The lake.

Most of you have probably heard of Lake Victoria at one point or another in your life. It is the largest lake in Africa and third in the world. It has become especially famous through the documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare” showing the lake’s challenges regarding the Nile perch and water hyacinth. Many many years ago I held a presentation about invasive species in Lake Victoria (that was for my UWC interview in 2005). During my first Ecology course we learned about colour selection in Cichlids and how pollution disrupts it. And now, year later, I am actually living just a 15 minute walk away from this giant pond of awesomeness.

This morning I was lucky enough to have a roommate that has to take pictures of otters to make post cards and other touristy products. I was allowed to join the otter hunt and at 6:30 am we started our boat tour. We were joined by the captain (who had brought a big bag of life jackets, fuel and the motor on his bike) and a volunteer that had helped out with otter research in this area some time ago.

The sunrise was short but pretty as always. Even before we took off I saw my first ever Hippo peeking out of the water. I was totally hippnotized by it. The lake was calm and very milky, the birds were singing, chirping, shouting and squeaking. Every time you look in a different direction there is a new species. I particularly like a yellow, abundant, bird (Village weaver) that lives in large colonies and builds round hanging nests close to the water.

We were driving around looking for otters, and found none. Instead we got to observe at least nine Hippos. It might have been more but I didn’t count the ones on the way back in case they were the same. So cool. They don’t mind people too much, which makes it quite easy to observe and photograph them.

Other than Hippos there were people on the lake. Fishermen were rowing or sailing out hoping for a lucky day. Apparently, marijuana is part of the payment they receive. Other than that we saw quite a few children using long poles to move their boats around the shore and chop branches from the trees that are standing in the water.

Carpets of water hyacinths were floating around the lake-scape. One harbour that was almost free of hyacinths in the morning was completely covered just three hours later. Once the wind changes, those hyacinths will move again. They pose a major problem to fishermen, other boat traffic and quite a few species and leads to increased risk of getting bilharzia as the hosts (snails) live in the roots. However, often not mentioned, the hyacinth has quite positive effects on a lot of smaller fish species. They are being hunted by the Nile perch and can now hide in the roots. Therefore, the otters have been doing better again, too. Nowadays, the water hyacinth is controlled by an introduced beetle. It hasn’t eradicated the plant but decreased it to more manageable levels.

After four hours of seeing ever more birds and Hippos we turned around, watched fishermen sell their fish at Dunga beach and landed safe and sound back at the harbour. From there I rushed to work (three hours late) on the back of a motorbike.

What a beautiful morning.

Nairobi – 2 days that turned into 7 or: A week that I got to spend with my son

Last week I took the bus to Nairobi to deal with some immigration matters, in short get an exemption to pay the 2000 Euro work permit fee (per person). I had found a place to stay through the UWC couchsurfing page and got picked up by my host and grandson, Francis. As well as Isabel from Germany, my co mother. Yeah that’s right. Once we got to the house I was greeted by my son, Mr Patrick, the father of the family and another co mother, Isabella. Isabella senior was Patrick’s mother and his only daughter was named the same but he had started to call his daughter “mom” and hence the confusion. Now that there was three Isabel(la)’s in the household he looked like his birthday had happened early. Needless to say I had a good time with this (my?) family.

So how is Nairobi? In Nairobi there is cars, cars and busses, and busses and cars. There is traffic jams and traffic jaaaams. Fancy high rise buildings and dirt roads. Every second car belongs to some embassy, UN or UNEP. Funny water fountains and water shortages. Diva Nairobi has her very own charm, it is her busy-ness, the contrasts within and the ever active people. Someone I talked to compared Nairobi to New York in the 80s. Not sure what New York was like in the 80s but in Nairobi there are cell phones and Kenyans, and not too few of them. President Kenyatta has left his marks. If you come across a building that doesn’t quite fit in, is ugly and/or looks like a space ship Kenyatta probably played around with it. With or without Kenyatta, it is hard to call the city beautiful (take away some amazing parks) yet it draws you in to stay and explore!

Besides wanting to sit in a traffic jam for several hours every day I had come to get that fee exemption. Things took longer than expected. Here is a short run down:

Monday: I meet with Mr. Jonathan Chege at the treasury to give him a letter from the German govt explaining that I and two other volunteers are not being paid by Kenyans and that we don’t take away any jobs. He takes it and tells me to come back on Thursday. I tell him that I would want to leave the next day and if it was possible to do it a little faster. “Call me tomorrow morning and it will be done”. Two weeks ago when I had met Mr. Jonathan Chege for the first time I had helped him with his computer so I guess we are on good terms.

