Over the desert and through the oasis, to Kalacha town we go

Every year, all the missionaries in Northern Kenya get together in Kalacha, about a three hour drive north of Korr and very close to the Ethiopian border, for a retreat. I made arrangements for other teachers to cover my classes, and I got to go along, too.

We set out after lunch on Monday, and just a few minutes into our drive we saw them – ostriches! Tons of them! There was a big… herd? gaggle? chain gang? of teenagers who were still grey and kind of shaggy (typical!) but a ways onwards there was a mama and papa ostrich with a little baby. We slowed the car to get a better look, but still we spooked them. The papa ostrich spread out his wings and started running away from the mama and baby in an attempt to distract us. Apparently, an ostrich will even fall to the ground and play dead so that a would-be predator will come after him instead of the baby (but look out when you get close! You’re in for a might big kick!). With another small group of teenagers on the road, we drove the car up to them and stopped. “Have you got your camera ready?” I did, and we stepped on the gas and chased them a ways before they all scattered. I know, I know, PETA would kill me, but chasing ostriches across the desert in a land cruiser? AWESOME!

In an hour and a half or so, we reached the Chalbi desert...

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Professional Development, African Style

There's another new post below this one, too - "He's been to Infinity and beyond..."
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February 27 - March 1, 2009

To celebrate the success of Tirrim’s standard 8 pupils, the Area Education Officer for our district decided that all the teachers from the seven little schools in this district should be rewarded with a trip (that’s the way things are done here in Kenya, it seems… the kids do well, the teachers get a reward!). Word went out to each headmaster that they needed to raise a certain amount of money – not from the teachers, but the community, so that the communities could show their support for the teachers. (Arg! How could I go for a weekend away on the shillings of the Rendille?!?! Hooray for being able to make anonymous donations!) Money was raised, and the trip was on!

We would be heading to a resort in South Horr (look it up! That one’s actually on the map!), would be fed, and would go there and back with special chartered transportation.

Faaaancy!

But then, remember, this is Africa!

The resort wasn’t exactly a resort (though it was pretty nice!). The women – all five of us – stayed in huts with bunk beds, bamboo leaf roofs, and a kerosene lantern. The two married couples also got huts. The other 60 or so men slept on the concrete basket ball court. About 20 had foam mattresses, the rest slept on a tarp, most without sheets, cause there was no indication that we had to bring bedding. I was extra thankful for my bed when I heard that!

We arrived Friday night and had supper (over the weekend, they slaughtered 5 goats to feed us all!). Saturday morning and early afternoon we had a few sessions. I kept thinking – this is professional development African style!

We met under the roof of the basket ball court, which bordered on a trail where Samburu warriors and herders – children as young as 6 years old – walked their cattle and goats back and forth from their village to various grazing areas. As we met, the cattle passed, their metal bells clanging back and forth as they walked. Then came the goats, bleating away as they walked. We spotted some monkeys playing in the trees above us as we talked.

We began the meeting with a brainstorming sesson aboug what makes a good teacher, which was a good inspiration. But of course, things quickly turned to politics. We got into groups and brainstormed some of the problems facing education in the north, and it was amusing to think that, except for the monkeys and the warriors, that it very well could have been Canada – too many kids in classrooms (but here, some teachers have classes of 50, 75 and even 100 kids), too few resources (but here, there is one English textbook for my class or 27 kids), teachers are underpaid (but here, many teachers make nearly nothing, often being paid about the same as a house helper/maid).

But there were problems unique to the north, too. For pastoralist people who keep camels and goats and sheep, the children are needed to take care of the animals. They take the herds far away in search of grazing and of water. If all the children go to school, there is no one left to tend the herds. How do you strike a balance?

After we listed problems and solutions (which basically ended up being “We need more money.”), the Area Education Officer spent nearly an hour and a half telling people that they should stop complaining about these problems, look how much has already been done (at least we have schools… we can’t afford teachers, but we’ve hired untrained people to teach… etc). He then told people that they should really take charge of their lives and go to continue their education so they can help solve some of these problems (gulp!) I asked our head teacher afterward what he thought of all this. He said the AEO was just motivating people and that he came away from the weekend really encouraged. I came away from the weekend angry and feeling pretty defensive for these teachers! I chalked it up to a different cultural understanding. If people felt encouraged, that’s great. That’s what the weekend was supposed to be about. Eekers!

