February Trip to Teremi/Chwele

I have gotten a lot of questions/complaints about how it seems that I never do work, and that all I do in Africa is go on safaris and see wild animals.  That isn’t true, but I have never had a way to back it up especially since I was always at the wrong end of the lens.  In February I had BUC Eric Chamberlain as my travel partner, and as a fellow Nikon SLR user, I was finally in some pictures worthy of posting. 

The February trip started by heading to Eldoret, to see two of most important projects.  This contactor is a very fast mover and has quickly prepared the site for the foundation.  These two projects are each for a 100 student open bay dormitory, one at a girls high school and one at a boys high school. 

Chwele is the girls school and its dormitory is being placed on a difficult hillside.  Over 10 meters the foundation had to be built up over a meter in height.  This is the admin building at the school.

Here is me and the contractor, Anwar, overlooking the trenching for the foundation.  Four trees had to be removed to make room for this dormitory.  All the work you can see has been done by hand, no backhoes or excavators, no mechanical equipment whatsoever.

Overall view of the jobsite, you can see the two trenches on the left are for the main and veranda foundations.

Here me I am taking a photograph of the foundation walls.

A Kenya worker placing a large bluestone onto the foundation wall.

Walking the jobsite with Anwar.

We ate lunch at the jobsite, with the drivers Alex and Sam.  We are looking at a map deciding how to get to one of the new sites that the embassy wants me to check out.

Teremi Boys School is slightly behind the girls school, but is being built on flat ground, so its construction should be easier.

All the excess soil must be moved by hand, a truly amazing feat when you are used to seeing bobcats and backhoes.

The overall foundation view.

Anwar and I looking at the foundation trenching.  The rich, compact soil allowed him to dig the trenching without any shoring and make it look like he cut it out with a knife.

BUC Chamberlain, myself, and the headmaster in front of the school.

Apologies for disappearing - Tsavo East NP

I apologize for not posting in the last month, but taking over as Kenya Country Engineer has been very time consuming. In the January trip, the last pictures I posted were of a day off in Nairobi at the elephant orphanage and giraffe park, the only other interesting things that I took pictures of was a stop in Tsavo national park. The February trip was extremely busy for me, and though I took many pictures, many of my pictures were lost when my laptop burned up on one of the last days there.   Though I thought that was as bad as it could get, on the same day my large (150mm-500mm) camera lens broke.  That was a very bad day for me.  I lost roughly 4000 pictures from the February trip. 

In January, the last trip was a pass through Tsavo East National Park.  It’s an awesome park, full of history.  A movie, The Ghost in the Darkness, is based upon true events that occurred in Tsavo. 

The most special part of Tsavo was the elephants, they are so different than elephants in a zoo.  These elephants are wild, wary of humans, and know they are the biggest animal in town.  

Kate and I stopped at one of the washed out bridges.  The road now snakes further upstream and crosses the wadi.  I can only figure these are all impassable during the wet season. 

A beautiful bird that landed on a branch next to the road.

A water buffalo calf with its heard; the rest of the herd was very protective. 

These were two of the males that were interested in defending the young, even if it meant going head to head with a Prado.  They were grunting, pounding the ground with their hoofs, and making a range of other gestures.

This male was so agitated, he had snot dripping from his nose.  He just made a gurgling sound as he stood there staring us down. 

These two elephants were hundreds of meters away, but were very aware of us and were not comfortable with our presence, moving off into the trees as soon as we stopped.

 

A flock of egrets passing from the river, in the bright morning sun, they were basically glowing.

Another bright bird in the park. 

These two elephants were cooling themselves in the river and wandered out of the valley right past us. 

These ostriches were a trio of females that were close to the road.  All others I saw were far off in the distance and running away.  This was the first close ones that I could get a decent picture of, but the sun was moving overhead and did not provide good light.

