Water Conference and solar cooker extraordinaire!

The beautiful women of Katito, Kenya listening to a presentation about water and hygiene.

Felix making new friends.

The women's group in Katito wanted to show us how they grind maize.

Good day for solar cooking!

The women came up to the road to greet us, singing and dancing.

A Hammercop and drying laundry.

Access to water (not to mention clean water that is not from a river being shared by cows) is an unusually hard challenge in Kendu Bay.

Vivian and I sitting on the shore of Lake Victoria.

Um...this water looks healthy don't you think?

Kingfisher getting ready to dive.

Kitui Site Visit

2008-11-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

African Women and Water Conference participants Jeniffer and Priscah-the amazing women of Kamanyi village in Kitui, a dry region southeast of Nairobi. These women are the epitome of your small town, model community members. Jeniffer is a teacher and Priscah is a business woman. They are key members of the Tei Wa Wo community based organization, leaders in the church, board members for other local organizations, and they are helping to establish a polytechnic school for young girls to help learn sewing and other income generating skills. I had a wonderful week staying with them in their community, watching them implement their new water project. They installed gutters and storage tanks at a school and a clinic and the day after they completed it started to rain! They are now selling the water to their community, saving to install more community rainwater harvesting systems.

Done with the shopping for rainwater harvesting materials and ready to head back to the village (a 3 hour, dusty, bumpy ride hugging the new plastic water tank).

Feeling like a celebrity! People in Kitui were very excited to have ther picture taken with me.

Almost an African woman what with my new clothes and little friend!

The Kitui ladies took it upon themselves to see I have proper clothes to wear in Africa.

The amazing ladies of Kamanyi Primary School (heading to fetch water at the river for the school garden and kitchen).

"Dear God, help me to be number one or two AMEN" Exams are a particularly stressful part of education in Kenya. Almost weekly there are stories on the TV news or in the newspapers about national exams. Last fall the stress of exams led to student strikes, violence and vandalism at many secondary schools. The pressure to perform well and the implications it has for their futures is intense. At the home I was staying at in Kamanyi, my little host brother woke up at 2:00 am to study by candlelight before going to school! For 2 weeks straight he did this!

School lunch

Collard greens was the main course every night of my visit, served with chapatti or ugali and milk tea.

And I was tutored nightly on how to properly prepare and cook Kenyan food (this was done simultaneously with my Kikamba language lessons-this is my little teacher and whew she was tough!).

Here I am, working in the office trying to escape the sweltering heat!

Amazing sky! This was a welcome sight, as it had been 8 months since it had last rained.

There aren't words to describe this beautiful little girl! Her smile says it all!

Tei Wa Wo community group member with her adorable son.

The short bus! Only passes through the village twice a day to transport people to and from Kitui town 3 hours away.

Main street Kamanyi

Yes, it's amazing, the white woman knows how to roll chapattis!

This is how it started...you can see from above that I attracted quite a crowd.

These two gentlemen are fantastic! They are members of Tei Wa Wo and volunteered their time to help install two rainwater harvesting systems for the local clinic and primary school.

Yum, chapatti!

Local restaurant

What a face!

Bicycles are a common sight in Kamanyi and the women are quite mobile on them. They ride into the village center, to the farms, to church...it's amazing how this simple addition to thier lives makes such a difference. In Kamanyi a bicycle has become a household spending priority.

Pounding maize

It's a different version of writing on the bathroom stalls

And a nice greeting when I arrived back in Nairobi!

Mt. Kenya Hiking Weekend

2008-10-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

The road to the Mt. Kenya Lodge was a gruelling 15 kilometers of mud and ruts which takes an average of 3 hours

It was good entertainment watching them get the Land Rover un-stuck and it gave us a nice chance to stretch our legs

Vehicles headed to the lodge are equipped with a three man team, a bolo (for digging and chopping bamboo or fallen trees), and a jack

Anand and Heidi blowing out the birthday candles

The lowlands of Chogoria with the giant tussock grasses in the foreground. We were almost always hiking through these fluffy cotton balls.

The trees in this forest are covered with "goat's beard" lichen and moss; it's like being in a fairy book story

Beautiful Mt. Kenya in the morning sun

This was one of the better patches of road

The bamboo forests; they can grow up to 30 feet tall!

Elephant!

Sunrise over the lake out the back door of our cottage at the Mt. Kenya Lodge

Sunset over the lake; watering hole for herons and buffalo and bush buck

Me and Anand at his birthday dinner party. Ato, a Kenyan artist, made his cake into a car.