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But the best part of the weekend – an experience I’m so glad I had, but am also glad it’s over – was the special chartered transportation. Sixty people on the back of a public lorry. And not just any ol’ public lorry – a beat up, old, yellow lorry loaded with lumber and tables and all kinds of junk, with some of the metal bars up top lashed together with rubber straps and others sketchily welded together.



I spent the first part of the ride there up at the front, wedged in with a ton of people, hanging on to the bars and bouncing around with everyone else. At least I wasn’t one of the ones sitting up on TOP of the bars. Bumping along and balancing your butt on a two inch metal tube isn’t exactly my idea of comfortable! A lot of the guys rode the whole way like that. I have no idea how they did it, especially considering they had to be constantly on the lookout for overhead branches and duck when we passed under, lest the be torn to pieces by the nail-like thorns!


When my friend Janet and I got tired of standing and clutching the bars for dear life got too tiring, we found a place to sit on a large sack of maize for the remainder of the journey. Thankfully we were under the canopy for most of the trip, so there was at least a little protection from the sun.

The 100 km journey took about six and a half hours over bumpy, dusty desert roads. We stopped at every little town along the way (and a few that were not along the way) to pick up other teachers from the district: Ballah, Namarey, Ngurinit, Illaut... the lorry got more and more crowded with teachers and other random travelers who hopped a ride.

There were a few mamas with babies and a Borana woman who was making trouble, saying that Marsabit, a traditional Rendille area, was Borana country (the Rendille and the Borana are not exactly friends). There was some random dude with an AK-47 that he propped up against the fuel drum he was sitting on and an outgoing pastor who found that the solution to the cramped, dusty, bumpy ride was to get people to sing at the top of their lungs. It worked! You can’t be grumpy when you’re singing!

And then there was the miraa*-chewing muslim man who was stoned the whole trip and insisted that I should marry him and take him back to Canada with me. When my friend told him that I was a Christian and that I wanted to marry someone else who was a Christian, he told her to stop talking and go away, she was leading me astray. I assured him that, no, she’s right, I want to marry a Christian, and he’s a Muslim. “Well that’s not a democracy!” he told me. “Who says anything about a democracy? I can choose who I marry, and I choose to marry someone with the same faith as me.” I’m sure he thought I was the rudest woman in the world. It was mostly in good fun, though I did stay far away from him for the rest of the ride. He didn’t give me anymore trouble, as his attention quickly turned to the guy sitting on his stash of miraa, nearly starting a fist-fight on the back of the lorry.

Before the fist fight got going, however, everyone was distracted by a large part of the lorry FALLING OFF onto the road behind us. ‘Member how I talked about the sketchy welding? Well a piece of the tubing that made up the top of the lorry – it came up from the back corner and then bent and met the beam in the middle – had just had it with everyone sitting on it or holding on to it, and it completely broke off. For a while we thought that someone had fallen off with it, but the two guys who were hanging on to it flung themselves forward into the lorry and were OK. We stopped and a few guys dropped and ran to pick it up. Over the course of the trip, five of the twelve joints had broken.

As far as the driver goes, he was nice enough on the way there, and drove alright, doing his best to mitigate the bumps in the road for his passengers in the back. The ride back, however, was a different story! I think he must have been angry with us or something (we were told that we’d be leaving South Horr at 8am sharp, but knowing about African time, I thought a safe bet might be 10am. We didn’t leave till ten to TWELVE! Or maybe it’s cause he thought we were wrecking his truck!), because he drove like an absolute madman. Janet and I had found our seats on a pile of round-ish wooden poles and we were leaning up against the side of the lorry, our backs just the right height to be against the 1/4 inch metal rail that ran down the side of the lorry. We bumped and we banged and we rattled like crazy as the driver sped through the desert with the wind, causing great billows of dust to pour into the back of the lorry. And the driver slowed down for nothing. At least a dozen times the truck banged so fiercely that I was bounced 6-12 inches into the air, slamming back down again – butt on the poles and back on the rail.

