Masai Mara Safari Video!

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Final Days

Danny:

Yesterday, John and I traveled back to the states. After flights of 7, 9, and 2 hours, we were happy to be back in Kansas City after our 4 weeks in Kenya. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers during our time there.

I'm now realizing that it's been a full week since our last post. Our extremely slow mobile internet at the orphanage finally went out completely for the last week, so we were unable to give updates. I'll try to summarize our last week in Kenya here. I also promised a summary of the health care, education, and political situations in Kenya that I never got to, so I'll hopefully do those over the next few days.

Right after our return from Maasai Mara, we got back in the routine at the orphanage for just the next couple days. This involved finishing the swingset, working on the new animal structure, and playing with the kids. The new animal structure will be quite impressive. It houses the cows, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. Zach, the staff person in charge of animals, showed us the final plans, and you learn so much about animal husbandry from just the design. There are so many details that I never would have thought of - like making the cow stalls only 3 feet wide so the cows can't turn around (and poop in the same place to make it easier to shovel into the biogas refuge), allowing for gates in the pig sty (so that the mother can be separate from her piglets because a hungry mother will eat them), and that rabbits don't need a water tray (they get all they need from the greens they eat). That project should be complete in the next month. John and I also made a trip to Don Bosco for our math lessons.

Soon after a few days at the orphanage, we left for a one day trip to Mt. Kenya. Mt. Kenya is the largest mountain in Kenya and the second largest in Africa, behind Kilimanjaro. We took a 3 hour matato ride to Nanyuki, a larger town near the mountain with 2 friends David (UK) and Sabrina (Canada). The mountain takes 4 or 5 days to summit and is a pretty treacherous (and cold) climb, so we opted not to do that. Instead we stayed at a cheap hotel in town (I'm talking $3 each) and went on a camel ride around the area. The area is much more arid than Makuyu (thus the camels). We rode for 4 hours with the mountain in the background and seeing a couple Maasai villages. I wouldn't recommend camels as a comfortable method of transportation. My butt still hurts. We fortunately got a shower at that hotel (number 3 or 4 of the trip!), though mine was cold but somehow John's was hot.

Then for the last week at the orphanage here are a few notes:

- I devoted a lot of my time to an "organizational assessment" of the orphanage. When Ann and Devin, the couple from Oregon managing the project, found out that I was a management consultant previously, they asked me to do an assessment of the organization. So, I interviewed the staff and some volunteers, and I'm now summarizing some findings around ways to improve the organization. For example, I'm suggesting a better homework program at night. Right now, it's easy for the kids to avoid homework or reading at night, so we think it'd be good to match up volunteers to kids to help them through their work.

- On Sunday, we attended the kid run church again - again adorable. Afterwards, we took a few of our favorites to town for a nice lunch. Granted, a nice lunch in Makuyu is chipoti (like a tortilla, that we have as a treat at the orphanage on Fridays) and beans and peas, though it tastes a lot better than it does at the orphanage. We took Daniel, Virginia (13, and the older girl assigned to look after Daniel), James and Julius (who are brothers). Then we went to get Cokes and Fantas and then to the Sunday market. We splurged and bought Virginia earrings and James a pair of sunglasses. Despite the crappy quality on our standards, they were so excited and we enjoyed taking them out for a special treat. It was Julius and Daniel's first times to a restaurant, so it was funny to watch their faces when all the food came out. It was a bit different than the fight for food at the orphanage.

- John and I visited Don Bosco for the last few times for our after school math lessons. We both really enjoyed the teaching, and found the progress the kids made over few weeks to be rewarding. A new volunteer (from Atlanta actually) came with us the last time and will continue the sessions. It's nice to know that we started that relationship with the school.

- Sure enough, on the second to last day in Kenya, we started to feel sick. John had stomach pains and I had a really bad headache that kept me up most of the night. Our first thought was it was malaria, which is the first assumption in the area. We're both on antimalarial drugs, but you can still get some of the symptoms if the parasite is in your blood. Figuring that a doctor in KC wouldn't have a clue about malaria, we decided to march on down to the local clinic for a test on our last day. After finally figuring out which of the many lines of patients we qualified for, we paid 40 shillings (about 60 cents) for the test. However, after seeing the line and waiting for about 30 minutes, we gave up and decided our health concerns weren't that grave. We both felt pretty crumby our our travel day yesterday but are feeling better now (malaria unconfirmed).

- We visited a neighbor of the orphanage for a goodbye tea. The neighbor, Michael, is about 70 years old and lives on a farm down the road. He is of Indian origin, so he sticks out about as much as us in the area, except he speaks Kikuyu and calls the area home. The man has quite the life story. His family emigrated to Kenya a couple generations before him in the time of British colonization. His father was a banker and Michael emerged into a successful business man. At one point, he owned a successful safari company, one of the nicest hotels in Nairobi, and we're told had a very lucrative drug trafficking operation. Eventually the law and his debts caught up with him and he know lives a quiet life in this Kenyan village. He married a Kenyan woman and lives with her extended family, where we visited. It wasn't much nicer than the typical poor Kenyan home, except he had TV with CNN. His son is a very prominent artist, also and we bought a small painting from him.

- There was a bit of drama at the orphanage the last week. Donna, the staff member in charge of the routine of the kids called the "social worker", was caught caning a girl. Caning = using a cane to punish someone by slapping their hands with it. This is a very common practice in Kenyan homes and somewhat common at schools. However, it is forbidden at the orphanage. Evidently, this isn't the first time she has done this. Ann and Devin have said that they will leave the orphanage if Donna isn't fired, but the director is still deciding what to do. I think it's a tough issue because the practice is so common culturally here.