Birthday party favors! These provide endless entertainment at the Mt. Kenya Lodge, in the car in the jam on the way home, and the fun was still going at the dinner party.

Finicky cell signal. The guides have to keep the cell phones right where they are and there are random bamboo markers all over the trails and slopes of the base of the mountain marking where it is possible to send a text home.

Heading out for an afternoon walk

Anand doing his part to help get the Land Rover out of the mud.

South Africa

2008-09-19T02:45:00.000-07:00

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Rural community where we did a WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) and Rainwater Harvesting workshop for a member group of the Rural Women's Movement (RWM) (http://www.rwm.org.za/). RWM is the organization Sizani started to help women come together to advocate for land rights and other social issues. I love how this small community has house numbers-won't find this in other parts of rural Africa!

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Zama, Sizani's niece and new assistant at RWM, teaching the women about Tippy Taps-a handwashing station using old plastic jugs where you use a string to tip the water out without having to touch it.

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: RWM women watering their community garden-a project started by a group of grandmothers. Grandmothers here have a huge responsibility to take care of children, especially when their parents die.

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Water tests using Colilert 10 ml tubes to test for Coliform bacteria; the ones that fluoresce under the UV light have presence of E. Coli

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Our workshop venue was a local creche (daycare)...another one of those words I just learned from non-native English speakers about my own language (remember viand from the Philippines?)

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Zama, daughter of one of the RWM local leaders. She's gonna be an amazing young woman in 5 years! So exciting to meet people here you know will soon be great leaders and forces in their communities.

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Nature's sunscreen!

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Traditional mud hut where we installed a gutters and a tank for rainwater harvesting

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Sizani teaching the women about the different methods for rainwater harvesting.

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Local homemade Zulu instrument

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Cloud burst at the end of the day...a nice farewell for our workshop

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The Amahlubi Rural Women's Movement group upon completion of our 4 day workshop

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The students at the daycare gave us a short concert the last day of the workshop, complete with "Twinkle, Twinkle"

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The Amahlubi landscape, these hills are the start of the Drakensberg Mountains

AMALHUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Rural South Africa-I love the simplicity and the beauty

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Rockin' hair!

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Digging the foundation for the rainwater harvesting storage tank

AMAHULBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The ladies during the workshop doing a group activity to identify the water resources and problems within their community

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The daycare playground

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Look at the tummy on this cutie! Actually the nutritious snacks served at this daycare are amazing for how poor and rural the area is-yogurt, carrots, crackers, milk!

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The water carriers

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: No words necessary!

AMAHLUBI, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: The landscape dominated by vast tracks of private land-87% of the land here is privately owned and a large portion of this land is empty and unused. A huge land battle is going on for the black South Africans to regain some of the colonial land to settle on and farm in order to relieve the problems of overcrowded settlements and hunger.

KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: As a response to the government threatening to take privately owned land back, land owners create game ranches which exempts them from losing their land...it's just for show, there is no game to be seen on these reserves

PIETERMARITZBURG, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Mickey, one of Sizan's dogs in her garden. I've been lucky, every place we have stayed at so far in Africa has dogs and cats to play with!

PIETERMARITZBURG, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Yes, it is cold here!

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Colenso women attending a meeting to become a member group of RWM

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Colenso feels like a ghost town. When apartheid ended and the new black government took over a lot of white people moved away, closing factories and stores and leaving land empty and fenced off. Very sad, seems such a waste!

PIETERMARITZBURG, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Sizani and me at the site of Nelson Mandela's capture which led to his stay in prison

PIETERMARITZBURG, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: A water source that serves 5 families

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Tap water, yummm!

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

COLENSO, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA: Sizano conducting a workshop for RWM

Travels in Kenya

2008-08-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

TRANS-MARA: So, this is what we are here to talk about. This spring is shared, as you can see, by all members of the community. The ladies get water from 5-8 every day and then must let the livestock be watered. Now think about this, how many of us have to share your water resources directly with cows? This trek to the water source every day, and the queue to fetch the water leads to another problem. The women may be away all morning fetching water and their children, home from school awaiting lunch

TRANS-MARA, KENYA: This is Lucy's site-she is working with the Maasai women of Emeyian Orphans Support Group in a small hillside village in Trans-Mara. Lucy runs an NGO called Indigenous Information Network. She has been around the world and back advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples and trying to encourage them to value adn apply their traditional knowledge and practices especially when dealing with environmental issues.

TRANS-MARA, KENYA: Emily, the secretary of Emeyian Orphans Support Group.