Janet at one point told the driver, “Hey! Remember you’ve got people back here, not sacks of maize!” He just laughed and said that he had forgotten that, that he was sorry, and would drive more carefully. He got crazier. Even the land rover carrying the head honcho people behind us couldn’t believe how this dude was driving!

We could have been miserable, but, like the Rendille seem to do, we all sang instead. The pastor lady, who was sitting directly in front of me, led most of the signing, and as the bumps got more severe, she just sang louder. This photo is from a video I have of her dancing around and whistling and whooping. Notice the poor guy next to her - he has a bandana over his face keep the dust out, and his hands over his ears to dampen the decibels coming out of this fabulously rambunctious woman!

The whole weekend was a pretty cool experience. Despite the stiff body and bruises on my back (!!!), I might even venture to say I enjoyed it! It was definitely an experience to remember. No professional development I’ve ever done or will ever do will rival this one, that’s for sure!
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* miraa – a stimulant drug that’s common here in the North – it’s a plant whose leaves, when chewed, make you pretty much lose your mind. A lot of lorry driver here chew it so they can drive for days without sleeping and make more deliveries, and thus more money.

Over the desert and through the oasis, to Kalacha town we go

Every year, all the missionaries in Northern Kenya get together in Kalacha, about a three hour drive north of Korr and very close to the Ethiopian border, for a retreat. I made arrangements for other teachers to cover my classes, and I got to go along, too.

We set out after lunch on Monday, and just a few minutes into our drive we saw them – ostriches! Tons of them! There was a big… herd? gaggle? chain gang? of teenagers who were still grey and kind of shaggy (typical!) but a ways onwards there was a mama and papa ostrich with a little baby. We slowed the car to get a better look, but still we spooked them. The papa ostrich spread out his wings and started running away from the mama and baby in an attempt to distract us. Apparently, an ostrich will even fall to the ground and play dead so that a would-be predator will come after him instead of the baby (but look out when you get close! You’re in for a might big kick!). With another small group of teenagers on the road, we drove the car up to them and stopped. “Have you got your camera ready?” I did, and we stepped on the gas and chased them a ways before they all scattered. I know, I know, PETA would kill me, but chasing ostriches across the desert in a land cruiser? AWESOME!

In an hour and a half or so, we reached the Chalbi desert...

This is the kind of desert that I picture when I think of a desert – flat, baking nothingness, the ground cracked and dry, mirages shimmering in front of you, only to vanish as you come near, the scorching wind kicking up dust as it howls across the plain. It was incredible! The Chalbi is mostly a salt pan, so, had it not been for the searing heat as we drove across, you’d almost think there had been a light dusting of snow. The black rocks of the lava fields rose up in the distance to our right, and we could see the palm trees that grew in the oasis at the edge of the desert.

A herd of camels walking single file in the distance seemed to hover over the desert, their reflections visible in the mirage below them (I know! Reflections! Crazy!) Soon it was nothing but nothingness, too far from water or food for even the bravest camel herder to venture.

Side story: A number of years ago, some people from the Gabbra tribe raided the Rendille and stole 2000 camels. They took the camels over the middle of the Chalbi because they knew that the Rendille might come looking around the edges, where the water is (they usually walk them along the edge if they have to pass that way). Word got to authorities, who sent a helicopter looking for the thieves. You would think that two thousand camels would be easy to spot, but the pilot flew back and forth all over the Chalbi and was never able to locate the massive herd. It was later discovered that the helicopter pilot was a Gabbra, and the camels all made it over the Ethiopian border and disappeared.

When we arrived at the mission station in Kalacha, I was practically abducted by Barbara and Charmyn, two single girls about my age. “You’re staying with us!” they announced. Woohoo! I was glad to get to hang with these two for the week. Slumber party!!! Hehehe! As we were waiting for dinner, Barbara and Charmyn took me to the swimming pool (SWEET!). The mission station also runs a campground for tourists, and so operates a small (but fabulous when the only water where you live is at the bottom of a well!) pool. We climbed up to the deck and looked at the gorgeous water. “Aw, man! My swimmers are back in my bags at your house in town,” I told the girls. “So???” asked Charmyn as she jumped in in her clothes. SPLOOSH! In went Barbara, too, and I, not being one to spoil a party was in a split second later. Swimming is SO much better when you do it in your clothes. (But swimming in a near ankle-length skirt DOES prove rather difficult!). We got out and stood on the platform a while to let the wind dry us off a little. We were hoping it might make us a little bit cold, but we only got as far as “a little less hot.” Oh well, we took what we could get. We were still pretty much sopping when we arrived for dinner. To the questioning looks, we responded through giggles, “Ah! It was terrible! We went up to the pool to show Hillary and she fell in! I had to jump in and save her!” “Yes, and then they were both struggling, so I had to jump in and help!” “I’m so glad they did! I could have DIED!” We “fell in” three more times that week!