Tuesday: I call him in the morning. “Call me in the early afternoon”. I call in the early afternoon. “Call me later in the afternoon”. I dropped by his office in the afternoon. Waited for half an hour until he came back from I don’t know what. Waited another hour and I had the exemption letter in my hands. Happy times. Only that I had to get a stamp from the German embassy and it was already closed at that time.

Wednesday: I go to the German embassy, pass through numerous security gates. Wait for half an hour and then again for one hour to be told that the person I need to talk will come back in the afternoon and that he will call me. I was smart enough to write down the name because he never called. I called. No answer. I call again. “Sorry, I am in a meeting. I will call you when I am done”. No one calls.

Thursday: I call in the morning. “Just drop by.” I go to the embassy, pass all those gates again and get my stamp. Only that they have never seen such an exemption document there… Strange world. He congratulated me though for having gotten one.

Instead of taking the night bus back and being tired at work on Friday, the family I stayed with forced to stay me until Saturday so that I called my boss and asked if I could work from Nairobi instead. I actually did sit down on Friday to do some work…

Other than that I had a wonderful week with wonderful hosts. – I was driven around all day (Thanks Francis!) and was well entertained. Learned some Luo and immersed myself in Kenyan politics discussions (that’s some kind of hobby here). After one week it was sad to leave Nairobi but I was just as happy to come back to Kisumu where I was greeted by the lake, quiet roads with their colourful bicycle taxis and by our new apartment (thanks Inga for getting up at 4 in the morning!).

One week (and a half) in Kisumu.

Last week I reached Kisumu, my new home for the coming year. Right now, Inga and I (other German volunteer) stay at the guest house of my work because we are waiting that the apartment we are moving into is done. More about that later.

Kisumu is a mid-size city located on the shores of Lake Victoria. Other than having those awesome Cichlids the lake might be known to most of you because of the Nile perch, water hyacinth or its pollution in general. I have already seen the water hyacinths and the water is rather milky. No temptation to jump in. On Friday morning I joined a bird walk by the lake. I saw a lot of very colourful and awesome looking birds and heard Hippos making their noises in the background. For the first two days I wandered around the city, drank fresh Mango juices and met up with Laura, a friend from UWC. While struggling with a cold, Inga and I started to get things for our new apartment. A friend of another volunteer helped us to buy furniture, a stove, mattresses etc. Because we wanted to get mosquito net frames for the windows we got a carpenter to make them. He said it would be no problem. So far it has been pretty disappointing, they use nails here instead of screws and he managed to break out pieces of wall every time he attached a frame, some sections are not straight etc. Hope that he is going to fix all of these issues soon.

On Sunday people celebrated the end of Ramadan. There are not that many muslims in Kisumu but the friend that had been helping us with the apartment is muslim, so we joined his family’s celebration. I don’t know how many hands I had to shake. In the end we were all sitting on the floor outside of the house and eating lots of food. Most of the people were men, food was plenty and a lot of it ended up next the plates and on the floor (they had put out mats so it was easy to clean). At least they allowed to kids from the neighborhood to come and join.

My work has been pretty nice so far. After having met with my boss, another employee gave me a run down on the different sectors and surveys my NGO conducts. One day I was able to go out in the field and look how they track the farms and how they interview the farmers. This older lady (79 years) invited us for tea and then later insisted that we’d stay for lunch. Ugali (water with maize flour) and kale. It was tasty and interesting to see her house and farm. She was just mixing in ashes with the corn to prevent weevils from eating it. Most of the farmers in this region are subsistence farmers, barely getting by. VI Agroforestry, the organization I am working with organize seminars to teach sustainable agricultural techniques, encourage the plantations of woodlots so people can harvest their own firewood and help farmers to organize themselves as groups to either set up a loaning system or market  certain produce together. Three out of the nine divisions near Kisumu are also taking part in a Carbon pilot project funded by the World Bank, which is compensating farmers for sustainable land use techniques that sequester carbon in the soil or vegetation. Those carbon projects are currently being mapped by the field staff and therefore I will probably be working mostly with those three divisions in the near future. For most of the days I was busy fixing up GIS shapefiles that they had already collected in the office. Something went wrong with the projections recorded in about half of them so I have been reading up on how to re project polygons or fix the issue otherwise.

Currently I am sitting in the kitchen at my office and it is raining cats and dogs. One would get soaked in a second trying to go outside. Luckily the kitchen is the place where the food is so I don’t mind waiting for a while. The thunderstorms here …are crazy. – After I typed the “here” I went to close the window and almost got hit by a lightning. I could feel the charge and the electricity went out immediately. For a while we decided to stand in the hallway as that room doesn’t have any windows and seemed like a safer option. Now the storm is slowly moving past us and we are sitting in the dark with just the laptops (of course and luckily we had them un-plucked).  EDIT: Electricity was out in Kisumu for a day after that and the area where the office is it was out for more than two days. The internet server at the office got fried and I think parts have to get replaced now.