Beyond that, it was really just saying our goodbyes, which of course was tough. We woke up at 6:30 the last morning to say goodbye to the kids before school. Luckily, we didn't have to leave until after the kids got back, so we got some more time with them. Goodbyes were tough because there wasn't much to say. Many asked when we were coming back and it broke our hearts to not really have an answer. Little Daniel broke into tears twice that afternoon while we were playing. Then we were really touched by our goodbyes with the staff. They really appreciated the work we had done and what we had left behind (especially the swingset), saying that "the brothers" - our collective nickname - would be missed. Finally, as Zach prepared the van for our departure, we said our goodbyes to the other volunteers and larger kids and then got into the van - to find about 10 of the younger ones waiting for us there. As is a tradition when volunteers leave, they all rode with us to the end of the first road and we waved goodbye to Watoto Wa Baraka and all of the great experiences we had there.

Walking home one day from Don Bosco. We'd always get an entourage following
Nightly feet washing. This night the kids washed mine also....and my hair (I guess I was getting a little grubby)

Julius swinging

The swingset has come to double as a sort of jungle jim. However, the little ones are too short to reach, so there was constantly calls of, "Daniel, you lift me now, do me". Here is Daniel, Baby Joyce, and Lucy.

Digging the ditch for the new animal area

With all the volunteers
My "class" at Don Bosco
and John's (of course, much less well behaved)
Walking the kids to school (Eric's taking a break from holding John's hand to give him a little slap)

Camel ride....you can see my discomfort

John up close and personal with my camel

With Daniel, Sabrina, and Little Joyce at church

Daniel and Julius eating at the restaurant

James, me, and Virginia at the restaurant

Daniel and Julius with their Fantas (Coke commercial, anyone?)

With Michael at his house (with grandson, Michael)
John and the kids in the van ready to leave
We're off... :(

Maasai Mara Safari

Danny:

On Tuesday evening we got back from our 3 day Safari to Maasai Mara. It was incredible! We were picked up at the orphanage by our guide and went to the park, which is about 4 hours from here (much do to the fact that there are many stretches of dirt road). We met our friends Angie and Ashley (other volunteers) who had gone on a trip to Lake Victoria. There they were able to meet Barack Obama’s grandmother. Needless to say, I was a bit jealous. Evidently, she still lives in the small farming village that she always has (which the girls described as being similar to Makuyu where we are), but her house has been built up a bit and there is a security guard there for obvious reasons. However, they met Barack’s aunt and grandmother, staying there for a couple hours, enjoying conversation and food.

Anyways, we then went on to Maasai Mara to check into our camp. The Maasai people (more later) are a tribe of animal herders, famous for their colorful garments and strong warrior tradition. They operate the camp we stayed at. The accommodations were tents on a concrete platform, with flushing toilets and hot showers (except for the second night when an elephant kicked our water hose). The camp was just outside the gates of the park, so it was an easy drive each day to the park. The four of us and our driver would basically drive around the park in a van with an open top looking for wildlife. And we could get very close. I’ll let the pictures tell the story of our 2 day game drive (and we have much more where this came from, including videos)…

Here we came across 4 cheetahs off a fresh catch. One of the hardest to find in the park, we were fortunate to find this group because of some circling vultures. 2 would enjoy the feast while the other 2 kept watch for other predators. At one point, 2 of the cheetahs went over to another safari van and lay down to get some shade.

On the Kenya-Tanzania (Serengeti) border

The site of the Wildebeast migration, if you look closely there's a 20 foot crocodile in the background

Colobus monkeys that joined us for lunch. The little punks will steal your food if you aren't careful
Tanzania burns fires at the border to try to prevent the Wildebeasts from migrating into Kenya. Makes no sense to me - 7th natural wonder of the world, fires in your national park, it hasn't been successful in stopping the migration for 50 years, polution, etc. etc.
The start of the migration

This is one of the groups of lions we came across. Here is the king of the jungle and his mate. There were also 3 younger lions in the same area (2 with developing manes). You can only imagine all the lion king references over the trip. Simba= lion in Swahili.

On our way out of the park, we stopped at a Maasai village. Granted, much of the Maasai tradition is focused on tourism now, but many still keep their old ways of life. This Maasai village still supports itself by cattle grazing, but has a nice tourist income on the side. We stopped here to experience one of their traditions (that John was especially fond of). As they are nomadic, this isn’t much of an herbivore population. To eat in between cattle slaughters, they mix blood and milk of the cattle for meals. There is much ritual and tradition surrounding this practice – though they were willing to recreate for $20. And let us try…They grabbed a cow, put a belt around its neck and found a strong vein. Then, with a small arrow, they started shooting around the vein. This took a few tries (by few, I mean 20), as they couldn’t get the vein. At this point, the ritual wasn’t all that glamorous – more resembling animal cruelty. Angie and Ashley almost fainted and decided they had enough. After having no success with that cow, they got another one and hit a vein on the 3^rd try. A steady stream of red blood flowed out, which they caught in a canteen like thing. Then, yes, believe it or not, John and I both tried a sip (sorry mom). John had more of a chug and actually burped afterwards (see pic of his blood stained teeth). Overall, pretty gross, but we noted that it resembled a rare steak. We had to try though, right?

Swingset Finished!

We finished our swingset for the kids - which you'll see they've really enjoyed. Most of the welding was finished by our local welder, Jeremiah, and we put the finishing touches on when we returned from our safari yesterday.