It was so wonderful to get to spend time with both Barbara and Charmyn throughout the week. We shared stories of how each of us had come to work in Africa, talked about our lives back home and our ministries here in Northern Kenya, prayed for each other, and enjoyed some general girlie silliness. One image (of the many!) that I have of my time with them is of the three of us sitting all in a line in the living room of their house and brushing our teeth. Barbara and Charmyn just leaned over and spat on the floor (it’s a gravel floor that gets watered daily to keep the dust and heat down). “Come on Hillary! Spit on the floor! Do iiiiit!” It took me a minute to get over the notion of “a good guest doesn’t spit out her toothpaste on the living room floor!” but I soon did and had fun spitting on the floor all week! (It all got washed away by the buckets of water we dumped on it when washing or faces and our feet, so don’t worry!) hehehe!

The sessions throughout the week were really good. We spent time praying for each other, and I got to hear about what is happening in different parts of the North. We spend some time singing together, and I realized how much I had missed worshipping in a language I understand. I sing along in Rendille at church in Korr, but I often (ok, almost always) don’t understand the words. It was so sweet to sing songs that I knew in my own language! One morning we split up into four groups and went for a prayer walk – we walked all over town praying as we went – for specific people, for the town in general, for the various difficulties that are facing Kalacha at this particular time. It was a pretty incredible time as some of us prayed, some of us walked, we met people at talked with them, and learned in relative detail about what is happening in Kalacha.

During the week, Nick also did a number of sessions on language learning – giving ideas and tips on how to learn a language when you can’t buy a textbook and sit in a class to learn it. I discovered that the idea of figuring out a language – learning bit by bit, discovering and figuring out rules and structures, working with a language helper and then going out in the community to use, use, and re-use what you are learning… it’s really cool!

One suggestion was to get a small collection of photos together of people doing something to things (a man cooking meat, a girl milking a goat, etc). You can do so much with your language helper using those photos: nouns – “This is a man. This is milk. This is a fire. This is meat…” verbs: “The man is cooking meat. The girl is milking a goat. The wood is burning…” adjectives: “This is a tall man. She is a young girl. This is a white goat…” Ah! It’s so cool! I would LOVE to learn a language like this! I SO wish I had more time to devote to learning Rendille!

One highlight of the week (ok, so there were a LOT of highlights!) was when we all packed up Thursday afternoon for an evening picnic out on the Chalbi. Kalacha is just on the northern border of the desert, in an oasis, really, and it doesn’t take long before you’re out in the middle of nowhere again. We made a quick stop at Kalacha goda, a natural spring that has been bubbling up for hundreds of years and provides the town with ample water, then headed out to the desert. It was quite the setup – four vehicles and a trailer, tarps, benches, chairs, and lots and lots of food.

Barbara and Charmyn skipped the trip to Kalacha Goda (been there, done that) and walked out to the Chalbi to meet us. The only problem was, once we got there (I guess there’s kind of a regular spot that they meet), there was no sign on them anywhere. We did, however, see something off in the distance. We weren’t sure just what it was… a hyena? A wild dog? Or was it just a donkey? It was too hazy and… mirage-y? to see, so we didn’t want to unpack until we knew for sure what it was. Nothing spoils a picnic like a hungry hyena!

Just before one of the men got in the truck to drive over and see what it was, I put on the zoom lens of my camera and took a photo. I zoomed in on it, and discovered it was Barbara and Charmyn lying face down in the desert with a dog Charmyn has “adopted” from the village – they were hiding on us! We honked at them and they came over, enjoying the mischief they had caused! :)

All dangers now out of the way, we unpacked and set up, and the kids all went out to play, finding a pile of bones in the dirt and using them to dig around in the dirt. Gotta love life in the desert! We frolicked and feasted, and talked and sang as the sun went down over the Chalbi. How cool!