TRANS-MARA, KENYA: We received some special gifts from the ladies before we left the community. Gemma is holding a gourd that they use to carry milk in and I am wearing a shawl that married women wear. They sent us off with a song (of course!) but we have big plans to come back and work with this community.

TRANS-MARA, KENYA: The people of this village still live a very traditional life. They have an awareness of how valuable their water sources are and about the importance of safe drinking water and are very willing to work on improving their situation, all they need and are asking for is help.

KENDU BAY, KENYA: The kids are always close by when we are around!

KENDU-BAY, KENYA: This is the Power Positive self-help group that Hannie and Benta work with. These wonderful women are all widows and are all HIV positive and they started this group because their husbands started dying and they starting getting sick and they didn't understand what was going on. Now they are a support group for each other and they encourage other women to form similar groups to support those who are victims, educate communities about HIV, improve the quality of life of those suffering from HIV, and help the many orphans who lose their parents to HIV and AIDS. Access to safe water is an important part of living a healthy life when you have HIV or AIDS so they will incorporate what they learned at the Women and Water Conference into their outreach program.

KENDU BAY, KENYA

KENDU BAY, KENYA: I love her! There was a lot of singing and dancing with this group. They greeted us with a song where the chorus went, "it's too late to save my life, it's too late to save my life, it's too late to save my life, just give me a chance to live." Wow, amazing women!

KENDU BAY, KENYA: A Power Positive woman!

KISUMU, KENYA: Portable Microbiology Laboratory test taken by the ladies of GWAKO Ministries. Before and after of a water source used in one of the areas they work in. In the tube yellow means presence of Coliform bacteria (the group E. Coli belongs to), if it fluoresces under UV light there is presence of E. Coli-and therefore presence of recent fecal contamination, because E. Coli lives in the intestines of humans and animals-in the 10 ml sample. On the Petri films, red spots mean Coliform bacteria, blue spots mean E. Coli is present in the 1 ml sample. So...this water is contaminated with E. Coli and after going through the BioSand filter...VOILA!

KISUMU, KENYA: The amazing BioSand filter installed in a small canteen. The owner of this shop is so excited and proud to be providing clean drinking water to her customers! And the word is getting out, all the local transport drivers stop along their route to get water. Clean water apparently brings more customers!

EN ROUTE TO KISUMU, KENYA

EN ROUTE TO KISUMU, KENYA: Love the load!

KATITO, KENYA: Solar cooking at the Solar Cookers International regional office with Jesca and Seline.

KATITO, KENYA: Oh, all the rain that is being wasted! We should be harvesting this great rainwater, but soon enough that's what Jesca and Seline will be doing. You should have seen the amazing lakes formed along side the roads after this 30 minute downpour.

KITUI, KENYA: Tei Wa Wo grandmothers working in the riverside garden; Tei Wa Wo is a community group focused on helping orphans and vulnerable children, people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHAS), and supporting kitchen gardening

KITUI, KENYA: Adorable children chasing and waving and smiling at the Muzungu (white person)

KITUI, KENYA: Helping the group with their project proposal

KITUI, KENYA: Working hard!

KITUI, KENYA: Sharing the water-this is a big issue here! A lot of the complaints from the women are that the animals are treated better than the people. But the quandary is that the animals are important as water carriers and they provide income and food so keeping them healthy helps the family. BUT, you also have to keep the family healthy so it's difficult to balance.

KITUI, KENYA: The leaders of Tei Wa Wo riding bicycles.

KITUI, KENYA: These kids were so fun! They gathered outside the meeting hall, where we were meeting with the members of Tei Wa Wo, and started to make a lot of noise. An older gentleman said to me, "they want to meet you, just come outside." And that's what they wanted, to say hello and shake my hand and then they would go back to school.

MERU, KENYA: Gemma, Alpha (renamed Holpha by her elementary school teacher), Betty, me and Jennifer-Betty's mother

MERU, KENYA: Market

MERU, KENYA: Local tea plantations. This tea is meticulously picked, taken to the local selling hall where it is bought from the local farmer, sorted, sacked and sent off to a regional center where it is again sorted into the better and best classes of leaves, dried, processed, sacked again and sent to places like Mombasa for weekly tea auctions where agents, like from Twinnings, bid on the best tea. It's bought, shipped wherever it's going, processed again, packaged and then ready for the tea-drinking public. This is where you really get the gist of fair trade, walking along, watching the people in the fields working daily picking leaves from these bushes, going home with a little money to feed their famil of 7, and we pay $8 a box for 20 tea bags and hardly ever think about where it comes from...how many of us ever get to see this?