Day in Nairobi

I am sorry that it has been weeks since my last post, but I have been busy getting back to Djibouti, completing my turnover as the Kenya Country Engineer, and then returning to Kenya.  In the final days of the last trip to Kenya, we explored around Nairobi.  The first stop was the Elephant Orphanage within the Nairobi National Park.  For one hour a day they allow people into the compound to see the young elephants being fed and allow them to play in mud/water.  All of these elephants were orphaned because their mothers or entire families were killed by poachers for their ivory.  The wildlife rangers spend 24 hours straight with an elephant, feeding it every three hours and tending to all its needs, before rotating to another elephant.  This is done to ensure that one does not get used to a single ranger. 

Here is the younger elephants being led into the feeding area, they are between 5 and 15 months old. 

This one is drinking human baby formula.  They have found this is the best substitute for the young elephants, but did make the joke that it is very tough to get milk from a wild elephant mother. 

After eating, the young quickly went to the pond and started to play and drink. 

The youngest elephant, only 5 months old, would follow the shadow of the umbrella on this hot day.  She was found lying against her mother, dead from poachers shooting her and removing her tusks.

It took awhile for it to happen, but soon all of the elephants were in the pond, pushing shoving, and spraying water. 

After the younger ones were led away, the older (17-30 month) elephants were brought down for their feeding.  This one was old enough to have the bases of tusks starting to emerge.  These animals weighed over a thousand pounds. 

These guys and gals were even more energetic; pushing, shoving, throwing dirt, and splashing. 

After getting wet, they would get a trunk full of dirt and throw it onto their backs, or at their handlers, whichever suited their fancy at that moment.

This teenage elephant grabbed this stick to chew on, which the handlers made a valiant effort to take away, but the elephant won the law of gross tonnage and kept the stick.

This orphanage also cares for rhinos on occasion.  This juvenile black rhino was found next its dead mother, whose horn had been cut off with a chainsaw.  They raised it here for two years before releasing it back into the park.  They say every so often it returns to the pen where it was raised to just hang out.  They lock it in when guests are around, but open the door and let it leave when it wants. 

The rhino was now almost a ton in weight, and if it wanted to leave this wood and steel door enclosure, it could at any second. 

You could see that this young boy had lived a tough life so far, and the rangers were really hopeful that it would adapt to the wild, be accepted, and one day mate with a wild female to assist the engaged population.

The next stop was the giraffe park, where you can hand feed these gentle giants.  When you are up close, these things are monsters.  Though the park is extremely large, most stay near the feeding stand for obvious reasons. 

This young one came over to the low feeding area where Kate and I were.  He saw the bucket of pellets and made a beeline right for where we were. 

Here is Kate feeding the young one.  They are very gentle and just pick up the feed pellets with their lips. 

Me posing with the giraffe.  Its concern was not the composition of the photograph, it only cared about the food.

One of the adult males came over from the tall feeding area to our area after seeing how much food the young one was getting.  It walked over, scaring the young one away, and then leaned down quickly at Kate.  The sheer size of the head approaching her quickly frightened her, but the goliath just nibbled the pellets and went back to the tall feeding stand.

We both went over to the tall feeding stand to pose with the large male again. 

Kate also got very familiar with this adult female.  She (the giraffe) had been trained to lick a pellet out of a person’s lips. 

This family of warthogs came in and quickly cleaned up the pellets that were dropped by the giraffes.

Our next stop was the Nairobi National Museum.  It was very impressive, breaking the history of Kenya down into three segments, pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial.  It’s very humbling coming from North America, where our history can be measured in thousands of years, to Kenya where their history goes back 18 million, with the first humanoids.  The museum also had a hall of birds and some other stuffed animals. 

The most fun part was the snake park.  There were terrariums all around with a full range of snakes, but the most interesting feature was a sunken snake pit.  Within this pit were hundreds of snakes, both venomous and non-venomous. 

There was also a tortoise pit, where the tortoises were doing what they do best.  This male was relentless, and in the two hours we were there, completed at least one and a half laps around the pit, chasing and propositions the females. 

An African python wrapped around my head.

Kate was not so excited about this part of the tour.

This snake had just finished eating a lizard, within minutes it was swallowed and into its midsection.

This was the most awesome snake I have ever seen, the Gaboon Viper… it is only about 3 feet long about and 4-6 inches in diameter with a head that is nearly the size of your palm.  When we walked to its terrarium, it puffed/inflated in defense.