The families with young kids went back a little early, but a few of us and Charmyn’s dog stayed out to talk and do some star gazing. The wind howled across the desert, but we positioned ourselves behind the truck for some shelter and enjoyed the desert night. Suddenly, the dog sat straight up and started growling. This definitely got our attention. What was out there? We shone our lights around, but could see nothing. The dog settled down, but still sat bolt upright and stared out into the desert, watching. We were on our guard a little, but decided that if the dog was not freaking out, neither should we. And then the dog freaked out – he shot up and ran a ways out, barking and barking like crazy at something unseen. He didn’t let up, so we quickly decided it was time to go. We jammed the remaining things in the back of the truck and jumped in – I’ve never seen a picnic get packed up so fast! We scooped up the dog, too, who’d never been in a car in his life, closed up the back of the truck, and sped away. We never did find out what it was the dog saw or heard (it’s probably better that way!) but it certainly made for a good adventure!

Friday was the day to pack up and say goodbye. We left after breakfast and headed back over the Chalbi, stopping in Kargi, just on the south edge, for a quick ten minute visit with a pastor there. (Of course, there’s no such thing as a quick visit in Africa, and we ended up there for lunch and nearly and hour and a half!) Kargi is the first Rendille town you hit on the way back from Kalacha, and, while Kalacha was wonderful, as soon as we hit Kargi, I felt like I was home again! It had been a wonderful week of new friends and new places, good worship, and exciting learning. I was sad to leave, but excited to come back and see the kids again and attack the language with some new ideas. I was encouraged and refreshed, and so thankful for such a fantasterrific week!


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Elephants, Giraffes, and Rhinos, OH MY!

This weekend, two other short term missionaries staying at Mayfield and I were able to head out and enjoy two different outings. On Saturday we went to the elephant orphanage and on Sunday after church we went to the Nairobi giraffe centre. ( I’ve posted photos of both here.)

The elephant orphanage is a place where they bring very young elephants that have been found either orphaned or abandoned in the wild. It’s part of the Nairobi Game Park, and the goal is to raise the elephants in such a way that they are able to be released back into the wild. They only have contact with the public for one hour a day for feeding, and the rest of the day they wander the game park with their keepers.

I was amazed to learn how human-like elephants are in terms of their social interaction. They actually form really strong bonds with their keepers, who sleep in their stall with them so that the elephants can have contact at all times. The keepers have to rotates, so that the elephants don’t get too attached to any one person, which would make it harder for them to eventually head out into the wild. Also, there is one elephant at the orphanage whose mother was killed by poachers when she was about a year old. Park rangers found her nearby, and still to this day, she has quite a mistrust of humans because of what she saw humans had done to her mother. The poor thing is psychologically scarred! (I recently read an article on elephant poaching, and it’s so, so, SO terrible. My goodness…)

But OH! These babies were ADORABLE! They are still bottle fed, and the really young ones are just learning to use their trunks, which made for some pretty cute elephant watching as they attempted to take up water and get it into their mouths!

After both groups of elephants had come out and fed, they brought out a baby rhino (they also have a few rhinos in the centre) who was only three weeks old! He had stage fright and wouldn’t come close to the people, no matter how much the keepers tried to push him along. Eventually they just scooped him up – a RHINO! – and carried him off!

On an excellent tip from a friend, we booked a driver and headed out on Sunday after church to the Giraffe Centre, too. It’s sort of a conservation/education centre with about 10 giraffes. There is one side where they come for the day and the public can come to feed them and the other side where they go in the evening to roam free.

On the public side, there’s a platform you can climb up and feed the giraffes. Only “Daisy” was around, enjoying the attention and food from all the visitors. The keepers are really good at taking pictures for the visitors, giving you all kinds of ways to pose with the giraffes. MAN, those animals are big! But they’re really gentle, and super soft! (Well, they’re gentle unless you being teasing them or they think you have food but you don’t – then they head butt you! Thankfully I avoided any giraffe head butts!) They might be the favourite animal I’ve seen so far (though I don’t know, the monkeys we saw on the side of the road were pretty cool… as were the elephants… and the warthogs running around under the giraffes… hmmm… ok, it’s so hard to pick! hehehe!)