MERU, KENYA: Working with Betty and Holpha to develop their project proposal action plan

MERU, KENYA: Holpha's beautiful niece, Blessing

MERU, KENYA: AVOCADO heaven! These monsters are huge and delicious!

MERU, KENYA: Coming from the forest with firewood

MERU, KENYA: Butcher shop

THIKA, KENYA: Little resident of the slum area where Beatrice and Lydiah work with women's groups

THIKA, KENYA: Visiting Beatrice and Lydiah's site in Thika-about 40 minutes outside Nairobi. They are part of a group called Boda Boda (originally called Border to Border, this happens a lof with word here!) that works in a slum called Kaidotu. There is a group of 40 women that meet twice a week to try and work on issues in their community. They have started some livelihood projects and they have something called a merry-go-round where every month they each give 100 KSh and one person gets the 4000 KSh to put towards their livelihood projects.

Visiting the MicroHydro Projects of Robert Mutsaers

2008-08-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

The link for the project in Kenya

http://www.greenpowerkenya.org/

Power station under construction

The dam for another hyrdo power station

Walking through tea plantations to reach the river

Tomatoes on the move

Riding around Africa-style in the back of a rickety old jeep on terrible roads

The river that will help bring electricity to hundreds of households

The river has a capacity to support 3 inlet pipes into the power station...politics and locals stealing money has stunted this particular micro-hydro station.

Robert with students and professors from Canada who are helping to evaluate the project by conducting community studies on demand and acceptability and the anthropological affects of now being able to buy light bulbs and electric fans.

Kids picking tea

Castle Forest Lodge at the foot of Mt. Kenya

2008-08-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

The view from the deck. Castle Forest Lodge was opened by a Dutch woman. It's a great place to find serenity, chilly moutain air, elephants roaming through the forest, good food.

This lodge is off the grid. No electricity, except at night and that is the 12 V they get from their solar panels. There are hot showers in the am and pm, heated by these boilers.

The road to the lodge which turns a bit mucky when it rains.

Tree damage from the elephants, they knocked this healthy 30 foot tree down to get off the bark on the trunk. You can imagine how people coexisting with elephants in their backyard can complain about.

Our fearless leader for a morning hike through the forest. He taught us everything from the medicinal and traditional uses of all the plants to bird calls and elephant biology. Here he is showing us the spiky tree of death.

The living room inside the lodge's main house. We played 4 hours worth of Mafia with a group of Canadian professors and students!

Hiking to the waterfall

Elephant tracks (never saw any of them though)

Gemma on the path to the waterfall

The ficus starting it's long journey to surround and kill the water berry tree

Job done, the parasite wins!

The cottages

All cottages are decorated with themes and have a fireplace that they light for you every night

The grounds and the elephant pool

The Elephant Orphange

2008-08-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

Started by a woman whose husband was one of the key players in setting up protected animal parks in Kenya.

The residents include warthogs...

black rhinos (one of whom is blind)...

and of course the elephants!

Their skin feels hairy and tough. They usually stay behind the ropes but occasionally back into them and give the crowd a scare or completely barrel through the crowd and walk around freely. The guys in green sleep with these animals, feed them every hour, and play with them just like kids.

Great sandbox! This is what they do to beat the heat.

Little guy, big personality

Me and Godfrey

Our Time in Nairobi

2008-08-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

Carnivore is a popular, expensive, touristy place that used to serve wild game like zebra.

This is the way it goes: you sit down, order your drink (which could be made by the roaming bartender with his Mai Tai fixings hanging around his neck like a peanut vendor at a baseball game), they bring the spinning condiment platter-with sauces designated for each type of meat, and then festive waiters in safari hats bring around meat and you wave them over if you want them to cut you off a slice onto your plate. I have never felt so full in my life!

Complete with Ostrich meatballs. This is Godfrey who is our favorite Nairobi taxi driver. And yes, this is how I come out in most pictures here, as if it wasn't already obvious enough how white I am in comparison to the Africans!

A jam in Nairobi. And the billboard for Nakumatt-the SM of Kenya.

Cool way to sell newspapers! I'm sure we've all seen wierder things for sale outside the car window. How I wish I had just spent the 50 pesos and bought a pair of those glasses with the nose and mustache!

Anand's house-our borrowed pad for a month while staying Nairobi.

And the garden out back! Complete with the peaceful river sounds and monkeys swinging through the trees and crawling on the roof.

Uhuru Park refreshments, Nairobi. They have the good Coca Cola here.