 

Dar Es Salaam to Kisumu

Dar Es Salaam. Cars, mini buses, factories, fruit stands and awesome plush chairs sold on the streets. On the 1^st of August our group landed in Dar Es Salaam and the first couple of days we got to spend in Mbagala Mission. Besides learning the most important phrases in Kiswahili we got to explore downtown and buy ourselves moblile phones, sim cards, grade one Kiswahili books and other useful items we might need and won’t get outside of the capital. We got to practice our very basic Kiswahili skills and get used to the chaotic and rather noisy capital/ transportation system. Compared to some places in South America I thought it was quite relaxed, though. Only that trying to get into a mini bus (Daladala) often ended up in fist fights and something I probably will never get used to is the garbage (mainly plastic) that gets burned everywhere.  On a Saturday, early in the morning (5 o clock) we left Mbagala Mission again and took a bus Mlalo. The Dar bus station is one very very big area with hundreds (at least it felt like it) busses leaving to all places in the country. We had to track through all the busses and vendors selling bread, fruits, candy, water and other not so useful things to find our bus. Most busses leave early in the morning to they can reach their destination before its dark outside.

The drive to Mlalo was about seven hours, most of it on asphalt road. Leaving the city took a while and slowly we moved into a dryland landscape with clay houses surrounded by small agricultural plots or orange plantations. Every now and then the bus would stop to drop off and pick up people and vendors would sell their fruits through the window. The best section was the orange curve. Oranges were sold in large nets (ca. 50 oranges in one net) and I bought one for 2000 Tanzanian shilling which is 1 Euro (2 cents per orange). Some used the bus ride to sleep; I couldn’t sleep as it was too exciting to observe the landscape and people. You got your full dosage of cliché Africa with clay huts, kids chasing wheels with a stick and woman dressed in wonderful colours washing their clothes in the rivers nearby. For the last couple of hours of our journey we passed through the Usambara Mountains where temperate temperatures allow for intensive agriculture on small patches by the river and in terraces across the hill side. To my surprise some of the most prevalent goods were cabbage and carrots. A lot of it gets eaten locally but also gets exported elsewhere within the country. People there are poor but healthy and social structures seem to be very strong.

Mlalo, the place where we stayed for five days is one of those small communities in the Usambara Mountains. We stayed in yet another Mission half way up the mountain. The mission was an old house build by Germans around 1900 and still had its old charm with squeaking, old wooden floors, high ceilings and a kitchen equipped with an old stove (Kuechenhexe) covering the house in smoke. In Mlalo we studied Kiswahili for part of the day and during the rest of the time we got to hike in the area, drive to Lushoto, a town “nearby” (2 hours or dirt roads) and once we went to the market and buy everything to prepare a meal for the group. Because veggies are so cheap it was really fun to cook. Part of our meal was a huge bucket of Guacamole because avocados only cost something like 5ct each. Hiking around Mlalo was great, although very little native vegetation is left it is a beautiful landscape with small scale agriculture, sweet little irrigation channels and big boulders sticking out of the green from time to time. The paths we walked on often lead right through the backyards of houses (there is no real concept of my space your space there) and it was fun to be greeted by the kids (Mambo!!!) and give respect to the elder (Shikamoo). One of the highlights of that week was a Chameleon that we found during one of the hikes and played with for half an hour. On yet another early morning (4:15 wake up) the group of people going to Kenya left Mlalo.

We took a bus to Moshi were we stayed in a nice Hotel and hung out with some other Solivol volunteers. Moshi is a nice little town, quite touristy because it is the starting point for many of the Kilimanjaro adventures. Unfortunately it was raining and cloudy so we couldn’t see the mountain from there. From Moshi we took a bus to Arusha and then another one across the border to Nairobi. With Moshi we had left the green, hilly landscape and entered the dry savannah where we could see Massai herding their cattle, little boys taking care of the goats and from time to time there were gazelles nibbling on some leaves. The border crossing was pretty eventless and the closer we got to Nairobi the more industry and fenced up areas we could see. The hotel we stayed in was right downtown so we could discover and run our visa errands by walking. Downtown Nairobi is a busy, metropolitan and rather interesting area. I still get hopelessly lost there but some of the large buildings, especially one with a giant Johnnie Walker sign on it, kept us somewhat oriented. Getting  a work permit wasn’t as easy as we hoped. Although we had all the documents we were told that they had doubled the fee (from 1000 to 2000 Euros) last month. Long story short, we talked to the chief officer of immigration and to someone in the ministry of finance and now we may get the work permit for free if we manage to get an official letter from the German government (BMZ) ensure that they cover the costs of our stay and that we won’t earn any Kenyan money. After a tiring ride in a night bus to Kisumu I finally reached my new home for the next year.