There’s one way in particular that you can feed the giraffes that provides from some pretty great pictures… you’ll just have to go check out the set to see! :)

Bwuah ha haaah!

I totally forgot I had this! This is from the August long weekend camping/hiking trip I did with a bunch of friends to(almost) Needle Peak (You can see the Needle in the panorama shot in the video). It's Trudy, Ken, and I being goofy after a long hike! :)

Some summit shenanigans...

Backlogged Blog Be Gone!

Well. How to catch up on a whole month full of shenanigans, photos, and adventures? Who knows. But I'm betting there'll be bullets. Not the bang-bang kind, silly billy, the listy kind. And hoo boy, will there be photos. Here's installment one...

After summer school ended, I was super-de-duper eager to get out of the city and spend some time in the mountains. I had a group together, and we were going to go up past Whistler to backpack, but, as you may recall, there was a mountain on the road. We quickly did some last minute research (thanks, Jon, for your tip!) and went up to the Coquihalla canyon instead, about a 2.5 hour drive east of Vancouver...

I'm only half heartedly apologizing here for the mass quantity of photos in this post (heaven help you if you're on dial-up, sorry!), but whatever, it was AMAZING, and between the nine of us, six cameras, and three days, there were over 1200 photos taken (I may or may not have been responsible for over half of those... shut up!). These represent only a mere smattering of the awesomeness that was the August long weekend! Click any photo to see a larger version, or, if you're a sucker for punishment, click here to see the full photo set on flickr.

* Hiked in to a wilderness campsite on the shore of Falls Lake, set up, chilled out, and tootled around. Ken decided to forego the first aid kit for a hammock and water guns, so we had some fun with those, too. (Yes, we DID have other first aid kits! :P )



* Hiked up an ATV trail to find a long pipeline path covered in fields and fields and fields of wildflowers. We hiked up quite a ways, enjoyed the views, the flowers, and the company.






* Came back down and got our little camping kitchen set up for dinner and Jiffy Pop. Mmmmm! SO delicious!



* Did some fun night photography that mostly ended up with hysterical laughing and frivolity and sat around our non-campfire campfire and told stories and chatted late into the night. And yes, way to many "ands" in that last sentence. Oh well.



* Got up for a somewhat lazy morning of enjoying the spectacular surroundings before heading off for our hike: Needle Peak!




* We hiked all day - massive swarms of mosquitoes couldn't dampen our spirits as we hiked through forest and into the high alpine with spectacular views of mountain peaks as far as the eye could see.



* After lunch, we split off - some went to an alpine lake, and some went to try to get to the needle, which involved some fairly crazy scampering up steep bouldery cliffs. There was one peak we had to climb up and over before we got the needle itself that took long enough (and was scary enough!) that we decided to stop there and just enjoy the views - which were FANTASTIC! - from there.




(Gee, I wonder why it's called the "Needle?")




* On our way back to camp, there were some bets made and some money laid out, and Ken (of the hammock and waterguns) made some coin by doing something nobody else was willing to do...


* The evening held swimming (OY VEY that was a c-c-c-c-cooooooooold lake! It burns! It buuuurns!,) dinner (sweet! Pour boiling water into foil bags, let sit for 15 mins to rehydrate: "We're cooooking!"), and stargazing. In the middle of nowhere, the stars were intense and multitudinous, and we enjoyed lying against a log and watching the early August meteor shower fling stars across the sky right, left, and center (can you spot the big dipper in the photo that looks all black?). SO beautiful, SO peaceful. I couldn't help but think over and over, "The heavens declare the works of your hands..." (Psalm 19:1)




* We packed up the next morning and drove to Camp Kawkawa for a swim in the (much warmer) lake and some chill time on the beach. We were treated to the most spectacular display of synchronized swimming (can it be synchronized if it's only one person? Water dancing?) to Enrique Iglesia's "Hero", had some more shenanigans with the Weapons of Mass Wetness, and revelled in a weekend well spent - just what summer is supposed to be.





It was only three days, but it felt like a week, and was the perfect way to kick off my summer vacation.


View the full August Long Weekend photo set here.