Paid our tribute to Wangari Maathai by visiting Freedom Corner where she and a group of mothers staged a non-violent protest to demand the release of the sons who were being held by the government unlawfully because they spoke out against the government. They were finally brutally attacked and forced to leave. The women responded to the police in the most unlikey way. In Kenya the tradition is to treat every woman as your mother, especially if they are older. So when the police came the older women took off their shirts to shame the young men and the police left. Brilliant!

Traveling on the Nairobi buses

First month in Africa

2008-07-13T04:37:00.001-07:00

Lillian Mwandha and Mildred Mkandla, my co-trainers at the AWWC

The ladies learned about water access, water storage and water treatment through hands on experience building rainwater catchments, a ferro cement water tank and the BioSand Filter. My co-trainers were Lillian-who is a lawyer in Uganda and Mildred-she is from Zimbabwe, lives in Ethiopia and has been working in the water development sector for many years. We had a great time together!

The Fireless Cooker supported by Solar Cookers International and the Portable Microbiology Lab for water testing being promoted by Robert Metcalf, a microbiology professor from California State University, Sacramento. The fireless cooker is a basket with "pillows" in it that, for example, you boil rice for 3 hours, stick it in the basket, cover it with the other "pillow" and an hour later your rice is cooked. The women's group who is making these collect discarded cloth from factories and other places for the "pillows" and use native material to make the baskets.

I love this water testing method. It's nothing new, Dr.Metcalf just put two tests usually used independently in the food industry together and is making it available to people who have no experience with microbiology. There is a petrifilm test made by 3M and a test for 10 ml called Colilert. I won't bore anyone with the scientific details, but the short version is it identifies the presence of E Coli bacteria as an indicator of fecal contaminants which can cause major illness and it quantifies approximately how contaminated a water source is.

This is the Solar CooKit! Check out the website-http://solarcookers.org/. It is very cool and simple and cost effective and all the participants of the African Women and Water Conference got to make one of their own. It's a piece of cardboard with reflective material glued on and you put your food in a black pot (the cheap thin kind) inside a clear transparent plastic bag, set it in the sun for several hours (depending on the kind of food) and voila! Very neat idea in a place where sun is abundant and fuel resources-wood and charcoal-are expensive and becoming incresingly scarce. You can also use the solar cooker to pasteurize water and milk and they come with WAPIs (Water Pasteurization Indicators-a little devise with wax inside that melts when the liquid reaches the appropriate temperature to the bugs)

After the AWWC Gemma and Jan (she is one of the co-organizers of the conference, her group is called Crabgrass) and I went to Tanzania for safari. We traveled to Ngorogoro Crater and Manyara National Park and visited a Maasai village on the way home. Saw Kilimanjaro in the distance which was amazing, it is so striking on the landscape! I was glued to the window the whole time.

Well, that's a pretty good glimpse of my time here in Africa so far. Until next time...

And as my sisters here would say, be blessed!

Professor

2008-07-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

I got hugged and kissed on the cheek by a Nobel Peace Laureate!!! Wangari Maathai is such an amazing woman (we saw a sneak peek of the documentary she just made about her life) and it was really special that she came to speak to the women of the conference at the closing reception.

African Women and Water Conference BioSand Filter Training

2008-07-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

Success for the Langata Women's BioSand Filter Enterprise (so named by themselves-they were quite enthusiastic)! These 12 brilliant, colorful, singing women learned the in's and out's of the BioSand Filter in three afternoons.
They built and installed 2 filters and taught the staff at the Greenbelt Langata Training Center how to use and maintain them.
All have pledged to start a BioSand Filter business at home, so we'll see what they make happen...

First day in Kenya

2008-06-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

Jambo,

That is the “hello, how you doing” greeting here. Nairobi is chilly and overcast-coats and sweaters and scarves definitely necessary! They tell me it is like this most of the year, which I had heard before but didn't believe it.

Staying at a bible society guest house with my own room that has a tv, bathroom, water heater (kind of), and mosquito net hanging over the bed like a canopy. The food has been pretty tasty; crepes for bfast and beans with sausage, and rice and meat and veggies for dinner.

Went to a village outside Nairobi today for a grassroots meeting with locals leaders about women getting displaced from the land they live on when their husbands die (which creates a lot of poverty and orphans)-this is one of the projects of one of the coordinating groups of the conference. The language they speak sounds awesome! They live amongst the tea and coffee plantations which are huge; Kenya is a large exporter of tea and coffee. It was cloudy and cold and quite beautiful.

Tomorrow we will do some planning and shop for some materials to build the mold for the water filter.

Until next time, I am off to bed.

With love from Kenya,

Mariah